Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Is this game hard or did I miss something ?

Well I played for a good hour now and I am already game over. I'm not a RTS noob by far but I am not the best I am aware of this. But I couldn't even win one game in the SP campaign because the enemy was just mass producing units and throwing them at me and I couldn't keep up which in result made me lose.

I like a challenge but not even wining the first map goes beyond me.

so you guys have some tips you can toss at this good old man ?

I have not yet had the chande to play the SP campaign but from my experience with beta I can say: the game has a pretty steep learning curve. It took me almost 1 whole day at the beginning of the beta to win my first RTS fight (before that I was just loosing and loosing and loosing...)

Here are a few tips which maybe could help you:

- Familiarise yourself with units and their abilities. I think there is something like training grounds which maybe could be worth looking at before launching the campaign

- In the game setting there is the game speed option - maybe you could first try the lowest speed setting. The same is true for the AI difficulty.

- Use hotkeys rather than selecting with mouse (at least that is what I am doing)

And do not worry: Even I can now manage the RTS fights quite decently (although I have never really played an RTS game before)

One thing I see a lot of people do in various videos online is hesitate on building their first building. DO NOT DO THIS.

Get that battle forge up ASAP. Don't look at the map, don't adjust your viewpoint, don't examine your starting army. BUILD THAT FORGE.

Weird, what difficulty are you on?
I played only 1 rts match and 1 autoresolve and on normal mode they posed no difficulty to me on a small map (I`m not great rts player either).

I am doing some let's play videos on normal and I haven't had a real fight yet. been blowing through their lines like they aren't there.

Let's assume that you aren't encountering a strange difficulty bug here...

What's important to keep in mind in the RTS part of this game is that it can be quite fast.
The AI likes spamming you with units if it gets the possibility to do so, so you have to prevent that.

1. Always try to capture ressource points (the sites where you can build recruitment centers) and try to prevent the enemy from getting more than you and keeping them.
2. Especially if you have some fast units like hunters, capture those building sites asap.
3. Until you have some anti-blobbing abilities (passive abilities that do AoE damage, like the bazooka upgrade or active upgrades that can disable enemies, like the shaman's stun ability) and familiarized yourself with the game a bit, counter the enemy unit spam with spamming units yourself. It's vital to keep up production unless you have the upper hand. Set rally points to help getting your troops to the frontline. Not very elegant, but it works at first.
4. Finally, the dragon can help to fight of an attack. Initially he's a bit weak, but with a few updates he can be a great help to stop enemy offensives or capture the enemy base.

Turn down difficulty or gamespeed. For players new to this game.. the "normal" setting will probably smash your head in :P

watch some gameplay videos on youtube, might help

First of all thank you all for the great tips.



I restarted the game again on Normal and this time it is way easier so I do think it was a difficulty bug. For now with these tips in mind I did got victory fairly easy.

A difficulty bug? On the Steam forums was someone complaining about the beta AI constantly making warlocks without cease and mercilessly spamming Death From above to obliterate his army.

The AI did this to me sometimes. I enjoyed the challenge

Though it was a little annoying that the AI could cast spells faster than I ever possibly could. And there really isn't a very good counter for death from above short of rushing ahead and taking them out with the dragon first.

I encountered a few times during the beta what I called the Giant Blob Of Death - the enemy would quiet suddenly start mass producing huge amounts of cheap units in all his factories and send them against you, with a constant stream of fresh units moving towards the frontline.
It usually happened to me in 1vs1 battles when the resources were beginning to run out.
It can be hard to counter this if you don't have AoE/crowd controll abilities yet (i.e. early in the campaign). Sometimes I was able to counter it (esp. once I had AoE abilities) and it helped to fall back to my base and to rely on the additional help from some turrets.
Once the AI had used up his resources, it surrendered, so I had to simply hold out long enough, but without AoE abilities that can be very hard.

I'm not sure if this is caused by a bug, or just an emergent effect from some AI settings that can get a bit wonky under certain circumstances.
It might also have nothing to do with your problem.

I usually encounter an AI who is passive, but deadly when taunted. What happened was that the AI, 3 insane, stayed on their initial bases and deployed insignificant troops to me until I attacked them.

Maybe it changed now, haven't played the game for the last 2 weeks :P

Here are a few tips when you start a match with ANYONE, not just A.I.

Build the battleforge first, then troopers and send them out to capture as many construction sites as possible. THEN a war factory or aerofactory.

Research unit abilities and upgrades.
A few examples:
Shaman has a terror ability, charm, and shielding ability, this can help you ALOT in battle. charm some of their units, or terror them all. Warlock has a rain of fire ability that deals heavy damage to enemis in a selected small area. Zeppelin Has the mustard cloud which deals surprising damage over time in a big area. And the zepp has a cloaking ability which, unless the enemy has a detector (hunter with upgtade or bomber balloon with upgrade or a dragon ability which reveals stealth in an area.) they cannot touch your units except with abilities that target the ground for a very long time.
Armors have an AOE effect that deals heavy damage to nearby enemy light units. Very useful for infantry rushes.

Learn the hotkeys.
Fortunately the hotkeys are actually very easy to learn since most of them are labeled on the icons for buildings and units and such. also zxcv are your "factories" and will select all of a particular type of factory, with that you can build up fast.

There is much more you can do and just try experimenting and looking at all the different skills and see what suits your play style the best and watch what the opponent is doing so you can see how best to counter their strategies.

Alastar - that advice is good against the AI, but not so much against people. Troopers are easy prey for a Dragon, so against people, you definitely want to make a bunch of Grenadiers before a War Factory. I know I lost a few multiplayer matches because I forgot that.

Rather than build something first, it seems to me the no.1 priority should be to move out and capture all of the production spots on the map so you can increase resource production.

That's really it.

If you can capture all or most of those spots before the AI does, you're in too advantageous a position to lose; if you fail, you'll be at a serious disadvantage you may not be able to recover from.

Rule #1: Expand, whoever controls the most recruitment centers on the map can pretty much out-zerg the other guy no matter what.

Rule #2: If you're initial army is too weak to secure expansion, turtle up until you can summon your dragon, use your dragon to slaughter any enemies in your way then go back to rule #1. (Remember the cooldown on dragon is only like 5 seconds, so do what ya need to really fast then switch out of dragon form so you can control everything again if you're not a fan of the controls while in dragon form)

Rule #3: Win.


Tips:

Be wary of Warlocks, the AI loves using them to slaughter your army while you're not looking. Kill those guys asap with your dragon. You can almost completely counter their aoe with the healing shots from your dragon (the 10 second duration heal that allows your basic attacks to heal)

Be aware of enemy transports. The AI knows about Rule #1 and will try to secure island bases, don't let him.

This game supports one of the most advanced rts game play AI I have ever seen. I have actually seen AI troops evade my strong points and fight with an intelligence level I did not expect.

But I didn't want a simple game. I wanted a challenge.

Excellent work Larian, brilliantly designed.

Dito.

Thank you devs, for such a great challenge after all this years mediocrity AI's!

So, shamans, or who the *ell those units are that lady beetle everything. How do you kill them? I'm on a mission that is all well other than that. They just disable all my stuff and there is literally nothing I can do.