Why i don't play AI war anymore

[RCIX]

First, i don't want to come off as self-centered -- tons of people obviously love the game, so i must be missing something

I don't really play AI war anymore, and i think i figured out why:
 * It's supposed to be strategic, but i don't really feel like it is; i roll in my blob and curbstomp planets i want, or my forces evaporate long before i finish the job
 * I very easily lose track of my goal and start treating the game like a sandbox game, which it's not very good at

Part of it's the ranges and speeds; it takes all of a couple of minutes to crush a planet, when it really feels like it should take longer. Combined with my available forces, i can just stomp post after post and easily finish off a planet quickly.

I guess i want each planet to be an adventure; charge in and set up a beachhead, then i can either start building some sort of long range siege weapons to blast away at other posts or start building/use a force to attack them.  Maybe i can do something to outflank the AI and lure it to attack while i go ninja its command center.

I also don't have any real drive to go attack the AI; waves that it sends against me don't ratchet up very fast (that may be my fault though ), and if the AI does slam me it's usually hard enough to cripple or kill me.

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you for the feedback   A few questions:

1) Is this based on recent versions or have you not played for a while?
2) Have you played with Hybrids (from CoN)?  They're not done yet, but even now they tend to keep people on their toes moreso than usual.

[Lancefighter]

random question - have you tried the hybrid hives ai plot? because uh, sometimes those require a good deal of effort to deal with. (read: usually requires me to lure them out into a trap of siege starships or similar) Sure, every planet isnt going to be like this, and every planet isnt going to be fun and interesting, but what you are asking for is a tactical game. AI war is more strategic in that the taking each planet should be inconsequential, its which planets you take that is more important.


Also, turn off wave warnings.. even if the wave isnt huge, its no longer automatically met be your entire fleet  

edit
ok, keith beat me to hybrids by all of 30 seconds. 

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, turning off wave warnings can help change the feel of the game, as can cpa-like-waves.  I really like playing with the galaxy unexplored too, tends to help feel a little more "goal oriented" because you have a more tangible frontier, etc.

[RCIX]

Thank you for the feedback   A few questions:

1) Is this based on recent versions or have you not played for a while?
2) Have you played with Hybrids (from CoN)?  They're not done yet, but even now they tend to keep people on their toes moreso than usual.

1. Um, i think i played a bunch on the more recent non-unity versions.
2. Not really, they sounded really hard (in a passive way) and i don't care for really hard

[TheMachineIsSentient]

The game I played last week really demystified hybrids. They can be taken down, and there's a variety of strategies to do it. Maybe you just need to take a break from the game for a while; that happens. I'm still enjoying it, and there's plenty of content I haven't even seen yet.

[Fleet]

I would imagine playing on higher difficulty stops the whole huge blob of death strategy. The game should be hard enough where you can't just comfortably build a big ball of death, so I would recommend upping difficulty and enabling other game modifiers until you can no longer do so.

Tried the Warp Jumper AI type? That looks particularly brutal.

Addressing your remark about loosing track of your goal..can you be more specific on this? Is it particular elements about the UI that inhibit keeping track of everything?

In any case, I'm sure that if you adjust the game difficulty and modifiers, you could make a game where you would not feel comfortable leaving even your home planet for a while until you shore up defenses, such as high diff, 2x wave, no heavy defenses, and warp jumper type. Until you have set the game to just below the level where you can't quite beat the AI, or make really really slow progress, the game won't feel right for a reason, because you don't have to make those strategic decisions.

[RCIX]

Addressing your remark about loosing track of your goal..can you be more specific on this? Is it particular elements about the UI that inhibit keeping track of everything?

Its that there's no direction provided really. You're just dropped in, with little to remind you that you're supposed to be doing. On a game of this scale, that doesn't work well

[Lancefighter]

to be fair, there is that 'objectives report' thing above the planetary info bit....... the bit that nobody really looks at except to tell how many co-processors or datacenters are  left :p

[lanstro]

Sounds like it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile your desire for it to be strategic but also not hard.

To take another strategy game as an example, Civilization.  If you play on too easy a difficulty there, you don't need to think at all about how you're going to win (because you will eventually meander your way to one anyway due to the low dificulty), you start playing around like it's a sandbox game (just responding to the AI civs and the world in a way that you 'feel like doing' at the time, rather than in a way that focuses on one of the victory conditions), and it all gets a bit pointless.

If you're not willing to increase the difficulties or turn on some of the options that do that, then it sounds like you're over the basic mechanics of the game.  Take a break and the desire to play might come back.

[quickstix]

Increasing the pressure on you to act is the key. Increasing the difficulty, setting the rate of AI progress to 1 per 5 mins, using harder AI types and enabling some of the minor factions or AI plots will really put the pressure on to kill the AIs. I personally found increasing the pressure to act faster did wonders for my interest and reducing the length of my games. I think you've also got to look more at the greater macro scale of the game (which planets to take, the overall picture of the economy) over the micro battles on individual planets.

[Ozymandiaz]

Thank you for the feedback   A few questions:

1) Is this based on recent versions or have you not played for a while?
2) Have you played with Hybrids (from CoN)?  They're not done yet, but even now they tend to keep people on their toes moreso than usual.

1. Um, i think i played a bunch on the more recent non-unity versions.
2. Not really, they sounded really hard (in a passive way) and i don't care for really hard

As an observation, not saying its true, but if you decide to go easy, and not challenge yourself, it will become boring eventually

I am curious, what AI level are you playing on? Sounds to me you got it too low, since you can easily go and take what planet you want. Perosnally I find level the 7 AIs to be too easy now, maybe you got the AI too low to give you a proper challenge? Just asking

[HellishFiend]

It really just sounds like you dont like the game to be difficult, and thus turn down the difficulty to the point where the game is no longer fun. AI War loses a lot of its appeal if you dont play on a level which you find challenging and capable of defeating you.

What fun would tower defense games be if there was never a danger of any of the waves killing you?

What fun would RTS games be if your opponent never had a chance of destroying your base?

In my opinion, AI War should be played with settings where you WILL lose if you "curb stomp" all planets in your way and take everything you want as well as things you dont need. That way, youre forced to make careful choices as to which planets you take, and the games become much shorter, more interesting, and less grindy.

[superking]

even on higher difficulties though, taking planets quickly and efficently is best acheived by unloading your entire fleet on the planet and just laying waste to everything in one fell swoop... the regenerative properties of AI worlds mean fighting upon them to any effect except complete eradication is usually needless, and that the more AI worlds you fight at once the greater your overall casualities and you struggle against the reinforcement of multiple worlds at once. the most efficent strategy IS to focus you whole fleet against one world at time. microing your various shiptypes on that world is important, but I have rarely felt a need to use slower or sneaky tactics (seiges or cloaking) when I could just gogo gadget 400 zenith polarisers and roll right over anything.

I'm not criticising in the sense that I still love AI war, but its the strategic map (choosing where to go next), long term economic decisions (jammers? which merc to build/how many to build over time? golems? research choices?) that most hold my attention, not the battles (which, once fleets get over a certain size, become rather simple)

[Ozymandiaz]

I'm not criticising in the sense that I still love AI war, but its the strategic map (choosing where to go next), long term economic decisions (jammers? which merc to build/how many to build over time? golems? research choices?) that most hold my attention, not the battles (which, once fleets get over a certain size, become rather simple)

Same here really. If I wanted to play a tactics only game I would play SC2, SupCom2 or the likes. For me the epic fight in AI war is the grand scale fight

Tho AI War is not without tactics, indeed, to most effectviley take an AI planet without spending too much time building a blob you can use a lot of interesting things.