Ai progress from killing warp gates

[Kjara]

It seems to me that the ai progress from killing warp gates is too high for the benefit(disregarding the fact that most people seem to kill them by habit, as taught by the tutorial). I find that with my playstyle(never take adjacent planets, pretty much only take a planet if its an advanced research, an advanced factory near the ai homeworlds, or a necessary intermediate planet on a long path(~5 hops away from an owned planet) to one of the above), it is by far the ideal strategy to just ignore warp gates even on planets I take anymore.  Removing the chance of waves at those planets would cost me at least 40 ai progress(from raiding adjacent planets).  I know I'm somewhat atypical in playstyle, but it really seems to me even with a normal playstyle, it often doesn't seem worth all the extra progress.    It also seems that the ai seems to like wasting its reinforcements to reinforce warp gates on my planets, which just means free kills for my turrets and means lower general ai unit production. 

As an example: My current game has had its ai progress vary between 40 and 60(even though the number of data centers was lower than what I've usually been seeing), I've taken 4 advanced research labs(and am currently in progress of securing the 5th), 1 advanced factory, I'm within striking distance of both homeworlds, and have gathered enough knowledge to unlock tier 3 f/b/c, antiarmors, mirvs, and munition boosters plus spire/raider starships and most tier II turrets.  This doesn't even need really any sort of really deep raiding, merely being willing to not take the 1 or 2 planets between "interesting" planets, not getting bogged down killing everything in adjacent planets(thus hitting planets that are not alerted, and are relatively weak) and being willing to use enemy planets for energy generation(mkII plants). 

All that for this suggestion: change ai progress from warp gates to 5, and enemy command centers to 15.  I don't think it will change the game much for people who actually play "normally", but make my playstyle slightly less broken(honestly, its at least close to as broken as the deep raiding playstyle was--10 ai progress for 10k+knowledge +a special building, makes it way too easy to keep the progress level low(3 data centers easily cancel out 2 planets and the time to take them even at 1 progress per 5 mins)--15 per planet would at least make me more likely to at least hit tier II enemy units in waves after I take out one of the homeworlds).

[Volatar]

That just doesn't sound right. Sounds way too easy.

What AI difficulty and types are you playing against?

[Kjara]

7.6:2 random mediums(I think teleport turtle + parasite feeder, but I've been in too many multi games to be sure that I'm remembering correctly),1 ai progress per 5 mins--Special ship was anti-armor(which is nice since its an anti-bomber unit that moves at a reasonable speed, but doesn't seem overly broken in general).  Oh and no astro trains, but I don't really stick defenses at wormholes for the most part anyhow, so thats a minor difference.

Edit: I should have jumped up to 8 on this game, but haven't had much time to play recently (and I wasn't sure how the turret changes would effect things, it actually did make some things a bit harder), my main difficulty jump from the last game I played was to change the progress over time from 1 per 10 to 1 per 5.

Edit2: Wait, that can't be right actually on the ai types, one of them has a couple of capitive human settlements, and I can't remember which medium ai type can have those(there are also some troop accelerators around, so I could be off on what types there are).

[nullspace]

I've been having an easy time with a strategy similar to kjara's, although not quite so extreme.  I conquer a few low-level planets near my home for resource income and powerplant efficiency, and I haven't been baiting the AI to reinforce into a killing field (I think you need to leave the warp gate and a guard post for the AI to reinforce).  Exo-forcefields are invaluable, and targeting planets with ion cannons to conquer makes them easy to defend, although that's harder now when out of supply.  This is against 7.6 difficulty AIs, too. 

I "gave up" one game where I had a big fleet and I was in striking distance of enough data centers to drive the AI progress below zero.  It was never much higher than 100.  I don't see much reason to conquer many planets because knowledge, advanced factories, and advanced labs are the main reasons to destroy command centers.  And there's really no reason to conquer planets near each other (its bad for knowledge gathering, and it is easier to defend a wave by building turrets than moving ships from adjacent planets).  When your planets are spread apart you would have to destroy many gates to funnel waves away from any given planet.  In addition, you have to defend all planets anyway because of special forces and cross-planet attacks, so funneling waves doesn't help much. 

Now I've been playing with +40 AI progress per hour, which increases the need for high resource income, and decreases the relative importance of AI progress from destroying command centers and warp gates.  I own enough planets and waves are big enough that it's worth making some planets safe so I don't have to defend them. 

Reducing the AI progress on warp gates sounds good, but it's maybe more important to add (lots?) of AI progress to things that are more dangerous, like capturing factories and labs, or attacking and conquering planets near AI homeworlds.  Maybe captured factories and labs could have an effect somewhat like those captive human cities, to make them a bigger risk. 

[eRe4s3r]

Given that the strategy is still viable (just seems less easy) i would suggest a +75 progress penalty every time a planet outside of existing supply is captured (meaning when you destroy it but leave it alone, it won't count, but if you colonize it and no adjacent planet is yours, you get that penalty when you colonize it)

That would i think, make this tactic much less viable .. 

[RCIX]

That would also make the game *extremely* unfun, because the whole point of supply is to make the players capture planets further apart in order to operate over more of the map.

[Haagenti]

Definitely seems a viable strategy. I only take out the warp gates near my "home cluster" and near the advanced factory, and leave everything else (but I play a lot against my favorite combo: Vicious Raider and Teleport Turtle and VR forces you to seriously address raiding)

I find that if you can build any form of long-term viable empire while keeping the AI below 200 or so, this will allow you to start picking off the Data Centers to bring the AI down further, and the AI Home Planets are not strong enough at that level. 

Moving Command Centers to +15AI and Warp Gates to +5AI (or so) would help. I think that the -20 for a Data Center is also too much (should perhaps be something like 5% of the current AI level).

And the addition of more capturables in the expansion will help as well.

[eRe4s3r]

That would also make the game *extremely* unfun, because the whole point of supply is to make the players capture planets further apart in order to operate over more of the map.

Well, the point of supply is for people to capture more planets, not necessarily to capture them further apart

I agree though that this would make the game unfun, i wasn't being serious It would block a lot more tactics than just the "planet hopping" tactic described above, like actually cutting of an ai planet of supply (which helps a lot when it is a IV world ,p)

Having data centers reduce by % would be pretty fun though, then it would be viable to get ai progress up BEFORE you destroy them not to keep it down.

[Kjara]

Another option would be to instead give ai progress for other actions, such as the following:

The first time you take military ships into any planet, the ai notices that you have spread to another planet, gets slightly more concerned and adds 5 ai progress.  Thus, knowledge raiding costs 5 ai progress, skipping 2 planets costs 10 ai progress (would want to jump datacenters up to 25 progress reduction here possibly to cancel out the 5+ cost for getting there?)  Combine this with just the reduction in warp gate cost, so it now costs 10 progress to kill a command center, 5 for entering the system, and 5 for the warp gate and it doesn't change the costs for normal play, but attaches a cost to both knowledge raiding and deep raiding.

[Ktoff]

What about the possibility to customize the AI-progress cost?

Probably best 'hidden' in some kind of advanced options thingie with a caveat that changing these greatly affects the gameplay. But this could be a solution for those who want this without changing the game dynamics for the rest.

Cheers
K'Toff

[x4000]

I think this is probably irrelevant now, with all of the capturables and other changes -- you're going to take more planets, and the warp gates are going to be causing reinforcements and waves all over the place if you are not destroying them.  Point taken about their balance in the old scheme of things, but I am betting this is not an issue.  Moving to general discussion for now.