AI War:Border Aggression
How Does Border Aggression Work?
A: As of version 3.107 of the game, there is a new "Border Aggression" feature for the AI. Here's how it works:
AI planets with more than X number of units in cold storage (basically, sitting idle as guards) will now set the excess units above X to be free. Usually planets would be capped around 4000ish in the first place, but on the lower difficulties this provides incentive for players to at least partially neuter really high-guard-post-containing planets that are near to the player's area. On the higher difficulties, it makes neutering way more important, and also gives the AI more latitude for interesting attack vectors.
The number "X," above varies in the following way:
- Difficulty >= 10 = 3300 - ( AI Progress )
- Difficulty >= 9 = 3600 - ( AI Progress )
- Difficulty >= 8 = 3900 - ( AI Progress )
- Difficulty >= 7 = 4100 - ( AI Progress / 2 )
- Difficulty >= 6 = 4400 - ( AI Progress / 2 )
- Difficulty >= 5 = 4600 - ( AI Progress / 2 )
- Difficulty < 5 = 5500 - ( AI Progress / 2 )
So does this mean that if you leave an AI planet on alert for long enough, that ships will just start pouring out of it over time? Potentially, yes. The per-planet ship caps for the AI are still very much in place, but if their ship cap for a planet is higher than their current "X" value above, then that's when you will start seeing a steady stream of AI ships coming out of that planet, with it never really filling up. But, this can be prevented pretty easily. See below for tips on how to defend against border aggression.
Defending Against Border Aggression
How Do I Defend Myself Against Border Aggression From The AI?
A: As noted above, border aggression only kicks in when an AI-controlled planet has more ships sitting on it than those caps. So to completely eliminate border aggression from a planet, you could simply neuter it. Of course, that comes with its own drawbacks -- in order to make the AI burn the most reinforcement points, you may actually want to only partially neuter the planet, unless it is a planet that creates a backdoor into your area that is hard to defend.
