2011: An AI War Odyssey – The Setup

2011, An AI War Odyssey

I have decided to do a long-running playthrough of AI War in an attempt to get at its juicy inside bits. I am not good at this game. I’m not good at many games.

I’m just not good at games.

As I mentioned in the Day 0 entry, I think Arcen is a pretty cool company and that AI War sounds incredible, but routinely frightens me with sudden movements and loud noises.

The game has a comprehensive tutorial system that oughtn’t scare anybody off, but, like I said, I’m bad at games and afraid of new things like the outside world and most forms of eye contact. This is not a diary for the experts. This is for the normal bumpkins that have difficulty masticating Dentyne and playing hopscotch. (You shouldn’t do that, by the way. Serious choking hazard.)

I click the “host new campaign” button and get this:

More like GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALAAAAAAAAAXY!

Really, what I get is a panic attack. I breathe into the paper bag until the palpitations subside. That’s what a galaxy looks like, sure. But does it have to be so brain-explodingly galaxian? And this is “simple” style? What the fuck, guys?

Okay, so that’s a galaxy and it looks galaxy-ish and all my other games started in galaxies that looked like galaxies ended in horrible emasculating failure and this JUST WILL NOT DO.

I hear tell things are a lot more manageable if you have choke points. That makes sense in theory. Less avenues of attack makes entrenching yourself a little easier. I make a couple adjustments to the map style.

So, so much better.

Ahh. Much better. At this point, I imagine AI War veterans screaming at the screen. The female players lounging on silk divans, being fed plump, juicy grapes by musclebound cabana boys (or girls) as they solve global warming with their minds; the males clad in tweed jackets, looking up from their dissertations to see this nonsense, eye bulging behind their monocle even as their svelte servants enter through bejewelled archways for their daily hot yoga session and sponge bath followed by a dodo omelette.

This is, generally, not how the game should be played. Adding a vaguely linear structure to the galaxy encourages That Which Must Be Avoided At All Costs. Which is to say: playing AI War like a normal conquer-the-other-dude’s-dudes-with-your-dudes RTS. Though, if you’re way into playing along with these kinds of things, here’s the map seed: 1458984375. That seed contains the starting conditions of my current game. If I keep using that seed, it’ll be the same starting out each time. It won’t let me drop that number in myself, though, but there must be some kind of voodoo that you do to monkeywrench that stuff in.

Since I haven’t explicitly said yet, is that AI War is inherently imbalanced. If you try to go toe-to-toe with every AI-controlled planet, you are going to lose. The purpose of the game is to engender exactly the same kind of run-and-gun desperation that showed up in that re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, just without the AI getting all Frankenstein’s Monster and demanding that we give meaning to its life: The AI has already killed most of our civilization; we’re just the crumbs. They probably know we’re out there, but exactly where isn’t worth the effort. We’re hobbled. We’re the underdogs. Every time we kill an AI-controlled planet, “kill the humans” gets bumped a little higher on the AI’s to-do list. Unless, I have been informed, you make the right choices during the Fallen Spire campaign, but more on that later.

Bearstar Galattacktica

The key, then, is to manage this huge range of ships to pick your way through the galaxy, crushing specific targets that will either further your cause, or reduce the AI’s ability to detect you.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SHIPS, indeed. But most of them are controlled by the bad guys.

Also, see that little red point in the upper-left quadrant of the map? That’s my home world. It’s where I start: Kilaelfu. Hiding in a corner like a goddamn warbling baby.

Now, when I hover over that planet (or any planet with a ship over it) I see what must some kind of bonus ship design unique to that location. Here’s mine:

SPACE PLANE

SPACE PLANE! Mr. Park, you’re on your way to redeeming yourself. I’ll call off the Prototype Space Attack Bears, for now.

So the top line is the base cost of the ship, which is nearly immaterial, considering I’ll need to pump any ship out by the metric fuckton to get anywhere. I don’t know much about the ammo, I guess the attack is base damage. Interestingly, it can shoot further than its dampening range which feels like it would be tremendously frustrating for the AI to counter. Rate of fire isn’t stupendous, though.

Those attack multipliers, though, I have no idea.

This seems pretty useful. Essentially it’s a fightery scout-style ship. I imagine the health on this one is probably better than a scout drone, too. Maybe I can send these as an escort on some far-ranging scouting missions to find planets actually worth attacking.

Ideally, I want my first crack at this to have only one entrance to my homeworld. So, while it’s tempting to take other points along the maze (The Vampire Claw ship sounds pretty interesting, too, and I see a few other Spire-related ships) if I were to choose another location, chances are I’d wind up sandwiched between two AI-controlled planets, which requires me to start conquering the spaces around me just to get some peace of mind and inevitably escalate much sooner than I’d like, given my newness to the game. In a real game of AI War, you likely have to deal with multiple paths heading directly to your home planet, which can get ugly if you piss off the AI too soon and don’t have proper defences in place.

Point of inquiry, though: if I don’t pick those starting designs, do I still get them if I conquer those planets? I don’t know. I also kind of doubt it, but imagine they can be researched.

I should say something about the AI details on the right of that screencap, too.

Previously, I was a sissyface and wouldn’t go above difficulty level 4. Even then, I didn’t fare too well, even with general assurances that I’d need to keep a towel handy to make sure the AI didn’t drool all over itself. Scaling things up past 7 is just asking for trouble.

There’s also different AI types that will have a dramatic influence on the way they perform, what units they use, etc. etc. I don’t have any particular preferences so I’m going with Random Moderate. Although a Zenith Virus Enthusiast has a wonderfully mad doctor tone to it.

Then there’s me. I’ll be flying the pink guys. Shut up. I’m comfortable with that.

You can have friends join the game and play alongside you. I imagine this makes things a lot more interesting, but everyone I know is busy or not cool enough to want to give this game a shot. Or dating me, and heaven knows she puts up with enough of my nonsense that she doesn’t need to hear me lament (even more) about the lack of Space Attack Bears in AI War (I’ve already complained about reality’s lack of attack bears when we go out for dinner, to the mall, to visit friends. She once convinced me to go to her parents’ place for a weekend on the promise that there MIGHT be bears there. At a safe distance. Fighting people that wouldn’t be me.) Obviously, expecting everybody to sit around and play a game for 7 hours is one of the strangest hostage situations I’ve ever been a part of, so you can save and exit if you’re exhausted and want to pick things up the next night.

There’s a pretty excellent community attached to the Arcen Games site, though. If I were hungry for a game, I could probably get someone on board from there. Given the fly-by-night nature of this current operation, that’s not really in the cards. Someday, though, someday.

Let’s check out those other tabs and GET THIS BITCH ON THE FUCKING ROAD.

I picked Complex ship types, just because I haven’t had a good migraine in a while. There’s two sides to this, I guess. On one hand, I can build pretty much anything, so long as it gets researched or otherwise unlocked. On the other hand, I believe it means the AI will have access to more complex ships, meaning I’m going to have to deal with seven shades of bullshit once this little kid starts pissing on the big kid’s porch.

Game options are pretty straightforward. This is where you can enable or disable cheats. For a good time: enable cheats and just start spawning golems like robotic bunnies and watch all the power warnings pop up.

AI Options is where shit gets bananas. You can enable minor factions that aren’t related to the AI but can either help, hinder or otherwise include a measure of utter chaos.

These are probably the options you want to think long and hard about before enabling if you’re new to the game, since they add significant changes to an already pretty deep game.

Which is why I’m starting with pretty much all of them enabled. Give me the Wild Wasteland, honkies.

For reference purposes I have:

Human Colony Rebellions – So, the AI wasn’t as thorough as they thought they were when they excised the human tumors from the galaxy. Every now and then, these cats will rise up against the machines, aggravating the AI in the process. They’re doomed to fail unless you intervene. If you fail to save ’em, the AI decides that maybe organizing their porn folders isn’t as important as MUR-DER THE HU-MANS. If you save ‘em, they’ll make nice and build you some shiny ships you wouldn’t otherwise get hold of.

Human Marauders – Space pirates, basically. You’ll sometimes get raided (or the AI will) by these cats. They ain’t men.

Human Resistance Fighters – Small pockets of resistance, inspired by your luddite crusade. They’ll  sometimes give you a hand if you’re attacking an AI-controlled planet.

Broken Golems – Gargantuan space fighty platforms are scattered throughout the galaxy. I picked Moderate, since “Hard” difficulty lets the AI add them to the waves. Yeesh. Repairing them gives you one hell of a monstrosity, I’m told. But reactivating them takes a long time and will draw the attention of the AI in the process.

Zenith Devourer – A mobile monster ship that roams around the galaxy absorbing other ships to power and repair itself. I’m told it’s nigh-invulnerable. Seems like a nasty customer, but I don’t think it differentiates between AI and myself. Makes me feel a little better about this whole thing.

Zenith Dyson Sphere – a massive, awful golem that is already awake and cranky. It attacks everybody: AI and player. If you manage to wipe the AI off the planet, the golem makes nice and will fight on your side. If you set up a colony on that planet, it reverts back to being angry at you.

Zenith Miners – A massive stripmining golem shows up randomly every 4-ish hours to Galactus the fuck out of a planet.

Zenith Traders – Sets up a mercenary ship vendor on your planet. Grants access to some nicer (and pricy) ships.

Neinzul Preservation Wardens – Starhugging hippies, you ask me. They abhor the rapid removal of resources and use of nukes, and will respond to these things with ANGRY DEATH. Given my intent to GET OPPENHEIMER ON THEY FACES, I get the feeling we won’t get on too well.

Neinzul Roaming Enclaves – Roaming starships that might attack everything, or might ally with the AI. Already I’m thinking that enabling Neinzul stuff might not be a smart move on my part.

Neinzul Rocketry Corps – Old nuke silos left behind. Will sometimes fire at human planets. Yep. Neinzul are dicks.

Fallen Spire – Here’s the money shot. Here’s my guiding beacon in the midst of this weltering fuckball of madness I have brewing. It’s what I’ve been dying for since this game came out, really. An organizing principle for how I’m going to expand beyond my tiny mudball of Kilaelfu. Arcen says this about it. I don’t want to read too much, because, y’know, spoiler warning. I think.

Spire Civilians – 10 or so of these outposts are scattered throughout the galaxy, under the control of the AI and angrying up the AI at a rate of 1 per outpost per hour. I can apparently free them (which will then decrease AI Angry at a rate of 3 per hour) or kill them to be a dick for fun and profit.

Spirecraft – I gather this is where you can start giving the AI some back. You can start mining resources around the galaxy and produce Spirecraft ships, which are, to read the description, supremely stupendously awesomely amazing – capable of taking the fight to the AI.

So that’s the lie of things. I didn’t put any AI plots on. I figure the minor factions will cause enough havoc and I’m already tempting fate by going for random AI types.

Here goes nothing.

Next: Oh god. What have I done?