how to advance past early game?

[IV]

hi, I recently bought the game + DLC and tried to get a win, but got very frustrated because I don't really understand how AI reinforcement mechanics work. I beat the difficulty 5/full ensemble in 3 hours total, but the game seemed way too easy so i read up on what difficulty's the most fair. it seems that difficulty 9 + adaptive brutal is good for a challenging AI that still plays fair.

it's been like 3-4 tries already and i keep dying at the same moment in the game - it feels like i'm not making any progress. the moment i die I have roughly 5 planets, 2 economic, 2 military + homeworld, a fleet of about 150-200 strength and AIP difficulty at 90. most waves are easy to defend, but at some point the AI decides to send a death fleet of strength equal to the defences of my homeworld (and it seems like you can reliably defend vs. 50-60% strength raids before risking a loss), which is like 400-600. i feel very starved for resources - my fleet is too weak to fight it out in most systems, as the remaining systems that have anything worth capturing are always 100-200 strength + a random 100-200 strength (not from guardians, but from some other fleets that appear, idk what they are). deep dropping into the enemy territory also seems impossible, even with lvl 4 transports, as eventually the enemy will have a system with shields blocking the exits - all in all limiting my access for sniping things like AIP lowerers or research. eventually my fleet is just so outclassed that they can't do anything - the enemy recovers faster than I can take out their ships, so after fighting 150 vs 250 I go back to recover and find out that the enemy's system is at 280 strength with my fleet having not improved at all. I'm getting pretty much all the research I can (pretty much every system I capture is a transport/research station, with the exception of 1 turret station). if I don't get the 1 turret research station then I can't defend vs. enemy waves.

i'm really stuck - what am i doing wrong? is there a way I can lower the size of enemy fleets when i'm smaller than they are, or will the AI just increase the defending fleets after my every attack?

[smidlee]

For one, going from difficulty 5 full ensemble to diff9 adaptive brutal is a huge jump in difficulty. Difficulty 7 AI is aimed to be the most fair while diff 9 is designed to be a little unfair against the player. A lot of players at diff 9 are good at beachheading with their battlestations since your gain the most strength from them in the early game. You need to level up your battlestations, turrets tech, and engineers tech twice in order to build mark 4-5 turrets fast. Use your ships to keep the AI from shooting the turrets while they are building.

[IV]

Originally posted by smidlee:

For one, going from difficulty 5 full ensemble to diff9 adaptive brutal is a huge jump in difficulty. Difficulty 7 AI is aimed to be the most fair while diff 9 is designed to be a little unfair against the player. A lot of players at diff 9 are good at beachheading with their battlestations since your gain the most strength from them in the early game. You need to level up your battlestations, turrets tech, and engineers tech twice in order to build mark 4-5 turrets fast. Use your ships to keep the AI from shooting the turrets while they are building.

oh, guess i'll try that. i used almost all my research (except on upgrading the mainbase) on ship upgrades, because i felt like they were really weak, but i guess if i'm able to make a far-out military base that can hold out on its own, i'll have a safepoint to mount my attacks from, instead of having to hope my transport's able to get to my target.

regarding the difficulty, i'm just a masochist that likes the challenge lol. if i beat diff 9 on advanced mode, i'll probably be maining diff 10, even though it's said to be unfair.

[smidlee]

Note at first you need to marked up the battlestations individually and not the mobile tech since this marks up it's turret level by one. It also often good to mark up command stations once or twice individually for the same reason. Increasing the stations tech in the tech bar marks up all stations in that group but only stations themselves and not their turrets.

[Strategic Sage]

One thing to keep in mind that there is really no such thing as 'playing fair' in this game. You've played enough to know that the game is asymmetric with humans and AIs playing by different rules. Beyond difficulty 7 the AI just gets more resources. From what you've described I would try difficulty 8 first if not 7. Having a goal of playing on a high difficulty is great, but that doesn't mean you need to get there right away. Crawl before you walk before you run, so to speak.

[Lord Of Nothing]

The thing to keep in mind is that two difficulty levels is a big jump. 4 is an enormous jump. Diff 9 is intended to be a challenge for people who know the game very well. Then on top of that, Brutal AI's are generally considered to be the equivalent of an entire level higher, and adaptive means it's significantly harder to tailor your ship and tech picks to counter the AI's favourite units, since they keep changing - so don't necessarily feel discouraged, you've gone from a good starting point to learn the mechanics straight to a difficulty that I would have to take seriously, and I have a few hundred hours in this game and thousands in the original.
Posting a current save would be useful for us to help understand areas for improvement.
Saves are stored in ...Steam\steamapps\common\AI War 2\PlayerData\Save

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

As the lead dev, I can reliably play against difficulty 6 and have an interesting time, and diff 7 provides a strong challenge. I know the game quite well, but difficulty 8 not something I am likely to ever win, and difficulty 9 is waaaay out of my league.

I'm not missing anything by not playing at those levels, incidentally. The AI is still just as interesting and challenging at the levels I do play at. That's the nice thing about this game.

If I were better at coming up with a super strong meta analysis and getting really expert at the game like people do with any RTS game, though, then there would be somewhere for me to go (diff 8 and 9 or even 10). Those difficulties are for that sort of player, which I don't enjoy the idea of being.

I'm here to test my wits and have an interesting time, not to try to become a professional at it. I think for people with a similar mindset, diff 7 or 8 is the highest you're likely to ever go unless you get a few hundred hours in the game, and you won't be missing anything in terms of coolness factor or having an interesting foe.

It's kind of the opposite problem: for those people who minmax the game to a really huge degree, how do you keep them engaged long-term? Once they figure out some minmax strategy, is the game just done for them? The higher difficulty levels, plus the general large ship variety, are meant to be the answer to that question: no, there's still more for them to enjoy.

I was tired of playing through strategy games where once I fully understood it and had developed a favorite strategy, the AI could no longer pose a challenge. So I'd just have to move to a new game now that I'd mastered this one. A core design ethos behind AI War ha always been that once you have mastered it, it should still be very interesting for as long as you want to keep playing it.

Anyhow, that's what the higher difficulties are about. Jumping to difficulty 9 is an exponential jump for a reason, and that's what it is.

[ExavierMacbeth]

As one of those minmaxers that tend to memorize the game mechanics to the point of becoming bored... AI War has always managed to stay on my active game list even if i take long breaks between games. Average run per game... 16hrs+ (You actually beat our the 12hr sessions I used to have with Starcraft & Supreme Commander) :P

I usually play with Diff 9 AIs... but often stack the game with alot of minor factions & other settings to make the galaxy a very chaotic place to live in for everyone. Then have fun by exploiting the ever changing puzzle lol

A couple of things I tend to do that make the game alot more forgiving that might help...
- If you didn't start with a Cloaked Transport, it is worth it to go into the fleet's detail & spend the 30 hacking points to make it a cloaked transport. Add about 3-4 levels to it with the use of Science directly... and it will have enough cloaking to generally allow you to deep strike targets regularly. Very good at dealing with all those annoying little problems even if its just flying next to the Orbital Mass Driver the AI has on the other side of the system & dumping your units right next to it. You can unload the transport, wait 6 sec, kill tower, reload transport & then retreat or move to next target.

- You don't need to "capture" Turret or Ship research stations to use them. You can if needed clear the system of everything except the AI command, then hack it to gain what you need (costs more hacking points if its hostile but is an option). Also if you happen to have Marauders as "Hostile to all" on the map, you could strip the system clean, jump out, and the marauders will usually blow up the command station... then you can clear the marauders & hack for normal price without the AIP loss as long as you don't build a station there.

- Avoid straight up fights in AI owned systems. If you start losing more than 30% of your fleet you run the risk of giving the AI free reinforcments from salvage. Often times this adds more force than you killed in the first place. Only way to stop is is to withdraw before the little popup shows up at the top of the screen, or kill all the guard posts in the system. If you can get out of the system hit/run style you can leave that system alove for about 15min oor so (hit a different target) and i think it forgets the salvage from the previous attack... I do know multiple small attacks (leave rebuilt & hit again immediatly) will stack.

- If your having trouble with the learning curve, Add Marauders, Scourge, or Dark Zeneth Svikari to the game and set their faction to "Allied with Player" and crank the slider for their power up a bit. In ally mode these are really good at filling your space with free defencive units to help givey ou breathing room to learn the game mechanics better.

[IV]

thanks for all the tips. i bonked my head vs. the AI once again and failed spectacularly. i'll take a break and try to apply some of the stuff said here. someone asked for a save, so here it is: https://www60.zippyshare.com/v/XDbdqErJ/file.html

if there's something obviously wrong and incompetent there let me know

Originally posted by x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park):

As the lead dev, I can reliably play against difficulty 6 and have an interesting time, and diff 7 provides a strong challenge. I know the game quite well, but difficulty 8 not something I am likely to ever win, and difficulty 9 is waaaay out of my league.

I'm not missing anything by not playing at those levels, incidentally. The AI is still just as interesting and challenging at the levels I do play at. That's the nice thing about this game.

If I were better at coming up with a super strong meta analysis and getting really expert at the game like people do with any RTS game, though, then there would be somewhere for me to go (diff 8 and 9 or even 10). Those difficulties are for that sort of player, which I don't enjoy the idea of being.

I'm here to test my wits and have an interesting time, not to try to become a professional at it. I think for people with a similar mindset, diff 7 or 8 is the highest you're likely to ever go unless you get a few hundred hours in the game, and you won't be missing anything in terms of coolness factor or having an interesting foe.

It's kind of the opposite problem: for those people who minmax the game to a really huge degree, how do you keep them engaged long-term? Once they figure out some minmax strategy, is the game just done for them? The higher difficulty levels, plus the general large ship variety, are meant to be the answer to that question: no, there's still more for them to enjoy.

I was tired of playing through strategy games where once I fully understood it and had developed a favorite strategy, the AI could no longer pose a challenge. So I'd just have to move to a new game now that I'd mastered this one. A core design ethos behind AI War ha always been that once you have mastered it, it should still be very interesting for as long as you want to keep playing it.

Anyhow, that's what the higher difficulties are about. Jumping to difficulty 9 is an exponential jump for a reason, and that's what it is.

it's great to see you interacting with the community! i'm somewhat familiar with you as I read some of the stuff you wrote about the AI in the game + watched the interview on Explorminate. i'm developing a 4x/strategy game myself and i'm trying to join entertainment and productivity by checking out competent devs in that genre. your design ideas are extremely unique and well-thought-out, unfortunately the game is very raw and counter-intuitive to the more casual players - only 2.9% of people even beat the default AI on any difficulty which is very disappointing. your game's already a commercial success, but imo it's very much a diamond in the rough - deserves a magnitude order of attention more than it got.

[Strategic Sage]

FYI that site wants me to download a bunch of other items I don't trust. I would suggest uploading the save to the discord or Mantis. I'd be happy to look at it but not at the cost of putting a bunch of items I don't want to add on my PC.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Originally posted by IV:

only 2.9% of people even beat the default AI on any difficulty which is very disappointing.

This is actually a bit misleading. Steam & Humble Bundle are really great at distributing games, but it really messes with the achivement % because when you get the game as part of a bundle it adds to the total owners, but doesn't account for how many people have actually launched & played the game.

To Dev: Maybe add a stupidly silly achivement for "I launched the game & played 5min" just to give people an idea of what % of the "owners" are actually contributing to the achivement numbers :P

[Strategic Sage]

I think it's too late to fix the achievement numbers, since the majority of people who will try the game, already have. That's actually a big part of why they are so low. Achievements weren't added at all in the game until a while after launch, so a whole bunch of players who tried it when it was released didn't get any achievements no matter what they initially accomplished. Basically those percentages shouldn't be used as indications of much of anything.

[IV]

Originally posted by Strategic Sage:

FYI that site wants me to download a bunch of other items I don't trust. I would suggest uploading the save to the discord or Mantis. I'd be happy to look at it but not at the cost of putting a bunch of items I don't want to add on my PC.

god, why is almost every upload website a virus these days. i went on discord and uploaded the save on new player advice.

Originally posted by Strategic Sage:

I think it's too late to fix the achievement numbers, since the majority of people who will try the game, already have. That's actually a big part of why they are so low. Achievements weren't added at all in the game until a while after launch, so a whole bunch of players who tried it when it was released didn't get any achievements no matter what they initially accomplished. Basically those percentages shouldn't be used as indications of much of anything.

yeah, the achievement stuff was an off-hand comment. imo the game still has way less sales than it deserves for the level of innovation and quality it provides.

[Strategic Sage]

Sounds good. I posted a bunch of ideas in the discord channel, good place to put it.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

It's all good. Also achievements don't get logged if you run in offline mode, which some people prefer to do for privacy reasons. (That's true of any steam game.) In AI War 2, they do get logged locally and will get uploaded the next time you are playing logged in (that's for the "I was in a cabin in the woods without wifi, I want my achievement" scenario). But some folks never play logged all the way in.

I can see anonymized data of how many people play the game, and what the average play time and such is, and it's acceptable for the type of game it is. I would certainly love it if the numbers were higher, but there's overall a lot of competition for people's attention these days.

[soulcandy]

I've got over 250 hours in the game and have only beat a level 9 once - and that was with the help of another faction to soften the beating. If anything, try level 8 but with an Easy AI Simple Ensemble so that their planets are less beefy and easier to manage. Once you get into the Hard and Brutal territory, their planets start to hit 200+ strength territory within a few minutes of starting a game.