Campaign help (Mission 3)

I have this problem in mission 1. They are building stuff faster than I can research it.

campaign? There's a campaign?
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If you have AP.

~SDC~

i had this trouble with level 2. but keep in mind that you don't have to defeat him, or survive with lots of planets. i won't give away the story, but just remember to just do the objective and it shouldnt' be a big problem, and make sure the other guy takes the brute of the fight.

Joqorhan, I need more specific help please I've had five planets churning out nothing but corvettes and transports for over an hour and the rogue ship just plucks them off before they get there.............

hmm.... i have no idea if this would work, due to slow speeds on transports, but try taking an out of the way route, if you just go straight from your planet directly to his, they'll easily get picked off. i would get a large fleet (15-25) and send it a sector or two to the left or right. (left side is the altarian side, right? i haven't actually played the level, just looked at it a bit.

That doesn't work, for two reasons.

A - The Krox ship is far faster than your ships; it would probably have time to get both fleets before either reaches the planet.

More importantly,

B - You can't build a fleet - the Krox destroy the ships as you build them. And before long, they'll start capturing your planets.

As far as I can see, the only way this scenario is at all possible is if the Krox decide to pick on the Altarians for long enough that they allow you to build some sort of force. But there's no way to control that, so at best, this scenario seems to be totally up to luck - either that, or there's some trick I'm missing.

If anyone knows how to reliabely, or semi-reliably, win this, please could you post an strategy answer? Or at least very direct hints?

The trick to this campaign for me was to planet hop. Don't waste time building combat ships or defense ships. They are useless!

Build a collection of colony ships and scouts. Use the scouts as cannon fodder to locate the enemy ship and be destroyed by it (thus freeing your colony ships to colonise). You colony ships should be used to planet hop. I set my spending on zero military (50% social, 50% research), kept government spending low (thus racking up credits in my treasury) and bought ships as required. Always buying the colony ship in the planet closes to the next empty planet.

Once the enemy planets were discovered I'd buy a single military craft to destroy any transport ships (again using scouts as cannon fodder to find them), and transport ships to capture their planets (using colony ships to move population forward planet by planet)

Paul.

~SDC~

Your good.

I have not been able to pass mission 1. It is ridiculous hard.

You aren't kidding. I have yet to win a game...I even went back to Challenging. I did get a good game going just in a regular game, but it crashed and now the save crashes every time I press End Turn. So I'm waiting for the next update. Some folks have said that it's not more difficult (or even easier) than 1.20, but that's sure not true for me.



~SDC~

Well, it toiok me a try or two to get past mission one and 2 but 3 has got me stuumped. Gonna try what Paul says next.

Well, two games just played. In both I had 8 or 9 planets, just about the max I think. I had military set to 0 , soc and research to 50/50. Once I researched to BC I started to make ship on planets as follows - 2 scouts for chaff, 3 BC and 4 freighter. I sent the scout into his home system bypassing his ships and the avatar ignored them. I sent the BC to the extreme south which he made a bee-line for and killed the only two I had produced. I had 3 frieghters hidden in the lower right hand side when he started coming at me with freighters guarded by frigates. Once he does that, you are going to lose. The saddest thing is the corvetts you produce can only BARELY kill his transports. When they go back to a planet to repair , mister avatar wipes em out not to mention the frigates and eventually Black Knights.

This scenerio is very frustrating and relies 90% on luck. I dont have time to play this 20 or 30 times to get lucky and I sure don't have the patience. I'm sure there are better players than me, I'm more middle of the road, this has got me stumped. I'll guess I'll wait until they either re-balance it or someone developes a better strategy. I can't see going beyond this point right now.

repair the corvette?

Don't bother. kill the transport and then send the corvette to the far corner of the map. His avatar will eventually chase it down. While he's doing this buy transports and invade another planet. Repeat as required! Economy is key here. You need income so that you can buy ships as required. Research straight for Battleships so that you can use combat transporters. They make things much easier.

Paul.

~SDC~

Hmm, I'll have to try that.

your guys enemy ship is an avatar?? mines an excalibur with 500 hp and a crapload of movement. This level is literally impossible for me, i cant colonize more than 1 planet because it is able to cross several sectors in a turn (meaning that the scout thing doesnt work). ummm help!?
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ug finially beat that mission. It is about 10x as hard as every other mission so far (on mission 7 now)

Whew, I musta played this one 4 more times and never even got close to the enemy homeworld. I'm not gonna play anymore until it gets rebalanced.

Irtaiko,
play it again and do the following. Reduce difficulty by 1 level. Choose +2 speed pick. The speed picks are crucial as they allow you to planet hop your colony ships without them being destroyed. Focus everything on expansion at the start building scouts and colony ships only. Use the scouts to explore the planets (expect them to last just a few turns) and the colony ships to hop from one colony to a new one. Expect your ships to be destroyed so don't put many people on them. You can ship more people planet to planet later using new colony ships. Early in the game the enemy has no means of invasion so you must capture as many planets as possible before that.

Once the colonisation is complete (all planets colonised) switch your focus to research and social development. Keep a large cash reserve. Get transports asap. build colony ships to transport population forward (planet by planet so the enemy does not destroy your ships). Once the population is forward buy a transport and invade. Focus on getting the eyes of the universe and the gravity accelerators wonders as these are very very useful.

Hope this helps. If you have problems drop another difficulty level and repeat. Once you get the hang of it you can up the difficulty again.

Paul.



~SDC~

heyt whats this all about bet thx i knwo this is cool u know

~SDC~

I don't get how you can possibly expect to keep up in research if you have your spending set so low. You will NEVER get to dreadnought before you are completley annihilated by combat transports. How many planets does the AI typically have once colonization is over?

And by the way, you cannot hide your vessels, the AI has no fog of war or shroud. I've moved scout ships to the four corners of the map and had them just guard there. Eventually the EXCALIBUR would come and kill them. But that would give me about 2 turns to move a colony ship out.

Does the AI normally have no fog of war? I know they start of with the entire map explored.