AI War 2:Dark Zenith

Dark Zenith

It looks like some powerful race has twisted a clan of Zenith into their agents. You can tell they once were Zenith, but now they only exist to destroy all other life in the galaxy. These Zenith are also eerily reminiscent of the Dark Spire. Any force powerful enough to bend both the Spire and Zenith to their own ends is to be feared!

Short Version

During the game, the Dark Zenith can invade. This will create some new planets in the galaxy, populated by a very angry group of Zenith. Are you tired of implacable foes yet?

If you have both the Dark Spire and Dark Zenith enabled then your life will be even more exciting; all members of the Dark Alliance seek to destroy everything. This is intended to be the scariest minor faction in the game as of DLC2. It's intended to be able to fight the AI toe to toe (especially with Dark Spire allies)

Goals

• Have a really interesting economic engine in the game

• Add some unexpected alliances (The Dark Alliance, between the DZ and DS).

• Provide an implacable enemy faction strong enough make the AI sweat. The Nanocaust is the other main "Conquer the galaxy faction", and this tries to improve on something like the Nanocaust to make it more interesting and interactive.

• Give the player a reason to attack the DZ homeworlds, by placing some structures the player can hack for DZ units.

• Include some interesting minor interactions for people who want to look really closely; the DZ will sometimes build Pirate Epistyles, who will send out ships to hijack transports. Pirate Epistyles build unique units

Economy

The Dark Zenith begin with a large invasion force, but it uses a powerful economic engine to build more units. The DZ have several types of economic structures.

• Terminii are used to create new resources. The fundamental resource is Metal, which is harvested and stored at the Metal Terminus. Transports then move the Metal to other Terminii, which transform resources into more powerful resources. The resource types are Metal/White/Green/Blue/Red/Black.

• The DZ then transports Resources to Epistyles, which use them to build new units and structures.

• Some Epistyles are piratic, and will hijack resources bound for other Epistyles.

• The DZ can also upgrade itself; it will sometimes spend a lot of resources to permanently improve itself. It can increase its income permanently, it can increase how many structures it can build, etc...

Another version of me explaining how things work

• The DZ economy has Terminii (resource production), Epistyles (use resources to make things) and Transports (move resources between structures).
• The start of the economy is the Metal Terminus, which is fed by Harvesters.

• The DZ then uses Transports to bring the Metal to other types of Terminii to generate new resources
  • So for example, a transport will bring metal to a green terminus, where its converted into green resource
  • Combinations of the lower resources (White/Blue/Green) and metal are used to create the higher level resources (Red/Black)
  • As these resources are produced, they are then brought to Epistyles to do the actual building of new units and structures.

• Different units, upgrades and structures cost different amounts of resources.

• A quick description of the resources, which are at least in part inspired by Magic: The Gathering.

• Metal is the base resource
• Green corresponds (roughly) to the health of a unit/structure
• Blue corresponds (roughly) to the Shields of a unit
• White corresponds to "Utility/Misc"
• Red is Damage
• Black is for new scary weapons systems and stuff

Jormugandr

This is a unique feature for the DZ. When the DZ homeworlds are attacked, they can unleash Jormugandr against the galaxy. When there aren't any any active attacks against the DZ homeworlds going on, the Jormugandr just wander around the homeworlds. Once a homeworld is attacked, the Jormugandr are free to demolish any attackers and then start rampaging through the galaxy for a few minutes, then it must retreat to the DZ homeworlds again. Each time the DZ homeworlds are attacked, the Jormugandr are unleashed for longer.

Fimbulwinter

The DZ will convert planets they capture