Necron strategy advice (playing against) Thread - Ultimate Apocalypse Mod (DOW SS) for Dawn of War

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this, and i hate to be that guy... but how in gods name is anyone supposed to defeat necrons late game?

I understand they should have an advantage because they are so weak early game, however in situations like this; me and 7 other AI on hard free for all. its pretty hard to harass them early game. Does this mean i should just never have necrons in a mix where i cant keep tabs on them? Seriously my entire army struggle to take down one squad at about 15 minutes into the game (on hard) because they will just continue to respawn and reinforce until the flayed ones break the moral of everything and the heavy destroyers annihilate all defences in about 10-15 seconds. Ive been playing dawn of war for 6 years now and i have never had a problem like this. I like the challenge but its got to the point where im not sure how to tackle it because I'm worried im wasting my time on the chance that no one can actually defeat the stomp machine of a necron army. Its really cool how unrelenting and never stopping they feel. But where are the tactics? The battlefield decisions that turn the tide of battle? It seems to me necrons are resistant to everything, dont break moral, do heavy damage with all weapons, have extremely high health, randomly respawn, have awesome abilities, break moral by standing around (flayed ones) and destroy bases in a matter of seconds. This i believe take away from my ability to turn the tide of battle with commanders/abilities or a well placed squad. Reason being it does fuck all anyway. A massive group of orcs would be slaughtered by a heavy weapons team outfitted with grenade launchers and mortars, a massive group of necron will.. well not really notice it. Im not saying that you should change anything really, maybe i just suck. But i like to think there are people out there that can defeat them easily, I do enjoy putting necrons on insane and teaming up with my friend who is awesome with Imperial Guard, make for a nice hold the line feel . But even then we struggle to win against one AI.

Anywho, i just finished a match where i lost so maybe im a little ragey, any suggestion against fighting Necrons in a situation where you cant harass early on? Specifically with Imperial faction as thats all i really enjoy playing. Any ideas to get a good grip on how to combat them? Any strategies you always use that are fool proof? Any and all advice is welcome if it leads to the destruction of the enemies of the Imperium.

Necrons will be different in THB

In the latest version you just cant beat necrons, you cant because they have insane power income in late game. Because they have free generators they can have over 600 of power income after about 10mins so how do you think you can beat them?xD

With the might of the Imperium.

Well.. the AI has a bit of a special way of playing the necrons. at some point in the game he starts spamming destroyers and heavy destroyers. It works well for an AI tactic as they are fast, dont get easily stuck and one counters infantry and the other counters armor. Before that hes not to hard to stop. Just keep moving back so you dont fight all of them at once and dont get meleed by flayed ones. Special weapons i'm not entirely sure, but i think flamers work well on both troops and commanders at that point.

When the destroyer spam starts it gets harder. Even though they look like infantry they have vehicle armor so you'll need other weapons to counter them. Good news is that he doesnt seem very likely to build relic units. If he progresses from his destroyer spam at all its usually to build a few tomb stalkers or (either because of a bug or becacause of an ability im not aware of) multiple decievers.

I tried recreating your 8 player free for all to see if i could find some tactic that worked whilke playing defensively, but for some reason i decided to only include only 5 necrons and a Tyranid ate all but one before i decided to break out from my defensive positions.

Ater that i tried a 2 player map on harder where i took half the points on the map and stayed on the defense until the late game. Space marines worked fine with no special tactics. Used the peaceful early game you get while fighting necrons to build the economy and skipped almost straight to sternguard veterans. Give them all apothecaries and upgrades and they are very hard to kill. i had a few whirlwinds as well after a while, close range armor like dreadnoughts just die way to fast against necrons. I mixed in some terminators after a while and i think i had a landraider redeemer. Then i just waited until i had a warhound titan and started attacking.

Tried the same with Sisters of Battle but i just couldn't do it. I normally find them easier to play than space marines, but in this instance they go into a part of the game where they're very dependand on immolators and penitent engines just as the AI starts spamming heavy destroyers. Not a good match up.

Didn't check out imperial guard as i already did that 8 player FFA with them, but their normally the strongest of the 3 so im guessing they can deal with it with their normal defensive stuff. Lots of turrets, endlessly reinforcing conscripts to stand in their way, a few basilisks for disruption and then tanks behind the wall of dieing conscripts.

Thanks heaps mbjo, i will play a match now with your suggestions on space marines

Hum normally in ffa and if there's a Necron AI involved, they should be the first to die. Well, that's what happens in 99% of my ffa games. So, maybe you are blessed with a UA setup with fully functional Necron AI?

You have 2 main objectives to beat Necrons:
Destroy their listening posts (not too hard as they rarely get 2nd upgrade). Less they have, the slower to product troops, build structures and advance in tier they will be + they need them to spam many destroyers otherwise, they can't. They need 7 requisition points to be able to get their max heavy support cap (20/20 minus the resurrect bonus). Destroy their 10 poor generators. If you can, kill as many builders as possible in the process. If you follow this, ,they will be heavily crippled and almost beaten. Should take 10 minutes max to do, they won't even be to the point of producing ANY destroyer anyway.
By the way, flamers are surprisingly well working on Necron generators.

Actually Necron AI is almost always working like this in my Soulstorm, FFA or Team game (insane) Youtube.com . No need to watch the whole thing. Jump to 10 or 15 minutes and watch what they have to put in front of Nids...
Read what I wrote in description too to situate my economy state in this specific game setting.

Soulstorm£an wrote: Necrons will be different in THB

In the latest version you just cant beat necrons, you cant because they have insane power income in late game. Because they have free generators they can have over 600 of power income after about 10mins so how do you think you can beat them?xD

Playing Necron as well

If I understand well, he's talking about playing against AI so the 600 income won't happen imho as they don't build extra generators aside the starting 1st batch...

@mbjo: And with those 5 Necrons AI, how many were actually "functional"?

Edited by: sinblood

sinblood wrote:
@mbjo: And with those 5 Necrons AI, how many were actually "functional"?

Thats a bit hard to say. As i was supposed to find out what worked late game without harassing i just grabbed my corner of the map and built defence. When the tyranid started using superweapons i had to start moving though. And thats when i found out he had killed everyone except my neighbour. So i know that necron had a decent army at least. But yeah. I've seen the necron AI being very passive at times. And even when its functional it often gets overrun early by more aggressive AIs

Necrons are weak against being out-ranged, they're also helpless against most lascannon weapon types, but the most important thing when fighting them is to NOT let some their squishy tech buildings pump out something like a doomsday monolith.

my 2 cents, I always rush their base at game start with a melee durable and fast unit (assault marines / chaos raptors), uncap one of their points, cap it and build a listening post and 1/2 turrets.
Next I focus on their scarab + those turrets in range that are shooting at my units, then wipe out the monolith, usually by going tier 1 and deploying havoc squads with anti-building stuff (autocannons works best to me than missiles) just to make it quicker, because I almost always play 4vs4 so the game's is not over when necrons are

Always works out flawlessly, against hard / harder AI anyway.

Edited by: KalidhoS