The point of taking more planets

[Qatu]

 As I've improved at the game, I've been taking fewer and fewer planets when I try to play optimally. I played for a while with the core generators but I ended up always turning them off since I found the game less fun when I play with them, partly because out of the 5 ARS i rarely use the ship from more than 1 since by the time I take them, I normally have a fully developed fleet capable of taking on AI homeworlds.

 Playing with the OP as balls stuff (trader+(champion or spirecraft), or just Lazy AI), I've managed to win level 10 games with 2 planets, but without any of the OP things i've won my last 6 games at 8.6 even vs technologists with 4-6 held planets + 2-4 destroyed planets depending on maps (been playing simple, x, or maze A maps).

 Looking through my saves, my last optimal game was on a 120 planet X map vs 2 8.6 technologists and was won in ~6h10 holding 5 planets. My last non optimal game was on a 120 planet x map, vs 2 medium difficulty 7.6 AIs and was won in ~11h30 holding 26 planets.

 Basically, my method is start by unlocking gravity mk3 turrets force fields mk2 decloakers and heavy beams mk1, unlock mk2 bonus ship if good else mk2 bombers. That unlock+mk1 fleetships+mk1 starships+transport shenanigans gets me my little 4-6 planet empire that i chose for having 2 chokepoints (or 1 if map loves me!). My unlocks for the rest of the game will be heavy beams mk2 missiles mk2 lasers mk2 basics mk2, my bonus ship mk3 if good, mobile repairs, riots mk2+mk3, and most starships mk2.

 That's a pretty short summary but this covers most of it. Transports+raids mk2 or spires mk1+mk2 will take care of most problematic enemy structures, group moving my fleet over enemies stomps everything except large groups of AI ships, in which case group moving along the outer planet rim takes a while but will eventually destroy all enemy ships, with mobile repairs stationed along the way getting my fleet back to full. AI homeworlds go similarly althought in the first pass i'll usually rush some super high threats even if it costs me my fleet.

 I'm not sure why i'm making this post. I don't think there's any problem with this, although sometimes i wish taking 10 planets wasnt making the game harder than taking 5 planets, and that taking 20 planets wasnt significantly harder than taking 5 planets. I think my problem is the time commitments required for taking more planets, or really, for unlocking more toys to play with. It's probably a good thing that the AI scales with me like this, but rebuilding my 5 planet fleet takes less than 5 minutes without resource unlocks, while rebuilding a 20 planet fleet can take 20-30 minutes without resource unlocks or half that with them (but that means fewer toys).

 I guess i'm rambling, but building the bigger toys takes so long that it almost cancels out the fun of playing with them. After playing an hour yesterday and finding out that mk2 turrets are now costing the same as mk1 turrets, i'm imagining a time when mk2 ships cost the same as mk1 ships. Or maybe, just maybe, a time when there are no resource cost, just time energy and knowledge costs.

[Diazo]

Interesting to see you tried the CSGs (core generators) and then turned them back off.

I tend to leave them on so I don't end up in the situation you are describing where taking only a couple planets is a viable strategy.

Having said that, I do also play maps with more connections, usually the Lattice map although I do also play Realistic.

It sounds like to me you might take a look at playing on a map type with more connections, you'll find that as the number of ingress points into your empire goes up, the difficulty starts really ramping up.

Having said, stuff like the strategic reserve that went in was supposed to combat this. Was that last optimal game of yours (8.6 technologists with 5 planets) with lazy AI on or off? With lazy AI off, the strategic reserve is supposed to make it harder for you to win with only a few planets captured.

That's the beauty of having so many options though. Want to spice your next game up? Turn on Astrotrains 3 or something.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

You might also consider trying out a map that's a little more (but not too much more) restrictive. If you can get a good spawn point in the middle of a maze map, that'll practically force you to take a lot more planets and make harder decisions. You might go for a Maze x - Easy if you don't like that idea, since those have more loopbacks. If you have a low amount of potential connections, that reduces your options which will get things feeling rather tight as you go. Good enough reason for any really serious game to never take place on Snake. That's one of the hardest map types in the game.

Try to reduce the amount of planets in the galaxy as well... not at the same time as trying new map types, of course. A 40 planet game should probably be about the minimum for a 'sensible' game of AI War. The goodies will all be more densely packed together, so you'll never have to look far for a planet with multiple beneficial structures to capture. This way, you'll have to take fewer planets for a greater increase in your arsenal. The disadvantage is that you'll have less knowledge overall. If you dare go below 40, 30 isn't so bad. 20 or less is practically suicide. I recall a time where my homeworld spawned adjacent to a raid engine.

Have you played with Fallen Spire enabled? That's a huge overhaul to the regular campaign style of gameplay, wherein you are actually encouraged to take a huge amount of planets to get a massive fleet of capital ships.

[Qatu]

 I only played with lazy once, that was a level 10 game i started with 2 homeworlds in a corner with the zenith trader enabled. I won the game and still had 10 aip, lazy is pretty absurd, i'm never playing with that again.

 For maps with more connections I preferred simple, lattice and crosshatch i only played at 7.6 and while the challenge of more fronts was real, i had ~4 chokepoints instead of 2 but was within 6-8 hops of the AI homeworlds so it wasnt much more difficult but it was much longer since i needed to get the fleet back to defend much more. The map types I prefer are simple, maze a, and X, i find between them i can experience the low to high chokepoint games and medium to high distance to ai homeworlds.

 I did play snake maps but stopped it because beachheads are so good it made the game long boring and easy. I won a 40 planet snake map on level 10 using the fallen spire thing, it was overall pretty easy since they AI could never threaten me, just long since the AI chokepoints were pretty big, but the above strategy works just fine with larger fleets, 500 human ships can kite 2000 ai ships+a bunch of carriers just fine, and because it was a snake map i never even had to step on the ai homeworld, the spire super duper fleet crushed everything for me.

 For the strategic reserve, it's obviously rather strong, but the first pass on AI homerworlds i just ignore it if there's super high threat structures. For that pass i'll temporarily capture a planet 2 hops from the ai homeworld, clear the core world, then load my fleet into transports on my temporary world to drop them right on top of the eye or whatever highest priority target and take out 1-3 more structures before losing my fleet. On the second pass (or only pass in case of easy ai homeworld), without the high threat structures, I can do the kiting by group moving around the outer ring of the planet pretty safely, unless the reserve has a mothership then i'll only lose a few ships before i finish off the posts and command station. Also it seems like spending a few minutes clearing the reserve from the core world will take the reserve down to 70% and doing that before going to the homeworld i havent seen motherships.

 For trains, i completed 2 games with them in the past few months, one at 9.6, and i don't think i'm gonna be playing with trains again. With the new info on the wiki (thanks for it wiki guys!) i would know how to game it (leave 1 low threat train alive per convoy), but not knowing i ended up having so many fotresses and super fortresses it was a huge slog, but i was playing with champions and had spire corvettes as bonus ship, so i could just ram the super forts with minimal losses. Overall it's not a very fun plot, hybrids is the only plot i really like and always have enabled. I see it as almost perfect as it is one of the few things where my opponent is actually trying to win rather than try to slow down my winning, it is active rather than reactive.

 Anyway, I'll be getting the new expansion when it comes out, i'm curious about the new stuff. Also I hope this thread doesnt come across as whining, i find this is one of the best games available, i've just really played it a lot, and probably will continue, i'd just like to spent more time being entertained and less time putting the game on +10 and still waiting 5 minutes to build whatever, and the time spent building increases faster than the increase in resources when taking planets, so taking more planets makes the game more boring.

 Thanks for the replies!

[TechSY730]

About the strategic reserve.

One of the biggest things holding it back from doing its job is how easy it is to "game" by doing "dumb" things like running around in big circles.

TBH though, this sort of kiting is something that even "pros" can have trouble dealing with if their aggressor starts doing it around their base in PvP RTSs, so I'm not sure what can be done about this.

Maybe have some % of the strategic reserve refuse to attack (and thus move towards) anything that isn't within attacking range of the homeworld?

[chemical_art]

Almost all the brutal guard posts have global effects to reduce the effect of going in circles around the perimeter.

[Wingflier]

I only played with lazy once, that was a level 10 game i started with 2 homeworlds in a corner with the zenith trader enabled. I won the game and still had 10 aip, lazy is pretty absurd, i'm never playing with that again.

 For maps with more connections I preferred simple, lattice and crosshatch i only played at 7.6 and while the challenge of more fronts was real, i had ~4 chokepoints instead of 2 but was within 6-8 hops of the AI homeworlds so it wasnt much more difficult but it was much longer since i needed to get the fleet back to defend much more. The map types I prefer are simple, maze a, and X, i find between them i can experience the low to high chokepoint games and medium to high distance to ai homeworlds.

 I did play snake maps but stopped it because beachheads are so good it made the game long boring and easy. I won a 40 planet snake map on level 10 using the fallen spire thing, it was overall pretty easy since they AI could never threaten me, just long since the AI chokepoints were pretty big, but the above strategy works just fine with larger fleets, 500 human ships can kite 2000 ai ships+a bunch of carriers just fine, and because it was a snake map i never even had to step on the ai homeworld, the spire super duper fleet crushed everything for me.

 For the strategic reserve, it's obviously rather strong, but the first pass on AI homerworlds i just ignore it if there's super high threat structures. For that pass i'll temporarily capture a planet 2 hops from the ai homeworld, clear the core world, then load my fleet into transports on my temporary world to drop them right on top of the eye or whatever highest priority target and take out 1-3 more structures before losing my fleet. On the second pass (or only pass in case of easy ai homeworld), without the high threat structures, I can do the kiting by group moving around the outer ring of the planet pretty safely, unless the reserve has a mothership then i'll only lose a few ships before i finish off the posts and command station. Also it seems like spending a few minutes clearing the reserve from the core world will take the reserve down to 70% and doing that before going to the homeworld i havent seen motherships.

 For trains, i completed 2 games with them in the past few months, one at 9.6, and i don't think i'm gonna be playing with trains again. With the new info on the wiki (thanks for it wiki guys!) i would know how to game it (leave 1 low threat train alive per convoy), but not knowing i ended up having so many fotresses and super fortresses it was a huge slog, but i was playing with champions and had spire corvettes as bonus ship, so i could just ram the super forts with minimal losses. Overall it's not a very fun plot, hybrids is the only plot i really like and always have enabled. I see it as almost perfect as it is one of the few things where my opponent is actually trying to win rather than try to slow down my winning, it is active rather than reactive.

 Anyway, I'll be getting the new expansion when it comes out, i'm curious about the new stuff. Also I hope this thread doesnt come across as whining, i find this is one of the best games available, i've just really played it a lot, and probably will continue, i'd just like to spent more time being entertained and less time putting the game on +10 and still waiting 5 minutes to build whatever, and the time spent building increases faster than the increase in resources when taking planets, so taking more planets makes the game more boring.

 Thanks for the replies!

I should point out that even though the expansion is in beta (LATE beta, at that), it is already available for purchase and download here.

You can also purchase the Arclight Indie Royale Bundle which includes ALL of Arcen's games (except Skyward Collapse), for about the same price.

If you want Vengeance of the Machine on Steam, don't worry, you'll get a Steam key to go along with your purchase as soon as it is released on Steam.

Playing with VotM would solve a lot of the problems you're currently having with the game. The quadruple AI personalities, as well as Dire Guardians, and some of the new tougher settings (like Hunter) would definitely give a player like you a run for their money. Having said that, I still think this thread is proof that Core Shield Generators were a viable solution to a problem that *STILL*, 3 years later, has not been totally fixed. Obviously some people don't like using them (and I can understand why), but it continues to be the best working solution anyone has come up with.