INFO on Campaign Only

One of the easier ways for this mission is (as other people have said) make sure you turn up the difficulty from the base normal - I finished this one on Crippling difficulty. While this seems counterintuitive what it really does is make your allies, and non dreadlord enemies more powerful, and actually useful.

I had a bit of luck as well, though, the Torians were a buffer between me and the dreadlords, and during the early-mid game period they retook one of their planets from the Dreadlords - and stole the technology for Black Hole Eruptors. Well I Traded for the weapon and pretty soon I had fleets capable of easily bringing down Dreadlord ships.

On another mission, again painful or crippling difficulty the race that actually wiped the Dreadlords off the map were - the Drengin. I was barely holding my own against the Dreadlords when over the course of a few turns the Drengin decided that since they couldn't get to me (Altarians, Torians, and Arceans in the way) they turned their offensive power on the Dreadlords and punted them off the map.

So try turning up the difficultly and see if your allies and enemies can help you out.

Well for achilles heel. Check out the text introducing the level. Attack them fast, i had this over in a few game months, yiu have lots of starting ships and enough tech to build decent ships to take out a dread lord defenders ship that will probly be guarding the initial dread lord colony. I quickly colonized enough to be in striking range of their world. Built up a fleet of the default "battle axe" ships and threw them at the DLs planet, then quickly invaded and boom! mission finished. Fighting them traditioanlly results in a very prelonged and bloody conlict that will rage on for years. On the apocalypse mission the DLs wiped out the powerful Drath in an assault that took all of 4 turns.

Good point! I am in the same mission now and even though I did not play it so far - I played the all the others on tough and most of the time it was the Altarians who more or less won the mission for me

Most of the time it just needed just a small attack to finish the Drnegin off or just when I was about to launch my invasion fleet the last planet fell to the Altarian forces.