How SHOULD the AI try to wage war?

[Liggi]

In my last game, I spent some time wondering during wars exactly what the most effective strategy is for winning, and what my "objectives" were in descending order of importance. I think often I have a straightforward idea of "kill all their starbases, invade all their worlds, smash all their fleets", but obviously there's more going on below the surface when I'm actually executing this plan.

So, I wanted to open a discussion about (at a high-level), what the AI's objectives should be when waging war against an enemy?

Some suggestions:

• Occupy the core worlds - core worlds are generally the most valuable in terms of resource production, so this will cripple them the most.
  • (Alternative) Bombard their core worlds into oblivion / Use your Colossus to destroy their core worlds
• Capture and hold valuable choke points to hinder enemy's ability to move around
• If you're stronger than them in fleet power, attempt to engage and smash their fleets as much as possible, grind them down
  • If they are stronger than you, try to lure fleets away from important targets, use hit and run tactics (I'm not sure how effective this is currently), try to attack multiple targets at once to force them to divide their attention

I don't think the AI currently has much of a plan resembling any of this, but I thought it could provide a basis for some sort of general purpose AI strategy.

Does anyone have anything to add?

 

[Nevars]

Try to achieve local supremacy aka doomstack.

If our fleet are superior to enemy then try to force decisive battle aka kill all their fleet then destroy all their shipyard or even all their starbase.

Once that achieved we can pick anyhing as our leisure.

But if our fleet are inferior then fallback to choke point, preferably the choke point had been fortified in everything, starbase module, defence platform, etc.

Meanwhile kicking up our fleet production to surpass their firepower.

As long as we can not surpass them we will waiting in our fortified choke point, the moment we surpass them, switch our plan to offensive aka the first plan.

Alternatively if our economy isn't robust enough to attempt that then sitting on choke point and waiting to status quo out is recommended.

Don't know if it will be easy to implement this to ai though.

 

[Liggi]

Another related question is how the Fallen Empires should wage war. I've noticed that they are REALLY bad at the War in Heaven.

If I was a FE, I'd probably do something like... focus on my most powerful neighbours first. I'd keep the bulk of my forces in my own territory to protect it, and I'd send small recon forces out to try to capture systems near the enemy's core worlds, then I'd build a Gateway, allowing me to project influence there.

I'd definitely like to see the War in Heaven given a Custodian pass at some point!