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Sure I can think of a few examples of the top my head. The warden bases. Does killing them reduce the warden fleet or does it just redistribute the warden fleet to the other bases. If I avoid killing them does that mean the warden fleet patrols the systems around the base or does it just send warden ships when there is an attack? Actually does it even send them when there is an attack?
There is a decision to destroy it or not but I don't know what the strategic consequences of the decision are. When I played I destroyed them just because but I have no idea if that was dumb or not.
What gate raiding actually does was pretty confusing in game. I think I get it now but there seem to be quite a few exemptions and I'm still not sure about some situations. Like if I carved the AI empire in two and then kill the gates on one side will that trigger the AI to attack anywhere from that side or will it redirect to attack from only the gated side.
Or take astrotrains. What the depots do is described but when a depot is creating more and more stations what does that actually mean in game terms? Like do the astrotrains route through the station randomly and then go to a depot or do they have to hit a percentage of the stations out before going to a depot. I played a game with a number 7 AI where I raided the hell out of them but I never really felt I understood anything about why they travelled the way they did. The same train seemed to go in circles rather than depot to depot.
It was just a constant feeling of not knowing enough and then not learning by playing the game either.
Here's what the Warden Fleet Base tooltip says while you're in a game with them on:
I think those pretty well answer the issues that you state you couldn't find the answer to in-game. A good way forward, and if you have any specific suggestions I promise you I'll personally link this thread on the Mantis and the Discord to bring it to developer attention, is how to improve this? If tooltips don't work to inform you as a new player how mechanics work, what could be done better? Or did you read these and not understand the information you were looking for?
How, specifically, should Arcen make this game better for you and other new players?
Also choosing base oriented in the lobby is hardly a great place to put such information. It doesn't immediately occur to me to read each AI type for game info. I think that's pretty disingenuous to be honest. That you present that as a way to find out kind of speaks for itself.
The best thing would be for the game to have the ability to click a unit to gain a more detailed description about it. Another option would be a manual that goes through things in further detail.
I'd say there is a game design issue as well though. I think a terminal you could have that would give you temporarily information about the effect your attacks have had on the AI or give you details about AI thoughts might be good. A real issue in the game is that cause and effect are unclear enough that you aren't able to learn as you go as some other games.
It's possibly something is broken with the base-oriented ones, but I doubt it since better players than me have described it as working in their games. My last completed video series had the wardens essentially dominating me everywhere I tried to move. Part of it is that due to the type of AI the game uses, it isn't deterministic in most aspects (meaning that it won't always make the same decision). That might be playing into part of what you've observed.
I've personally gone back to the lobby to look for information like that on many occasions myself. It's definitely not disingenous on my part. I've also encouraged others to do so in my tutorial series. I understand why you wouldn't want to look for it there, but on the other hand that's literally where you make the decision on whether or not to use Base-Oriented, Kite Master, etc. for the Warden Fleet subtype so from my POV it's a really sensible place for the information to be.
I do admit to being completely confused here on some points. For example, there's literally tooltips in the game for every unit with lots of details and three different hotkey options listed every time you go to win for how much to display, etc. Regardless, I'm going to link your thoughts in the Mantis and Discord as I mentioned, perhaps others will be able to better contribute to either this discussion or making improvements.
The Warden base I noticed was in the overlord planet and though I took the stars around it the strength rating of the overlord planet, implying the warden's never mounted a defence. If they had then I wouldn't have been able to take the planets as there were over 300 strength in those warden ships. Possibly it behaves differently when it is in the overlord planet. I guess that is another unknowable aspect of the game.
There are a lot of details. Most of those details are tactical in a game with very little tactics (not a criticism), while they are helpful they mainly give you information on weapon systems and the like.This is nice to have and all but clicking on a astro train and getting a real explanation on what is going on would be far better. Even if you had to spend hacking points for this it would be good. The strategic information would be the most important and that is where the game is most lacking. You seem like an expert and yet some of my questions you don't seem to know either.
Sorry if this comes across as combative. I appreciate the response.
I am annoyed that Extragalatic units budgets has its own income too, even in non-spire games, rather than drain from others budgets to improve performance. I thought that was how it worked when it was first introduced but no.
I do think it isn't that the game introduces concepts too poorly, the game changed heavily and it's considerably more accessible than AI War 1, or even early version of AI War 2. What I think hurt the game, is that unlike many games with complex mechanics (Slay the Spire, Supreme Commander, Rebel Incs, Stellaris...) AI War 2 don't have a lots of guides or tutorial videos to help players with so-or-so problem. So a lot of obscure mechanics remains obscure.
I did notice that I usually can't tell where the threat is or a bunch of things during a game, especially when I don't have full vision activated. The budget income is also very odd. On diff9 it explodes exponentially leading to huge CGAs attacks that go from 200-300 strength to 2000 thousands strength at 100 AIP difference. Apparently some players can survive those, but all of it is obscure, even for a player with hundreds of hours like me.
I do know. It does redistribute it to other bases. It doesn't reduce it. You are correct that this isn't directly stated in the tooltips unlike the other questions you raised about the Warden Fleet which are, but I do think it is implied. The devs have overtly stated that this is the case though.
Nope. One of the better players has taken to intentionally losing a planet near the AI homeworld purposefully to coax the warden fleet out, in order to manipulate it's response. They've found this to be a very effective strategy.
I'd be happy to answer whatever other questions you have, but my main point here was to try and help you understand what's going on with the information available to you in the game itself. With things like this, I literally don't know what you are even asking though. What do you want to know about astro trains that it doesn't tell you?
This particular issue i believe can be address if enough attention is brought to it though.
I would agree that a building that has pros and cons staying alive, should be not destroyed on sight by ur ships.
-does this allow the AI to consolidate their forces into larger balls? (if yes, sounds like destroying bases are TERRIBLE choices, why would my fleet do it on my behalf?)
-fewer rally points = lower spawns?
-can wardens teleport from a rally to another?
Such information would help players (unless theres reason not to help players XD) given that most veterans acknowledge the wardens as one of the AI's strongest asset.
Never understood the trains as well, but i saw them as a huge overall asset to players, so no qualms about it.
Budget was also a conundrum but i figured i'd trust instinct and rough sensing to pull through.
Saw your review, the uncertainly of the warp gate issue also scared me for the longest time i nvr dared consider a planet with just the station safe.
Although i kinda feel to say that you have to 'act blindly and try to determine what was the correct decision based on limited feedback' contradicts 'Fun is coming up with my own solutions' a little.
Personally i feel that the fact that this game does not have as much feedback can be seen as a form of challenge and fun in and of itself. i personally felt that information given to you is actually sufficient (if u are overwhelmed = clearly whatever ur doing now does not work), the hard part is to figure out why and i would lose interest if the reason or strategy is handed to me on a silver platter.
As a point of comparison, i felt civilization is far more complex and also has its fair share of ambiguity.
You are not wrong to say both games arent everyone's cup of tea.
To be fair, i have beaten the game on diff9 a few times, and once on diff10 recently (though it turned out to be a bug as advertised after all!)
Warp-Gating and waves can generally be manipulated, since both waves and AIs forces tends to prefer attacking lower-strength worlds. It's perfectly doable to bait the AIs on planets without critical capturables. So long as you keep your energy high enough to afford losing them, it's a very important way of thinning out the threat.
Feedback is odd. You need to thin out the threat but nowadays it can be a huge pain given the AI will flee your forces. Webbed defenses for the spider turrets (laying traps for fleeing forces) can help though, so there are tactics.
I find it more annoying that AI planets with only the command station can grow into threat at diff8 and 9. Part of that is odd budgets stuff with AIs reinforcement multipliers and "reinforce alerted planets first".
Some quirks are just troublesome evolutions from the successive patches. Like how losing your "bait" planets too deep into the AI territory can lead to the AI reserves to drop in multiples times, which can lead to huge threat snowballs as part of those join the threat.
Otherwise It's a lot of learning the game. Lots of faction and stuff that changes how dangerous or not something is.
Warden-wise, yeah it's kind of annoying that killing warden base makes it... sort of harder? Because it condenses the warden into the more critical AI-held area with the AI homeworld. It isn't like warden base have their own warden-cap that get removed when they lose the base, so that's probably why it's confusing. I think most new players expect the loss of the base to reduce the warden max budget but that isn't how it works.
Units in gate attacks come straight from the hidden reserves of the AI somewhere in the galaxy, so whether the planet with the warpgate is connected or not to AI territory is irrelevant. If you leave an enemy gate alive somewhere in the back of your territory and kill off any other gate that might be adjacent to your planets, all gate attacks will come from there - you can manipulate this to your advantage.
If you destroy the last gate that's adjacent to one of your planets BTW, the AI will start building up the reinforcements that can't make it somewhere, and eventually come at you with a huge cross-planet attack.
I'm still bothered by the fact that warp gates "slingshot" units straight into the destination wormhole so they appear directly on your planet not at the gate itself, yet there's no visual indicator that the gate is doing so.