So, after having two wins and a loss for my first three games, I figued I'd try enabling Fallen Spire. it started off slow; I was planning on seeing FS through to the end, so I wasn't that bothered in exploring too far out, also one of the AI homeworlds was 22 jumps from mine (my bad for starting in the middle of a Concentric galaxy, I guess).
I got as far as getting the first city hub up before finding the chase waves far too problematic - it didn't much help that I didn't know Spire cities were strong, and took 'put it somewhere defensible' to mean somewhere safe, not making up part of my major defenses. Actually, does the Fallen Spire strength affect the chase waves or just the regular exos? I had it at 6/10, but I didn't find the regular exos too much trouble (well, I had to recall my fleet for them, but didn't take too much losses for them), but the chase waves just overwhelmed me.
Anyway, I spent quite a long while trying to build up some sort of stronger defenses to deal with the chase waves to get the shard for the second hub before finally calling it and deciding to just play through with my 1 cruiser 2 destroyer 12 frigate fleet. Problem was, I only had about a quarter of the galaxy explored, and AIP was a bit high due to my trying to establish territory while still pursuing Fallen Spire.
Finding the remaining CSGs and carving a path to the AI homeworlds took forever, especially with having to recall everything to deal with Fallen Spire and Broken Golem exos every now and then, but eventually 25 hours and 45 minutes in with 380AIP looming against me I was finally in position to assault an AI homeworld.
So there I was, entering the system with 6 loaded assault transports and an armoured golem, already kinda laughing at my first time seeing a wrath lance in action, pathing my assault transports over there to deal with it quickly and pausing and unpausing a lot to better take stock of things unfolding when I suddenly notice something.... large.
"A colossal armed planetoid. The AI would not normally consider even the entire Milky Way galaxy worth the attention of a mothership. What did you DO?"
This thing is rocking 21 H/Ks of varying marks as escorts.
"58 massive AI ships (231,260 S) are en route to your planets."
That's an whole order of magnitude greater than I've ever seen that number.
I - I'm sorry, humanity. I don't think I can do this.
...But man, that has got to be the most entertaining way to have a prospective victory turned into hopeless crushing defeat in an instant. It's half an hour later and I'm still just tabbing back in to the paused game, looking at it, and laughing. Next time, AI, next time!
In any case, I'm definitely going to give Fallen Spire another shot, and it looks like I've got some advice to take on board for next time, so here's hoping!Another piece of advice if you do X galaxy, if you want to minimize the amount of space you need to control for the victory condition, be very careful with your placement of cities in the X, and plan out all the placements beforehand keeping in mind the distance requirement, that makes the difference between whether you can fit 2 cities in your X or all 5.
I understood it that if I set it to a higher value the chance is higher to encounter the fallen Spire.
Next time, AI, next time!Fallen Spire is far and away my favorite way to play. I can't recall ever turning the option off since I first turned it on. As you've probably seen, Spire Cities are CRAZY powerful. In fact they are pretty much one of the most powerful static defenses in the game, at least for players. And the best way to combo that is with Military MKIII Command Stations. You will double their damage output, decloak the entire planet, and knockback most things that the city defenses don't outright murder the crap out of. IMO the best way to use the cities are to create two 'types'.
No. The 4/10 base setting is how HARD the retaliation from having Fallen Spire on is. It has nothing to do with your chance to encounter the Fallen Spire. Even if you set it to 1/10, you will STILL encounter the exact same chain of events. Just the AI response is much weaker.
Also, put both the city hub AND your command station right on top of the wormhole leading deeper into your territory. That means the AI MUST remove the city defenses to get deeper into your space.