First Victory: Few Ever Find It

[ewokonfire]

As a 'somewhat nooby' player, here's my take on these issues:

I refer to hulltypes a lot.  I almost never simply send a blob to assault an AI guardpost, instead I'll only send the ships that it doesn't have a bonus against.  How on Murdoch can any of you think it OK to allow your ships to be mown down by a (generally) x6 multiplier just because you can't be bothered to look up what hulls a post is good against?

As for the 'nobody finishes a game' issue, I think one of the best ideas would be to make Chivalric the default, and add 'Sadistic' or something as an AI modifier, that just resets it to how it is now.  I think a lot of players (myself included) who have a certain completionist spirit will consider the loss of a fabricator to be cause to abandon a game.  If this sounds like too much of a change, maybe allow the default AI to attack fabs to disable production of that unit for an hour or something?

[Kahuna]

If you don't want to worry about losing the fabricator you can hack it.

[TheVampire100]

If you don't want to worry about losing the fabricator you can hack it.

Best idea Arcen Games ever had. Remember the times before this was possible?

[Kahuna]

If you don't want to worry about losing the fabricator you can hack it.

Best idea Arcen Games ever had. Remember the times before this was possible?

In the good old days we had to protect Advanced Factories (etc.) even more vigorously than our home command stations and quit the game if we were unable to. I just loved it when the capturables spawned on top of hostile wormholes.

Mostly I took it as challenge though. It took a lot of planning and strategy and felt rewarding when you managed to pull it off. Whenever I saw a capturable on top of a wormhole though I just pretended it didn't even exist, unless it was a Zenith Power Generator (OP!) in a "not the most horrible position possible".

[nogwart]

Not trying to be a jerk, but just had to add a different voice.  I have had "Victory", but the "cost", in my opinion was not worth the effort.  The learning curve for AI War is far too high, again in my opinion.  After repeated attempts, I did finally complete the tutorial, then played a few real games, and ended up "winning" my last game.  Unlike some games where the learning process was well worth the end result of finally winning in the end, with AI War, I felt like I'd been cheated and ridiculed by being forced to play for so long and receiving so little reward.  Again, this is just my take-away opinion, but for me, AI War was not worth the effort.  I'm actually quite disappointed both with myself for having stuck with it and with those who have promoted the game so vigorously.

I realize I might be unique, but having read the statistics quoted, perhaps I'm not.

[TheVampire100]

Can you tell me, what is so unrewardinmg about winning the game for you?
Because for me it's very rewarding. You did it. You finally brought the most terrifying AI in video game history down to it's knees. That's quite the accomplishment. And looking at how FEW this has done, it's even more worth.

[Jotto]

Citation:
http://steamcommunity.com/stats/AIWar/achievements

If you search on the page for "First Victory", you''ll see that only 3.8% of players have beaten a game of AI War, on any difficulty.  First Loss on the other hand is 12.5%, suggesting that new players are told to try out difficulty levels that the majority can't handle.

I had taken a long break from this game, and then a few weeks ago I decided to try out difficulty 1 to see just how easy the easiest game setting is.  60 planets, 2 vanilla AIs, both difficulty 1.  I could've beaten it drunk; it was 7 1/2 hours of primarily listening to music and relaxing.  I was taking a planet every 25 minutes, AIP never went into the mark 2 range, I never lost a planet or irreplaceable structure, and my assault transports obliterated any enemy ship or structure that wasn't core.  The core-level things were still obliterated, but instead by my released army.

Using my ships to defend any planet under any circumstance was utterly not needed.  That said, I in particular happen to have a turret-heavy playstyle, which involves only ever building Mk 4 turrets on a line of best fit to the enemy wormholes from my command station.  The exception is when an archive needs something to stick around for half an hour and defend it, in which case I use some Mk 3 turrets. (EDIT: I have recently started toying around with low-level turrets.)

And I was not paying any attention at all to hull types.  But even playing through a difficulty 1 game took time and game knowledge that will exclude many gamers.  As already said, this is a very niche game with huge complexity, long behavior-to-reward/punishment times, and a not-entirely ideal UI.  A lot of people buying it are doing so because of a steam sale.  My advice to those who have never beat a game: play on difficulty 1.  The advice to most people to start out around 5 or 6 seems demonstrably naive and unrealistic to me.


This game is like the book Diaspora - way too difficult for most people, and even difficult for a lot of regular sci-fi readers, but (often) stimulating and rewarding to those who can read it.

[Jotto]

Not trying to be a jerk, but just had to add a different voice.  I have had "Victory", but the "cost", in my opinion was not worth the effort.  The learning curve for AI War is far too high, again in my opinion.  After repeated attempts, I did finally complete the tutorial, then played a few real games, and ended up "winning" my last game.  Unlike some games where the learning process was well worth the end result of finally winning in the end, with AI War, I felt like I'd been cheated and ridiculed by being forced to play for so long and receiving so little reward.  Again, this is just my take-away opinion, but for me, AI War was not worth the effort.  I'm actually quite disappointed both with myself for having stuck with it and with those who have promoted the game so vigorously.

I realize I might be unique, but having read the statistics quoted, perhaps I'm not.

That doesn't make you a jerk at all.  The strategy in this game doesn't appeal to everyone...or even most people, given how few people complete games.  I, of course, am fond of the game, but I can sympathize.  No one wants to make such an investment and be disappointed.  Can I ask what kinds of strategy games you have enjoyed?

[Cyborg]

Think of it like a really long game of chess. Winning means that you successfully solved the puzzle. After checkmate, the game is over.

You are playing for checkmate. Most of the veterans here are looking for checkmate against all odds and enjoy the journey on the way there, not knowing if they will ever reach it. It's not for everyone, of course.

[Clasmir]

Not trying to be a jerk, but just had to add a different voice.  I have had "Victory", but the "cost", in my opinion was not worth the effort.  The learning curve for AI War is far too high, again in my opinion.  After repeated attempts, I did finally complete the tutorial, then played a few real games, and ended up "winning" my last game.  Unlike some games where the learning process was well worth the end result of finally winning in the end, with AI War, I felt like I'd been cheated and ridiculed by being forced to play for so long and receiving so little reward.  Again, this is just my take-away opinion, but for me, AI War was not worth the effort.  I'm actually quite disappointed both with myself for having stuck with it and with those who have promoted the game so vigorously.

I realize I might be unique, but having read the statistics quoted, perhaps I'm not.

I felt cheated when I won because the expectations the game itself set are a lie! The wormholes to the far away locations still work, you really don't win...

[Jotto]

Not trying to be a jerk, but just had to add a different voice.  I have had "Victory", but the "cost", in my opinion was not worth the effort.  The learning curve for AI War is far too high, again in my opinion.  After repeated attempts, I did finally complete the tutorial, then played a few real games, and ended up "winning" my last game.  Unlike some games where the learning process was well worth the end result of finally winning in the end, with AI War, I felt like I'd been cheated and ridiculed by being forced to play for so long and receiving so little reward.  Again, this is just my take-away opinion, but for me, AI War was not worth the effort.  I'm actually quite disappointed both with myself for having stuck with it and with those who have promoted the game so vigorously.

I realize I might be unique, but having read the statistics quoted, perhaps I'm not.

I felt cheated when I won because the expectations the game itself set are a lie! The wormholes to the far away locations still work, you really don't win...

I felt the same way.  Lore-wise, no AI ships should come through after you win, and it would be cool to have this as a possible (or default) setting, for those who would find this satisfying.  After all that struggle, throw the player a bone.  A galactic bone.

[nogwart]

First, I have to state that I have a great deal of respect for this community for the simple fact that all responses to my (decidedly negative) opinionated post were met with intelligent, respectful, and largely insightful responses.  You all have my utmost respect for this!

To answer the question, to me, it is a matter of "Return On Investment" (ROI).  My Investment is my time, which may vary per participant, but for me personally, my time is quite valuable.  I won't go so far as to assign a dollar value to my time, but I hope it sufficient to say that I expect at least as much enjoyment from 2 hours of my time as I would expect from a relatively mediocre/good movie (opinions matter, of course).  If I "play" or "try to play" (tutorial) a game for more than a couple of hours, I would (according to my "movie" analogy example) expect to be "fulfilled", "happy", "satisfied", or some other such emotion instilled by some "entertaining experience".  When I won a game of AI War, I did not have this "entertaining experience" feeling.  It was more of a "Thank God, this is over" thing.  I had no desire to ever touch the game again.  After spending well over 50 hours on the game, this was an example of a very poor ROI.

Damn, I think I've VERY MUCH over-thought this.  My sincere apologies!

[Jotto]

Damn, I think I've VERY MUCH over-thought this.  My sincere apologies!

Not a problem; I identified quite a lot with the style of thought that you displayed in this post.  I suspect that this community has many people who analyze things this way.  It is also very reasonable that you feel motivated and incensed to post about it, given the time investment (which is much greater than the monetary cost for anyone gainfully employed, or even mediocrely employed)

For me personally, a similar self-analysis comes to a very different conclusion, and is why I don't watch TV or movies much, and avoid watching much YouTube.  Though very entertaining, I find such things do not stimulate my mind in a good way.  Entertainment that gives frequent, cheap dopamine hits, fed to me passively or with little mental effort or planning, turn my mind to mush.  It is why reading a good book for hours can be quite joyous and cerebral for me, yet watching a good TV show for hours makes me feel...blugh.  And that's even if it was a show that I like.

I suppose that I'm not looking for "entertainment".  I want hobbies, which stimulate me in the right way.