Core design: What makes AI war, AI war?

[skrutsch]

The reason is, placing your turrets, choosing which ones to buy, and having range limitations gives meaningful decision points to the player. That creates a game.

I don't see meaningful decision points in AIW Classic. Since a defense has to be able to handle "everything" and all planets are similar, the best defensive placement is always going to look pretty much the same.  Just follow Kahuna's great guide and you have a fine defensive setup.  But anything this micro-intensive that has one optimal solution either needs to be done automatically (like Orelius mentioned above), removed entirely, or made more interesting to provide meaningful choices to the player. 

Some possibilities for the latter, too low-level for the main discussion:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Now that we are considering more planetary "terrain", maybe make different-shaped gravity wells, "unstable" areas where turrets can't be placed (or ships can't enter and/or be fired on or out of), restrict or increase the number of turrets (maybe by less/extra planetary power available), maybe say "gas planets interfere too much with grav turrets" or "cloaking doesn't work near a white dwarf", all sorts of things that could encourage player thinking.

Also, why not give the AI some options better than a beeline blob to your home command system?  Perhaps you make the AI eliminate some "core shields" on the same planet before it can assault the home command center, but it gets multiple (or random?!) entry points into your home planet?

[chow404]

My favorite was the ability to do insane tactics and strategies, and them being occasionally effective, i.e. hacking every hackable target at the same time (the retaliation can be punishing, but you can defend it. Occasionally), or neinzul attrition wars.