Thanks to the DLC and latest update I have technically lost a game fair and square against normal AI

Environment:
- Ellipse shape galaxy
- 101 Stars
- 7 Enemy empires (one for each race)

Winner should have been: Ashdar Colonials

Main reason:
- Me loosing around 100 turns till figuring out things for the new Tinker faction (low research speed, cannot build shipyard on new colonies and such)
- Difficult starting position due to lots of Harpies and the new Galaxy shape does not allow for hiding away in a corner
- Ashdar and Gremak were close to victory, so closed alliance with Gremak and attacked Colonials

At around turn 500, the war started against the Ashdar empire and after some initial successes, they overwhelmed me with fleet carriers

Why the AI didn't win in the end (exploits):
- Thanks to abundant influence could force a truce, declare war, take planets, strike peace against before retaliation - rinse and repeat 3 times
- Though groups of Fleet Carriers are impressive at first, reliance on them enables cheap tactics to overcome the fighters: PD destroyers mass produced at low costs + dozens of mobile bases outfitted with fighters got the job done
- Gremak did not declare war on me even though it had perfect opportunity with its more advanced tech and massive fleets - once the AI is forced to Alliance it cannot seem to get out of it even if this costs them the game

Altogether I am very happy with the outcome, as victory would clearly would have been by a normal level AI if not for the above exploits

Yeah, the diplomatic ability to essentially declare peace at any time is a bit exploitable lol.

And my experience with carriers/fighters is similar. Once I know my primary opponent is going to mass fighters, I can pretty much invalidate them with a combination of PD DDs and CLs carrying PD and AMs. Sure, I lose some DDs and occasional CLs, but once the fighters are down, I can easily pick apart the CVs.

I use CVs, but even as Ashdar Colonial, I rarely rely exclusively on them.

The game could really use a multiplayer skirmish component to test out various fleet combinations and identify potential balance issue. I see lots of people complaining about fighters, but my gut instinct tells me that they are just massing battleships and whatnot and then getting overrun by fighters and complaining about it rather than building proper escorts. Unfortunately, there is really now way to tell without some ability to fight battles in a controlled environment.

Just wanted to share this gorgeous invasion fleet from the AI

I am so glad to see such a fleet, I am considering retreating simply to see how the AI then handles the ships (does it split up this wonderful fleet or push on with the invasion at a single system)

zolobolo wrote:Just wanted to share this gorgeous invasion fleet from the AI

I am so glad to see such a fleet, I am considering retreating simply to see how the AI then handles the ships (does it split up this wonderful fleet or push on with the invasion at a single system)

Two Dreadnoughts headed back to safe Tinker space, as well as all the Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers
The rest continued with the invasion though without support didn't last long