How do I beat Vanguards?

Every time I face them unless I have more vanguards or an army costing twice the metal I lose. Even if one gets into my base its pretty much GG from there as it destroys all of my power generators and factories. If the enemy mixes in the occasional AA unit with the vanguards then there's pretty much nothing I can do to stop them as bombers are out of the window. I've seen boom bots used to try and counter them but that only seems to work if you have around 30 per Vanguard. In a recent game I also saw a player use Slammers against them but this only works if the opposing army has no ranged units in it, which is never the case.

So yes how do I beat Vanguards in a cost effective manner?

Vanguards are the most powerful units in the game right now.

The way to beat them is to stay out of their range, so use something that has longer range than them or use aircraft.

But because they are the most OP unit in the game, you're going to have a hard time beating them. It'll take a lot of micro and/or a lot of units.

The other way to beat them is to have 1 more Vanguard than they do.

Also, don't use Infernos about them.

There is no effective counter to Vanguard.

This is one of the many reasons why we need specialists, not upgrades.

That was an incredibly quick reply! I was hoping that there was a way to beat them but I fear what you're saying is correct. Guess I'll wait for a patch then .

Shellers. Better still, attack the sides and rear of your enemies base, making them drag back their Vanguards to defend rather than steamrolling through your stuff.

If that happened to me, I would be so happy. I would destroy your entire base. Pulling my vanguards to defend would be pointless since my vanguards are already in the middle of your base, it would take too long to have them return to my base. I'd use the units that are in my base to defend, probably lose a portion of my base, but destroy my opponent's entire base.

Vanguards are just so OP right now, and Uber's slight cost increase is nowhere near enough to balance them.

Since we're on the topic, Shellers are pretty unbalanced too, especially when you consider that they're better and cheaper than Pelters, and they can move.

Custard is right, although I would suggest shellers over snipers almost every time. T2 bots just aren't as good as vehicles.
spam shellers to win is very effective.

Haha yeah I edited my post and removed "snipers" as soon as I posted it. T2 bots are just too sucky to encourage that right now.

Also Brian I meant attack BEFORE the Vanguards get to you. They're pretty slow and if you scout properly you'll see a blob of them building up. You should even be able to see the T2 vehicle factory going up and start planning at that point.

One more thing! Vanguards are really good right now, probably OP, BUT this may be more to do with T2 air and all bots not being so good, rather than the Vanguards numbers being too high. I think the cost increase in PTE is reasonable.

i dont know where to get exact numbers of different builds from but my feeling is that vanguards are OP because you can reposition them a lot lot easier then the enemy can reposition their base, also they can take out commanders alone

T2 bots kill them with a little micro, T2 tanks kill them with a little micro and air kills them without any micro.

Yeah that's what I was thinking haha.

In any difficult situation, rush their comm with bombers and/or laser platforms. If that fails, you were outplayed in every field on this planet and just have to lose. If you have higher tech available than bombers and platforms, why didn't you use it first?
Seriously, if enemy dedicate himself to rush X thing, the probably don' have much else. If they rushed some OP tech and still have enough stuff around to defend against whatever you have, you will just have to deal with the fact that they are better.

It does, but it does it slowly.

And attacking with Vanguards, all I need to say is "move" – and defending against them takes a lot of micro. And if I have spinners/fighters, then air is not very effective. While they're attacking, I'm off doing other things. Defending against Vanguards requires attention.

Vanguards cause more damage and attention than they take.

AFAIK, only Anchor spam provides sufficient DPS to kill Vanguards in time with an acceptable demand for attention. But you need to sink a lot of metal into these Anchors, far more than the enemy did sink into Vanguards.

There is absolutely nothing you could do against crowds of 20 Vanguards or more. They are going to steamroll you. Period.

levelers are pretty good at dealing with vanguards....except for the fact their turret turns so stupidly slow

Slammers are probably the best unit to kill Lone vanguards right now. Shellers and x3 turrets come pretty close, though.

It's really just better to have vanguards with them

I think that's more of a testament of pelters being underpowered than shellers being overpowered. Though I will admit i haven't been keeping up with the most recent balance changes so pelters aren't as bad as they used to be.

Oh how I long for a guardian / punisher equivalent base defense.

Jeez, thats an expensive way to kill it, and it would mean you would have to rush Tier2 in parellel to the enemies. If you want to beat it with tier 1 tanks, the simplest way is to have an effective radar, If it has already reached your base, then theres nothing you can do about it.

Air can obviously always beat it, given enough time and I wouldnt use Kbots
-)

Countering many vanguards with tier 1, can be done with a lot of Aventails (the ranged one), simply by staying out of range and firing until they are dead, they move at the same speed, and provided they arent already at your base, you can kill them quite quickly

Countering the Rushed Vanguard with aventails is much the same, although given the time it takes to kill them, a microed Inferno army may be more effective (it might reach your base first), though will cost you more

To kill it with infernos, split into 2 groups, the first group has 1 inferno, the other has every other inferno, approach it from both sides and engage with the 1 inferno first, with the other group engaging <1 second later (FROM ANOTHER ANGLE!). The vanguard will shoot the one inferno, giving a 2 second opening to attack, 3-4 infernos can kill the vanguard within this period of time

Edit: Killing Vanguards with tier 1 is the most cost effective way to kill them, however it is also the most Micro Intensive. Use only when it is your only option

To OP: More Vanguards.... Shellers help if you spam a whole bunch of them. Forget fighting a vanguard laden army with t1 tanks, or t1 anything, you see Vanguards, you need to tech up FAST.

Play on water. Vanguards can't swim.

And I think that is a huge fundamental design flaw with PA and why I advocate for specialized T2, not upgraded T2.

The concept of the only reliable way of beating T2 is to use T2 leads to boring and binary gameplay.

By making T2 units specialized units with drawbacks, we achieve greater variety in gameplay and available strategies. Now we have more options to beat our opponents other than "tech up because my opponent(s) teched up."