Don't play the campaigns. This game is about the open sandbox mode. The original DL campaign isn't even playable in TA anymore, since the techtrees are too different.

The Dread Lords as a race, for example when spawned by an event, are supposed to be very overpowered. The only solution is to invade them before they get any chance at building up a fleet. And then, you usually still have superior numbers that could make up the difference.

However, if you have trouble keeping up with ANY AI, set at 'tough' or below - you should lower the difficulty and try different tactics. The AI has no boni to abilities at this level, gets significant mali below and doesn't even have access to it's full algorithms. It really is 'dumber' the lower the difficulty is set.

Without knowing more about your specific problems, however, it is hard to give advice for that matter.

I finally found a way to get through that horrible campaign but, it was senseless.  I had to set difficulty down to lowest setting.  I stayed on the one planet I started with and colonized nowhere.  All attempts to colonize anywhere met with disaster.  I built up planetary defenses and pressed the turn key.  How fun.  Some startegy.

Ya, I know what you're saying.  I get something into my mind and then I want to see it through.  I have a lot of games I play as a sand box style of play.  I may do that more with GCII.  But, unlike other games where I more easily left the Campaign, for some reason with GCII  I wanted to play it out.

There are some really good scenarios in Dread Lords and I'm glad I stayed through the end.  The final one was a bit of a let down though.  

I'm guessing there's something I'm missing in the Apocalypse but, I'm not sure what it is.  I do know that if I built anything it ended up being a waste of resources that should have been used for planetary defense and soldering.  That's how difficult this introduction to the Dread Lords turns out to be.

I'm going to have to play Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor.  And, I'll start looking at sand box style of play for this but, after I I see how the 2 expansions work out.  Later.

Well thanks aftermono.  I hadn't considered this strike fast tactic.  I think the DL ships are a lot like our own only more deadly and shielded.  If you look at them in the game it shows attack value and defense values.  They are higher for the DL ships.  I think the strike fast option works because they won't have time to scout you then build the troop transports and invade. 

I finally got through this one by employing an all defensive strategy for myself and I let the other AI players get strong enough to deal with the DLs.  For some reason it worked but, I wasn't very happy with my limited actions.  If I ever replay this scenario again I'll try your suggestions.  Right now I'm deeply involved in the TA campaigns and then I'm going to go back to the DA campaigns.  I've never worked through all of those.

Again Thanks everyone!.

I've tried all kinds of tactics with this mission.  I've tried going for the dread lords as fast as possible, and I've tried going for the long game. Here's what I've found.

Stirking fast:

This tactic involves a massive amount of luck, and is unlikely to work.  The problem with going hell for leather at the Dread Lords is that you're at the bottom of the map, and they're at the top, your technology is not sufficient to take on their ships, and your population and economy is far too weak.

The problem with the distance is that you need to either build a starbase with the Constructor you start with, which is very vulnerable to attacks and is too slow to be effective, or you can build a colony ship and colonise Inversonia (a system about 2/3 of the way up towars the Dread Lords).  By doing this, you stretch your already weak economy and take precious citizens off of your planets, meaning that you don't have enough troops to mount an invasion, and have to wait for your funds and population to increase before you can attack. 

All of these things slow down your attack, which effectively ruins your blitzkrieg tactics. It also means that while you are doing all of this, the Dread Lords are steadily building ships and so just when you think you are almost ready to go, they swoop down, take Inversonia and destroy all your ships.  You end up back at square one, and the Dread Lords are still too far out of range for you to attack.  Game over. 

Long game:

This tactic is hard bloody work.  The fundamental thing here is that you colonise a small cluster of planets, develop your economy and population, then build up techs and ships for an all out attack.  The most essential thing is that you colonise the two planets in the right corner of the map (Markus I and II).  The Dread Lords won't discover these planets until late in the game, so you won't have to worry about invasions.  These planets are essential for building fleets and your economy.  Look after them, and build lots of factories and market centres. 

You also want a few 'bait' planets, up towards the Dread Lords.  These planets will likely be taken, but they draw the focus away from your core planets.  You need to build troop transports and retake these as often as you can, as each time you retake a DL planet you steal a tech, meaning that your ships can finally be effective against their ships.  I would't build too much on these planets, as you won't be able to keep them for long.  Also, make sure you only buy Transports as you need them.  If you build them the Dread Lords will just find them and destroy them. 

This strategy is by no means easy. It takes time, and in that time the Dread Lords will have built up a large army and taken lots of planets.  Don't count on your allies either.  The AI won't necessarily research the best techs to beat the Dread Lords (they'll research shields when the Dread Lords are using missiles, for instance).  However, your allies are great for swapping techs with.  Give them techs that you think will help them, and take techs that help you.  Whether the AI uses the techs you gave them is out of your hands.  Use the Korx and the Drath to sell your techs to for quick cash.  You'll need it.

If all else fails, fall back on Markus I and II and defend it.  You'll just have to hold out and hope your allies can beat the Dread Lords. 

Either way, this is a VERY hard mission.  Expect to play this several times, quick save often and good luck.

I beat it, but it took quite a bit of doing.  This was done in the vanilla GalCivII: Dread Lords game.  The key was to outmanuever the DLs.  Their ships will flatten you, but they kept doing some rather dumb things that made them easy pickings.

The cargo hull was my friend.  I stomped up the propulsion and miniturization tech tree branches, and built three main ship varients.  The first was the standard AWACS design- engines, range, and sensors.  I sent them to keep tabs on the DL movements, and built the Eyes of the Universe when it became available to assist.  The second ship design was little more than a hull with engines and one popgun.  These One-Hit Wonders were my main defense, with the speed to swoop in, pick off the DL transports, and get out of range.  The third was a transport with, you guessed it, engines up the wazoo.

My strategy was simple- the Dread Lord frigates and fighters can have the space around my planets, but their transports can't. Every time they sent one out, I had a ship in range to intercept.  Since they kept sending their ships to try and run down my One-Hit Wonders instead of general hunting, I managed to effectively shield my AI allies while also drawing the DLs down to the Dengrin/Yor corner.  It worked so well we had trade routes up and running!  I turned the planets between the Drath and the DL into the main battleground, letting their ships through only to send a transport in to retake the planet right behind them. I must have gone through a good 90% of the weapon techs before I snagged Doom Ray, but that was it.  I could build my fleet in peace, and send it in one lightning strike to smash all the DL defenses and land my troops.

The entire top half of the map was a near sea of red triangles by the time I struck, but none of it mattered- the Dread Lords simply couldn't catch me.

I've just recently beaten it for the first time, but on Beginner. I could probably have gone a bit trickier than that, but I'd lost about half a dozen times on Tough that I just wanted to get it out of the way. 

The tactic of stealing techs is pretty much the only way forward.  I researched large hulls as quickly as possible, and got all weapons techs through trading or stealing.  I figured that I couldn't make any sort of effective ship with small or medium hulls (and in fact I didn't really have much hope of winning until I researched massive hulls). 

Quite right.  You can pretty much suss out where the DL ships are going to be because they generally hang around the same areas. In order to get my more vulnerable ships (transports, individual ships that weren't in fleets) into the action I simply manoeuvred around the danger zones.  Transports only needed 2 regular troop mods to take a planet (or 1 advanced troop mod), so all of the excess space was taken up with engines.  I could slip in and take planets before the DLs had a chance to respond.  Also really useful was that fact that the DLs had the habit of leaving planets undefended.

Mascrinthus, you are somewhat misinformed.

The "tie rule" results in the winning ship surviving with 1 hp, but it is based entirely off of the ship in question's attack.  (And you're simply not going to out-attack the Dread Lords.)

Within DL itself, destroyed ships do not fire back, but in DA and TA, every ship fires their weapons at least once, even if destroyed in the first round (relevant if one is playing the DL campaign from DA or TA).

Well just to chime in with my overly ridiculous method of beating this mission.

First try I only colonized 4 planets, but DL's took an AI planet, so I restarted with another idea in mind.

Second time, I colonized every planet I could, and traded my AI allies for theirs (except their homeworld) if I could. Since the DL's have no defenses initially, I made only Tiny-hulled ships with 1 attack, and with only 1 maintence cost. Pretty soon, every planet could make a ship every 1 or 2 turns. So making 8-10 ships per turn began to add up. I actually got eyes of the universe mid way through, but every ship I brought straight up to the DL homeworlds and just parked it there, cornering them in. When a transport attempted to leave, I would destroy it (so they can take no other worlds). When there fighters and frigates started flying around, I was worried for a sec, but even with a speed of 9, they could only kill 1-2 ships per turn, they wouldn't destroy 9 in a row. And often they would fly around the 200 ships I had parked up there and go somewhere else, for a starbase or something. Eventually when I accumulated about 500+ 1 attack starfury's, I snuck some speedy transports up (i brought up about 10+). And the DL's still had no defense, only attack. 2 of their planets had 3 defenders, the other 2 had only 1 (a good 320 hp's worth i believe). To destroy them all it took almost every ship I had up there, it seemed I got a hit maybe 50% of the time. But I was just glad when that mission ended.

Hi,

I'm stuck on this mission and I find it impossible even with the tips and on the easiest level!

One big problem I'm having is that I can't steal any techs at all from the dread lords I must have recaptured about 50 DL bases now though all of the games on this map and not once have I sucessfully stolen a tech from them when I recaptured one of my bases from them through plantary invasion. What am I doing wrong and why can't I ever steal any techs from them? Geez if I can't steal techs I see no way to win this one and I just think it's unfairly too hard.

I'm playing the ultimate edition BTW.

thx.

just finished the mission playing ultimate edition on normal level. there is no tech stealing from DL, so better keep those bases from capturing. DL use mass drivers, badly hurting the planet quality. they upgrade what's left of it with super factories and labs, but it costs a fortune to complete in the begining of the game. their transports are easy targets even with small fighters, if you place them strategically on the map away from their scanners. 

i discovered two key strategies towards winning this mission. first, you need to research sensors technology up to Mark IV and build Eyes of the Universe. this will let you see further with your ships than DL can. second, never build a starbase. DL know exactly where it's built and unleash its whole army of ships towards it. and that's their achilles heel... 

once you managed to develop your colonies and intercept their transports, all you need is ultimate logistics tech and a couple of fleets with good firepower and transports. build that starbase in the opposite corner from DL and wait to see all their ships rushing towards it. this should give you enough time to kill 2-3 interceptors left defending each home planet and land the transports.

enjoy it!

I tried that strategy and I ran out of money before I could build enough constructors (the cost of having like 20 constructuctors and fighters was just too much). BTW by 1/1 ships what do you mean exactly? Cargo ships with a laser on it?

Boy this one is just impossibly hard everything I try with the tips here still doesn't work for me I still end up getting creamed. If you win apoc do the missions get even harder? I can't imagine that.... Talk about no fun.

First i managed to throw back the DL and after that 3 Team Races are gone (shared Tech with them) and the YOR are so mighty i could not build a ship that is strong enough (with max weapon research).

Can someone give me a tipp. I managed to survive somehow (i got only the 4 planets in the lower right) till the Yor became to strong.... The whole game i have to protect my planets couldn't build a fleet. I didn't managed to intercept the transports can someone post a good configuration of a good ship for carrying sensors and a ship for interception? Eventually a good position to place the ships?