AI War 2:The Scourge

The Scourge

The Scourge are an optional faction that can be enabled via the Game Lobby, or by activating a beacon in game. The Scourge are intended to satisfy the Nemesis kickstarter goal, and draw further inspiration from the Hybrids from AIWC.

Lore

The AI felt a need for a subsidiary force to wipe out small annoyances, and not need to bother its main Processors with petty things. The AI took various races they have conquered in the Arcenverse, twisted them by genetic engineering, and fused them into a new and powerful force to crush its foes. The races the Scourge use are the Thoraxians, the Peltians, the Neinzul, the Evucks and the Burlusts.

Primary Features

• Give the AI a new way to be more active and attack the player in new ways. For example, the Scourge can build a few cloaked ships, then suicide them into your economic command stations behind your defenses.
• Give the player some juicy infrastructure targets that can be killed to weaken the enemy. It's always fun to destroy your enemies production facilities.
• Give the AI a new method of building defenses
• Make it possible for a faction to have really strong flexibility and coordination in launching attacks
• Give the Scourge a giant scary ship called the Nemesis
• The Scourge are canonically allied to the AI, but you can have player-allied scourge or minor faction-allied scourge (Marauders, Nanocaust and Scourge as a team is terrifying)

What's Actually Going On

The Scourge have a few basic structures and units

• Spawners
  • They create Neophytes. Can be upgraded to higher levels by builders. At Mark VII Spawners can summon Nemeses; it takes multiple Spawners to power a Nemesis (higher intensity Scourge requires fewer spawners per Nemesis).
• Armories
  • Each Armory is associated with a Scourge race. Builders and Warriors level up here. A Warrior that levels up enough here Evolves into a Warrior of the given race. If a high-level warrior of another race upgrades at an Armory it can sometimes become Hybridized. Hybrid units are very scary.
    • Example: A Warrior upgrades at a Burlust Armory and becomes a Burlust Warrior. If a high level Burlust Warrior then upgrades at an Evuck Armory it can become a hybrid Burlust/Evuck warrior, with the powers of both races.
• Fortresses
  • Strong defensive structures built by the Scourge. There are a number of Fortress types, one for each race

• Neophytes: all Scourge units start as neophytes, and then transform into either Builders or Warriors
• Builders: Builders gain metal over time, and can use that metal to build or upgrade structures. They tend to wander the map at random.
• Warriors: The base caste for Scourge units. They are weak, but level up at armories. They can Evolve into more specialized units, and then Hybridize into very strong units. Warriors are analagous to fleetships; Evolved units are analagous to Guardians and Hybrids are analagous to Dire Guardians
• The Nemesis: Giant. Scary. Bad news.

Each Scourge unit or structure gains experience over time, and can level up once they have enough experience.

Scourge units are upgraded by travelling to an Armory. Scourge structures are upgraded by Builders.

Warriors join Fireteams to attack their enemies. Each Fireteam is between 1-4 strength (give or take), and it picks a target to attack. They will wait until they can take out the target, then strike. Some fireteams are focused on defense, and function like the Warden Fleet its allies.

Scourge units prefer to hide on planets that aren't Watched, so you won't know when they are coming.

Scourge fireteams can either be focused on attacking their enemies or defending their allies.

Game Start

For AI-allied scourge, the AI begins with one spawner per AI Overlord.

For Player allied scourge, you start with a spawner and an armory on each player's home planet. This is a balance tweak because you only start with one planet, so expanding is harder.

For Minor Faction allied scourge, when an allied minor faction owns a planet and the scourge have no spawners, the scourge will join the invasion by building a spawner, armory and fortress on that planet. So assuming the marauders and scourge are allied, when the marauders capture their first planet the scourge will join them. If you then destroy that invasion and they capture another planet, the scourge will join them again.

How to play against the Scourge

The scourge need space around all their structures; they generally won't build multiple structures on a planet. The more Spawners and Armories they have the more powerful they get. You need to be proactive and try to take out their infrastructure before they get too powerful. Killing high-mark builders is a good idea, as is depriving the scourge of safe territory.

Nota Bene Some Scourge units are specialized anti-forcefield units, so you'll need to use some new strategies to defend important structures.

The Scourge won't start to attack you until 30 minutes to an hour and a half into the game, based on the intensity. So you have a bit of grace time at the beginning.

Difficulty Considerations

The Scourge are a very powerful faction. Adding AI-allied scourge to a game is very roughly equivalent to adding a new AI of that intensity to the game on top of the game's other difficulty.

Note that having multiple AIs and AI-allied scourge will mean the Scourge will start with additional Spawners, so it will be even harder.