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View Full Version : AIWar: Space strategy for hardcore gamers


vonduus
07-18-2010, 08:50 PM
Hi guys.

I just made an announcement on the AIWar forum, telling everybody there how good a game Men of War is. So I feel it is only fair if I tell you guys, why I think AIWar is such a great game.

From the developers home site:

At A Glance
- Space-based RTS, single player or up to 8 player co-op.
- Powerful emergent AI that retreats, probes defences, and surprises even veterans with intelligent tactics.
- 30,000+ ships at a time on 10-120 simultaneous planetary battlefields.
- Different Every Time: 16 billion procedural maps, each with specific units. - A focus on deep strategy with nearly no micromanagement.
- PC Gamer UK (November 2009): AI War breaks most of the genre's rules. Which is precisely why it's incredible... This out-of-the-blue one-man passion project is one of this year's finest strategy games.

http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php


AIWar is an RTS space game. Two ai's have taken over the whole universe, except one planet system. This is where you begin your game, with the goal of eliminating the ai's two mother planets. You mine resources, harvest knowledge and build space fleets, just like in any other space RTS. What makes this game special is the scope: You control fleets consisting of literally thousands of ships.

Basically, what you do is to defend your own home planet, while trying to kill the enemy's home planets. At first you conquer a few nearby planets, to get resources and knowledge. With the knowledge you unlock new technology, improve your ships and turrets. But every time you conquer a new planet, or conduct various aggressive actions, the ai gets more vicious, ie. sends more and better ships against you. So in mid game you control thousands of ships and turrets, but this is then balanced by the fact that your task now is to defend your front line and your home planet against waves of thousands of enemy ships, while at the same time expanding your territory. What is really special, imo, is the fact, that you actually begin to choose exactly which planet systems you want to conquer, realizing that conquering everything will lead to an ai so strong that he cannot be beaten.

Your base fleet consists of fighters, bombers and frigates. Fighters kill bombers, bombers kill frigates, and frigates kill fighters. In addition to this you select one bonus ship class at the beginning of the game. As the game progresses and you harvest more knowledge, you can spend this knowledge on unlocking Starships, special turrets, and various auxiliary units, or upgrading your available ship classes. Certain planets have Advanced Science Labs, when you conquer one of those, you get access to a new ship class. You end up with eight different ship classes, each with four mark levels, in addition to your fighters/bombers/frigates. The higher level ships are in addition to your lower level ships, so you end up with thousands of mk. I and mk. II ships, hundreds of mk. III ships and dozens of mk. IV ships - in addition to your several Star Ships mk. I, II and III.

I don't know how many different ship classes there are in the game, probably more than a hundred. This means that no two games are the same, as the classes you unlock are chosen randomly.

There is so much good to say about this game, that I don't know what to say next. So I better stop here. One important thing though: This game really shines in MP mode. There is no pvp play, only coop, with up to eight players against a very vicious ai. I have had some of my best gaming experiences in AIWar, coop mode. The only other games I know of, that is as hard as this, is Soldiers, and Men of War.

All in all, this might on the surface look like a run of the mill space game, but it really is something special. It is very hard to win, it took me months before I achieved my first total victory. And there is no one way to win, the ai is pretty unpredictable, so the strategy you used to win one game may be a disaster in another.

The game is still evolving: Every few months there is an official update with new stuff, and if you are so inclined, you can participate in beta testing these updates. Right now the studio is busy finishing another project, but normally there is a new beta patch every week. There is an existing expansion to the game, there is a mini-expansion coming up very soon, in august I believe, and a major expansion due out sometime this winter.

There is a demo available, so you can try it out for yourself:

http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php

:):):)

PS Did I mention that the main design was all done by one person?