AI War II is the sequel to the award-winning AI War. It is a grand strategic RTS where the player must survive against an inhuman enemy who has conquered the galaxy. To survive, the player must steal as much technology as possible and take enough territory to be able to fortify bases and launch attacks.
The more territory you gain, the more you begin to get the attention of your enemy, the AI. You will have to choose carefully which territory you conquer and where you set up your bases.
Whether you are a newcomer to AI War or a seasoned veteran, there are difficulty settings to suit everyone. One thing is for certain, however – you are always going have the odds against you. This challenging game can be played both in single-player and co-op (up to 8 players).
Damien Smith: How big would a campaign be and how long would it take to complete one?
DS: When capturing territory, roughly how long will it be before the AI begin to pick up on your activity, and how would it go about tackling you?
On the length, I’d expect the same normal range of 8 to 16 hours, with the usual outliers.
And there’s still the behaviour from Classic that any AI ships you’ve antagonised but not killed will organise and try to hit you where they think they can win.
DS: Could you describe how the gameplay will differ between the difficulty settings?
DS: The hardest difficulty you describe as being for the masochistic or the ultra hardcore RTS player. Would you need to be a strategic mastermind to win against the AI at this level?
The higher the difficulty, the more resources the AI diverts from other galaxies to deal with you.
The default difficulty level is the lowest one where the AI isn’t holding back at all on the algorithms. The levels above that are intended for people who want more challenge by virtue of having more stuff thrown at them. They can also add more challenge by choosing harder AI personalities, and various other options like the Avenger, if they’d prefer that to “an AI with Moar Ships”.
DS: For those who may not have played the previous game, could you talk a bit about the backstory of the game and the races? For example, where did the AI come from, who are the Spire and what caused the conflict between them and humanity?
DS: Would it be recommended to play the first AI War before the sequel?
DS: The original Kickstarter funding goal was almost $300,000. How do you feel having to lower the funding goal will affect the overall end result of AI War II?
DS: There are currently three stretch goals announced that range from $65,000 - $90,000. What other stretch goals might there be beyond that?
Each of those would be fun to re-implement with adaptations based on what we learned from years of feedback on them. The idea is to get to them all eventually, but when depends on when the funding comes in.
DS: I have always felt the music of a video game is one of the most important aspects that brings everything together. What kind of soundtrack can fans expect to see in AI War II?
Starting with AI War: Fleet Command, and then with all of the AI War expansions, I have had a pretty simple goal: paint a picture of space. Now, that subject has been tackled a million times over in other space games and films, but I wanted to do something slightly different.
A lot of times space is depicted by ambient music and sound. It makes perfect sense as there is no actual sound in space. What I wanted to do, however, was to imagine that space was full of sound. Full of melodies, full of different musical flavours, full of colours.
While that leaves the subject of the music for the games very open ended, it’s that freedom that has helped me be really creative with the soundtracks. For AI War II, in particular, I want to write music that sounds enormous. I want the players to close their eyes and feel as if they’re inside a never ending void.
I don’t want to confuse that with the music sounding far away, that’s not the case at all. I want the impact to be immediate, but to then let the music feel as if it’s travelling for miles on end. I’m really excited to score the game with this idea in mind!
DS: You mention on the Kickstarter page that the game is designed to be moddable. What kind of mods would you love to see the community make?
Some of that would probably require some work on our end, but given the kind of back-and-forth on our forums in Classic that’s not a big barrier. I also greatly look forward to modders competing to see who can make the most glorious “this melted my 10-cpu, 4-gpu, 128 GB of RAM beast-machine into the ground!” battles. I know at least one player who won’t stop until that happens.
Another one would be something that has multiple huge factions fighting it out, and the player is just one actor on the board who can only really hope to influence who wins rather than dominating the galaxy themselves… and then some player pulls off total domination anyway. That’d be pretty cool.
AI War II is looking to becoming a wonderful title that takes a different approach to the RTS genre; just like the previous title did back in 2009. LaMothe is looking to bring back what players loved about the original title and expand on it as well. I wish Arcen Games the best of luck with the Kickstarter and look forward to hearing more about the title throughout development.
If you would like to find out more about AI War II you can check out the Kickstarter page. If you would like to take a look at the original title AI War: Fleet Command you can find it available on Steam. I would like to thank Keith LaMothe and Pablo Vega for taking the time to talk to me about AI War II.
