Tau overpowered

[Bronze]

Most people complain about IG and Necrons while I agree those factions are strong in the campaign and skirmish matches they never feel unfair to fight on the other hand Tau is a ♥♥♥♥♥ to deal with from insta stealth units that can capture and shoot from cover to heavy infantry that outguns everyone from crazy range to melee units able to hold off armies while the infantry eliminates everything to crazy support ships or tanks able to crush and take extreme punishment.
Everything into the Tau arsenal is extreme like every necron unit has crazy powers every tau unit will outgun yours.
In the campaign their stronghold has insane power with both Mont'ka and Kauyon upgrades it's almost impossible for me to beat them unless I am playing with the IG or Eldar which are the only ones that can out match them in combat with the fire arsenal of IG tanks or the versatility of the eldar able to make it to the Ethereal and quickly deal with him ignoring the enemy units(Hard btw)
In skirmish games they usually manage to overwhelm me unless I have a fully upgraded army which I usually don't with the speed they can reach their maximum strenght.
I would love some tips on beating them with orks and chaos on hard in the campaign and some general tips on fighting them in skirmish modes.

[Count Von Count]

Tau units are very strong in their field, but are extra weak if you play against that weakness. ie if they have too many fire warriors, then sending melee infantry would really f them up. I have never been able to balance the Tau overly well, but that’s just because I’m not really that good

As far as tips go - PRAY. You get that one for free

[Andy]

Ikr? I just ragequitted from a fight with Imperial Guard vs Tau on insane difficulty, after trying for like 10 times. I've beaten every other race on insane on multiple occasions - even Tau, but only once. Yes, insane is insanely hard (no pun intented), but with Tau is just... Rage inducing.

Those turrets of them are super powerful, and you cannot detect their scouts - they're like space marine scouts on steroids, except you can't detect them. Yes, Imperial Guard has the detect area ability, but you can only use it once in 30 seconds and the Tau scouts will simply move elsewhere, out of the detect range. And the psykers you get only after you've upgraded your building - and you definitely need the psykers elsewhere than chasing scouts around the map, who are capturing your critical points.

Because Tau has multiple basic infantry unit buildings - three actually (the main hq where scouts can be built and the fire warrior and kroot unit buildings), they can spam high quality basic units at you faster than you can produce your own ones with paper thin health.

And once the broadsuits come, it's game over. Those suits butcher your squad faster than you can say, "SOS". And they're immune to grenade launcher stun lock tactics. Also, they're like walking turrets, their health is immeasurable.

In this current map (Hayne's Demise, where the description says ironically that the IG lost to Tau on this planet due to Tau being op) I'm attacking their base with 6 of my fully upgraded squads with grenade launchers, while I'm building two new ones at a forward base nearby. It's only 10 minutes down in the match at this point. I also build a turret among my units to bolster my attack. There's a Kroot, a Vespid and a scout squad waiting for me, plus 3 broad suits. The a.i starts spamming Kroot Shapers to disrupt my squads, rendering their grenade launchers useless. I last for a few minutes but my squads get butchered faster than I can build new ones. At this point the Tau builders are building a vehicle building, so soon a skyray gunship will arrive.
I manage to destroy the kroot unit building so the Kroot Shaper spamming stops, while destroying the builders that try to build the vehicle building, but the 3 broadsuits are situated between two turrets (both turrets upgraded to maximum of course, thanks insane a.i) at the far end of the base. I simply can't approach them without getting butchered immediately. Now I'm down to 1/3 of my squad strength and I would have to retreat, but this means that their vehicle base gets completed and that's the end of my line, since I don't even have a vehicle building yet and the skyrays will destroy everything. Besides, if I retreat they will immediately build a new Kroot building and start spamming Kroot Shapers yet again.
By 12 minutes the a.i has 3 broadsuits, two skyrays and kroot shapers plus the commander and head for my base, obliterating my turrets as they have trouble in killing even the most basic units. The Ethereal will soon follow. This while I control 75 % of the requisition sources in the map.

F*ck this game and the cheating insane a.i with infinite resources. I'd rather be playing Tau hq over and over again on hard difficulty than this cr*p.

Edit: Will probably try this again some other time with another tactic. Maybe focus on gaining exponentially more requisition and power as a.i, while controlling most of the control points. Trying to contain the a.i with capturing first the control points nearest to the a.i and trying to desperately hold them so the a.i is contained... Sort of a requisition embargo.

But right now, I'm done with Dark Crusade for a while. This is like hitting head to a wall, over and over again.

"Tell me, what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again."

Yeah, that's insane on Dark Crusade allright.

[[TUUONCUOGB]BothChicken]

Having played Tau a bit more I can say it isn't entirely bad. Firewarriors have long range but poor sight, on their own they can only fire at what's in front of them, meaning you'll almost always shoot first if you encounter them. Target their pathfinders and forward units, this makes their Firewarriors blind. If you're IG, get a bunch of grenade launchers and you should be outgunning firewarriors if they you kill their spotter.

Also I wouldn't put much consideration into the AI as a measure of balance. The IG AI seems to never builds tanks, never garrisons its guardsmen into its buildings and just builds hordes of guardsmen.

[crazy]

Tau are extremelly unbalanced in Dark crusade,same goes in soulstorm,mass Fire warriors and stealthsuits wins you every game,Sad but true

[420Vinz]

Everything has a weakness...just find it and use it against them..

[The Mighty Mulletman]

Tau aren't so bad. They're at extremes but their weaknesses are the same. Nothing like a few jump units like assault marines to mess up a Tau Fire line. That's one example.

[Kat]

I must agree with men who said that Tau are not so strong especialy in the beginning. Fire warriors are very very weak and melee units take them down like peace of cake. You have to send your first units very quickly out and let them die (like in starcraft). If you are lucky you discover his base and after that is the end of whole Tau. When you let them to build first "Fist of Motka" you can restart the game but against Tau is only one way and it is to rush. So my friend try harder :D :*

[☼Solaire Of Astora☼]

Originally posted by Kat:

I must agree with men who said that Tau are not so strong especialy in the beginning. Fire warriors are very very weak and melee units take them down like peace of cake. You have to send your first units very quickly out and let them die (like in starcraft). If you are lucky you discover his base and after that is the end of whole Tau. When you let them to build first "Fist of Motka" you can restart the game but against Tau is only one way and it is to rush. So my friend try harder :D :*

The OP is from 2018 my guy, you just comitted necromancy.

[Bronze]

Originally posted by Kat:

I must agree with men who said that Tau are not so strong especialy in the beginning. Fire warriors are very very weak and melee units take them down like peace of cake. You have to send your first units very quickly out and let them die (like in starcraft). If you are lucky you discover his base and after that is the end of whole Tau. When you let them to build first "Fist of Motka" you can restart the game but against Tau is only one way and it is to rush. So my friend try harder :D :*

Thanks for the tip, I haven't played Dark Crusade in some time, I'm now fighting another OP enemy (law school) but your comment brought me back to this thread I forgot about and it made me want to redownload the game, thanks and have a happy new year :))

[GoldSrc]

Necromancy aside, keep coping, blue aliens for the win

[Unseen]

Originally posted by GoldSrc:

Necromancy aside, keep coping, blue aliens for the win

Necronmancy?

Anyway I just played the tau a bit just got the game, killed the necron hq, and all the necrons did was make builder units. Didn't even see any necron infantry, but they had dozens and dozens of builder units.

Is the necron AI braindead in this?

[HappySack]

Originally posted by Unseen:

Necronmancy?

...

Is the necron AI braindead in this?

This thread was created in 2018 and was only bumped because of some moron.

The AI is terrible but it doesn't help if you played skirmish mode with the difficulty set on normal or lower, the only way to improve it is with the bugfix mod which is self-explanatory as the game was abandoned in favour of Soulstorm.

[BAKPAOISITAE]

You need moderate dmg dealer also rather fast units. Bikes, yes. Skimmer, yes. Necron destroyer, yes

[Vaati]

So the triumvirate of op races in this game is Tau, Necrons and the Eldar, especially the Eldar.

Tau early game is carried by their fire warriors who are enabled by kroot carnivores, if you can get a fast melee unit like assault marines, stormboyz or infantry that you can deepstrike in like flayed ones you can get a good early lead on them. later on when they get some really dangerous melee unit (kroot hounds) and their vehicles you at this point must have good anti tank and good screening units or even better your own heavy melee infantry like grayknights (with a force commander/chaplain), orgyns, phariahs or flayed ones. A problem that Tau has is that their units are expensive, so each early loss is very costly when they dont have a lot of map control to fund the war machine. If the tau field their ethereal, do what you can to kill them, the Tau crumble very hard if the ethereal dies and for every second the ethereal is alive and the tau are fighting he is accruing massive value through his mapwide armour, health and damage buff, the elite firewarriors he spawns are not a massive problem and are more a in a pinch unit if the tau needs a instant sniper squad.

In the unlikely event the tau goes Mont'Ka for crisis suits and hammerheads instead of the far more useful kroot hounds, fire warrior range increase and all the other amazing research, anti-tank becomes far more vital since the hammerheads can and will begun taking chunks out of whatever relic unit, tank or building it fires on and the crisis suits are very good heavy shock anti-everything units.

generally the best way to deal with the Tau is to not give them time to get the ball rolling.