What is the deal with Hardcore?

[Zap Rowsdower]

At this point I have played enough games on expert to where it feels like easy, and the gradual progression of difficulty is just too slow for me. It took a while for me to get to that point but it never felt cheap or unfair and it really felt like any challenge or difficulty you ran into could be adapted to and overcome on an even field.

HARDCORE on the other hand....I don't know is it just me? I just feel like this difficulty is all about the enemy already starting with upgrades drastically better than your own and beyond your reach with the starting 800K CP, and the damage scale seems to be horribly skewed....the damn Blackfoot gunship wings I face always seem to be able to shrug off my transports and fly away while still being combat effective after a while of being engaged, meanwhile my poor Cheetahs seem to be immediately shredded even from a brief encounter with enemy transports and brought down to half health or less from just a few seconds of being in range before I can even order a retreat in response. It also seems like the enemy has much faster deployment and CP refresh rate to a point where they are constantly at an unfair advantage and making it feel almost impossible to gain an opening with how skewed their CP point system is compared to mine. It just seems like Hardcore counterintuitively has less to do with strategy and more to do with just throwing ♥♥♥♥ at one another until someone manages to be the last one left or brute forces their way to finally get the majority of uplinks.

I hope this doesn't come across as some sort of angry lash out against EndWar because that couldn't be further from the case, I adore EndWar and it is one of my favorite RTS of all time, rather I am actually trying to figure out how to keep enjoying the game since Expert is now almost too slow for me, but Hardcore still just seems to be far too lopsided against the player for me to get the hang of it. Are there any words of advice to effectively get started in Hardcore, as maybe I am not efficiently or intelligently upgrading my units to stand a chance?

[shobbs001]

add me please ,i would love to talk about this and give some tips.

[shobbs001]

ok so i am playing hardcore campaign right now. im on turn 13 and have only lost 2 times. kk things u must do.
1. only upgrade about 3 times thats it no more. if u dont upgrade the ai willl not either. the less upgrades the ai has the better.
2. as soon as ur shield is half retreat. unless ur going all in
3. u must have 1 tank/1 transport/ 1 chopper. if u lose 1 fall back untill u have it replaced.
4. artillery will save/ win games for u. makes the ai make the first move into ur tank/transport/chopper.
5. call in what ur about to lose before u lose it.
6. make sure ur wmd gets 2/3 units

[TheBMT]

Yea, you gotta keep a tighter cluster for the rock/paper/scissor in hardcore. If you are good with unit management and rotating the units around to save shields you can use EMP more often, since you aren't calling in a ton of new replacements.