AI War:OLD Golems

What Are Golems?

Q: The first expansion to AI War, The Zenith Remnant, introduced a new class of ship called golems. What are they?

A: Golems are massive ships, the size of a fortress or even larger. These ancient war machines were left behind by an alien race known as the Zenith, and are hundreds of thousands of years out of repair in most cases. The only functioning, modern golems belong to the Zenith aliens themselves (which players can encounter as minor factions).

The AI, for the most part, does not use golems. They either don't know or don't care about the repairable broken golems that can be found amidst the wreckage of their systems. Only on AI personality, the Golemite, uses any golems at all in fact. All of the rest of the golems are purely for potential use by humans: if humans see the broken remains of a golem in a system, they can capture that system and then repair the golem to bring it back online. In most maps, there are three golems somewhere out in the galaxy.

Activating a broken golem is a herculean task, not to be undertaken lightly. First, the planet must be captured -- and then you're committed, in one way or another. If the broken golem remains are destroyed before you can finish repairing them, that generally leads to an AI Progress increase of 100 or similar -- and make no mistake, once the AI sees that you have captured a broken golem, it will start coming after you. In fact, it will send stronger waves than usual at that planet.

But your problems are only beginning with the capture. To actually do the repairs takes a lot of engineers a long time, and -- worst of all -- also increases the AI Progress as it proceeds. The amount of AI Progress that is incurred for fully repairing a broken golem varies a bit by the type of golem, and by whether or not the golem is further damaged during the process of restoration, but it generally works out to between 70 and 100 AI Progress just to get it functional. And when you are finally ready to take the golem online, it takes 400,000 energy to activate and run it.

What on earth could possibly be worth all of that trouble and expense? Well, the abilities of the golems vary, but they are all very powerful if used carefully -- and they tend to lead to the most epic battles possible in the game, because the AIs react strongly to the arrival of golems in their systems. Even once a golem is complete and functioning, it takes AI Progress to repair it (again, about 75-100 AI Progress to bring it from 25% health to 100%), and if the golem is eventually lost it will still incur that 100 AI Progress. The biggest threat to golems are other golems and Orbital Mass Drivers.

So, again -- what could make that all worthwhile? Here are some basic details on the golems that humans can capture:

• Armored Golems have 250 million health, and deal 5,000 damage with each of their 30 shots. They cut through even fleets of core AI ships like butter. Good thing, because the AI ships really start pouring in when these guys are around. The downside? Their shots are self-damaging as well as damaging the enemy, so in effect they are expending themselves to take out masses of enemy ships. A single armored golem can often clear three or more Mark IV AI planets before dying itself.

• Artillery Golems "only" have 50 million health, and are also self-damaging. In general, these are the least useful of all the golems in most situations, because they are fairly poor against masses of enemy ships. However, their sole attack is able to do up to an unparalleled 5 million damage with one hit. A single artillery golem can take out an AI home command station in under a minute -- by itself. Other hardened targets such as SuperFortresses are also no match for it, especially if the artillery golem strikes from its extreme sub-sniper range.

• Black Widow Golems are a bit more tricky to use, and tend to do best with the support of either another golem or other player ships. They have very low health for a golem, only 30 million, but they don't damage themselves when attacking enemies -- a notable advantage. They are able to fire 50 3,000-power shots in fairly quick succession, and they are also bristling with 100 tractor beams that lets them pick up and drag enemy ships with them. They are the fastest of the golems (which tend to be rather slow), which makes them good for doing supported raids and other tricky things.

• Regenerator Golems are a non-combat Golem, and yet are one of the most powerful golems. They have a single 3,000-strong main attack, which is enough just to keep the occasional stray enemy ship away from them, but that's not the point. They possess 50 million health, which they are able to use to instantly regenerate any allied mobile military ship that dies on the planet they are on. When an allied ship explodes, it is instantly warped back to the regenerator golem at full health -- and the amount of its full health is removed from the regenerator itself. Like most golems, regenerators require AI Progress to heal themselves; but in the meantime, they can sustain a very large and self-renewing raiding party or planetary defense, whatever is most needed.

• Cursed Golems are a bit of a mixed bag, as their name perhaps implies. Once they are fully repaired and operational (with a paltry 10 million health), they immediately start losing health and will die if you don't heal them -- except that they are unable to be healed by engineers or mobile repair stations or similar. They only have three simultaneous shots of 6,000 power each, but they fire them more quickly than most golems -- and their shots are vampiric. In order to survive, the Cursed Golem must go constantly on the offensive, slaying enemy ships to heal itself. Of course, given that it is healing itself, that also means that this is causing the AI Progress to go up. It's shots are not self-damaging (thank goodness), but the death of this golem is almost assured within 20-30 minutes of it being repaired (thankfully, the death of this one only causes an increase of 10 instead of the usual 100). These golems are the shortest-lived of all, but in the hands of the right player they can self-sustain themselves through enemy territory with only moderate support from allied ships, clearing an important path or obliterating some dangerous planets. Best not to send these against the very toughest AI planets, which will likely overwhelm the cursed golem, though.

• Hive Golems have a very unnoticeable main attack, but they have an entirely unconventional way of dealing with foes: they spawn up to 500 smaller "wasp" ships inside their hull, slowly over time. When the player is ready, they can unload all of the accumulated wasps to wreak havoc on the current planet. Wasps cannot be directly controlled and will die after just a couple of minutes, but more can always be spawned later. Players have the choice of letting off the wasps in occasional controlled bursts, or in huge, overwhelming forces on a much less frequent interval. The best part is that the Hive Golem itself doesn't self-damage, and doesn't even need to be particularly near the enemy forces to let off its wasps. It can simply release the wasps from way across the planet, and even then escape through a wormhole to a friendlier planet while the wasps do its dirty work. It's not quite as flashy as some of the larger golems, but it's comparably safe to use in terms of AI Progress, and it also rewards patience and clever timing of the releases.

• Botnet Golems are the last of the player-controllable golems in The Zenith Remnant. These act sort of like a parasite or leech, in that they reclaim enemy ships -- except that they reclaim enemy ships as "zombie bots" at full health, rather than half health. Zombie bots cannot be controlled by the owner of the botnet golem, but neither do they cost energy or against ship cap, etc. The zombie bots attack any enemies on the current planet, and then run mindlessly to nearby enemy planets. The botnet golem does damage itself in creating the zombies, and also is completely unable to attack any enemy ships that are immobile, have no attack, or which are immune to reclamation. Often the zombie bots are quite capable of taking out those other structures, except for those structures which are never auto-attacked by players. So this means that an unsupported botnet golem can never capture an enemy planet or take out a command station or warp gate, but it can provide the perfect opportunity for a supporting fleet or starship to act with impunity.

In addition to these golems that can be used by human players (all of which start in a broken state), or by the Golemite AI type (all of which start the game having already been rebuilt), the following other golems exist:

• Devourer Golems are used by the Zenith Devourer minor faction.
• Mining Golems are used by the Zenith Miner minor faction.
• Zenith Trade Ships (which are actually a form of golem) are used by the Zenith Trader minor faction.
• Dyson Sphere Golems (which contain a captive star at their center) are used by the Zenith Dyson Sphere minor faction.

AI_War:Fleet_Command