How to deal with very strong aliens at game start?

[Lawlman Griff]

Started a game and some of the aliens are metal dinosaurs or some ♥♥♥♥, their unit strength is ten times higher than any of my battalions. Is there a good strategy to wear down a unit like this or do I just have to deal with them constantly cutting my LOCs until I tech up?

[CHOO CHOO]

If they're just cutting up your lines, live with it and clean up after them until you get anti-armor units.

If they go for your capital, you die. Happened to me on my last planet.

[Thomas]

For anti-capital aliens - I have noticed that neutral monsters have tendencies to not take hex after victory battle. So you wall them outside capital and replace troops after every lost battle - and wait for them to get bored of chewing your toys soldiers.

But I would need more games to be certain of that.

[CHOO CHOO]

They do not occupy the hex, true, but they do kill all your councillors when they attack.

[Vahkn]

The best approach I've found is to rotate your defending infantry. ie just have one unit defending at a time and if any survive keep them on a safe tile to recover while a fresh sacrificial unit moves in to defend. If you keep more than one unit defending at a time then you just lose more troops each turn for no benefit. Meanwhile, obviously get your model design council up asap and beeline the first discovery that will be able to damage them.

Either way though, you're going to lose a big chunk of population replacing infantry for the first 20-30 turns and waste a lot of resources instead of expanding, so it's a big starting handicap.

[peterebbesen]

As a general rule, block them off with units and whenever their random movement moves them away so they aren't in direct contact, move in and occupy: this way you will gradually push them into the wilderness though at a steep cost in casualties.

This works best with herbivores, but it works even with carnivores and top predators. Of course, unit traits matters as well. Animals that are tagged as Crusaders will actively seek out your units and attack them, so pushing them back this way is not guaranteed to work, especially if you are unlucky enough that they also have high recon.

That said, if the enemies are only ten times as strong as your starting battalions, we are talking fairly weak alien wildlife, which can be fought with RPGs or light tanks with high velocity guns. So you can take the fight to them in the early game if you choose to prioritize model and military council.

But the strategy is general - it also works with difficult aliens such as those you find on Medusa planets, though if like so many others you roll Medusa planets for the Kaiju factor you should expect many thousand casualties *per turn* once you start expanding, and shouldn't expect to be able to actually fight the alien life until scores of turns later since even Tech4 weapons will have a hard time scratching anything but the tiniest of enemies.

That being said, if you start with something like this Polymer Cavebeast 5 hexes from your capital, as I did in my last game, just restart immediately rather than waste time thinking of distracting it. You can't run, and you can't hide. All you can do is die.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/8026/n3U9fK.png

[Strossi]

Originally posted by Lawlman Griff:

Started a game and some of the aliens are metal dinosaurs or some ♥♥♥♥, their unit strength is ten times higher than any of my battalions. Is there a good strategy to wear down a unit like this or do I just have to deal with them constantly cutting my LOCs until I tech up?

MG battalion wall. Alien Fauna will most often not attack your unit, and when it does, it tends not to move into the units location. Then you just move your mg infantry back into the wall, or extend the wall of the aliens breach it.

Due to the variability of fauna movement, eventually you can corral the creatures against a blocker, like a cape or AI border.

In the beginning the priority is to wall off the 2 hexes from your starting city to avoid increasing the danger in it. Then you need to secure supply lines.

The 500 men MG inf is the most cost-efficient way of doing this (militia too). It costs, but if you chose a hard start, then a slow start is simply part of the experience. Consider rushing interior council for tax increase stratagems.

[peterebbesen]

With regards to the 500 MG wall, its cost-effectiveness depends greatly on what kind of alien wildlife you are facing. It is a very, very good approach for planets with weak wildlife, but when things get more hairy, the calculation isn't that simple.

Each 500 MG Battalion costs you 2PP and, while tech 3 MG is capable of surviving attacks by weak alien wildlife so it'll be replenished automatically if you have reserves, if your planet has more dangerous wildlife you risk that they'll eat it right up, which means that you'll not only have to replace its manpower, IP, and metal cost - you'll have to replace the PP cost too for each of them you lose, and then move them from wherever you recruit replacements to the front.

And if you are herding several units of wildlife and one of them wipes out a blocking force, or forces it to retreat, there is the possibility that another unit that moves later will move into the hole. The more vicious the wildlife on the planet, the more the 500 MG wall shows its weaknesses.

Contrast that with recruiting a 5500 man MG Infantry Brigade. You get 5 blocking forces of 800 infantry, 200 MG, under local operational command, as well as the 500 man unit you'll definitely want to keep safe. Each 1000 man subunit deals more damage and is capable of absorbing more damage than the 500 MG battalion without retreating - or dying and having to be replaced for PP.

You get field training for both infantry and MG, as well as operational training for the commander. You will only very rarely lose one of the subunits, but on the flip side, you will occasionally lose a commander and have to replace him for PP. And if you are playing against very, very, dangerous wildlife, then the animal that is capable of killing a 500 man MG battalion might also be able to kill a 1000 man MG infantry battalion. But that is rare unless you are playing on Kaiju style planets, and on those you are going to be recruiting tens of thousands of soldiers anyhow to have a chance of survival.

On the other hand, OHQ's are the perfect place to dump all those leaders you recruit with the cheap Junior or Military cards, that turn out to have poor stats. Should they survive, they'll turn out useful in the end, and even if they don't your units will fight better with both OHQ and SHQ support than they would as independent units with only SHQ support.

So if you are playing on a planet with weak wildlife, very limited population, or starting at tech 4 or 5, 500 MG Battalions may be the best choice available to you. But if you aren't, you should seriously consider using MG Infantry Brigades for your main blockers (supplemented by 500 MG Battalions if you are short on leaders).

[Epervier]

With the DLC, on oceania planet, it seems it's the IA who have major problem.
Octopus boosted with steroids come from the sea and ravage their citys. In 2 games on oceania planet (with lot of isles), there's at least 2 majors each time how fell under the attack of hostile fauna. Fun to see i'm gonna say, but it's low down the difficulty for the rest of the game.

[Vahkn]

The OP is talking about the predators with 1k+ attack/defense that kill anything you put in front of them at low tech levels. Corralling herbivore rodents using MG's is fun and all, but it's a very different situation.