AI War: Fleet Command

Finished my first real campaign of this, clocking in at about 13 hours. Sixty planets, 7.0 difficulty, two easy/medium AIs that turned out to be Assassin and Turtler. Felt like its almost a separate minigame trying to correctly guess what AIs you're facing up against. Its a nice touch that they're revealed at the end.

Now I can't be sure if this is because I read that the author of the game was actually inspired by this, but I felt so much like I was leading the humans in Ender's Game during my final desperate strikes against the AI home worlds. I can't precisely describe it, but the set of emotions each brought out in me were so close that it was deja vu like. Certainly a more exciting way to end than the standard slog of conquest that most strategy games end up having.

Needless to say I had a great time. The Assassin constantly sending raiders and autocannon minipods forced me to change up my defensive tactics since tractors and most standard defenses weren't at all effective. My own main force was usually the trio of Laser Gatlings, Fighters, and Raid Starships, though of course by the end game I was using all of the ships available to me in some capacity. I saw that one of the more recent beta patches has since nerfed Raid Starships. Pity, they were my highest damage dealers.

Looking forward to my next game. Probably going to go with 80 planets, 7.6 diff, and two medium AIs. For my force composition I'm want to try out a combo of Space Tanks, Missile Cruisers, Flagships, and Dreads. It'll be a slow moving ball of total destruction.

One small question about the end of my last game. On the hall of fame screen its still listed as "incomplete" despite the game saying "you win!" when I load it back up. Is there some button I'm supposed to push that officially ends it or something?

Having a great deal of fun with this game—currently working on a first co-op game with a friend, and we just passed the ten hour mark against a 6 and a 7 with normal combat on. I'm sure we'll get faster in future games, and I've been experimenting with "fast and dangerous" combat alone, and we'll probably use that in the future.

I think we've got some defensive specialist AIs, because they are bunkered down all to hell and gone...

Question: Is it normal to have serious defense adjacent to the human homeworlds? The tutorial and reading the wiki made me think that "Yeah, you really want to take all worlds adjacent to your homeworld to get a buffer against waves"... But, well, that's kind of hard to do when I have yet to try a real map that doesn't have at least one class IV world adjacent to me. :X

Those just don't seem crackable at early-game fleet levels, and of course the longer you leave it, the more reinforcements the AI has put there, since you've been adjacent to it for the whole game. What's the right way to handle these?

(P.S. My friend's reaction to us getting the achievement "1. Nearing The End? 10 Hour Campaign" was "Well, that's just rude", since we had just finally located both AI homeworlds. :D)

Hypatian wrote:

Question: Is it normal to have serious defense adjacent to the human homeworlds? The tutorial and reading the wiki made me think that "Yeah, you really want to take all worlds adjacent to your homeworld to get a buffer against waves"... But, well, that's kind of hard to do when I have yet to try a real map that doesn't have at least one class IV world adjacent to me. :X

Those just don't seem crackable at early-game fleet levels, and of course the longer you leave it, the more reinforcements the AI has put there, since you've been adjacent to it for the whole game. What's the right way to handle these?

I was in a similar situation with a big class IV planet next to my homeworld. I went in with a surgical strike to the Warp Gate and Special Forces Guard Post. Didn't cause me any problems after that except for one cross planet attack which I was luckily prepared for.

Having Mark IV planets right next to your home planet isn't that big a deal, at least not until the late game. You won't see any attacks with ship levels that high until the AI threat level gets high enough, so unless there's something there you want they're more a roadblock to progress than anything.

I got into the game just recently myself after picking it up from the Steam sale. It's surprising how similar the game is to Sins of a Solar Empire, just with ten times more micro and very little in the way of economy development. Establishing beachheads and staging invasions on planets is a blast to coordinate.

x4000 wrote:

Hey, sure thing -- I'm going to be writing a full article on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but here's a quick rundown ...

Holy sh*t, you just sold me your game. Nice pitch.

I'm torn between GSB and this but I think AI War draws me more to it. I haven't played them, but I am interested even though I've never really liked chess Will try the demo in a few days and see how that works out for me. I have some fears that this game will be too smart for me, though.

liquid wrote:

I'm torn between GSB and this but I think AI War draws me more to it. I haven't played them, but I am interested even though I've never really liked chess Will try the demo in a few days and see how that works out for me. I have some fears that this game will be too smart for me, though.

Choose not to choose. Buy both.

That's the best choice, but unfortunately even getting AI War from Steam where it is discounted will screw with my budget so I always have to make decisions and choices like this one. I will play Borderlands for now and maybe get this few weeks/month or two down the road. What got me interested in the game was mainly x4000's enthusiasm about it and the fact that I want to do what he does right now but lack the skills

I picked this up during the sale, started it up... stared at it like a monkey doing math, tried to work out how the zoom-levels functioned, looked at lots and lots of numbers and descriptions, went through a warp-gate, and decided to play Peggle for an hour or two.
I am now watching the tutorial videos linked earlier in the thread and I think I may be ready to give this another go. Still not sure about the Zoom-levels. I really wish that the backgrounds would align with the current zoom-level. The ship placements seem very arbitrary and jump around like mad while zooming.

I downloaded the demo because of the sale. I've only done the first tutorial and some of the second and I can see myself enjoying this game. With the fact that I've only played minutes in mind, it seems like tutorial two is broken. Two times it wanted me to build harvesters but the icons are red and say "locked." Weird, but I could progress. Now though, it wants me to do a specific action which is red. The tutorials have been good so far for an undoubtedly lengthy game. Even if I did something wrong, which I doubt cause I'm perfect, should the mechanism in which the player is expected to learn be unintentionally breakable?

I just started my first real game and...dear gawd..the Ai is insanely clever.

Feature lists for the Zenith Remnant and the free AI War 3.0 update.

My favorite section, from the free part:

-Ship Balance Updates: Many minor and major ship balance adjustments have been made – the most notable of these is that the core fighter/cruiser/bomber triangle has been redefined into an easier-to-follow fighter/bomber/frigate triangle.

-Game Flow Improvements: Not only are the disruptive cross-planet attacks less frequent, but all human ships now move 40% faster (making it easier to stage defenses or coordinate assaults – especially so since AI ships are still the same speed as before), many new automations have been built into the interface (the most notable of which is that metal/crystal harvesters are now automatically rebuilt on human planets after hostile AI forces are gone), and a few key structures (space docks, factories, etc) have been made more robust. Players will spend less time than ever on repetitive tasks, letting especially new players take to the stars faster.

One thing I noticed is that how he implemented automated defense is brilliant. Example...you can press 'V' while moving your fleets and it puts them into a "defense" mode of some sort. What I noticed is that when you have multiple attacks or the enemy breaks off into multiple groups, your defending ships also break off into some-what even defense squads and start chasing down the attackers instead of staying in a massive blob. Extremely efficient and really cool to watch.

I might pull the trigger on this game but still have X3 (the space flight sim) to get through as well as trying more Armageddon Empires and Solium Infernum.

I am doing Command and Conquer 3 right now, but after 10 hours in I still had more fun playing two hours of the Armageddon Empires demo. Go figure.

I'm digging this game. Nice, simplified setup for economy and research lets you concentrate on your military. It's been a lot of fun the last few days getting stomped by the comp. Last night I've finally made a good foothold on a 50 planet match with level 6 AIs. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can win one.

Odds are, my minimal defenses will crumble when one of my all-or-nothing attacks goes sour and they press their advantage. Maybe I can do something about that possibility when I fire up the game again. I have a couple thousand research points and lots of room for building turrets under the current cap. Just not a huge building capacity. I have a good fleet so maybe I'll halt the continued offensive construction and concentrate on defense for about an hour. Ensure I have a few bottlenecks I can halt any major attack at.

One of my AI enemies seems to be a huge fan of stealth and I have yet to figure out what a good counter is.

If anyone is interested still I would love to join a co-op game sometime. I have a pretty good grasp on the game so would not be AI food immediately I am free most evenings for about 3 hours from 6-11PM EST tue-sat.

My steam ID is here Mr Popov

Add me to your Steam list. This is one game I haven't spent anywhere near the time I want to with, but I absolutely love the design and am an Arcen games convert. Lately I've been in more of an action (Just Cause 2) phase than a strategy game phase, but between this and Distant Worlds I'm totally itching for a good strategy game. The problem is that I lived in Colorado and summer is just so amazing out here (topped out at 74 degrees today) that I tend to play games in smaller chunks.

I'd love to spend some time with this game but I have too many shiny distractions. Also, I tried a single-game and am utterly lost. I have no sense of scale or effective range, it all just feels like blips on a screen.

garion333 wrote:

The problem is that I lived in Colorado and summer is just so amazing out here (topped out at 74 degrees today) that I tend to play games in smaller chunks.

two words for you garion. BITE ME!

Rezzy wrote:

I'd love to spend some time with this game but I have too many shiny distractions.

Yeah, I think I've done the tutorial twice. There's a lot to like in this game, but distractions are a b*tch. And now I'm totally occupied wit SC2.

You can preorder the upcoming micro-expansion for $3.99 now. It gets you early access to the expansion (read: beta). I have no interest in playing the pre-release stuff, but I did buy it anyway as all the profits are going to Child's Play.

Key Features:
* 36 new ships, including:
* 5 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.
* Enclave Starships and Regeneration Chambers for direct unlock.
* 6 new AI special weapons.
* 6 new AI Types.
* 3 Neinzul alien minor factions (NPCs).
* Devastating new Hybrid Hives AI plot.
* 3 new in-game music tracks.
* Two new map styles: X and Concentric Circles.

Yeah, it looks pretty awesome. $4 well spent.

Saw a post about this game (and the studio as a whole) on RPS today. Seems very interesting, with the main selling point being the intelligence of the AI. Completely missed it when the game first got released, but am going to try out the demo over the next couple of days.

Caddrel wrote:

Saw a post about this game (and the studio as a whole) on RPS today. Seems very interesting, with the main selling point being the intelligence of the AI. Completely missed it when the game first got released, but am going to try out the demo over the next couple of days.

You mean the post about how Arcen games is not doing so well? Yeah, that sucks. I think Chris is a really cool dude and I hope he can continue making games on his own, but if Arcen goes under he certainly has the chops to find work somewhere.

garion333 wrote:
Caddrel wrote:

Saw a post about this game (and the studio as a whole) on RPS today. Seems very interesting, with the main selling point being the intelligence of the AI. Completely missed it when the game first got released, but am going to try out the demo over the next couple of days.

You mean the post about how Arcen games is not doing so well? Yeah, that sucks. I think Chris is a really cool dude and I hope he can continue making games on his own, but if Arcen goes under he certainly has the chops to find work somewhere.

Every time I see this thread I feel guilty for not playing the game more. Think I will get the expansions, then reeeaaalllly give it a go this time.

Considering Steam saved Introversion I'm sure Arcen could benefit from a Steam sale too.

*edit*

Interesting post post from Chris Park on their front page.

Makes me sad to see this too. AI War is one of my favorite strategy games of all time to be sure. Am really looking forward to the full non-beta 4.0 release later this year.

It seems to me that ultimately the decision to focus their efforts so much on Tidalis was a mistake from a business perspective. While it is certainly a fun game that I'm glad I purchased and has received good reviews, getting over the hurdle that it's "just another puzzle game" is enormous.

I played the beta and have been meaning to pick this up. It had the "I'll just do a few more things and then call it a night" Civ syndrome. I really like the attention to detail in the game.

garion333 wrote:

You mean the post about how Arcen games is not doing so well?

This makes me sad in my bunk. I haven't even played an actual full round of this game, but I own it + all the expansions because I was so impressed with how the developer was interacting with the community. Every time a great new outfit like Arcen goes under we get that much closer to a game store filled with nothing but a thousand copies of Madden XXVII

Perhaps you're sick about hearing about Arcen's financial situation, but this article at PC Gamer (which is mostly a reprinting of an email from Chris Park) is about as transparent a look at a game company's finances as I've certainly ever seen.

In other news, AI War 4.0 will be hitting public beta "today or tomorrow", so it looks like they're on schedule to get it released officially at some point next month. I'm stoked as there's a TON of changes, but I'm interested in how the new UI looks.