Could I get some tips on fallen spire?

[Ecthelon]

I've been messing around with the fallen spire in my latest campaign. The AI difficulty and response to fallen spire are both set to 7. I've got to the point where I have a couple of tier 4 cities. By now, the AI overlord is a pushover as I can obliterate whatever AI world I want.

However, I rolled back the save as I'm interested in getting to the endgame of the fallen spire and summoning the spire fleet or whatever happens (no spoilers please). My issue is that getting new cities at this point gives insane counters from the AI. By necessity, I have world all across the galaxy both to avoid deep-striking and to settle near spire relics I discover. With each world I capture it's more impossible to defend them all when I get a new city and many of my worlds are attacked at once. Despite the overwhelming power of my fleet it's never going to be enough to split up and defend my entire empire at once, particularly as I have to defend the relic until it becomes a city.

How have people dealt with this?

[Strategic Sage]

The top suggestion IMO it's already too late for in your case. Map type matters a *lot* in Spire. Having a minimal amount of perimeter chokepoints for your empire and preferably a backup defensive system behind each of them is vital; you can also manipulate certain maps to optimize relic and debris spawn locations. Worth noting as well that 5 is the default for Spire intensity, so by setting it to 7 you are asking for pain. Which is fine, but just know that you are using a scaled-up version of it. Marked-up military commands on your chokepoints, investing heavily in turrets - and I do mean heavily - putting your strongest Spire cities in those locations, minimizing investment in your normal fleets so you can put more tech into these aspects, these are all approaches I take. Some players prefer logistical commands for the gravity generators, but I find the attack bonus of the military to be more useful.

[Timerlane]

It seems like picking a more central location for your homeworld(not 'exposed', just not tucked away in a random corner at the edge) is a good way to make sure the Relic trains have to go somewhere near you, and so you'll probably have an alternate way out past the scary post-relic Exos to send your 'normal' fleets out to hack the debris.

[Ecthelon]

Interesting. Thank you both. I'm very curious as to how to achieve the things you said Sage, as they all make sense strategically but getting a map to play out that way is difficult.

On that note I have follow up questions if that's okay:
1. How can you get all your cities behind your defensive lines when the relics can spawn anywhere in the galaxy (even 2 jumps from the enemy homeworld in my case)? I have always seen the massive and constant response to moving a relic across the entire galaxy and assumed it was nonviable to move it any significant distance.
2. Relatedly, how exactly would I optimise relic and Debris spawn locations? Is there a wiki/guide that explains their spawn logic that I'm not finding? Debris was almost always fine until it started spawning close enough to the enemy core worlds to allow those pesky dragons to attack my hacking transports.

[Strategic Sage]

1. Not necessarily the case. Here's an example of me moving one several hops in the middle of a Spire campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j9--ifgmnc&list=PLWPhJvJ0SSDswFNHdu-fcBDikJ0H_sdps&index=5&t=1s. Basically, lean into using battlestations and Citadels to blunt and slow down what they have chasing the relic. One thing to keep in mind is that just because you take a planet doesn't mean you have to keep it. You can abandon it, retake it later, etc. if it's useful to do so. The other part is, you need to take a fairly large number of systems in any Spire game anyway, so the homeworld shouldn't be that far away.

2. I prefer the Bubbles and Snake maps for Spire; you can also make Concentric work and probably some others. The idea is that the AI Homeworld is one side of the map and your territory extends fairly close to that, with a much larger area of hostile space on the other side. This means debris, relics, relic trains etc. will tend to spawn on the other side, with your empire between where they spawn and the AI homeworld. That also means no warden and smaller amounts of hunter fleet will be on that side to interfere. You can see that in the playlist that the linked video is part of.

Other map types can also work, you can play Spire on Realistic etc. map types, it's just harder and you'll want to turn down the intensity if you do that.

[Ecthelon]

Ah. I didn't even consider other map types. I've almost always just used realistic.

[RedPine]

Strategic Sage is a good youtuber to watch. Depending on preference, you may want to watch his videos at 1.25x or 1.5x speed though.

The TLDR is that debris will try to spawn a certain distance away from your planets, and that the AI retaliation against the spire can only spawn in AI territory. In one of his later campaigns, he took advantage of this on the Spiral map. He basically had 4-5 systems of nothing but defenses that acted as ablative armor while he moved debris around. If he lost more than 2 defensive systems he would drop the debris where it was instead of trying to move it further.

Personally, I consider Spire to be extremely difficult. I usually wind up dropping debris wherever they happen to spawn, then plan on taking that territory at a later date.

Friendly Scourge, or the mod Civilian Industries, makes it much easier to stack massive defensive forces in your systems. I never attempt Fallen Spire until I have one of those two.

Long Spire games recquire an absurd economy because of how expensive it is to rebuild Spire structures.

[Willem]

Here are some tips from my experiences with Fallen Spire:

1: When you scout for a Spire Relic count the exact number of hops away from where the Relic is supposed to be, note down all systems where it could be, when you scan one of those systems, unless you find the Relic, note down the Distance between the relic and the system you're in, then count back from that system to any of the points where the Relic might be, you'll generally have only one location it can be at, this helps reduce the AI Response when you grab the Relic (And with Swarms of Dire Guardians, Golems, and eventually Exogalactic War units as you REALLY Ramp it up this is CRITICAL, the Relic only has 3 (or was that 3.6?) Million HP which Artillery Golems will make mincemeat out of)
If you're feeling really cheap: just save scum before you scan for the Relic and calculate based off of that,

2: Plan Ahead, you do not want to have to decide where to place the Relic after you obtain it, you've got to know where you want to build the City before you seize the Relic, this can even start as early as the game set up by precisely calculating where to place your HQ for maximum Spire Efficiency, that includes finding Chokepoint locations where to place Cities. (Those Spire Beam Cannons pack a wallop, use them)

3: Destroy Each and Every Warp Gate between where the Relic is and where you want the Relic to go, this mostly applies to mid and late game where AI progress matters less for Spire playthroughs (just do not destroy stuff willy-nilly, just because AI progress matters a bit less, does not mean you should just Ignore it)
The reason for the Warp Gate destruction is simple: The AI sends their reinforcements through them to intercept the relic, once lost a Relic from the sheer number of AI ships being bigger than even I was able to take down in one volley, destroying all Warp gates in the path allows you to get the Relic through and managing AI response to a certain level.

4: Don't plant your fleet around the Relic, plant it at the wormholes the AI intends their fleet through, you do not want to have to move to intercept an Artillery Golem targeting your Relic, no you want to kill that along with everything else under the B&N (Big and Nasty) Category before it has a chance to fire, once the Relic has reached a certain point in the system, send your fleet through along with the Relic, Rinse and Repeat.

5: If you can get an Allied Scourge, GET IT and let it build up, the sheer amount of crap it can send out can really add up a load of damage and armour, if I scout a Biotechnology lab, I'm deepstriking and destroying everything for it, too many benefits not to do that once they build up... believe me, you'll be glad you did, possible "Ethics" be damned.

6: Prioritizing Targets, Artillery Golems are the first thing I kill because of their extreme single-target damage and Infinite Range, other Golems, Dire Guardians, and Exogalactic War units are targeted based on my threat assessment, smaller AI units can be allowed to get closer because unless they've got a Giant Swarm of Tier VII ships, damage will be limited, once the Big and Nasty stuff is down, send your fleet to intercept ASAP, even if damage is limited.

7: Zombify Everything combined with high level Parasitic ships = lots of Dire Guardians for you, since the Parasite ships do not have to kill something to Zombify it, they can just target the Big Things and let the Spire melt them down, a couple of Dire Guardians can go a LONG way in multiplying your Firepower with exceedingly Nasty effects.

Just some advice from my personal experience.

[Ecthelon]

All good stuff! I do most of that already. Heavy zombification is a fun idea. In retrospect is was odd that I didn't get a single zombifying ship in this play-through. I've played with allied scourge before; it was kind of a pain to hand hold it through it's setup but I should try that again.

[arnaud_defrance]

A couple tips I haven't seen mentioned so far:
-Have defensive depth: expandable planets that will 'whittle down' AI attacks. This will enormously help survive such attacks.
-Use military stations both defensively and offensively. They give planetary damage boost, +25% per mark. This affects your turrets and your spire fleet, so this matters a lot.

[Ecthelon]

Lol. Update on my save where I'd already spread my planets sporadically across the galaxy:

I kept pushing to see how many cities I could get before I just couldn't cover everything any more. I nearly got to a second Mk5 spire city and then the AI spawned a Mothership. Oh dear. Things just went from challenging to impossible defending my spread out worlds if that's how it's going to be playing.