Campaign Feedback - Land Striders and Heavy Defences

dyth68

it would be best if total of active units by player is limited, for example to 200, be it AI or human player, so the game wouldn't crash due to thousands of units AI produces during the game....or fixing the problem which causes the crash, because circumventing is not the real fix for this problem.

Hibiliha Normal:

Shocking how little resources there is on how to do this mission. The old video series had completely different funnelwebs and all the forum posts involve extreme turtling in a 20minute bonus time limit mission. The developer's intent is plainly lost here.

Series of runs is with athena/lazarus unlocked. Was having problems pushing out until I terrformed a ramp up the dominanting piece of terrain to be hover/tank passable. Also did lance spam and revived paladins for mega beam spam into a slow win taking about an hour. Didn't have scorp/ulti unlocked here.

The bonus objective run first started with lance/emissary spam which is found to be too slow, so scorp spam was done. The current fastest run that barely gets bonus involved a streamlined athena impaler Ultimatum clearning of the south deso/tank facts + some reclaim + fusion + mex, prepare reverse slope 2x scorp/ultimatum paladin ambush at 10:30, attack uphill at southmost position, reinforce via djinn with shieldbot rackteer/aspis/convict. Really hit momentum stopper when shelled by merlins/firewalkers/cerb on top of exploding geothem blowing up Aspis. 6 Scorps got attritioned down to one left for 19:40 mission end without the other bonus objectives (which was cleared in the slow push run).

I can see a number of efficiency improvements, including replacing the artillery, cut Scorps for heal/shield power to prevent crowding, throwing in the commander with extra d-gun and shield/heal power (as opposed to guardian allied deso at center), counterbattery the cerb, but I'd think I'll need about 2 minutes of extra time to clear anti-nukes and I'm not sure if that is the right way to do it. I am not sure how anyone are suppose to do brutal with all bonuses with all the attrition already, unless someone can dual-lane ultimatum push or something (or lobster assault!?), or a center map push can be done fast somehow.

Much pause was also done in the time bonus run, ultimatum is just that untrustworthy and I also needed some time to think about what to do since situation awareness is lost (eco, construction queue, mission time, reinforcement position).

Difficulty 5 (bonus 7, all bonus run ?)
Learning game mechanics 8

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Sapphie Normal:

Restarted a few times after finding the initial defense setup is wrong. It is not very easy to know what to build when the player have basically no idea what chickens do. Did a partial wall that blocks off 50% of the ground path since I don't want to full cheese it. Held on with lance/shield/Ogre/Deso/Cerb until chicken queen nukes front position and buried mexes and prevented bonus objective. Still lasted enough to finish. Will have to study more efficient defenses that actually enables a mobile reserve.

Difficulty 6 (bonus ?)
Learning Game mechanics 7 (first real anti-chicken assault)


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Chatka Normal: expanded behind phantoms, phantom spam plus spotters to slowly win, didn't use merlin at all. You can't lose it if you don't use it.

Difficulty 3
Learning Game Mechanics 2 (no time pressure to use new unit to deal with the mission situation = unit not used)

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Tempest Normal: Most annoying mission. Finishing it was easy enough, done the first time and the strategy is self evident. However the bonus is annoying as:
1. Ultimatum kill themselves, each other, the commander (when using its area shield to enable more aggressive pushes) when you stop microing to look at anything else. A random flea can cause mission failure.
2. Protecting the south western geothem is a pain, ultimately terraformed some high walls. I wonder if taking the endgame geo could be less pain.
3. Not sure what kind of firepower other than using an ultimatum (which means it have to happen after build count objective) can kill the center geotherm without zombie revive. Domi-car capture does not count towards bonus.

Once the bonus objectives are reached the ultimatum army can blast a path to objective. Getting eco for faster ultimatum build up is probably the path for improvement, but ultimately it can be done with bad eco.

Difficulty 5 (annoyance 8)
Learn Game Mechanics 7 (always micro Ultimatum, and it's terminal results against high hp is sooo unreliable)

Perhaps something to do with reclaiming or porc pushing? I think there is a mission nearby that promotes Ulti hiding within a Funnel shield.

After the last few days of experience, I wouldn't want to use a Ultimatum in a shield ball unless I'm doing a one lane fight and probably not even that. The short range and slow speed means getting shields to protect it takes micro as it is easy to be either outside the shield or having enemy inside the shield. The high unit density of a ball also blocks pathing and promotes friendly fire, if one doesn't put the ultimatum at the front. Alternatively stuff like jumpbots or bombs happens. Ultimatum is even a explosive unit when killed.

I'd also expect properly played detri or palandins to kite shieldballs. Dante in active fighting stance is not a great target for ultimatum as one can easily get decloaked and killed early, while you are likely reactive against scorps and may eat an AOE stun early. Once the first shot is fired it is unlikely the opponent misses it (unlike some flanking, non-focal snipe) and will likely pull back and regroup or focus fire. The shield ball is likely to have lots of AOE thrown at it anyways, and reasonable amount of lighter units thrown in a brawl, making detection likely.


Still, the assault is kind interesting to figure out, the difficulty is just so much higher than the paladin and detri mission. The scorp mission is closer with problem of allies safety but at least the necessary unit is unlocked and simple, scorp monospam works.

Still don't know what is the proper factory choice, unit comp and push strategy for Hibiliha from the perspective of more skilled players. I'll try sea flank backdoor when I have time, not sure if the rear is well guarded or if the computer responds to radar jammed out of los attacks. One alternative strategy is to hard push center, rez some porc (need to practice non-gib ultimatum micro) and silo targets that can not be assaulted in time.


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If I am designing a porc and anti-nuke kind of unit-mission I'd just do a defense mission with the AI having a almost done nuke at the start and enough early offensive pressure to make making an anti-nuke a difficult thing. Once funnels tanks the nuke, builds the porc and reclaims the field the mission can be basically clean up.

Hibila Athena Cheese Strategy (works on normal difficulty)

0. Build Athena
1. Use starting funnel/ulti/spiders to clear out the bottom deso and sea defenses beside it. Retreat into defensive positions afterwards
2. Cloak Athena, fly athena all the way to be back of enemy base from south edge (there is enough space besides defenses), there is a beach there that you can build units
4. Build a Gremlin for scout, remember to put on hold fire
3. Build Phantoms, remember to put phantom on hold position. Always position phantom away from natural pathing areas in use by AI. (on hills and likes)
4. Move phantom to snipe the Strider Hub and its caretaker to stop strider. Snipe airfact to reduce chance of athena being scouted
5. Move phantoms to snipe the sunlances, snipe other structure in the way if needed
6. Should finish in <14minutes if following plan. Build silo in allied territory to snipe antinukes for full bonus I guess. (didn't do it in my run, had that bonus objective already)

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Hibila assualt strategy. I've found impalers scorp + start units + djinn and filler as workable enough. Just shift queue impalers on defensive structure and micro the scorp and ulti. Still need to get comfortable with formation move and cut base micro time more to work well though. I'll try placeholders to see if they help if I redo this mission.

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Alternative strategies that I have not implemented: (probably no bonus due to slowness)

1. Silo to destroy Antinuke, nuke them after
2. Clear sea defenses (some amph-bot with micro should do it, though one can try ships or gunships, also scylla itself), Scylla all objectives
3. Defense up into bertha/super. Note that you can use the initial owl to scout pylons powering desolator, use impaler to snipe the pylon to disable it, destroy the desolators with normal (not ulti) units and revive it (with commander, as artemis kills athena) for your own use, giving you a strong defense if you don't have it unlocked yet. Build shields and have anti-heavy around for an all round strong defense.

Other: Maybe cloaked and shielded placeholder into (2x) Shockley can be a much easier and cheap way to deal with paladin than scorp/ulti. Will have to try.

Getting very tired of these missions where the enemy is given some 34625796463hp and damage units which are basically non-counterable DESPITE of owning 3/4 of the campaign map. That paladin or whatever walker should be outright removed from the game cause its a drooling, oozing design flaw. Cant do a damn thing with the opposition to give the game a spin? Oh i know, why not just give them a unit that has twice the hp and damage of ANYTHING IN GAME obtainable

Frustrating, completely trash design that limits player choices into nothing,

Chatka (Normal)

I went for spiders here, not sure if it was the best choice, but it worked. Secondary objectives didn't really work for me, though. The yellow enemy put a lot of effort into raiding, and by the time it was being dealt with, the red enemy destroyed most of their stuff and turned on me. It took quite a long time to push them back, and Merlins turned out difficult to use offensively in conjunction with a large army, took a long time, including Berthas and a Trinity, but I managed to beat both enemies. I found this mission satisfying to play.

Difficulty: 8/10

Tempest (Normal)

This mission shoots itself on the foot because of the time limiter, it has the potential to be really fun, but instead you have to rush into the artifact before your stuff blows up. I didn't even bother with geothermals but I can see that being doable, I made Athenas and Scorpions for the mission, as I didn't find ultimatums very suited for this kind of mission, and completed the whole thing in about 12 minutes, including the time it took to regroup scorps twice.

Difficulty: 4/10

Sapphire (Easy)

THere's hundreds of languages on this world, each has dozens or hundreds of four letter words, yet they're not enough to describe this experience. This thing is Walchice on steroids, having to fight both chicken and striders is too much for what it requires, and setting up defenses across the frozen river for the secondary objective is just not a thing. I remember reading something about terraforming a ditch, but then I found the "not clairvoyant" AI magically showing up with a Dante, which doesn't appear AT ALL if you just porc up on your starting position, you do that, however, then a Paladin inside a megashieldball AND a chicken queen show up at the last 5 minutes and just delete all the defenses you worked so much on building. Five singus also seem like too much for the available time, maybe three or four would be better suited.
Either way, with only the heavy strider/superweapon missions left to do, I can confidently call this one of the (if not the single most) frustrating mission of the whole campaign, the best part of finishing it is that you don't have to play it ever again.

Difficulty: 10/10


Hibiliha: (Normal)

This was probably the most enjoyable of the bunch. While hints suggest to slowly crawl with defenses, I figured that Funnelweb's high buildpower and big shield would be useful to cover smaller units and keep them alive while reclaiming stuff and tried a spider push instead. The starting ultimatum comes handy to clean the area of desolators and the first tank fac, but I lost it afterwards. Nonetheless I had some scorpions up by the time the enemy started pumping out Paladins, I wasn't expecting them but I figured I'd need bigger guns to fight heavy defenses or tank balls. Keeping the funnelwebs alive isn't hard if you build multiple of them, I made three but two should be enough for the most part. The only real difficult bit would be to do it in 20 minutes, it took me twice the time, but it was a fun mission to play.

Difficulty: 6/10

you should specify which difficulty you are playing on

There is anti-leeway time after you win, where you lose if your commander dies. At the time I figured that pyrrhic victories shouldn't count, since the lore is "you are your commander".

RandomThePybro reported in discord that the loss timer on Tempest doesn't stop when the player wins, resulting in a defeat for not promptly clicking through the victory screen. The objective in question reads, "Win before 20:00" and RandomThePybro actually did that, so the subsequent defeat is a bug.