Just Finished My First Fallen Spire Finish

[TechSY730]

Just finished my first fallen spire campaign finish.
Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.

I gotta say, I was less than impressed at the final AI push. I mean yea, they did throw out all kinds of golems and stuff, but it wasn't enough to even begin to scratch my chokepoint, and the rate they came was far too slow. And there were no hunter killers, ever, due to spire based exo waves, including the final push. (I got one in a spirecraft hard exo-wave once, though)
Needless to say, when the exogalactic transceiver (or whatever it is called) was finished and the allied spire fleets started coming in, the AIs puny force barely scratched their forcefields, much less their health (dang, those Mk. IV heavy beam modules are stupid powerful)
The only thing that began to resemble a threat to them was when they showed up on the first AI homeworld, where all the stored up "defense" exo-points were unleashed and a whole hoard of hunter killers were spawned. That would of done some nice damage to the fleet, except that they decided to get hit by the "I'm just going to sit here and do nothing" AI bug after firing a few shots. (I have a save of this, but haven't gotten around to making a mantis post yet)

Granted, this was on difficulty 8 rather than 9 or 10, but still, I expected more. The AI may be a little too aggressive for even the spire fleets in its final push at 10, but they are barely even trying to take me out at 8.

If you want a save of this underwhelming final push, I have some of those as well.

Still, I had great fun with this campaign. Before I got some of the higher level spire starships, the AI did put up a good fight, and that was fun to figure out how to deal with.

[Minotaar]

You probably did a good job, what can I say 
Mine was super close (I could maybe hold on for half a minute) even on 7/7.
No H/Ks either, though. But I wasn't really complaining 

[TechSY730]

Granted, I was playing on a map type that gave me a nice single world chokepoint, not only enforced by my gate raiding but also map geometry, so there was no way they could slip through the back.
Also, I took the single chokepoint model to its logical conclusion. Forcefields up the wazoo, including shield bearers, lots of tractor beams and gravity turrets, with forcefields covering them, a Mk. IV ion cannon (it came with the planet, lucky coincidence), several Zenith trader offerings (including, but not limited to, an armor booster, armor inhibitor, Mk. II radar dampener thingy (halves range of all enemy ships on the planet), orbital mass driver, a black hole generator), Mk. II military station (making my guarding ships and glut of turrets even more crazy strong), 2 Mk. I fortresses, a spire city hub and its various things it can build with crazy good modules, and even some spirecraft attritioners.

And my homeworld was similarly crazy reinforced (most of the stuff mentioned above, minus the spire city stuff of course, but also the SUPERFORTRESS)


I don't usually play maps quite this sparse such that they have many great chokepoints, but I wanted to try it out. (I was playing a Maze B Easy map type, BTW)



On a side note, when the journal said that the spire have not learned how to be subtle with their assaults, they weren't kidding. They were stomping through the galaxy with reckless abandon, not caring about AIP, alarms, counterattack guard posts, anything. If they weren't so strong, I would of been toast.

[Wingflier]

Haha, okay Techsy, now try it on difficulty 8.3 against 2 medium AI types on a "simple" planet layout with at least 3 chokepoints (this is the norm). I'd venture to say your experience might be quite different ;p

[Nodor]

Nah, just go to hex grid and up the difficulty to 10/10 and start in the center.   No reason to make it boring.  Oh, and turn on spirecraft & Golems on Hard, and activate advanced Nienzul hybrids. 

More broadly, control of the variables is the human player key to victory.  Whether it's setting up the inpenetrable chokepoint, managing the wave sizes through AI progress and difficulty level, or selecting minor faction options, these choices have a major impact on the player's ability to respond to the events the RNG systems use against the player.

[rabican]

Heh , i had completly different first experience with spire's final push.

I had something around 5-7 places to defend and took minimum amount of planets to complete the campaign. Regular AI waves /exos/cpas/everything were joke since i got my first cruiser so i just rushed along to the end. The end crushed 85% of my planets  and in the end i had to concentrate everything on single planet.

Anything that would be able much against that kind of defense would just rip the player apart in less extreme circumstances.

[keith.lamothe]

Anything that would be able much against that kind of defense would just rip the player apart in less extreme circumstances.

This is one of the design challenges in trying to deal with chokepoints   But in general it's working out ok.  Just thinking off and on about how to give the AI some new siege options.

But yea, if you have that kind of one-world chokepoint, particularly with the spire city and all the trader toys... congratulations

[TechSY730]

Anything that would be able much against that kind of defense would just rip the player apart in less extreme circumstances.

This is one of the design challenges in trying to deal with chokepoints   But in general it's working out ok.  Just thinking off and on about how to give the AI some new siege options.

But yea, if you have that kind of one-world chokepoint, particularly with the spire city and all the trader toys... congratulations

Yea, I don't usually like playing on trivially chokepointable maps because it tends to lead to ridiculous defenses at that chokepoint, both for me and the AI (the AI of course focusing defenses on a single choke point as well )