Any tips out there for TEC player who can't seem to beat Advent player late game. The only thing I can think of is don't let them survive to late game.
Well, as TEC keep in mind that you will need to have superior numbers to beat the Advent. You have a better economy, and you will need to use it to have a chance. Build all the factories you can on your border worlds. If possible you are going to want to attack on multiple fronts, forcing the Advent either to split their fleets or lose some of their planets. If not, you'll just have to out mussle them. A Marza's missile barrage or a Starbases safety protocol override abilities would be the easiest way, but if the Advent player is any good he'll avoid them. A Sova carrier with embargo is good for slowing the rate he creates reenforcements at his defending planets, but you can't count on them (or any capital ship) to survive focused Illum fire.
TEC vs Advent in the late game is quite possibly one of the hardest matches to win. First of all, your opponent will have guardians with repulse,which can push away any short-ranged combat units. Secondly, he's going to have telekinetic push that will disable and damage large groups of strike craft. These powerful abilities severely cut down on your options. You cannot lean heavily on flaks or heavies because they will get repulsed, and you cannot lean heavily on fighters or bombers because they will become victims of TK push. You basically have to rely on LRM's as the core of your fleet, which leaves you very vulnerable to being countered.
However, there are some upsides. First of all if you're LRM-based this will make it difficult for the enemy to use disciples to disable hoshikos, so you should have a strong healing presence on the battlefield. Secondly, you can still use flaks and heavies defensively. This can keep strike craft off your back, and heavies can keep enemy illuminators out of side-beam range; if they get close enough to use those deadly extra weapons, then they're likely in range of your kodiaks.
Unfortunately, your biggest problem will be getting past the guardian/progen combo, which will keep the enemy fleet's shield levels near maximum. If you can get cobalts in range to disable the guardians you're golden, but between repulse and illuminators this is easier said than done, and shield restore will still be available and likely will keep the Advent fleet together for the duration of your attack. The moral is that if Advent makes it this late in the game, you're in deep trouble as TEC.
You know thats a good idea using embargo. I Sova spam because of the illums, so early to mid I'm surprisingly unbeatable with the 3 Sovas and 1 Akan running around. I've also considered splitting their fleet by frequent bomber raids. Anyway, much appreciated.
We did a 1v1 a couple weeks ago with me using a smurf name, and yeah, my later game Advent battleball knocked your TEC fleet around. You even had your fleet run away from it.
Anyway, I think you ask a good question. I'm not really sure what the answer is if someone is doing what Darvin described other than to just have far superior numbers. You might also want to hit the Advent player early on before he can get his battleball up. I would be interested in reading what people have to say about approaches that all three races can use to counter a later game Advent fleet (battleball). Suppose the fleet includes 6 capital ships--2 or 3 Progenitors, 2 or 3 Halcyons, one Radiance (for Animosity-Vengeance combos), and one Rapture (which can cast Vengeance on any cap that's getting focus fired upon) in addition to lots of illuminators, some guardians, and some flaks.
I'm going to assume you mean the Illum Heavy fleet. Well, here's what comes my mind.
1. Never, ever, build carriers. Not only can Illums chase them down, All the guy has to have is a few flak or a halcyon and your carriers just became dead weight in your fleet.
2. Try an Akkan with LRMS if you're fighting repulse. The Akkan gets the range bonus ability, and provided it's high level, (it's always my first cap of choice), it should have armistice so you'll never lose it. Keep it near repair bays/hoshis and that Akkan will become your pride and joy.
3. While repulse negates these units, that does not mean stop buying them. Get scouts, and get HC's. I say HC's because they are highly armored, and if you stop telling your units to kill the guardians, they can hit anything in range (thanks to a recent HC range buff). You won't be near as effective, but you need highly armored units that even Illums have a hard time taking down.
4. Mass like say 80 or so scouts so he thinks you're going to fight him with them, and then send them behind enemy lines and find his military labs. Use tactical strikes. Leave the scouts there. A force of 40 or so at a planet is something he'll HAVE to achknowledge. Not to mention if you can get those guardians to jump around, they lose antimatter.
5. Illum fleets LOOOOVE going after your caps. Keep a level 6 Akkan. It's a must. It's the only way I've found to successfully thwart the annoying pissants who go straight after your caps. Best part is you destroy a bit of his fleet, and your Akkan just flies away.If he won't stop, then you're going to have to send the fleet in first.....and THEN your caps.
6. 2 Dunovs can be lethal. EMP Blast, Magnetize, and Flux field are highly underutilized abilities in this game. They're all awesome. The problem is the dunov itself isn't that good a cap early in a game, but for a late game support cap, this think kicks some ass. 2 level 2 emp blasts knock out enough antimatter on a guardian that it'll have to waiti a while to do repulse again.
7. Armor and health upgrades. Buy them. You'll need them.
8. Try to fight in repair bays. TEC repair bays are ridiculous with upgrades.
9. Unlike Advent, you can afford the risk of separating your fleet. Like....send your fleet one way, but your Marza and Akkan the other. See if you can knock out a planet.
10. Antagonize him. I've actually gotten a few guys to stop using repulse by calling out their manhood. It works....occassionally.
11. Red button can do amazing things for you if you get the chance to use it. Just make sure your shit aint arround it to die with it.
Guardians/Progen and a wall of illums, thats all i see late game.
I think after the 2nd or 3rd Sova I am going to double up on Dunovs. I always have the money for Caps, but I find myself replacing a lot of Defensive structures. I think I am going Kodiak a little late as well, because I tend use the slots for Refineries.
Just let me write that into my playbook... always looking for new ways to kill an Advent (seriously, 80% of the the games I personally lose are when I start point-blank with an Advent. The last game where I personally was beaten by a Vasari or TEC player was... either when Tyr pulled off a flawless Vasari starbase rush or when I got map-screwed (1-lane no roid) against a TEC enemy who got fed to rush with two caps at the very start of the game.
I'm shocked by how many players fall for this. If my enemy has 5 labs, I just presume every starbase is rigged to blow and refuse to let my fleet close in.
I fought a human who didn't use repulse. Just got Illlums, Illums, and more Illums. It's not a bad idea in theory. Just get shear amounts of DPS to crush. He had 100 Illums and a progen/halcyon and like 8 guardians.
This was Berzerker. You know what I did? 200 Scouts. 50 LRMs. 20 Hoshis. I had to leave the Akkan and Marza behind. I hate Illum spammers. I hate people who abuse repulse. The only thing I can say is thankfully repulse isn't as effective as it used to be (still damn good). Illums are still an exploit, though thankfully, my little scout children make Illum spammers weep. Hence why I fight so vehemently not to have the scout counter of lrf taken away.
I played my first 50 games with advent without even building a guardian. only won 49 of them that way.
late game aside, im gonna talk about a few key points to keep in mind when your fighting an advent player, the late game will be decided by early and mid game, so thats what you should focus on. As a point of reference my points are gonna be confined to 5v5 scenarios (since thats where people usually have the most trouble with advent).
Firstly, anything other than massive illum spam/halcyon/guardians can be pretty effectively countered by TEC. And recently I've come to the realizations that an advent who wants to LF/scout a TEC is making a huge mistike, since TEC's only LF spam can bring it hard, faster, and stronger and paired with a marza youll knock the advents friggin lights out.
Darvin is right on the money as to WHY advent has such an advantageous matchup against TEC, but speaking from a high level of play....I feel it is incredibly foolish to build any LRMs early or midgame against an illuminator spam. 40 LRMs MIGHT beable to take 20 illums...factor in malice and shield restore and youll probably need more like 50 to take 20 illums. Provided the advent player is using them properly.
Secondly, YOU MUST HAVE THEM SCOUTED...I know that goes without saying but I dont think most people understand what i mean. SCOUTED does not mean you know where there HW is. SCOUTED means you have scouts queued to jump in and out of the advents strategic positions. You must know when they start producing illums and beable to react IMMEDIATELY. If you cannot start producing when they do then you can expect to be on the defensive for the rest of your empires existence. Also, hitting them fast and in sufficient number is the only way scouts work. A certain Amish-man will tell you scouts become useless once they have about 40 illums, and i think that is LUDICROUS. Onces they have around 20, your looking at needing about 60 scouts to fight effectively and with malice and sidebeams at higher numbers scouts get exponentially less effective. If you are gonna use a scout based strategy, I suggest a rush, and the sova would be your best bet as 4 bombers squads on a lvl 1 halcy would tear up a marza. the fighter squads would also be a great help for dropping constructors quick.
Dont get me wrong though, 20 scouts in a fleet of flak and LRMs are some extremely cost effective meat and firepower, just dont risk crippling yourself with a terrible fleet composition.
As Amish said, ARMOR UPGRADES. TEC has amazing early game defensive upgrades, and for good reason. I always prioritive those over offense because the tougher your ships are, the longer hoshis can heal them, which essentially means your ships get exponentially tougher from upgrades.
Against a fully blown halcy/illums spammer flak is absolutely your way to go, with a marza as well. just be sure to put on your dancing shoes cuz this strat requires very effective use cap micro and repair bays. use lose the marza and its game over. yes guardians will be a problem but the flak will negate bombers, and the goal is pressure the opponent constantly, you want to skirmish to get MB. repulse is hugely expensive, and for good reason, if someone rushes it prematurely they likely wont even have enough illums to render LFs completely useless. In this scenario SABOTAGE REACTOR (most underused ability in the game...right next to infailable jump drives....T--7 FTW ) is your best friend.
One last thing, DO NOT EXPECT TO HAVE AN ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE. I don't know who said that but...eeek. Even with an akkan advent cap colonize is about right on par. and if you have civ labs and tradeports then you dont have military labs or ships. and therefore expect to be on your back all game spamming scout (best case scenario) or joining a new game lobby (most likely scenario).
Ok hopefully I have a point or good advice in their somewhere, I have a hard time keeping on track when someone asks a question like "what should I do against advent". And I can speak in length about this matchup (900+ games too much free-time and an over-active brain will do that I suppose). But I have to cut myself off. Hope this helps.
apologize in advance if I hi-jacked your thread =P
I just won a game versus an Advent halycon/illum spammer as TEC. What was interesting was that I lost my homeworld to the halycon rush and it didn't even matter as my econ was still #1 after the loss. The key points are as follows:
1. TEConomy - it doesn't take long for TEC to build an economic edge against an advent player and keep it perpetually. This puts time in your favor, the longer the game lasts the more that superior economy will pay out in tech/fleet advantages. It's espescially true once TEC starts to get the trade upgrades as advent has no equivalent and even with fewer planets and a shorter trade chain TEC can end up with a much stronger econ than an advent player.
2. Big red button - this ability is a game winner particularly if you deploy it relatively early when it's unexpected. that swarm of illums can take down a starbase fast but 1 click and all he's got left is the halycons. It's what won my game tonight as every last frigate he had when up with the starbase and all that was left was 4 damaged halycons. GG
3. Sitting your fleet next to a starbase with akkan boosting it's range is also very effective. TEC starbases can be lethal with the akkan range buff. They also become very difficult to kill if supported by several repair bays. Even with a smaller/inferior fleet the illuminator rush can still be held up by one of these.
4. Once you have the econ edge established and it's time to fight back the best option to fight back is the Kodiak/hoshiko combo. That said, you'll need a lot of it and well boosted with the armor/hull upgrades. The biggest problem is the halycons here, they pretty much mean the advent player will have control of the skies and probably a lot of bomber swarms to counter your kodiaks. Worse still, the beam weapon aura will boost the bomber output and some players will really abuse it by having their bombers hold position on their target endlessly unloading fire into your Caps/HCs/structures
Personally, I think one of the biggest problems with this is the halycon itself. It's just too good a cap now with far and away more firepower than any other cap (due to more squadrons of the best type). The fact that it also has the ultimate strike craft counter ability just cements it's power even further. It even does above average planet bombardment damage. I think a rebalance is in order for this ship. What might work would be to have some of it's abilities traded with other advent caps, if only to cut down on the halycon spams. Telekinetic push on the carrier cap makes it unusually difficult to cope with the strike craft swarms, particularly if there's 3-4 halycons level 3+ (18-24 squardrons just from caps and yours can't approach without death)
The devs never should have listened to all the whines about carrier caps, I think they were fine where they were before the patch. Now they all seem way too dominant/likely to be spammed. They just have too many strike craft espescially at higher levels, couple that with each of them having some truly awesome abilities and they just get spammed over and over.
This tip is like, totally awesome. This makes me want to switch back to TEC again just to try.
Phbt
as an advent player i'll tell you what TEC strategy i'd hate to be used against me ^^
make 2 dunov (3 is better) 2 marza (lvl 6), 1 akkan lvl 6 and you won the game if the dude has his fleet together
let me explain
armistice
run in the middle of his fleet when armistice is at half
prepare double missile barage and use dunovs to cover the marza
game over
If he has a Radiance, though, he'll just disrupt the first one, tank the second one with shield restore/guardians, then disrupt it once detonate antimatter recharges.
I've started noticing 3 as well. A fully weapon upgraded starbase with lvl 3 targeting uplink can cause some serious damage. Its good to see Akkans are finally useful now.
I have to disagree about the carrier caps though. Halycon may be a bit too strong now, but the other two carrier caps were truly pointless to build before unless you were on point blank and were going for a Sova rush. Even now, I don't think I'd ever build more than one Vasari carrier capital and Sovas only truly shine as (ironically) raiders and trench fighters. Kortuls, Devestators, Evacuators, Kols, Marza's and Dunovs are still much better choices for most Vasari and TEC players.
If you nerf the Halcyion's abilities, then after the illuminators get nerfed in the next patch, the near-tie between TEC and Advent for best race will be broken and Sins could become a TEC-only game. Also, the Halcyion is probably the most fragile Advent capital ship in terms of its shields and hull. (Don't see too many people playing Vasari anymore and there's a reason for that.)
i didnt say it wasnt couterable i said i'd hate to see that ^^
problem is that rady is nice but you can dunov or ion bolt it ^^ ther's always a way out, but once you have your fleet in the middle of his illums its becoming a real battle, repulse don't work so well when it pushes the fleet all around, that kills illums focused fire, repulse is at its best when the enemy fleet isnt scaterd all around but concetrated on 1/3 of the repulse circle
how wrong you are my friend. only 3 caps worth getting as tec aside from when you are front-running are: (in no particular order) Akkan, Marza, and SOVA. I have done some dirty dirty things to people with double sovas. I dont even get embargo, its a drain on antimatter.
I cant thinks of any situation early game where a kol could be the deciding factor. And I'd only start with a dunov if I wanted to embarrass my opponent....like the next time I play against Star Player
I agree whole heartedly, I hope whoever wants to follow that advice ends up on your team lol.
Can you stack embargo? It's pretty effective.
If I'm not mistaken, two lower-level Embargoes will stack, but not if both are at level 3.
Well, then do tell what these dirty things are. What I meant by raider was using a Sova, scouts and carriers to quickly destroy all the planetary structures while using embargo, then run when an enemy fleet comes. By "trench fighter", I meant using it on heavily fortified planets where frigate factories are constatly providing reinforcements, as embargo is good while on the offensive and rapid manufacturing on the defensive.
Early game I wouldn't use a Kol either, but this is a thread on how to beat late game advent, so I assume it is also late game for the TEC. And while I would probably get a Marza instead, if you want a strong individual fighter, the Kol is hard to beat. As long as the other battleships aren't around.
I tried the Dunov's Emp. It doesn't seem to have an area of effect on AM or shields? Does it only effect one unit?
Ok ill keep it simple, but first this is what you need.
Late Game:
Economy 1 - you need to at least heve loads of trade, and you can have more then one trade port per planet (remeber that). When you get near to an advent fleet, upgrade the planet with two frig factoires (even more if ur economy is good) and repair bays WITH FULL UPGRADES (saves ur cap ship). Just build enough fleet to defend ur self and get trade up. Here comes the best part.
A fleet of gardas or kodiaks supported with hoskios will help you to keep them alive to kill the late game advent fleet. If they decide to use repulse, you need to build quite a few long range missles, but listen to this carefully, KEEP them AWAY from there fleet, they are one of the longest range units in the game, they dont need to be in direct combat.
Use the Jarvis Missles to kill the guardians, once this is done, then you can preceed to retret back ur long range missles, and fire them from long distance, while helping to support your other units. A good tip is to take there cap ships out first.
Usally Advent end game fleets have loads of strike craft, you dont really need to build carriers yourself, you can build a kol, with a level 3 abbility on the shrapnel ability, you can wipe out almost allof there strike craft, even if they have bombers, gardas will make sure that all strike craft are kept to minimum levels. you can also spam colbalts to kill there carriers.
and if ur having problems with AI seige firgs running around, build about 14 socuts, and then can be ur defensive fleet aginest them, cheap and nimble.
Any other advice, post me an Email.
Yours Sincerly
The Hawk, The Great One, The Peoples Champion.
I doubt eco is the best option against experienced players. I only say this because I will get a scout at my home world within 15 minutes of play and whether I have 1 mil and 1 civ or 2 mils or 2 civ will influence his decision to rush. I go all out military and get some star bases up before I put research trade, culture, and refineries. I tried to keep my economy centered around my home world and I do not colonize to far out till I have good enough production of ships.
As far as late game, economy is never the issue. Its man power and lack of tier 5 and 6 advantages that are. I'm using a lot of boom bases to split up there fleet and keep them from gathering together. But fleet to fleet, advent's abilities are still too strong no matter what I have
Best tactic against Advent is to find out their address a deliver them a pizza. "What? I didn't order a pizza!" They can't pause.
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