I just finished a game and I have to say that the AI Santiago has no grasp of how to win a war.
Me, the UoP, facing the Believers, the Cult, The Drones, The Gaians, The Hive and as mentioned the Spartans. Talent level, random map. I had a small continent to myself and quickly expanded all over it. When I moved onto the nearby (smaller) continent I found the cult. Cha Dawn was quick to sign a treaty in exchange for a few techs. After all, I was third in power, and no real threat. Santiago was first and after I built the empath guild and contacted her she tried to extort 800 energy credits out of me! (I told her to get bent)
Miriam and Yang also instantly declared vendetta on me, but thats no real big suprise. Deidre was saber rattling but none of them where near enough to me to make me sweat. However Santiago was kicking asses clean across the freaking solar system. At various times the others would ask me to pact against her. I refused, as I was busy building my infrastructure and didn’t want to stop to build troops. I had a tech lead and I used it to beat the others to most of the SP’s. Finally I assembled a strike force and sent a transport to Santiago’s closest base. As soon as I landed she surrendered!
You see, Yang and Miriam had started to wear her down. As a matter of fact Yang had taken several bases from her. Well, I couldn’t let Yang get too big for his britches so I pacted with the Spartans and used my new chaos choppers to clear the bases Yang took.
Heres where Santiago didn’t make sense. I’d take the base. I’d give it back to her. I’d kill all of Yang’s artillery troops that were taking potshots at us. Yet instead of reinforvce the base, Santiago would WAIT until it built a defender. To make matters worse instead of using the perfect opportunity I had given her by killing most of Yang’s troops Santiago didn’t do ANYTHING! I cleared a path for her right into Yang’s territory. On one hand I regretted giving her the bases back but I didn’t want them. None of them had ANYTHING in it, and I building a base up in a war zone wasn’t my idea of fun. Since it was her territory though you’d think the Colonel would try to keep it.
Well, Domai and Diedre decided to join forces against me so I had to divert my attention to defending myself from them. They were closer than Santiago and Diedre was using Domai’s bases to ‘leap frog’ her aircraft to me. (I ended that by probing Domai and framing Diedre with a sabotage attack.) Domai was hard to beat, too. For some reason his troops were really tough even though I had built the Cyborg Factory and had superior weapons. Eventually he surrendered, but it was a defensive battle for me for the most part. (I tried bombing his farms and mines to slow him up, but he had a million interceptors!) Global warming set in but everyone agreed to launch the solar shade. Then Diedre snatched the Planetary Governorship from me.
Question: Even after I lost the governor position I could still click on a rival base and see inside of it. Is that a bug? (I forced myself to not to do that after I found that I still could in case it was) And the global warming message blamed the drones. Do they usually cause this in your games?
Cha Dawn declared vendetta too, but I’ll admit I started it. I threatened to crush him like a bug if he didn’t join me in my crusade to kill Domai. Well, Cha rolled over fast after I took his four land based cities leaving him with a measly three sea bases.
Why does the AI build sea bases so close to the human player? I guess its a purposeful attempt to still resources. It really ticks me off, but I let Cha get away with it since he was basically stealing resources from his old cities and for the longest time he was my only ally. Once the space elevator was built Miriam surrendered to me. I landed some drop tanks in the heart of her empire and took New Jerusalem and a few other bases. Domai gave in when I landed a few troop ships on the opposite side of his empire where he didn’t expect an attack. Yang fought to the finish, but I didn’t throw him into the punishment sphere until the turn before the Ascent to Trascendence. And Diedre? Well, my goal was to trancend not conquer and she was a handful. But I had enough bases that I could spare one early on to build nothing but Fungus missiles. By the mid late game I had a huge arsenal of them. A litterally covered her territory with them and watched the mind worms tear through her troops. Then I rolled in and took only two bases...the two with her SP’s! (Xenoemapthy Dome and the Nueral Amplifier) Actually thats the only reason I bothered with Miriam...she was very far away, but I wanted to capture her SP’s. (Command Nexus and Merchant exchange)
All in all, a fun game. I don’t play as much as I’d like but I think I’ll be able to go to transcend level soon.
Thoughts, comments etc, are welcome!
D4
