Question about the new AI changes (5.0)

[Rustayne]

I'm curious about something that since the newer updates the ships are doing.  It seems that ships that are freed are sitting on gates, a system back from where I'm held up at.  They seem to wait til a wave is about to hit, and then come in along with the wave, and basically make it a double wave.  I've managed to handle that pretty well, and overall I like this.  Makes the AI seem less suicidal. 

The problem I'm running into is they don't seem to want to leave the gate anymore.  I'm playing with the Fallen Spire campaign, (which so far is a very interesting change to game play and I'm quite enjoying it) and through the course of playing, I wound up taking both warp gates out to my bottleneck area.  So when waves come, they go to , which is fine, aside from the fact that they actually never come.  They sit on the gate behind, waiting, and waiting.  Eventually they get eaten up by carriers, and they recollect.

I've at 1 point had 6k ships sitting on the other side of the gate waiting for me.  Eventually a spire craft wave came and made a beeline for the bottleneck, and well there came 7k ships in total.  Let me say it was quite a rush.  I managed to survive, though I'm not sure how, and this process started again. 

Is this really how the AI is supposed to behave?  If so, it is kind of lame in this instance.  I know that partly it is my fault for killing both warp gates into my system, but on another level you would think the AI would be smart enough to know that 2k-3k of ships would be enough to launch a pretty good wave against a player.  At the current rate I'm at, I got a 6k cpa due to hit me in like 4 minutes, and it will more then likely get stuck sitting there til something manages to come through.  Lightning warheads to tend to kill a bunch off when I do it, but it still grows and I get the feeling it will overwhelm my defenses at some point in the next 2-3 hours.

[TechSY730]

2k-3k ship may very well not be enough to take out a system. For example, if those ships were laser gattlings and neinzul younglings, and your planet had plenty of turrets and a fortress, those 3k ships may very well fail to take out the planet.

The AI not only considers their numbers, but also their estimated firepower in relation to the planet they are considering to move into. Thus, for mildly to well defended planets, this behaviour is very plausible.

[keith.lamothe]

In my test game I would often get 2k-3k stalking-blobs next to my spire-city defense planets.  Basically the firepower of the cities (and capital ships if you station them there) is so high that the AI ships won't attack until they have a similar amount.  And that takes an awful lot of fleet ships  This tends to result in them piling up a really mammoth swarm that comes through with the next sufficiently-large exogalactic strikeforce (which often includes high-firepower ships of its own).  This can be quite a strong attack, and a game-ender if you're not particularly well set up for it.

Currently there's one very easy way of dealing with them, though:
1) Move an EMP MkII and your entire Spire capital fleet to your side of the wormhole.
2) Send the EMP through, boom.
3) Send your Spire fleet through and turkey-shoot the emp'd AI ships.

I've managed to destroy 2000 AI ships (on low caps) before an EMP II wore off.  In some cases an EMP III may be warranted.  If even that won't do it, just pull your fleet back before the emp wears off (unless you think the fleet can now take them, of course).


If you don't want the AIP of warheads, and you have an alternate path into the system with the stalkers, you can send your spire fleet around and into the system from the "back entrance" and this tends to "spook" the AI ships into flying into your planet.  This can backfire, as they may overwhelm your less-defended city before your fleet can catch up and do enough damage.


If you're bottlenecked, and don't want to spend AIP, you may be able to provoke an early attack by temporarily pulling your capital ships back and thus changing the firepower value of the defense planet by quite a bit, and the AI ships will rush in.  In theory they'll retreat if you rush back in and overwhelm them but in theory I've found that the firepower difference is not enough for them to "take their ball and run".  Even if they do, there are various tricks  (notably engine damage and paralysis) you can use to whittle them down while they're on-planet.


Later on I want to make the stalking smarter than "gee, let's sit directly on top of their doorstep so they can lob explosives at us", so some of these would be less trivial, but this is how it stands for now.

[Rustayne]

Well that is what I've been doing with the explosives at least.  My AI progress is 950 or so roughly now, so 1 ai progress for warhead isn't a big deal to me.  The emp trick works too, aside from the carriers getting primary targeted.  They get paralyzed too, which is great aside from the fact that my fleet loves to kill them first for some reason.  As far as your trick of going behind them, that would be impossible.  They basically got me pinned I guess you could say from the AI's perspective.

My fleet leaving does nothing either as far as triggering them to come in.  I got a spire hub in my bottleneck, and with it's firepower alone it is a beautiful thing.  I really like the hubs, and quite honestly, I think I might play with them from now on, even if I don't always complete the objectives.  Since you messaged keith, I got a question about the objective updates.  Will they plan a new shard in friendly terrority, or is it ever only in hostile areas?  I'm planning on cleaning out a huge wing of the map (35+ systems), and then colonizing to get the next shard.  Wasn't sure if this was a wise idea as there will only be 50 or so AI lands left.

I'm playing a Maze C, which I got to say is a ton of fun.  I'm partially testing for the CPA bug that I've found in earlier versions, but so far, CPA's have been delivering as scheduled, aside from the stalking thing.  I really do love the changes, I just wanted to make sure this was acceptable behavior.  Really seems like the AI is smarter, which is a great thing if you ask me.

[keith.lamothe]

Since you messaged keith, I got a question about the objective updates.  Will they plan a new shard in friendly terrority, or is it ever only in hostile areas?

With a few rare exceptions, always in hostile areas.  Details here:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Fallen_Spire_Walkthrough

I'm planning on cleaning out a huge wing of the map (35+ systems), and then colonizing to get the next shard.  Wasn't sure if this was a wise idea as there will only be 50 or so AI lands left.

It depends, as long as you aren't increasing the minimum-distance-from-AI-territory-to-your-homeworld or the minimum-distance-from-your-border-to-your-homeworld it shouldn't make much difference.  Taking tons of territory can result in longer shard runs, but from the sound of it you've got a single-bottleneck system that can smash all the AI's chase battlegroups to pieces.


Glad you're enjoying the new stuff

[Rustayne]

Yea, the bottleneck I got setup managed to kill 7k ships, and survived somehow.  As far as the distance, it wouldn't really effect it aside from throwing it on the other side of the map that won't be colonized.  Only trouble I see is that both homeworlds are roughly 12 jumps away, and I worry that I won't be able to get all the shards before running out of room.

[Zeba]

I like the new mechanic. It really makes you choose when and where to do an offensive because as soon as you jump out your fleet to take or neuter another planet the ai ships that were piled in to the other systems come pouring in. Which when done correctly is a way to get the ai to 'pull the trigger' so to speak before the buildup gets too big so you can jump your ships back in and pwn them.

[TechSY730]

Quick question. Is the AI more willing to send waiting units into a planet if the planet they are waiting on suddenly comes under attack (even if there was no change to the planet they were stalking)?

[keith.lamothe]

Quick question. Is the AI more willing to send waiting units into a planet if the planet they are waiting on suddenly comes under attack (even if there was no change to the planet they were stalking)?

In practice, sometimes.  I think when I've seen it it's because I came onto their planet with overwhelming  force so they "retreated into enemy territory".