Would you like some cheese with that wine?

dreadlords are very very hard indeed. one tactic i was able to think off is to hold the fort as much as possible and develop your weapons (dont bother with defense), and try and destroy them in one to two hits. since they (thankfully) build thier ships slowly, you would be eventually slowly be gaining the advantage as you overwhelm them. Its very easy to invade them as well as they only have 20 people in the planet. just bring 2 transpo modules and your set.

Wow... don't get TOO hot under the collar! THough I actually agree with you.
The strategies in this game are varied. Once or twice I tried "seiges" but that always led to the Dreadlords killing everyone including me. So I just went out there in a blitzkrieg, sacrificing Billions of troops to steal necessary technologies from them. It was bloody, yet effective. Choose a path and stick to it.

I played "sandbox" for about a month (never above "challenging") before finally giving the campaing a go (on normal). When I the Dread Lords showed up in Achilles Heel I became very happy I had played sandbox extensively. You have to know the game mechanics to be able to research, build your social infrastructure, trade, build ships.....without going bankrupt.

In Achilles, I took all of 1 planet, built two military starbases and maxed them out before building a couple economic starbases and kept two fighters available to respond either direction. This allowed me to research like crazy; selling the techs for cash and keeping my allies competive throughout. It worked. While I did steal all of two techs from the DL's, my allies expanded and applied pressure. By end game I launched 3 fleets of 3 fighters and a handful of constructors on a final mission. Once they had the DL's limited to a newly built ship in orbit, I launched my fast troop transports and finished them off.

My only complaint? As many techs as I traded my allies, they refused to trade any of the DL techs to me. Something's just wrong with that.

I also agree with the general theme of everyones posts....The thing i hate most about games is when you can run through the campaign in about...oh....30 minutes. This game does present a challenge, and I love the non-linear aspects of the campaign. Just because you cannot beat the game the first time through does not make it abad game, in fact in my humble opinion, it makes it a better game.

Are you a multi-million dollar game and software developing company? No? Didn't think so. You can leave. Now. Turnaround is fair play as they say ... just, in the future, please don't use this line angainst someone else ... it's just rude.

I used that merely because he was saying he "Knows what makes a good game", implying stardock doesn't. I am not using it as a stick, I know what games people like, since I know a lot of people that play games.

I stand by my remark about 47 hours for the mechanics. 47 hours to beat the DL yes. The game mechanics? If you don't have a chance to learn them (and waste time flaming) then go play another game.

The DL aren't overpowered. I can, in DL on parade, beat them completely. I can out-tech, out-manufaacture, out-income, out-weapon and fit my ships so the DL can't touch them, even if they hit first. The campaign is harder as less planets are available, but if you wished to do so it would be possible to just kill them all.

Overpowered means they are, by normal means, ubeatable. Like if the pirates could colonise worlds and produce more of those hulking fleets of death.

I just started playing this game, although I love it, the AI is kicking my but badly. So, I set the difficulty down to Retarded.

At least that way I have time to learn the techs and get a handle on the game.

The normal mode is very very hard for newbies, it is alot more fun to learn the game and win more battles in the process.

I have found two different paths to beating the dreadlords on the first dreadlord mission (and the others are really quite a bit easier to me). One involves simply doing what the mission calls for and rushing the drengin world asap. The other strategy involves simple retaking the worlds from the dreadlords and getting the tech to beat them, you only need a ok weapon tech to build fleets that can crush them and that isn't too hard to accomplish. Starbases are another possible route though it would be really slow.

-I destroyed the dreadlords, making the mission easy from there or
-I simply took the drengin world and won the campaign.

Starbases and a fleet to make your area hard core (well new patch to make everything expensive could present problems with that strategy) was also working fine for me. It took like 1000+ turns and was very boring though so I tried a different route.

That is at least three routes none of them require much in the way of "knowing all the game mechanics". Both require only one thing, a certain tech route that includes getting all of the planetary invasion techs asap. It doesn't hurt to trade techs to the drengin and yor as well. They are really just a minor annoyance and the extra B.C. may help.

The key to the second strategy, retaking the worlds, is taking them fast. Hover a transport close to the world nearest the dreadlords at all times. They will generally run for it. Keeping ships in orbit is quite helpful as well. You should be able to absorb the occasional invasion when your falling behind but honestly you should never be truely falling behind. One thing to remember is to spend that large sum of cash wisely, and gleen as much of the allies cash as you can. Purchasing ships outright is rarely wise in my opinion. Spend a few turns buying infrastructure and perhaps a couple colony ships. Your choice of abilites is also something to consider. Many will help you with the dreadlords but several should not be bothered with at all. That should be relatively easy for you to determine but if not you can't go wrong with economy buffing abilites, and just say no to influence.

As Meglobob says, all the AI's have inherant weaknesses. The DL can't research, can't adapt, can't fleet, and don't escort their transports. How are they so invulnerable? Sheesh, an Altarian could take them on.
Bloody planet stealers.

Starbases and a fleet to make your area hard core (well new patch to make everything expensive could present problems with that strategy) was also working fine for me. It took like 1000+ turns and was very boring though so I tried a different route.

How expensive is everything going to get??

I can only assume you are trolling after that last post since your original post generated quite a lot of serious suggestions on how to approach the "darklords" campaign differently and also some discussion on peoples take on it.

Out of 18 replies you got maybe 2 bad responses and even one of those had some ideas at the end! Considering you finished your original post with "this game sucks and I know best" I reckon you had a good run there.

Personally I didnt like the lack of continuity in the campaign, not carrying techs forward etc. Perhaps they could have used tighter caps on the techs you can research each mission and then you can start the next level from where your tech left off. Maybe thats too hard to balance. I just think that the missions should represent a particular timeline in a story and in that entire timeline only x number of techs are going to be discovered.

I also didnt like the small number of planets that tend to be available especially to new players. Doesnt help you tech or learn to colonise or specialie a colony if you only get one. Sure, play it a few times and you know where to go straight off the bat. But that first game a few missions in with only your initial colony coz the Altarians took the rest will put you off when you know you need planetary invasion but it takes 50 turns...

If you are struggling with game mechanics then I suggest the video tutorials in-game followed by Draginols galciv2 beginner guide in the Journals forum. The tutorials themselves are not so useful but if you have played a bit then that guide will get you on your feet and running.

Anyway, thats just my take on it.

It really was a piss poor decision to nerf keeping techs from one mission to another. I'm stuck on a mission now, and what's strange is the DL tactica changes every game. In one game within a couple turns I had lost. They ignored everyone else and came after me. One game I did okay trading techs, they ignored pretty much everybody, one game they left me alone so I could advance a pretty decent amount and after a savegame they turned all their forces to me.

It really was a piss poor decision to nerf keeping techs from one mission to another.

I presume it was a question of balance. It would disadvantage people who finished a mission quickly, because they'd be stuck with lower level techs. If somebody just spent ages on the first mission and teched up to the max, the rest of the campaign would be a cakewalk.

This could potentially be solved by having the other races keep their techs as well, but this is still open to exploitation, as you could just lock the Drengi in the corner in the early missions and tech up much faster than they could dream of.

The only tech I really, REALLY wished I could keep was Planetary Invasion. I feel like I must have spent more time researching that than all the other techs combined!

Oh, and the Dread Lords are the best part of the campaign. Especially in Appocalypse. But not so much in the final mission. Am I the only person who found that ridiculously easy, not to mention a massive anticlimax?