AI War 8.0 & Destroyer of Worlds Incoming

[-budd-]

My installed AI War on Steam did an auto-update today, so that seems like a good sign.  :D

Yup, they rolled out another update.  And it looks like another is in the works.  Nine more days until 8.0 and the expansion!

Started a new campaign today and had a random encounter with this guy:



That's a "Devourer Golem".  It eats all ships under Class V.  It wandered into my home planet at precisely the wrong time.  I had a 200+ fleet preparing to launch an attack on an AI system.  It ate them all!  And then left.

Had to rebuild the entire fleet.   ;D

A great game, even after all these years.  The only downside is that whenever I play this game I always want to read another Fred Saberhagen Berserker novel.   :)

you suck ;) .....it was that fuc*ing picture that got me, who can resist a fleet swallowing AI bastard machine from hell. Please tell me there are some good tutorials and can anybody point me too an informative lets' play.....$%%#$^^$#%#% .....at least i got a good price......Holy F**k

[Nefaro]

Please tell me there are some good tutorials and can anybody point me too an informative lets' play.....$%%#$^^$#%#% .....at least i got a good price......Holy F**k

I just used the in-game tutorial to get acquainted, and then I was off on my first campaign. 

The real chore is learning the key commands that you will regularly use.  There are a metric shit-ton of them available, but you will probably only use a small amount of them regularly.  There are some that you will need to use.  Definitely one of those games I write down the keyboard hotkeys for while running through the tutorial (and anytime else I have to look one up while playing). 

[FarAway Sooner]

budd, my basic advice is:

• Pay careful attention to the tutorial.  The game play is different than other games, which is a lot of where the novelty comes from, but it does require a little attention.
• Learn the interface.  There's a lot of stuff to manage, but the interface is actually very powerful and helps you to take advantage of it.
• Don't try to micromanage the battles.  Just get a feel for what units do really well against what other types of units, plan the composition of your assault force accordingly, then sit back and watch the fireworks.
• Don't just conquer systems for the sake of conquering systems.  This isn't your standard 4x.  Every star system you conquer gets the AI to take a little more notice of you.  And as the AI starts to take notice of you, bad things happen.  If he mobilized all his forces to go after you, the game would be over in about 45 seconds, but that's why you tiptoe around the fringes of his space...
• Expanding on the prior point, take any systems with Advanced Research Posts (to give you new classes of ships) and any system with factories you can use to produce specific types of ships.  And then take systems to create secure bottlenecks.  Just don't get greedy.
• Your first few games, build lots of defensive turrets--and different types of them--around the various warp points in your home system.  I was always stingy with my defenses, and when I got whacked, I'd then have to spend the next hour of game play cleaning up the mess after the alien breakthrough lead to AI units rampaging in my rear.  It was only after I played co-op and I saw how my friends never ran out of turrets, and how much more often I got creamed by attacks, that I realized I was being too stingy.

I could go on, but have fun!!

Cougardk, I can appreciate the problem.  Even at the lower difficulty levels, if you go about needlessly poking the hornet's nest, you will get very badly stung!

[-budd-]

thanks for tips...i'll take all the help i can get.

[Nefaro]

Understanding where enemy AI attacks can come from was another facet that took me some time to learn.  I have to relearn that every time I played, too. 

A larger extension of that is knowing what specific types of AI installations do.  Each type has a special purpose and scouting ahead is essential to get intelligence on what kind of problems taking or avoiding a specific planet may cause.  As FarAway mentioned, it's best to avoid most of them if you can.  However, you want to take the ones that will give you unit upgrades and create defensive bottlenecks so that you can get the most out of the limited quantities of defenses you can build on the front.


You are essentially waging a guerilla war.. IN SPAAAACE!  ;)

[FarAway Sooner]

Some nice beginner guides in the Arcen forums on strategies, tactics, etc.  Best one is at:

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1839.0.html

[Cougar_DK]

This guide is also worth reading: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13369.0.html

[RooksBailey]

you suck ;) .....it was that fuc*ing picture that got me, who can resist a fleet swallowing AI bastard machine from hell. Please tell me there are some good tutorials and can anybody point me too an informative lets' play.....$%%#$^^$#%#% .....at least i got a good price......Holy F**k

LOL!  Sorry about that.   :)  As for advice, the guys above me pointed out all the good stuff.  Really nothing to add other than start off with a stripped down campaign with low level AIs to get a feel for it.  Like the others said, AI War looks like your typical 4X game but it isn't.  It is something quite different.  And the amount of depth is amazing - just the sheer number of different ship types is remarkable.  Personally, I think it is one of the finest space strategy games we have seen in a very long time.

My only other piece of advice would be to read this while playing:  http://smile.amazon.com/Berserker-Saberhagens-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00A4Q4FLK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407977429&sr=8-1&keywords=berserker+fred+saberhagen

;) 

[Yskonyn]

Wow I thought development for the game had ceased.
I have started it countless times to quickly get overwelmed and close it again.
:)
Still it calls out to me at times.

[Nefaro]

Wow I thought development for the game had ceased.
I have started it countless times to quickly get overwelmed and close it again.
:)
Still it calls out to me at times.

I don't think the base concepts of the game are difficult to learn.  They're just unusual.  Plus there are buttloads of different units in the game, but they're not as daunting when you know what the stats and traits are.  Having lots of "Stuff" is always good IMO.  Keeps it dynamic.

[Cougar_DK]

My only other piece of advice would be to read this while playing:  http://smile.amazon.com/Berserker-Saberhagens-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00A4Q4FLK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407977429&sr=8-1&keywords=berserker+fred+saberhagen

;)

Thanks for bringin Saberhagen up, I found a coulpe of his books free here: http://www.epubbud.com/search.php?q=Fred%20Saberhagen

I'm reading Blue Death right now on my iPad - great stuff !

[RooksBailey]

My only other piece of advice would be to read this while playing:  http://smile.amazon.com/Berserker-Saberhagens-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00A4Q4FLK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407977429&sr=8-1&keywords=berserker+fred+saberhagen

;)

Thanks for bringin Saberhagen up, I found a coulpe of his books free here: http://www.epubbud.com/search.php?q=Fred%20Saberhagen

I'm reading Blue Death right now on my iPad - great stuff !

Thanks for posting that link!  Nice to see Saberhagen making the leap to ebooks.  I noticed Amazon has now converted a lot of his Berserker novels and short fiction into Kindle e-books for $5 a piece.  I can now fill in my library with some titles that have been long out of print.

PS: Haven't read Blue Death yet.  My favorite is the original short story collection called Berserker! or sometimes  Berserker: The Beginning.  Shiva in Steel is also very good.  My favorite part of that book was when a Berserker robot was virtually destroyed but it still showed its dedication to eradicating "bad life".  Even though it couldn't complete its mission to kill the human it was targeting,  it could kill a nearby houseplant instead.  Life is life, after all.  So it started smashing it before it short circuited out of existence.  LOL!

[RooksBailey]

The new expansion is out today: $4.49 over at Gamer's Gate.  Gonna go pick it up later. 

Version 8.0 is also out.  Word from Chris Park:

http://arcengames.com/ai-war-8-0-launches-alongside-expansion-6-destroyer-of-worlds-and-linux-support/

AI War's run from 7.0 to 8.0 took a long break during our development of The Last Federation, but still contained over 60 new releases in 425 days. Thanks to player feedback (some new, some from years ago) the game is now better than ever.

Biggest on the radar is the addition of the new "hacking" mechanic which gives the player several abilities which can be extremely useful but also quite risky. Hack wisely, and you can turn defeat into victory. Hack foolishly, and you can turn humanity into hamburger. The idea came out of long discussions with players on improving the relationship between metal and crystal. Those two mechanics had become far too similar, and ultimately the idea of merging them in favor a new radically-different mechanic found a lot of support from the community.

"Salvage" is another major new mechanic based on years of community feedback. Basically if you lost your whole fleet in an attack it could take a long time to rebuild but often there wasn't much actual danger. In a game where 8 hours is a "short" campaign, players don't want to be stuck spending real "wall-clock" time without much actual "game" happening. So salvage allows the AI to harvest the remains of your ships lost in its territory to build a "reprisal" force that threatens you after a fleet-wipe, and allows you to harvest the remains of AI ships lost in your territory to accelerate your rebuilding. This led to a somewhat bumpy ride balance-wise but it's shaken out pretty well by now and has significantly improved enjoyment of the game.

Champions have also been the subject of quite a bit of player feedback since they were introduced in the fourth expansion. Some people really liked them, some people really did not. One of the biggest issues was how the nebula scenarios (the main way you could improve champions) were so disconnected from the rest of the game. So we've added an optional alternate way to improve your Champion units that's much more aligned with playing normally. There's probably more to be done on this topic, but what's been done thus far has helped.

"If anyone beats difficulty 10, that's a bug" is one of our old jokes with the community. Actually, we laugh when we say it but we're not joking. Several players have managed to beat Diff 10 over the years and the refinements to prevent this (without being too heavy-handed) have continued. Several AI improvements were made for 8.0, especially it's pushing an advantage during a large-scale attack. Balance dials have also been cranked to even-more-painful levels, and as of this writing there are no confirmed reports of a "normal" diff 10 win since the last round of related changes. The gauntlet's right there on the ground, folks.

Player feedback (and our own devious minds) prompted tons of other changes in 8.0 (counter-attack posts being made optional comes to mind, and many turret caps becoming per-planet), but this account has to stop somewhere. Oh, and let's not forget the engine upgrade and the addition of linux support :)

I've been enjoying the hacker mechanic.  It is a fun way to get new units and makes perfect sense for the setting.

[son_of_montfort]

Note: You can get the entire DLC pack at Arcen Game's website for $4.00. It puzzled me that it was cheaper to get them all than just Destroyer of Worlds, but I was happy because apparently I had missed Vengeance of the Machines!

[-budd-]

Note: You can get the entire DLC pack at Arcen Game's website for $4.00. It puzzled me that it was cheaper to get them all than just Destroyer of Worlds, but I was happy because apparently I had missed Vengeance of the Machines!

Anybody get this? Are they separate keys for each expansion?