Getting Started

Newcomers

Welcome to AI War 2!

AI War 2 is a combination of RTS, 4X and Tower Defense. You'll be continiously commanding units in battle, explore the galaxy, and defend your planets all at once.

I'd recommend looking in the quick start section of single player and checking out one of the beginner situations. This should help you familiarize yourself with the game's mechanics and quirks.

General Tips

• Don't attempt to conquer everything, only capture planets that have something important/you need, or have strategic value. A planet that has a Zenith Power Generator or a fleet, or worlds directly adjacent to your home world are good for example.
• At certain AIP points, the ai "techs up" it's units, so that the warden, hunter, and waves will be one level higher.

Veterans

Welcome back to AI War. The AI has taken over the galaxy (again), but lots of things have changed.

Major Mechanic Changes

• in general, AI War 2 is not as micro intensive as classic, and many things have been removed due to redundancy, clutter, or making things easier to understand.
• fleetships are renamed to strikecraft and starships are renamed to frigates.
• instead of producing strikecraft and frigates immedietly, they are bound to a flagship. You can't just, say for example, immedietly build 150 fighters, bombers, missile frigates and a bonus ship. instead, you must have a flagship that has those units attached to it. once built however, there is no limit to how far a strikecraft or frigate can go across the galaxy, like classic.
  • flagships are captured much like golems from classic and they are what lets you expand your military power. Flagships come in 3 varieties, strike (generic transport flagship, but many strikecraft and frigates), officer (flagship has a gimmick or is very powerful on it's own) and lone wolf fleets (no supporting strikecraft or frigates, but flagship is INSANELY powerful)
  • flagships cannot die. Instead, when they reach 10% health, they become crippled. While crippled, a flagship cannot have strikecraft or frigates assigned to it built and if it has a weapon, can't shoot. the flagship can still move however and be repaired back to full strength. While this means that you can't loose your golems anymore, the ai still gets LOTS of salvage for reprisal.
• ARS no longer give their contents via capturing their planet, but by hacking them.
• hull and ammo types are gone
  • these have been replaced with the stats Armor, Albedo, Engine and Mass. More info can be found on AI War 2: Units of Measurement
• you no longer spend knowledge on individual unit upgrades, but instead on categories divided into weapon types, and hull types.
  • while you spend more knowledge short term, with multiple units upgraded at once, you save knowledge long term.
  • all ships are no longer built as individual marks. instead all ships are upgraded at once (example: if you have mk2 v-wings somewhere in the galaxy, and you upgrade the generalist tech catagory, ALL v-wings currently alive and built after this upgrade will become mk3.)
• hacking points are now earned per planet, rather per AIP
  • Each planet has 30 and you can only earn this amount by building a command station on that planet
• colony ships no longer exist
  • in order to build command stations on planets, you must have a Flagship on that planet as well as no AI Command station
• energy collectors do not exist anymore, instead, economic command stations produce 2 energy collectors worth of energy, logistics produce 1 energy collectors worth of energy and military command stations produce no energy at all.