Might be the tweaked Border Aggression stuff. Enemy planets on alert will over time become more of a threat.
Hmm, the unit count on those planets is definitely not above 4000, but they do seem to have a few guys flying around free instead of sitting in cold storage.
It doesn’t help that I forgot about planet neutering (with the command post still there) until a couple hours ago in my game!
You’re going to be in a world of hurt when you kill the first AI homeworld. 450+ progress should be pretty, uh, entertaining to work past.
I definitely have border worlds with working warp gates, yet these backwater planets still get attacked once in a while. I did discover some of the guard posts were sending patrols (special forces AI). I cleaned them out and then I thought I was finally safe. Several hours later with no activity from those planets, I suddenly get a group of 250 ships wreaking havoc in an undefended area. They are all the mark IV ships too.
This is just pissing me off. Oh, its not the border aggression thing yet since the border worlds have at most 650 ships.
It seems my only choice will be to kill those planets which I really do not want to do because they are worthless. I just wish I understood why this is happening. I can’t be defending everywhere, you must be able to secure a sector near an AI world and know its safe.
All Mark IVs? And you didn’t kill a counter-wave post? Hmm, really do think you should ask for ideas on the AI War forums. With so many changes recently it can be hard to know exactly what’s happening at times.
I was looking at the Wiki about AI Progress and it says 400-600 shouldn’t be a problem late in the game. It’s all Mark II ships, right? Has anything changed with this lately?
The first campaign I won by being meticulous about AI Progress, and raiding data centers. I’ve still destroyed most of the data centers in this game (and the co-processors) but I haven’t been as much of a stickler about AI Progress. I do have a SuperTerminal ready to go if I need it.
The only endgame problem I will have is the economy. I don’t think I will have a chance to build to my current ship cap and boost my reserves. As soon as I attack the first homeworld, my docks and factories will have to start cranking out troops again.
The X map should help. The homeworlds are 6 hops away from my homeworld (heh, maybe this is a bad thing) and the other one is guarded by an unalerted Mark IV planet with like 150 ships. The only other AI planet in the way is a neutered Mark III. I need to move it on this first AI homeworld though, since the Mark IV guard planet has been alerted. It’s the Grav Driller AI, so getting the Gravity Well is going to be painful.
Speaking of the endgame: I think I read somewhere that it’s easier now to make multiple raids into the homeworld instead of throwing everything you’ve got at one chance to destroy the command station. Or maybe it’s required that you do so now, to kill some of the guard posts first. Anyone tried it recently?
As I understand it, the changes to the homeworlds make it a lot harder to just build up and smash them. Not got there yet in my game (been pretty busy recently!) so take it with a pinch of salt…
Edit: Gah! You beat me to it. Basically the homeworlds are modular - you have heavily defended bits you need to kill in order to attack the command station, and it’s very difficult to kill them all at once. Guessing a bit, though.
I really should have spent more time getting my economy right and fixing my scattered, messy turret defenses. I’m still using all Mark I turrets. I envision a lot of frantic scrambling. :)
I’m going to forge ahead. If I lose, that’s okay. I haven’t worn myself out this time, so I’m ready to do a better job on a new campaign.
So what is the trick to taking a home world sector? I have never actually done it in this game. Mostly I quit because it becomes a boring grind. I am so glad he changed it so that each sector isn’t jam packed with lightning turrets. I also hope the game doesn’t start to chug when you got a fleet of 4000 units.
I’ve been saying the same thing.
The only annoyance so far is that harrassment. And that’s only because I didn’t expect it, so I didn’t organize my turrets properly. Next campaign I want to spend a little time and research on that to save me some effort late in the game.
I also hope the game doesn’t start to chug when you got a fleet of 4000 units.
Only slowdown I’ve had so far is when I sent 3500 units to a planet with an AI Eye. It cranked out over a thousand new units all at once. That made the game chug a little on my Core2Duo machine.
Now I have a planet that is 3 hops from any enemy AI planet. Then there is an announcement it will be attacked. A little while later, a bunch of units show up and trash the place. Can someone explain this to me?
Only if you explain accoutrement.
I’m tempted to abandon my campaign. One of the AI homeworlds had a Gravity Well and AI Eye on the opposite side of the map. The reinforcements were low so I could only send in 200 ships with the AI Eye. It wasn’t enough to make it over there. I tried reloading a bunch of times just to see if I could do it.
Now that I think of it, I could clear the guard planet, put the homeworld on alert, and maybe boost its unit cap a little so I can send more units on a suicide run. That would give me more time to build Siege Ships to help me reach the Gravity Well from farther away.
Were you using Transports to get your assault team to the Eye?
No, I should have done that. I might have even had that idea yesterday while thinking about the game at work, but forgot about it. I’m using them to scout but need to use them for AI Eyes.
My plan worked fine though. Took 30 minutes to upgrade to some better economic command centers, then I wiped out the first AI homeworld.
AI Progress is 500+ now, and the Threat is at a constant 400+ with steady harrassment. (This has to be what DeepT is running into.) I’m going to capture that AI SuperTerminal now, and maybe destroy 3 or 4 Mark III planets that seem to be sending the most units. I looked at it more closely and I think the AI is even sending some from a distant planet that is next to an open planet with no command station. It’s been on alert for 5-6 hours now, but has to send the troops multiple hops to where I actually have planets occupied. So watch out for late game raids when you are going to abandon a planet.
Once you take out one AI home world, you are under constant attack? I have never done this so I do not know what to expect.
I think it relates to AI Progress, combined with the natural threat that has built up over the last 7 hours from Border Aggression.
I just realized something about that wiki article. The wiki is out of date (Chris has some volunteers updating it) so it might be using unit counts from the old ship caps. I think he recently reduced ship cap for normal games. So the 700 units at these alerted Mark III planets are probably enough to keep that threat high.
I could ask the Arcen forums for the answer, but it’s more fun to try my plan to neuter the planets and use the SuperTerminal to see if it helps.
I got AI Progress down about 100 with the SuperTerminal. Then the waves that warp out of it became overwhelming and I had to deal with a 3000 ship cross planet attack. I continued to get harrassed up until the point I had a few thousand ships right outside the final homeworld. Everything became eerily silent, like the AI didn’t want to harrass me anymore. That just gave me more time to get up to ship cap and make the final planet a breeze.
Break time!
Nice work!