AI War:OLD Guardians
What Are Guardians?
Q: What purpose do Guardians serve?
A: Guardians are part of the shift away from just huge numbers of fleet ships in our new emphasis on larger centerpieces. The AIs have massive new command stations and a variety of guard posts, as well as mobile Guardians that not only defend but launch often-brutal counterattacks. Guardians are one of the new elements that take the place of AI turrets, which the AI no longer uses at all, and in general they lead to a vastly different feel of game. The different combinations of guardians you will find makes planets feel more unique and fun before you even get into the various special weapons that have always been a cornerstone of AI War.
Contents
Guardian reinforcements
A certain number (varies by difficulty) of guardians are now seeded at each command station and guard post belonging to the AI, except for special forces guard posts. These ships are mobile and powerful, and present a more serious counterattack threat than the recently-added new guard posts, which are stationary. In other words, if you launch an attack and botch it, then you it's possible you might have a bunch of guardians turning offensive and coming after you.
During each reinforcement phase of a planet, the AI is now allowed to add a single guardian to either the command station or one of the guard posts. It is only allowed to add a single guardian per reinforcement phase and the command station or guard post in question can't already have its cap of guardians.
If the AI is unable to add a guardian, it does not get any recompense.
If the AI sends reinforcements to guard something that turns out to be dead (which happens legitimately, if something dies at just the wrong time), those reinforcing ships now fizzle and disappear.
Does the AI difficulty level affect how many guardians the AI gets?
The per-guard-post cap of guardians is difficulty-dependent:
- Regardless of AI difficulty the AI always gets tachyon guardians.
On difficulty 5 and below, the only guardians that the AI gets are the "freebie" tachyon guardians.
- On difficulty 6, the AI only gets a single guardian at each guard post, and it cannot ever rebuild these when they die.
- On difficulty 7+, the AI can rebuild guardians, but only gets a single one per guard post (and only starts with one).
- On difficulty 8+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets two per guard post (and starts with two).
- On difficulty 10+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets three per guard post (and starts with two).
The AI does not get any guardians at all on planets adjacent to the player home planets. This is consistent with ion cannons, AI Eyes, etc.
It is not possible for starships or guardians to be part of cross-planet attacks or border aggression.
Types of Guardians
- 50 new types of Guardians have been added to the Base game (5 Mk versions each of 10 different overall types):
- Artillery
- Flak
- Heavy Beam
- Laser
- Lightning
- Raider
- Sniper
- Spider
- Tachyon Guardian
- Most AI-controlled wormholes now have a Tachyon Guardian at them, putting the scouting balance approximately back to where it was before the AIs lost turrets. The difference now, however, is that if these tachyon guardians are destroyed, the AI is very unlikely to rebuild them. This makes it possible to "carve paths" for scouting, whereas before it wasn't really feasible to do that.
- Tractor
Light Of The Spire Expansion Added Guardians
(in development)
