AI homeworld advice

[benjbrun]

Hello everybody

Altough I played this games for nearly 100h by now, I never actually finished a game. Mostly I just tried things out and started a new game every now and then. This time, it's different.

The current game features me and two AI's at difficulty 4. I quickly realised, that this difficulty really is easy in every way. Waves are coming rather rare and they're mostly handled by my turrets alone. I took around 12 planets or so, my AI progress is with 113 pretty low (took some data centers, leaved the super terminal alone). I actually managed to scout the whole map and locate both AI homeworlds. So far I've unlocked some mark II ships, all flagships, all the plasma siege starhips (my beloved plasma siege ship) and mark III bombers. Additionaly I could get my hands on a lot of bonus ships and an advanced starhip constructor. So far, so good.

Now... I should go for the win. The AI homeworlds look pretty hard to get and I'm not sure what will happen when I'll going to try that. So here are some questions, you hopefully could answer to:

1. I read a lot about core worlds. The mark IV worlds next to the AI homeworlds are core worlds, correct? What about other mark IV worlds? Are they core worlds too?

2. What happens if I set an core world on alert?

3. What happens if I set an homeworld on alert?

4. I was on the planet with the superterminal for a short time, but with a rather big fleet. At that point it said something about deploying strategic reserves. What's that all about?

5. That's another topic, but... What do you do to stop enemy starhips? At one time, the AI attacked 4 planets at the same time. 3 planets could defend themselves against ~300 ships. The fourth however... All the small ships got stopped. A flagship mark V and a neinzul starship mark II got to my forcefield and begun grinding it down. I could barely stop them in time. On higher difficulties, there are going to be more then just these two starships. How do you effectively defend your planets against them? Even the turrets with strengths against their hulltypes seem to be rather weak (I built mark II turrets at that time).

6. In general: Are there any hints on how to tackle an AI homeworld? Taking a mark IV world next to it as a base of operations? Hopping in with transports? Trying to attack both of them at the same time or one after the other?

I'm looking forwardl to every answer and comment!

By the way: I love this game. It took me some time to get into it, but I love it.

[AxiomExotic]

Im honestly amazed you start out at difficulty 4. This game isnt supposed to be easy and lowering the difficulty that much just ruins it.

[shiverczar]

@Axiom: There's literally no point to your post except being a butt, so I'm not sure why you bothered to say anything.

If you're getting used to how the game functions and how to even do things within it, getting wrecked by the AI doesn't really help much.

@benjbrun: Honestly, I can't remember specifics of what I've done with the AI Homeworlds when I've gotten to them, all I can say for sure is that you're going to need a loooot of ships.

Generally speaking, you probably don't want to take a planet next to the homeworld.

When a planet is on Alert, it gets prioritized for reinforcements, and if the homeworld which receives the strongest ships the AI gets is prioritized for reinforcements much before your attack, you're going to have an unpleasant time conquering it.

I'd go in there expecting to lose my entire fleet at least the first time, needing to rebuild it and try again. Just make sure that when you're there you blow up as many A) guardposts as you can, and B) ships as you can. The more you can destroy while you're in there, the less they'll have for your next assault.

If you can figure out a use for them, warheads might be pretty useful.

Rather than conquering one of the worlds adjacent to the homeworld, I'd neuter it. Destroy literally everything in the system except the command station and maybe the warp gate, and leave. It's still under AI control so the homeworld won't be alerted (unless you have 50+ power of ships in there) but it's of negligible concern when passing through - what few reinforcements it gets will be annihilated by a halfway competent fleet.




I'm not a pro at this game, I have most of my fun with AI War playing on a difficulty that [vanilla] would I believe be frequently winnable for me [7-8]... With every single minor faction enabled at 4/10. I usually lose miserably this way.

[benjbrun]

@Axiom: I'm well aware of the fact, that the game is supposed to challenge the player. I tried a lot of different stuff out while being on difficulty 7/7 or 9/9 and I saw the response from the AI. This first "full" game is supposed to be a "simpler" (altough not simple) playthrough to learn one thing or another. The game isn't supposed to be easy or to be hard, the game is supposed to be as difficult as wanted by the player. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to adjust the setting before starting a campaign.

@shiverczar: Thanks for the post, I appreciate that. I did know about the "normal" reinforcements of alerted planets, but I wasn't sure if the core worlds (or homeworlds) do get some special bonus, beside the fact that they're mark IV. Warheads are something I really should use sometime. On lower difficulties, there's never the urgent need to detonate one.

2 things that still puzzle me:

1. What's with the message about strategic reserve getting deployed?

2. How to stop multiple starships of mark IV and mark V? Some posts suggest an extensive defense with grav-turrets. Using the fleet for defense (as an alternative) doesn't seem realistic to me. If I split them in half, they're not at their full strength; If I try to reach all planets from everywhere I am too late.

[shiverczar]

Well, to explain what I understand about the way the AI works, is this:

it gets a certain number of 'points' every period of time which it uses to get new stuff - this means reinforcing places, upgrading ships if a place has 'full' forces and can be upgraded, rebuilding things, etc. - purchasing from the wandering trader , and allocating to its "strategic reserve" which iirc is basically a box of points that it gets to save for later which it can use to build emergency defenses and things if you are somewhere important to it.

I'm not certain of that, but it's my understanding of how that all works.

Secondly; waves should be occuring in at most two places at once, so you should be able to prioritize which place is most important and send your fleet there - if you're concerned about how powerful the enemy asault is going to be.

If not, make sure you have a crapload of turrets. Personally, if I build massive turret defenses I'll do something a little unconventional [because it usually means this is a very important choke point for me] -- I'll build 3+ force fields around the wormhole that they can attack from, so that the only thing not protected is a small area around it. This means that none of the ships (except raiders) can move once they exit the wormhole. On the wormhole are a bunch of area minefields, and then around the forcefields (outside of them so their damage isn't reduced by 75%) I have my turrets.

Alternatively, put grav turrets around the wormhole / on the way to wherever the enemy fleet will go and attack them while they're immobilized that way.

[Boss]

One mistake many new players make is to simply create a huge fleet, send it in and expect to win. Many times it can be advantageous to first do some raids. Build human raid starships, maybe assault transports and some riot control starships can also help.

Especially if the system has nasty things like an AI Eye, barracks, strong guard posts etc. it can be useful to target those first. When you are about to hit the homeworld make sure you don't forget about using (EMP) warheads as well.

Mercenary units can also easily make the difference between winning and losing. I like to send in my entire fleet without Merc. units first to clear out the world next to the homeworld. Then I rebuild any losses and for the final homeworld assault (or sometimes the 2nd one) I also attack with my mercenary units. I typically build up my mercenary force throughout the game whenever I have too many resources.

So before you attack think about your logistics. How can you get fresh troops to the enemy homeworld? How fast can you rebuild them? How is your economy? Maybe try to take a planet 2 or 3 hops away from his homeworld (2 is usually best).

Don't forget that it's also crucial to attack the other homeworld ASAP after you take down the first one. So make sure you know where it is, have captured a planet a few hops away from it and won't need a lot of time / raids to get to it.

If you still have trouble to secure the homeworld you could try to go for beachheading. This guide is excellent on all things related to AI War:
https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=13369.0

Checkout the Beachhead chapter as well.

Good luck!

[benjbrun]

Today I started my first attempt to clear some guardposts from a coreworld with the help of an EMP warhead. The attack worked properly, until I got the message that one of my command stations just died.

Naturally, I paused the game and checked it out. Some mark IV ships attacked one of my production-planets, but they weren't the problem. In the middle of these ships was a spire starship mk IV (or V? I'm not sure anymore). This thing cleared my planet with ease, annihilated forcefields like they weren't there and then moved on. I lost two planets to this little monster, before I finally took it down.

I know that this isn't the end. Two planets are easily rebuilt and the loss of a planet isn't the loss of the whole war. I'm still puzzled, how to deal with these things in bigger quantities. My solution would be: Heavily fortify the most important planets and use the rest as expendable, temporarily bases. I can't really see how to defend all planets AND use a fleet without ecenomy command stations to cover the energy cost of the turrets.

This current campaing still shows me how to play the game, despite it's somewhat low difficulty level. I'm going to rearrange my defenses and take another chance at the win. Still having fun and thanks for the answers :)

Btw. I looked into kahunas guide and yes, it's very helpfull. I tried out his defense style and some little things bugged me:

1. Everybody says, that the AI will go straight for your command stations. That's not what I experienced so far. If there are come space docks without a forcefield or if there is a metal harvester near the wormhole, the AI will attack that target. This is something to consider when building defenses, such as minefields. In the end I unlocked the ressource-cloaker, so that the AI doesn't get distracted by some harvesters and follows a straight path to my command station (and my killzone with turrets).

2. Kahuna suggests to use the needler-turret as sort of a range indicator. This turret is placed, so that it still reaches behind the forcefield around the command station. Tractorbeam-Turrets are then placed, so that the needler starts shooting, when the tractor turrets are beginning to grapple ships. In theory, that's a good idea. But what about AI ships that have rather big range? They will just fly near enough to shoot at the tractors, destroy them and then move on. This happened quite often to me.

[Boss]

As for the 2 points you bring up:

1) That is weird. I usually play diff 7 games (and have tried diff 8 and 10, only to lose very quickly haha) and the AI always goes straight for my command station. But why would you have space docks or force fields away from your command station? Unless you mean an Adv. Factory but in that case you could build your command station and turrets between the Adv. Factory and the wormhole. In all other cases it's better to build everything right next to your command station.
I've also never had to worry about my resources or the AI attacking them. Are you sure that the AI doesn't go for your command station?

2) I don't see where Kahuna suggests using needler turrets this way? He mentions needler turrets separately on the screenshots but only to indicate their larger range (than most other turrets) and they're your major starship killers so you want them to fire early.
You can place flak and lighting turrets next to your tract/grav turrets for protection, along with force fields. Flak and lighting turrets are the only turrets that are not affected by the 75% damage reduction from forcefields.
In general you want all your damage dealing turrets to fire as soon as the AI triggers the tract/grav turret. So the position of your turrets should be based on that.

Spire Starships have Medium hull so you could build more turrets that have a high damage multiplier against medium. Missile turrets definitely counter medium, I cannot check the other turrets right now. So maybe unlock mark 2/3 missile turrets and build some more of them.

In general having basic defences (like Kahuna describes) on all your planets that could be attacked should be economically viable, as long as you don't build too many higher mark turrets.
But just some mines and mark I/II turrets should be pretty cheap. Of course this is not gonna stop a major force like you described so there are some other tricks for that:
- Have a mercenary fleet or reserve fleet behind your frontline as a backup force. Never commit your entire force at once, unless you are taking on the AI homeworld.
- Heavy Beam turrets are among my favorite turrets. Spread them out and they can deal some pretty major damage.
- Adapt. Always have economic reserves. When your first planet got attacked, you should've had plenty of time to start building turrets like crazy on your 2nd planet, preventing it from being destroyed. Mark II/III engineers can also help with that (to build/repair faster).

Also, do you use whipboys? Do you do gate raiding to neuter planets? This can help a lot.
See, neutering planets: https://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War:AI_Reinforcements#Neutering_AI_Planets
Whipboy is basically the result of this, where you select some of your planets that serve as your frontline. So you only have to spent resources on defending those planets.

I can't really see how to defend all planets AND use a fleet without ecenomy command stations to cover the energy cost of the turrets.

Well the point is that eventually you should be able to handle all waves without worry if your turret/mine placement is good enough (and you have unlocked some higher level defences). Of course there are lots of different strategies that work and you can also defend against waves with golems or your fleet.

But my preferred strategy is to focus on a strong defense so it can handle all the waves. Then you can focus all your attention on your fleet and offensive campaign without having to worry about defending your planets.

Of course depending on your playstyle upgrading economic command stations or your resource extractors might be necessary at some point. I usually prefer mark 2/3 eco command stations + strong turrets instead of military command stations.

I don't know if you have any of the DLC's but I would recommend using Golems even (or especially) if you are a beginner. They are a lot of fun to use and really help to defend your planets or attack strong AI worlds. They also make it easier to have clear goals in your campaign. Once you've scouted the galaxy map you pick 1-3 golems that you need and you work towards acquiring/repairing them.