AI War 2 – What is the AI? A Short Explanation.

What is the AI?

 
Introducing: The AI 
The AI is the primary antagonist that you will face in AI War 2. As obvious as that is, the only victory condition is that all AI Overlords are dead, and the only lose condition is that your home command station is destroyed. This is important when it comes to dealing with minor factions (more on those later). 
 
AI Subroutines 
 
The AI can be divided into 6 main subroutines or components, AI Sentinels, AI Threat, AI Warden Fleet, AI Hunter Fleet, AI Instigators and AI Praetorian Guard. 
The AI Sentinels are the main AI faction you’ll be fighting. 
 
AI Sentinels are usually dormant, found inside Guardposts. Most AI units start out as Sentinels but can become AI Threat under certain circumstances, usually after a certain amount of time after you aggro them. 
 
The AI Warden Fleet are used by the AI to defend only. They will never be committed to an attack on your planets. While the AI Wardens do have a strength cap, the lower the strength they have, the faster they replenish themselves. This means that they won’t effectively stay “dead” for a while, but it will still take them a good deal of time before they bounce back from a total wipeout. The Wardens will actively defend any planet that the AI deems important, such as having capturables, destroyables, or if the planet still has guardposts, so if you engage a planet with guardposts, the wardens will likely show up to defend that planet, but if you leave some of your forces on a neutered world, the wardens will likely just ignore you there, seeing that there is nothing to defend. 
 
The AI Threat are AI forces actively waiting to strike. These units are ready to come at any time they sense a weakness. Threat is provoked typically by AI defenders who escape a planet after you attack it, or the remainder of defeated waves. If Thread doesn’t find a suitable target to attack after a while, those units will join the Hunter Fleet. 
 
The AI Hunter Fleet will constantly probe your planets for weaknesses and will attack whenever they feel like they can win. The AI Hunter Fleet is arguably the “smartest” AI subroutine, since it will notably flee from battles it knows it cannot win, and will attempt to hide on planets you do not have vision of. However, this does also make it to a degree predictable, since you can effectively use spies to coral them into a location of your choice. 
 
The AI Instigators are not immediately apparent until later into the game. Every hour or so, an Instigator base will spawn somewhere in the galaxy. Instigators spawn close to your homeworld and on low level planets initially, but as the AIP becomes higher, they will spawn farther away and on higher mark planets. Instigator bases have a variety of nasty effects, ranging from increasing the amount of strength the AI will put into its waves, to spawning units every now and then to attack you. Instigators are usually not immediately threatening, but do not take your time dealing with them. The longer they remain active, the deadlier they get! 
 
The AI Praetorian Guard behaves like the AI Warden Fleet, except they will only appear near and on AI home worlds and WILL attack any nearby human planets. 
Additionally, there are also a few secondary subroutines that don’t crop up quite as often, but are still notable. 
 
AI Reserves spawn whenever you begin deep striking the AI. Deep striking occurs when you attack an AI planet that is more than 4 hops away from one of your own planets. AI Reserves spawn from invincible wormholes near your deepstrike location and beeline towards the offending forces. Initially, AI reserves start out small, but the longer you stay in deep strike territory, the more wormholes open and more AI Reserves start pouring out of the newly opened wormholes. If all offending forces have retreated or are dead, then the AI Reserves will start heading back to their wormholes and leave after a short while. 
 
*Note* If you want to deep strike, consider grabbing your fastest transport, level it up for durability, use HaP to convert it to a cloaked variant, and then send it through a wormhole to behind enemy lines. Use this method to bypass heavily defended planets to take weaker planets behind the AI’s chokepoints and front lines. 
 
AI Exogalactic Wormhole Forces spawn when you have a high AIP. Every 1-3 hours or so, the AI will unleash an Exogalactic Wormhole on one of your planets, more often than not, a weak economic station in the back, forcing you to dedicate time to defend against this sudden backdoor intrusion. When it spawns, you are given a 10 minute grace period before it starts to spit out units at you. After a while, the Exogalactic Wormhole will collapse. This subroutine only shows up on AI difficulty 7 and up. 
 
AI Relentless Waves spawn from… well… waves against you. They also spawn from any hacks against the AI. Unlike other AI Subroutines which normally retreat under certain circumstances, Relentless Waves are highly aggressive, and will constantly seek to do battle with your forces, most often one of your command stations. You cannot easily hope to force them to retreat like AI Hunters, but their high aggression makes them easy to track since they will always attempt to attack you. 
 
AI Tsunami CPA behaves similarly to AI Relentless Waves. They are highly aggressive and will attempt to always attack your planets. Unlike Relentless Waves which generally sticks together as a group, Tsunami CPA comes in from all directions, and attacks any planets they want. This generally means that the more planets you own, the more “surface area” there is for the Tsunami CPA to destroy itself upon. 
 
AI Exostrikes spawn on any planet with an AI warpgate, are given a target, and will relentlessly chase down and attempt to kill that target. While in normal games they only show up after the result of a successful hack, Exostrikes play a much larger role in Fallen Spire and Risk Analyzers. In Fallen Spire, Exostrikes will commonly attempt to destroy your Spire Cities, or inbound relics. While Risk analyzers sees them attempting to kill any Command Stations that have a risk analyzer with them. If their target is dead, they then behave like Relentless Waves. 
 

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