Apocalypse

One thing you can do is customise your race to have great diplomacy, and trade weapon techs with the Drath and Korx. This is because they start out next to the Dread Lords, so they will be gaining some of their technology as they conquer their planets early on.

Build fast fleets with a lot of fire power - don't bother with defense (The Dread lords weapons are too powerful to effectively defend, plus they don't seem to add much defense to their ships, so if you strike first, you can usually win.)

Also don't worry about the Drengin or Yor, they are stuffed in the corner and aren't likely to ever bother you.

I used a planet hopping strategy. Taking a planet, and parking a fleet of ships at it to defend. then build a new fleet to attack the next planet, and so on. If you use the same fleet, the dread lords will likely just take back the planets as soon as you leave them, since they have faster ships than you can ever hope of having. Anyway, after a while, you will have good weapon technology from them as you take their planets, and your ships may even be able to go toe-to-toe with theirs.

This is probably the funnest scenario in the campaign, so enjoy.

The opening screen says if you wait too long, the DL will be unstoppable. Is that true? If you tread water and boom your economy, will bad things happen? Or do you pretty much need to rush them like the other 2 missions? thx!

Nah, that's a myth. The Dreadlords pull new tricks out of their rears as time goes on, but I found that playing with Technologists and +50% research rate I was slowly but surely becoming stronger than them. My game went for 8 years and I saw them move up to using Dreadnoughts more often, making small fleets, equipping 12 laser shielding on one ship type I didn't fight too often and invading one of my planets not with the usual 10-man death squad but an actual force of several thousand troops (which needless to say, stomped my defenses horribly). All that simply didn't compare to the crazy crap I had flying around at the end.

Some tips: make sure your allies get some of your tech so they can chip in better. I found that the Arcaens and Altarians got boxed in and never mattered much, but the Iconians killed off both Dregin and Yor while the Torians took a ton of punishment for me. Don't just sit tight and try to tech up, you need to be waving around the biggest, baddest fleets you can make in the Dreadlord's face to halt their expansion. If you can pry a planet from them, do it. Don't try and pull a "sneaky" win, they start with like 5 planets and actually have defenses this time around.

So I finished this scenario (and the next one).

The hardest part of Apocalypse was shoring up my economy. I colonized the heck out of the galaxy, even grabbing those 4 planets right next to the Drengin & Yor and two planets north of the Drath/Korx. In the campaign I always take +50 Military so I can crank out those colony ships by hand at the beginning. Much much cheaper than purchasing them, but still, I was running -700bc every turn I went 100% military. I had a bunch of planets & not a lot of population. And the Drengin & Yor WERE a threat, simply because I had undefended planets right next to them. They needed Defenders right away, and I frequently was in danger of going -500bc in debt. Even 100% research was -172bc a turn. The mid-game was a difficult waiting game, trying to grow my population and get my tax base to meet my industrial capacity. Researching Sensors and getting those Survey ships out there helped a lot, finding those 1000bc anomalies, as did selling my techs to everybody (including Drath & Korx). That helped a lot keeping my head above water. But that hardest part was, you CAN'T just wait when you've got people attacking you.

The DL's up north were up to all their usual tricks, which we learn how to handle from the previous scenario...sensor ships, fast cheapo laser-1 ships to knock off their transports, etc.. But this is where I first learned the power of retaking DL planets--you can steal their high-level techs! I thought I was doing good when I stole Graviton Driver from them--I was able to build fleets that could knock off their escorts & fighters--but then I stole Quantum Driver! I then researched Medium huls and was able to build fleets that could knock off their battleships. What's better, my sensor ships on occasion detected the DL's leaving some of their home planets undefended. I could build a fast speed-13 transport on Iversonia (the northernmost star system that's not DL's) and sneak it into their home system. The DL's would retake it, but not before I stole a tech.

I thought I was going to end up conquering the Drengin & Yor before the DL (the battle was going better there), but as luck would have it, the DL left their homeworld undefended for a brief time. I snuck in, stole Star Democracy, but best of all that's where all his factories were. When I raped his homeworld, that's about the time my economy was turned around and my decent 18-attack ships started showing up, and it was over.

If I had it to do over again, I would spend more time building military, even if that meant lowering the spending slider below 100%. Most of all, I would build more fast transports. When the DL lets their guard down, the opportunities are awesome. I might also have been wrong in colonizing the northernmost planets. Maybe I should have let the Korx take it, and when the DL's come, I retake it. That would have saved a lot of stress with the DL's and economy.

The way I ended up doing it was going 70% research bonuses and then just doing the vast majority of all the research for everybody. I colonized a bunch, but left the ones closest to the DLs for the Korx and Drath to take. Then I teched like hell and just bought everything I needed with the starting funds and the proceeds from selling my research to the galaxy (I feel that buying and reselling other civs' tech is lame, so I didn't do it, but I researched way more techs than all the rest combined). that way, my allies were teched up enough to dominated the Yor and the Drengins, and the Korx were doing well enough to take some DL worlds. Once I could get fleets of 4 small ships with 8 damage each and 6 speed (to outrun the battleships with 5 speed) I got two of those fleets and went up with some fast transports and a couple of sensor ships. The sensor ships were speed 12 (can outrun even the "escort" type DL ships which had speed 11) and all the sensors I could fit on the rest of the frame. They allowed me to keep tabs on where the DL defenses were without being spotted. I sent a decoy troop transport up the right-hand edge of the map, got it spotted by a couple of battleships and then ran them on a wild goose chase away. In this way I didn't have to fight a single battleship and only had to face defenders, heavy fighters, and escorts. All of these I could take out without losses as long as I got the first strike. Took the 2 remaining planets (the korx had already done half the work for me) and that was that.

Ok this mission is crazy. I think there's some balance issues...

I started out okay, I had 4 or 5 planets colonized nearby. Then the dread lords came and I was getting pounded, but then I recaptured a nearby planet and got the huge ship technology. I started cranking out huge ships, which initially could stave off the dread lords, but then they sent in frigates with 25 defense which nullified my huge ships.

Not only that, but my allies and everyone else were not colonizing any planets! They weren't attacking the dread lords at all. And, the ONLY planets that the dread lords were attacking were mine!

Also, get this, I had about 17 foreign agents in my planets towards the end. I simply could not produce anything. Also, I was doing three times the research as everyone else. Eventually my allies ran out of money so I couldn't sell them any more technologies, so my economy collapsed.

All in all I think the game just went whack on me; there's no way to beat it all of your planetary improvements don't work due to espionage.

I'm not sure how anyone can beat the dread lords when they send out frigates with 28 HP, 125-300 attack, and 25 defense. I was thinking of maybe sending out ships with 12-15 speed that might be able to take out the 11 HP defenders on their planets along with some transports... but that would require making fleets, which don't get destroyed while I'm amassing them. Also, I'm playing this on tough... is it possible that all of my allies got bad AI intelligence while the dread lords got good AI?

Also, I noticed some things in this thread... the transports have 8 attack, so there's no way for 1 attack guys to kill them. Besides, any fleets that I have for the transports are destroyed by maurading frigates. Also, the as well as the neutral races didn't do ANYTHING as far as colonizing and attacking. Seriously, nothing. So maybe the only way to play this campaign is to play on the regular setting?

Strangely enough - this exact thing keeps happening to me! - my allies never colonize any planets, except for the starting colony ships they appear to have (or they only make one, and give up) research almost nothing (they never go beyond laser/mass driver/stinger, or pretty much any 'early' technology unless I give it to them, and yes, for me as well the dread lords COMPLETELY ignore EVERYONE, including the drengin and yor, except for me - going straight for me, from the beginning. Also, I had to survive by buy-building things, so I sold technology to my allies as well, but when they ran out of cash, they generated more at a ridiculously low rate, still never getting any more technology, and eventually starting to randomly beg for money and tech from me (they seemed to practically research at the starting research rate, forever) - the only ships of theirs I ever saw was scouts, and.. yeah - mission is impossible, the only good thing being the drengin and yor appeared to be totally incompetent as well (I couldn't tell, though, as I never had a chance to leave my little corner of the map due to the 20 dread lord ships scouting around it, but none ever seemed to bother me)