One-Way Doormaster and AIP

[eronrauch]

Hi! I'm a new player and this is my first post here. My friends and I recently picked up AI Wars and have been really enjoying learning the game despite/because we're being beaten fairly evenly by the AI.  However, in a recent 80 planet, realistic, 7 game I've been working on I randomly got the One-Way Doormaster as one of the AI's (Tank as the other) . When I was learning at lower difficulty levels, Black Hole Generators normally weren't even a concern, but now that I'm getting a feel for how AIP works I'm stumped as to how to win this game in an efficient fashion.

My main concern is the mounting AIP from +10 AIP from killing a BHG. I've scouted about 5 jumps out (as far as I can get with Scout IIIs owing to a bazillion Tachyon IVs and Ion IVs) and I would say about 80%+ of those worlds around my home have one. I've seen a few that even have 2 BHGs each. There is a single data center within 5 jumps, no factory IVs, no Dyson Sphere, and no Fabs.  My guess, based on the map, is that the home worlds are each about 15 jumps in different directions away from my home.

Any advice on how to beat this without it turning in to a high AIP fleet-ball grind fest? Or is that pretty much how games against a One-Way Doormaster roll?

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums

A couple years ago this change was made to address this issue:

One-way doormasters now seed with 3x as many data centers as normal, to make up for the AI Progress cost of all those black hole machines (30 each). It's still a harder AI than normal, but now not so egregiously so.

Hopefully that will help

Also remember that if you're going to capture a planet, you can simply leave the BHG intact and capture it with the planet, giving you a defensive asset and no extra AIP from the BHG.

[zoutzakje]

does the extra data center spawn also apply to the Raid Engine AI type (5 AIP for each raid engine)? unlike black hole generators, there is no reason to capture a planet while a raid engine is still alive... I didn't even try it in my recent Raid engine game. I did get the feeling I was seeing more data centers than usual though, so perhaps it was already implemented.

[TechSY730]

Yea, I think every AI type that gets a bonus to the spawn rate of AIP increasing structures (except for turtles and their small bonus to AI eyes) get a similar bonus to the spawn rate of data centers.

[eronrauch]

Thanks for the replies! From what it sounds like, I just got rather unlucky with *where* AIP reducers got spawned, so I should just plug along and weather a few of these bigger front-end waves. Then once I've got access to more of  the [unfortunately spawning] map  I should be able to find what I need to keep AIP in check. As for the suggestion for using the BHGs against the AI, I've certainly been playing along those lines. Particularly, I've teched to Military Command III, and been putting those at the worlds with one [or more] BHGs creating really nasty choke points.  Thanks for the info — so much still to learn!

[keith.lamothe]

Happy to help, let us know how it goes

[zoutzakje]

good luck with your game and feel free to ask us anything if more questions arise =)