How does one kill a shieldball?

The only way I know that works with any regularity is shelling out 2.8k on a Likho, which is game losing in the mid-game.

How well does Odin work on a mobile shieldball?

That's a rather frustrating answer.

To take a part of it:

quote: Make more Lances and keep them active, not idle. Use superior hovercraft speed to attack on awkward sides of the map rather than retreating when the shieldball disengages and goes somewhere else.

What speed? Mace and Scalpel are speed 61.5 and 63, Aspis and Thug are 61.5 and 57, so the only round about attacks one can do with Hover is Dagger and Bolas. And while raiders can indeed work (see: https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1815149) once the mid game arrives it's not possible to get the low attrition needed to carry using raiders. And Bolas are likely interceptable in maps like this tbh, what with the distance from centre to pathable edges being around 2000 elmo and Rogue's 570 range making corner cutting and chasing unwise.

Also, Racketeers are much cheaper than Lance and will happily keep their damage down below the level needed to overcome shield regen. In fact, at 14 minutes the main enemy 10k shieldball has 30k shield hp, 7 racketeers and 364hp/sec regeneration (it's a highly flexible ball with Felons, Outlaws, Bandits and Rogues). 7 Lances wouldn't even break even against that regen+Racketeers and 10 would still take an extremely long time to get through (more than enough time for some sacrificial Bandits or Dirtbags to mess up scouting or force wasted shots).


Another thing you seem to miss is the cost of attention. An unattended lance is a lance that's either useless or one you're probably doing to lose (the Lance unit AI is a bit reluctant to turn and kite and it's slow to turn when it does). An unmicrod shieldball is a recharging one. That attention is crucial for things like eco construction, scouting and escalation.


Having rewatched the replay, I don't think the game was winnable after the southern attack failed due to poor coordination.
Interestingly, after the attack lite's army was more expensive than the shieldball (Cyclops, Minotaur, 2 Emi, 2 Ogre, 1 Kodachi healthy vs 7 Thug, 1 Racketeer, 1 Felon, 1 Aspis, 11 Rogue), but would have lost everything without doing any damage if he'd tried to chase it (I just tried this out in sandbox).

Lawesome9: Badly. The shieldball just moves and the 30 second life time is enough for a surprising amount of shield regen. (also, shieldballs are surprisingly tanky, they'll rarely be under 10k shield hp)

quote: And Felon is 45. The shieldballs had Felon in them.

And Lance is 49.5. My point was that your idea of "make more lance and use superior speed to attack elsewhere" is completely nonviable. Lance is not a viable counter to shieldballs in a world where Racketeer exists and is made.


Aside: It's not relevant at all to the broader picture, but in the case in your screenshot the hoverball is not "retreating" or "inactive", it's trying to move north to stop an attacking army that doesn't actually exist at that point (then waiting in confusion for the expected attack).


Regarding Minotaur and Cyclops vs shieldballs I cannot reproduce your results not matter how many times I try, the Felon and Rogues easily cause Minotaurs to retreat (or even kill it! Felon DPS is a lot) before they are in range and Cyclops hasn't a chance at catching anything but the Felon and tends to take a lot of damage while doing so.
I've also noticed that in practice the slower Felon often ends up at the "back" of the shieldball, closer to friendly lines so when the ball turns to retreat the other units literally PUSH the Felon, making it's effective speed when balled more like 52 than 45.

At this point the only advice I can give to lite for fighting shieldball as tank is "Don't".

Best anti shield strat I found was to get a 6:1:1 ratio of racketeer:aspis:outlaw
you might get away with a cap of just 5 outlaws tho for larger balls. Focus purely on disarm to cripple the shieldball and leave the dps to an ally.
Maybe tweak aspis count for to get ~5 early on tho for the ball and vandals if needed

I don't have any experience with 2v2, but I played shieldball in lobpot and vs AI almost exclusively. My experiences might turn out useless to you, but it's fun to share either ways.

Usually I lose the shieldball when trying to hold some indefensible position, over-extend to kill buildings, or when marching to another lane and getting caught out of position.

I think GoogleFrog is right on the money with "win the war" instead of "kill the shieldball". Shields are slow to react, drain energy, must constantly retreat to recharge and basically can't kill a walled mex. If you raid their eco, you can force shield player to make bandits, porc or morph com. Bandits can't even chase down a halberd so you can force them to make stingers anywhere you want.

Light artillery like slings can sometimes keep shieldball out of the game or force shieldball player to do an "all-in" attack. Just by constantly draining the Aspises. Heavy artillery usually doesn't have the DPS/cost to beat shieldball itself, but the combination of light and heavy artillery can kill. Tremor doesn't really fill either role (but it has a place in my heart).

A mistake I often see is people miscalculating the shield charge. They burst the Aspises to red, then chase with raiders. But the felons/thugs still have charge. Assaults or heavy artillery can pick them off with much fewer losses.

For "in a vacuum" shield-ball counters, aka things I don't like to see when balling, I would say: Det > Nuke > Silo > S/W > BB > Pala > Sirens(lobbed) > Snitches(cloaked) > Juggle(repaired) > Assaults > Scylla > Lances > Merlins > Likhos > Domis(shielded) > Scallops(lobbed) > Arty > Unit-Spam.

Also, cloaked lances are more scary to shieldball than shielded lances. Racketeers are Zero-% efficient against cloaked lances and playing "peekaboo" or "guess how many cloaked lances?" is pure pain.

4-6 lobsters and your shieldball becomes the slayer of artillery, not even merlins are safe