9/9/9 Hammer Time![WON]

[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]

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.

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.

[BadgerBadger]

I wound up watching some of your video to see how my Scourge were doing. You asked about that Dire that showed up to take out your ZPG. I suspect that the Dyson attacked the Dire Teuthida Guardian on some nearby AI world, so that Dire was allowed to join the Threat (but only to attack Dyson ships; the AI can have threat that targets only specific minor factions). Unfortunately, there were some Dyson Ships on your ZPG planet, which meant that the Teuthida could attack your planet. And once on your planet your turrets shot at it, so it was allowed to attack you.

[Pireciter]

I wound up watching some of your video to see how my Scourge were doing.

They drew some blood, that's for sure.

You asked about that Dire that showed up to take out your ZPG. I suspect that the Dyson attacked the Dire Teuthida Guardian on some nearby AI world, so that Dire was allowed to join the Threat (but only to attack Dyson ships; the AI can have threat that targets only specific minor factions). Unfortunately, there were some Dyson Ships on your ZPG planet, which meant that the Teuthida could attack your planet. And once on your planet your turrets shot at it, so it was allowed to attack you.

That makes sense. I was thinking either that or released when I messed up and triggered the Alarm Post.


Did you happen to see the "stealth" DC and/or the siege frigates not damaging the shield posts?

I'm not sure on the DC, but I guess maybe something with the AoE calculation for the frigates? Since the FF edge is outside the AoE range...Curious on those because that changes some of my strategy for the longer term.

Here's the stealth DC I was talking about. Showed up on Intel, but no planet icon..thus missed it until I was checking Co-pro count and happened to see it:

[BadgerBadger]

No, I didn't see the stealth DC. If you have a save game where the intel menu is claiming that it exists I can take a look.

Not sure about the siege frigates, would need to dig through the code.

[Pireciter]

No, I didn't see the stealth DC. If you have a save game where the intel menu is claiming that it exists I can take a look.

Not sure about the siege frigates, would need to dig through the code.

Easily done, I'll toss a save on Mantis and try to also repro a test save for the frigates.

This round...I am so mad at myself. So many stupid errors.

2:03:48 - ~80 threat on Sikun. Time to clean.

2:04:36 - 50 attack on Ekrhi. Cleaning continues. I'm debating on upgrading my battlestation a little bit...

2:05 - BHM almost done. That will be good to keep any threat on planet. 73/66

2:06:20 - BHM done. Now Ekrhi is a trap planet.

2:07 - Battlestation back on Sikun. Why not. 1000 Science for a Mark. 10,250 left.

2:08 - CPA 2 minutes. 76/3

2:10:01 - 1 second. 55/1

2:10:02 - 151.7 strength. Less than I thought. Quite OK with that.

2:12 - 171/0

2:13 - Sending a couple fleets up to Teng to check out the borders up there.

2:13:35 - Station pokes his head into Brore again to check the score. 65 strength, about 1k ships.

2:15 - Oh, now the scourge are Mark II. That's going to be an issue before too long.

2:15:50 - Station disabled on Brore. I can't move it back or have vision either? That's new.

2:17 - 127/48

2:19 - Some threat coming to play on Ekrhi? Sure, you can check in but never leave.

2:20:46 - Instigator base on Mores. I'll get that in a minute

Unlock:
Citadels I

8750 Science left

Battlestation even stronger now.

2:24 - Pushing into Brore...remember this. Oh, and an Armory here now as well.

2:25:40 - Boom Boom, kill that armory please?

2:25:46 - Wait...siege frigates did no damage to the FF? Hmm...wonder if it's related to area damage?

2:26 - Next volley, same thing. Alright, new plan. Go attack the incoming swarms while everyone else goes to take it out.

2:26:45 - Armory almost down, now where is that Instigator? Wait...it's not here?! Curses! It's on Mores, not Brore.

2:27 - Fleets enroute. Some staying behind to finish off Brore. 35/0

Unlock:
Fusion I

7,250 Science left

Little more damage for my tanks and defenses.

2:29:42 - Brore CS down. +20 AIP Mark II AI.

Scout data. Finally, a DC! Oh, and the Super Terminal. Not sure I'll mess with that...maybe, I don't know yet. And yep, Dyson on Joshi. I'll have to free that at some point to keep them off Teng.

Wait...there's a second DC? Cool! Where? Pullian? But...no icon? I'm so confused. I've had a DC to hit all this time? Well, at least it will be an easy one to get.

The other is on Tichy. I'm clearing that way anyways so all is good.

2:30 - MilI up on Brore. I'm a little nervous about the proximity to the wormholes, but that coordinator meshes real well with my fleet right now.

2:32 - Defenses up on Brore. Moving north to get that DC.

2:35 - Oh yeah, ARS with Bombards. Went back and forth a bit between the Bombards and FFs, but Bombards it is.

2:35:06 - Yep, and there is a DC on Pullian...wait and an Alarm post? And Extender? What happened with this planet? I'm really confused now. I really didn't want that 5AIP.

2:35:40 - DC down, for my first bit of AIP reduction.

2:38 - Bombards are mine. Now to extend them.

Notice that I ran right by the one next to Brore to go all the way north...shows how much I'm paying attention. And it only gets better...

2:41 - Doubled Bombards. Moving on...

Alright game plan: I'll hold on the Dyson for the moment. Let's get that other data center and upgrade the concussion first. I'll hack the alarm post on the way so I don't need to worry about it.

2:43:33 - OMD down on Geneva. Now to clear it out a bit.

2:45 - Pulling my factory to help with the push. This was mistake number one...notice the attack starting on Brore...

2:47:25 - Oh, stealth guardian on Geneva. Time to kite around.

2:47:53 - Wait...attack coming on Brore?. Battlestation is there. Should be fine...Strike 1.

2:48:19 - Even more coming to Brore? Re-task the engineers...Strike 2.

2:49 - Dire stealth down, now to clean a little more.

2:50:11 - Checking on Brore again? Uh oh...this is starting to look bad. Get some fleets en-route. Strike 3

2:50:20 - Micro time...but it's not enough

2:50:50 - Coordinator down. +10 AIP. Ouch. Well, it was just about on top of the wormhole...

2:51:50 - That scourge Armory is Mark III now as well...now watch Teng...Strike 1.

2:52:10 - And of course...not thinking or paying attention to remaining AI forces...Alarm Post triggered on Geneva...Strike 2.

2:53 - Relocating forces to come reclaim Brore and focus on the Scourge...Strike 3...keep watching Teng for you following afterwards.

2:55 - Taking out a couple things on Path as well.

Observant viewers who are still watching Teng may notice something about this point...something I haven't yet...

2:56:15 - Now I notice...and...!@$# What's that Dire doing on site? When/How did he hit threat fleet?

2:57:07 - ZPG Down, +10 AIP, oh and massive brownout. -375k energy.

Unlock:

Concussion III
Metal II

250 Science left

I need some more damage potential and metal generation here. Without the ZPG, it's a bunch of converters on deck. I didn't really want to burn all my science right now, but I can't stall out here. I need to regain the initiative.

Alright, take a deep breath. Focus here.

2:58:46 - Brownout over, let's get things back under control here. ~140/0

2:59:28 - Switching Brore out for a LogiI. Same for Teng.

3:01 - Another attack coming at Brore and a decent wave soon at Ekrhi.


This was a painful hour. I made so many tactical mistakes. I don't feel my gameplan has been lacking, but not focusing enough cost me 30 AIP. Although, I'll consider it only 25 since one of those Alarms I didn't even know about. That was weird with that planet.

I need to do some thinking on how I'm going to approach this. That Scourge is getting deadly, but 100AIP isn't fun. I need to get that other DC soon and also get Dyson under control. Hopefully the trader comes back around. He's still hoarding 2 ZPGS I can grab.

A couple body blows, but by no means down for the count. Funny enough, the CPA was the least troublesome part of this whole round.

Current AIP: 100
Scores: 112/~40

State of the Union:

[Pireciter]

Live in a few minutes...and I just noticed I never attached the State of the union for the last round. I'll get that later.

Edit: Ugh. Scourge are much more powerful than I thought. Even on intensity 6, they are giving me quite the headache. I'd almost consider a 6 scourge to be as a +1/2 level AI. Even worse if you let them get out of control. I'll have a write up tomorrow, but this round at least is not looking good...


Edit edit: In the interest of seeing what is going to come of this, I played on to see how bad things were going to get. Without fail, the 4 hour CPA was the kill shot. Not that the ~250 strength CPA was unmanageable, but with the Scourge swarm behind it was just too much.

However...I have one thing that the Scourge doesn't have...save games.  >D

Something I've noticed though: You really have to control and bottleneck that Scourge and if there are spawners/Armories in reach, you need to take them out ASAP.

 This map may still prove to be an issue as things go on, but I have several good bottleneck points. Being able to keep the AI at Mark I for longer will also be good...*cough*Stealth DC*cough*.

[ArnaudB]

I had the same problem with Scourge in the A twisted enemy quickstart.

The scourge simply keep expending and snowball till 4h+ where it throw non-stop Mark VII at you. It doesn't seem that killing the Mark I-III the player can reach stop or reduce the level of the Scourge buildings on the AI Homeworld. So, Scourge pretty much kill you past 4h+ in most cases.

[Pireciter]

I apologize to all, but no streaming tonight. Had some items come up. Sorry folks.

I should have things cleared up tomorrow though.

[BadgerBadger]

The scourge definitely require some different strategies. You can't play a scourge game like a normal game. Check out https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:_The_Scourge#How_to_play_against_the_Scourge

[Pireciter]

The scourge definitely require some different strategies. You can't play a scourge game like a normal game. Check out https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:_The_Scourge#How_to_play_against_the_Scourge

Yeah...but I wasn't expecting THAT crazy of a response on 6/10.

[Pireciter]

So...update on this AAR.

I ended up reverting back to my hour 1 save. My problem wasn't so much trying to contain the Scourge, it was fighting a Mark II AI at level 9 at the same time that was giving me problems.

So...knowing that DC was there on Pullian...why it wasn't revealed I don't know, I went back and took it out and kept that AIP down. Playing forward back to that 4 hour mark,  things are a lot different. First a new State of the Union:



Now, for the cliff notes on what all was done.

After taking out that DC, I jumped back and took Tabar real quick. Since I already had Ekrhi by this point, I already had the Scourge blocked on the eastern half of the map. Taking this extra planet did three things: One, revealed 2 more DC's(I only expected 1), it had a capturable metal mine + EIGHT more,  and also scouted Savik...The real planet I wanted. I needed the metal to push through real fast and sustain a push.

Now, I already figured that the AIHW was on the eastern half of this map before hour 1 was over, so I don't consider that as an unfair advantage. I didn't determine that for certain until hour 2/3 in the previous round, but I was going to push east anyways because of the jump distance. It just made sense. The only difference here so far is the fact that I should have known about that DC on Pullian...well, and considering the Scourge a MUCH greater threat.

At this point, I liberated the Dyson to help cover my north flank and also ran into Brore briefly to hack the ARS like last time. I didn't capture it though..and it's still un-captured. After that, I cleared all the western scourge out and fought on toward Savik. We are at about the 2 hour mark at this point.

I held up briefly for the CPA, only about 140 strength then went on a Scourge cleaning mission. Savik took longer than I would have liked since the Scourge kept coming(~3:20 mark). Then, I fortified the heck out of Savik and kept cleaning. Oh, and also captured Bowen because 1, it has an Armored golem and 2, a "target" for the Scourge to play with. It also gives me scouting data to watch the Scourge travel patterns along the N/S route.

4 hour mark now and I'm trying to ensure there are no Scourge on the south side so I can keep them contained in that ~15-20 planet cluster in the north corner. There is at least 1 Armory and Spawner on the south side still. My next bottleneck target is Istvan, but I'll have to cap probably two more planets before I can scout it. There's probably a spawner/armory or two I'll have to take out along the way.

I'm also still only 71AIP, so still Mark I AI as well. Haven't finished repairing the golem yet so that will push things over, but I'm in much better shape than last time. I'm a little concerned on my end AIP though. If the homeworld is way back on Pell/Pandronis, that could be troublesome. If I can identify the core worlds, I'll probably burn some hacking points to scout the rest of the way vs. capturing more planets. I'm so stretched out that too large of a attack/CPA could punch through like last time. I'm also worried about the Scourge...I haven't seen any super weapons yet, but I'm sure they will be coming soon...

I'm not out of the woods yet, but I think the trees are thinning out.


Edit: Minor clarity changes