Ok so I have been fighting someone who is Vassari and their strategy is to rush me early with as many assailants as they can get. Pretty much they just expand fast with alot of assailants but barely colonize. What is a good way to combat this with any civilization? I am rushed by like 14 assailants within 15 minutes of the game, what do i do to fight this? Its getting annoying.
I play Vasari but don't usually do a mass Assailant rush, but on occassion when I do I find these tactics very effective against me...
- Scout spam, especially with Advent but also with TEC. An army of scouts is cheaper and faster to build and will eat through Assailants when they out number them.
- People getting their Capital ship out of there before I can destroy it. The combo of Egg and Assailants excel at killing cap ships early in the game. When it escapes, sits by a repair bay for a minute and is back in the fight good as new it is harder with win a fight that relies on speed.
- Illum spams. Ship for ship Illums will beat Assailant, but they take longer to get up.
- Carriers. Same as Illums they take longer to get up and running but they are very effective against Assailants.
- Maxing a planets health so I can't take it and build a closer frigate bay. Odds are if I am rushing I am not going to be able to colonize volcano or ice planets, so if it takes me a long time to kill an enemy asteroid then that is all the longer my ships have to make a handful of jumps to get to the action.
Things that wouldn't bother me much...
- Building multiple capital ships, even carrier caps. If they are pumping out 2 or 3 cap ships (and not getting fed) then they don't have enough frigates to support them and will either have to retreat or die.
- Building defenses at some place other then their home world. If they fortify their asteroid then I'll just leave it and go to their home world.
- Building so many defenses that they have no money to build ships. Seems like a no brainer but people do it all the time. I'll just research carriers and flak and come back with a more balanced fleet and mop the floor.
- Spaming any light frigate or Jav's. Assailants can tear through these quite easily and just cost my enemy money he could use to develop something better.
Make sure to always scout effectivelly early in the game. Don't worry about what is 10 jumps away from you unless you are vasari and trying to find neutral resource asteroids, instead let your teammates deal with that and focus on what your closest enemy is doing. If he is outright skipping planets to get you with a lrm rush he is doing a "sink or swim" gamble. Of all the things listed above I would rush a large number of scouts, without over doing it, to blunt his initial wave then start developing a more advanced ship like the carrier which can target both Assailants and cap ships depending on whether you make fighters or bombers.
If you are playing Advent or TEC (either will do, but I especially recommend Advent for this strat), start making hoards of scouts right away. Seriously. Just get your colonization cap and go off colonizing with a small fleet of light frigs, and meanwhile just sit there and keep tapping the "build scout" button. Do all the normal stuff, i.e. upgrade your planets, get extractors on them, blah blah, (get your 2 civil labs to research ice and volcanic), but other than that, with all the rest of the money coming in just keep hitting that "build scout" button.
When he attacks (THIS IS IMPORTANT) grab all your scouts and click them to autoattack, because they are set by default to not autoattack. But don't just let them autotattack once you do that. After you grab them, just hold down the shift key, look up at his assailants in the empire tree, and right click on each assailant one by one in the empire tree (while continuing to hold down shift).
Then laugh when his fleet dies, and press the attack on to his planets.
Report back here with your results.
Alright cool. So scout spamming should be effective against it? What if I am also Vassari against him? He just seems to beat back me very easily with me getting defeated really easily.
Vasari scouts will work against assailants, but not as well as other factions scouts. Whatever you do, don't make skirmishers. Your best bet early on is to get assailants of your own, but diversify quickly to add flaks and carriers (with fighters) and you should be fine.
alright. Ill try the scouts method. Thanks!
Like Darvin3 said, vasari scouts will work too, but they aren't as good as Advent or TEC scouts. Try Advent against him. If you do everything right, you should be able to crush his strat.
IF your advent agaisnt vasari.... just make a huge number of scouts and disciples.... (about 1/2-1/2 to 2/3scouts 1/3 disciples.. and a haylcon or two) as soon as you reach a critical mass where you have this friggin huge fleet... there is nothing a vasari player can hope to put out there to defend himself. (the only thing that beats this stratigy is nothing.... i did the battles, and did the math, and assuming equal resources/fleet supply the scouts/disciples win... except starbases and heavies... and good luck with those...) Dont waste money on military labs (at least for a bit)... civic labs of course... and do research and build zillions of trade depos to support your massive army. If your not pumping out scouts or disciples constantly out of 2 or so frig factories your doing it wrong.... if your enemy managed to somehow defend himself agaist you your doing it wrong.
dont do it wrong.
and then hope that your opponenet was a dev so that he may be like "herm... that needs to be fixed"
If you're playing against human opponents, prepare to get starbased! The possibility that your Vasari opponent will try to starbase you early on and how you would counter it at your home terran should always be at the forefront of your mind.
As sad as this sounds though, a good scout/disciple rusher isn't going to have many problems dealing with early, modestly upgraded starbases. Several times I have had mine, or watched allies fall victim to hordes of scouts. 70-80 scouts with 30-40 disciples can be built suprisingly fast and will dispatch a starbase with minimal loss, along with your Cap too. They simply are too cheap to make and have too many hit points.
ya... thats the thing... while a starbase with equal monies put into a fleet of scouts/disciples... will win... the issue is is that... starbases dont move... and they have to have a few upgrades before thier fleet arives...
and starbases dont really move.
SO you can have an uber starbase... and no fleet... and he will come in with carriers... or just ignore your pathetic little planet and pwn the next guy.
Interesting, So the base idea is that I use scout rush? And that should work well against like 10-20 assailants?
If your opponent is making nothing but assailants, a scout rush is going to hammer him hard! You'll want two scouts per assailant, but if you can manage that you should be able to completely overwhelm your opponent.
Remember that you have to "focus fire," i.e. grab all units and target a single unit of his with them at a time.
Cool. Ill try it. What should I use to colonize/after his initial assault? He generall can resuply prety fast so should just keep a bunch of scouts out? And build extra ships later?
One of the great things about scouts is that you should have no problem scouting. Know what he's building, and have the right counter-units ready. A smart player will produce units to kill your scouts, so you should try to be one step ahead of him.
For colonizing, your best pick is always the colony-class capital ships (Jerrasul, Progenitor, and Akkan), and for attacking your best bet is usually the carrier-class capital ships, though there are other great choices depending on your factions. It's very common to see a player build a colony-class as his first cap, then build a carrier-class just as he's getting ready to attack.
Alright. So in terms of fighting his strategy, I colonize for a bit until I am attacked by his vast number of assailants. He only builds assailants, so what later game ship is better against them? If I use scouts early, and that holds him off for a bit, It wont forever because he will upgrade or something. Then what should I do?
Also, he sends assailants (and a lot of them) constantly during an attack. How do I go about other things such as colonization or research when I have to keep fueling a defense effort?
Thanks for all of your help so far guys! Its really helping me develop a good strategy against him!
The thing with scouts is you have to out number him, 2:1 is ideal. Don't go overboard though because then you will be stuck with a ton of scouts after you have killed his assailants and he has moved on to flak and carriers (or something else). Also during a battle you have to be constantly producing units to replace ones lost. Honestly if you can do a scout spam right you should be happy that he is still making assailant because that is a ship you can counter.
As far as balancing exploring vs. research vs. combat here are a few things to remember. If you lose in combat then it doesn't matter how much you have explored or researched. Also why expore and colonize a new planet which takes ships out of the fight when you can use those ships to defeat him and take over one of his planets. All things being equal I would take an enemy planet over a neutral one every time.
The other ships which will counter assailants are carriers/fighters and heavy cruisers. Carriers is the more logical route to go as they are quicker to develop and can switch over to bombers if he goes heavy cruisers himself. The down side is they can't defend themselves so you have to keep an eye on them so they don't get killed.
Also come online sometime and ask for help, it is much better for someone to show you what they mean in a game then over the forums. People online in general are usually quite helpful and you should be able to find someone to assailant rush you and give you pointers on how to better counter it.
Alright thanks! Ill try those ideas. Ill get back to you on how it works. Its definetly stressing him so far, he said yesterday that we was stressed during a scout spam so If it is just improved a little more I can defeat him!
I don't mean to be an ass, but shouldn't a guy named "Code Geass" have a Code Geass (anime) avatar?
Oh so you watch it?! Fantastic! Its a fantastic show isnt it? I was jsut to lazy to shrink one of the many pictures I have of it to be icon size.
I am glad I found other people who watch anime though! Lol
I can't say I watch it. I've only seen a couple episodes.
Oh I see. Still its a good show!
Alright, I fought him again, and his constant stream of assailants still overtook me. Though I think I still might have won due to my massive money income he also seemed to be superior still. However one of our internet died before we could finish.
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