Prerelease 3.039 (Bugfixes, Astro Train Nerfs, K-Free Rally Posts)

[x4000]

Thanks for the answer.

I must be doing something wrong then.  I'm playing on normal(7, 80 planets,realistic layout, 5 minute increase,  random easy AI's(I' was trying for as normal as possible))  , and that seems like a difficult strategy.   Within half an hour(~50 AIP) the waves reach a point where it doesn't seem practical to maintain defenses at each planet enough to fend them off and still be able to attack.

No problem.

I don't think you are doing anything wrong, per se, but it's not the sort of strategy that a new player is likely to be able to use with any effectiveness.  I'm not surprised it wasn't working for you, I think even I would have trouble with it because of how I play.  But some seasoned players were very much able to exploit this in various ways, and that creates a problem.  Just because a strategy is hard to pull off doesn't mean it can't also be an exploit for those who can then spam that strategy to get victories that are too easy.  Hence a lot of the rebalancement of most strategy games, usually those are things that normal players don't really notice much, but which prevents the most experienced players from creating "super strategies" that dominate at their level of play.  As with anything else, we try to protect against that so that the game is fun at any level, without there being any best paths at an expert or a novice level.  Quite a challenge!  And sometimes makes for mildly unpopular changes (like this), which are nonetheless best for the longterm health of the game for all players.

[Ozymandiaz]

Hi January, welcome to the forums!

The reason that the warp gates are exploitative is that their continued presence doesn't offset the lack of AIP increase, really.  If players are able to keep AIP really low, then they are able to withstand the waves from warp gates left scattered around.  Leaving warp gates scattered around helps keep the AIP low, so then that becomes a self-fulfilling cycle: you're able to withstand the waves from anywhere, and the waves are boring, because you left the warp gates on all the planets you took.

That then provides a markedly easier game experience, because players are able to trick the game into having too low of an AIP compared to what benefit they derive from capturing planets, which is basically the nature of an exploit compared to simply a clever and unusual strategy.

That's my feeling on it, anyway.  Glad you like the rally posts change!

I agree on this. I never really thought about it before either, I always nuked Command and Gate on planets I take. I usually purge the systems I take entierly .

Having a way to "fool" the system is imo not that fun, after all I play to have a challenge, and a challenge AI War provides .

In fact, I may need to up my difficulty some more soon . Not sure I am ready for diff 8, but soon .