How do you keep your Golems alive?

[Philo]

I've had 4 golems in the last game I played. All were killed very quickly. Got two Artillery golems, a regen and a botnet golem. Not at the same time on the game ofc. Out of them only the Artillery one seemed to have any use before dying. The other ones just were killed instantly. Even when I sent them with 500 troops against like 200 AI troops.

How much do you need to micro them to keep the Golems alive? I don't find them that useful for me since usually in a few seconds they're down to like 10-30% health.

[zoutzakje]

send your fleet in first, the botnet golem mere seconds later (especially if there are huge numbers of enemy ships piled up at the wormhole). Also make sure to check what kind of enemies are on that planet. If the enemies are Mark V or any other ships with reclamation immunity, the botnet golem is useless.
The regen golems main function is to immediately spawn ships that have died on that planet, but it doesn't have much offensive abilities. So once on a new enemy world, make sure you put it on a safe spot (not near wormholes, guardposts, etc.). Send the golem to the opposite direction of where the enemy ships are coming from and let your fleet do the job of killing enemies. If your ships die fast, de regenerator golem's health will also drop fast (it spawns ships at the cost of it's own health). Using the regenerator golem to assault homeworlds works great for me.
If you want to make effective use of the golems, make sure you back them up with your fleet. Same for Artillery golem. They can only fire once in 30 seconds. Without a fleet to kill off the smaller ships, your golem won't survive long.
So yeah, if you want them to live, you'll have to do that extra bit of micro-ing instead of just sending them through a wormhole and hope things go allright.

[Philo]

Ok, thanks for that info. No wonder the regen golems health depletes so fast. It doesn't die though if its health goes down to 1% and it tries to regen somone right?

The Artillery is really useful on a world where there are lots of stuff under Forcefields. Other than that, it being able to fire only once per 30 seconds, is there any other use for it? Does it do area of effect damage? Like could I destroy multiple small ships with one shot?

[Fleet]

Your botnet golem dies quickly? Mine seems pretty tough. Granted, if I send it into a moderately reinforced III/IV planet, I'll be keeping an eye (oh god, this name needs to be changed) on it, but it does last some time. Really, mine is only taking significant damage from the gravity rippers, which are immune to reclamation.

[zoutzakje]

Ok, thanks for that info. No wonder the regen golems health depletes so fast. It doesn't die though if its health goes down to 1% and it tries to regen somone right?

The Artillery is really useful on a world where there are lots of stuff under Forcefields. Other than that, it being able to fire only once per 30 seconds, is there any other use for it? Does it do area of effect damage? Like could I destroy multiple small ships with one shot?

If the regen golem's hp drops to 10%, it will stop spawning ships and just be able to fire on enemy ships. You'd have to repair it again if you want to use it to spawn ships again.
I myself haven't used artillery golems a lot, but I'm going to since it is now immune to radar dampening (at least I believe so). So you can use it to shoot down guardposts from a distance if I'm correct. I've also been reading about people using them to shoot down AI eyes, which can be pretty helpfull. The artillery golem doesn't do area damage for as far as I know. Just a powerfull shot on a single target.
if you want golems that can clean up enemy ships pretty fast, I'd recommend the cursed golem and defenitely the botnet golem. If you want golems to attack high health targets with, I'd say artillery golem and probably armored golem too.

[BobTheJanitor]

It depends on the strength of the planet you're going up against, really. Any situation I can imagine where a beast like a botnet golem would die in seconds is probably a situation where you should have utilized some warheads first. Most golems can take a lot of hits, normally. Either use a lightning warhead or two to clean off the wormhole before you send the golem through, or EMP the planet and then send it in. You do want to have some distraction if you're sending it in without any other preparatory strikes, but you did mention that you sent it in with fleet support. So I'm not really sure what could have caused it to seem so fragile. In my experience, at least against lower mark planets, a botnet that has been repaired up to full and sent through on its own will lose about 1/3 or 1/2 of its HP before it will have created enough zombies that the AI ships are too busy to keep focused fire on it.

The Artillery is useful for taking out important, big targets. Since it's (finally) immune to radar dampening, you can send it in and blow up a guard post and then pop it back through the wormhole to reload. It's a bit micro-intensive, but this way you can pretty much clean out a planet with nothing but the golem. Of course, then you have to deal with all the angry AI ships waiting on your doorstep and wanting to discuss why you just blew up all their guard posts, but that's a side problem. And of course they're great for easy gate raids or destroying data centers.

[Red Spot]

I find it all depends on a lot of random factors. One game I can casually send golems around and worry little more than that they get damaged a bit, other games I cant get an armored golem to survive more than 3sec.
Actually they, by themselves, are rather fragile in my games, but I love raising the AIP a bit and bottleneck the AI. When used at the correct time and place they are -1 man armies- though.

[Sunshine!]

Keep in mind that the Botnet Golem has the lowest health of all golems at 36 million.  Also keep in mind, that unlike before the change to armor types (if you were playing then), some ships now do get bonuses against golems because of their Ultra-Heavy armor type.  If you want your golems to have long and healthy lives, make sure to keep them away from Bombers in particular, and anything else that has a decent Ultra-Heavy bonus (anti-armor ships, space tanks, chameleons, N Tigers to name a few).

[Frozen Critical]

Check if there's a anti-starship(Or whatever it was called, long time since i played) on that planet, main way to get a golem destroyed, another contributing factor is Turret-camped Wormholes, send in a lighting warhead to clear it before sending the golem and half your fleet in

Another one is the fact that most golems use health when attacking, which means that it operates on a health*shot factor, you may be using it for prolonged combat, Regen golems can easily eat half of their health if your attack force consists majority of a type which the AI planet has tons of counters to it, so make sure it keeps out of combat zones of major danger

The Change of armor types have also caused the golem to have more then a dozen counters

[zoutzakje]

Another one is the fact that most golems use health when attacking, which means that it operates on a health*shot factor

I don't know how things with golems used to be, but nowadays they lose hp over time if they're not in low power mode (self attrition), regardless of how many shots it fires. Thank god, otherwise the cursed and botnet golems would die in mere seconds.

[Sunshine!]

another contributing factor is Turret-camped Wormholes, send in a lighting warhead to clear it before sending the golem and half your fleet in

There also are no longer AI turrets.  Have you updated recently?

[Red Spot]

another contributing factor is Turret-camped Wormholes, send in a lighting warhead to clear it before sending the golem and half your fleet in

There also are no longer AI turrets.  Have you updated recently?

Check if there's a anti-starship(Or whatever it was called, long time since i played) on that planet,

[Sunshine!]

Reading comprehension FTW   in my defense I'm a little overloaded in the whole comprehension department from real life right now.

Edit: I thought 4.0 had been out longer than it has, whoops!