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.

It's recommended to look in the quick start section of single player and check out one of the beginner situations. This should help you familiarize yourself with the game's mechanics and quirks.

In general, AI War 2 Isn't about going guns blazing and capturing everything in sight. That'll just get you killed. It's about taking only what you need and being as quiet as possible so you don't draw the attention of the AI. The AI doesn't play by the rules, or rather, it plays by a different set of rules. The AI can afford to throw countless ships at you. You (in general) can't do the same.

The AI can be divided into 4 components, AI sentinels, AI wardens, AI hunters and AI praetorian guard.

• The AI sentinels are the main ai faction you'll be fighting. AI sentinels are usually dormant, found inside guardposts, or sent as attack waves towards your planets. Most AI units start out as sentinels but can become hunters under certain circumstances, usually after a certain amount of time after you aggro them.
• The AI wardens are used by the ai to defend only. They will never be committed to an attack on your planets.
• The AI hunters will constantly probe your planets for weakness and will attack whenever they feel like they can win.
• the AI praetorian guard behaves like the AI wardens, except they will only appear near and on AI home worlds and WILL attack any nearby human planets.

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.
• there is a cap to how strong the warden fleet can get. Once it reaches that cap, any resources devoted to the warden fleet instead add to wave budget, so if you see waves suddenly spiking up in strength and no/very little AIP has increased, it's probably because the warden fleet is at it's maximum. Start grinding the warden fleet down to return waves to normal strength.

Abbreviations

• ZPG: zenith power generator
• ZMC: zenith matter converter
• ARS: advanced research statoin
• IGC: intra galactic coordinator
• ZT: zenith trader
• AIP: AI progress
• ST: super terminal
• SA: spire archive
• DSVG/VG: dark spire vengeance generator/vengeance generator

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.
• cloaking is no longer an "on off" state, but rather each ship that has cloaking has a certain amount of cloaking points, and every time it shoots or gets detected, it looses cloak points by a set amount or certain rate respectively. once cloak points reach 0, THEN, the ship is no longer cloaked. a ship cannot recharge cloak points until all it's cloak points reach 0 and is not being detected or firing.

Minor Changes

• wormhole guardposts no longer exist.
  • yay! no more annoying 2 damage attacks!