As the person who's pretty much started this conversation (or at least being very vocal about it recently), I suppose I need to provide some background on why I've been harping on this.
(See my next post for actual gameplay suggestions.)
I generally play very difficult games, my 'standard' challenging game setup is Random All AI Types, diff 9/9, lattice map and then hit "New Map Seed" and then "Start Game" without looking at the map or choosing your starting ship.
I do this so I have a random map location and a random bonus ship. If I allow myself to pick starting map location and starting bonus ship it is in a diff 10/10 game.
However, I get away with this because I do not enable any of the minor factions that help me and so in return I do not enable anything that helps the AI, in other words I play straightforward games, it is me vs. the AI and nothing else.
However, even in that setup the best games I play end up being the ones I unlock warp jammers and play a low aip planet hopping strategy so I am effectively "chokepointing" the AI by only exposing a single planet to waves and with the low AIP I do not require significant defenses to defeat AI waves. (Relative to what I see posted on the forums anyway.)
Whenever I do not unlock warp jammers the game is significantly harder as I now have significantly more systems to defend.
On a lattice type map, having more 'safe' systems not adjacent to an enemy warp gate then there are 'hot' systems the AI can send waves at is the exception, not the rule.
And because I play low AIP on lattice, gate raiding is not an option. 6 or 7 games ago now, my starting homeworld had 14 adjacent systems, that would be 70 AIP in gate raiding alone.
However, what pushed me over the edge was the fact that I read a couple great Fallen Spire AARs so I decided to finally play the Fallen Spire campaing. I enabled the Fallen Spire at 4/10 and dropped the difficulty down to 8 for both AIs, figuring that as it was my first Fallen Spire playthough I would need the leeway.
I then proceeded to get flattened, over and over and over. I'm not talking a mistake where I miss something and have to save-scum, I'm talking having to save-scum the same event multiple times because I simply did not have enough units and had to get both a lucky roll on the composition of the exo-wave and lucky on how the combat went to survive.
As I understand the minor faction difficulty, Fallen Spire 4/10 is supposed to be default, that is tough-but-fair. However, on a lattice map that exo-wave is anything but fair because the fact that it can come at me from multiple directions means that I either split my defenses on the border worlds which is a losing prospect against an exo-wave that is expecting to meet a chokepoint, or I allow the exo-wave through to its target (my homeworld) and turn my homeworld into a 'chokepoint'. Both of these options are bad.
This experience took me from "ah, lattice maps are a little tougher but I can take it" to "lattice maps are a full difficulty, if not a difficulty and a half harder" and made me focus on what makes the map with fewer connections so much easier, the chokepoint.
Having said that, this is a strategy game and acheiving the chokepoint is a desirable thing as it simplifies your defense and allows concentration of force. The problem is that because AI War is procedurally generated, the game designed can't place chokepoints in strategic locations, but force the player to have to leave them to win the game. Rather, you get map types where natural chokepoints form when the game generates its layout.
I just took a quick look and I would say anywhere from half to two-thirds (depending on your personal definition of chokepoint) of the map types generally give you maps that have a lot of chokepoints. A 'lot of chokepoints' in this case being you can expand your empire in such a way as to never have more then 3 systems exposed to the AI without gate raiding.
Maybe part of the issue is the 'lattice' map type. I just did three test maps using the same map seed for both lattice and realistic map types.
At least one starting option on each of the three the lattice map types had 11 warp point connections (one of the three had a 14 connections option), on the realistic maps the maximum warp point connections was 4 across all three map seeds.
I think at the end of the day it boils down to the fact that I want lots of warp point connections so I have multiple routes to get places and deciding which systems to take is important and also give me the leeway to go around a Mk IV system with a whole bunch of specials if I want to.
I don't want to be playing a low connections map where my choices are limited.
I also feel that because the game is harder as the number of warp point connections goes up, a lot of the recent changes to how AI reinforcement, waves, special forces, strategic reserve, etc. have been balanced by feedback from players and the average player plays a map with a lot fewer connections then I do, so my map choice is giving me a harder experience for the same balance point.
That's why I was happy to see the topic about the Counter-Attack posts and warp gates sending waves to more then just the adjacent planet. Because I expose so many systems to the AI due to my map choice of lattice, I'm effectively already playing this way. Implementing a mechanic like that where you could not (as easily) setup a single chokepoint would then swing the game balance back towards what I prefer, that is a lot of connections between systems, which brings with it a lot of systems exposed to AI attack.
(See my next post for actual suggestion.)
