These awesome gadgets don’t stop the enemy ships from shooting, but they hold them in position, allowing a small fleet of cruisers and fighters to patrol this dead zone and whittle away at a much larger force long before it gets within range of the beating heart of my empire. It’s an expensive tactic, but the two enemy forces are snooping around in my sector of space within minutes of the game beginning, and that defensible mote in space soon proves its worth.

After this initial fortification, the rest of the sector can slowly be secured. Assigning guns to the wormholes and around metal and crystal harvesters, while trying, somewhat desperately, to shore up the resources to keep this delicate area of a 20 planet galaxy safe. Even with the aggression turned down a notch, the AI is unforgiving and unrelenting, and just treading water is enough to occupy all my (limited) strategic aptitude.

The bottom corner shows the score of each player, including the enemy AI’s, and I see that of the four of us, mine is the lowest. Paz is way out in front, and I realise he’s taken less obsessive defensive measures and put together a fleet ready for the inevitable attacks. And those attacks come thicker and faster the more aggressively you act, which means my gallant colleague commander is encouraging lots more cannon fodder into his territory and racking up some tasty points.

With virtual heels dug into the ground, I put together some forces. The planet I’ve chosen as my homeworld favours tanks; slow moving, yet solid and damaging. With a decent mixture of these bad boys surrounded by as many other types of fighters that I can afford, they’re sent to the nearest wormhole, where a sprinkling of enemies have been seen to appear. Sent through (without the foresight of any accompanying drone to apprise me of an exact breakdown of enemy forces on the other side of the wormhole) I find my score start to climb impressively.

Sending that fleet to a suitably fleeting death was almost worth it, just to save face in this galactic community of four. At least one of the AI enemies is now in fourth place. I’m not bothered about winning – truly I’m not – but I’d be loathe to come last. But even this point gathering distraction has left my homeworld unattended long enough for mining facilities to be wiped out, and a resource and energy crisis to strike my empire. Once again, fortifying the immediate area of space around me is of the utmost urgency.

What’s even more apparent this time (not that it wasn’t obvious before) is that a full and populated game of AI War wouldn’t be measured in hours, but in days. This is a game of simple controls, quickly accessible gameplay, sparse visuals and massive scope. Peter and I chat, casually but sincerely, about the epic scale of a full battle, and realise that we’re not going to finish any game that’s worth playing – at least, not in time to get a review written.

But that’s no bad thing. This is a game that takes little toll on your system; that most any rig will play comfortably and any internet connection cope with, but offers an experience of acute intensity that will satisfy strategists from the meek and uninitiated (that’d be us) to the warmongering King Nerds, with no life and an unquenchable desire to conquer.

AI War gives you the universe, so long as you’ve got the time and fortitude to take it.

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