AI War:OLD Golems

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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 one AI personality, the Golemite, uses any golems normally, but all may use them during waves if you activate the Hard Broken Golems variant (see below). 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.

Activating a broken golem is a fairly sizable task, not to be undertaken lightly. First, the planet must be captured (automatically capturing the broken golem at the same time). Then you must actually repair the broken golem, which takes a lot of engineers a long time, and generally costs a lot of resources. And when you are finally ready to take the golem online, it takes 10,000 to 40,000 energy to activate and run it.

Golems used to have a self-attrition. While they no more drain your economy, re-repairing a damaged golem still cost a lot of metal.

The abilities of the golems vary, but they are all very powerful if used carefully. The biggest threat to golems are spirecraft, other golems, and Orbital Mass Drivers.

Three Variants Of Golems, By Minor Faction

• As of version 5.0 of the game, the golems are also implemented via one of three minor faction options:
  • Broken Golems (1 - Easy)
    • The EASY version of this minor faction simply gives you the golems with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. Consequently, your adjusted score is also halved.
  • Broken Golems (2 - Moderate)
    • The MODERATE version of this minor faction gives you the golems at a moderate energy cost and with a small AI Progress increase upon repairing them from their broken states. Consequently, your adjusted score is also reduced by 1/3.
  • Broken Golems (3 - Hard)
    • The HARD version of this minor faction gives you the golems at their base energy requirements with no AI Progress cost to repair them. However, whether or not you choose to capture any golems, the AI will be launching periodic large waves with golems (and other big nasty things) of their own -- so you're highly advised to get some golems in order to survive.

Types Of Golems Available For Human Use

• Armored Golems have 500 million health, 100,000 armor, and deal enormous amounts damage with each of their 5 shots. They cut through even fleets of core AI ships like butter.

• Artillery Golems have "only" 100 million health and no armor. Their sole attack is able to do up to an unparalleled 50 million damage with one hit. Hardened targets such as SuperFortresses, guard posts, guardians, and starships are no match for it, especially if the artillery golem strikes from its extreme sub-sniper range. It cannot hit the AI Home Command station, Core guard posts and Core shield generators, though.

• Black Widow Golems have 70 million health and no armor. They can be a bit more tricky to use, and tend to do best with the support of either another golem or other player ships. They are able to fire 50 mid-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 strong main attack shot, which is enough just to keep the occasional stray enemy ship away from them, but that's not the point. They possess 100 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. With this ability, they can sustain a very large and self-renewing raiding party or planetary defense, whatever is most needed. The regeneration ability stops when the golems health drops to 10% or less.

• Cursed Golems are a bit of a mixed bag, as their name perhaps implies. With 10,000,000 health they are the most fragile of the golems, and they lose much more per second. After only 400 seconds being online without repairs they will have gone from full health to 1 health. On the good side, they have 20 shots with 160,000 damage each every 2 seconds and near sniper range. This makes them a very valuable but also very costly tool.

• 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 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 then escape through a wormhole to a friendlier planet while the wasps do the dirty work. It's not quite as flashy as some of the larger golems, but it's comparably safe to use, 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". 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 is completely unable to attack core ships and 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.

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Benefits And Risks Of Capturing

What Are The Benefits And Risks Of Capturing Golems?

Q: Why would I want to capture a golem? Or, better, why would I not want to capture a golem?

A: First, make sure that you read the section above about all of the various costs and penalties that come with golems. Golems are a superweapon, and as in real life there are serious repercussions to using something like that. On the flip side, also as in real life, a very great effect can be derived from their use. Each golem has its own benefits and risks associated with it -- see the above descriptions, and take careful note of the various stats in the in-game hover menus, and you'll want to build your strategies around them accordingly.

Most importantly, if you don't have a clear use for a golem, don't capture it unless you're just looking for it for the fun-factor. But from a strategic standpoint, don't pay the costs of activating a superweapon you don't have a reason for using.

In most games with them activated there are 8 to 10 golems for you to choose from on the galaxy map. To afford maintaining multiple of them, you will need quite a big empire and economy.

The AI most of the time does not use golems itself but it knows how dangerous they are. If you enter an enemy planet with a golem, the AI will handle it like a major fleet of yours.

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Golem Supply

How Does Supply Work For Golems?

Q: Do golems require supply?

A: As of AI Wars 5.0, golems don't need supply anymore and can be used anywhere.

Killing A Mining Golem

How Do I Kill A Mining Golem?

(obsolete) This answer needs rework as Golems have ultra-heavy hulls which some units get large bonuses against. Use the STATS button\reference tab to find what will work for you.

A: The first challenge is actually getting to the golem, if it did not spawn on one of your planets. You'll want to bring along fairly high-level ships that deal a lot of damage. If it is on one of your planets and you are getting down to the wire where it is really close to a loss, then the golem is also closer to the planet center -- so you can do things like put turrets in its way, or stuff like that. You can also use Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators to make your ships faster and able to get out there and kill the golem quicker. You might also be able to get tricky with transports to get ships right up next to him and then hit him (force fields are pointless against this golem).

There aren't any ships with special bonuses against golems in general, so what you want are ships with a high degree of damage output in general. The spire and other starships that hit hard may be a good idea, but they will also be taking heavy damage. If you have a golem of your own, or bombard ships, or electric bombers, or sentinel frigates, those can also do well against the mining golem.

The main thing to remember about defending against a mining golem (in terms of your ships) is that it hits really hard (100,000 damage) but only against a single ship. So he is inherently weaker against large groups of ships. If you group ALL of your autocannons against it that might provide some good effect, if you have those. Keeping lots of little ships around it to distract his shots may also help preserve your larger ships if it takes that bait. Anything that is cheap, numerous, and does a lot of damage is the best bet, though most ships only have two out of the three of those qualities.

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Working With A Zenith Trader

Moved to dedicated page.

Surviving A Zenith Devourer

Moved to a dedicated page.

Interacting With A Dyson Sphere

How Do I Interact With A Dyson Sphere?

A: The Dyson Sphere is certainly the most temperamental of the Zenith minor factions. The Dyson Sphere is a gigantic golem surrounding a captured star that powers it. The Dyson Sphere is absolutely invincible, and there is literally nothing that you or the AI can do about it. The Dyson Sphere starts out on one of the AI planets and at the beginning of the game is hostile towards both the AI and you.

It spawns Dyson Gatlings that are not immortal but still pretty powerful and will attack all non-core ships on sight. If its gatlings, which are not immortal, manage to kill all of the ships on the current planet they will venture outwards.

If you destroy the command station of the AI on this planet, the dyson golem will realize your benign intent and will start producing gatlings that are friendly to you, but hostile to the AI. Those gatlings will help defend the current planet, and will go off to fight at nearby planets as well.

If you then try to take that planet for yourself, watch out -- the dyson sphere will not look kindly on this betrayal, and will produce an accelerated stream of dyson gatlings that are hostile only to you, until it has taken the planet back away from you. It will then resume being friendly with you. Thus if you absolutely have to capture the planet in order to (for instance) capture a fabricator or broken golem that is on it, you can do so without the repercussions being permanent.

One important note is that when a gatling is spawned, its border color in far zoom gives strong clues as to its stance toward you and the AI. Once a gatling is spawned, it does not change its stance -- it fights on until it dies, with whatever orders it was given upon creation. The ones hotile to you will wander the galaxy ignored by the AI until you kill them. They may even wander to your home system and attack/kill your home command station.

If you are able to, you should consider freeing the dyson sphere as soon as possible. Its constant agression angers the AI, but is often not enough to clean the planet of all AI ships, leading to a buildup of considerable AI forces on the planet the dyson is on and its adjacent ones, which could be a roadblock on your way to the AI homeworld.

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