I started a new game with 7.6 AIs, and I’m getting plenty of action at just 50-ish AI progress. I haven’t tried using a 2.0 save in the 3.0 game yet though.
I ran into a Zenith trader last night and bought myself a shiny new Ion Cannon 2 for the low low price of 800k metal and 800k crystal. Considering I only owned one planet at the time it’s surprising I was able to afford it, but it builds so slowly (80 minutes) that I still had positive resource growth as long as I wasn’t also pumping out ships. And I built it in an enemy-controlled system (stupid traders took one look at my home system and turned around) meaning it was attacked pretty much the entire time it was being built, but the few dozen ships they sent weren’t able to damage its HP, just slow the construction.
Turns out it was an excellent location to build it because in addition to being adjacent to my home system it borders two IV planets and one III planet and is a single hop away from two more III planets. Now if the AIs want to harass my home system they have to say hello to my little friend first.
Chris said I should be good to go upgrading from 2.0. Probably coincidence that the game is quiet, since I did kill a nearby special forces post and I’m trying new defense mechanisms like laser turrets.
I forgot to increase the automatic AI Progress rate for this game but that’s okay. I’ll just destroy more command stations if it’s too easy!
I think it’s interesting that the expansion allows you to mess with things you couldn’t before due to the “story” of the game, like alien technology and core ships that are too complicated for you to develop.
Most important change I found? The ability to set the AI to “Random all except Technologist”. Sweet.
That change log is freakin’ scary. Tempted by the expansion though.
EDIT: Screw it, I bought the expansion. The free DLC support has just been amazing.
I love that you can just uncheck a box and even if you’ve got the expansion you can now run a non-expansion game. Awesome.
I’m now 8 hours into my first campaign and about to run into some serious resistance. I thought about whether to capture 3 planets to connect a few bases of operation and make it easier to move ships back and forth. Went ahead and did it since the AI Progress is still just under the next tech level when it starts sending Mk 2 ships. There’s a cluster of 3 planets with advanced factories / core fabricators, and I’ll probably take another to connect that. By then I’ll have destroyed 14 planets and it will be time to settle in for some raids and knowledge farming.
I found one AI planet and it’s a cakewalk to get to it, but haven’t found the other one and it is anywhere from 6-12 hops away through Mark3/4 planets. That’s probably my biggest endgame concern.
Anyone have some endgame advice? I’ve found the AI homeworlds but they are extremely far apart from each other. There’s one last cluster of planets I’d like to take for advanced goodies. Other than that, I’m trying to convince myself not to destroy a few more to clear some paths between my bases of operation but then raise the AI Progress. Not sure what the tradeoff is between AI Progress and making my life easier by connecting all my planets.
At that point both homeworlds would be about 6 hops away. I take it I have to use two attack parties and kill them fairly close together in timing?
I also figure I should be farming knowledge as best I can. What should I be researching right now in the endgame, as many specialty Mark III ships as I can?
Is there any way to increase the size of the font the game uses? It’s killing me with it’s smallness (and my blindness)
Yes.
Settings - Graphics - Scale Game to Large Monitors.
Try hoping planets to get to the homeworlds. Eg. take the 3rd planet in the chain and then the last one. You’ll increase the AI progress a bit but its worth it, your going to need staging grounds closer to the AI homeworld. It also means its a lot easier to hit one homeworld straight after the first.
Also make sure you have Mark III (and at least some Mark IV) versions of all the ships you plan to use (especially missile ships and bombers) or you havent a hope in fighting against the AI on their home turf.
Picked up it via Steam :)
This endgame is creating the biggest concern I had with AI War, that it would turn into utter tedium at the end. It reminds me of the attrition of King’s Bounty, where if you don’t play smart in the early game then the lategame becomes a serious grind.
I know what I’m doing wrong (spreading myself too thin without enough defenses and without steadily building up over time) and I know what I need to do (more turrets to stop raiders from harrassing me to annoyance and death) but there’s one problem – I don’t feel like it. I just want the game to be over.
You need to be more of a baseball fan.
And I quit. Like the first full game I tried, I think I’ve learned some things that would prevent frustration in my next game. I also noticed on the high scores screen that I’m up against an entrenched homeworlder and a turtle. Fuck, no wonder.
There are some things that are clearly broken in 3.0, like enemy turrets stacking on top of each other preventing me from targeting the lightning turrets, which are a real chore. I thought cross planet attacks were also fairly diffuse, yet in my savegame right now I’m about to get blasted by 1600 ships all to the same planet.
I’ll pick it up again with the Zenith Remnant and make a few adjustments. Fewer planets, more turrets, more dreadnaughts for those lightning turrets. Maybe think about turning off fast & dangerous. It’s a good game so I don’t want to beat my head against these turtle AIs and start to hate it. Lots more time to play in the future.
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but just to follow up: I broke down and started a new game against two AIs that had more lightly defended planets, The Tank and Sledgehammer. It was nice to have a reason to set up more defenses and led to a more balanced game.
The endgame was a breeze because I had upgraded command stations for more income without having to take many planets. I did some data center raids with starships to keep AI Progress way down. Destroyed both homeworlds on the first try with about 2000+ ships, but the real force multiplier was a bunch of starships to give me 5x attack boosts.
I encourage everyone to pick a balance of AI types so you don’t end up with two turtles.
Now I’m taking a break for real this time.
Just decided to resurrect this thread due to Ai War and it’s expansion, Zenith Remnant, being half off on Steam all this week.
For those of you who bought the game from anywhere other then Steam (Impulse, Chris’s own site, etc.) you can simply enter your Registration key into Steam and it will register your copy with them aswell. So there’s absolutely no excuse not to pick this up now if for some reason you haven’t already.
-edit- Just for clarification the Key works both ways. You can also buy the game off Steam and use it on the Download from the official site, if for some reason you don’t trust Steam.
I will at some point be doing an AAR for one of my games, but the best one I’ve read so far is this one as it includes lots of the new shiny things.
The description of the Avenger was positively 40k-esque:
It waltzed into a 2600 ship blockade, my ship cap in every ship type, and destroyed them all in 30 seconds. It would fire it’s beam cannons all in one direction destroying every ship in an arc, taking out 200-500 ships per shot. The Avenger incurred only 10k damage in the process.
Swoon.
Back in September I suggested an option for having the galaxy’s structure be unknown at the start of the game, making scouting even more crucial. As of last week’s patch that is in the game. I just noticed it today so I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but it sounds like exactly what I was thinking.
It’s pretty awesome that an off-the-cuff comment I made the day I bought the game ended up as a feature.
No, thank you!
Cool! I keep trying to get into this game but it feels so dry. But I’ll keep at it because it seems like it should be my kind of game.
Wow Bob that’s pretty awesome that you got credited for that.
Also will people pleeease stop bumping threads of games I want to play, it’s bad enough keeping up with the recent ones without old ones coming up and shouting 'Play me".
I like the game a lot, but sometimes it just feels like I’m just pushing a huge ship blob to the next planet. I think I’m missing something.