Achilles Heel Mission Help!

Thats a DL mission rite?

You just need to know 2 things to beat the Dreadlords – firstly, never garrison your planets! The reason for this is that the AI will not fleet its transports. Secondly as a result of having unfleeted transports, this then leaves them vunerable to a special kind of ship you will need to build- get a cargo hull and put just 1 cheap weapon on it, then add some sensors and heaps of engines. Use this fast ship to avoid dreadlord combat vessels while picking off all their transports. This strategy is made much easier with eyes of the universe wonder.

You are then free to take your time and research some respectable technology before even bothering to build any true combat vessels.

good luck

Thnaks for the ideas they worked really well!

Now that my worlds aren't being invaded I feel much safer, however I can't figure out how to build a ship strong enough to overtake theirs.If I build a ship with a lot of lasers it'll get picked off before even making it to their planet, and if I build a fast ship with not as many lasers it will be far to weak, or will get destroyed orbiting my planet while I'm building up an army of them.

Anyone remember how they got passed this mission?

SOS-Literally!

Btw, yes this is a Dread Lords Mission

well you need to built dreadlord transport hunters fairly early on, you just have to avoid dreadlord warships but you do loose one on occasion thats normal. Then build real warships using tiny hulls only - make sure they are faster than Dreadlord ships so you can send them off to a distant safe corner of the map to fleet up. You will need some logistics technology to have reasonable sized fleets. The ships do not have to be powerful, so long as the dreadlords are not shielded against their weapon type, they will be suprisingly effective.

Hi!
What Mystikmind forgot to say is: fighting Dreadlords is a war of attrition: for each one of their ships destroyed you'll give some of yours. But you have several times their economy, so you can afford the losses. IIRC in DL campaign I've been using small and medium hulls for fighting, because I couldn't make tiny hulls fast enough to catch DLs' ships.

If you find DLs' ships in Dread Lords game hard, you'll be frightened to death with them in Dark Avatar.

BR, Iztok

Simple - Don't use lasers! Missiles are much more powerful and Mass Drivers are more compact. Since your cargo-fighters are preventing the Dread Lords from invading you, you won't be troubled by the Missiles' or Mass Drivers' high research costs.

Forget that defense nonsense - don't even care to research Starship Defenses, they won't help you. Focus on economy and research, building up your treasury and technological level. When you have enough tech to build fleets that you think can kill a Dread Lord Frigate in one shot, flip over to an industrial regime and begin building these things. Then beat back the Dreads and do whatever your objective was, if your allies haven't done it already. Try to get Eyes of the Universe - it will save space on your ships and will provide you with a fool-proof early-warning and space-reconnaissance system.

Of course, I wish I can open that box and play this campaign... I actually have never played GC2 at all. This post comes from whatever I've come to know during my rather... intense excitement-induced preparation.

Thanks for all of the tips!

So it seems like as long as I can keep my plantets safe, there is no disadvantage to taking a while to research higher weapons and such. Sadly, in the mission I'm doing I can only research beam weapons. I guess I'll just have to get really high level ones.

My last questions are these:

1. What is a good infracture for my planets, and when should I upgrade the builings on them?

2. How do I go about making credits if the Dreadlords constantly destroy my trade routes?

Thanks SO much all! You've been most helpful!

specialisation is the key.

What i used to do is build just 1 planet with all science facilities (no starport, everything rush bought), and 1 planet with all factories and their accompanying capitals, no farms, no morale structures. All other planets get markets, markets here, markets there, markets almost everywhare (tile bonuses excepted)and 1 farm and 1 morale building. Any planets with a factory tile bonus will get a factory on it and a starport, any planets with no factory bonus get no starport or factory, just markets and science buildings if there is a science tile bonus.

Usually i will totally ignore planets with no tile bonuses early on, meaning that i build nothing on them at all until my economy can handle it.

Yes i would recommend ignoring trade freighters untill you can afford the galactic privateer. Oh and as for wonders, just remember that they effectively kill tiles on your planets, so please, rush buy them on crap planets like Mars etc etc unless they contribute to a planitary bonus such as the omega science lab.

that above strategy of going crazy with markets everywhare has served me well right up to my current difficulty level of 'insane' or is it 'obscene'? the one before suicidal anyway. Currently i am playing a random map on gigantic and the Drengin just surrended to me. I am getting over 5000bc each turn! I am ready to face suicidal with that market madness strategy with my next game.

too excel in the galciv universe you just need to know 1 word.... 'money'

I checked the campaign files after getting really mad on that board, giving up and doing arms race to skip around it! Turns out the tech rate was set to... 7! normal is 50! So I changed it!  

I used all of your great strategies and everything worked out really well. I eventually gave up though because they ended up conquering planets too close to mine and could reach my planets with transports in one turn. I could also only knock their ships down to 1 HP. Once their ships had 1HP they could not be destroyed for some reason.

Oh well, thanks so much to you all! 

Admittedly, I only did this on Normal difficulty, but...

At the start of the mission, the dreadlords only have a fighter with 2 attack.
I started with civilization bonuses in speed, bought a few fighter ships built for speed, bought a few transports with more speed, used the available constructor to build a military starbase close to his planet, and rushed him. Cheap, yes.

As for reaching your planets in 1 turn,,,, well usually they will not immediately garrison a planet, so you can always retake the planet if you have troop transports. Also that retaking of a planet will give you a free technology each time, not too shabby. Also you can probably trade that stolen technology with your allies by to get transports from them. meanwhile the big problem is that transports are troublesomly slow to get built, so in the end you still probably loose.

Not being able to destroy a dreadlord ship as you describe is a result of not using fleets. Get some logisticks technology and create some fleets!

Played this one yesterday on Crippling, but I played it from DA not DL. DA has spies. I used them (I think it was 8) to completely shut down all the Industrial Sectors on the Dread Lord planet. They only managed to launch 1 colony ship and never got anything else made.

Thats 1 more colony ship than what you will ever see in DL! But surly, you need to let them build their ships so you can have some fun??

Yup, pretty boring, but I've played this mission 3 times on different difficulties and was just messing around. I could never have used this strategy in DL.