Well, here I go, trying something new. Teams, 2 vs. 2, hard level, I'm the Trade Federation, computer controlled the rest. I've played 1 on 1 often enough, now, and medium has lost its challenge.

First Game
I gather my resources, build a protective wall to block off enemy approach, and then my mistakes start becoming appearant. I had two narrow land strips to the north. I built a tower and some wall in the middle of each land strip to prevent enemy approach. The majority of walls, towers, and gates I put on my long open side (the side facing my teammate). Well, the enemy ended up attacking completely from the North side and the meager defense I constructed up there kept them from coming through but took a heck of a beating. I had no manueverability to defend the towers well and I had no way out to hit the long-range cannons. I eventually had to build an airport to create bombers so I could bomb the long-range stuff. I also started running out of resources while my units were slowly being picked off by the waves of enemy troops (both computer opponents were attacking me on that north side.

What I learned:
1) Always have a gate open to every side.
2) Always build your defenses BEHIND the bottleneck, not in the very middle.
3) Be careful with your precious resources.
4) Don't depend on the computer (my teammate was completely useless that game)

Second game
I'm building up my resources. I actually found enough cattle to fill 3 entire animal shelters. The food was rolling in. I even sent out a few workers to gather resources from the enemy side of the map. Problems? Those darn kitty cats ate up the workers that I sent to collect enemy resources. The enemy sent troops near the beginning of tech 2 to shoot up the workers at my base. Things went downhill quickly from there.

I think my mistake that time was not building a troop center during tech 1 and building at least 5 protective troops. I didn't have enough resources left to build the troop center after building a food processor, 3 animal shelters, power core, some farms, carbon processor, and ore processor. I'm guessing that the farms were not necessary given the 3 animal shelters and that the ore processor could have waited.

My thinking is that I need more practice at medium level (which I always win at) just to hone proper skills for playing at the hard level. I need to get into the habit of building the troop center at tech 1 and building 5 troops during the tech 1 to 2 transition. When I play at medium level, that's never necessary. The computer never attacks until after I've built my walls and turrets. At hard, they almost always rush.

Learn from my mistakes,
SirKai

Ah yes, I have had similar "back door" experiences.

I always bulid 10 troops (usually a mix of regulars and mounties, with fewer mounties, maybe 3-4) during the waiting period of the TL 1-2 transition, when you can't build workers but food is still coming in. They're not all punched out by the time TL 2 rolls around, but the job is completed in short order and now I have a decent defense.

An added advantage of gates, besides allowing your ground forces out, is that the computer is drawn to them like moths to a flame. It never seems to hit un-gated walls, if there is a gate to be had in the desired approach direction. That means you can pile up your defenses behind your gates, and you will have your forces right where they need to be when the attack finally comes.

Something else I just thought of is the fact that I always pay for upgrades to my resource buildings before I upgrade my defenses. For instance, I upgrade the carbon processor and animal shelter before I upgrade the troops to a higher level. In this fashion, I collect more resources faster and tech faster.

In the harder level, though, I need to defend better or I lose those extra hard earned resources repleneshing troops and repairing towers/walls. Tonight, I shall try the opposite strategy, upgrade the units and turrets first, then upgrade the resource buildings with leftover resources.

That brings up the subject of when people usually upgrade their resource buildings. Do you wait until you have an adaquate defense (walls and turrest guarded by mechs and bounty hunters) before upgrading your resources or do you do it early in the game like I have been doing?

SirKai :guard:

The computer cheats on hard and I dont like that but that is okay:) I always have problems pushing their buildings back. By the time I get to tech four they are all over the map. They are like a hive...My gosh it reminded me of starship trooper...:eek: I play medium. I dont play hard because I am trying to figure out how to keep from being slaughter under waves of troops. They cheat and I cant figure out how to cheat back....No I WILL NOT USE SIMON!

T2 Tower rush, T3 air rush followed by pummel drop will always kill a hard computer opp. Always.

Never build walls. Waste of ore. Build turrets near resources. Two at a time.

Yeah, I used to play moderate only when I first started out, but then I started to never lose on moderate, and so I gave myself quite the test, 1v7 on moderate.

The moderate AI gets to T3 in about 26 minutes or so normally and I can usually get there in 18, so I had a 8-10 minute adavantage to get started with. I was the rebels, and so when I T3'd everything went into air. I then started sending my ships out to a nearby base and started harassing them. I kept pumping ships down there, and eventually I had his base pinned down. Unfortunately it took me like 8 minutes to finish off that guy, and so when I sent my fleet to take out the guys above me, they had already T3'd, and all of a sudden I got attacked by like 4 guys at once. Luckily their AA was weak, and I already had a few castles up. Unfortunately, There was no real chokepoint to get into my base, and so I had to keep shifting my fleet all over the place. But my economy was really strong, and so I kept popping out ships and fortresses. I had I think at least 8 fortresses to cover my base opening, and I kept pumping out fully upgraded rebel ships to the front lines.

Eventually I had at least 120 fighters/bombers/speeders providing my defense, while the castles provided a target for the stupid AI to go at. But the reason I was able to do it is because it wasnt a human, and they never built anywhere near enough AA, and for some reason they never bothered to attack my ships who were somewhat ahead of the castles. They kept walking until attacked to reach a waypoint or something. Which of course once they were attacked they died quick so no reaction time was available to them. So here I am 8 fortresses, and 120 planes taking on computers with their own massive armies. Gradually, I built my own air attack force and took them out one by one, but it was really sad.

That strategy would not work against a human at all, but on any difficulty excluding hardest(On hardest you dont get the chance, T2 in 6 minutes?? What the heck is that anyways? Sorry, got sidetracked there) you can just build up a few castles and then a massive fleet to pick off guys as they head towards the castles. And the fleet has no problem with their planes as long as you are the rebels, naboo, or wookies I have found. Hard is a challenging difficulty still, but only in the beginning with their constant attacks. If you can set up a decent defense, you can easily get it to the point where they just stupidly run into the same defense, and die the same way for the rest of the game.

While I am talking defence, I have to say that I never build walls unless there are very small choke points that make it logical to have a gate and to focus ground defence there at first. But otherwise, I build a very tight base and try to have defenses surrounding it as best as possible. That means two turrets spread out as much as possible over the base, without losing the ability to protect each other. Then I try to build my turrets around my base so that they provide a focal point for enemies to attack, and so that my base has a "wall" of turrets, that will hold off early attacks. Of course as the tech levels go up, I upgrade my turrets and AA turrets to full, and they do a great job of holding off attacks combined with a few fortresses. This works on the zone too, as you really want to have a tight base there or it will get picked off easily in a rush. As long as I can keep up with the AI on hard economically (18-22 min T3) I can always hold off his attacks with this strategy.

But my big problem with the AI on hard is that its defense is just pathetic. I know that the better way to play is to rush to get the game over earlier, but I play with a friend often, and we usually like to build up huge armies in our 2v2's on hard and so if we make it into the solid defense stage(their attacks bounce harmlessly off our chests) then we just mass and when we are at max pop and full upgrades, we attack. And of course the computers get crushed under a massive attack of 150+ units by each of us. The defense is just too sad though. Weak spots everywhere, and they just give up so fast. I dont mean resign either, they seem to just stop doing anything after a point. I love the feeling of building up a huge army and sending it to battle, but I can't stand that if you get it to the solid defense stage you win. End of story. It is the reason that we play on the zone now, because though we don't like losing, it happens, and the challenge is new everytime. Not just, ok we make it for the first 30 minutes and we win.

Sorry to go off ranting there, especially since the AI does a decent job on the rushing. I don't know if they cheat on hard but I have never had any problems with that. I have tried it on hardest, and they must cheat huge there as it's freakin impossible to fend off a t4 rush in t2.

But yeah, back to the point, if you build the base tight enough with turrets all around you should be fine when playing on hard. Plus, because its the comp build air whoever you are because they never build enough anti air to make it worth their time building them.