Short game setup?

[quickstix]

I've got a real itch to play AI War, but I don't have much time at the moment. I was wondering if anyone had any setups for short, skirmish style games on the smaller maps. I know that the smaller maps are there, but I'm not sure if heading into them with default settings will be much of a fun game.

What sparked my interest in this was that I recently got my hands on Sins of a Solar Empire (finally), and I've noticed how easily it scales from a quick 1v1 skirmish, all the way to huge multiplayer intersystem battles. The potential for short games is there in AI War, I'm just not sure how to go about setting it up, given AI War isn't designed to go small with the usual settings.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if in some far off time if it would be possible to limit the smaller maps to only one AI homeworld. Wandering thoughts. 

[x4000]

I don't have any good advice on this myself, as I don't tend to play that way at all, but I'll be curious what others have to say.

[quickstix]

It's a bit of a tricky question, because it completely goes against the intrinsic design of AI War and every aspect that makes it unique. It's kind of like asking how do I turn a jet fighter into something I can go down the road to the shops with. It's sort of possible, but it goes against the actual design of the jet fighter. I guess I'm just curious to see if anyone has cracked the 10 planet nut yet, considering smaller maps were a requested feature.

[x4000]

Yeah -- that's what I'll be interested to hear, too.  Most of the stories I hear about 10 planets are rather horror stories about how hard it is, and how there's no knowledge, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, 10 planets are pretty hard

I think a more likely solution to the "short game" desire is a set of more focused "scenarios".  At base you could do this by having a carefully crafted partially-played save game; either within an hour or so of the end and you just play it til the end, or at some interesting point in the middle of the game where your end "objective" (not really recognized by the game) is to take a particular region of space, or rescue that decloaking human colony, or prepare for and defend against that particularly nasty CPA/wave-combo against that precariously-frontline ZPG.

That sort of thing.

But for a game starting from the beginning and playing to the end, "short" and "fun" probably won't go together for most players

[SmileyFace]

It's a bit of a tricky question, because it completely goes against the intrinsic design of AI War and every aspect that makes it unique. It's kind of like asking how do I turn a jet fighter into something I can go down the road to the shops with. It's sort of possible, but it goes against the actual design of the jet fighter.

You may have answered your original question there. It would also help to know if you had multiplayer games in mind - I can understand the argument for shorter games in multiplayer. And AI War caters well to this, surprisingly.

To go off on a tangent for a moment... I found SoaSE plays not much different to any other RTS (TBS/RTS hybrid my rear) except for being very slow. The base game, at least, has plenty of time for thought but I found it doesn't need any. Upgrade taxes, develop resource infrastructure, and... you're mostly done! There on, offense and mobility are key just like in many other RTS's and you just steamroll/bash your way forward to victory or loss.

In contrast, as Keith suggests, AI War is highly objective-based. There is always something consequential to do and the approach to do it will be different. i.e. turret defence vs a wave, a deep raid, a neighbouring data centre raid or a deep capture of a mark IV factory. Each objective will require different play.

To me, AI War is built to run slow. It just doesn't work any other way. But unlike SoaSE, which to me feels like it's slow just for kicks, AI War is slow so you have time to think, to plan and to execute. It's a much deeper level of thought.

[keith.lamothe]

SoaSE was a lot of fun for me... not for long, but longer than most RTS's (I actually don't think of AI War as an RTS, though that's probably the best main-genre-description).

Anyway, yea, you can have short AI War games in a similar fashion to having short Axis & Allies games: start with an already-interesting situation, narrow the scope of your objectives, possibly narrow the scope of your resources (no new ship production, time limit, etc), play it out, and see what you're able to accomplish

[Kjara]

If you are looking for a quicker game, try to play at a slightly lower level, and perhaps at a slightly smaller map than normal--if you force yourself to play much more aggressively it can still be challenging but take much less time.  I have a few extreme cases of this(such as the time I did a pair of level 1 ai's--I can't find it anymore, but I seem to recall it taking under an hour to win).  I don't think it will quite reach the quick sort of sc2 speed of game, but it can keep it at the 5-6 hour range which makes it actually possible to finish games when you are busy .

[x4000]

Of course -- one point that I guess I should have raised earlier, is this: why not just play a long game in short sessions?  It doesn't matter if your game lasts 10 hours if it is played in 10-30 minute bursts or whatever.  If you are playing with any regularity, or leaving notes to yourself in game, the ramp up/down time should be pretty minimal.  I have definitely done this sort of thing in the past, myself.  I understand that's not really what you are going for, but I am curious as to why (too much ramp up time when returning?).

[Kjara]

Well, one issue with the play 30 mins at a time for me at least is a) I like to play an entire game under the same patch if possible, b) I like to update when updates come out, and c) you update far far too often .

[x4000]

Ah, I gotcha.  See, I have no such qualms. I have some games that I still play on occasion that were started on version 0.80 or thereabouts.

[quickstix]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I suppose I was looking at the short game as sometimes I find with stretching out longer games I'll lose interest and not really feel like coming back and having to remember exactly what I was doing, where my ships are, ect.

To be honest though, it may have more to do with me always looking at the bigger picture as a whole and never breaking things down into smaller, more manageable and separate tasks. It's a nasty habit I have with a lot of things, like uni sometimes, that I'm still trying to get rid of. I guess that's why I was looking at going from start to finish in a short amount of time.

One thing I completely forgot about was the fact I always play on 'Normal' because I love the drawn out, longer game. I think trying 'Fast and Dangerous', which I've never done before, combined with messing about with settings might produce some interesting scenarios on the small scale.

Lots to think about. I think I'll try some things out and see if it's worth writing a bit of a guide to smaller games, as there isn't much literature about the topic.

[x4000]

Ooh!  Yes, fast & dangerous would massively increase the speed of the game.  Another thing you could do to really speed things up would be to play with a handicap on for yourself, and/or the AI.  If you have 3x more resources coming in, you can play 3x (or more) as fast.  If you give yourself and both AIs equal handicaps, then it doesn't even count it as cheating for score purposes (since it's not).  It will take some tweaking to get the difficulty right so that it still feels remotely like AI War, but between that and F&D mode you ought to be able to shave a lot of time off.

I hear where you're coming from, though -- I was just curious about it, mainly.  Hopefully one of those things suggested so far in this thread will help, or perhaps someone else will stop by.

[Doddler]

I'd be pretty interested if people have tips to make the game a little shorter.  My friends commonly will play games up to 5 hours but rarely will we go beyond that and multiplayer games with my group are very un-prone to actually picking up games in later sessions.  I'd simply play on a smaller map but the game doesn't scale that great to AI War's gameplay style, and really small maps like 10-20 are really boring, you spend most of your time just building up ships and its easy to be pushed into a situation where the AI is stronger than you and you're out of options.  The high handicap for both player and AI is an interesting idea though.

[x4000]

You could even vary it up by giving yourself a high handicap but not the AIs, but giving the AIs double waves, invisible waves, waves into their territory, and so on.  Then offense is a breeze, mostly, but defending is a nightmare.  With a high AI Progress incrementation based on time, that would help to make it a constant rush forward, while periodically stopping to thwart the insane AI incursions.  Losing or winning would happen relatively fast, and I would suspect that might create a sort of AI War counterpart to "rushing" in other RTS games.  Given that this is AI War the rush might last 1-3 hours instead of 10-30 minutes, but it would certainly be different in style.