Am I this bad or are the DLCs frigging hard?

[Xenos]

I finished all Pz Corps campaigns on general or field marshal, and the main campaign of Armageddon on challenging. But, for the life of me, I can't win the first mission of Golgotha and the Space Marines ones. Simply too many orks.

Just tell me if dementia is kicking in (so that I could go seek medical aid) or if the DLCs missions are meant to be tried multiple times till you understand exactly what to do (and in this case I would happily reduce the difficulty as I hate to lose time redoing stuff over and over).

[Shards]

Golgotha certainly presents a different challenge. You're on an Ork world and those units will just keep on reinforcing if you don't eliminate them in good order...

For the first mission I prefer to throw up a defensive screen North of the landing site and push West to take the VP, using the more mobile of my forces to patch up holes as need be.

[Anon052]

Yeah the DLC are very hard. I did not play Golgotha but for the Marine DLC I had to lower the difficulty. I finished the main campaign on the highest difficulty, but I couldn't do it with the marines. There it is very important to not lose your units to get experienced troops. And some of the marine missions I can't archieve the bonus objectives (like the bonusobjective in the first Ultramarines mission) which are very important to get troops in later missions.

But I like the higher difficulty! I found the main campaign tot easy! There are so few games that are really hard and a challenge.

[Slitherine_Iain]

The DLC';s are definitely aimed at people who've already played at least some of the base game so do start at a higher difficulty level. We didn't want to waste the first few scenarios as a tutorial -we wanted you int eh thick of the action from the start!

[Solo4114]

It's difficult. The DLC involves orks that constantly reinforce. So, you can't use the technique of whittling them down. Instead, you have to focus your force to eliminating units in a single turn, or at least knocking them down so much that they can't fully reinforce next turn. The only benefit to plinking at enemies is to reduce their morale. You also end up needing to manage your requisition points so that you can reinforce on the go and avoid losing units.

It's a pain.

I'm playing the Vulkan's Wrath DLC and finding that my core force may be a little too squishy for starters. I'm only on mission 4, and I'm having a devil of a time keeping the IG units alive to get the secondary objective. I can usually eliminate pockets of orks with a decent sized force, but when they're all spread out, they just run roughshod over the IG. Plus, with the auto-reinforcing, you can't trust the IG to do anything other than act as speedbumps.

At the moment, I'm thinking of restarting the campaign and investing much more heavily in armor and dreadnoughts. Infantry, so far, seems to not really be worth it, until you can seriously upgrade it.

[Slitherine_Iain]

The AI is playing much more like a human player. In the original game the AI didn't do a lot of reinforcing and now you have to find ways to kill off units in a single turn so it definitely presents new challenges!

You need to make more use of good match ups. Make sure you have units with high enough rate of fire to kill those pesky numerous infantry units. You will need to make more use of cheaper and mid level units at higher difficulty levels. You'll probably also need more assault units to get in to hand to hand and finish off those damaged units. Remember to end your turn adjacent to damaged units to prevent them repairing back to full strength.

[Xenos]

Well, thanks to all. I feel that playing on Normal wouldn't be too much of a shame, all considered.

[Anon052]

Yeah I started playing Golgotha and the first mission is hard. I played it at least 7 times. I downscaled the difficulty to challenging and still I can't seem to win this mission. Its just to much orks and to few own units and you have to split your forces. I never considered myself a great player but there I get completly humbled.
I always used the tactic of concentrating fire on one unit to kill it as fast in one turn as possible, but orks that are entrenched with support units, it seems impossible to kill some units in one turn considering your force in the first mission. Its possible to do it but not without heavy casualties that slow you down.
I would really like to know if there are actually people who beat it on very hard and would like to know how.

[Solo4114]

Originally posted by Slitherine_Iain:

The AI is playing much more like a human player. In the original game the AI didn't do a lot of reinforcing and now you have to find ways to kill off units in a single turn so it definitely presents new challenges!

You need to make more use of good match ups. Make sure you have units with high enough rate of fire to kill those pesky numerous infantry units. You will need to make more use of cheaper and mid level units at higher difficulty levels. You'll probably also need more assault units to get in to hand to hand and finish off those damaged units. Remember to end your turn adjacent to damaged units to prevent them repairing back to full strength.

I'll give it a shot, but I still have a feeling that I'd be better off with more durable units like dreadnoughts or armor. I'm not saying no armor whatsoever, but rather that the kind of composition I used in the main campaign (which was pretty balanced role-wise) doesn't seem as likely to work as well, mostly due to population limits.

Like, if I only get 15 units per scenario (not counting bonus units), then it seems like I'm better off prioritizing armor and walkers over squishier infantry, even with high ROF units. I'll take a look at my overall ROF, though, to see if that could be improved.

[Anon052]

I actually managed to finish the first Golgotha mission on hard. I pushed hard north with the steellegion group and then west to take the VP. Only the mortar team went to the defense at the canyon with the bridge which was defended by the mordians. The mobile forces where a joker that went were they were needed as was the HQ which is the most important unit because of morale refresh.

The second Golgotha mission is even harder. And it seems that there is something wrong with the AI. If i understand correctly the AI is supposed to attack and then you have to counterattack. When I played the AI did strange things. The first time I played I was attacked only in turn 13. Other times I some positions were attacked others not.
I tried several things but at the moment this mission seems unbeatable for me.

[Xenos]

Originally posted by Anon052:

I actually managed to finish the first Golgotha mission on hard. I pushed hard north with the steellegion group and then west to take the VP. Only the mortar team went to the defense at the canyon with the bridge which was defended by the mordians. The mobile forces where a joker that went were they were needed as was the HQ which is the most important unit because of morale refresh.

The second Golgotha mission is even harder. And it seems that there is something wrong with the AI. If i understand correctly the AI is supposed to attack and then you have to counterattack. When I played the AI did strange things. The first time I played I was attacked only in turn 13. Other times I some positions were attacked others not.
I tried several things but at the moment this mission seems unbeatable for me.

I hear you, mate. At first I tought it was a simple defense mission. Didn't saw the two objectives up north. It turns out you have to take them AND defend the southern ones. I like the Lordz but I really think they have a habit of going overboard with difficulty in DLCs (both here and in Panzer Corps).

[Solo4114]

Ok, just a quick update:

They're right about ROF issues. You have to look not only at number of shots, but also number of troops in the unit.

Tac Marines (and later Sternguard Vets) come 20 to a unit. Most of the other units have smaller numbers of troops, so there are fewer total shots fire. It's a little confusing, but the bottom line is that the Tacs ended up performing quite well. Better than, say, Imperial Marines, who are more versatile, but ended up doing damage in ways that just doesn't help (e.g., their combi-bolter is only good over longer range, and not up close).

[Anon052]

Rof is pretty important and pretty basic. You learn that when you play higher difficulties and you encouter big ork units ;-) Its nothing new for a experienced player.

Still playing the second golgotha mission. This mission seem ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up by the ai. Its passive until you do something. It does not act until you move. I tried pushing with the western troops to the northers VP and defending with the eastern troops. it does not work because all orks will attack your pushing force(easily overruning them) and then ignore the VP and your troops in the trenches. If you push too with the eastern troops they always manage to take the VP with some sneaky troops and without trenches you lose a big defensive bonus.
I played this mission 21 times, tried a lot of things and I think this is most anoying mission I have encoutered so far. I give up and wont play anymore. And no one seems to talk about the golgotha missions not in the slitherine forums not here on steam.

[Solo4114]

Originally posted by Anon052:

Rof is pretty important and pretty basic. You learn that when you play higher difficulties and you encouter big ork units ;-) Its nothing new for a experienced player.

Still playing the second golgotha mission. This mission seem ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up by the ai. Its passive until you do something. It does not act until you move. I tried pushing with the western troops to the northers VP and defending with the eastern troops. it does not work because all orks will attack your pushing force(easily overruning them) and then ignore the VP and your troops in the trenches. If you push too with the eastern troops they always manage to take the VP with some sneaky troops and without trenches you lose a big defensive bonus.
I played this mission 21 times, tried a lot of things and I think this is most anoying mission I have encoutered so far. I give up and wont play anymore. And no one seems to talk about the golgotha missions not in the slitherine forums not here on steam.

Yeah, I don't really play the higher difficulties. I think I'm on "normal" and that's it. I don't really care about the bragging rights of the higher difficulties and I tend to enjoy the level of difficulty presented by "normal" although I might give one higher a try.

But anyway, my main issue right now is figuring out how I apparently missed a bonus objective on one of the missions that awards you a Banesword super-heavy tank.

[Anon052]

You missunderstood me. i did not bragg I was just frustrated that your post seemed offtopic. Yeah missing a bonus objective makes the Marine DLC harder. There are some missions where the bonus objectives seem almost impossible to win if playing on higher diff.

I got the counterattack mission on the 22nd dry^^ You have to do an fullout attack without defense or else the mission doesn't work and the ai is passive.
At the moment I am at the sixt mission where you have to defend the road. It just seems too hard. I did not lose one coreunit before that mission, did try to minimise losses but still not enough Req to buy any new units. At the moment my core is at minus 4. Funny were the missions were they told you to buy chimeras for your troops.....how do you do that if the req you get is nowhere enough in hard? Could the requisition bug that was fixed in the main game and marine DLCnow be in the Golgotha missions? This could explain the near impossible difficulty of the golgotha missions in higher difficulties.. Did they playtest the missions? I just don't get that impression....

The sixt mission......wow they just drown you in ork masses and stompas. How are you supposed to win that mission?

[Strauss]

While units reinforcing every turn does present a challenge I'd argue it's more of an annoyance and pretty crappy. Panzer Corps has this exact same problem, and it was annoying in there too.

Whoops, left that T34 at one health? well now he's back to 10, and back to full morale after the first attack. It's just as annoying in Golgotha, which added to the fact units act in un-orky ways like back caping vicroty hexes you long ago moved out of and going straight for your commander to make you lose, it's just plain annoying. If I wanted a realistic AI I would just jump online.

I personally think the ork hunters DLC is the best. It actually feels like you're fighting a giant WAAAGHH with hordes or orkz charging at your units.