Nearly impossible to attack at 400 AIP and... diff 7

[Poko]

Yes, 10 planets worth of K is nothing, because I've already unlocked everything meaningful.  Nothing, not K or Fabs, can give me enough power to match doubling the AI strength.  I already end 9/9 games with ~5-10k  Knowledge unspent, and I'm doing 10-12 planets.

Can you list what you typically unlock?  I find I can never get enough K, I'd be interested to hear about a different way to go.

[Hearteater]

Mark II, all ships
Gravity Turret I
Tachyon Beam Emitter I
Spider Turret
Basic II
Fortress I
Harvester III (metal and crystal)
Hardened Force Field I and sometimes II
Force Field II, rarely III
Scout II, sometimes III
Zenith Starship I
Spire Starship I
Mini-Forts

That pretty much wins most 9/9 games for me.  There are some other nice unlocks that help, but it really depends on what I'm facing.  The EMP mines are often a good option, some other turrets at Mark II can be useful.   But those are defensive unlocks and so I generally don't do that unless the AI ship types are making things tough on defense.  The Mobile Repair Station is ridiculous on cloaked operations.  That's a pretty common unlock against a HW that is giving me trouble, unless the AI has tachyon ships.  I really like unlocking the modular Fort as well, but that's 3000 K and ship cap 1 vs. Fortress II which are 4000 K and ship cap 4.  So unless I really need to lock down a system I know is going to be attacked, Fortress II is often better.  If you are playing with high connections, Warp Jammer Command Station is nearly mandatory and one of the few unlocks it is always worth taking an extra two systems for because it pays for itself directly in AIP.

[Poko]

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that's something like 36k knowledge, or 23k from planets, 12 planets (or hacking).  Is there a reason you don't have any Mk II [Edit: meant Mk III] ships in there, or the Mk II and III zenith / spire starships?  That's the primary difference between what I unlock and what you've listed and written about.

Sorry for the thread derail...

[Cinth]

MK II ships was the first line in his post...

[Poko]

Sorry, meant Mk III ships

[keith.lamothe]

There certainly has been a drift in what AIP levels you can get away with, and this is largely due to the fact that unless the game is hard on 100 AIP it will never get hard for anyone who's really watching their AIP like a hawk.  How to deal with this is an ongoing balance problem, but we're doing what we can.

And no, ultra-low-AIP as a playstyle is not going away.  The non-Lazy-AI option just makes it less desirable to stay ultra-low all the way to the end.

If you want to break a stalemate one way or another in a non-superweapon game, I suggest warheads   Most anything below mkV can be completely neutralized (temporarily with EMPs or permanently with Nukes) Bait as many of those core-planet mkV ships as you can, hammer them with lightning warheads, send your armada to the AI HWs and punch them out.  If you win, you win; if you don't you lose, and you can move on to trying again or whatever.

[kasnavada]

And no, ultra-low-AIP as a playstyle is not going away.  The non-Lazy-AI option just makes it less desirable to stay ultra-low all the way to the end.

Still, either "normal" AIP level should be doable, or scale waves to represent reinforcements level or something.

Players learning the game will probably use waves caps (I did) and strength to gauge the level of the AI, and it's completely inaccurate, either because the caps shown do not correspond to the AI power level, or because waves are irrelevant as AIP gets higher compared to reinforcements.

There certainly has been a drift in what AIP levels you can get away with, and this is largely due to the fact that unless the game is hard on 100 AIP it will never get hard for anyone who's really watching their AIP like a hawk.

I'm sure there are plenty of solutions for this :
- Multiply AIP by AI level = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.
- Mutiply AIP by AI level squared = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.
- Start high diff AIP higher than lower diff
- Make the "minimum" AIP level dependant on difficulty level.
- Multiply AIP gains depending on the diff level (lvl 10 = 40 AIP for a system, lvl 7 = 20 AIP for a system, number are indicative and not by any means meant as "real balanced values" to be used in a game).
- Multiply the knowledge needed to beat up the AI (to clarify, make it so about 36k knowledge cannot beat the AI, that you need 45k or 60k to finish a game, possibly only for higher diff levels).

There are probably loads of other ideas on the other threads though.

Yet, the question I asked at first was, is that drift even intended ? While I can understand caring about the most hardcore, there are others which just may not want to delve into that much tactics for what should be an easy game (diff 7...). Not getting to 400 AIP with the recent changes after the first AI kill means taking less than about 16 worlds. Half of those are needed for Core Shield Generators. And, that amount is irrelevant to whatever the map size is, making what is still "standard" 80 size way more difficult than 40 size maps.

Basis:
400 AIP - 10 (start) - 10 (guard posts + ressources + some zeniths) - 180 (First AI) + 80 (DC) + 40 (CP)
= 320
= 16 * 20 (worlds).

180 for an AI, I think I saw 10 AIP for 8 guard post + 100 for the AI. I may be wrong, I did not re-check... still the point would remain as the number of capturable planets may vary from 16 to about 20. It's still a very low amount IMO.

I'm also assuming that I do not put any auto AI progress, and never fail to defend anything that could give AIP (trains ?). AFAIK, AI superterminals are not in every game, so I do not count them in.

Is capturing less than about 16 world with a pretty good knowledge about how to defend your world, real good knowledge of the game mechanics (Alert mechanisms, Core fabs, adv research stations, core shields, behaviour of the threat AI versus heavy defense...), "world hopping", managing every defense of a unit or building that could give AIP a boost, barely using any warhead even intended for what is a mere 7/7 game ? Which is still (AFAIK) the default diff level that is presented when starting the game for a first time, and the "lower" achievement for beating an AI type.

PS : edits for spellchecks.

[TechSY730]

I sort of agree with you. As I mentioned in that other thread sort of covering this ground, I feel that 400 AIP being the "tipping point" on difficulty 7 is too low.
Keep in mind, the AI is supposed to be "trying" starting at difficulty 7, so for brand new players to AI War, 7 may not be appropriate. (I believe the tooltip about difficulty even states as such)


Excellent point about the disparity in relative growth that the wave strength over AIP and the reinforcement strength over AIP have. I can see how that would trip many new players up, not to mention being a pain to reason about balance.
I'll try to see if I can dig up the equations and see if I can analyze asymptotic behavior of their differences. (wow, that was a very math jargon filled sentence)

[Winge]

@kasnavada

Not quite--Core Guard Posts should increase the AIP Floor by 10.  Above the AIP floor, that won't affect you.  It would not affect a high AIP player, unless they really rode the ST down...

[kasnavada]

@kasnavada

Not quite--Core Guard Posts should increase the AIP Floor by 10.  Above the AIP floor, that won't affect you.  It would not affect a high AIP player, unless they really rode the ST down...

Oh, yeah, my bad. Still, as I said in my post, that brings only the cap from 16 to 20 "capturable" planets.

[TechSY730]

@kasnavada

Not quite--Core Guard Posts should increase the AIP Floor by 10.  Above the AIP floor, that won't affect you.  It would not affect a high AIP player, unless they really rode the ST down...

Oh, yeah, my bad. Still, as I said in my post, that brings only the cap from 16 to 20 "capturable" planets.

20 planets is a very large amount of planets. 16 should give you enough resources to deal with the AI homeworlds.
The tricky thing about this game though is figuring out which planets to get, and how to get the most out of each planet. That is where the strategy of this game is centered around.

[keith.lamothe]

- Multiply AIP by AI level = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.
- Mutiply AIP by AI level squared = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, but rest assured that there are difficulty-based multipliers for both of these   Diff 10 probably gets around 9x the pain as Diff 7 in a lot of ways, and in some places it's probably worse.

- Start high diff AIP higher than lower diff

We've talked about that but it has issues, particularly if we're talking about more than a 10 point (maybe 20 point) increase.

- Make the "minimum" AIP level dependant on difficulty level.

The floor does increase faster on higher difficulties (it's 1/5 of total AIP on diff 7, 1/3 on Diff 10, and 1/4 somewhere in the middle there).

- Multiply AIP gains depending on the diff level (lvl 10 = 40 AIP for a system, lvl 7 = 20 AIP for a system, number are indicative and not by any means meant as "real balanced values" to be used in a game).

I suppose, though that could get confusing.  Data center AIP reduction goes down on the highest difficulties.

- Multiply the knowledge needed to beat up the AI (to clarify, make it so about 36k knowledge cannot beat the AI, that you need 45k or 60k to finish a game, possibly only for higher diff levels).

Well, the AI is a lot tougher on those difficulties, which thus requires more knowledge to survive and attack effectively.  Also, the non-Lazy changes further emphasize the need for a higher "minimum power" to punch through the endgame battles.

Yet, the question I asked at first was, is that drift even intended ?

Not specifically, but nor is drift necessarily a problem.  It's gone too far, I think, but since this is an ever-changing game the balance is going to shift a lot over time.

180 for an AI, I think I saw 10 AIP for 8 guard post + 100 for the AI

Someone already mentioned the guard post thing, but the actual on-death AIP of an AI home command station also went from 100 to 20.  Core guard posts also give +2 to normal AIP (and have since a long time ago), though.

Anyway, not being able to take more than 20 planets without encountering a stalemate situation is fine (and not unique to this phase of the game's lifetime).  But I'd prefer if you still had a decent shot with 20 on Diff  7.

[Cyborg]

Core Shield Generators: You need to take 8 worlds to destroy these, not a dozen like you mention. I suspect you know this already and were not being exact when posting, but I just want to make sure.

Turn off CSG's. Lower potential AIP.

[keith.lamothe]

Just in for 6.019 (which will probably be out next Tuesday or Wednesday) :

* Normal AI reinforcements now have an "effective AIP cap" of (AIDifficulty^2)/2.
** So, for example, a Diff 7 AI's normal reinforcements will not increase from AIP increases past 245 (on Diff 8 it'd be 320, on Diff 9 405, and on Diff 10 500).
** The main reason for this is that reinforcements tend to produce stalemates rather than player-loses outcomes.  If the player really oversteps the viable AIP range then waves or CPAs or something like that should step in to kill them, but reinforcements generally aren't going to do that.

[chemical_art]

** The main reason for this is that reinforcements tend to produce stalemates rather than player-loses outcomes.  If the player really oversteps the viable AIP range then waves or CPAs or something like that should step in to kill them, but reinforcements generally aren't going to do that.

Oh.

My.

AI.


Am I dreaming?

EDIT: I'm downright giddy. Between this, strategic reserves, and hacking, mid AIP games look viable.