Factions enabled:
Swarmer AI 8 ; Cloaker AI 8 ; Royal AI 8 ; One-Way Doormaster 8
Hunter/Wardens 8
Dark Spire 7
Astro Trains 8
Bonus ship: Grenade launchers
Ark: Thantos
Map type: Octopus with 4 arms; my HW in middle, AI HW’s in each arm respectively
Part 1 (.815): Flying under the Radar
My strategy for part 1 is decidedly low AIP hit-and-run raids. I avoid taking adjacent planets because these will be available later and the AIP incurred is counterproductive to my early game strategy of using my HW for salvage from weak waves. Instead, I prioritize key choke points—in this case the planet(s) that block the arms from the rest. I go about this by investing in mark 3 raid starships (will upgrade these to mark 4 later) and destroying all tachyon on sentinels to open up scouting. Each arm has one planet in particular where a sentry starship affords 6 planets worth of scouting, so I prioritize carving a path to these.
My overarching goal this game is to sit back while the dark spire assumes the power to crush the AI overlords, so my other purpose of raid starships is to find the HWs and kill the dark spire wards present. Unfortunately, the placement of vengeance generators isn’t ideal since only two AI HWs had one within 3 hops, but I do my best to provoke the dark spire into attacking the AI.
The early part of the game—raiding with low AIP—takes a couple hours (but I speed things up on occasion). At the end of this stage I have effectively scouted the entire map and have decided what planets are essential to capture. I invest the rest of my tech, spreading it out between grenade launchers, ambush turrets, area mines, Thanatos, mark 2 metal harvesters, and some miscellaneous things.
The planets I first target, while my AIP is still low, are ones with schema servers and mercenary beacons. I’m in good shape to take several planets quickly, using my raid starships to focus powerful guard posts, eyes, ion cannons, OMDs, etc. The rest of my fleet is pretty disposable other than Thanatos, so I take control of the “head” of the octopus. This had the unexpected benefit of cutting the wardens/hunters from each other and the former in particular became effectively MIA the rest of the game. The hunters suffered from indecision paralysis, as my static defenses intimidated them. (Late game, this negatively affected performance as they just continued to build up without using them—adjusting stacks addressed this pretty well.)
I chose this map type and my position because I hoped (and was vindicated) that the AI hws would spawn in each arm respectively. This had a cool consequence of making each arm predominantly owned by the AI HW. The revised AI types was really noticeable here. Swarmer bases were just that—so many drones all over the place. Raiding these was my go to strategy, as the drones were just keep coming and even my grenade launchers were having problems keeping up. The cloaker bases were frustrating (in a positive sense) since I needed to have sentry starships on-planet in order to clear them out. The dark spire seemed to struggle against this AI type more than the others (they would sometimes “fizzle” out during their strikes and just go back and forth or idle). The Royals were cool and noticeably more powerful than their counter part guardians. Zombfiying these units was particularly satisfying. The only AI type that didn’t really feel that impactful (like vanilla) was the one-way doormaster. I can only recall one time where my units got trapped, but this was because my game style revolved around units that were immune. Transports ships effectively countered this without needing to kill the blackhole generators.
Astro trains were much more impactful in the early game, although I don’t think enough trains ever arrived at a depot to trigger their ability. Because of my layout, trains would often intersect my territory and provided a great boon in metal (early game, metal was hard to come by—late game I had so much the trains became irrelevant).
The dark spire was pretty quiet in the early game.
I have to choose which HW to go after first, and I choose the swarmer because there were no vengeance generators anywhere near it. I carve my way toward this HW, skipping many planets along the way.
I take control of the planet adjacent to the HW (without actually killing the command station) and use this as my staging ground. The AIP is still pretty low, about 180 (I killed all data centers and co-processors with my raid starships), and I crush this HW without too much grief.
