New - trouble vs Normal AI!?

Hey all,

I played TA back in the day, and SupCom as well. I'd usually back myself into a corner of the map and put up tons of air patrols and/or turrets until I could overwhelm the enemy commander.

I haven't been able to win a Galactic War campaign yet, haven't even beat a leader. I can win the 1v1 matches in about 15 minutes but the leaders are too hard.

Seems like they have all the tech, and all I get is maybe Bots and vehicles. No orbitals, artillery, etc., and it's 1v3?!

Does anyone else struggle with these, or am I just terrible?

I usually end up holed up near my spawn until they smash a planet into me.

What map size are you playing on? It's is actually *easier* to play GW on a large map than a small one at same difficulty as you get more *free moves and tech* before you take on a faction leader. You can also find 'support commanders' that will give you an AI ally when you go into battle to even out the GW games.

Also if you want to get to grips with the game properly (i.e. no tech limits) then your best option is to go into a skirmish game. From there you can load maps you've made yourself in system editor, or use an auto generated one (surprisingly good) and play against AI, you can set the teams up as you like as well. GW is a bit hit and miss and depends allot on luck that you pick up something useful at the start.

Ahh - I've been doing the small/medium ones. I didn't realize there were support commanders! It sounds like I should stop picking up 3 techs and heading straight to the 1v3 match, maybe clear around the leader instead.

Thanks for the tip!

Yep, take your time and get as much tech as you can before the faction leader fight. The *most* important tech to get to win those is *orbital*. Otherwise it is very difficult to invade occupied planets. A support commander 2 helps loads as well as it gives the AI something else to focus on

First off, turtling doesn't really work in PA. You can't hid and build defensive structures until you have enough units. PA is all about massive. Massive armies. Massive economies. In order to have a large economy, you have to have a lot of map control. In order to have a lot of map control, you have to expand. You can't afford to sit and wait, you must attack.

PA Matches has a lot of gameplay videos and tutorials. Watching gameplay videos is a great way to get a grasp on how the game is played.

This tutorial is also a good place to start

Understatement of the year. (hence why I don't really like this game as I have never been a fan of rushing and unit spamming)

If you don't like massive armies, then PA probably isn't the game for you.

PA is all about massive armies and large explosions, not about single hero units.

Nothing wrong with preferring small armies, you just prefer a different type of game.

I think I am just having terrible luck with these Galactic Wars. I started an epic one this time, about 10 solar systems in and still no aircraft or orbitals. It's storage compression over and over ...and 200% commander move speed LOL

Oh, yeah. No denying that. No, I'm not about single hero units. I just like to turtle, that's all. Build my defenses, build my economy, etc. And then when I'm a powerhouse, go on the offensive. PA doesn't allow for that. One must go on the offensive immediately. Too much stress.

For the record, though, I think PA is an awesome game for the those who prefer not to turtle... which is basically anyone who is into MP and not SP. And I'll still highly recommend the game to anyone who asks.

You should be able to let tech stay on a planet. Why does it have to vanish.

Also it would be nice to be able to scan after more slots. or simply you should get a free slot after each battle.

I had a game where i literally got the same tech like 5 times in a row LOL. it was air, then air, more air, you want air?, here take air . it was hilarious.

Then the game was mocking me, by gaming me systems with Metal planets, but i didn have the DAMN things to make the laser work

Galatic War is kinda random atm, very easily makes one rage. It just feels like its entirely up to the wind, and very to do with your skill. Sure you can win, but its a STEEP uphill climb when you dont have the tech and they have EVERYTHING.

Hmm...

You should try playing Spawn Wars. It confines all metal spots within the spawn area. You do this by... setting metal clusters to 0 and metal quantity to the max in the system editor if I remember correctly.

As for the turtle style players, I wonder if there's a way we could make a mod to accommodate this playstyle. We probably won't be able to do much for this until we can make flat maps and custom maps. And then we could make a balance mod inside of it. *shrugs*

i'm a bit of a turtle

and even though i'm aware of it, i can't seem to make myself play smarter

my brain says that i have to have oceans of units before i'll step an inch outside my base

i was a TA turtle for much too long, so i guess that i'll just have to skip PA multi-player

now i'm sad...

Just play against someone like you. Put the game title as "new players that like to turtle."

get the Section of Research and Exploration mod off PAMM, it tells you what tech is on what system in galactic war

Making a turtling mod shouldn't be that hard. Just increase range of defenses drastically, and power/rate of fire as well.

If no one else does it, I'll take a crack at it when i get a chance.

Uber doesnt scale their small maps to their large ones very well. The amount of enemy commanders that you have to fight go up by % of map controlled, instead of just base amount of points controlled. So the smaller ones are hard and constantly upping difficulty and you live or die by tech, and in large and uber size its a cakewalk (even on absurd, later on)

Yes get support commanders, a advanced tech tree of some sort, orbital tech is nice, storage tech is nice, and the enhanced commander arm is nice. My first game I collected 4 sub commanders and they helped a ton. The last boss fight was an epic 5v5 on a 4 planet system and it was immensely fun. I digress get sub commanders, use the easy wins to discover new things about the game, keep tabs of the orbital layer with radar, and don't be afraid to expand to other planets. Transport engineers to make a tele, then move your commander that way.

In short that was a bunch of tips good luck!

Personally these are teh techs I like most:
Basic Vehicles - nothing is as deadly vs normal AI commander or base as the Flametank; assault or vehicle commander are must-have for me.
Basic Air - you need ot to counter AI raiding and invasions.
Any Advanced, ideally not naval - you need it for nukes and anti-nukes. Personal preferenc goes Naval<Bot<Air<Vehicle.

Any orbital tech helps, but is clearly not nessesary. AI tends to have predictble commander positions (just nuke where his obrital launcher and factories are) and in a pinch the astreus can be used as a spysat.
And only superweapon normal AI can build is haley, it lacks nuke & anti-nuke routines.

Overall I find GW harder then Skirmish. Simply because you have limited tech. Only once you get support commanders, most basic unlocks and maybe some buffs do you have a decent chance.

I dunno you guys, a turret push across the map should be possible, but then you do need a large population of fabbers to build yo stuff.

There is a GW turret commander, but you have to unlock him.

Single planet large scale FFAs also seem to lend themselves to turtling to some extent. Most that I've seen end up with someone sitting in a double walled enclosure with turrets and artillery surviving quite a while. The problem turtling elsewhere is simply the amount of eco available if you expand. A turtle will be stuck covering a small amount of ground trying to protect themselves with defences that are not significantly more powerful than the attacking units (that invariably outnumber them). Add to that the cost of T2 means a turtle with the advanced defences needed to survive is unlikely.

Your other option is play games where you spawn on separate planets. Orbital turtling is far easier than land turtling. A planet covered in umbrellas and anti-nukes with patrolling bombers and orbital fighters is a tough nut to crack. You can then fight over other planets available in the system or try to nuke a hole in your opponents planetary base in order to create a beachhead for landing a ground invasion force. The only problem is forcing people to spawn on separate planets. The turtling phase usually comes either through sheer luck in being alone on a planet or by kicking an opponent off with better early game aggression.

Alternatively go online an play team games. Someone else can do the early aggression while you focus on base defence and eco building.

Obviously not a lot of that applies to galactic war. To be fair I also used to be a turtle in SupComm and TA, I was starting to unlearn the behaviour towards the end of my time with SupComm 2. It's now turned round to the point that I almost don't build turrets in PA except as last ditch backup if I'm being attacked and have a lot of fabbers behind a weaker defensive force. It's worth trying some new tricks though. Nothing beats being able to play relatively competitively online (NB: relatively competitive = hopping into random games and having >50% likelihood of winning, I'm nowhere near clan level)


TLDR : it's possible but only in exceptional circumstances. Try new things, it's fun!