I managed to fit a single player FFA game in, with seven AI. I set them at hard difficulty as that is the standard the AI plays at in multiplayer, and I wanted to test whether multiplayer FFA with some AI factions was possible, to make 2-5 player games more interesting. I used all the options, with normal fleet sizes and set to a one player win.
I won the game fairly easily, two of the AI factions were defeated- neither by me- and simply by moving up the tech tree I managed to get good relationships with all the remaining factions, even the ones where I had no envoys. After that it was just a question of not losing the pirate bids, and I would win.... not good.
One of the Vasari factions would offer me a resource pact and when I accepted, withdraw, so that I was left offering them a resource pact using their half of the pact screen, and they would repeatedly reject this until I cancelled the offer... a bug?
I attempted to take out the pirate planet but though I destroyed the ships the turrets had developed flak and extended range and it was too much of a chore to finish them. The added strength to the defences adds nothing to the game but dullness. Perhaps some flak, though if the turrets have flak they need a flak gun graphic, and having extended range seems reasonable- but the ultra-armour and ultra-health to go along with these upgrades are not.
As I was going for the new victory, I wanted to stay on good terms with the other factions, and this proved possible even after I sent huge pirate raids to level their planets so that I could take them over. The hard AI proved unable to handle the raids, unless with a starbase plus fleet, and even then it tied up their fleet for a long time. I just occupied the planets after they were razed. But it was very boring. There is a typo among the pirate missions messages 'presuasive' for 'persuasive' when the pirates seemed to decline an offer.. though the raid may have launched anyway, another bug? Also, the raid timer for missions seemed to get stuck, so that while it seemed as if I had to wait to send another mission, I could still access the screen and order one.
I wasn't impressed. The way that the relations are handled needs to be reworked- I was getting points from Advent empires (supposed to hate TEC) that I'd made no efforts to be on good terms with and had repeatedly attacked using pirates. The relations bonus for a simple 100cr gift seems far too high. Mostly, though, there is no sense that the other AI are attempting to win the game themselves. Some element of a stop-the-leader alliance needs to be added, and also I'm not in favour of a victory on points alone, some further condition like owning half the system needs to be implementd as well. Then the new victory condition would help to finish won games earlier, rather than the borefest that it is at the moment.
The pacts I wasn't able to investigate much as even though I won the game easily I couldn't get pacts... again this needs to be rewoked, why an empire that you only trade with under a cease fire and which refuses to share secrets or sign treaties should pile up points to your eventual victory seems very questionable...? If consulates existed then another aspect of the victory could be to have a consulate on every enemy homeworld? I hadn't even visited one of the homeworlds when they were already crawling to me!
The pirates are just silly. The development team have commented that they don't want 'free experience' for enemies- so what is Insurgency then, just ultimate abandontech? Its as if the OMG! crowd have been let loose OMG! 8000 health! OMG! 30 armour! OMG! 100 attack! Pirates could play an important role in the game as counters to over-extended trade empires, with sneaky AI and relevant abilities like cloaks and phase inhibitor bypass. The heavy stuff should be left to player-financed missions, and even then not at the level where it can simply destroy a player fleet- a carefully selected vulnerable target, maybe even a small starbase in the later game, should be the limit of pirate terror raids. Pirate upgrades should max at the 30-40% level the player upgrades max at, by all means more special abilities, just not risible levels of armour and health. Its a pity the pirate steal ship attribute couldn't have been made to function.
So- my opinion is that all the features of the expansion need much more development, there wasn't anything that impressed me as having improved the game, very much the contrary. The only consolation might be that Entrenchment wasn't great on release either?
