AI War state of the game

[Hearteater]

My normal speed games take 15-25 hours.  I can't imagine how long Epic would take, much less a More Epic o_O !

[keith.lamothe]

I wouldn't expect combat style to have a very big impact on total game time, because the strategic "timers" (metal+crystal income and costs, wave intervals, cpa intervals, etc) aren't affected.  It just affects the... well, style of the combat

[doctorfrog]

"glacial"
 "Blue Danube Waltz"

[zoutzakje]

I like playing epic in the sense that I like watching fights. But after I got a few hours into a game, I get bored of it and want everything to move faster. Blitz works much better for me, even on high difficulty scenario's.
One of the main reasons I enjoy playing Blitz is because of scouting. I play with show unexplored wormholes off and I do all my scouting manually (no jumpships, I don't like that kind of cheese). Scouts move faster too, so the chances of more scouts getting through alive and undetected by tachyon guardians is much higher.
And I just don't like the endless waiting of ships that have to travel from one point of your empire to another. I still enjoy playing normal, but epic is just... too slow.

[Philo]

Blobbing is fine as it is right now imo. For me at least I'm having enough trouble microing around a Bomber Starship fleet, a Raid Starship fleet and two divided fleets in one single planet when I want to take down those guard posts fast (which is most times). I don't really pay that much attention to what the 2 fleets' ship compsition is so I would call that blobbing in a sense. And it's fine.

Edited...

[Gallant Dragon]

"glacial"
 "Blue Danube Waltz"

"Space Odyssey"

(of the 2001 variety)

[Histidine]

"State Funeral"
"Hey Keith, I Think My Copy of AI War isn't Responding"

[keith.lamothe]

"State Funeral"
"Hey Keith, I Think My Copy of AI War isn't Responding"

"Sure It Is, It's Just Right Behind You"

[KDR_11k]

Kill times in 1v1s may be very long but AI War isn't a game about 1v1s, it's about 1000v2000s or thereabouts. When a full cap of frigates launches a volley at a pile of fighters the fighters die by the dozen. The numbers are simply so large that even fairly meh 1v1 performance adds up to hundreds dead in a matter of seconds (which incidentally weakens repair units because dead units cannot be repaired and unlike a smaller scale game* you won't usually end up with your units only damaged unless you're only fielding superweapons). Then there's the multipliers. They're practically mandatory because the AI will regularly exceed your ship caps by a factor of 4 or more. Lower multipliers would make it much harder to kill such an overwhelming AI force with your much smaller numbers because the advantage you get from fielding the right ship types is less. E.g. 2x multipliers count as counters in other games but they would be totally devastating here because your 96 fighters are no longer able to stop 200 AI bombers.

*= ALL OF THEM. The ship cap of fighters is roughly the total unit cap in e.g. Star Craft and a full cap of triangle ships is more than you can build in Total Annihilation!

[Wingflier]

I really don't understand this forum.

After the extremely negative response this thread got, I figured that maybe I was doing something wrong, so I went back and increased the difficulty higher than it has even been before, and played against a Special Forces Captain and Tag Teamer, with 5/5 Advanced Hybrids and Golems - Hard, thinking that all of these factors combined would make taking individual planets INSANELY difficult.

It turned out to be just as easy as ever.

I don't understand how you guys can say this game ISN'T about blobbing.  If I have to play on difficulty 10, which is supposed to be impossible, just so I can spread my forces out, not because the game is tactically deep, but because I'm getting hit with so much shit from so many different angles that I have to, then that is just pathetic.

On my next game I'm going to play a 9/9 against two Tech Turtles on Crosshatch.  If I win the entire thing AGAIN with just blobbing, then I'm going to come back here and tell you that you're all full of you know what. 

[Lancefighter]

I skimmed through the thread after initially posting in it, so what I'm about to say probably isnt amazingly up to date.

But I thought most of what people said is that the game actually IS about blobbing? I am confused. Sun Tzu even once said something along the lines of war not being about protracted battles, but being about victories. (I'm probably murdering the quote, but I havent looked it up in forever).

In either case - Grab the 2.0 game sometime, and ill run a coop game with you. We will see how well that goes..

[chemical_art]

I don't think the responses were not about the game isn't about blobbing.

It was if through strategic positioning you were able to blob, then you are rewarded with the greatest tactical success.

If anything, higher difficulties increase the need to blob, and  both increase the punishment if your blob is wiped out and decreases the time you are able to blob safely without risking defenses.

[chemical_art]

On my next game I'm going to play a 9/9 against two Tech Turtles on Crosshatch.  If I win the entire thing AGAIN with just blobbing, then I'm going to come back here and tell you that you're all full of you know what.

You are welcome to, but a purely defensive AI with your strategic options limited to lobbing sledgehammers against the AI is a recipe for that which you don't like.

[Wingflier]

On my next game I'm going to play a 9/9 against two Tech Turtles on Crosshatch.  If I win the entire thing AGAIN with just blobbing, then I'm going to come back here and tell you that you're all full of you know what.

You are welcome to, but a purely defensive AI with your strategic options limited to lobbing sledgehammers against the AI is a recipe for that which you don't like.

Well then it's exactly what I've been saying.

What strategy is there in this? 

I am playing a supposed strategy game, yet every game I do the exact same thing, with the exact same units, and the exact same tactics, in the exact same way.

Where is the strategy?  I just blob all my stuff, from planet to planet.  I take the planets I need to take (core shield gens mostly).  I pop the Progress Reducers.  Eventually I make my way to the Homeworld.

I can do these with the same bonus ships every time.  The same unlocks.  The same defenses.  Very little changes.  Very little strategy.  It's just monotony; repetition.

Somebody please explain where the formulaic, mindless blobbing ends the strategy begins.  TELL ME what difficulty and settings I need to use in order to have to do something out of the norm of just group moving my guys from planet to planet in the exact same way 40 or so times until I win.

[chemical_art]

On my next game I'm going to play a 9/9 against two Tech Turtles on Crosshatch.  If I win the entire thing AGAIN with just blobbing, then I'm going to come back here and tell you that you're all full of you know what.

You are welcome to, but a purely defensive AI with your strategic options limited to lobbing sledgehammers against the AI is a recipe for that which you don't like.

Well then it's exactly what I've been saying.

What strategy is there in this? 

I am playing a supposed strategy game, yet every game I do the exact same thing, with the exact same units, and the exact same tactics, in the exact same way.

Where is the strategy?  I just blob all my stuff, from planet to planet.  I take the planets I need to take (core shield gens mostly).  I pop the Progress Reducers.  Eventually I make my way to the Homeworld.

I can do these with the same bonus ships every time.  The same unlocks.  The same defenses.  Very little changes.  Very little strategy.  It's just monotony; repetition.

Somebody please explain where the formulaic, mindless blobbing ends the strategy begins.  TELL ME what difficulty and settings I need to use in order to have to do something out of the norm of just group moving my guys from planet to planet in the exact same way 40 or so times until I win.

When you stop thinking tactical = strategic.

You pick an example where you eliminate all strategic thought in what has been acknowledged by the developers as a strategic game,  then complain the tactical game isn't deep, then say the whole game is shallow.

It has been said, repeatedly, that the game is a primarily a strategic game, not a tactical one.

You can keep banging your head against the wall that you don't like how blobbing is the most tactically most advantageous situation, but in most situations when you accomplish tactical blobbing without strategically sabotaging yourself you come out with an advantage.

You are arguing against lanchester's law, tactical superiority, and a variety of other observations.