Just registered. A couple of things to clarify

[towerbooks3192]

I had AI war bundle sitting in my steam account for months and I finally had the chance to look have a look at it and I am a bit confused if it is a 4x/TD/RTS or what?

I managed to play the tutorials except the final one where you could lose and I have to say this game is great but it is so overwhelming for someone like me who prefers pausable RTS games and there are a lot of of ships and structures to build and it is confusing.

My question is if I could pause the game and issue orders in co-op games? and Is it alright to play the game like this on single player? I am not a fan of click-fest or fast RTS games and I am someone who prefers to think about my decisions and execute them and I am worried if I am playing the game the wrong way.

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

Sorry for my questions and I hope I could enjoy this game like everyone else, I mean I am scared of playing this game as of the moment because of the overwhelming amount of ships and structures and I don't have a set strategy or I don't know how to proceed. By the way, I am not sure if it is what the game creator intended but this game really instills fear in my heart and that feeling of hopelessness where the odds are stacked against me and there is no hope of winning. I need help in getting over the fear and knowing that despite all the odds I could do it as long as I work hard 

[Draco18s]

is it a 4x/TD/RTS or what?

Yes.

My question is if I could pause the game and issue orders in co-op games?

Yes.

Is it alright to play the game like this on single player?

Yes.

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

No.  The AI will wtf pwn you if you try, unless you have it on like difficulty 1.  Beyond that, there are simply too many planets.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the games and to the forums, glad you're enjoying the game thus far

My question is if I could pause the game and issue orders in co-op games? and Is it alright to play the game like this on single player? I am not a fan of click-fest or fast RTS games and I am someone who prefers to think about my decisions and execute them and I am worried if I am playing the game the wrong way.

Absolutely pause if you want to.  Before I started working here most of my suggestions were to the end of making playing-while-paused work   I probably spend half my game time paused.

That said, some people play mostly without pausing, and if you're playing co-op you should definitely make sure it's ok before doing much pausing (some people really don't like pausing in multiplayer).

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

NOT advisable, your AIP will go through the roof and the AI will kill you

By the way, I am not sure if it is what the game creator intended but this game really instills fear in my heart and that feeling of hopelessness where the odds are stacked against me and there is no hope of winning.

Sounds like what Chris had in mind, yea

As far as strategy, you'll largely pick up stuff as you go, but you might pick up some useful stuff from other players on the forum, particularly in the after-action-report subforum where they often describe specifically how they handled the challenges in their game.  And feel free to ask questions

[LaughingThesaurus]

Hehe, if you think things are hopeless, things ACTUALLY feel hopeless around 7/7. At 10/10, I'm pretty sure the AI spends half the time telling you to not even try, and the other half of the time eating your face for breakfast.

[Bognor]

I am someone who prefers to think about my decisions and execute them

Then I think you'll like AI War 
The game uses sophisticated auto-targeting and provides you with a range of tools to save micromanagement and prevent the game being a clickfest, putting the focus on long-term plans and strategic decisions.

[Diazo]

Hehe, if you think things are hopeless, things ACTUALLY feel hopeless around 7/7. At 10/10, I'm pretty sure the AI spends half the time telling you to not even try, and the other half of the time eating your face for breakfast.

Not really.

Once you figure things out (and there is a lot to figure out), 7/7 is where people are expected to find a fun game that is difficult enough that they find a challenge while being easy enough that they should win.

Below difficulty 7 the AI is given disadvantages (has some game options removed, has its decision tree limited so it makes 'stupid' moves, etc.)

Above difficulty 7 (so 7.3 and higher) the AI gets bonus ships on everything it does and so is more difficult that way.

In other words, difficulty 7 is the sweet spot where the AI is not hampered in any way so you are facing its full range of abilities, but the AI is not receiving any bonuses in its attacks against you either.

Having said that, do work your way up to 7, there is a lot to learn and while you can afford to make small mistakes against difficulty 7, making a large mistake can easily cost you the game as the AI does not pull punches at that level.


Do be sure to keep posting any questions you have, I absolutely love this game (I've been playing since before the first expansion pack came out) and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

D.

[kuresuti]

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

No.  The AI will wtf pwn you if you try, unless you have it on like difficulty 1.  Beyond that, there are simply too many planets.

Hmm... I've been playing 60-80 planet maps against 7/7 AIs doing exactly that. Usually I just start a new game because it becomes such a grind after awhile, but when I do finish a game it isn't unbeatable. It gets hard for sure but the same could be said about any strategy going into the later stages of the game.

[Diazo]

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

No.  The AI will wtf pwn you if you try, unless you have it on like difficulty 1.  Beyond that, there are simply too many planets.

Hmm... I've been playing 60-80 planet maps against 7/7 AIs doing exactly that. Usually I just start a new game because it becomes such a grind after awhile, but when I do finish a game it isn't unbeatable. It gets hard for sure but the same could be said about any strategy going into the later stages of the game.

I think it actually depends on map type.

That's one of the reasons I seriously dislike the snake (and similar) map types. You have to take all the AI worlds as there is really only one path you can go, and the single line of advance lets you get away with it. This turns into a grind as you start to conquer more systems and the AIP increases.

One of the things I really like about AI War is you have to decide where to go (on the more complex maps) and how you are going to defend you empire when you do so. Playing on a snake type map removed this part of the game and makes it less fun for me.

I personally play only on Lattice map types these days for that reason. In my current 80-planet (single homeworld) game, I'm looking at only capturing 9 planets before I begin my attacks on the AI homeworlds.

I do this because I believe that's why the snake map games become a grind, you are not expected to conquer the entire galaxy so when you do, you are so far beyond the designed unit count in the game that things start bogging down.

D.

[kuresuti]

Also, is it not possible or advised to conquer all the planets?

No.  The AI will wtf pwn you if you try, unless you have it on like difficulty 1.  Beyond that, there are simply too many planets.

Hmm... I've been playing 60-80 planet maps against 7/7 AIs doing exactly that. Usually I just start a new game because it becomes such a grind after awhile, but when I do finish a game it isn't unbeatable. It gets hard for sure but the same could be said about any strategy going into the later stages of the game.

I think it actually depends on map type.

That's one of the reasons I seriously dislike the snake (and similar) map types. You have to take all the AI worlds as there is really only one path you can go, and the single line of advance lets you get away with it. This turns into a grind as you start to conquer more systems and the AIP increases.

One of the things I really like about AI War is you have to decide where to go (on the more complex maps) and how you are going to defend you empire when you do so. Playing on a snake type map removed this part of the game and makes it less fun for me.

I personally play only on Lattice map types these days for that reason. In my current 80-planet (single homeworld) game, I'm looking at only capturing 9 planets before I begin my attacks on the AI homeworlds.

I do this because I believe that's why the snake map games become a grind, you are not expected to conquer the entire galaxy so when you do, you are so far beyond the designed unit count in the game that things start bogging down.

D.

Usually I play the simple map type, but what you're saying is still true. On many seeds you can capture clusters of planets and defend those through one or two choke points which in effect makes the gameplay similar to a snake map except you capture planets 5-10 at a time instead of 1 at a time. The new cluster map type is pretty much this.

I haven't yet played a low AIP game, probably because I've already got the grinding type game down to a science and I'm too lazy to learn a new way to play. A low AIP game does sound more fun though. I'll try to make an effort learning it in the future

[Diazo]

Heh.

A lower AIP game is what the game is more-or-less designed to handle. (In my understanding from seeing the Devs post on the forum.)

I think it's expected you will capture around 12 planets on an 80 planet galaxy, only capturing 9 is getting into the super-low AIP range but that game is a diff 10/10 game so the rules are a bit different.

I was originally only going to capture 8, which is the absolute minimum needed to destroy all the CSGs, but strategically I ended up having to take one more because it had so many useful structures on it.

That is the thing though, with how many options, minor factions, units and features you can enable/disable, I'm not sure there is a "take X number of planets" goal, it's going to vary widely depending on the options you choose at game start.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

On Diff 7 I'd say a normal endgame AIP would be 200 to 400.  Under 150 would be "low", under 100 would be "really low"   Much over 400 and it could become a slogfest, depending.

[towerbooks3192]

Thanks for the replies guys. Good to know that the forum is pretty helpful and hopefully I will enjoy it like all of you and get the hang of how the game is played.

I just started playing the campaign tutorial and I must say that maybe when I finish it I could have a sort of routine I could follow for every game that I would be having. I must say that things are really pretty hectic despite the game being a tutorial and the frequent ai attacks (not waves) which sends a couple of missile frigates,bombers and fighters is annoying since they usually target my tractor beams and that warp sensor thing (the thing which indicates the wormhole that waves would come from).

I think I can't imagine myself playing the game without the pause button. I had a hard time keeping up with things at times.

One thing that annoys me is that on a planet map, my mouse could continuously scroll the edge of the map, I was wondering if there is a limit to the map or sort of an invisible wall to stop my mouse from wandering too far and its hard for me to center the view close to the wormholes or planets since I don't know which key to press to center so I just try to pan the camera and hope I am going in the right direction

[Diazo]

If you press and hold 'T' there is a (sort-of) mini map you can use to recenter the display.

I think there is also a 'zoom to command station' hotkey but you would have to check the controls to see what that is.

It's under ESC menu -> Settings -> Controls Mapping I believe.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh I didn't mean that it was actually hopeless at 7/7. It just feels hopeless when I scout around, and just feel my commander that I'm role playing go white in the face when he sees the countless sentry and ion eyes, and some scarily close Ion Cannons mark IV and I that became buddies and hung out on a planet. Okay, not countless eyes, but like, an amount of them. Then, I didn't really have chance to really play 7/7, that was just my first impression. It was more of "Oh God, if we're winning this, this will be the ordeal of an eternity."

...So if I looked at 10/10, then, surely I'd feel "All hope is lost. Abandon the galaxy!"

Edit: Oh yes, hold T and left click pretty much anywhere and that should get you back into the galaxy.

[Hearteater]

I think there is also a 'zoom to command station' hotkey but you would have to check the controls to see what that is.

Should be H.