Difficulty

Depends largely on what kinda games are you playing.

I started with small/medium galaxies with few opponents. It did not take long to get the hang of things now I play on tough , large maps against 5-6 opponents. And I usually manage to win. Practice practice

I think Peteman means the Dread Lords campaign.

I haven't played it myself, but have heard quite a few people say it's very hard in places. I think there's a level called "Siege" in particular which is meant to be vicious.

Yeah - Siege sucks. It's the fourth mission overall, I think, and it comes after three relatively easy missions where you basically keep whipping the Drengins all over the map.

All of a sudden, DLs start jumping all over you with their 33 rated missile battleships and you can't do much but put your junk fighters up as sacrifice.

(You can win with a good focus on core strategy right from the start, but the first time you play you usually get wiped up pretty quickly.)

It's easier than DL on parade, where they get free reign. The trick to beating them is to have every soldiering tech, and suddenly they lose the power to invade and thus expand. One time I even manage (through the use of death trains) to wipe out the DL on siege, and knock them back to their one planet. Most of the time the Drengin are a bigger threat, as they can mass produce fighters. But, the real problem is where the DL manage to build up the infrastructure to knock you out, then you're in trouble.

the key is to keep them on one world. Just keep invading the first world back as many times as it takes and keep something in orbit on your other worlds as much as possible. When the dreadlords invade that nearest world invade it back quickly. Once you get a decent weapon start pumping out ships with as much damage as possible. Alternately a starbase strategy can be effective but takes a VERY long time. I beat this mission and wiped out the dreadlords to boot, but I got quantum singularity drivers on my second re-invasion which I slapped on medium hull ships and was able to send out several fleets to control the dreadlords. Since they don't form fleets they would lose any battle against me. Hold them to one planet though, that is key. If they get 4-5 it's over. You won't be able to outproduce them in ships and they will just smack you down.

I havn't played the campaign the .... dreadlords sound pretty scary....

they DL are HORRIBLE! i've tried beating siege about 5 times now, and everytime, by the 100th-150th turn they trundle up with these battleships that can't be touched, and i get smeared! even on the simple level! am i that bad or is my strategy wrong? any help?

I beat Siege using morale, soldiering and population growth abilities combined with the populist party.

With Beta 3 and its "spread" of abilities, I suspect this mission is somewhat harder.

I got lucky when I re-took a planet and stool Doom Beam from the dread lords I was in the process of re-taking the galaxy when they defeated the Dregin (who now held the planet I needed) and they surrendered to me, victory planet and all

yeah just got trounced on seige myself somewhere in the 300-500 turn range. HAd the three main planets and one just NW of the start colonies.

Altarans claimed the other. *Shakes fist at moronic ally AI that tries to influence your planets away from you*

First thing I did was spend money on espionage. Can not stress how much this helped in the early game when my allies refused to hand over technology.

Anyways it got to the same point, tons of huge battleships and frigates against my large size fighters.

60 odd mass driver damage vs 10 beam. And what's worse....at that point in the mission the dread lords start using beam weaponry themselves which tears through the anti-mass driver weaponry....

Thought did last long enough to see the Denign Empire surrender it's worlds to the Yor.

A tip for Siege:
Just to crank out colony ships at the start and run them all over to the Drengin planet you want to take. In the meantime research Planetary Invasion. Once you have that upgrade all the colony ships to transports and invade. You may have to kill a Drengin ship or two but it's pretty easy if you do it fast enough.