Keeping Up With AI

[Cruis.In]

So having done the whole build your own empire/research through and through multiple times, I decided to start with level 7 research, expanded...19 empires.

Luckily early on I focused on diplomacy and sweetened a nearby neighbor to like me. He's going to be my buddy. At some point I saw him in a war with someone else and it looked like he might be getting the worst of it, as his systems were turning 'broken lined'. Losing colonies. So I declared war on who he was at war with, sent a fleet to fight off the guy in his system. Upon having sent my fleet to help him, I proposed a MDP and he accepted.

I immediately loosed the fleet towards the offending empire. Decimating their structures and their waves of fleets they throw...I paved the way for my ally to do his AI invasion stuff and we beat the guy up till his military was terrible and he was down to one system.

The second war happened when I saw he was skirmishing with an empire much larger. I again declared war, helped him out and we beat this guy up too.

Now he's asked me to join a war. I do, things are fine. I defend my systems with some fleets, I send some fleets to stay in his key systems where his large starports are, to keep him in the fight, and I sent some to maraud in the enemy systems.

But now this has brought a multi pronged war, several more have declared war on me and him, and in turns these guys who declared war on us are at war with several people themselves.

What I see is strike forces and fleets all over, how does one keep up with the AI. Initially it seemed easy to defend your space by keeping your enemy occupied. But the AI just seems obviously to be able to do so many things at once, it is difficult to keep up.

How do you guys handle this madness?

Also posture doesn't seem to work so good. I have fleet on manual control and the necessary on manual, when I do an attack, I get it set right. I target a system, the red sphere appears, I expand it to nearby systems, yet the bloody fleet still seems to go off and do something else instead of focusing attacks on those systems.

I even tried defense. I have fleets in my home system which just idle. And don't respond to attacks in nearby systems.

Only once when changing the 'sword' to 'shield' did I see a blue sphere.......I can't consistently get it to appear. So I have too much micro managing of my fleets to do, when I should just have them set to defend certain areas, destroy certain areas.

And it seems I have a lot of fleets wasted.

[Bingeling]

I have rarely found myself in those kind of situations, so this may not work so well if things are really chaotic.

What I do, though, is to end "extra wars". That may be bad for your buddy, though. I check trade proposal and see the price of "end this war". If it is low, I may pay the 5k or whatever needed. If it is high I will hit them to make them dislike the war, and they should be ready for peace for free or for a very low cost.

Often they demand a high price for peace as they believe they have the upper hand or something. Then I bust two mines and a large fleet of theirs, and they are suddenly ready to end the war.

[Cruis.In]

So far the extra people I've declared war with as part of my alliance with him, have all excepted a cease fire immediately. I had a trade agreement with almost everyone and everyone liked me heh...

So that's ok.

Other thing is the game is largely unplayable. It's only a 10X10 sector with 700 planets but everything moves in turns. It's smooth on the battles when I zoom down, but the Galaxy Map is a crawl. The ships don't 'fly' they just jump every 3 seconds or so along their route.

[Cruis.In]

http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag6 ... sfldea.jpg

[Cruis.In]

I removed all but mine and another empire from the game. Still ran like crap.

I notice the save file is 60mb, nothing bad there. The game is only using 1.5 gig ram...

Clearly it can't be too many ships/bases/ai/structures, I removed practically everything from the map, but what's on the map still crawls around at like 1 frame every 3 seconds.

Running windows 7, ATI 270x, Core i3. 16 ram.

I know people will say it is a shitty system, but I've run better games on older systems, and I've seen people comment they don't get this stutter.

And it's just the galaxy map and how ships move around. (civillians ships are off)

700 stars. 10x10...

It's only using 30 or so CPU......so there's no bottle necking going on.

Out of ideas.

[Cruis.In]

If you go to a point where the galaxy map is unpaused, and look at how the units move, that's how mine does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA1qqT6Jm5k

I can't say that mine was unplayable before the whole galaxy became involved in war with one another. What I want to figure out, is if other people can play this save I have, or when they say DW runs fine for them, they haven't reached this level. Where 19 empires are at war with each other and each empire has about 500 MILITARY ships alone running around. Or more. Because there military strength is 190k plus.

[jacozilla]

Only way i have been able to handle massive, many-many fronts of attack AI combat is to
1. Defend only systems - mines and stations outside inhabited systems can be rebuilt, forget about them unless so obvious can defend it and not get lost with other conflict

2. Set a defense posture fleet in every system - every damn system so like by mid game or later mid game i have like 40-50 fleets just as defend fleets, not even counting my 10 hotkey attack fleets. Auto usually works but always set Options screen setting for default stance to be Engage System targets when on manual.

Because this catches if a) you forgot and touched dleet and it goes off auto to manual, that manual fkeet will still defebd entire system it is parked, and b) lots of times only way you can guarantee a system defend fleet wont stupidly move on its own to go somewhere out of system is set on manual.

3. Ignore all message prompts and concentrate on taking out AI key shipping systems - let the attack vector warnings come and go - if you parked a decent enough defend fleet in every colony system, they will mostly take care of your systems. A few will still fall, so use 1-2 hotkey fleets setup as pure invade fleets but smallish - to take back your own worlds. Make sure you have just as many transports solo, as you have in these reaction troop fleets.

Because after you reconquer one pf your worlds, just click auto on your reaction troop fleet, drop any ship that has zero or low troops, and dont even bother wasting time re-picking up your troops - go back to attacking with your hotkey fleets. Your solo troop ships on auto will notuce all thiose extra troops just sitting there on reconquered world and come over to load up. This is rinse and repeat process - just add back into your reaction troop fleet some replacement full solo troop ships.

The ones you just dropped from fleet will go about refilling up, and you ought to have enough solo full troop ships to replenish for the ships you dropped. If you manage this right it is a bare moment of time to turn away from attack, poco troop fleet, target own world, invade order, go back to attack fleets, return to troop fleet when success invade msg pops, drop some ships, add some ships, go back to attack

4. A good offense is the best defense - forget conquering worlds - to chop the many, many AI off at its knees - send your 1-10 hotkey attack fleets against just two targets - gas mining stations and spaceports. Click attack fleet, forget buggy attack posture, just set to defend posture on a frontline staging world, ignore defend part - send that fleet on attack target ordee against a gas mine or spaceport, then click auto again (because when you give attack ordeer it goes on manual, so just send, then click auto because this will then automatically bring the fleet back to your staging world after it kills the target

AI that cant refuel is cripppled fast, and they will rebuild spaceports but with even few attack fleets much less 10 if you get hotkeys and juggling ok will take out their current ship buillding ability in a hurry. If you try and invade one at a time, you get swarmed like you said - so invade later - step one is always cripple refuelimg and cripple ship building

Target homeworld always first, kill spaceport, amy defense stations killed is bonus but always target order spaceport because thatnis what fleet will auto kill before auto returning. After you take out eveey spaceport on your war front, it takes awhile for AI to rebuild ships and i find his existing fleets just smash against my defend fleets and whittle down, with the fee worlds i lose here and there reconquered by my small reaction troop fleets

Then kneecap the major AIs after taking out spaceports and gas stations (not all, just the ones adound your contact war front, thats enough usually) by invading their homeworld. Hold it with a strong defend fleet and pretty much its all mopping up,after that. I usually negotiate peace at that point because AI will stupidly give it and in this game peace means you can,still attack. Just dont conquer a world and you can finish taking out rest of his spaceports and gas stations while all they say is 'i'm warning you, stop attacking me blah blah'

I find if you go UI management crazy but setup defend fleets this way and ignore comquering to cripple AI ports an pd gas stations, the waves and waves of strike fleets coming at you becomes manageable very fast

[aaatoysandmore]

I learned early on to stay out of other people's wars. I only have my own to worry about. I've taken up the put a wall up around my borders (like Trump wants to do) and let no one in. I don't even trade colonies or stations with the AI. I methodically go around the map in a clockwise or reverse clockwise motion eliminating my foes. Sometimes I get into two front wars but that's a far cry better than a war on every side if I befriend AI's. I win every time and take out the really bad guys as fast as I can.