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When armies dont work

Posted: 20 Jan 2007, 22:27
by tb87670
I was wondering what your supposed to do late in the game, when both sides have so much defenses that any large armies get stopped like nothing, nukes get shot down, and both sides can only wait for the other to die of old age. I tried massing attacks of tanks backed up by gunships, artillery, and bombers, I tried kbots sneaking around some hills and such, I tried airlifting a huge force behind their lines, and nothing works. Then I tried many combinations of units, and they dont work.Then after my army is dead, the enemy marches his huge army into my defences that i was forced to build in response, and the same fate happens to him as hvy lasers towers and flak guns prove very effective at stopping anything in combination. What am I supposed to do when a game gets to this point, just quit?

Posted: 20 Jan 2007, 22:36
by AF
strategy is what you need.

Should you have gotten behind their defensive lines, what did you attack? For one I'd have thought itd be better to send in cloakable crawlign bombs rather than tanks, and then target resources with them, specifically energy storage and generation, then to soak up what energy they have left by sending an army at their defences, which will run out of energy and stop firing.

Also, antinukes arent specifically antinuke, they're antimissile, they'll target any vertical launch cruise missile nuke or non nuke. So send in some missile launchers such as krogs, merls, diplomats, dominator, followed by a barrage of 10 ro so nukes aimed at an antinuke near to them. Most will be shot down but enough nukes sent enmasse will get through as several antinukes target the same nuke missile rather than splitting between them.

Also, your covert operations may be more succesful if you use distractions. Send in a large group of tanks to their defences while you sneak them in then withdraw the tanks once they're at the back of their base.

And as always build LRPC, berthas vulcans intimidators buzzsaw, and shell the enemy as best you can. If they've jammed their base, then fire blindly and randomly as chances are you'll hit something.

That and playing the game better at an earlier stage to prevent stalemate from ever occuring.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 01:20
by Licho
Disable antinukes - use EMP missile, EMP bombers or just walk in cloaked spy bot and self-d it, it will stun anti nuke.
At that moment launch your nuke.

Build several LRPC and aim them all at same point, try to knock down nanotowers or factory.

Re: When armies dont work

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 03:14
by LordMatt
tb87670 wrote:What am I supposed to do when a game gets to this point
I honestly can't remember a game where it was a complete stalemate.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 05:52
by tb87670
It happened to me just again after I posted on Xanthe Terra (I like the scenery, its a beautiful map). I bowed out due to me having to go to the bathroomthe first time I got stuck in this situation. Thx for all the ideas, I just wish Vulcans where in thier glory again like in OTA TAUCP mod (lol come on it was a huge minigun, and shot as fast as one too :twisted: ) but that would be unbalanced. I think the workaround I found was send in a ton of Bulldogs and Stumpys to distract them like AF said, then I have Zeus and Raven Kbots go under the radar in the canyon in Xanthe Terra. While the tanks spot stuff, the Ravens open up and do a ton of damage while the Zeus's are mop up. After sufficient air defences are gone, I send in 80 Phoenix bombers in fight mode and 40 Brawlers to their base. I lost a few aircraft due to the massed Slashers, but half of my airforce is left over and the ground units are still shooting. The main part of all this is to not give a dam about the tanks, they are just meatshields with an average gun.The good thing is the tanks can shoot over their buddies in front cuz they got shells similar to plasma artillery that arc. All this adds up to a huge force that won. Problem is I had 12 Moho Metal Makers and about 10 Moho Extractors working to fuel this, took a long time to build up the farks and the 11 fusions, but it all worked out. Later I tried the same thing against 3 AI on Xanthe Terra since they are better a Microing than an average human late game, and it worked :wink: all in all thx for the info guys, and I didnt know about the cruise missile thing, Ill try that next time I get in a stalemate.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 09:12
by KDR_11k
It's not true, interceptors (antinukes) shoot only at missiles marked as interceptable and in AA/BA that's limited to nukes AFAIK to prevent people from using cheaper missiles to drain the antinukes as well as giving the EMP and cruise missile silo a chance to hit better. Shooting ten nukes can overwhelm the antinukes but will do so whether you fire loads of starburst missiles or not.

Also Core nukes have a blast radius almost as large as the range of an antinuke, you could use one to put the hurt on his line of defense by shooting just outside of antinuke range (the antinuke will probably not be the first unit in the line of defense).

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 10:01
by hunterw
when games get like this for me (like an hour and 20 min in to the game) the only thing i find that breaks the porc is liche bombers with huge peeper swarms for sucking up AA. find those antinukes and eliminate them, or if they've foolishly clustered together explosive buildings by each other, see if you can't make some nice chain explosions. my favorites are fusions, especially advanced fusions, and of course moho geothermals.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 10:40
by Day
I dont know if many people know this trick, i got it from speedmetal, ARMs paralyser bombers are very hard to shoot down.. and they go very fast.. their also very good at EMPing their antinuke(s) if you can find them ^_^

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 12:56
by Drone_Fragger
Or you could just que up loads of units and structures then go AFK for 2 hours, Hoping the enemy WILL die of old age.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 16:00
by 1v0ry_k1ng
I find the best thing to do is not play chokepoint maps or BA.
low metal maps often make fr the best games imo

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 16:27
by DemO
1. Make Core nuke
2. Make 15 Tier 2 bombers
3. Bomb anti-nuke
4. BEWM GG

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 17:36
by Relative
When it comes to choke points I tend focus with arty (particularly level 3 core arty) after scouting. If your arty can take out just one of the highly explosive structures (Shield for instance) your opponent's defense line will then consist a large hole and free metal. :P

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 17:55
by tombom
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:BA.
You have a very non-biased opinion.

Re: When armies dont work

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 17:58
by ZellSF
tb87670 wrote:I was wondering what your supposed to do late in the game, when both sides have so much defenses that any large armies get stopped like nothing, nukes get shot down, and both sides can only wait for the other to die of old age. I tried massing attacks of tanks backed up by gunships, artillery, and bombers, I tried kbots sneaking around some hills and such, I tried airlifting a huge force behind their lines, and nothing works. Then I tried many combinations of units, and they dont work.Then after my army is dead, the enemy marches his huge army into my defences that i was forced to build in response, and the same fate happens to him as hvy lasers towers and flak guns prove very effective at stopping anything in combination. What am I supposed to do when a game gets to this point
When the game gets to that point, it's time to ask yourself why you let it.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 20:00
by Peet
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:low metal maps often make fr the best games imo
3v3 on Pydah Pass = win.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 21:19
by hrmph
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:I find the best thing to do is not play chokepoint maps or BA.
Did that make anyone else lol? :)

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 22:55
by DemO
To be fair XTA is more porc friendly than BA.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 22:59
by AF
Not at all. Defences are mincemeat if you outrange them. 5 ravens/dominaters/merl/diplomat/morties/luger/any arty with a jammer will pwn defences.

Defences in XTA are highly susceptible to these things and are only invincible if your using lvl 1 units.

Infact I'd argue BA is more porc friendly, as BA defences are at least 10x cheaper than in XTA to build, and they build faster too and use less resources to keep firing.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 23:39
by quantum
In BA, level 1 artillery can outrange any lvl2 static defense except guardians, which die exceedingly easily to flashes and cost half a lvl2 factory.

Posted: 21 Jan 2007, 23:40
by hrmph
'Atleast 10x cheaper'? Uhm, that is a huge exaggeration... I compared the cost of defences yesterday (just basics like llt, hlt, etc) and they are no where near 10x cheaper in BA (they weren't even 2 times cheaper if I remember correctly)...
Defences in XTA are highly susceptible to these things and are only invincible if your using lvl 1 units.
It is strange that you make that statement but still say that BA is more porc-friendly.. (I suppose you are just talking about late-game XTA)