Is this completely impossible, or am I missing something?

[AlexV]

I'm new to this game, so after playing through all the tutorials, I thought I'd start with a simple 10 planet map and an easy AI level. Either I'm completely useless, or missing something, as I can't seem to do anything to progress here.

There are two clusters of five planets. From my starting planet, I could see one heavily defended Mark III planet to the west, and one more promising target to the north. I captured the one to the north, then the next one immediately adjacent to that which was slightly better defended, but had an advanced factory on it.

The next planet on the path was another Mark III, so I turned my attention back to the first one, bordering my home planet. That one is the gateway to the second cluster, so I must either pass through it, or defeat it. Passing through never got me very far - on one occasion I managed to briefly get a couple of ships through to the next planet, which turned out to be an AI homeworld.

So, as I see it, the only option is to attack the Mark III. It had one special forces guard post, and I think three other guard posts, along with an astro-train station. I killed the special forces post, and two of the other guard posts, but the third has a force field on it. Almost every ship was Mark V.

I've built up the largest fleet I can manage (300 bombers, 275 fighters of mark I and II, and 300 microfighters of II and III), along with a flagship. They are all sitting inside the hostile system, at a turreted beachead that I can defend.

I still can't send the fleet to take down the force field before the fleet is wiped out. I can't take out the defences around the wormhole to the AI homeworld without being wiped out. If I free the AI by dinging the command post, they overwhelm my defences and I'm wiped out. (I tried also building all turrets allowed by the cap at the beachead, still got wiped out).

Nuking doesn't work as there are about 2000 Mark V ships which survive the nuke, then wipe me out.

I'm just about completely out of ideas here. Is this map now unwinnable? Did I do something wrong to start with? This was supposed to be an easy starter campaign!

[x4000]

Just as one note: 10 plant maps are very very hard, not easy.  You don't get enough knowledge to really unlock much, and you don't have enough room to maneuver much.  Some people really like the smaller maps, which is why they are there, but the game suggests 80 planets as a default for a reason.  A lot of people prefer the 40-60 map range, simply because that makes the games a tad shorter and the various capturables are closer together, but there is still plenty of room to expand.  The 10-planet maps often are not even that much shorter than the midsize maps, because you'll spend so much time slogging against the few planets that are there while not having as many ships as you would in a more knowledge-rich map.

So don't feel bad, the overall campaign you chose just wasn't as easy as you'd thought.

Hope that helps!

[Mánagarmr]

I'd suggest something like 50 planets for a starter game. I also, faulty, thought that smaller maps were easier. They are most certainly not

[AlexV]

OK, thanks for the advice - I'll try a new campaign on a bigger map and see if I do any better!

[x4000]

Good luck!  Hope you have a good time even if you don't win -- it's all about the journey, not the destination, right?   Of course, it is nice to win, but I like that the game beats me about 20% of the time on diff 7, because that makes my victories that much more sweet.  Of course, I lost my last four campaigns in a row, but that was just a a bad streak on some map seeds that turned out to be pretty tough...

[triggerman602]

my only suggestion for the situation he was describing would be to build 20-30 spider turrets and let those eat away at the engines of everything in the system. once every single ship has had its engines killed, destroy the command center and take it from there with a system full of stationary enemies.

[superking]

if a planet has time to build up that much, you are moving waaay too slowly. the moment one foothold is done you should already be invading the next. the longer you delay, the more enemy forces build...

[AlexV]

build 20-30 spider turrets

Unfortunately I didn't have spider turrets, and had no way to acquire knowledge to unlock them, as all planets with knowledge remaining were beyond the impossible one.

if a planet has time to build up that much, you are moving waaay too slowly.

The planet was too strong to take immediately from the start of the game. I expanded pretty quickly in the other direction, but I don't think at any point it was any easier to take that one - it got stronger at least as fast as I did.

Thanks for the ideas, though - they might come in handy in future campaigns!

[eRe4s3r]

Generally you had really bad luck, the smaller the map the earlier you trigger alerts on high level planets, and this can VERY quickly become something unmanagable (even unlucky starts can cause this and it happens to be best of us)

If you want an easier game you should think about disabling the AI Progress grow rate over time to 0 - i do it, mainly because i am often distracted and that way, difficulty does not increase just because i am taking my time ^^

[x4000]

If a high level planet is on alert that is indeed a painful prospect to then take. As others have noted, this is all too common on the tiny maps. On the other hand, on the larger maps, if a big planet happens like that you may just be able to ignore it the entire game. The key thing there is good scout intel, and having room to not alert key targets until you ae planning to take them out. I disagree with the sentiment that you have to constantly expand -- I certainly do not, not even close -- but I heartily agree that you should not alert anything you are planning to take in advance of when you will attack it if you can at all help it.

Partly just bad luck on that one map, but those tiny maps are also basically cage matches compared to the regular sizes, if you think about it.