This AI is awesome.

[Entrenched Homperson]

Now all I can think about is Fruit Roll Ups, teleporting away forever, me never being able to catch up... 

...

 

[soMe_RandoM]

wow 9+ are awesome, i love how there an giant leap from 7.8 to 9+ the difference in tactics is awesome. for example AI waves, the AI sends the wave to so they can then wait till they have ether more fire power or overwhelming forces to take you out. this most unique aspect of 9+ and doom is fact that no matter what they never directly send waves to you. because of AI doing this it somewhat buys you time to recover from attacks but they much more brutal than normal waves basically think of it as CPA every wave but only units from wave. this however makes game more interesting as you can in fact find these waves while they building up and some times when i done this AI has decided to attack and run away with units to one of systems it was going to attack thus leaving my fleet to deal with remaining AI forces on planet. and when you do successes in taking waves out they are good but it risky as they basically stalking the planet, and it can be anyone planet, however scouting is awesome, just in notes write down reinforcement numbers of planet then go check once while, and if there big jump then it AI wave. for this cant wait for day where they introduce 10+ (11,12,ecter).

[hullu]

There should be no difference in tactics from 7.8 to 9+, the differences probably arise from different AI types and different system topography you have in place. They should send waves just like normally unless you have destroyed all warp gates, in which case the waves wouldn't come to your planets even on difficulty 1. Unless, you have some fancy AI types that do the behaviour described above.

[Red Spot]

Or you trigger a raid-engine without having any adjacent planets.

[zoutzakje]

I don't even dare touching difficulty 9 and above atm, not even the easy not-sending-any-waves Ai types.
I'm just barely handling myself on 7.3. I always play with Random AI types, and everytime I win I put the difficulty of 1 AI just one step higher. And everytime I get utterly destroyed and there is no way of winning, even with an older save, I move one step lower. So far I've only been moving up the ladder so I'm preparing for the worst
Beating a 7 Tech Raider was hard enough as it is already. I'm not looking forward to the day that I get the Core as random for example

[Red Spot]

You should take note of that a lot of factors contribute to how a game goes and how difficult it actually is.
I can easilly handle 2 lvl10 Assassins on a snake-style map without the use of any minor-factions/AI-plots.
Taking on 2 8.6 Mad-bomber AIs with Adv. Hybrids on a simple/realistic-style map seems a bit too steep for my skills.

High difficulty Grav-driller AIs can drill their own doom, or yours ....
Still need to try out the hardest of AIs, but I am sure I wont be playing them on 8 or above ...

You can tweak you game a lot using different AIs/minor factions/map styles in specific combinations.
eg: Hybrids are easy to deal with when you have 2 or less fronts, but a pain at 5 or above fronts .. depending the mapstyle you wont need to have more than 2(snake), or get less than 5-ish(realistic).

[Sunshine!]

Zout: the "don't send wave" AI types at higher levels are actually probably more difficult than the send wave types. Consider that every so often the AI will send a massive pile of junk at you, but there are ways to learn how to manage that, with AI wave senders.  With non-wave senders, that massive pile of junk that would otherwise be sent at you is sent to reinforce the planets around you, making expansion extremely difficult after not too long, and making any offensive action very dangerous because of the possibility of releasing ridiculous piles of threat.

Edit:
Red: I don't think the hardest AIs really cause too much of an undue problem for some of them.  Golemites, for instance, have golems on some of their planets sure, but otherwise they function normally.  Just treat golems like mobile fortresses.  Attritioners have attrition emitters, sure, but those are both easily destroyed (transport with 20 bombers or so, boom!) and capturable.  Scorched Earth is a nightmare any way you look at it, Everything is hilarious (though scary!).  Just set your randoms to "Random Non-Technologist" and have some fun, you'll get used to it eventually.

[Red Spot]

With hardest I mean the technologist AIs, not the attritioner and such

[Sunshine!]

IIRC, mk1 waves have a 1.1 or 1.3 size modifier or something, and mk4 waves have a .5 modifier.  Just remember that you'll be dealing with technologically superior, but (likely) numerically smaller incoming waves, so your disruption (tractor beams, spider turrets, or paralyzers if you've got them, for example) is going to be more effective.  Abuse that stuff.

Edit: This gives me a thought - I usually drop mk3 military on my planets and go for "overwhelming force," but dropping a mk1 logistics station and pairing it with spider turrets/riots/spider bots instead might not be such a bad idea.  That is, until the exogalactic strike forces show up and ignore engine damage/gravity effects :/

[zoutzakje]

ah yes, I forgot about the no wave AI types using their "wave points" to reinforce the planets even more. Even so, I'm still staying away from dif 9 so far
I now got a random new realistic map seed where I am able to play as if it were a snake map for a large part. Took 8 or 9 out of 40 planets so far and I only got 3 borderplanets. Despite the fact that I'm fighting against yet another technologist, I should be able to handle it on 7.3.
I know there are a lot of random factors in the game, but being able to adapt to them is what's enabling me to slowly move on to higher difficulties (though I'll save AI plots such as hybrids for later )

[Vihermaali]

Wow! My first time playing against a Spirecraft - Hard - AI. The 2nd exogalactic wave is incoming and just like last, it goes straight for my homeworld (which is on the edge of of my own part of the galaxy).

My shields are holding and suddenly...my home command station just dies. With all the shields around it still holding. I reload and this time I watch carefully for ships that can shoot through forcefields and I see.. raid starships. Raid starships that AI puts under some shield things and then RUSHES them towards my home command station! This means the raid starships are protected from my fleet while he tries to..assassinate my homestation.

Daaaamn, I didn't know AI could be this clever.

[keith.lamothe]

Raid starships that AI puts under some shield things and then RUSHES them towards my home command station! This means the raid starships are protected from my fleet while he tries to..assassinate my homestation.

Daaaamn, I didn't know AI could be this clever.

Haha, I told it to rush your homeworld, but I didn't tell it anything specific about raid starships and shield bearers (not sure exactly which shield things are working here; could be riot starships, shield bearers, or spirecraft shieldbearers).  But yea, raid starships are very troublesome to an otherwise citadel-level defense due to flying through and firing through forcefields.  Sniper Turrets are fairly effective at nailing them, in quantity, as is anything with really high per-shot firepower (to punch through the raid's armor).  More generally having multiple layers of defense in which to catch them before they can physically get near your home command station.  Also you can separate them from their shielding friends by placing forcefields over the wormholes that they have to enter (not exit), the shielding guys will get bumped aside by the ff (as long as it lasts) while the Raid will go through.  Though depending on the exogalactic attack's setup the Raids may stick with the battlegroup's lead ship, but at least it isn't beelining at full speed in that case.

[Corsaer]

It was really early in the game and I needed to take a MkIV planet holding an ARS that also happened to be directly in my path of conquest. I had only one MkIII ship unlocked at the time (Infiltrator planet bonus) but the AI had just a few hundred total ships and an Ion Cannon. I'm new so I wasn't sure exactly how large of a force I would need to take it so I decided to err on the safe side and send my entire fleet. Well I'm not sure if it was coincidence or what, but as soon as my fleet finished warping through, a large group of AI ships that had been stationed there made a beeline through my fleet and into the wormhole I came through, quickly destroyed my unshielded/unturreted Command Station on that planet, then hopped over to assault my Home Planet. I quickly select an appropriately sized splinter of my own fleet and attempt to send them through the wormhole since I left things rather undefended--only to find out that I had overlooked a Black Hole Machine that prevented me frome leaving. I paused the game and queued up several more Engineers, two Colony Ships, and unpaused my infinite loop of all my ships (which were currently capped out) on my Space Dock. Unpause. My Tractor Beam Turrets manage to hold all of the AI ships for now. I rush my fleet on the MkIV AI planet from guard post to guard post, destroying them as fast as I can and ignoring AI ships shooting at my fleet. Every casualty is built in a second or two at my Space Dock and I send them to delay the AI on my homeworld. When both Colony Ships finish I send them with three Engineers through the wormhole to the Mk IV planet. One Colony Ship and two Engineers make it through. But by this time more enemy ships from a neighboring hostile planet have come through to assault my homeworld, I have two normal waves counting down, and I've triggered a counter-attack wave from a guard post. I Scrap three of my starships to free up some energy, send a handful of my rebuilt Infiltrators to one of my adjacent planets I've captured and pop a Nienzul Hive (the thing that gives you lots of their MkI ships.) Use the Nienzul and whatever is being built at my Space Dock to finish off the original ships, and then delay the two waves. I manage to capture the planet just as my last Tractor Beam Turret is destroyed and rush my fleet back to my home planet to mop up the remains of the two waves and to defend from the counter attack that was going to arrive in several minutes.

This might just be bad luck and sloppy decisions, but at the time it seemed like they knew.

[keith.lamothe]

This might just be bad luck and sloppy decisions, but at the time it seemed like they knew.

Hahaha, yea, that bit where the pile-up went through the wormhole after you sent your fleet in was probably the "don't go through if you're massively outnumbered" logic kicking in, so we kind of did tell it to do that, but the two-front dogpiling on your homeworld while so much of your fleet was tied up by a BHM was very much just an interesting situation emerging from a set of very simple rules that didn't actually have that in view.

Welcome to the forums

[TechSY730]

This might just be bad luck and sloppy decisions, but at the time it seemed like they knew.

Hahaha, yea, that bit where the pile-up went through the wormhole after you sent your fleet in was probably the "don't go through if you're massively outnumbered" logic kicking in, so we kind of did tell it to do that, but the two-front dogpiling on your homeworld while so much of your fleet was tied up by a BHM was very much just an interesting situation emerging from a set of very simple rules that didn't actually have that in view.

Welcome to the forums

You know one of the things that this game is big about is emergent intelligence, "smarts" that are not programmed in but rather seem to come about from simple rules.
You know the saying stating is impossible to distinguish sufficiently advanced incompetence from malice? Well I guess you could say that one of the "sayings" of  emergent intelligence is that it is impossible to distinguish sufficiently advanced "dumb luck" from intelligence.