Before I resume banging my head against the wall, I feel I need to check if I'm not doing something fundementally entirely wrong in my approach.
I'm playing on Low difficulty by-the-by, in apparent absense of a "Patronisingly Easy Difficulty for Babies" difficulty setting.
I played in 2019, before giving up partyi in frustration, partly because I somehow after completeing the Vanguard missions instead if progression to the Kir'ko ended up starting a new campaign (which would have forced me to go back and do all the Vanguard missions again, which I culdn't cope with). I have this time picked up where I left off, I finished the Kir'ko campaign, re-did the Vanguard one, muddled through the D'var but as on Amazon, Syndicate and Assembly, I have been finding it harder and harder and increasingly ended up relyin on the cheats to get through. (See previous thread...)
(Aside: Allow me to just take a moment to genuinely and whole-heartedly thank Triumph for actually HAVING cheats still, in a time when that has more or less Stopped Being A Thing, since without them, I would have had to rage-quit completely.)
I can only conclude that Bad At Video Games as I am, I must clearly be doing something fundementally wrong.
Basially, it all seems to fall apart at the point the AI declares war on me, since it does so and shows up with several doomstacks which, if I'm lucky, I might just out-number/score if I have my entire fielded army on hand in defence (which I never do).
So, let me go through what I've been doing, and you can hopefully tell me what I'm doing catastrophically wrongly (or else we'll know tha I'm just Bad At Games and might as well leacve the cheats on (since I'm GOING to finish the campaign, as ticking unfinished games off my checklist is the only thing that passes for an escape at the moment).
So, I start out Veteran, Kleptomaniac (as the least bad flaw, it's basically only the cost of a tier II unit upkeep), and mixing it up between APC (and the database one) or extra troops (and a gun).
I begin by sending out both starting scouts (plus shortly one more) on auto-explore to gather pick-ups, since they do so way more efficiently tha I do. I begin sending my starting stack around, clearing marauders, getting a second colony out fairly quickly if I can. I also start doing the objectives that are close by (including accepting timed quests from the NPC factions), and gathering units from thr rewards, which are a mixed bag, but often from the main quest/side quests (as opposed to faction quests) highter tier unit than I can produce at the start.
The problem I am finding it (especially with the Amazons and the Assembly) is that I very quickly find my energy income tanks due to the units, preventing me from... Well, doing much (such as expanding or recruiting heroes). So I seem to be expanding about as fast as the AI most of the time. By the time I am making any reasonable headway, my two or three stacks traipsing around the map clearing/qusting is the point the AI inevitably seems to declare war (around maybe turn 45-ish in the first Assembly mission?) and thus well out of position is the point at which the aforementioned doomstacks turn up.
Assembly 1 was particularly bad, since the first sidequest objectives involved attacking the spacers and thus ensuring the destruction of all my scouts, because of the aforementioned tanking of economy making getting the 150 energy for peace afterwards difficult.
(Can I just say that the defenders not being able to retreat feels awful, since it ensures that scouts are fundementally auto-killed by any hostiles. I only dimly remember AoW III (I played about 80 hours of that, rage-quitting when I discovered that the final mission of the elf anf human campaign was basically the same), but I have a recollection that wasn't the case there and you were able to avoid enemies and do a runner... But maybe I'm thinking of Fallen Enchantress or something.)
So. What am I doing wrong?
Should I not try doing ANY objectives until I've got 4, 6, 8 or 10 cities on the map and have manufactured (rather than smei-randomly recruited) about three stacks worth of troops to stand guard while one or two stacks then start doing the objectives? (Assuming then, that the unit rewards for quests are really something of a newbie trap, rather than to enable you to progress?)
Is it intended that I must become sufficiently proficient at the tactical combat that I should be able to routinely beat AI stacks more powerful and/or numerous than mine? As I usually find I get better results using auto-resolve.
(And I'm going to make myself unpopular here, but I am not fond of the tactical combat, basically due to the deployment (especially the seperation of multiple stacks) and the fact the AI seems to move so it ALWAYS gets the first attacks in whatever I do; to the point I can't bring myself to fight battles with more than one stack. (except for the sieges in AoW III, where I could actyually have time to draw up my troops into a deployed fashion before attacking, but which also got tiresome after a while).)
Should I just NOT send out scouts early on?
Should I be making use of frontier outposts with the intention of them being extra orbital relays later on?
Residential exploitations are clearly something that didn't exist previously when I played - I now gather that I should be using them to get up to six sectors (and/or extend beyond 2 sectors from the base)form, but what are the subtleties?
Should my first exploitation always be Food (instead of whatever seems best suited to the underlying terrain, like I have been doing), even it's only possibly to get level 1?
Is there some other fundementally obvious thing that I'm missing or mistake I'm making?
Suggestions/observations would be appreciated.
I'm playing on Low difficulty by-the-by, in apparent absense of a "Patronisingly Easy Difficulty for Babies" difficulty setting.
I played in 2019, before giving up partyi in frustration, partly because I somehow after completeing the Vanguard missions instead if progression to the Kir'ko ended up starting a new campaign (which would have forced me to go back and do all the Vanguard missions again, which I culdn't cope with). I have this time picked up where I left off, I finished the Kir'ko campaign, re-did the Vanguard one, muddled through the D'var but as on Amazon, Syndicate and Assembly, I have been finding it harder and harder and increasingly ended up relyin on the cheats to get through. (See previous thread...)
(Aside: Allow me to just take a moment to genuinely and whole-heartedly thank Triumph for actually HAVING cheats still, in a time when that has more or less Stopped Being A Thing, since without them, I would have had to rage-quit completely.)
I can only conclude that Bad At Video Games as I am, I must clearly be doing something fundementally wrong.
Basially, it all seems to fall apart at the point the AI declares war on me, since it does so and shows up with several doomstacks which, if I'm lucky, I might just out-number/score if I have my entire fielded army on hand in defence (which I never do).
So, let me go through what I've been doing, and you can hopefully tell me what I'm doing catastrophically wrongly (or else we'll know tha I'm just Bad At Games and might as well leacve the cheats on (since I'm GOING to finish the campaign, as ticking unfinished games off my checklist is the only thing that passes for an escape at the moment).
So, I start out Veteran, Kleptomaniac (as the least bad flaw, it's basically only the cost of a tier II unit upkeep), and mixing it up between APC (and the database one) or extra troops (and a gun).
I begin by sending out both starting scouts (plus shortly one more) on auto-explore to gather pick-ups, since they do so way more efficiently tha I do. I begin sending my starting stack around, clearing marauders, getting a second colony out fairly quickly if I can. I also start doing the objectives that are close by (including accepting timed quests from the NPC factions), and gathering units from thr rewards, which are a mixed bag, but often from the main quest/side quests (as opposed to faction quests) highter tier unit than I can produce at the start.
The problem I am finding it (especially with the Amazons and the Assembly) is that I very quickly find my energy income tanks due to the units, preventing me from... Well, doing much (such as expanding or recruiting heroes). So I seem to be expanding about as fast as the AI most of the time. By the time I am making any reasonable headway, my two or three stacks traipsing around the map clearing/qusting is the point the AI inevitably seems to declare war (around maybe turn 45-ish in the first Assembly mission?) and thus well out of position is the point at which the aforementioned doomstacks turn up.
Assembly 1 was particularly bad, since the first sidequest objectives involved attacking the spacers and thus ensuring the destruction of all my scouts, because of the aforementioned tanking of economy making getting the 150 energy for peace afterwards difficult.
(Can I just say that the defenders not being able to retreat feels awful, since it ensures that scouts are fundementally auto-killed by any hostiles. I only dimly remember AoW III (I played about 80 hours of that, rage-quitting when I discovered that the final mission of the elf anf human campaign was basically the same), but I have a recollection that wasn't the case there and you were able to avoid enemies and do a runner... But maybe I'm thinking of Fallen Enchantress or something.)
So. What am I doing wrong?
Should I not try doing ANY objectives until I've got 4, 6, 8 or 10 cities on the map and have manufactured (rather than smei-randomly recruited) about three stacks worth of troops to stand guard while one or two stacks then start doing the objectives? (Assuming then, that the unit rewards for quests are really something of a newbie trap, rather than to enable you to progress?)
Is it intended that I must become sufficiently proficient at the tactical combat that I should be able to routinely beat AI stacks more powerful and/or numerous than mine? As I usually find I get better results using auto-resolve.
(And I'm going to make myself unpopular here, but I am not fond of the tactical combat, basically due to the deployment (especially the seperation of multiple stacks) and the fact the AI seems to move so it ALWAYS gets the first attacks in whatever I do; to the point I can't bring myself to fight battles with more than one stack. (except for the sieges in AoW III, where I could actyually have time to draw up my troops into a deployed fashion before attacking, but which also got tiresome after a while).)
Should I just NOT send out scouts early on?
Should I be making use of frontier outposts with the intention of them being extra orbital relays later on?
Residential exploitations are clearly something that didn't exist previously when I played - I now gather that I should be using them to get up to six sectors (and/or extend beyond 2 sectors from the base)form, but what are the subtleties?
Should my first exploitation always be Food (instead of whatever seems best suited to the underlying terrain, like I have been doing), even it's only possibly to get level 1?
Is there some other fundementally obvious thing that I'm missing or mistake I'm making?
Suggestions/observations would be appreciated.