At the start of the game...

[Lancefighter]

I want to spend 1.2 million metal, and 1 million crystal. (not including: Turrets, scouts, bonus ship, siege starships, bomber starships.)

This amounts to:
Flagships mk1/2 (480k,360k/240k,160k)
Zenith starship mk1 (160k,240k)
Riot starship mk1 (120k,200k)
Fighter, bomber, frigate mk1 (180k,140k)

At about 500/500 income, (average for a home system), that will take.. A half hour.

If I was aiming for a full fleet, (spire, siege, bomber), add an additional full 620k,660k.

Turrets, an additional 120k,102k. (30 each mk1 basic, laser, mrls, missile).

Add in a bonus ship, I randomed IREs, and I get an additional 50k/50k.
This leads me to a grand total of 
1920k, 1812k

Thats nearly an hour of building stuff. A full hour. Of sitting around doing nothing while stuff gets built.  Its somewhat important to note that its about 4.5k of knowledge too, spent on mk2 flagships, and mk1 zenith and spire starships. I could additionally spend another 8.5k knowledge on starships, skyrocketing the costs even further... Usually though, I spend most of that on mk2 harvestors, scouts, and engineers.

Anyway, this random fun story brought to you by Lancefighter, the guy who spends far too long doing completely random things. And spends far too long building fleets.

[TechSY730]

Well, maybe you should start using more conservative early game build orders. 


More seriously though, the possibility of doing things like raising the amount of resources you get at the start was discussed, but then it was pointed out that to keep the early game's balance from being thrown off, the AI would have to get more "resources" too, which for the AI would mean more reinforcements and/or an earlier first wave. That was a "scary" enough balance proposition to table the discussion for a while until AI War became the focus again.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the AI could get more reinforcements at game seed in return for players starting with more resources...that might work.

[Lancefighter]

Its probably true that I could take and hold systems with about 50 fighters total.. not counting the champion. at very least, the few that dont have guardians.. those are usually pretty easy. With the champion, I could easily annex 3-4 systems before anything got too troublesome, while my fleet was building.

Completely random also somewhat fun story - I hit level 21 in under an hour a few days ago. It was pretty cool. (missions go really fast if you can get forcefields up on the bombers..) '

That mantis link also brings up a good point - 99% of the time, when my fleet enters a system, the entire planet is released as threat, and start attacking me. This usually means they fly at their own speed towards my ball of doom.. and get engine killed and kited until they all die. Or I just stand there and kill them, depending at what point of the game/how threatening they are. This means I basically go around clearing out guard posts one by one dealing with whatever minor reinforcements I end up dealing with.

Unless of course, there are hybrids.. in which case I really need to do the kiting. Or, bait them over the wormhole and pop a lightning warhead on top of them. That solves things real quick.

Anyway, back to the original point - Its incredibly likely that the majority of players dont spend as much at startup as I do. getting mk2 fighter/bomber/frigate/bonuship would only come out to about 600k of each, if I did my math right. If they arent building tons of starships immediately, (which seriously cost SOOO MUCH.. the price I pay.)

But then I hear stories of how aiwar goes really well with netflix. Like.. I dunno. Spending the first hour of the game merely waiting and somewhat scouting..
I've restarted so many times over the last few days, I am honestly just getting kinda tired of it.

[Hearteater]

In my current 9/9, I spent the first 30 minutes clearing a Mark IV world, and I have hybrids on, so it was exciting.  Then again, I play with AIP over time so I don't want to wait around when I don't have to.

[TechSY730]

Unless of course, there are hybrids.. in which case I really need to do the kiting. Or, bait them over the wormhole and pop a lightning warhead on top of them. That solves things real quick.

Anyway, back to the original point - Its incredibly likely that the majority of players dont spend as much at startup as I do. getting mk2 fighter/bomber/frigate/bonuship would only come out to about 600k of each, if I did my math right. If they arent building tons of starships immediately, (which seriously cost SOOO MUCH.. the price I pay.)

But then I hear stories of how aiwar goes really well with netflix. Like.. I dunno. Spending the first hour of the game merely waiting and somewhat scouting..
I've restarted so many times over the last few days, I am honestly just getting kinda tired of it.

Never really was a fan of the really early game myself either. Then again, this sort of "I don't have much to work with and it will take to get more to work with" is sort of the nature of most early games that don't hand you a good chunk of "the world" at the start. Actually, by RTS standards, AI War is very generous with its initial game seeding for humans. Doesn't change the feel of the early game by much though. 

[Kahuna]

You can always speed up the game with Cheat Engine. Set the in-game speed to -10 and FPS or whatever it was.. to Extremely Low. Then set the AIWar.exe speed to something like 999 or 999999. The game will go much faster than with +10 in-game speed. You're welcome.

Oh and this isn't really CHEATING. You don't gain any advantages over the AI. In fact.. it's a disadvantage to the player because the game goes a bit too fast. Pause is your friend.

Last time when I tried to change the resources, knowledge or the number of ships with Cheat Engine it didn't work. So it can only be used to speed up the game if you're building for hours or something.

[Lancefighter]

Yeah.. That sounds like an amazing idea. And by amazing, I mean terrible.

If I really wanted to do that, i might as well just set myself to +300% in the lobby.

[Kahuna]

I've restarted so many times over the last few days, I am honestly just getting kinda tired of it.

Um time to change the strategy no?

[Lancefighter]

I've restarted so many times over the last few days, I am honestly just getting kinda tired of it.

Um time to change the strategy no?

What do you want from me.. Its the first hour of the game that invariably is the most boring. There is nothing really that the ai does interestingly, and its mostly just setting up for the early game, where I take many planets so i can begin the midgame (of building spire cities).

I seem to be rarely leaving the early game, because I dont spend enough time in the first hour being afk while ym fleet builds. I clearly need to netflix better.

[KDR_11k]

MkI planets are pushovers, just kill those if you're bored. Start moving out once your fleet strength is enough, don't wait for the full cap (what for? Nothing's gonna demand that much so early). The AI won't attack you so early so you might as well send your whole fleet until the first wave arrives. If you've got a champion even better, go out and kick some donkey.

If it's boring that's because YOU'RE boring. (Yes, that's what she said.)

[Lancefighter]

no. Its boring because I dont take planets I cant defend. I know that at the difficulty I play at (8ish, no wave warnings, crossplanet waves), I need to expect an entire ai fleet to show up at any of my planets at almost any moment. I simply dont have enough turrets to defend more than 3 worlds in this manner. Even three is pushing it.

So if I dont have the means to defend the worlds through chokepoints, I cant afford to claim it.

Additionally, counterwaves really scare me. They are absolutely terrifying. That an ai fleet of inflated mk will show up at any of my planets in about 15 minutes.. I simply cant do anything except stare at the galaxy map until 2k threat shows up on one of my inner worlds.. then hope my fleet can get there in time to contain it.


Sure, I could go around with my hero in the first 20 minutes of the game and capture 5 planets.. but that would accomplish nothing other than setting multiple worlds on alert, and creating an incredibly large amount of surface area to protect.

[LaughingThesaurus]

As an alternative, you can just go around killing guard posts and tachyon guardians that you feel you can handle to occupy yourself. You don't actually have to have the planets.

[chemical_art]

I don't understand what you want from ai wars early game.

You don't want to be conservative and wait for your desired fleet strength.

You don't want to attack with less then full strength.

You feel you can't hold a planet with less then full fleet strength.

I'm guessing you don't find scouting / planning what planets you want to take enough of a distraction.

---

I'm trying to comprehend what you want ai wars to do. Only on a 10/10 game did I have to wait for my energy to become zero before taking the first planet, and even then I was working on scouting and neutering desired planets with champions / fighters to set up the assault . A full cap of fleetships is enough even for 10/10 early game except for a IV world, but you can work around them too.

You want to be able to steamroll over any non core world, and not wait till full strength to do so? I'm trying to figure you what you want. If you feel you cannot hold a world, neuter it hard (destroy its guards and guardposts) and neuter the others around it too. If you neuter hard all the other planets around the desired planet, you can replace the ai command station with your own with a cap of fighters / bonuses ships on defense (or whatever two caps you units you prefer). If a wave just happens to hit that one planet...so what? Your first planet doesn't have irreplaceable stuff in most games, so you don't have to hold it at all costs. If you choose to not let any planet fall ever, then you play ultra conservative and should have to wait an hour before the ball starts rolling.

If you want an economy so strong you can fully fleet up in less then a hour, there is resource modifiers in the lobby too.

[Kahuna]

I don't understand what you want from ai wars early game.

I dont think he knows that even himself LOL.

Change the settings youre playing with or learn to play with the current ones.

[Kahuna]

I've restarted so many times over the last few days, I am honestly just getting kinda tired of it.

Um time to change the strategy no?

What do you want from me..

I want you to stop whining and learn to play. Cheers