You are outgunned. You are massively outnumbered. You must win.
— The first words that you see on Arcen Games' A.I. War page.
AI War: Fleet Command is a 4x / Real Time Strategy with Tower Defense and grand strategy elements video game created by Arcen Games.The story is simple enough: 2 human factions fought a big war against each other, and built AI to help in combat. The AI revolted and nearly annihilated the humans. You (and your friends, if any), as one of the best, and the last, humans commanders preserved, are tasked to drive the 2 AI factions out of the galaxy.The game proudly says that the AI is specifically designed for challenge, not balance. Thus, the AI does not follow the rules that you, the players, need to follow. How the AI will move against you mainly follows a value: AI Progress, which dictates on what type of ships and how many of them they will use against you. The greater the progress, the stronger they are. There are very few ways to reduce this number, but many ways to increase it. So, the players need to carefully plan their expansion, so that they will have enough resource and technology to beat the AI and not overly aggravate them in the process, which will surely result in their annihilation.
Awful Truth: Ever wondered why the AI is so wary of the Spire resurfacing in the galaxy? Why does it turn so batshit aggressive as you progress along the Fallen Spire sidequest? Why it goes bananas when you start building their cities and amassing their fleet? It's not just wariness of the Spire's enormously advanced weaponry and powerful craft. It's because the AI was created with Spire technology. They know how to deactivate it.
Back from the Brink: The Game. Also, if you're following the Fallen Spire campaign, the Spire civilization. The AI destroyed the Spire intergalactic travel system to splinter the Spire main fleet so that they will have the chance to destroy the main Spire civilization. The final objective of the Fallen Spire campaign is to build and defend an exogalactic transceiver to reestablish the intergalactic travel system so that the Spire can regroup their fleet together. When the countdown finishes, that objective is successful, and the (now regrouped) Spire Warfleet shows up... with far more powerful versions of the already insanely powerful Spire ships you have gotten... and brings Spire Super Dreadnaughts which you can't get outside of this endgame and can engage combat planetoids that would be considered overkill against a GALAXY on roughly even terms
Big Damn Heroes: So, you're playing the Fallen Spire sidequest. You have the exogalactic transceiver about to finish its countdown, but the AI has you against the ropes... And then, when you thought all was lost, the transceiver's countdown reaches zero, in comes a LEGION of Spire ships, leaded by the biggest craft you have ever seen, and they start to rain fiery death on the AI and sweep through them like they were mere nuisances. Now if that is not Big Damn Heroes, then absolutely nothing is.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard - While the AI doesn't necessarily "cheat", it does play by a different set of rules. Its production facilities are outside the galaxy, so it warps in ships instead of building them. They have bases in every single star system at the start of the game, and because it's a computer, it can react to all fronts at the same time, which means that the only benefit of a two-pronged attack is to split enemy forces. Maybe.
Deflector Shields: A wide-area forcefield that blocks attacks. Prior to version 4, there was a second type used to describe individual ship's resistance to attacks, before it was renamed to armor.
Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Happens when you detonate a nuke in a system. Oh, and you don't get to collect resources or research from that location anymore.
Enemy Mine: Later on in the nebula scenarios, the enemy factions start to team up to take out friendly sides. This is especially noticable with the Dark Spire and Neinzul Astrid, since in one scenario the 2 and Shattered Pillar Zenith (the friendly side) are in free for all battle. The friendly sides you met did create more formal alliance so they don't fit this trope.
Exclusive Enemy Equipment: The AI has access to units that you outright can't make, or make in very limited quantities. Needless to say, they are also very, very strong.
Expansion Pack: Four of them, The Zenith Reminant, Children of Neinzul, Light of the Spire and Ancient Shadows have been released already (each of which adds various features such as planet setups and AI types), with a fifth possibly planned. Each one can be toggled on or off per campaign, and they don't have to be installed in any particular order.
Extreme Omnivore: Some ships can swallow other ships. Swallowed ships suffer continuous damage as the ship that ate them 'digests' them. One good example of them is the Zenith Devourer, a gargantuan robot ship that travels the galaxy, eating anything that stands in its way, with the only exception being Mk V ships.
Godzilla Threshold: When you have to use a nuke. Also, when you constructed the exogalactic transciever, the AI goes bananas and throw everything it have at you, since it knows that if the transciever is completed, the splintered Spire fleets will be able to regroup, and they don't have enough firepower to take the whole fleet head-on.
Immune to Bullets: Some vessels have an immunity to certain attacks (e.g. Bulletproof fighters are immune to shell weapons, Leech starships are immune to missiles, and some are immune to nukes.)
Infinite Supplies - but not for somethings not adjacent to a system you control.
Instant-Win Condition/We Win Because You Didn't: Destroying all Home Command Centers, even if the other player happens to have a much stronger presense. (The AI "Backdoor Hacker" can drop incoming waves just outside your command center.)
King Incognito: The leader of the Spire refugee group turns out to be the Emperor of the Spire civilization.
The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Averted, while humans lost most of its intergalactic travel capacity, others still have. The AI main facilities are outside of the Milky Way, and Spire main civilization is based in the NGC 224/Andromeda galaxy, and its fleet are scattered in several other galaxies.
My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The AI uses a separate resource system, and warps vessels in rather than building them locally.
Nuke 'em: Using a nuke practically eliminates all enemy presence in a planet system, short of command stations. It also makes the AI more nervous, increasing its progress. In addition to the Mark I, the Mark II also destroys all adjecent planets, and the Mark III destroys all planets at once.
Playable Epilogue: The game still continues after you complete it, with the AI still sending in waves.
Precursors: Found in the DLC, The Zenith Reminant, Children of Neinzul, and Light of the Spire. To varying degrees, they are still present and active (the Zenith have fractured into a Proud Merchant Race, a Proud Warrior Race, and a Hidden Elf Village, the Neinzul are, for the most part, Absolute Xenophobes, and the Spire are mostly/not quite fine. While Spires in the Milky Way galaxy are only colonies, the AI also lay siege the main Spire civilization by splintering their main fleet across several galaxies and attack thier main systems. If you complete the Fallen Spire campaign, the main fleet will be regrouped and they'll come in to blow the AI up.
Reality Ensues: What happens when you make the AI with far more resources than you ever can have and no compunction against holding back sit up and decide you're a threat? You get flattened, that's what.
Salt the Earth: The Scorched Earth AI has command centers that will cause a nuclear explosion, destroying all resources and ships within the system. Don't ever play against two of them. Or with one and the other AI is just as dastardly in other ways.
Series Continuity Error: Light of the Spire expansion basically says in the Fallen Spire campaign that humans never met the Spire before, and all they found before finding the refugee ship are just artifacts and such. In Ancient Shadows, however, humanity seems to have a regular contact and are in a fairly good relationship with a group of Spires known as the Gray Spire.
Shout Out: In 'The Zenith Remnant' expansion, there is a cheat code that spawns a Zenith Devourer on a planet of your choice. The code? "Invoke Unicron"
There's a couple of cheat codes like this. "Pull The Lever" is another well known one.
While no human has ever met a Zenith in person, their use of organic materials in their ships raises the possibility that they are their ships.
For all we know, when we are using their blueprints to create new ships for our own use, we are actually helping them reproduce — and then enslaving their "offspring." This is just one theory, though.
The Neinzul are an insectoid race of perpetual "younglings" that live for an extremely short span before dying and being superseded by fully-aware and vicious replacements. Their Enclaves form mini-collectives with their own personalities, goals, and desires.
The Spire are rocks.
Dr. Michael Davidson: Er, perhaps that's not very diplomatic. To put it another way, their bodies are crystalline formations. Exact composition unknown, for reasons you can deduce.
Tractor Beam: Dedicated turrets that hold other ships in place, but they can also be found on other ships.
We Have Reserves: The AI definitely has. You can have too if you plan your production well, but not to the extent that the AI has. And some valuable units are irreplaceable.
Zerg Rush: The AI attempts to attack your systems by launching large waves. While your starting forces are strong enough to defeat them, they can sometimes take out a command center if you don't have secondary defenses.
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