My First Extreme: AI Improvement 1.01

[Unbroken]

I've played through my first game on Extreme as the Boskara, and I've gotten to the point where I'm not sure if I can actually win the game. AI colonies and fleets are popping up everywhere, and I'm not motivated to continue playing the game while in a permanent state of fire-fighting, especially after I stopped the Teekans from winning the game previously.

Since I know a number of people here enjoy challenges (I'm looking at you, Icemania), I'm going to post the latest save from this game. I think I have a bit of an earlier one too, should this one be too far-gone to be rescued.

Here are the original game settings:

Pre-warp Boskara, Extreme, Chaotic aggression, few pirates on weak (first game on extreme!) with no respawn. Medium irregular galaxy (8x8 sectors) w/700 stars, colony range of 1.0s. Tech trading is disabled, scattered independents cannot start empires, 9 random AIs, default settings for homeworlds, expensive tech. Victory conditions are the standard, with the main story elements disabled.

Now for the situation...

I was preparing to launch a sneak-attack war with the Kiadians to capture their homeworld due to the three research wonders located there. My reputation is in the toilet after blasting a lot of things without a war declaration, including a Securan carrier fleet dispatched to blockade a colony of mine. My buggy 'allies' (Dhayut and Sluken) are both terribly weak and not very happy with me. The Shandar are kind of on the sidelines, while I also fairly recently brow-beat the Ackdarians to obtain their Loros Fruit colony. The Ugnari have mostly been getting steamrolled by the Kiadians. The few remaining pirates are mostly an annoyance, but they do maintain a lot of ships, and enjoy trying to chain-raid me constantly.

The main problem I've had is that my economy does not churn out the dollars I was used to. I made a serious error by not pouncing on super-luxuries earlier, which handicapped me quite seriously due to my anemic economy. Politically, the Securan-Kiadian-Teekan MDP party prevents me from singling one of them out at a time. Also, the Kiadians are very far ahead techwise - they have Plasma TBolt IIIs, among other things like troop cloning facilities, which I imagine is very, very far down their queue. I have had to steal research madly from everyone else to try to catch up (I had two very good agents early on, one was lost during a 90% steal a short while ago), otherwise this would've been a lost cause a lot earlier on. I still do not have FireStorm IIIs as my research capacity sucked until now, along with one serious critical failure right before I got FireStorm IIs.

My empire's military overall is actually pretty decent. I have four fleets (packs of 4) of Devastator Pulse-based destroyers, along with four fleets of regular FireStorm-fitted ships, plus a few combat carriers. I was intending to build many more destroyers as they are way more effective against the AI than my normal ships are.

I'm sitting on a relatively large pile of cash, however I am running a very large deficit. Super-luxury trades are about the only thing sustaining me now, but the increasing sanctions are threatening me there, especially because my reputation is god-awful.

Attached is a screenshot of the galaxy map, with my empire in red. The goal of this game is simply to win. I learned a good number of things from this game, and I'd enjoy seeing steadier hands try steering this game to a decisive victory.

Unfortunately, the forums won't let me link to the save file, so if you're interested in giving this a go, send me a PM and I'll give you a link to get the save.

[Unbroken]

Here's another screenshot, this one of the empire statistics. Forgot to mention that I do not currently control the Zentabia Fluid, but I was going to dispatch a few destroyers to rectify that situation (read: if it's mining the fluid, it is going to die horribly).

[Icemania]

Very cool Unbroken but I'll politely decline and say that I am sure you can recover. I am however sad that you are not continuing until the defeat screen ... that's the screenshot I'd really like to see! [:D]

[Unbroken]

It's not so much that I've had to try and recover, it's more that I've been playing catch-up all game. I've never enjoyed having to go colony-collecting, and since my private economy is so much smaller than the AI's, I can't rely on that to help pad my victory %.

I forsaw this degenerating into me having to either bombard or invade every single colonizable world in the game, which I don't like doing since when I am in that position, I know victory is only a matter of time so at that point I lose interest. Also, with bombardment, the AI will simply recolonize those worlds within a matter of game-months.

The main strategy I think I'd have to employ is to assemble as many small invasion fleets as I possibly can, then go blitz the biggest AI threat, but I have no idea how I'd possibly defend all that new territory without dispersing my firepower over a giant area, or building a lot of defensive bases. This may work if my economy doesn't fall over dead from the troop & ship maintenence, especially if the super-luxury sales dry up.

Anyways, I may revisit this once I have the time to design a more concrete strategy. If I do, I'll probably continue it as a more in-depth AAR.

[Unbroken]

After a little bit of time scoping the situation out, I believe my best chance of winning is to hit the Kiadians with one hell of an invasion blitz, targetting their biggest colonies. I can assemble some troop transports, stuff them full of armor + a few SFs and they should be strong enough to defeat almost any garrison they have, short of a troop dump.

If this fails, the last resort plan is to bombard every single planet in the game, irrespective of the reputation problems. My destroyers can easily sweep any defenses aside, while a couple of frigates can, within a few game weeks, glass most of the smaller colonies without trouble. If I can break the Kiadian and Securan fleets, I'll likely default to this plan as I doubt the remaining combined fleets could crush thirty or forty destroyers wielding Devastator Pulses without being annihilated themselves.

So here we go:

2147/08/05 - time to put down two more destroyer fleets of 4, also queued troop carriers + recruiting teeming hordes of armor and SF. Demons 2 (a destroyer fleet) is still camped in low orbit around the Kiadian homeworld. Since I can't declare due to MDP dogpiling, I plan to stay in sneak-attack mode until I am more ready.

2147/12/06 - well, there goes my last low-level agent. Got captured on a 92% tech steal - figures. My last good agent is busy lifting the Kiadian's ops map. I need to find their fleets so they can be introduced to the Boskaran idea of a 'good time'. Also, I cannot recruit troops fast enough!

2148/10/01 - my three Demons finally arrive at the Zentabia source, and instantly vapourize the Kiadian station sitting in orbit. No, bad AI! Those resources are mine!

2148/12/03 - two of my destroyers die because one jumps in ahead of the rest and gets cut up, the other due to a little too much friendly fire. Oh well - I got the ops map. Seems the majority of the Kiadian space fleet was busy paying the Sluken a visit. Those fleets plus a 26-stack are camped at Memban, which definitely merits a surgical strike. Best part? They're refueling; no easier DP target can be desired. Hyperspace ho! [Sidenote, I now have over 1M credits]

2149/02/18 - The Securan 14th fleet is blockading a small colony of mine. You shouldn't have done that...

2149/05/05 - Now their 7th fleet is blockading another colony. Go away. I don't want to play with you right now.

2149/11/27 - Hmm. I can't find those fleets from before. Still causing problems, still blowing things up, but their mil. strength isn't dropping. They must be spamming ships elsewhere. I dispatched my main invasion force to the Kiadian home system.

2150/04/10 - found some of their ships refueling. Lit them up. Didn't seem to dent their military strength again, which disturbs me. Reputation has fallen to Evil, no dogpile yet. The last resort may be moved ahead of schedule if the AI isn't going to declare; glassing planets doesn't trigger auto-DOW while invasions do.

2150/08/10 - lifted another ops map. Kiadians are sending 20-ship fleets to try and dislodge me. Yay! No more trying to chase them down. All I have to do is sit tight and wait a little longer. Their hyperdrives are horrible on some of them ships, while some seem to have Torrent IIs or even IIIs. Two months after this, a 20-stack engaged a 6-ship destroyer fleet. I lost two destroyers, their whole fleet died. Also, their HW is now up to 3500M battle value in troops, with the bunker. This is going to be interesting to say the least.

2150/11/28 - I need to pull the trigger now. Kiadian score is at 72%. I plan to draft my regular fleets for dedicated bombard duty. Let's get this party started.



I'll continue in another post. Screenie is of DPs being deployed against a small fleet refueling.

[Unbroken]

Continued from the last post:

2151/01/01 - just noticed a Kiadian fleet jumping three of my destroyers before forced DoW. My four destroyers got demolished, but I took at least six of their capships with me. Also, Kiadians DoW the Ugnari. Wonderful.

2151/02/17 - that same fleet jumps another block of destroyers. This time, I wipe the floor with them, losing one destroyer to ~10 capships. Despite all the ships I've killed, their mil. strength still has not budged.

2151/05/06 - Kiadians DoW me, as I invade their homeworld. Reputation is now Diabolical. That's it - I'm going to bombard everything I see. No more Mr. Nice Boskara.

2151/06/27 - Wiped two colonies out, and invaded one successfully. The homeworld attack is in a bit of trouble, since despite me dropping a full 1M BV over the AI, sheer numbers sadly tells its tale. I sent my troop ships to go grab reinforcements ASAP, as I'd rather not lose my best general.

2151/10/12 - leveled more colonies, but the homeworld attack's a bust. I should've brought way more troops. WAY more troops. The things I'd give to have cloning facilities... Still not making a dent in their mil. strength. Why is this happening? On the bright side, the Kiadians are going bankrupt very quickly.

2151/11/07 - the Shandar decide blockading me is a good idea. I don't agree with their logic.

2152/06/26 - billions of lives are lost under the hailstorm of Shaktur torpedos across the galaxy. The Kiadians are ready to peace out, but I am nowhere near done with them yet - war weariness will paralyze them ages before it harms me. I want their homeworld, and I am not going to stop until it is mine. The vaunted Kiadian fleets have yet to show themselves to me since the DoW, but they're still at war with the Ugnari, having subjugated the Sluken. In a twist of irony, the pirates are actually helping me by drawing defensive base fire and being general pests. Hah. Kiadian score is down to 57% and falling dramatically every time I incinerate a world.

2152/12/02 - my regular fleets need to refuel. Lost a carrier and a frigate, with the fleet admiral toast too, but oh well. Gonna rotate in my two other regular fleets to keep my momentum rolling. Also invaded another colony or two.

2152/12/21 - Kiadians DoW the Ackdarians, and they seem to be trying to retake some lost colonies with lone troop transports.

2153/02/16 - did a Kiadian health checkup. They are now completely broke, and their mil. strength is falling rapidly; they're down about 1/3rd from war's start. All I have to do is keep squeezing.

2153/05/10 - scattered ships are attacking my resource bases. Retook the lost colony, bombardments continue. They're now attacking another colony I took, but meh. I can always bombard...

2153/07/24 - d'oh. Found a few destroyer fleets sitting idle. I could've used those to continue applying pressure. The fleet camping the Kiadian HW needs to refuel, so I'll rotate them out. Crashed Equinox II drives, as all my ships use them. I'm also tempted to crash FireStorm IIIs.

2153/09/07 - got some construction ships to start building a few bases in the captured territory, mostly for refueling reasons. Also started building some defensive bases to deter low-level attacks. Ackdarian fleets are doing me a favour by causing grief for the Kiadians. At this rate, I should be able to completely defeat them in a few game years -- if I can do so without crippling their fleet a lot, I will reap epicly huge tech rewards when I retire them.



To be continued!

[Icemania]

Nice work! Great to see a suitably evil strategy used for the Boskara! Looking forward to more AAR's until you get a Victory Screen ...

[Unbroken]

Before I start this part, I checked the Kiadians again: their mil. strength has fallen below 20k for the first time since they mass-upgraded their fleets some time ago. However, they pulled 80k credits out of their asses - not that it'll help them much.

Overall, I am the closest race to winning at 57%, followed closely by the Ackdarians at 54%. Despite this, I am #2 by colonies (Securans are ahead by 1) and #1 by population. I can easily max out my racial victory score by re-enslaving all non-Boskarans, so the more colonies I burn to the ground, the larger my score will grow. My economy score is a weak 4%, but it's been around there for the entire game.

I plan to continue the Kiadian war until they are absolutely defeated. I could use the free tech bonuses from retiring their ships. After they are put to rest, the other races should not pose a large threat, as Shandar and Securan missile bombers have difficulty killing my destroyers without overwhelming numbers, and they're only going to get more difficult to destroy as time goes on: once I get FireStorm IIIs, I plan to beeline for reactive armor.

I stole Quantum reactors from the Teekans during the last AAR posts, but it wasn't that important to the wargoal, so I didn't act/note it. I spent some time upgrading my civilian ships by hand before starting this part.

Here we go.

---


2153/09/19 - Hey cool! A new, not-bad scientist appeared! This'll help a lot. Shaktur torpedoes continue to sweep planetary surfaces clean of Kiadian cities. I also just realized I never rebuilt my weapon research station after it was sabotaged. Whoops.

2153/10/12 - Ops map steal: masses of ships are being built at far-off colonies. One of these shipyards is about to get smoked by 3 Ackdarian fleets. Sucks to be them! I cannot find any more big fleets floating around, meaning the Kiadians are unlikely to mount any big comebacks unless I let them.

2154/02/20 - Bam. Equinox IIs - those will help a lot. Also had the Boskaran troop surge event fire, which will also help a lot.

2154/03/20 - dispatched 2.1M BV in troops to hit a colony with the Advanced Medicomplex wonder. I think it'll be enough. Securans keep wanting to trade me no sanctions for a mining station. No. Ackdarians also invaded a Kiadian colony in their space. Go team! Kiadians are down to 11 colonies, from around 30.

2154/06/03 - attack spam out the rear. Some dude sabotaged a mining base of mine. Invasion of medicomplex colony in process, although disjointedly due to my troop carriers standing around watching too much. A lone Kiadian troop transport got past a defense base of mine - well, guess I'll invade it back shortly.

2154/09/16 - lost that colony they hit, but no biggie. 1.6M in troops are on their way. Aside from them trying to dislodge my destroyers, the only threat is a lone Kiadian destroyer harassing a space port of mine. Kiadian-Ugnari war ends. Kiadians also had Zentabia fluid for all of five seconds: I re-directed a fleet specifically to remove their mining base, and iced a Securan constructor waiting nearby.

2154/12/21 - Kiadians want a ceasefire. The Kiadian ambassador who brought us the request is promptly taken out back and shot. Also, the pirates were getting uppity, the penalty for such behaviour being the loss of 1 LSP.

I checked this LSP, and good lord. There had to have been forty pirate ships there. Soon as the DPs roared, I got spammed with about 12 treasure/lost ship notices. Holy crap.

2155/02/04 - Kiadians are down to 6 colonies. Crashed FireStorm IIIs because I was terribly tempted, and I can't spend 1.5M credits that fast. Having those will give me a huge edge.

2155/04/16 - this war is all but over. Kiadian mil. strength is at 10k, they are at 6 colonies: two are in their home system, one is about to get steamrolled by me (66% quality, not worth taking. Arm torpedoes!), and the other three are in former Sluken territory. They will get a visit from me soon enough.

2155/06/26 - the Sluken have done a few too many drugs, and declare war on the Kiadians. MDP party mobilizes and DoWs them right back. Way to go, morons. Securans are blockading me again and I really do not care. Gathering troopage for the big push on the Kiadian HW. They have, including the bunker bonus, a total of 3325k there. Good lord I hate it when the AI spams troops defensively. The Shandar beat my constructors to the Zentabia fluid. The punishment for that transgression is having your constructor flattened by Devastator Pulses.

2155/11/04 - the last Kiadian colony not in their home system has been wiped out. Still waiting to amass overwhelming troops before delivering the final blow. Shandar have been complaining that I attacked them, but they won't do anything about it.

2155/12/28 - Oh this is rich. They built a Planetary Shield around their homeworld. You guys crack me up!

2156/03/21 - gonna hit their smaller colony first as a warm-up. I should have a few more troops by then.

2156/07/13 - pirates are being a bit annoying. Still waiting for my troop ships to arrive.

2156/10/23 - Baruunda 2 is mine; not much can stop around 30 armored divisions... bringing up a few extra for the final attack. Fighting has died down aside from suicidal pirate raids. I think I will break the Securans next, due to their explosive growth as of late. The Ackdarians are just as strong, but have been subjugated by me for a long time now. I am also now the proud owner of the sole Zentabia source in the galaxy.

2157/01/24 - just noticed the Fortress of Torak on a 93% volcanic world in newly conquered territory. That's an easy colony right there. Almost ready to hand it to the Kiadians one last time.

2157/05/07 - invasion's partway done. They're suiciding their ships on my destroyers, those honourless curs! I want those!

2157/08/23 - and it is done. The Kiadian Confederacy has been lain to rest at long last. A little over ten years to the day this AAR started, a great galactic power is gone, never to rise again.

About damn time though.

[Unbroken]

A bonus image, just before I hit the pirate LSP. I could not resist it.

[Unbroken]

With the Kiadians now defeated, my attention will now turn to the Securans. First, I have a lot of housekeeping to do. I picked up 51 Kiadian military ships, 22 constructors (!), 98 explorers (!!), and around 95 mining bases, as well as 14 60k research bases all over the place. The military ships contain 61 troops, which makes me wonder why they never attacked me with them.

I'm going to retire/scrap the majority of this junk, since it won't help me much.

As far as their top-of-the-line tech goes, they had Meridian Shields, Hyperfusion reactors, Reactive armor, fleet targetting (but no ECM - you may wanna fix this Ice). I was also unaware medical facilities on board troop transports actually do things. Some of their ships hadn't been retrofitted in a while, from the looks of things, but it won't matter. I am going to reap a nice tech payout from this.

Without further ado, let's roll.

---

2157/08/28 - I'm going to invade some pirates because I do not like them. They should just leave me alone!

2157/09/14 - I have deployed all four regular fleets to start glassing the Securans. I'm not going to bother hunting for a DoW that much, since they have no wonders for me. I'll invade good colonies, but the rest is being slashed and burned. Also, FireStorm IIIs are at 87%.

2157/11/18 - conquered that pirate colony. Even those constructors I got will give me free tech: already I've obtained Armored Shock Forces for free. Yippee!

2158/02/12 - the unofficial Securan-Boskaran war begins with the planetary bombardment of four colonies on the border. I also picked up a TON of free tech from the retirement plan, the nicest one so far being Reactive Armor. Also almost got enough in shields to open Meridian Shields up for research.

2158/04/09 - and with great joy I report I now have FireStorm IIIs, thanks to a retired ship. I think it's time to burn some of my 1.4M credits on a new celebratory fleet! I also have Massive Fuel Cells to boot, along with Meridian Shields.

2158/06/21 - A Shandar blockade force was there. Now it is not there. More Securans perish under constant barrages of FireStorm torpedoes. Despite the Securans having a whopping 67k mil. strength, I haven't seen much of it yet. They demand I leave their systems as I massacre their people. Funny stuff - being evil is fun!

2158/11/12 - Demons 2, a fleet of six destroyers, dies while valiantly clearing the Securan HW of orbital facilities. Oh well, I can easily replace them.

2158/12/01 - Securan military strength has already fallen 10k, just from me clearing orbital facilities. I've sent two fleets to retrofit to the new designs, and started building #5. I may build more. Many more.

2159/05/30 - not much happening. Shandar ships keep attacking me out of nowhere. Shandar ships keep dying too. The Securans aren't doing anything besides sitting there and dying. My score is up to 67% and climbing slowly. That stupid infinitely-spawning Sand Slug destroyed my mining base at Korrabia. Very annoying. Also had an economic crisis event sap me of 400k.

2159/12/19 - Oh noes. I lost my very first frigate to the Securans. Took 'em long enough.

2160/03/27 - The Securans are on the verge of utter defeat, as they only have 4 colonies left, despite their 53k mil.strength. I'm going to send fleet #5 to start pillaging Ackdarian colonies.

2161/06/17 - I got a little lax. Oh well - the Securans are defeated. The Ackdarian capital world is at 0% quality, thanks to bombardment fire. 117 free military ships, 11 constructors, 43 explorers... ship & base maint is going to strangle my economy if I don't deal with it now. Score is at 71% - I can wring 6% if I enslave all non-Boskarans, so I'm just about there. I'm going to also bombard Teekan colonies. Hell, I'll bombard anything that ain't red now.

Continued in the next post, so I can add a pretty picture of the Securans getting mauled.

[Unbroken]

From here on in, this is going to be pretty downhill.

As of 2161/11/07, I am now bombarding the Teekans too, retiring Securan ships, and so on. Score is at 78%, so I'm almost there. It's literally a matter of razing enough colonies to inflate my share of the score.

---

2161/12/22 - 79%. Probably another big colony or two will end this.

2161/02/20 - We have a problem. I can't increase my population or territory score any higher. I actually have to pad my economy score by one percent to win. Oh hell. Corruption is what is causing me so much grief - might even be worth switching to Hive Mind simply to win. Better idea: I'll invade the Ugnari home system, since it has the Trader's Bazaar wonder.

2162/05/22 - still bombarding. Need to focus the Teekans down harder due to their solid economy. My fleets need fuel though.

2163/02/19 - invaded the Teekan capital, they DoW'd me, and five seconds later I subjugate them and keep attacking. Hah, fooled you! I keep losing frigates since they end up standing still if I fail to micro them.

2163/08/18 - I DoW the Teekans again as I am sick of microing my fleets to attack ships. They had three fleets refueling at one station. Could not help myself.

2163/09/18 - re-subjugated them. Still haven't won. I'm getting a bit annoyed.

2163/12/09 - after enslaving every single non-Boskaran in my empire and wiping out some more Teekans, I finally broke the 80% victory threshold and win the game.

The economic handicap on Extreme is simply that: it makes it very, very hard to win without milking super-luxuries, as those were about the only thing sustaining my empire during this entire AAR. Without them, I doubt I could've fought back all that much with the huge deficit I was running.

I want a medal for 'Most Colonies Destroyed', or 'Most Innocents Slain'. I must have demolished at least 50 colonies during the last sixteen-odd game years.

Aside from not tapping super-lux earlier, I thought I was in a much stickier position that I actually ended up being in. I did not ever consider waging galactic-scale genocidal non-war as one of my options until push came to shove. I never imagined I'd burn through the Securans in three game-years the way I did. There was never any real question of reining it in, or playing defensively - I had absolutely no reason to do so, given how little and weakly the AI attempted to attack my main assets. It seemed far more concerned with trying to defend itself, and keep its fleets topped up on fuel. Not having to defend tons of useless colonies really helped too.

Playing as the Boskara is awesome, by the way. If you haven't tried them yet, give them a whirl.

Here's the victory screen:

[Icemania]

Good stuff Unbroken!