AI War: Fleet Command

AI War pits human players against AI opponents that control vastly superior fleets at the start of the game. The main goal is to destroy the two opposing AI's home command stations without losing yours (in multiplayer the humans will not lose until all human home command stations have been lost). As with chess, AI War is generally thought of in the three stages of opening, middlegame, and endgame, all of which involve different player and AI interactions and activities.

Maps vary in size from 10 to 120 systems and map size has a significant impact on the play style of the game as well as time required. The game starts out with the human player(s) each controlling one system (though they may choose to start with more) and the AI controlling the rest of the map. The AI operates using something called AI Progress. This mechanic works as an indicator of how aware the AI is of the leftover human remnants in the galaxy (as well as to balance the fact that if the AI simply attacked the player with everything it had at the start of the game it would win every time).

AI War received generally favorable reviews and achieved an overall score of 80 on Metacritic. Some reviewers have criticized AI War for being too complex with too steep a learning curve, which contributed to it not being nominated for a 2009 Independent Games Festival award.

AI War's more positive reviews said "AI War is a revolution in terms of how RTSs play," "[The first three AI War Expansions] are perfect examples of what an expansion should be," and "AI War breaks most of the genre's rules. Which is precisely why it's incredible." These same reviewers also noted "it's got a considerable learning curve," "The one thing [the first three expansions] have in common, however, is how much the[y] increase the difficulty compared to the original game," and "It has the presentation of a spreadsheet, but as much heart and soul as Dune 2, Total Annihilation, Homeworld, Galactic Civilizations and Desktop Tower Defense rolled into one."

In 2016, the sequel to AI War: Fleet Command, AI War 2, was funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The story and themes are similar to the original in that the player starts on a single planet and must defeat a powerful Artificial Intelligence that has taken over a galaxy. The player must make thoughtful decisions on what planets to capture so as to not raise the AI Points faster than they themselves grow in ability to defend their assets. The game can be played single-player or with online cooperative multiplayer.

In contrast the to AI War: Fleet Command, in AI War 2, ships belong to ship lines which are assigned to fleets. Lines of ships can be added by stealing from the AI using hacking points or by capturing planets with fleet carriers containing ship lines. A ship line holds a certain number of ships that can be increased by upgrading technology by spending science points. As ships are destroyed in combat, they are automatically replaced so long as the fleet is near a factory, player has enough resources, and the transport vessel has not taken so much damage that it became disabled. The ships in a fleet can be loaded in to the transport vessel to quickly transport ships across the map.