AI War state of the game

[Kahuna]

20 minutes into an 8/8 game on 2.0, i got a 1.6k unit wave warning. I ragequit.

For comparison, with my 10/10 mad bomber game, I think I was dealing with 400ish ship waves

lol I can only hope that was a joke

[Lancefighter]

on a 10aip game nowadays? I honestly do not doubt it. the initial wave has gone down so much..

Although, to be somewhat fair - back then, low/normal/high caps didn't exist. Everything was compared, on the unity switch, to 'high' caps. This means that a modern day 400 ship wave was still at least a 800 ship wave.

Its still pretty low.

[KDR_11k]

These days I no longer hit economy or energy constraints despite taking fewer planets and just repeat-building everything. I think the player economy is just OP. A nerf to that would also balance 10 AIP games because having just your homeworld would no longer be enough to maintain any sort of fleet. I recall having to make do with small numbers of ships on my first attacks, nowadays I can just pump out a full cap of all triangle ships before attacking anything.

As for variable caps, I quite like that I can set my dock to repeat-build and not have to worry about e.g. fighters going extinct. Though maybe it would be better to simply input target counts instead of production counts into the dock so you say "I want to have 60 fighters" and the thing builds fighters until you have 60 instead of always plopping out 60 fighters until you hit your cap. That would make dealing with more restricted power more feasible as you could decide how much power to allocate to each type. How often do you use the space dock without repeat build? I can see doing that with the starship constructor but not the space dock.

[Lancefighter]

i rarely take my starship constructors off repeat build :\

i agree though - there is no more energy crisis. I have 0 energy problems all game. There is no reason not to have energy stuff on every planet all of the time.

back in 'the day', you would have to spend an incredibly non-trivial amount of your income to maintain your energy supply.. I still dont know why that was taken out.

[KDR_11k]

Even free energy is fair provided there's an actual need for all that energy you produce. Currently it's quite hard to consume more energy than you produce without plonking down forts everywhere. It used to be that your fleetships alone could eat your power output.

[Martyn van Buren]

I certainly also have the sense that the player economy is OP.  I feel like you want it to be a tempting and potentially strategically valid choice to take a world you don't need just because it has a lot of resource points, but (am I mistaken about this?) it seems like everyone agrees that that is never going to be worth the AIP.

It may just be that I've gotten a better grasp of the game over the two years, but I have the sense that the game has been drifting in a more low-AIP-friendly direction since I started playing, which seems like a shame to me.  I definitely think it's more fun to get into the endgame trying to hold at least 10-15 worlds on an 80-planet map, but it seems like that's pretty much never the right move strategically.  Am I wrong?

That said, I am still very much pro-AI Wars.  It seems possible to me that eventually you might just learn all the tricks and run out of game (I wouldn't know), but the figuring out is still worth years of fun.

[TechSY730]

To me, it seems that many of these issues are due to: (in rough order of importance)
-Player economy is OP (resources and energy)
-Overall stat balance issues (armor and hull type bonuses and hull type distribution)
-Moderately widespread individual ship type balance issues
-The AI is growing a bit too quickly with AIP
-The AI not responding enough at AIP 10

And two lesser important items
-The AI takes almost no strategic actions
-AI is somewhat lackluster in tactics



These things I feel are the largest issues in the game.


I know you have done a lot of work Keith, and we appreciate it, but it seems like your work is still "cut out for you".

[KDR_11k]

The AI is supposed to not respond much at 10 AIP but the player isn't supposed to stay at that level for long either. I think the problem is that the player can afford to stay at 10 AIP, not that 10 AIP is too gentle. It's a grace period.

[TechSY730]

BTW, I am beginning to think that adding the higher mark harvesters was a mistake.
There is very little in terms of opportunity cost; nothing else can be used in those harvester spots, and their knowledge cost is just so low for what they provide.

Due to the nature of harvesters, it is almost impossible to find a balance point between always a no brained to get or almost never worth it.

[TechSY730]

The AI is supposed to not respond much at 10 AIP but the player isn't supposed to stay at that level for long either. I think the problem is that the player can afford to stay at 10 AIP, not that 10 AIP is too gentle. It's a grace period.

I agree that it is due to player economy being OP more than it is due to the AI.

Really, player economy being OP should of been at the top of my list. *starts making the edit*

[Histidine]

BTW, I am beginning to think that adding the higher mark harvesters was a mistake.

I was going to ask "how does the player get around resource shortfalls then?", but then I realized the obvious answer: take more planets. If the increase in AI strength from the +20 AIP wasn't so punitive, taking a resource-rich planet might be worthwhile in its own right. So fixing issue #4 could allow harvester upgrade removal, fixing issue #1 in turn.

As for 10 AIP being too easy, if people got used to playing with AIP/time it probably wouldn't be such an issue. Perhaps an AIP floor/time feature to prevent AIP floor riding without penalizing those who play the game "normally?"

[KDR_11k]

I think AIP over time is effectively just a proxy for AIP for econ because over time your econ can churn out anything (your harvesters aren't going to suck those rocks dry) and thus having AIP go up over time means that you need to use those resources you get per second wisely to build as much as possible.

[orzelek]

Are you sure that economy is OP or is this inflation of higher marks extractors? And potentially nebula buildings additions?

Anyone playing without instantly unlocking Mk II/III extractors from the start?

For quite some time I played without doing that and my economy was usually strained - add fortresses to that and energy was not so well also. So I also started to unlock Mk II+ extractors - they seem almost mandatory now. I'm not sure if that would mean that economy per se is OP - maybe ability to upgrade it is to good?

[Mánagarmr]

Anyone playing without instantly unlocking Mk II/III extractors from the start?

I do. I rarely unlock either extractors, nor econ stations, unless I'm REALLY suffering econ wise. I'd rather take resource planet than spend K on increasing econ.

I don't feel econ is that important in AI:War on 7-8 diff. In any other game you are racing against your opponent, so you need to push your econ as much as you can, while not getting behind the arms race. On higher diffs in AI:War you need to be able to rebuild fast enough to make an impact before the AI punches you in the face again. On the diffs I play on, that is never an issue.

[Wingflier]

Are you sure that economy is OP or is this inflation of higher marks extractors? And potentially nebula buildings additions?

Anyone playing without instantly unlocking Mk II/III extractors from the start?

For quite some time I played without doing that and my economy was usually strained - add fortresses to that and energy was not so well also. So I also started to unlock Mk II+ extractors - they seem almost mandatory now. I'm not sure if that would mean that economy per se is OP - maybe ability to upgrade it is to good?

I NEVER start the game without instantly unlocking both sets of MKIII Harvesters.  It's just too good of a benefit to pass up.

I'm told that the reason the Harvesters were buffed was because "nobody liked waiting around for their entire army to rebuild between battles".  I obviously wasn't there for that discussion, or I would have raised quite a stink.  It's not like AI War doesn't make you arbitrarily "wait around" in many other aspects of the game.  The ten minute ARS Hacking cost, the Superterminal wait, even Champion Scenarios are basically just sitting there, throwing up a shield every once in awhile, and letting your little allies win a war of attrition.  I mean Jesus, would anyone even play AI War games if they were afraid of waiting for things?

In pretty much every other strategy game I've played, when you lose your entire army, you lose the game; so I don't know why AI War wants to coddle you in this way, and not punish you for losing your entire force and having to wait around and rebuild it.  The waiting is the punishment - it's the time that you're vulnerable that the AI can attack.

Perhaps that's the problem with the game:  That the AI attacks on set intervals, instead of waiting until you're the weakest to strike.  That would certainly be a lot more interesting and realistic in my mind.

Honest to god, I'm a very tactical player.  I like using each one of my ships to maximum efficiency, microing the hurt ones away, and repairing them between battles etc., but AI War has put me into a position where I'm actually wasting more resources by healing my guys between fights, than by constantly blobbing them between planets, taking losses on purpose just so I can have a way to use my resources!  What kind of backwards game design punishes the player for being as efficient as possible?  If I don't constantly send my guys into battle, I'm just sitting at 999,999 resources, wasting them instead of using them.

In my opinion, we should just take MKII and III Harvesters out of the game.  Doing so would fix so many issues by default:

1. Instantly Econ Stations are mega-buffed.
2. Now the player has to choose between the more vulnerable Econ Stations, and the more practical other 3.
3. Instantly the game becomes much harder.
4. Instantly the player has to be more careful with his fleet, and not just throw them away willy nilly between battles.
5. Counters immediately become more important (they are superfluous now) in an effort not to waste your fleet.
6. Player has to expand more for resources.

It doesn't fix all of the game's issues by a long-shot, but it certainly helps.

In my opinion if we removed MKII/III Harvesters, added the bonus ship omission file, and added the Super Guardian AI Plot, most of the game's issues major issues would be dealt with.

Between the Harvester nerf and (individually) removing the useless bonus ships, tactical considerations would become much more important.  For players who wanted that extra strategic and tactical challenge, Super Guardians would be like icing on the cake.

Anything else (such as hull types and armor reworks) could be dealt with at Keith's leisure.