Am I totally missing something? Conquest issues!

[Antenigma]

Hi all,

I've only recently started playing this and I feel like I must be missing something incredibly basic in dynamic conquest!

I've got a 'man' limit of 50 (small helmet icon) so I got myself a little rifle squad as well as a small IG and machine gun team. I had to defend two points and I thought no problem to myself. After I got set up, I was besieged by (I'm not exaggerating) over a hundred soviets with four tanks who very quickly manspammed me until I was totally rolled back, just by sheer numbers. Am I massively missing something here? I had no opportunity to call in reinforcements or anything like that and I don't see how I could have possibly defeated them all?

[Randy Lahey]

You need to research to get better units, and immediately get Call in Phase !! (it's free) before you go into your first battle. The Conquest is broken atm, even on easy. The developers are saying a fix is in the works.

[Antenigma]

Originally posted by Randy Lahey:

You need to research to get better units, and immediately get Call in Phase !! (it's free) before you go into your first battle. The Conquest is broken atm, even on easy. The developers are saying a fix is in the works.

Thank you so much, I didn't realise I could get Call in Phase II from research! I'll keep plugging away at it and hopefully it'll be fixed and balanced soon

[Jimbob]

Also, reducing the cost of your troops is a fairly straightforward text edit. Extreme modability is the saving grace of this game and its predecessors. For all the ambitious devblog posts, this game still doesn't really have a functioning AI and the only way the computer can threaten you is with meatwaves- much like the current Russian military in fact.

If you feel like it's too much, you can reduce the points the AI has to play with, make some of your troops cheaper, or raise the rather limited population cap with a simple text edit.

[Slaughter89]

Its nuts right now i dont know what or why they changed it.

[Saxhorn]

Research "Small Defence". Costs 1 RP.
It's at the top of the research screen with all the command squads and call in stages.

You then get some AI controlled defenders to help.

[Antenigma]

Thanks for all your comments everyone, I've made a few changes and made it a little more manageable. I hope they change this relatively quickly, it's ruining a fantastic game :(

[Sturmtruppe]

Conquest is tremendously overtuned right now like it is insane

[S-Array 03]

Even with the rebalance where they supposedly tuned it down it's still ridiculous. Being in major numerical inferiority wasn't an issue before since the AI was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, in fact it was needed to at least create some difficulty. But now after all the improvement they made, the numerical advantage + mildly competent AI means you get your ass handed to you unless you do the extremely boring strat of spamming indirect fire for 10 minutes before walking onto the point.

BTW OP, don't ever use attack move (F5). It's basically the same as telling your troops to run straight at an MG ww1 style. For some reason the a-move command instead of working like a normal a-move which would stop the unit to shoot at a valid target whenever one presents itself, it literally behaves as a regular move order, maybe if your soldiers are in a good mood they'll take a couple pot shots along the way.

TBH I'd suggest exclusively playing skirmish right now, conquest is hardly enjoyable in its current vanilla state.

[Arkady2000]

Nothing broken but learning curve is hard for new players.
Playing on heroic, just started new conquest, not any problem so far. As Germany, with just Phase I, take IG and two Sicherheit gruppe, defense focus only on one location and you can patiently wipe them all.

My take on upcomign patch, make easy really easy for new and casual players to enjoy the game, normal could be as easy as pre-patch, hard at current heroic and heroic even harder than today, especially with smarter AI

[Flan]

The first rounds of conquest seem to be either know you can research and buy a couple of good tanks and stomp the computer or do what the OP did and have a struggle.

[✠19GaMoR83✠]

I agree there is nothing broken but forget what you do in RTS like company of hero’s and likes. You will lose everything on assault and get stomped in defence :) with the new AI many "cheesy" play styles are no more in. I don’t know how others do but I’m doing well / okay with taking my time in attack and defence.

Attack: I always build defence line and let Ivan come to me. And only small-scale harassment attacks on the point (i choose only one), till 600 - 700 Points and he is getting no reserve (depends on you progress - at the start it’s like 200-400 points). Then combined attack.

Defence: Use AI Def asap. Manage Ammo Supply. Heal Soldiers - Medic Tents and Medic far from the front. Use good Positions for your Tanks and Static Weapons they don't have to be on point. Sight of line is Key! Use Officers for key points observation. Set groups if needed to return fire so they don't open fire from a mile and tell the enemy Arty your position. Try to keep all points! The faster it is over - especially in later rounds when Ivan sends wave after wave with top tier units. For the static weapon always check in first person if they can shoot (very important!). And many will disagree: use fog of war to understand what happen and why it happens (why my man don’t shoot and so on and on). So, you get a feeling for the line of sight and that you spread your man to get more sight. Maybe one observer in a bush with "don't shoot" active. You will get the hang of it. It is very realistic you can use many things right from a field manual ;)

No matter after first couple of rounds make sure to have combined arms (Inf, Tank, AT, AA and Arty) don't research only one Tree. It is become a very slow game. Also don't cluster your Troops. Easy kills for a enemy Arty or Air attack.

For my part i love it. But i guess in the TikTok age it is not for everyone. So, i would like to see an arcade mode and hard / extreme should stay like they are right now.

I really, really like the new AI so far, I had very interesting battel, I could not remember such a good AI in RTS and I’m loving RTS since early 90s ;)

[Saxhorn]

Conquest is a bit like a lottery,
Some missions are easier than other missions because of the "setup".

You have different maps, different spawns points (for you and the enemy), different capture zones, what units the AI spawns, what equipment you have captured and what you have researched. These factors all make it easier or harder.

Mind you all of those things are just like they were before 1.028.0 apart from the AI unit spawn selection.

What changed in 1.028.0 wasn't the behaviour of individual soldiers. There may have been tweaks but enemy soldiers are still um ah how do we put it unaware? clueless?

What changed was how the AI:player chooses and deploys units to the battle. In the past it spawned one unit after 5 minutes and that unit moved up. Then it spawned another unit and that unit moved up. And so on until it ran out of MP. So it was a constant flow of units onto the map.

If you hadn't captured a flag the AI:player units would wander back and forth between the capture zones waiting for you to attack. The AI didn't come looking for you.

Once you captured a flag the AI would counter attack with all it's units to and try to recapture the flag.

With version 1.028.0 the AI:player now spawns 3 or 4 units immediately and then it gets more after certain period of time.
So instead of a "constant flow" you get hit with an avalanche.

It doesn't just sit and wait at the flags like it use to - it will send out "scouts" looking for your units. I have noted that it likes to use BA-20 and BA-6 scout cars and recon squads for this. So there is some 'intelligence' in that choice.

The AI appears to have a very good idea of where you are on the map no matter how far you move or how well you hide.

If you get hard missions in the first three or four battles it's pretty easy to lose so much "stuff" that the rest of the campaign isn't even worth trying.

Don't forget as long as the battle hasn't been 'won' or 'lost' you can always select restart and try again. You will return top the deployment screen with all your units as they were before you started the last mission.

I've done this once when two trucks towing my AT and infantry gun collided and both rolled over trying to go over the same bridge simultaneously.

[Fora]

Dump your first research as deep into tanks as you can, they'll stand up to the first several waves of anything while you research otherstuff.