the garrisons are cool but I feel like the offensive tec are way better. The titan is probably the most oppressive thing in the game fully built god forbid you get an artifact on it and the rebellion t5 research late game basically is a GG button if people neglect anti culture tech ( which Ai always does) and suddenly 500 supply rebellions are popping up in every world.
With Vasari only having bombers, I hate the idea of mass carrier armies for enemies, but it's nice they have the ship that is solely meant to destroy fighters. It sucks it so squishy but it lets me take a fully defended world is less than 3 minutes. Less than 45 seconds if I have my Titan. The TP ability does aoe to all enemy ships so i wipe fighters and bombers, then eat the rest using The Maw.
I found a huge problem with the AI in this game no matter what difficulty you play on. Once you got a big deathball of a fleet the AI will always try to flee from your fleet even as youre bombing their homeplanet to bits with capital victory on. Its like once you reach a critical mass of ships youre guaranteed to win because the A.I. simply refuses to fight you and lets you roll over one planet after the other. Even when youre playing against teams they dont seem to coordinate their fleets at all. Not once have they tried to stop me with two fleets against one (even on impossible) and its been like this every single game ive played so far.
This may be patched now. I played a couple nightmare AIs yesterday, and they both sent their whole fleet to defend the home world from my full supply fleet.
@@friednoodlesz i just tested it and youre kinda right. while everything else i described pretty much still is an issue, atleast this time they defened their homeworld.
I have seen them coordinate assaults against me, but there seems to be some conditions(based on observation). Both need to be in a "low threat" state where they are not pressured on a different front. If one of them gets attacked in a different region, it will try to defend itself, and it might be too far away from the other AI to send a fleet. They both need a good path into your territory. I havent seen them try to pincer you(AI 1 attacking planet X and AI 2 attacking planet Z at the exact same time), but if they can both attack the same planet(potentially from different phase lanes), they will do that.
I will say this at the end of the series but i agree although early game ai is terrifying as they have huge bonus there actual ability to play the game is quite limited leading to a very easy late game
Defensive structures have a singular purpose, and that is to stall the enemy until your fleet arrives. Only go crazy on defensive structures if there is a bottleneck and gauss canons can get vapourised by a mid game fleet, so it isn't worth the investment. You're better off building a Starbase with repair bays. Gauss canons are viable in the early game but are very situational.
It is worth noting that Gauss Turrets have better armour and hull, and better range(which can be further upgraded) and pierce(600), so it will deal maximum damage to heavy cruisers and capital ships, while Autocannon Turrets will only deal 25-33% of its maximum damage to such targets. The Autocannon Turret is cheaper, but if you buy 2 of them, they actually end up being more expensive. 2 of them will have more total armour and health compared to a single Gauss Turret though, so they are better for delaying tactics(fodder). The Autocannon Turret is only really effective against corvettes, frigates and light cruisers, and if placed behind a starbase, will often not be in range of good targets.
