Infected Empire (level)

[annikk.exe]

Map Type: Open (non-linear), Custom AI
Difficulty: Hard

Features:

• All-new AI, completely seperate from the AI used by the original game
• Background flashes red when you are about to be attacked!
• Procedurally generated spiral galaxy

This one was quite complicated to make... :>

[annikk.exe]

Infection giving you trouble?  Why not try Slightly Poorly Empire - you should be able to win with nothing more than a day in bed and some ointment !
[in this version the AI starts with a lot less seedlings, so it should be easier to win]

Ready for a challenge on a greater scale, and have several hours to spare?  Why not try Infected Empire Epic Edition!
[in this map there are 80 asteroids instead of 32]

[annikk.exe]

Hope you enjoy this one folks.  The next map will take a long time to make..

[annikk.exe]

Thanks to Beta Testers:

Temphix
Simonstep
Tristavius
Smokey
Smith
Njursten
Bonobo
Threephi

[AWS]

thanks...downloaded and firing it up now...will let you know how it goes.

AWS

[AWS]

well... i didnt download the hard original one, instead i got the 'poorly empire' version. after 2 attempts i managed it so thank you.
ill try the harder one now.

[Salameh]

I played the easy version and The Ai is great. It freaked me out when I attacked one of their asteroids and seeds started flying towards it. Great job.

[Rudolf]

Oh sweet, I am gonna try this tomorrow.

The flashing bakground thing ties into something I had no time to try out. Background colour changes tied into how well you are progressing through a mission. I want to base a whole new level on this, but I haven't had time yet.

[annikk.exe]

Anyone beaten the normal version yet? :>

[threephi]

This AI is absolutely vicious, well done!  I don't know if it can be beaten since the computer can send seedlings a lot more efficiently and faster than humans using the mouse interface.  And given the advantage in starting resources, once the AI gets its seedling economy going--which it does right away--the head start seems insurmountable.

I tried a few different strategies against the AI but the speed with which it gets its asteroids pumping out seedlings and musters attacks, once you fall behind you can't catch up. 

I beat the slightly poor version quite easily fwiw.

[threephi]

I beat it!   

I'll keep the winning strategy under my hat for now since I don't want to spoil anyone else's fun   But annikk I'll send you a PM with what I did.

[annikk.exe]

heh, grats :>

Glad to hear someone has beaten it at last - I actually launched without knowing for sure this exact number of starting seedlings was beatable :>  I figured they would be though, just very hard.


Thanks for the kind words Threephi - now I can finally sleep soundly.  :P  Aye, she's a vicious beast...  was very exciting watching her grow gradually smarter as I was working on the level.. :>

[threephi]

Even with my strategy, victory isn't always easy or 100% assured so I think it's a good number.

[threephi]

I didn't realize last night that these boards allow the spoiler tag, so here is how I beat the level, for those interested:

(click to show/hide)

In a nutshell the strategy is immediate offense.  After writing a few posts ago about how once the AI gets ahead in seedling production it's basically game over, a light bulb went off and I thought, don't let it get started.  I also noticed that at the start of the game, the AI immediately uses all of its seedlings to germinate new asteroids, so this gives you a brief but overwhelming numerical advantage right off the bat if you use your seedlings for offense.

So here's the strategy I used:
- jump immediately and with as few steps as possible towards the AI's asteroids, building only one dyson tree on the stepping-stones.
- attack the nearest AI asteroid as soon as possible with all your seedlings.  You should have 45 or 55 and the AI will have less than ten on the target since he's still expanding.  If there is a choice of attack, pick the enemy asteroid with lowest point value and/or greatest number of trees.  This will conserve your attack force on the one hand, and deliver the most efficient judo-chop to the AI on the other.  Continuously feed seedlings from your other asteroids into the attack until the target is taken.  Stay put for a few seconds to mop up most of any remaining AI seedlings (you can safely leave five or six there since those will be defeated by your seedlings that grow on the asteroid and the ones you sent into battle that are still en route).
- continue picking off the AI asteroids one by one until it's over.

FWIW the level didn't end until I had settled all 32 asteroids on the map, even though the AI was entirely wiped out with only about nine or ten asteroids visited in total.

This isn't a flawless strategy as I have found that there is a little bit of luck involved.  If your starting asteroid has low energy and/or strength and thus you have a weak attacking force, you will have a hard time of it and can possibly still lose.  Also when you plant the stepping-stone dyson trees, if they take a particularly curvy path to the center of the asteroid, that can eat up enough time to allow the AI to grow enough seedlings to make it more difficult.  But after playing with this strategy about ten or twelve times now, I think I lost only twice.

Also FWIW this strategy didn't work against the epic level the one time I tried it.  By the time my attack force made contact with the AI, he had already swarmed onto too many asteroids and soon overwhelmed me.

[threephi]

A few little bugs I noticed while playing with this level--

- The AI doesn't use flowers when it has them available and just leaves them growing on its trees.
- If you have an AI asteroid surrounded so it is separated from another AI asteroid by one of yours, the AI will rally seedlings from one to the other regardless of how many seedlings you have on the intervening asteroid.  In other words, the AI will send seedlings to their doom if you have a large force in the flight path.

This screen cap illustrates both of the above bugs:


Also I'm not sure if this is a bug but I also found that the AI didn't seem smart in going after nearby unseeded asteroids that had some of my seedlings on it.  Instead of gathering its forces and attacking with numerical supremacy, once its attack started, it sent its seedlings as soon as they were produced which wasn't very effective.  This screen capture doesn't show that in progress but this is the board I used to explore this behavior.

While investigating this, I continually cleared my seedlings out of the area so the surrounding asteroids had as few of my forces as possible.  The AI asteroid near the center of this image first attacked asteroid #1, the nearest one, and I rebuffed it.  Then it went after asteroid 2, the next-nearest, and I beat him back again.  Next it tried #3 and I held him off one more time.  Then it seemed to give up and wouldn't attack at all.

[njursten]

My strategy is a bit similar to threephi's.

(click to show/hide)

There's one difference though. I instantly build the max number of trees on the starting asteroid and the next. Then I expand so that I'm just next to an asteroid the AI is building up. This can take some time, the original seedlings are only enough for the first 2 full asteroids plus one single-tree asteroid. At the frontier I sit waiting until he has at least 3 trees on the target asteroid, then I send in my force of now about 40 seedlings. If he has a lot of seedlings on neighbouring asteroids I wait a bit longer. I'll eventually have more seedlings, as he spends all of his on trees. If there is no activity on the target asteroid yet I spend some seedlings building trees at my frontier asteroid. I usually pick one with good stats, so it's not a waste.

[Koss]

Programming AI is improbable, very clever. But it seems to me to win easily enough. In Infected Empire I played two times, both times have won, have tried different tactics. In Infected Empire Epic Edition has played once, and at once has won.

Thanks for interesting level !

[threephi]

Programming AI is improbable, very clever. But it seems to me to win easily enough. In Infected Empire I played two times, both times have won, have tried different tactics. In Infected Empire Epic Edition has played once, and at once has won.

Thanks for interesting level !

How did you beat the epic level?

[annikk.exe]

...I was wondering that.  I've not completed it myself... I kind of assumed it was impossible, actually :P

[annikk.exe]

Thanks for the detailed feedback by the way Threephi.  I'm not going to go back and change it now.. :P  But it's all useful for the next level.  :>

[threephi]

Thanks for the detailed feedback by the way Threephi.  I'm not going to go back and change it now..   But it's all useful for the next level.  :>

You're very welcome, thanks for sharing the levels with us!

[Koss]

How did you beat the epic level?

Fast advancement aside AI. In parallel development of asteroids with the best characteristics. The most difficult is to grasp to win the first asteroid at AI.

P.S. Sorry for my english

[Geisterkarle]

How did you beat the epic level?

I played it right a moment ago and beat it on first try. You definitely have to keep on your toes, but it's not terrible hard! I always try to hit the enemy es fast as I can, building nearly straight way to him. Seems to work

But I got some bugs! Don't know, if it's because of the custom game or a general problem, but I got "white clouds" blocking my vision! Good I was far ahead when it happend, because keeping track of your seeds is difficult, if you have to zoom in big time to get it away...



no, this is NO paint action, this is the game

[Bonobo]

I've also reported this graphics bug, so it is a known bug.

IIRC Alex or Rudolf said they’re going to look at this.

[smeece85]

I just managed to beat the epic level as well. Here's what I did:

(click to show/hide)

Using the rush attack asap strategy, make a b-line across the system, creating 4 trees on each planet, and trying to claim the most powerful planets possible on the way over.  The reason you make 4 on each planet is it takes a while to get across the system and instead of waiting for each planet to be claimed so you can move on, you could be making more.  Attack the enemy at the first planet you encounter of theirs and continuously move units up from the back.  After taking their planet, attack their next nearest.  This keeps them occupied.  At some point, either on this planet or the next you try to take over, their numbers will start to match yours.  Now the strategy is to claim as many open planets near the front with the strongest stats as possible.  I only planted one tree on each planet at this point.  If they move some units to a planet in anticipation of claiming it, fight them and take it for yourself instead.  Always move units up from the back and continuously claim nearby planets.

At some point they stop focusing on expanding and start gathering units at a planet or two in preparation for attack.  Be sure to be ready and defend their attack.  After fending it off, counterattack and take the planet they were massing at.  You should have enough power if you continuously move units up from the back.  Rinse and repeat!  Always be sure you're continuously taking planets while fending of their attacks.  It also helps to surround them so they can't expand along the edges while you're not looking.

One small behavior in the AI that seems a bit off is this:  Seemingly no matter how many seeds you have at a planet you have yet to claim, as soon as you claim it, the enemy will attack (if they have a mass of units nearby).  So, if I have like 600 seeds at a planet and then claim it, they send their amassed army from a neighboring planet even if it is far outnumbered at 10:1.

[Bonobo]

Annik, I think I never told you how much I enjoyed your levels—after hacking into them and decreasing the initial amount of enemy seedlings :! (No, I didn’t set them below 10 )

So here is my Thank You and I'm eager to see more from you.

Cheers, Tom

[wowo]

hi annikk,

had this level waiting for quite some time, tried easier version first, which was pretty straightforward to beat.

However, original one was pretty tough, needed several attempts, very clever, thanks a lot!

[Jazz Ad]

I hardly believe it but yes, I finally beat this level.