General Category > AI War II- After Action Reports

9/9/9 Hammer Time![WON]

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Pireciter:
A little different with this game. I will be livestreaming my playthough as I go, followed by a typeup here on the forum. If you feel like joining in and playing along, feel free...or you can just come and laugh at my failures. I'll post an alert here on the forum and Discord before I go live, but I'm shooting for the following times: AAR has finished.


After a cleanser of a couple rounds at difficulty 10, it's time for another AAR. And I think I'm going to up it a bit from my last one. The 10s taught me a few things, and this expansion also brought some new "entertainment" in the form of the Scourge, plus a bunch of other goodies. Without further ado, let's get going.

Note: This will NOT be a Fallen Spire campaign. That's for another AAR. I'll just be playing with the Scourge this round.


Map: Realistic/Original/Small Circles
80 planets
Seed: 107740293
Doorkicker/Eclectic/Rejuvenator
9/9/9 Sledgehammer/Base/Pred
Human Resistance 6/10
Dyson Sphere 6/10
Scourge 6/10
Cookie monster
Zenith Trader

Starting Planet: Hahn
Version: 2.008

Let the games begin


0:00 - Looking around, nothing too crazy...though the fleet on Pravoka is loaded with frigates. Given that I'm in a little corner here, I don't have much scouting intel but I will at least capture that. Let's do so and see what else we have.

Initial unlocks:
Engineer II
Harvesters II
Forcefields II

0:02 - Pravoka mine. Oh, and that's more Siege Frigates...hmmm...

Three ARSs off to the north here. The first one has a bunch of melee units and I don't really want those...I just played that game. I think I'll do a reroll there, but first I'll neuter it.

0:07 - Kane clear, let's reroll this thing...

Oh boy...OH BOY! I think I have a strategy here. I don't see these ships often. Daggers. Now...why are these so nice?



0:09 - Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie

Time for a fleet rework with my two groups of siege frigates. I'll probably throw my teslas in there as well. I really couldn't have asked for something better than that right now. This starting fleet is naturally slow so this is going to be very helpful. Let's also bump some techs up a bit.

Unlock:
Concussion II/III

7250 Science left

I can fine control these frigates with their crazy volley damage. And with the faster speed they have from the daggers, they can kite like no tomorrow.

Those two unlocks also decided my next objective. The ARS on Leviathan has concussion corvettes. Since I just teched those, let's grab them.


0:15 - Zenith Trader already? He's on Pravoka. I'll skip the ZPG on this planet, but I will grab an OMD, FF, and a couple defense ships.

0:17 - Leviathan clear, hack time.


Now...what's next?. Scouting data didn't give me anything good. Shame no luck on early DCs. Let's grab some more turrets then. With all this area damage, those new acid turrets look like fun. Ekril has those, and also splits the grid. It's the only planet that connects the two halves of this map. Would be a good strategic spot to have. Guess I got a target.

0:25 - Mine. I'll throw a MilI up for now and I'll hack the GCA. I think I'll switch it back to a Logi afterwards. Rather have the gravity turrets to slow down the AI if they try to move through here.

Let's check scouting data. ZPG up north at Teng. Concussion vault over at Geneva. I'm fairly sure the AI homeworld is off to my east somewhere. Longest jump from my HW on this side is 8 hops I think. Got 10+ on the other side. Probably going to go grab that ZPG and blow the warp gates so Mr. Hammer doesn't come over and start any funny stuff. Assuming the AIHW is east, I don't want to push too much back this way if I can avoid it. The only planet east I can see is Sikun with the raid engine. I have to go through it anyways, but...not yet.

0:27 - Oh boy, first wave with a Sledgehammer...only 21 strength? At 50 AIP? That's...that's so small...

0:28 - Defenses up. Hacky hack.

0:30:47 - Heh, the wave triggered the threat to come on in as well. I like how a whole bunch of it ran right through Ekril. 34/21 stands as the score.

0:31:50 - Hack done. Switching Ekril to a LogiI.

0:35:12 - Hmm...trader on Ekril. I think a BHM is in order. Why not...I'll grab an Eidolon as well.

0:40 - Strena cleaned. At least I don't need scouting data on Strena and Prasa. Two planets around them solved that.

0:44 - Now to work on Teng. That IonIV is the first target.

0:45:10 - And single volley from the sieges solved that problem. Let's have that group run around for a bit and do some cleanup.

0:55:31 - That was way too much fun kiting around all those MarkIV ships. You are never going to catch me. It's a constant Yakety Sax. Teng is mine. MilI right on top of the ZPG.

Ugh. No AIP reducers...only a single Co-Processor. Great..MarkII AI this early. However, I do see the Frigate coordinator and an ARS with Bombards off to the east on Brore. Those will fit nicely with the siege units.

I'm going to hit that Concussion vault first, then make my way over there.

0:58:23 - Oh yeah, extender on the ZPG planet. Concussion corvettes it is.

1:00 - Done, and cleaned.


Only an hour in and I'm loving this game already. All this concussion damage. I'm a little concerned as I get more to late game about how much micro I'm going to have to do, plus I will need some more standard ships. A pile of frigates won't help when I got 3k+ units bearing down on me which is going to happen real quick. Having to deal with MarkII AI already is going to be a pain. Hopefully I get some AIP reducers soon. I'll hold off on the warp gates around the ZPG for now and wait until I get Brore. Hopefully I'll find a couple DCs to drop to bring that AIP back down.


Current AIP: 70
Scores: 76/0

State of the union:

ArnaudB:
Lack of AIP reducer is painful at this difficulty. Hope you'll manage better than I do, I usually end up with issues defending on a too wide front in that kind of map.

Do you use the battlestations and its turrets? I didn't see you mentioning it, while I often use the turrets in an aggressive fashion.

Pireciter:

--- Quote from: ArnaudB on March 08, 2020, 06:53:45 am ---Do you use the battlestations and its turrets? I didn't see you mentioning it, while I often use the turrets in an aggressive fashion.

--- End quote ---

Both.

Usually if it's a planet that has something critical(ZPG) or way out of the way, I'll give it some bonus turrets from the station.

When attacking, if I bring a station it's an area-denial/support unit. Without FF frigates, I can't really beachhead, but I also do that if the situation warrants.

Pireciter:
Going live in ~10 minutes for the next set. See first post for stream link. I will update this post afterwards with the report.


Edit:

Well, I had some goals this round...but it was a bunch of back and forth sadly. This 70AIP slows things down quite a bit.

1:00:26 - Wave attacking Ekrhi, some threat came to play as well. 58/44

1:03:30 - Things are calm, let's start clearing over toward that vault.

1:04:23 - OMD down, now let's clean away.

1:10 - Dyson Antagonizer on Brore? Ugh...gameplan change.

So..new plan. Dyson...THEN come back up here. I'll hack that raid engine on Sikun and clear it out.

1:13:07 - Engine down. Time for the fun part.

1:13:21 - Oh, and an Instigator now as well? Fleets dispatched

1:13:50 - Antagonizer down.

1:15 - and now the Instigator

Well...I'm a dummy. I didn't think about my hacking points. I don't have enough for everything I wanted to do. That tech has an Alarm post that needs to go before the hack. With only 25 points left, I don't have enough and I don't want to pop a node quite yet.

1:16 - Back down south we go.

1:17:26 - Cookie monster on Sikun. Eat hearty...all those AI ships are on the menu.

1:19:27 - There's all those Dyson ships. Running through Kane right now. Means the sphere is off to the northwest somewhere.

1:21:43 - Bunch of threat gathered up on Sikun. Over 60 strength. All fleets pull back, let's draw them in.

1:22:02 - Gotcha. Steady...steady...wait for it...

1:22:16 - Go.

1:26:09 - And cleaned. 48 threat remains. Back to Sikun.

1:30:17 - Wait..Dire Vampire?! How'd I miss that? Ugh. I need to start paying more attention or I'm going to get run over. Siege frigates, you are up!

1:32:32 - Vamp down.

1:35:06 - and all the posts gone on Sikun. Let's finish clearing this.

Well...after I deal with the waves and threat floating around.

1:51 - That took way too long. Sikun cleaned, now to continue on.

1:57 - Great, reprisal on Brore. And 1 guardpost is buried under shields.

2:00 - CPA Declared. 70 AIP...I'm a little concerned for that. 1 post left...and my sieges can't break it with those shots scattering all the damage under the covered targets. 63 strength reprisal.

2:00:43 - I didn't want the reprisal, but I'm going to need to take it I think before it gets worse. Pulling back.

2:03 - Score at 131/21. I really didn't want that.

2:03:27 - 140/~0


Not real happy about this round. I was just being dumb, and I hope it doesn't cost me this game. CPA in 6 minutes and I have a bunch of threat to deal with. A 70AIP CPA is going to hurt this early. I may need to burn some of my science and I was hoping to hold off on that for a bit yet. I gotta prepare for the CPA and get some threat cleared. I wasn't planning on dropping Brore CS until afterwards anyways, but I didn't want that reprisal as well. This is going to be a tough hour.


Current AIP: 70
Scores 140/~0

No updates to the Union

Pireciter:
Next round starting in a few. See the first post.

Edit: I'm not going to get the write up done tonight, I'll post it tomorrow.

Cliff notes: CPA was no problem, so the AI decided to get nasty. A 1-2 combination strike, plus some unexpected friends has knocked things off balance. Not out of this yet.

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