Guide to Finding Coop Players

[Spikey00]

AI War Facebook page
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Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions: MantisBT
The Official Discord server
"How and where does one organize together for a coop game in AI War" is a question you probably will come across while playing, and since there isn't an internal matchmaking service you will have to find your games manually.  As a prologue to this topic, here's an explanation from Chris Park on why a matchmaking service wasn't implemented in AI War:

Matchmaking services are neither simple nor inexpensive, nor would they be of particular help for this game. When games last 8-12 hours routinely, you don't need a matchmaking service -- you need a way for regular groups to form and meet. That's these forums, and we have a subforum dedicated to that. I'm sorry you're frustrated, but this isn't a typical RTS where matches last 15-60 minutes at most. That means that, even if we had a matchmaking service, there would be very few people on it because most people would be actively in game the majority of the time; the match time greatly exceeds the matchup time. The math of the situation means that no matchmaking system would behave like you expect with a game like this.

Also: given that this game is co-op only, it's something built around the idea of groups of friends playing together, rather than total strangers.

Please note that all of these solutions require you to have patience, and if you don't then how would others expect you to finish a multi-hour game?  Hamachi is also something you probably will need if you are unable to port forward a router, and a lot of people playing AI War use it.

1.  Using the Arcen forums
Our forums are probably the best place to find individuals whom are seeking out others to play with.  The AI War Meeting Grounds is the best subforum for that.  Be detailed and specific with both your title and content like your timezone and location, what expansions you have, difficulty preferences and et cetera. 

2.  AI War Steam hub sortie bulletin announcement
Occasional announcement posts will be made here to gather a list of players who want to add others over Steam to form a group to play; you post your info and add or be added by others.  Keep in mind that people who have posted on the older topics might not be looking for a game anymore.

These posts are generally renewed biannually to refresh the list of people actively looking for a game to avoid topic clogging.

The newest announcement: 
December 3rd, 2014

Older announcements:
November 8th, 2013
June 7th, 2013
October 10th, 2012
July 18th, 2012
November 1st, 2011
December 19th, 2011

3.  Discord Server
Similarly to the AI War group chat, our AI War Discord server is another way to both find others and orgainze games.  If you have not used Discord before, you can access it from your browser, and run it without downloading any software.

The Discord server might not be an incredibly active place all the time, but it might be the best solution to matchmaking overall, from two-player coops to a full game of eight.  Your best chance in finding a game here is to idle daily if you do not receive a response.  People here generally partner up with people they trust that will finish a game, which usually means those who are regulars to the channel.  There are are a few regulars who chat about other topics here too.

4.  AI War Subreddit
You might be able to find others looking for a game over at Reddit here.  200 320 subscribers going up!

5.  AI War Steam community hub
You might find a couple people who are interested in looking for a game on the AI War Steam community hub forums, mostly from miscellaneous "looking for game" topics.

[Spikey00]

Just thought I'd cross-post this from the AI War group to catch some of the new player influx--I'll give this a post on the Steam forums as well.

EDIT:  or not, I see a sticky being sufficient.  :p

[x4000]

Good idea!

[cupogoodness]

I'd suggest the game's Subreddit as well. Up to nearly 200 subs, several of which are looking for a game at different days and times during the week.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

This is what the game ah, matchmaking? Solution. . .

As discussed at length...matchmaking would not solve the problem and would put financial burden on Arcen when quite frankly the "issue" is easily solved by just being social.  Which unless your going to be mute throughout the entire 10 hour+ match, your going to have to do anyway. 

Although I can't tell if you were saying that matchmaking is the "solution" to this "problem" or if you were saying this is the game's "matchmaking".  (sorry if I'm wrong)

King

[keith.lamothe]

This is what the game ah, matchmaking? Solution. . .

As discussed at length...matchmaking would not solve the problem and would put financial burden on Arcen when quite frankly the "issue" is easily solved by just being social.  Which unless your going to be mute throughout the entire 10 hour+ match, your going to have to do anyway. 

Although I can't tell if you were saying that matchmaking is the "solution" to this "problem" or if you were saying this is the game's "matchmaking".  (sorry if I'm wrong)

King

It was actually a semi-clever spammer, the signature link was a google search on some kind of things on your feet, and looking at the google results they all looked like the kind of spam they used to post directly in the post bodies

But it did look like sort of like an on-topic, potentially-semi-helpful (if we hadn't been over the subject a dozen times already) response.  Reminds me eerily of http://xkcd.com/810/ .

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Would explain the crappy english, geez, I didn't click any links but to get fooled by a spammer, ughhhhhhh. 

King

[x4000]

Fooled me, too, if it makes you feel any better!

[Nalgas]

But it did look like sort of like an on-topic, potentially-semi-helpful (if we hadn't been over the subject a dozen times already) response.  Reminds me eerily of http://xkcd.com/810/ .

Heh.  The mouseover text for that reminds me of something that happened recently on a forum I help run.  When reCAPTCHA was broken earlier this year and its effectiveness at stopping spam substantially dropped, we tried setting up some other simple things, because we're not large enough to get bots targeted directly at our site.  One of them was asking trivial questions that any human could answer but would require a bot to be able to parse English.  We just got an email from someone saying they tried 30 times to register an account and failed, and they were begging us to tell them what color the Beatles' White Album is...

[x4000]

But it did look like sort of like an on-topic, potentially-semi-helpful (if we hadn't been over the subject a dozen times already) response.  Reminds me eerily of http://xkcd.com/810/ .

Heh.  The mouseover text for that reminds me of something that happened recently on a forum I help run.  When reCAPTCHA was broken earlier this year and its effectiveness at stopping spam substantially dropped, we tried setting up some other simple things, because we're not large enough to get bots targeted directly at our site.  One of them was asking trivial questions that any human could answer but would require a bot to be able to parse English.  We just got an email from someone saying they tried 30 times to register an account and failed, and they were begging us to tell them what color the Beatles' White Album is...

We do something like that here, but overall with simpler questions. I had to take down one of them, though, because too many people could not solve 1 + 1 - 1. Seriously.

[GeneReyva]

1 + 1 - 1
People didn't know the answer?
Wow... my faith in humanity slips more day by day 

[x4000]

Yes, no kidding! Answer of 3 is understandable if the misread it. But people were saying 2 and 0, mostly.

[mindloss]

I actually had to think for about four seconds before I got it, and I'm a mathematician (well, will be soon enough). That's half because I've been up for thirty hours, but also I suspect it's because it's literally so simple that people are not used to dealing with similar problems.

Yeah, and it's easy to misread.

Fun fact: Read a study a couple years back showing that computer programs actually solve traditional CAPCHAs better than people do. (I know I can never tell if it's an F or a screwed up E, etc.)

[doctorfrog]

I actually had to think for about four seconds before I got it, and I'm a mathematician (well, will be soon enough). That's half because I've been up for thirty hours, but also I suspect it's because it's literally so simple that people are not used to dealing with similar problems.

Wait, so, to be half a mathematician, all I have to do is stay up for thirty hours?

(I'm an English major.)

[x4000]