Campaign Mission w/ Dreadlords

One Dreadlord fighter is not strong enough to wipe out your entire empire. Make sure you get first strike and have big enough guns to kill them quickly. Their small hulls have 16 HP just the same as yours, they are only speed five so you should be able to first strike them. Their sole advantage in space combat is the fact they have all the ultimate weapons, but if they dont get to fire them they die just like everyone else. Starbase bonuses are handy, as always, but with decent level plasma or even phasors, you should be able to take them in open space. Just be sure to get first strike, and its better to let a fighter through and lose a starbase or six , rather than let a transport through and lose a major world. Oh, and get sensors. Those transports have a move of 11- they can take an undefended world from outside your sensor range if you arent careful. Better yet, Eyes of the Universe gives everything sensors 15.

Or, you can rush. Rush-build colonisers for all four planets. Rush build basic labs on every tile. Rush build a fleet of small attack ships and a couple of invasion transports. Be running 100% research while doing this - your arent building everything, your buying it. Also, bring contructors. Build Starbases en-route to get the range, you should get to the target before it has any defences, and if you dont, well, you have an attack fleet. I got there just as the DLs were beginning to attack me. I lots a few worlds, but I still won. While en-route, be researching drives - you cant fit the new ones, but Warp Drive gives an intrisnsic +1 speed to all your ships, and life support, which also gives an intrinsic range bonus. Solidiering techs help as well, but if you have a big transport with a couple of troop modules on it, the enemy dont have a chance anyway. Remember to shut down your economy when you run out of money.

Thanks for the detailed tips, i'll try it out. I have been rush building colisers and quickly getting 6 planets not 4, but even then i can't develop much weapons tech before the dlords start harrassing me. But I haven't tried rushing all the research buildings. What do you mean by shut down the economy when i run out of money?

bah, i give up... this is way too hard for a 4th mission, I can't even get to the point of getting the tech to outpace the dlord ships before i get wiped out. They didn't play test this mission or something it's totally unbalanced. The pre mission blurb makes out like you might encounter the dlords, oh and if you do don't bother them. what crap, they come after you straight away and what chance have you got? They don't even mention anything about fixing it in the 1.1 patch either. I'm taking this back and getting a game I can enjoy playing not one that annoys the poop out of me.

That particular mission is meant to be challenging for experienced players. If you can't beat it, just lose it and do the alternate missions instead.

Why fight the dreadlords? You can get a small attack force, invasion transports, and your three starting constructors on the way to the target before they turn up. Dont build them, buy them. When your vast treasury runs dry - tech buildings only means you have a miserable tax income - go into the domestic screen and turn spending to zero. Scrap excess ships if you are still losing too much money.

Or, skip the campaign. Its not the meat of the game, nor is it a good tutorial. The point of 4X games is sandbox games, not the plot.

I dunno. I have to agree. There's not much way to avoid fighting them, since they start in the top righthand corner of the map and send a scout by to scope you out like 2 turns later. I tried a rush and their begining fighter just follows you from across the map, apparantly because it sees troop transports as a threat.

And that's on the games I even GOT to planetary invasion tech...

One game I had a DL troop transport show up on my (intended) major production planet on turn 10.

After trying the campaign like 4-5 times on Normal and 7-8 times on beginer, and then failing mulitplt times on SIMPLE.... I said screw it. Screw the campaign, it obviously isn't designed to be fun...

I could get my major production base to 70ish Mil production in under 100 turns but eventually these "slow building" dread lords just showed up with 3 or 4 fighters and wiped out my defensive forces, and star bases, and proceded to drop 2-3 transports and bam, planet gone.

Maybe I'll go back to just buying everything on the first planet, setting the difficulty to simple researching nothing but planetary invasion, and CRAWL my ass around the edge of the screen praying that a lone dreadlords fighter doesn't see my fleet and wipe it out, like it did almost every time I tried that strategy on the normal setting. (The one time I thought I was going to make it the Yor saw me.. sigh).

All in all I would reccomend ignoring the campaign, I certainly wouldn't reccomend the game to anyone on the basis of the missions....

What is surprising about the 4th mission is that it is so hard relative to the previous missions. Mission 1 was moderately difficult, 2 was almost a cakewalk (I think I claimed all but 1 resource...) and 3 was a similar cakewalk, only made tougher bythe fact that I had to compete with the Altarians to get colonies and resources. (I parked a Military Starbase right outside the Drengin world and beat up everything that emerged until my slow transports could make it to the attack point.)

Then, in mission 4, I get jumped by the DLs and can't recover. (OK, technically I'm still alive - but DL ships are swarming all around me, virtually every ship I build gets blasted right out of the sky, and I am barely holding off DL Transports from getting to me.) In retrospect, I can think of some better ways to play this level, and I will try them on my next attempt.

(I created base-level resource starbases in an attempt to gain a long-term advantage. BEfore I could upgrade them sufficiently, the DLs crushed them. I don't think the point of this mission is to "build and grind down" the enemy. I think this is intended to be a quick rescue mission - get a force together, get to the planet, and rescue the Torian leader.)

My thoughts now are to :
1) colony rush in the direction of your target (only one or two colonies are needed). The benefit of this is just to extend the range of your ships without having to use your constructors.
2) Immediately buy research and production capability on your worlds.
3) Figure out how best to place starbases to reach the target world. (Maybe a side-invasion of a Yor or Drengin colony would make this easier.)
4) Concentrate on Research and Military production. - Initial research - Weapons, Defenses and Starbase techs, fit Planetary Invasion in when you can. Military production - Constructors, then Transports, when possible.
5) Build up your one or two starbases so that they can defeat the occasional DL attack. (If one or two of these Starbases can be on a resource - great, otherwise, they should be Military Starbases to help out your ships)
6) Build a few of the fastest, best armed ships and Transports possible and head for the target world - taking a circuitous route if necessary (let the Altarians fight the DLs for you.)
7) Build as many of your biggest, most advanced ships possible. Bigger is better, so that they can take a DL hit and still get a shot or two off (maybe). The idea is to use these ships to pick off DL small ships opprotunistically, and otherwise defend your worlds and support the Starbases.
8) Hope to hold out until you can take the target world.

I don't know, we'll see how it works.

Sorry, double post

I completed this mission on beginner last night. I decided after about the 4th restart to go for a technological/star base victory on this one. Started off by colonising all the planets down the right hand side keeping most pretty balanced with one economy/population and another research based. Once that had been done and I had made contact with the non dread lord races I started the CIA approach to warfare. Basically I tech traded with everyone even the dregin in exchange for peace treaties. Although the Dregin and the Yor would not make peace with me they would make peace with the neutrals for a price (7-10 mid level techs) although it never lasted long. Once I had auto explored the entire section I started giving away my ships to the neutrals. My idea was to keep the dread lords busy with the others until I could get my research up to speed. I had no star bases and no ships. Dread lord ships would come through and sit at my planets but couldn't do anything. I researched sensors to full then built eye of the universe so I could spot those troop transports coming when they did I rush built a medium ship with nothing but an engine and the best beam weapons I could get my hands on. The ships would take out the transports then I would scrap them for money. Eventually the DL's got bored and went to attack the others. After about 150-200 turns of giving everyone every tech I researched, trading when I could and occasionally giving any ships I built the turn I built them the DL's had been pushed back into the corner. Their beam based weapons were pretty useless because of the high level shields everyone had so they started making MD ships. This slowed them down enough for every one (except me) to build up some fleets and take out their mining star bases and a few roving fleets. Without a immediate threat I started building constructors and researching star base fortifications/star base victory tech and life support. Once I had enough constructors I built a military star base around the central star and colonised the two planets. (unoccupied because the DL's wiped them out twice.) I then built 30 more constructors and some fast attack ships. By this time all the research was completed. Sent the constructors into the DL's star system and built a fully upgraded military base with all the trimmings. Sent 8 medium ships in two fleets they wiped out all bases and ships in the system in 1 turn. Once I colonised their planet I realised you didn't need to. But hey they deserved it for making me restart so many times.

dread lords are supereasy to fight. remember that small ships get to fire more often in combat. simply research some logistics/miniaturization/beams, and stack fighters.

sure you lose a few here and there, but at less than 200bc for a fighter with 4-5 lasers on it, not a big deal to replenish.

can also try some military starbases +1 or +2 to beam weapons, per fighter, is a nice bonus

It isn't unbalanced. You need to work with your teamates to win, and rush the Drengin planet. If you have max soldiering the DL can't conquer you anyway, so they aren't a problem. You think this is bad, wait 'til Apocalypse, where you have to fight them yourself.

This mission was tricky. But it is doable. I started off with 100% spending since you start with 30k of money.
I restarted game several times (crtl+N) until i had some nice bonus tiles, onne of which was the Precursor mine (+700% prod) on my capital planet (woohooo) .

I had 2 planets with research focus and the main doing prod. I colonised a new planet, and i was doing ok, but the DL soon came and took that planet with 10 soldiers vs 3000 pop I couldnt kill a single soldier!! agggg ... So i reloaded the last turn and abandoned the planet. My allies soon launched colonizers and battled the DL for it lol

A fighter with 20 atak (masss drivers) soon appeared and kiled a ship or two of mine, and proceeded to kill the an Economic starbase I had. I recalled my fighters and stacked them with about 10-15 atak. I went back and kiled the DL ship. But the main thing that saved me was researching heavily into ARMOR, and building a military starbase with all atak and defence bonuses i had at the time. I lost some ships but destroyed the small fighters they sent me.

Then heavy fighters with 40 atak MDs showed up. I had a nice enough defense to keep them away. I just kept reaserching + social building + churning out fighters and then upgrading existing ones, till i was able to take down the 40MD fighters. I built better ships and upgraded Armor and upgraded my starbase. I never colonized another planet cause it would spread me too thin.

When i felt i was safe in my area, a Dreadnaught appeared with 60 MD atack and around 70 HP Forunately with the starbase beefing me up and having 2-3 stacked fleets, the DD did not come close.

I kept reaserching into Weapons / Armor / Engines / Logistics mainly. Also I always trades techs with my allies. My money was getting low kinda fast but I kept 100% funding all the time (till very late on the game). I also discovered that I needed a lot more range to get the Drengin HW (or some plantes/bases on the way). so i did soem reaserch into Range (life support).

Needless to say, I got all my breaks from my allies (the Arceans) who were doing good on researching.
I traded them for the medium scale building (which then i contrinued researching to large scale building), and then I traded them for a MD weapon they just researched (+7 atack MD).

And that was it. I made a Large ship with 60+ MD atak and put it in a small fleet. This beast ate up about everything in its way. I had to kill a few things to get more lvls on my ships to atak the dreadnaught (which is very dam powerful btw esp that it had picked up a few lvls by that time).

I ended annihilating everythign and everyone (Except my allies of course). Late in the game, when I ran into negative funds, I started to sell techs to my allies until they ran out of money. Anomolies helped with +1000bc abd +2500 bcs. I lowered funding later on, made some constructors, built a few garded bases, and sent some Troops and conquered the Yors and then the Drengins.

Even without the powerful MD gun i got, I had good enough firepower, because I had lots of ships and I researched a lot in Weapons.

So in short, it is doable.

- Get some good bonus tiles at start.
- Go full 100% spending.
- Research Armor / Weapons / Engines / Logistics mainly.
- Trade techs with your allies when they have something (give them your lower techs and see if they can add money on top of the deal lol).
- build a military starbase around your starting area but farther down so its not an easy picking.
- build small fighter fleets and stak them with latest weapons + armor (vs Mass Drivers).
- build bases to get to the far away places (plus some research into range/life support).
- get all the anomolies you can, and then park your Scount ship infront of your planet to give you a nice early warning.

thats all i remember lol good luck

Some of you guys are referring to the wrong mission, if I understand the original poster.

Mission 4 - achilies heal. Ow, that mission is killing me.
There are some bugs too, I think. I can't research any missle or mass driver techs. I took over a DL world and got this "super tech" mass driver tech that 'distorted flesh too' or somethign like that... and it never showed in my build option lists...

And when you turn down the difficulty, your allies get stupider too, instead of better. YOu'd think that if you're playing on an easeir level the allies would help you MORE, not less....

Mission 4 - achilies heal. Ow, that mission is killing me. There are some bugs too, I think. I can't research any missle or mass driver techs. I took over a DL world and got this "super tech" mass driver tech that 'distorted flesh too' or somethign like that... and it never showed in my build option lists.

Thats a psionic weapon. Evil races only. Besides the tech tree is streamlined, you can't research a lot of things.

Wow, what a strange mission. After several days of experimenting with all the different tactics I have seen here in the forums, I finally beet it. Took about 30 minutes, 1 Battle Ax, 1 Transport, 2 Construction Ships. Haven't tried to duplicate my results yet, and it was on a lower setting, but this is what I did.

*Note: The DL's main planet, Teth, in this mission starts off with one fighter with a weapon strength of 2, 14hp's, and no armor.

1. On Outpost 22 I bought a Starport.

2. Then started buying my ships at both planets. Build, I mean buy, your slower ships at Outpost 22, and quickest one, which I think is the transport, at Outpost 21.

3. Start heading to Teth ASAP! It doesn't take long before they build their first ship. And when them do, it's a butt kicker.

4. Build a Military Starbase when you get closer, but don't get to close. It's all about stealth and quickness.

5. As I almost get to Teth, I through up one more Military Base, hit the 1 fighter in orbit with the Battle Ax, then land the Transport. That was it.

I hope I didn't get lucky, I hope this strategy is repeatable and helps those having difficulties with this mission. Good Luck

Wow, what a strange mission. After several days of experimenting with all the different tactics I have seen here in the forums, I finally beet it. Took about 30 minutes, 1 Battle Ax, 1 Transport, 2 Construction Ships. Haven't tried to duplicate my results yet, and it was on a lower setting, but this is what I did.

*Note: The DL's main planet, Teth, in this mission starts off with one fighter with a weapon strength of 2, 14hp's, and no armor.

1. On Outpost 22 I bought a Starport.

2. Then started buying my ships at both planets. Build, I mean buy, your slower ships at Outpost 22, and quickest one, which I think is the transport, at Outpost 21.

3. Start heading to Teth ASAP! It doesn't take long before they build their first ship. And when them do, it's a butt kicker.

4. Build a Military Starbase when you get closer, but don't get to close. It's all about stealth and quickness.

5. As I almost get to Teth, I through up one more Military Base, hit the 1 fighter in orbit with the Battle Ax, then land the Transport. That was it.

I hope I didn't get lucky, I hope this strategy is repeatable and helps those having difficulties with this mission. Good Luck

Oops, sorry bout that, wouldn't let me edit the double post.

A good simple rush there. Sounds repeatable since you dont seem to rely on your allies for anything and the cash is available.

For those that dont rush I would suggest the following:
-Dont expand very much if at all. Maybe take that PQ4 planet above you.
-Dont bother with Def techs until you are comfortably destroying Dreads.
-Dont use the bigger hulls (I use small) in fleets so you can get more ships and therefore more shots off (ships are gonna die in 1 hit early on anyway).
-Very early on get Plasma Weapons and design a small hull with 4 damage and the most speed you can fit. Spam this ship. Use your cash to get this in the field in high numbers and in fleets.
-If you have "good" fleets build a starbase to suck the Dreads in, at least you know where they will be heading.
-Research beam techs, logistics and soldiering as priorities.
-Tech up to Phasors and build a small hull that can do at least 8 damage (2 phasors and a plasma gun for example) and as much speed as you can get in it. In fleets of 5 this will take the fight to the Dreads.
-Trade all your techs with the allies. Get their techs or money. You are getting weapons and logistics so get your "regular" techs this way.
-You only need one transport per Dread world (1000 soldiers). Engines will help them make it in 1 piece.
-Dont let the Dreads have lots of planets. It does take a while for them to make them useful but once they can build ships there you are facing swarms of Dreads.
-Set your sliders to mostly research and a bit of Social (20~30%). Unused social will go to building ships.
-Stop the Dreads getting to your allies as much as possible. The more you do this the more your allies can help you.

Just some advice!

P.S - Dont just hit Ctrl-N until you get great bonus tiles. Thats just lame and you will never learn an effective strategy to beat them, you will always be dependant on your start. Remember you are going to be facing the Dreads for quite a few missions yet so get used to making the most of what you get. A PQ10 is still usefull without a precursor mine.

There were a few posts about this a month or so ago, I will attempt to recall the salient points and some things that helped me.
I think one of the main things to remember with the Dreadlords, is to build lots of small ships rather than a few big ones. 2 Lasers (or a plasma) and 2 of the best engines you've got on a tiny hull, put them in to the biggest fleet you can manage and your away. A fleet of 6 or 7 will kill the biggest things they can throw at you. Expect to lose 1 possibly 2 every battle and have replacments ready. The more you can cram in to a fleet the less the losses.
IMO defenses against the DL are useless. You have to research to (too?) far down the line to get ones that are effective and they make your ships prohibitively (Sp?) expensive.
The important things to research using this method are: Engines, speed is the key to attacking first, Weapons, but only a little way (lasers V or plasma will do you), Miniaturisation (Sp?), so you can fit all that lovely stuff on your tiny hulls.
Once you have 2 or 3 8 strong fleets roaming about you can pretty much get on with your normal game.
Another technique that was mentioned was to have a planet intentionally invaded to re-take it and gain tech. Build enough transports to completely load the population of a planet (or big enough ones). Once you see a transport headed your way load all but one colonist on to the transport and withdraw to a safe distance. Allow the DL to capture your planet. Return the transports on the next turn and retake the planet, hopefully gaining a doody high-end tech. Rinse and repeat.
It was generally considered abit of a cheese but DL are hard (and who'll know?).
Thats as much as I can remember (and be arsed to type) at the moment. Hope it helps. If not search the forums for dreadlords and I think there maybe a stratergy guide on the site somewhere, journals maybe, or databanks.
Anyway have fun, and dont get too disheartened sandbox is where its at.

Dont you just love it when that happens.
You spend a while writing a post and someone else has posted pretty much all the advice you've given in a more succinct and and understandable form.
Oh well, 2 people say it now it must be true.

What is wrong with my game? I just played this mission on Masochistic and the Dread Lords never even launched a ship off their planet. My allies were colonizing at a good pace. Does the actual action of building a 1-power cargo hull keep the AI from initializing? Because I built some but never used them for fighting. Then when it was time to attack their single planet I just sent in 8-power cargo hulls in pairs and the Dread Lords hardly got to fire back. (They let me sit 8 cargo hulls outside the planet just waiting for my transports, too.)

The other missions have been just as easy, but I thought that was because I figured out the exploit of using a cargo hull with weapons on it. Maybe my campaign mode is totally broken.

I think it was just a fluke, maybe. I've tried all kinds of techniques, including staying away from them or even using cargo hulls with weapons. It didn't matter what I did, they always defeated me easily. It's like every thing I did, they would counter with better stuff. I made ships with speed 7, then they made ships with speed 10. The only thing I didn't try was using tiny hulls as Dr Ben and GMJapan ( for some reason the first time I saw those suggestions, I kept thinging of the small hulls not tiny). Try the mision again and see if it is repeatable. I think I am going to try the tiny hull strategy just for the heck of it. Felt kinda cheesy doing my speed technique, lol.

I have tried almost everything except buying ships all the way from the beginning. I don't know how anyone can hold out the dreadlords using tactics suggested above. The problems:
1) Ship and Fleet building: forget it. DL's kills my ships easily, be it a cargo hull loaded with LaserV or fleet of tniy hull. The DL always use several frigates to blockade my planets and any ship built will be destroyed ASAP.

2) Fast ship take down DL's Transport? No way. The DL always send in escorts and slaughter all my ships before they send in the transport.

3) Military Starbase? It takes a long time to get Starbase projection...I'm done before i get it. also, any starbase built are quickly destroyed. Even with stack of constructors, the DL can send in a frigate and destroy it in one shot.

I don't believe anyone can hold out the DL long without cheating. I would like to see the game record/screenshots if anyone can really do it.

I've tried playing on both 'cakewalk' and 'painful'(v1.2). Still, the result is the same...

yes in v1.2 you don't get the big "first attack" bonus, so that would make it a lot harder I think.

Keep in mind that all the advice above referred to earlier versions of the game.

You used to be able to kill a ship in one shot and it would never have the chance to fire back. As of version 1.2, dead ships fire back once, so fighting with Dread Lords is gruesome work.

They also made the AI more sensitive about their transports, so now they escort them. They used to just leave them scattered all over the place with no escorts.