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AI War Zenith Remnant is out

J

Joseph Merrick

Member
expansion to super awesome game AI War Fleet Command

Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG01JWJNF9I&fmt=22

infos and screenshots http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_zenithremnant.php

edit: how to play the game some really good narrated videos here, for anyone who's never played ai war before, http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_videos.php

Key Features:
* 122 new ships, including:
* 14 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.
* 7 massive capturable "Golem" ships.
* Dozens of other new capturables, including “experimental” ships.
* 12 new AI Types.
* 4 Zenith alien minor factions (NPCs).
* Over 40 minutes of new in-game music tracks.
* Several new map styles.
* Several new AI behaviors and many related special AI weapons.

superb

ArtilleryGolem.jpg


SuperFortress.jpg


ZenithBombardmentShips.jpg


MapTree.jpg


DysonGolemZenithViralShredders.jpg
 
L

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Looks like a steal for $10. Definitely going buy it sometime in the future, but i'll probably hold off it for a bit, as i still haven't scratched the surface of the "original" game yet.

And 0 replies.:( this game needs more recognition at neogaf, it's easily one of the most original RTS game in years. And it's a damn shame, that few strategy game fans are aware of it's existence.
 
P

Phife Dawg

Member
Lafiel said:
Looks like a steal for $10. Definitely going buy it sometime in the future, but i'll probably hold off it for a bit, as i still haven't scratched the surface of the "original" game yet.

And 0 replies.:( this game needs more recognition at neogaf, it's easily one of the most original RTS game in years. And it's a damn shame, that few strategy game fans are aware of it's existence.
Click to expand...
It looks interesting but also like a game you would've to invest a lot of time into, I guess I'm not the only one with limited gaming time.
 
F

Fio

Member
I still have to play Fleet Command, it seems to be such an awesome game! I'll try to make some time this weekend, since it seems to be a very time demanding game.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
In general GAF doesn't like indie games that either aren't stylish adventure titles or have 'relaxing feeling'/ambient/PSN-nongame bullshit going on. AI War is a man's game for manly strategy men, and most of the posters here balk at something of the complexity of even an entry level strategy game like Civ4. The lack of responses isn't surprising.

The game is a slice of true genius in a lot of ways, and while there is both a learning curve and time investment required to play the game, it's not that bad. A shorter 40-planet game isn't any longer than an average game of Civ, and you can turn on fast'n'dangerous to speed things up even more.

Definitely going to check out the expansion this weekend. Note that you can register the original game's serial number on Steam regardless of where you buy the game, so if you see it cheap somewhere else and you're a diehard steamthing, no excuses!
 
D

dollartaco

Member
AI War was my GOTY last year. (Another indie game, Solium Infernum, was pretty close.) I've been looking forward to this release since it was annouced.

Seriously, this game is amazing. Best RTS in forever.
 
J

Joseph Merrick

Member
graywolf323 said:
is it going to be on Steam? I noticed the game updating right now so hopefully it will show up
Click to expand...
yeah probably edit: actually it is up now http://store.steampowered.com/app/40403/

but

Fragamemnon said:
Note that you can register the original game's serial number on Steam regardless of where you buy the game, so if you see it cheap somewhere else and you're a diehard steamthing, no excuses!
Click to expand...
so definitely do this, buy it straight from the arcen games site. more money for chris park

it's cheaper on there also
 
R

Roughmar

Member
Fragamemnon said:
In general GAF doesn't like indie games that either aren't stylish adventure titles or have 'relaxing feeling'/ambient/PSN-nongame bullshit going on. AI War is a man's game for manly strategy men, and most of the posters here balk at something of the complexity of even an entry level strategy game like Civ4. The lack of responses isn't surprising.

The game is a slice of true genius in a lot of ways, and while there is both a learning curve and time investment required to play the game, it's not that bad. A shorter 40-planet game isn't any longer than an average game of Civ, and you can turn on fast'n'dangerous to speed things up even more.

Definitely going to check out the expansion this weekend. Note that you can register the original game's serial number on Steam regardless of where you buy the game, so if you see it cheap somewhere else and you're a diehard steamthing, no excuses!
Click to expand...


Because of this post and your avatar, I will buy the original game and give it a try if it is under €10. I am not even going to inform myself of what it is about.
 
Q

Quixzlizx

Member
Fragamemnon said:
In general GAF doesn't like indie games that either aren't stylish adventure titles or have 'relaxing feeling'/ambient/PSN-nongame bullshit going on. AI War is a man's game for manly strategy men, and most of the posters here balk at something of the complexity of even an entry level strategy game like Civ4. The lack of responses isn't surprising.

The game is a slice of true genius in a lot of ways, and while there is both a learning curve and time investment required to play the game, it's not that bad. A shorter 40-planet game isn't any longer than an average game of Civ, and you can turn on fast'n'dangerous to speed things up even more.

Definitely going to check out the expansion this weekend. Note that you can register the original game's serial number on Steam regardless of where you buy the game, so if you see it cheap somewhere else and you're a diehard steamthing, no excuses!
Click to expand...

I'd try it if it were a TBS instead of a RTS, but I don't like feeling stressed out every second while playing strategy games.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
Niche strategy games being overlooked around here is nothing new, Airborne Assault gets no love at all. At least AI War actually gets name recognition from a select few.

The game's pretty fun as a co-op grand-strategy tower-defense type of game. My favorite part is picking a special ship type at the beginning of the game. Teleport stations, force field barriers, snipers, spider bots. The selection's pretty nice, and they do make the game quite more replayable.

The recent updates have made the game a lot more fun/playable for me, also, with all the control nodes making a lot of automation possible. For a game of huge scope, there's a little bit too much emphasis on micromanagement. Most of that is fixed now with the control nodes (auto-repairing turrets, auto-building engineers, auto-resources, and so on), as the automation goes a long way in removing those trivial low-level actions.

While the individual ship AI is nice, I'm not a huge fan of the fleet AI/controls. I like how you can quickly select ship types (on the whole map, or just the screen you're looking at), and I guess you can assign squads. But, having some sort of fleet AI customization would have been nice (it's pretty pathetic that the only one available is group-move vs free-move). A game with a large scope should allow me to directly interest with it on a strategic/grand tactical level. Being able to create fleets and subfleets with a proper chain of command would have been nice.

Looking forward to the expansion. New ships is certainly a very nice thing.
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
Sale up now on their site and across pretty well all big DD outlets $9.99 for the Base then same for expansion resulting in a Monster of a $20 game.

Oddly enough, I'd not even heard about this period until I saw the trailer and such on RPS earlier this afternoon----very likely about to buy it today or some such as I think I've $20 someplace.

I'm with Merrick and Frag, my own sadly lackluster...MANY various OP topics aside, it is an all too common occurence for Indie/Cutting Edge fare to vanish quickly into the haze around here. Maybe we need to form some sort of alliance, us wild pc/handheld/console fringe riders, as I still refuse to believe there isn't a solid potential audience here for a great many things which can help make all the difference to small teams in terms of how far the dollars go into translating to substantial improvements and such.
 
G

ghst

thanks for the laugh
so i bought the original at its new deliciously low price. tutorial is pleasantly patronizing. right click on a unit to select?? i can do that! i'm a fucking savant! each tap of "enter" is like a little victory.
 
L

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Llyranor said:
Niche strategy games being overlooked around here is nothing new, Airborne Assault gets no love at all. At least AI War actually gets name recognition from a select few.

The game's pretty fun as a co-op grand-strategy tower-defense type of game. My favorite part is picking a special ship type at the beginning of the game. Teleport stations, force field barriers, snipers, spider bots. The selection's pretty nice, and they do make the game quite more replayable.

The recent updates have made the game a lot more fun/playable for me, also, with all the control nodes making a lot of automation possible. For a game of huge scope, there's a little bit too much emphasis on micromanagement. Most of that is fixed now with the control nodes (auto-repairing turrets, auto-building engineers, auto-resources, and so on), as the automation goes a long way in removing those trivial low-level actions.

While the individual ship AI is nice, I'm not a huge fan of the fleet AI/controls. I like how you can quickly select ship types (on the whole map, or just the screen you're looking at), and I guess you can assign squads. But, having some sort of fleet AI customization would have been nice (it's pretty pathetic that the only one available is group-move vs free-move). A game with a large scope should allow me to directly interest with it on a strategic/grand tactical level. Being able to create fleets and subfleets with a proper chain of command would have been nice.

Looking forward to the expansion. New ships is certainly a very nice thing.
Click to expand...
Nice, i've only had this game for a week or two and i'm really impressed by the level of support for such a small niche title. The recent update that came with the expansion managed to fix two small issues i had with the game - such as the slow movement speed of the ships, and they seem to have automated the mineral / crystal building. They also seem to have added a new gameplay element too.

Oh yeah i bought the expansion along with kings bounty gold on steam. Played it for around 3 hours today, one major thing i've noticed so far is they fixed a another small issue i had with the game - which was the repetitive music. (that grated on my ears after a while)
The 45 minutes of new music really fix that problem, a lot of the tracks sound really nice too.

Haven't experienced much of the new stuff asides from that, but the new unit seem pretty cool so far, nice models and animations and all, to bad only the ai seems to have them, i haven't managed to acquire any of the new units yet.
 
D

Dina

Member
The screenshots look kinda scary to me and I'm usually not afraid of complexity. I kinda burned myself with Sword of the Stars and Sins of the Solar Empire. Will I burn myself with this?
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
Made my order, directly, from them this morning. I don't know about this whole registering to Steam business though as I've never done such prior. All I've got now are a pair of keys and downloaded the installer for the base AI War which I plan to migrate to my new PC when able to and then figure out about getting everything workable.

Also, said deal is only good for pretty well the weekend, so folks on the fence still have a day or so to decide. It would seem to me worth a shot for $10-20 same as many people jumped on Torchlight for $10-5.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
Regarding the CD-KEYs-I know that the original AI War could be registered through Steam (I did so, though I bought the game via GamersGate). Not sure about the expansion key.

This game is really not that difficult or complex, IMO. It tests your ability to plan and execute a strategy more than it does your ability to grasp and learn mechanics-if you've played an RTS (especially TA or SupCom, that use similar economic models), you shouldn't have too much time getting up to speed. Just make sure to watch the video tutorials posted on Arcen Games' site to get you in the right mindset, as the game's asymmetric nature prevents you from playing it like you would a normal RTS.
 
P

Peronthious

Member
Excellent expansion for an excellent game.

The game is certainly great fun single player, but it's much better multi. If you're looking for a game, their forums are generally teeming with people looking for groups, and the IRC channel (#aiwar on irc.rtsnet.org) is relatively active.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
I've been fumbling my way on iccup for online RTS lately-I actually use AI War as a way to "wind down", if you will, from the apm-induced frenzy on that cutthroat ladder.

It's a great game in single player. Big and fun. I can definitely see it being awesome (and faster!) in multiplayer, though.
 
D

dollartaco

Member
Fragamemnon said:
I've been fumbling my way on iccup for online RTS lately-I actually use AI War as a way to "wind down", if you will, from the apm-induced frenzy on that cutthroat ladder.

It's a great game in single player. Big and fun. I can definitely see it being awesome (and faster!) in multiplayer, though.
Click to expand...

It's _made_ for coop. Do it.
 
J

Joseph Merrick

Member
Fragamemnon said:
Regarding the CD-KEYs-I know that the original AI War could be registered through Steam (I did so, though I bought the game via GamersGate). Not sure about the expansion key.
Click to expand...
I tested the expansion key, it works with steam aswell. although of course it doesn't add a separate 'game' to steam, but it adds the key to the steam popup on game start thing. it really is a optimal steam implementation with this game as even when it's added to steam it completely operates outside steam on its own. very nice.

edit: also, the keys are the same no matter where you get the game from. so you can on a steam key just download the trial from arcengames and use the steam key on a regular copy of the game completely without steam. perfect :O~ hehe
 
E

eznark

Banned
Downloading AI War now, looking forward to digging into it. This plus the expansion for $20? How can any self respecting PC gamer pass up?
 
T

TheFightingFish

Member
Joseph Merrick said:
some really good narrated videos here, for anyone who's never played ai war before, http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_videos.php
Click to expand...

I already tried the demo and found it pretty neat, so I already know that I'm interested in A.I. War the next price drop. But I have to say this game really could us a little sprucing up in terms of presentation. If it wasn't for GAF / RPS / Tom Chick impressions I would have never even given the demo the time of day. Just looking at the first of the videos listed above and it looks like 9 minutes of utter boredom with totally no hook to get you interested. It really does open up in interesting ways even in the demo that I tried, but I can see why it's getting passed over even with good word of mouth.

Rock said:
Problems? The aforementioned lack of charisma is pretty striking. Presentation wise, it’s got precisely one card in its hand – the scale of the battles. Otherwise, as its anti-glamour title may imply, there’s close to no effort in giving it any personality . Compare and contrast how the equally mechanic-driven Armageddon Empires managed to elevate itself via embracing its theme. Its relying on a wiki for its documentation is a little iffy. And, most of all, the laser sound effects were beginning to make me feel like my girlfriend feels when I play Space Giraffe. I came close to shouting at myself to turn this racket down.
Click to expand...
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
TheFightingFish said:
I already tried the demo and found it pretty neat, so I already know that I'm interested in A.I. War the next price drop. But I have to say this game really could us a little sprucing up in terms of presentation. If it wasn't for GAF / RPS / Tom Chick impressions I would have never even given the demo the time of day. Just looking at the first of the videos listed above and it looks like 9 minutes of utter boredom with totally no hook to get you interested. It really does open up in interesting ways even in the demo that I tried, but I can see why it's getting passed over even with good word of mouth.
Click to expand...

From what I've pieced together on the site thus far, it is only fairly recently that they had enough capital to actually bring on an artist full time to begin flesh things out....prior/still to some extent I think they've been using the old art bits from Tyrian that got set free awhile even further back by the original maker.

Updates are supposed to continue to flow generally monthlyish, and another mega-damned expansion like this one is set for about another 10ish months( and I think another using the same general timings...all surely subject to how things go)---all subject to be modified by the ongoing sales and such considering the other 2 prime characters to the company STILL have to hold down day jobs at this point (but figurings are underway to dive in fulltime to greater effect), so it is closer to being say Crosscut Games than the likes of Chronic Logic or Soldak Entertainment or what have you. Furthermore, as I understand it, now is the transition time to getting their foray into a "puzzle" game especially underway as the company's next product release aside from AI War.

I wonder if they've given any thought to adopting some/all of the model Achron is going forward under in terms of contributions from parties outside of those few on the payroll for glory/credits screen mention/????that could be money? I suppose I should shoot a message at some point as one would think more manpower would be a boon given the small teams.

Craziest thing? They cite the game originally sold ZERO copies in the first two weeks. Madness for sure.
 
P

Proc

Member
hmm I guess I'll return to my computer chair to try this after about a 2 week hiatus away from from pc gaming.
 
T

tomasdk

Member
Thanks for pointing this out, haven't heard of it before. Certainly looks interesting, now if I only had enough time to play :(. But I'll keep this on my radar and try it out when I can.
I looked at the developers website and seems like they're doing a tower defense game which is great, we need more awesome TD games like defense grid was.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
Well, the buddies and me decided to get the xpac and start a new session. New ships are definitely very cool. The various marauders/zenith stuff are pretty nice as well. I'm actually enjoying the game a whole lot more this time around, though it probably has more to do with the settings than the actual xpac. Upping the diff, and setting specific AI behaviors rather than random has made things more fun. Starship commander :D and assassin! The latter is probably coming back to bite me, as it keeps sending waves at the strongest player. Now, because they keep sending nearly a thousand units at a time, and with 2x waves, I keep having to fend them off, with some backup from buddies, but that means my score also keeps going up at a relatively faster pace than them, so I keep getting getting 'stronger' and 'stronger', which just means the AI will keep targetting me more and more. Which is pretty nasty, since my economy is down to crap now, and my fleet and turrets are pretty badly damaged, and I barely have time to rebuild and repair. It's awesome! Now that we're actually fighting for our very survival, the game's a lot more enjoyable, and the grand strategy actually matters, since we need to be very careful where we tread, rather than it being some metagame where it ultimately doesn't matter because we can fend off the AI regardless of which system we cap or what we destroy.

Where it was a fun co-op game before (but I still spent half the game reading a book or playing DS, semi-passively interacting with the game), I can now fully recommend the game, as it is plain awesome. Higher difficulties is a must. I can't recommend schizophrenic waves, though, as that just makes them random, and then everything just becomes a mess rather than you properly planning how to fend off invasions using certain units to counter others.

And let's just say the feeling you get when you're being overwhelmed by an invading AI force, with your fleet barely staying alive, and all your structures are being systematically destroyed, is utterly awesome when you see a large fleet of allied reinforcements appear out of a warp gate. Cavalry to the rescue!
 
J

Joseph Merrick

Member
TheFightingFish said:
I already tried the demo and found it pretty neat, so I already know that I'm interested in A.I. War the next price drop. But I have to say this game really could us a little sprucing up in terms of presentation. If it wasn't for GAF / RPS / Tom Chick impressions I would have never even given the demo the time of day. Just looking at the first of the videos listed above and it looks like 9 minutes of utter boredom with totally no hook to get you interested. It really does open up in interesting ways even in the demo that I tried, but I can see why it's getting passed over even with good word of mouth.
Click to expand...
keep in mind that description is of the game pre-2.0 and they've kept updating it a lot with each new version, not only at the full *.0 versions either, it's now at 3.0 and almost unrecognisable from its 1.x self. it got rid of the horrible fonts with 2.0 and definitely established its own look with that update. I think it looks superb overall now, and especially after adding the bigger ships and zenith things. there's no questioning the support the devs are giving this game

take a look at the 1.0 to 2.0 comparison http://arcengames.com/aiwar_20vs10.php
 
D

Doytch

Member
Got the demo, planned to try it out for a bit, and now my finger hurts from all the mouse-wheeling...

I'm not seeing how this is any different/better than Sins of a Solar Empire, though. It feels quite a bit like it, with some tweaks to research. I've never been good enough at grand strategy games to hold my own at high difficulty levels so I'm guessing I won't even be able to see what makes the AI so good. Keep in mind all I've done is play the campaign demo.

Also, I find it hard to keep track of my stuff as easily as in SoaSE because of the lack of the customizable sidebar-like thinger (can't remember what it's called...)
 
L

Llyranor

Member
I've been playing more of this 3p co-op, and pumping up the difficulty has made it a lot more fun. We have a 7.6 (moderate) starfleet commander and a 8.0 (hard) grav driller AI. The AI constantly keeps us on our toes, sending large waves that have us fending for our lives, and sending freaking autobombs to destroy our resources and cripple our economy, while also sending out smaller harassing mobs in-between to keep us busy. We're constantly out of resources, our fleets are merely shells of their former selves, and rebuilding is slow crawl while we await the next inevitable wave. One of the players had his home planet completely swarmed as his forcefield generator was on the verge of getting destroyed and his command station was already taken hits, but the rest of us managed to drag on whatever reinforcements we could to keep him alive just in the nick of time. As close a call as any! Freaking awesome game.
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
We also had a mk4 planet next to one of our homeworlds harrassing us with no real chance for us to retaliate until my new best friend mr.devourer golem decided to wonder in and wipe the floor with all the mk4 ships. Despite the AI sending renforcements to the planet we jumped on our chance to cripple the system by moving in right behind the Golem and destroying the command center and special forces post.

Massive losses, but still a very low price for taking a mk4 planet, thanks Mr.Golem!
 
L

Llyranor

Member
But at what cost?

Cleaning up after the devourer golem was awesome, but we lost a lot of ships in that battle, and the AI made us pay for that heavily as it harassed some of our homeplanets just afterwards. We still haven't fully recovered from that. Freaking AI.
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
We actually found out 'what cost' when trying to continue the game. It had been a risky move and it proved bad timing as a series of brutal waves and a massive cross planet attack finished us off while we were at our weakest.

I love this game.
 
F

FoxSpirit

Junior Member
Doytch said:
Got the demo, planned to try it out for a bit, and now my finger hurts from all the mouse-wheeling...

I'm not seeing how this is any different/better than Sins of a Solar Empire, though. It feels quite a bit like it, with some tweaks to research. I've never been good enough at grand strategy games to hold my own at high difficulty levels so I'm guessing I won't even be able to see what makes the AI so good. Keep in mind all I've done is play the campaign demo.

Also, I find it hard to keep track of my stuff as easily as in SoaSE because of the lack of the customizable sidebar-like thinger (can't remember what it's called...)
Click to expand...

Bringing up Sins, this game like Sins and SupCom is most likely guilty of "nice graphics, too bad you'll spend your time looking at little icons shuffling across the map". Or am I mistaken?
 
D

dollartaco

Member
This game is nothing like Sins except that it's in space. It's designed for cooperative play. And if you aren't going to play it on difficulty 7 or up, you might as well not play it at all. Starting out, you're fine at a lower setting. But the game is about winning an asymmetrical fight.

And yes, if you're zoomed in you're doing it wrong.
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
I will sometimes use it for some basic micro, such as moving costly individual mk3 bombers under a shield to heal when I've got a very limited number or picking out priority targets in a swarm of turrets, but otherwise yeah, pretty much an icon-blob game.

Not that I don't also love the other mentioned icon-blob games.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
The only real cool graphical feature is that the planets in the background followed you around as you scrolled through the screen. Unfortunately, that seems to have been patched out now.

Also, rearranging sniper turrets in creative positions so that their synchronized shots took all kinds of cool patterns. Too bad sniper turrets suck and I don't use them anymore.
 
S

Sasquatch

Member
I just picked up the base game last Thursday. I've sunk a lot of time in to it already. It's one of those "I'll just do this one more thing" games. The next thing you know it's an hour later.

There's such a huge variety of ships and AI types, I doubt I'll ever get a chance to play with all of it.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
Here's the current sitrep. Here is Murdoch, a frontier planet where we've established a firm defensive base able to repel substantial enemy raids. A few hundred fighters/bombers/frigates, some starship support, 6 force fields, 2 fortresses, and a Maginot line of fixed turret defenses (the main pride of the base being its large number of lightning turrets - which do area damage - which has likely saved its bacon in a previous siege by thousands of enemy attackers). It's a pretty sturdy base and has served us well so far (even though we've had it destroyed once and had to repel the large swarm of enemy raiders that cut through to our much less-defended rear planets. Since then, however, the front has been well-stabilized. What's the worst that could happen?
ai1.jpg


Now, over time, the enemy has been accumulating a large fleet on the neighboring planet, numbering about 4000. Should be okay, since we've been able to beat back similar numbers before. Perhaps the addition of an impending cross-planetary invasion was a bad sign. Here you can see the main enemy fleet assembling right near the warp to Murdoch at the bottom there, with an endless stream of reinforcements from other warps. It's a bit cliched to say, but in this case it's actually over 9000 in the literal sense.
ai2.jpg


Here's a closer look at the eye of the storm (and it's now over 10,000 -____-)
ai3.jpg


This is where our session ended. To be continued!
 
L

Llyranor

Member
Yup, 3 of us are playing co-op. It's taken some time, but the game has really grown on me. Really loving it now, as we've finally struck a good balance in AI types and difficulty.
 
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