Ultimate Apocalypse is a mod for Dawn of War Soulstorm, which aims to create the most diverse possible unit and faction selection within the confines of the original DOW engine. We strive to create the most engaging and balanced Warhammer 40,000 game that we can, without sacrificing the fun factor. From hordes of Orks to the towering Titans, you can always find a new way to play UA. We invite all of you to join us on our Discord server to keep up with the development of the mod!
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Anyone playing competitive 1v1 games? What are the dirty tricks? | Locked | |
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Jul 6 2016 Anchor | ||
So I've been playing this mod for a while, mainly with a game group of about six. I dabbled at playing Soulstorm competitively but got a little bored with the strictness of the build orders. In a game with eight races the game is more fun in teams or in an FFA because there's a natural imbalance present in those modes that ironically balances out some of the more exploitative garbage. That said, I'm curious if anyone has been trying to learn particular races in a 1v1 setting? There are a bunch of strange details that aren't intuitively obvious, and if you know your micro it's easy enough to confuse an AI into defeating itself. Case in point: I notice some players who exclusively play against computers defending the state of static defense in UA, likely because AI places them sub-optimally, and a smart human can wield the things like a sledge hammer coming down on an egg - map depending. A human builds defensible, fortified positions, a computer does not, and a computer doesn't always attack your worker units to prevent them from finishing a turret if one is in progress. The weirdest faction is the Daemonhunters. There's a lot of lateral upgrading, it's unclear how much requisition the urban workers produce but I think it's +1, and the anti-daemon specialization is super wonky versus races that rely on those unit types. I was reading the discussion about them in the forum, but I'm not really seeing anything too... thoughtful? They just feel incredibly unwieldly and I can't get a bead on them. The AI plays them to strange habits. I can play them and win matches but they feel amorphous. And of course I see Cylarn nerfing one of their long range attacks into utter worthlessness but everything prior to Apocalypse level seems to get that treatment if it can annoy a turtle. I really hate turrets, but this is because we have a guy in our group who's dedicated himself to using them and walls on the offensive. Human strategy. ANNOYING strategy. A STRATEGY THAT HAS NO COUNTERS on specific maps because all the long range attacks that take advantage of the turrets' immobility keep getting nerfed! Anyway, if anybody out there is trying to play serious 1v1 or general competitive stuff with thinking, living humans, what are some of the dirty tricks and exploitative things you've seen? How are people getting certain races wrapped around their fingers in ways that seem really hard to counter? Aside from offensive turrets, the wall'n'stall thing seems to happen a lot too, where certain maps provide an advantage if you focus on tech and turrets rather than armies since you can choke off half the map. Tyranids have a quick early game thing with gaunt spam - since they build so many units at no cost, it's fairly easy for them to seize a lot of points early on as well as getting into your base to cause trouble. Otherwise, the auto-repair function seems to maintain a supreme role until at least T2, seating itself as the most potent, wide-spread ability in the game. |
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Jul 7 2016 Anchor | |
Well, DaemonHunter have a really good anti turret ability with the Calculus Logistic guy that you build from the hq. AT 250 power (i think), you can disable all turrets defenses for a while and get a, small advantage on them I guess. Also Auto-repair has been nerfed to be more harmful now as it lasts longer but heals less. They also have the whirlwind Hyperios, very powerful artillery unit. Eldar and Dark eldar have their Artillery too, that when upgraded to some shard weapon do crazy unbalanced damage. Daemons can pretty much ignore turrts with their debaser spam early game( 3rd vehicle that is mark based), and with greater daemons using the mark of Tzeentch for ranged resistance. The Yellow horrors are also really powerful. Then theres Eldar, space marines, Daemons, actually a lot of races capable of bypassing the turrets by just 'jumping over' with a webway gate, thunderhawk transport, depstriking. But then again, all these counters will force you into a changed playstyle which isn't necessarily fun either. I played a bit with a friend, and he kept doing this with necrons or eldar. Best way to deal with it was to rush. -- Ummm.... |
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Jul 7 2016 Anchor | ||
Yeah, rushing is the easiest way to deal with turret spam. At T1 most factions are able to sink their teeth into a turret nest because they're still the game's vanilla turrets. At T2, the reward for having invested in turrets really sinks in, though. The range gets bigger, the damage output gets higher, and because they're cheap they'll very easily recover the cost of building them in the first place. Many, many UA games have been turning into WWI trench warfare for me. If it comes in at T3, I don't really consider it a crucially valuable counter. At that point you're looking at relic units and upgrades powerful enough for you to just tank on through a defensive line. T3 artillery is pretty strong for the factions that get T3 artillery, if you want to sit outside the other person's base and drop bombs on them, but the artillery isn't really too impressive at killing buildings and you'd honestly be better off building something with a giant laser on the front so you can simply punch on in there and get the enemy before they have time to do something about it. On the bright side, I haven't really played with my friend who really applies the wall'n'stall thing offensively since the update that made it so walls can only be built in a control area. What he used to do was sneak builders to choke points at really far forward points in the map, wall it off, then just work his way back from there with an army until he held everything behind the wall. There's always a control point by those chokes, so with a few turrets there was really never any taking it back. Walls have roughly the same health as an HQ and more armor, so it was a waste of time to try to fight it without the kind of firepower that rapidly melts an HQ. The fact that he can't start by walling off a choke before he gets to work is going to really screw him up. Although he's telling me he's REALLY excited that tank traps give buildings a cover bonus now, so I think I'm going to learn soon how to feel about that little adjustment. Odds are good it's going to diminish the tactical viability of rushing. -edit- Oh, speaking of tank traps. You know what else is funny? Neither the Reaver nor the Warhound have keen sight. I once had a game where I thought I had the one up over my wall'n'stall friend because I'd built a Reaver before he'd finished anything on that level. This was before the Reavers had stomp damage, so I walked to his base and then the pathing got wonky. The thing got shelled by artillery until it died because it couldn't advance and wouldn't turn around for some reason. At first I thought it was the map, but then it turned out my friend had peppered the area outside his base with tank traps. Dozens of these cheap, stupid, invisible walls, and the Reaver couldn't see them. "Fun" game mechanics. Walls. Man. I HATE walls. Anyway,moving on from the wall rant. I've been looking at Daemon Hunters and this is what I've got so far: Units:
There's also the relic units, which normally don't warrant a lot of consideration because they show up so late and decide the game based on who gets to them first. The relic units are all strong, though, and they do what I expect them to. Buildings
Prognosis so far: Figuring out an army and where its breaking points are takes a lot of drilling and examination. I've used some of the other units but haven't really drilled them. All the stuff I've got listed are things I've built over and over in games. Sometimes against AI and sometimes against people.
Things to look at: Obviously I need to try the other units, but it's common to be able to look at what a unit's role is supposed to be and say, "Okay, this is redundant, or this is similar to that". In some cases you can imagine some solid timing pushes.
Edited by: Flamgino |
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