Ok, after being crushed in my first AI7 game i came back to totally annihilate them... heres how.
The first time I tried to capture a bunch of planets. this just raised the AI progress level and spread my defenses too thin.
This time I was playing vs 2 agressive AIs, mad bomber and I think fortress guy. I decided to keep the AI progress as low as possible to see what happened.
I chose a starting planet with only 2 wormholes reaching it. I heavily defended these 2 worm holes and scouted the surrounding planets. I built the MAX number of ships I could, along with 6 or 8 research ships. I then went to each of the planets around me and killed all the guard posts, researched fully, but left the command center and gate intact.
I then went to about 10 other planets very quickly killing all the guard posts and researching. I did not take any other planets yet or kill anything that increased the AI progress level (astro trains or commando outposts ect). The ai progress was around 15 or so, only from the +1 progress every 30 minutes or whatever.
Right now there was no planet within 3 hops or so of my home planet that had any guard posts. I used the research to tech up to the top level command post (+80 crystal and +80 metal) as well as to get a bunch more turrets and some lvl 2 ships.
Then I found a string of 3 planets close to my home planet, if I took all 3 I would only have to defend 1 wormhole on each end, so 2 wormholes for 3 planets. I took these over, built 3 of the super duper new top lvl command posts, and was raking in +240 metal and crystal from them, as well as the mines on the planets. This was really all the income I needed to win the game... I had 4 shipyards constantly cranking out ships (I had the max number of ships, so they would make a new one if one died) and made a few starships as well.
I had scouted out some data banks so I went and took about 1000 ships / research ships in and destroyed them... the AI progress was now at 4.
At this point I could crush just about any planet I came to, and I had dozens and dozens of turrets / mines guarding the 4 wormholes I had to defend, nothing could get through. With the AI progress so low it seems like they weren't doing much to stop me.
I took my 1600 or so ships and research stations and just went in a big loop, I didn't bother to kill all the guard stations, just warped in as one big mass, killed an ion cannon if there was one, then sat on the next wormhole in my route until I had the 2k research. this took about a minute with all my research ships. I did this for about 12 planets, teched up all my ships to lvl 3.
I found an advanced factory way off in the distance, maybe 6 hops from my home planet, but what I figured was on the way to the enemy bases (a big string off to nowhere I couldnt penetrate with scouts.)
I took my fleet and crushed everything in between my home planet and the advanced factory, then went in with a colony ship and smoked it. Set up a base and started cranking out tech 4 ships. My home base was pretty safe so I switched all my production over to this new planet. The AI progress was at 30 now. I killed 2 more data centers but it did not go down at all (bug?)
Once I had all my tech 4 ships I just moved out and killed the 2 enemy bases. Not much of a fight...
in the end, roughly 6.5 hours, total planets I held = 5. AI progress = 30. I wish there was a way to export your graphs / charts to share on the forum when you win. That would be sweet. Or a map of the galaxy... or to replay how your fleets moved on the main galaxy map in time lapse, like watch the whole game unfold on the galaxy map in a minute or so.
