Help with 2nd revelation campaign map

[sethmage]

I'm clearly missing somethnig here. Right out of the gates Shae have elite T3 units and multiple location on the map. Can I get a tip what strategy is here?

[snuggleform]

1) forget about rescuing the 3 syndicate colonies in the first quest; thay are way way too close to shae's capital and they will just get capped by her if you take them; if you don't take them they actually limit her expansion a little bit because apparently she's scripted to not take them herself until you take them. Just send the kirk'o and his band straight away to your base (if you have to use them to free a network location to avoid losing the mission then do so along the way)

2) you can feel free to push roughly 1 screen in all directions around your HQ and you can make up to 3 additional expansions comfortably. Make sure to upgrade your military defenses to tier II pretty early, and try not to use your main hero to go too far off questing, because Shae will sometimes send a flying unit to screw with you

3) luckily you are mostly separated by islands so usually if she sends something it's a few flying units which can be overwhelmed by the appropriate countermeasures against machines. IF she happens to take one of your colonies you should be able to retake it easily and quickly because she just can't reinforce that far away; the only problem is if you lose your army to her or your army is too far away and they can't rescue the town in time.

4) don't panic too much; Shae is actually mostly at war with a number of other factions so her attention is diverted

5) try not to take too many network locations; just keep 1 around not to lose. The more you take, she keeps activating more factions against you which early on is not good.

6) just build up quietly in your base have 2 stacks for defenses (your original hero stack + some cheap crap like the heritors) ready to move around, and just go for cheesy wraith builds. Wraiths hover over water and 2 stacks of them are invincible with the right mods.

7) do your best to ally any factions you meet by meeting their quest demands, but don't bother trying to explore to find them. They will find you eventually just build up quietly.

[sethmage]

Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail, much appreciated. Next time i'll make sure to explore ALL the anomalies in the previous map

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by sethmage:

Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail, much appreciated. Next time i'll make sure to explore ALL the anomalies in the previous map

I'm pretty sure the anomaloies keep showing up; I went through a small questline of them that went small -> medium -> large but after that I still kept getting small sites. I would not worry too much about it because the rewards don't stay with you (there is one anomly that rewards you a heritor hero but he doesn't carry over to the next mission).

Do make sure you hit level 8 in the first mission as that helps a lot and that is as high as your main + kirko guy can go in the first mission.

The items don't matter too much just rememeber to save skillpoints to learn modular increase at level 8. I gave my heroes pulse repeaters + buttload of arc mods, like the final arc shield, the one that gives chain projectiles, the one that stuns, etc.

edit: in mission 2 you may wish to equip your heroes with hoverbikes once you have a team of 6 heroes because it's too much of a pain to move around the water otherwise. Sure you can try relays but that's a hassle on its own.

anther edit: MAKE SURE you visit all the cults and finish all the cult questline, because if you do then at the end of mission 1 you get a choice to keep one of them as a hero with you to the next mission. Note that there are ways to complete the mission without talking to the cults but those don't seem to award you anything interesting. I haven't tried all possible paths so there could be something interesting if you ally the assembly that's one I haven't tried but merely going integration with the forgotten to end the mission doesn't seem to give anythng special. I would suggest you pick Ron Hubbard as your cult hero because he's Synthesis; he can learn hacking machines which shae has a lot of. The other two are celestian/psynumbra which aren't quite as relevant.

[sethmage]

At the end of the 1st map I had a choice to take 1 out of 3 cults (I don't know how many there were in total)

Some anomalies were giving perks, I got 3: Lucky Gambler (20%harder to hit), Champion of Justice(+400 inspiration) and Bane of Emperors(20% more damage against paragon), these did carry over to the next map

[snuggleform]

Oh that's a really good point about the perks! There's just 3 cults. The one thing I don't know if there's something special that happens if you ally the assembly (I don't even know how to do it since they dont seem to give you quests to ally them), or even if you kill them I don't know if something special happens.

[sethmage]

When I was playing the original vanilla campaign (lol, 4 months old), I was keeping track of commanders, for example in the 1st map for Vanguard campaign the chick from syndicate was carry over to the 2nd map, but if she died her brother was there.

However in the 2nd map of Vanguard the Assembly commander, even when I killed him he still showed up in the Amazon campaign.

[sethmage]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

1) forget about rescuing the 3 syndicate colonies in the first quest;

this was the game changer, from frustrating beginning back to enjoyment
Thanks again sir

[snuggleform]

Ur welcome : )

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

6) just build up quietly in your base have 2 stacks for defenses (your original hero stack + some cheap crap like the heritors) ready to move around, and just go for cheesy wraith builds. Wraiths hover over water and 2 stacks of them are invincible with the right mods.

What sort of MOD combinations work for these units, they always seem absurdly squishy to me.