Ok, so, I finally started on this....

[Misery]

.....and holy crap, is there alot of STUFF in this.

And I'm still in the intermediate tutorial.   


I've had the game and all of the expansions except the most recent one for awhile now, but hadnt really sat down with it until now because lazy.  As it is, I feel like I'm learning Dwarf Fortress all over again, except the interface isnt made of crazy and I dont have to watch 50 tutorial videos to understand what's going on.  Tutorial has been pretty good so far and I'm also gathering much from experimenting.  Usually I learn these things pretty fast. 

The game is excellent so far and completely holds my attention.   Really, your games just continue to amaze me.


Aaaaaanyway, being that I'm just starting out and considering that I have every expansion except that newest one, any overall tips you can give?   It's sounding like I'm going to need some here, hah.

[Tridus]

Well, read the strategy subforum. Lots of threads in there of newbies asking questions, tips, etc. There's an excellent guide on building advanced defenses. The after action forum also has lots of threads of people playing games and posting what they're doing, some of which are going to be useful to you (some others are either very high difficulty, or my currently running "turn everything on to get achievements" wackiness).

Next, don't turn everything on. Since you have most of the expansions, once you leave the tutorial and start a new game, you will have a LOT of options. Don't go turning everything on at once, some of the stuff is crazy and it's hard to learn with so many things going on at once. In particular don't turn on any AI plots until you've got a couple of games in.

For your first couple of games, stick to easier AI types. You can pick when setting up a new game. The hard ones tend to live up to their name, with nasty surprises.

The single most important number in the game is AI Progress. That goes up as you take territory from the AI (and from destroying special buildings), and the higher it goes the more aggressively the AI will react. The result is that you don't want to take every planet. Scout ships are key to see what's on planets near you, and you want to try to take things that are going to be useful. On lower difficulties you can take a lot more safely than on higher ones, but learning to leave some low value planets alone is a good lesson to learn early.

You can choose your starting planet and bonus ship while on the new game screen, by clicking on the system you want. You can actually click more than one (multiple homeworlds), but you shouldn't do that in your first game.

Other then that, try stuff out and see what happens.

[Aklyon]

Turning on all the expansions is ok.
Turning everything on, that is only for crazy experienced people.

Also, you might want to take a peek at kahuna's super cat thing.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the game   Glad to hear you're enjoying it.  The learning curve is pretty steep but often even that phase is reasonably enjoyable, and there's hundreds or even thousands of hours of fun (and !!Fun!!, though it doesn't have to be that) to be had after that.  Given the amount of time this one's had to develop, I'd say it's superior to all our other games (for now).  Though obviously personal taste is a pretty dominant factor.

Anyway, yea, Kahuna's guide is a good one to open your eyes to a number of things about the game that might otherwise take a while to find out.  And the various AARs are good sources of just learning about the game if you find them entertaining to read (they often are, particularly if you like to cackle with glee when the RNG or AI does something particularly uncomfortable to the player -- er, not that anyone here fits that description).

If you're looking for pointers on your first game setup, there are two approaches that come to mind:
1) Pick the "Beginner Game" lobby script, pick a homeworld with a bonus ship type you want to try out, and hit Start Game.  This will give you a very simple and very easy (relatively, in both cases) scenario that is nonetheless a full game.
2) Or you can just do what some of the crazier (and insanely competent) players around here did for their first games and just turn on EVERYTHING and learn by dying.  I suspect this is useful for a minoirty of players, but it could be fairly entertaining.  For you I think that could lead to some damaged computing equipment, however.  Losing is one thing; losing without understanding what happened is usually harder to take.

If you're looking for pointers on the game itself, what specifically?

[Cyborg]

AI War is, without question, the leading strategic campaign RTS in the market. There is no other game which offers the amount of variety that you will get from this title. I have hundreds of hours of playtime, and I'm sure the other veterans on this forum have put in more.

If you can get through the tutorial, and you know what all of the numbers on the top of your screen mean, you're ready for a 6/6 easy game or use the beginner preset. Once you feel what the pressure is like at different progress levels (and how to direct that pressure through the wormhole network that is your galaxy map), you'll be at 7/7 in no time. More importantly, you'll understand how the game works at the most fundamental level.

From there, it's as deep as you want to make it. Do you want to understand how strategic reserves work? Do you want to understand how reinforcements work? How CPAs work? We have a wiki page for those things, and there is also a planet design/strategy compilation by kahuna that's very good.

And when you're done with that, there are a variety of plots, special challenges, and goofy challenges in this forum to keep your mind engaged for countless hours.

Lastly, you can enjoy this forum, where we have endless debates over the most mundane details and continue to guide the development of one of my top five favorite games of all time, AI War.

There are comparisons to Dwarf Fortress, but this isn't a simulation. It's an RTS. The goal is to eliminate the AI through whatever challenges exist. There's also a few optional boss fights to be had.

Enjoy, and I'm sure one of us will answer any questions you might have.

[nas1m]

Welcome ! I only got started on ai war roughly a year ago and just now managed to win my first game - after more than 100 hours logged on steam!

For this game I disabled all expansions but used all Bonus ship types the Base game has to offer -which made for a really cool game that teached me a lot.

Here are some of my settings (i can provide them all if you want):
Map Type: realistic, Hubs
Planets: 40
Ship types: complex
Difficulty: 7/7 both random, easier
No ai Auto Progress, reveal random ai types
(My game had a sledgehammer and a Mine Enthusiast)

Have Fun !

EDIT:
BTW, did you manage to come up with a way to play AI War using a controller? If so, I would be very interested in your solution...

[Misery]

Welcome to the game   Glad to hear you're enjoying it.  The learning curve is pretty steep but often even that phase is reasonably enjoyable, and there's hundreds or even thousands of hours of fun (and !!Fun!!, though it doesn't have to be that) to be had after that.  Given the amount of time this one's had to develop, I'd say it's superior to all our other games (for now).  Though obviously personal taste is a pretty dominant factor.

Anyway, yea, Kahuna's guide is a good one to open your eyes to a number of things about the game that might otherwise take a while to find out.  And the various AARs are good sources of just learning about the game if you find them entertaining to read (they often are, particularly if you like to cackle with glee when the RNG or AI does something particularly uncomfortable to the player -- er, not that anyone here fits that description).

If you're looking for pointers on your first game setup, there are two approaches that come to mind:
1) Pick the "Beginner Game" lobby script, pick a homeworld with a bonus ship type you want to try out, and hit Start Game.  This will give you a very simple and very easy (relatively, in both cases) scenario that is nonetheless a full game.
2) Or you can just do what some of the crazier (and insanely competent) players around here did for their first games and just turn on EVERYTHING and learn by dying.  I suspect this is useful for a minoirty of players, but it could be fairly entertaining.  For you I think that could lead to some damaged computing equipment, however.  Losing is one thing; losing without understanding what happened is usually harder to take.

If you're looking for pointers on the game itself, what specifically?

Aha, yes, Kahuna's guide is just the sort of thing I was looking for.  The defenses bit in particular and game setup stuff will help, as I indeed do not really need the keyboard embedded in the wall currently or something along that line.   I'm no stranger to difficulty though, being used to things like this:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vuOQBL1T2o8#t=105s   so I likely should be fine, heh.   The game does a good job of making it easy to understand things, so that helps alot.  Usually if I'm gonna get all irritated it's when stuff isnt making sense (or just outright isnt working!)  I'm betting this game probably aint too buggy at this point, having been out as long as it has been, so that's good.


One question presents itself, as either the tutorial didn't explain it, or it did explain it and I either didn't notice or just forgot, but how does "supply" work?  I see that mentioned in various places, that such and such thingy needs supply in order to do whatever.

Currently I'm still in the tutorial.   didn't get much time with it today.  I'll read into the guide and other stuffs here more once I've finished that bit.

EDIT:
BTW, did you manage to come up with a way to play AI War using a controller? If so, I would be very interested in your solution...

Well, theoretically my usual controller-to-mouse setup that I use for games like Minecraft would work, but it would be a bit awkward and I'd have to pause alot due to "mouse" inaccuracy, as having that aspect during RTS combat would be an unhappy thing indeed.    That sorta setup uses the godforsaken nightmare program "Motioninjoy" to run a PS3 controller and JoyToKey (which is really good and useful) to convert it to both mouse and keyboard.   It's useful for alot of games.

Lately though my physical issue has gotten alot better thanks to PT (and strong pain meds like cyclobenzaprine);  I've even jumped into some of the moba games like Dota 2 and LoL, which are fine so long as I dont try to do more than about an hour of them at a time, because of rapid clicking.   Wouldnt have been able to do them at all a year ago.   I still get my damn headaches and other pain, but I dont get the horrible nerve pain in my arm too much now.   So, I figured, I can finally get back to games like this.   Been playing alot of strategy games as a whole lately because of that!

So for now, as long as I dont go nuts with it and as long as I dont try to push it when I AM having pain, I can just use the mouse mostly normally.

....now if only I could stop being so bloody inaccurate with the damn thing.   Always have been, just misclicks everywhere.

[Cyborg]

One question presents itself, as either the tutorial didn't explain it, or it did explain it and I either didn't notice or just forgot, but how does "supply" work?  I see that mentioned in various places, that such and such thingy needs supply in order to do whatever.

You need a command station on an adjacent planet.

[madcow]

I came back to this after a bit of a break myself - I only played a few campaigns so never really got everything down solid. Had a few questions on controls, etc.  Didn't want to make a new thread and figured it would fit in here.

1.  Is there a way to half/quarter your currently selected number of units? Thought I remembered doing this before, but can't remember how and didn't see it in control configuration.

2.  What's a decent value to put into the auto-kite, is there a decent standard value to use?

3.  For some reason I remembered killing a command center also destroying all the guard posts in the station, am I remembering wrong?  I was trying to take out an AI eye by fast striking the command center (even put in my own command center afterwards) and well, the enemy posts stayed up.  The fact that the star had no enemy ships made it hard to get around triggering the eye, heh.

4.  Not a question really, but man the revamped trains are rough. Suddenly at the hour mark have them going through my home system non-stop without enough break between warps/counter attacks to clear the stations out.  I assume if I clear out the border of stations I should get a breather from them.

5.  Are there controls in the wiki (or manual) or otherwise that aren't documented in the in-game keybinding settings?  Curious if there's any little command or keyboard shortcuts that are "must-knows" that I might be missing out on.

[Coppermantis]

1. Pressing L should select half of your current selection.
2. As far as I know, all that box does is enable the behavior if the number != 0. It doesn't matter how high it is.
EDIT: Oh, it does matter. Was that changed at some point? I somehow remember it just being any non-zero number.
3. This only applies to Wormhole guard posts and maybe select few others, but WGPs are the only ones I know for sure.
4. Yep, Pretty brutal.
5. None that I know of.

[TechSY730]

I'd say autokite if the range is >= missile frigate range. (best way to be sure is to input missile frigate Mk. I range - 1, just to avoid any ambiguity of > or >=)

If that proves too tricky to keep your missile frigates in position the way you want, or it their "scattering" proves too tricky to deal with in "hit and run" type situations, you can try range > missile frigate range. (again, best way is to set range to missile frigate Mk. V range + 1; IIRC, the missile frigate is one of the very few ships that get a range buff as mark goes up).


In any case, about missile frigate range is where I would start considering "long range" to start, or at least long enough that kiting could be very helpful.

[Shrugging Khan]

Frankly, I would NOT activate global auto-kite. If anything, use it for specific control groups (check the Control Group panel in the CTRL menu) and only add those units to the relevant group that actually can auto-kite effectively. Missile Frigates are, in my opinion, too slow to make use of it. And when you get any fleet action going and your ships end up spread out all over an enemy system, auto-kite can be a real liability.

[Kahuna]

Auto kite should be set to 1 ShortestRange-1 so ALL ships auto kite. I have set it to 1000.

your ships end up spread out all over an enemy system

That's why you should control your ships.

There's no reason to not enable auto kiting for all ships. It has only beneficial effects.

[madcow]

Interesting the number of different thoughts on autokite.  I guess I'll play around with it, I definitely found it working against me while trying to lay down force fields with my shadow champion ship.

Edit: another 2 questions popped up!

1.  Do neizhul regeneration chambers actually do anything for the AI if they don't have any neizhul ships unlocked?

2.  Is it worthwhile to jump out and pop barracks if I think I can handle the resulting threat?  Kind of worried about ship build up on them and been striking out to kill them on bordering systems.

[Kahuna]

Interesting the number of different thoughts on autokite.  I guess I'll play around with it, I definitely found it working against me while trying to lay down force fields with my shadow champion ship.

That's only because you don't use pause and waypoints.