Wow, Campaign is Hard

[tralev]

I've been trying this for a while now.

I'm on Achilles' Hill.

I've tried countless different tactics. The dread lords start out with two smaller fighters (still with a ton of offense), and a larger frigate.

I've tried rushing, taking all of the planets and building them up. Spread too thinly, once the dread lords take the planets (and they move to take one within 10 turns of me taking it), they upgrade my factories into super level ones and then it's over.

I've tried just sticking to my two initial planets. Within 20 turns the dread lords launched their troop transport and took my second planet, blowing away the pathetic single ship I had guarding it.

I don't know what to do, I'm only playing on Beginner difficulty. I trade as much tech as i can with my allies but they seem pretty worthless.

[charliechuckleberry]

I've wondered the same thing because I purchased this game twice actually. Long ago when it first came out, I paid $50 for Dreadlords expansion and beat it easy on normal. Then I just purchased the Ultimate Edition about two days ago and it's much harder.

I did some research, and while not officially announced. They upped the difficulty with patches. Things that make it harder/impossible to beat are the bonuses each race recieves at the start of the game. Just lower the difficulty settings until you get better.

I believe the AI works most efficient in a 1 vs 1 battle because they start off with more bonuses than the human players. They will never reveal what the AI does so efficiently to beat you because the truth is that they just plainly cheat (free bonuses).

In a multiplayer game, the AI is horrible. The AI terribly cheats by sharing technologies far too easily to the computer player with the most power in the galaxy. I know silly huh? Alien race X is winning the game by 2x the technology. So, why is Alien race Y giving him free tech every turn... If you want a fair multiplayer game, set that technology cannot be traded and you will steamroll them on normal.

[Altarn M. Rain]

Make sure you're playing the campaign with the game it was meant to be played with. When you play Twilight of the Arnor (says ultimate edition in the game menu but it's really just Twilight of the Arnor) you'll see all three campaigns and you can play them but it's better you don't.

Twilight's mechanics have changed quite a bit and the Dread Lords campaign is not meant to be played with it. For example, Twilight has Research Inflaction, meaning techs get more expensive as you research more techs. Dread Lords didn't have anything of the sort.

Play the Dread Lords campaign in Dread Lords game.

@charliechuckleberry
GalCiv 2 AI is famous for not cheating at all. At Normal difficulty the AI is actually crippled. On Tough difficulty the AI is equal to a human player bonus wise. Higher difficulties start giving bonuses.

Twilight of the Arnor has several bugs in the techtrees which prevent AIs from getting, for example, weapons. With techtrade they can compensate this, without they are as good as dead.

[tralev]

Wow thanks. That is so bizarre. I also played it a long time ago when it was just sold through Stardock and don't remember it being like this.

So play the first two campaigns by just using the GalCiv2.exe program?

[Altarn M. Rain]

Originally posted by jmcd:

Wow thanks. That is so bizarre. I also played it a long time ago when it was just sold through Stardock and don't remember it being like this.

So play the first two campaigns by just using the GalCiv2.exe program?

No, play Dread Lords with Galciv 2, Dark Avatar with GC2DarkAvatar.exe.

[mrp8196]

I gave up on the damn campaign too damn slow no econo and a dread lords are super powerrful
also the ai colonize planets even the allies nothing sucks more than having a race you can't kill colonizing gal civ 3 campaign much better. Play random games instead also I can't get metaverse to work properly on gal civ2 have not tried on 3 also to many sucky small planets on civ 2/ You can terraform away on 3

[Banzai]

May be wrong but I seem to remember kiting the (small number of) Dread Lords craft away from your planets works. Research propulsion stuff, get their attention, stay a move or two ahead of them. Keep something (anything, even no guns with empty hull) on the planets that may get hit by transports. Been a while though - I wont take responsibility for this not working. But I think it does....

[rkasel]

in order to kill a dreadlord ship you have to have 1 more ship in your fleet than the dreadlord has guns on its ship. so a 17 pt fighter you need 5 ships, that do at least 3 pts of damage each, and you have 1 left after fight. for 42 pt frigate you need 9 ships that do over 42 pts of damage and you have 1 left after fight. doesn't matter what size. dread lord weapon will 1 shot medium and large ships with no shields. shields help a little on large ships but not much. Allies are useless, they never kill anything. kiting wont' work anymore, dreadlords start out faster than you are.

Basically your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and you can''t win the campaign. Play it in sandbox or not at all.