first, make sure the AI know that you do not need to make path through the poisonous water, and then add poison to important points on the paths of units

Thanks to factory balance, JJ pretty much has to use this trick in some situations when they get behind. Although pyro spamming vs bolas got me into the midgame thanks to Manu's advice, there was nothing they would be able to do with scalpel present and guaranteeing your advantage. If I had gone the conventional route and made firewalker, we would be in Lance peak meta all over again and hovers would steal yet another victory on account of being an ultra robust factory.

You had the right idea with OP closed halberd usage and could have totally won the game if you did that better. Why didn't you position and hunt with them more aggressively? Plus, you have the added option of 1-2 halberds tanking all moderator shots before flooding with bolas/scalpels.

About puppy breeding, I had forgotten that they don't actually duplicate whilst stealthed and wasted a lot of time with them on the metal not doing so.

Props to Manu12 for the gameplay tip, even if it was only half-right in the end.

My goodness.... Do me one with mace!!

Invisible things are 'imba', puppies are part of a long list of things incredibly powerful in this situation.

Some other observations:
No jacks or firewalkers made cost this game. Any other factory's assault would have done better in their place, except perhaps hermit.

Despite a large economic disadvantage, hover was maintaining attrition parity for quite awhile.

Despite what Manu teaches us, the pyros vs scalpels do get harder to use and worse as game encounter size scales. They aren't awful, but when your metric for a successful raid is 1 near equal cost raider often nearly dies attacking a skirmisher, its a counter, but its not a good counter. If you already beat their raiders though, its a way to leverage your advantage to keep winning, so I dont mean to trash talk it too much.

Lone halberds scouting cloak ball was made very difficult by placeholder, perhaps too difficult?

Anarchid