StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ok, so in GalCiv II, how they hell do you beat the first mission with Dread Lords? I keep getting reamed by them. I've tried a balanced game (balanced research, social and military spending). I've tried pouring everything I can into research to upgrade my ships (and still get owned left and right), and I've tried the spray and pray method of building huge fleets. All of these straqtegies have gotten me reamed.

The only thing I can think of is to coordinate with the other races, but I can't figure out how to do that. What am I doing wrong?

Miles Teg

I can't remember exactly which one is the first one they show up in, but general strategy is hyper tech planetary invasion, try to keep your allies with good weapons/defenses, and logistics logistics logistics.

You will likely never build something that can take one of there ships 1 on 1, and they always seem to have a logistics short coming. Basicly the way you have to kill them is to have multiple ships with high attack ratings so either A) the rest of the ships kill it while it destroys a ship or two of yours or B) Your ships are able to overwhelm it in an opening volley.

When defeding your planets Orbital Fleet Managment is a absolute fucking MUST. Until you get Planetary Defense either keep a lone ship in orbit, with a fleet nearby(risky, if they off that one ship then slip in with a troop transport your likely fucked) or pull most of your ships out of orbit when you catch a incoming Dread Lord and overwhelm it with a fleet(also risky, cause if it comes in too fast it can take out a majority of your ships one by one from orbit.

Though I never did it, I did read about someone investing in a sensor recon fighter to help prevent fast Dreadlord ships from taking you by surprise.

Also, leaving a shithole planet undefended with a troop transport nearby is a good way to get some advanced techs to help even the odds. Also, if your mission objective is to take a planet by any means necissary, don't bother with playing the map like a regular game. Drain all your coffers, hyper tech and take that planet ASAP with absolutely no regard for defending your planets or establishing yourself.

In the *first* mission with Dread Lords, I remember pretty much ignoring them and just trying to cap that planet as quick as I could. Sometimes you get lucky and they ignore you for a while... sometimes they don't. :S

The third mission is even harder. It's okay to lose missions in the campaign, though - I certainly did.

Grr, I can't een get to the planet because my ships don't have enough range, and the research updates give a pittance of extra range each -- fucking lame. How am I supposed to quickly take over the planet if I can't even reach it until after the second quarter (by which time the DL are already raping my starting planets).

put two or three life support modules when designing your ships, they aren't big, but you may have to sacrifice an engine.

I just dropped a starbase. It got blow up quick, I didn't need that long. On earlier versions, if you didn't *change* a ships orders, range didn't matter - so I could build the base, set my transports to fly to Toria, and even if the base got killed I could just leave the transports and they'd get there fine. This may have been fixed.

Ahh, didn't think about starbases. I didn't realize they extended ships ranges. Now I am going to put my dunce cap on for missing the bloody fucking obvious. Doh!