Campaign - Siege » Forum Post by Mistikman

Theoretically impossible, although if the AI is high enough your allies can help. DO NOT FIGHT THE DREAD LORDS. I tried it and it was a long slog which I lost. Be quick, nab the Yor and Drengin planets, and it's won. You can't really touch the DL till Apocalypse, when you have to go toe-to-toe with them, the Drengin and the Yor. Have as many planets as you can, so you can afford to lose some, get soldiering techs, recapture planet, get a free tech. Only if you feel like taking them on. Just bum rush the Drengin planet.

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The trick to beating the Dread Lords is to use a swarm of tiny ships (possibly aided by military starbases). The Dread Lords never employ and defenses (or haven't for me at least) so lots of small attacks work best.

A ship can only destroy 1 ship per round. So if you attack with 7 tiny ships the Dread Lords ship will need 7 rounds to kill them all. Taking the speed abilities for your race help a lot because then you can throw a single engine on a tiny fighter (2 lasers and eventually 2 plasmas) for a decent attack and a move of 6 or more.

Throw down 2 military starbases with beam upgrades (4 total constructors) and now your force of 7 ships has an attack of 28. This will let you take down a lot of smaller dreadlord ships without any losses and if you attack a battleship (44hp) you will usually only lose one ship.

Eventually you continue to increase your logistics and reduce the size of plasma weapons and your fleet of tiny ships can take down the dreadlords without any any starbase aid.

I usually switch over to small or medium ships later when my logistics and weapons attacks allow it. That way you can put 2 or 3 engines on them and clear away as many dreadlord ships as you need. Really as soon as you have your first stack that can take the DL without any losses you have one. They will continue to send a slow stream of ships to you to destory.

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Couple of tips.

Use your allies to do all the grunt work and focus on pure research and then spread the fruit of your research. In return they will win a few choice encounters with Dread Lords, which will yield you some end game discoveries that really balance the conflict.

Secondly and this is probably a bug that needs disposition, use your trade routes plus privateer wonder to make your frieghters invincible, course this doesnt stop the DL from trying to attack them every round wasting all there moves and gathering in a big clump which you can avoid or pick off at your leisure.

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I just finished this mission... after at least ten attempts, and getting slaughtered horribly every time.

I spread out as much as I could early game (I think I colonized the three closest planets, and grabbed two resources), and then hunkered down. I actually didn't spread out any farther after that, though it might have been helpful later on.

I used a suggestion from another thread and created a number of cargo hull ships with one laser, some sensors, and as much engines as I could squeeze in. Kept these ships moving around as much as possible between my planets and the dread lords, running away from any fighting ships, and then charging in to pick off any troop transport that came my way. I had to retake my furthest planet twice, but other than that I was pretty safe. I didn't bother trying to fight the dread lords, just stuck to research and built ships with lots of movement. I think my final troop transports had over 16 moves per turn.

Dunno how repeatable the strategy is, though... I don't think I'm going to replay that game any time soon.

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"Teach me how to fight legends..."

I just finished Apocalypse. Here are a few tips for fighting the Dread Lords:

Don't build ships until you have serious high tech. It's a waste of money.

Research like hell, trade tech to your allies - you'll be amazed at how fast the tech builds up.

Research the planetary invasion/planetary defense techs early. Get your soldiering up to 90 or so to slow down the DL invasions.

Once you've got the engines to build speed 11 or 13 transports, it's time to start stealing tech from the DLs. Throw some cheap ships out near a DL world as bait. They'll often leave a planet unguarded to chase you down; then you slip in the transports; I usually use Mini-Soldiers but take your pick of tactics. DLs have a crazy low population cap. Every time you take a planet, you have a chance of stealing a tech.

Once you've taken a DL world, don't worry too much if they take it back -- that just gives you another chance to invade and steal tech again. Do it a few times until you've got a really big weapon -- anything that does 6 damage or more is a good bet.

Once you can build a medium-sized ship with at least speed 10, 16 attack and 8 defense, you can start trying to go on the offense. I like mediums here because larger hulls are too expensive and slow to build, and smaller hulls can rarely take even one hit from big guns. You'll need to gather your fleets in the back field and keep them moving, and expect to lose a lot of them early on. keep dancing until you can fleet three or four of them together, then go hunting. You'll still lose most of your early fights, but you'll learn what works and what doesn't.

Hint: attack attack attack. If you have 2 ships, and they stumble on a stack of 8 DL ships, attack them. "Don't try to run -- you'll only die tired." Getting the first shot is the only way to do any damage.

Keep researching, keep selling the tech around to all your allies and the neutrals. They'll be stingy, don't be stingy in return. It's frustrating as hell to see the Altarians get Black Hole Guns from an invasion and have them refuse to trust you with them; just be happy someone's able to put up a fight.

Large hulls + Miniaturization + speed 13 + 2 Advanced Troop Mod + 2 Phasor VI = assault transport. We don't need no steenkin' escorts. Expensive for a disposable ship, but they can blast through the tiny DL fighters that frequently make up the defense force around their border worlds. Okay, I lied -- you want to escort them anyway.

Eventually you'll hit a tipping point and things will go your way very fast after that. In the game I played, the DLs were stupidly leaving stacks of a dozen frigates all over the place, but not fleeting them. It sucked up movement points to fight them, but every fight added to my frigates' experience level and hit points; towards the end I had medium hull ships with 150, 200 hit points, no lie. (Then I bit off a starbase that was a bit more than I could chew... and lost them all...)

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"Teach me how to fight legends..."

I just finished Apocalypse. Here are a few tips for fighting the Dread Lords:

Don't build ships until you have serious high tech. It's a waste of money.

Research like hell, trade tech to your allies - you'll be amazed at how fast the tech builds up.

Research the planetary invasion/planetary defense techs early. Get your soldiering up to 90 or so to slow down the DL invasions.

Once you've got the engines to build speed 11 or 13 transports, it's time to start stealing tech from the DLs. Throw some cheap ships out near a DL world as bait. They'll often leave a planet unguarded to chase you down; then you slip in the transports; I usually use Mini-Soldiers but take your pick of tactics. DLs have a crazy low population cap. Every time you take a planet, you have a chance of stealing a tech.

Once you've taken a DL world, don't worry too much if they take it back -- that just gives you another chance to invade and steal tech again. Do it a few times until you've got a really big weapon -- anything that does 6 damage or more is a good bet.

Once you can build a medium-sized ship with at least speed 10, 16 attack and 8 defense, you can start trying to go on the offense. I like mediums here because larger hulls are too expensive and slow to build, and smaller hulls can rarely take even one hit from big guns. You'll need to gather your fleets in the back field and keep them moving, and expect to lose a lot of them early on. keep dancing until you can fleet three or four of them together, then go hunting. You'll still lose most of your early fights, but you'll learn what works and what doesn't.

Hint: attack attack attack. If you have 2 ships, and they stumble on a stack of 8 DL ships, attack them. "Don't try to run -- you'll only die tired." Getting the first shot is the only way to do any damage.

Keep researching, keep selling the tech around to all your allies and the neutrals. They'll be stingy, don't be stingy in return. It's frustrating as hell to see the Altarians get Black Hole Guns from an invasion and have them refuse to trust you with them; just be happy someone's able to put up a fight.

Large hulls + Miniaturization + speed 13 + 2 Advanced Troop Mod + 2 Phasor VI = assault transport. We don't need no steenkin' escorts. Expensive for a disposable ship, but they can blast through the tiny DL fighters that frequently make up the defense force around their border worlds. Okay, I lied -- you want to escort them anyway.

Eventually you'll hit a tipping point and things will go your way very fast after that. In the game I played, the DLs were stupidly leaving stacks of a dozen frigates all over the place, but not fleeting them. It sucked up movement points to fight them, but every fight added to my frigates' experience level and hit points; towards the end I had medium hull ships with 150, 200 hit points, no lie. (Then I bit off a starbase that was a bit more than I could chew... and lost them all...)

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