West operates 11 large shields, not counting a spam of felon and thug, and it's impossible to inflict any reliable damage to them without opting for risky and unreliable strategies - something that the shields are very much not - or having your own shields.

One would assume this takes perhaps an advanced geo, a singularity, or a bunch of fusions to power. One would be wrong - all you need is a mediocre bunch of winds and solars. Moreover, the shields consume this energy only while charging. A set of 11 area cloakers would be draining more energy constantly, and for much less benefit.

It seems like in this state shield spam is a type of thing that lacks any alternative.

quote: without opting for risky and unreliable strategies

This game features maybe 20 snitches, to very little effect. And that's without the opponent even trying to deliberately counter them with e.g. outlaw, or flea screens.

Spending that metal on more shield would have been smarter.

quote: You made some unsuccessful attempts to get stingers by losing center position and giving me the metal. Spam protection was equally unfortunate. After you switched to lancers and started inflicting very strong damage, we also switched to lancers, my lancers killed your lancers, thereby you lost this key duel, which allowed me to dominate the air, and my ally switch to spam aspis, spam aspis and energy was the result of our early victories. Moreover, a possible turning point was Dante, he was built against the Lancers, and then he committed suicide by giving me the metal. If you killed Lancers and aggressively moved deeper into my base, you would win

Sure, there were plenty mistakes. It's just that i expected you to, you know, have something huge powering up that shield spam. It was illuminating that all that worked simply on a bunch of solars and winds.

i have seen that shield-spam in multiple games already. i find it problematic as well.

let`s ASSUME snitches are a reliable counter (which i actually doubt, but ok):

is having exactly ONE counterstrategy a good design for the game?

quote: let`s ASSUME snitches are a reliable counter (which i actually doubt, but ok):

Good demolition expert is needed in every good team you know. I love when big shield ball coming from @Astrand and suddenly it becoming debris. Same was with Ontheheavens. He liked build combined unit balls with area shields, badgers, crashers, djinn.

And snitch is one of best counter against shielded/cloaked dominatrix ball which have anti riots in.

is transport such a high flying unit?

I've found it to be reasonable even with felon nerfed like that. It takes 2 tbirds to stun a shield ball in FW comprising entirely of felons. Then again vandal is pretty well buffed in FW and all the shield units having shields help.

katastrophe anything below 220 elmos is targetable. I believe transport flies blow that height.