Resources are the heart of your economy. Each area you take over brings new expansion opportunities like mineral-rich asteroids and land to build power plants and each planet's collective "knowledge." Each resource goes into your galaxy-wide pool, allowing you to create new units and upgrades.
AI War's scope is impressive. There's still a skeletal build order, but you won't unlock every unit type in every game. Instead, you're given access to roughly half of the available types.
Another interesting angle is the lack of a generic unit population cap. Each unit type has its own population cap, so you can't build to the most powerful type and go from there. Early units are just as important in the late game as they are early in the game. Attacking with one type of unit doesn't work, particularly when battles consist of thousands of units. Instead, you have to send a mix of units.
Besides the longevity of games, AI War tangles with slower-than-usual pacing. Waiting for things to happen requires a bit of patience. Realistically, it isn't long enough to make a sandwich while you wait, but it will seem like an eternity for twitch players who require instant gratification. You can speed things up, but this is only useful early in the game when there isn't as much to keep track of.
As a bit of a side note, when you do have a lot to keep track of and manage, the interface is clean and incredibly useful. The game still assumes you are able to keep some general information knocking around in your head, but offers a lot of information with only a few mouse clicks and hotkeys.
If it hadn't been brought to my attention through an email, I probably would have never heard of AI War: Fleet Command. This would be a shame because it turned out to be one of the more entertaining games I've played recently. It isn't something for everyone, but fans of well-thought-out strategy games will want to
download the game and give it a try.
