So if you have all the expansions and never played the game at all, is it best to start with the base game and learn that? Then, as you gain proficiency add the expansions one by one?
I played a new campaign or two in each of the first four or five expansions. At that point I got burned out. I doubt I will ever go back unless my co-op friend is dying to play it or something.
Definitely start with the base game, without enabling a lot of extra options. Then you probably want to play each one individually. Otherwise there can be too much crap all shoved together at once.
Yeah, base game only is probably more than enough to deal with on your first game…though I can’t help but suggest that you at least enable Golems - too much fun. :-)
Thanks guys!
I am trying to learn how to play this game but one of the things I can not figure out is how to attack an enemy warpgate? How do you target the warpgate (If I right click on it all my ships just move to it - so not sure how to target the gate itself).
If one goes into a system and destroys the warpgate how do you get your ships to go back to your own system (I realize I must be missing something that is obvious).
Any chance you can screencap what you’re referring to? If you’re trying to destroy an AI Warp Gate, can you hover over it and get the tooltip in the screenshot, as well?
I’ll take a stab at it anyway in case I can hit on what you’re looking for.
Warp Gates, assuming we’re talking about the AI structure that appears in many AI systems and not just inadvertently referring to the wormholes, have no impact on where you can travel as the player. The player is limited by the wormhole network, and you can either toggle to the Galaxy Map with the Tab key to give orders among a series of planets, or you can issue a Ctrl + right click order on a wormhole from the typical game view to send your units through to the other side of a single wormhole. Only right-clicking would move your ships into a cluster around the wormhole but would not send them through (which is still nice for staging an attack so your units all traverse the wormhole simultaneously).
When I read up on the game it seems one should try to limit what worlds the AI can attack. I thought you do that by destroying the warp gates. Unfortunately, a lot of articles mention this as a basic strategy but I cannot find any pictures or youtube videos that actually show how to do this.
They seem to say destroy any “warp gates” on adjacent enemy worlds so they can not attack resource planets you want to protect. I guess I still have not come to a full understanding of how the AI actually gets to your worlds/systems (I thought it was always through a connecting warp gate.
I have been going through the tutorials and about to start the 10 planet campaign tutorial so hoping that will help.
Oh, okay. I think I get it.
There are multiple mechanics through which the AI can attack your systems. Over the passage of time, the AI naturally accumulates ships in it systems which are generally used for defense. However, the AI can sometimes free these ships up to attack your planets, which is the most basic form of attack. This obviously just consists of taking ships already physically present in an AI-controlled system and sending them through a wormhole to an adjacent system that you control.
The Warp Gate structure presents a second method of attack, wherein the AI is able to use the gate to warp in a “wave” of ships which will attack a designated system. The AI has a public knowledge schedule of raids which you are notified of in advance (how many ships, what system they will attack, and when), but valid targets for these generic raids are limited to systems under your control that are adjacent to an AI-controlled system with a Warp Gate.
The concept of a “gate raid” is the idea that you can limit the AI’s ability to attack you from a given AI-controlled system by entering the system, destroying the Warp Gate, and then leaving. This helps to minimize the AI Progress gained from your activity while denying the AI the ability to raid you from a specific direction. It’s a middle-ground option between the extremes of leaving the planet alone (which risks raids from that direction) and capturing it outright (which moves your borders and more dramatically increases AI Progress, which has very long-term implications).
No clue if the tutorial covers all of that since I haven’t played it in over five years, but it will definitely cover AI Progress and should give you a better idea of how the game flows.
My questions:
How do you target the warp gate to attack it in the enemy system. I tried to do this in one of the tutorials but right clicking just moves them to the spot and I could not figure out how to tell my ships to destroy it.
Are ships able to just move to an adjacent system without a warpgate? So if I destroy a warp gate in an adjacent enemy controlled system I can just move my ships back to my own system by clicking on it in the galaxy map?
Thanks for the huge explanation above that really helps a lot.
Having not played them recently, the tutorial you’re referring to may have had a shield on the Warp Gate. A shielded structure (which is part of why the tooltip would have answered the question if we had a screenshot) is completely invulnerable until whatever is generating the shield gets destroyed. That’s the only thing I can think of off-hand that would cause the behavior you’re referring to, with ships clustering around what appears to be a valid target but refusing to attack it.
AI Warp Gates, despite any connotation their name might contain, are not used by the player for inter-system travel. Destroying an AI Warp Gate has no impact whatsoever on your ability to travel between worlds. The distinction between wormholes (which are the portals that are used for normal space travel) and Warp Gates (which serve thematically to circumvent the wormhole network entirely and are effectively a game mechanic to allow the AI to summon units out of thin air) is particularly important to keep in mind when you’re starting out, as I can see how that might be confusing to the uninitiated.
Teaser for AI War 2.
AI War is my favorite strategy game, full stop. I’m scared to death about 2, honestly. So much hope, but so much distance to fall. I kickstarted it way back when, nominally had access to the Alpha but never played it. Have you given it a whirl, kosc? I’m trying to avoid engaging with it until there’s enough there to try and fairly evaluate it.
I do take some comfort in the fact that the first one, especially with all the expansions, is just an incredibly great game and, even if this one doesn’t hold up, I can always go back to it. 600+ hours and counting.
I haven’t really played around with it, but it should be reassuring that they stopped and did a rework at one point to try and get the game closer to the feel of the original.
Yeah, I’ve been following the updates. The general sense is of having completely over-reached and then pulled back. I have (obviously) no problem at all with hewing closer to the original design, but for all that I value their transparency (and ability to self-assess) a major course correction like that is always kind of troubling on its own merits. I probably wouldn’t be so worried if I weren’t so invested in the outcome here, though.
Nope, just following along with development, I’ll buy it once reviews hit. ;)
I played it a few months back and…it didn’t have the magic of the original. 🙁
Can’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Certainly the UI didn’t work for me - the camera was sluggish and the way it would tilt the axis as you zoomed in was jarring (this coming from someone who’d happily play using only the 2D icons in AI War 1). The menus/buttons/etc were confusing but I think I was playing while this was in a state of flux so I probably shouldn’t be too critical.
But even the moment to moment gameplay felt ‘off’. I think too much had changed from the original for me to be able to ease into it comfortably and the lack of finish/polish meant I wasn’t motivated to re-learn everything in case things ended up changing again…which they did.
Again, this was all before the recent reboot, and from what I’ve seen of it (reading updates, forum posts, etc, not playing it) it sounds like it’s moved more towards what I had been hoping for ie original AI War + UI enhancements + a ‘de-clutter’ (too much stuff bolted on over time through DLC/expansions).
I think I’d currently describe myself as ‘cautiously optimistic’. That’s a significant step up from where I was a few months back. I really should find some time today to give the latest build a spin to see if my recent impressions are borne out in actual gameplay.
I played a fair amount of hours of the first game, but I never beat it. I am not sure how I feel about a sequel.
@legowarrior should this be compstomp material? I think that is what they originally designed it for.
I have the original one I think. Maybe.