Just to follow up, I had more time yesterday than I expected and focused on making the Easy level as do-able for me as possible. As I've said many times here, I'm lousy at these types of games but really enjoy them as do some gaming friends - who are very good at these types of games. I simply lose track of all that's going on rather quickly and can't execute on plans I come up with for just that reason.
Anyway, I turned off creeps. It just takes way too long to make a factory and takes too many units to take each point otherwise. And since I know nothing of the other race I made them PHC. I also exposed the terrain for two reasons. First, even though I've played this map (Deneb) a LOT, this helped me figure out which areas I want to take first and how to better defend them. And second, it let me know where the enemy was and how fast they were moving.
One MAJOR note: I paused. A LOT. Often. Again and again. In the early game, every time I got a new scout (and every time I got an engineer) I'd pause and review the map to double-check which was going where and where I wanted the next one to go. By late-mid- to late-game I hardly paused. But I wasn't really being attacked by then and I had the game in-hand.
I made two factories to start, building scouts and sending a single scout to key, connected points. Then I built 3-4 armories, all the while cranking out an engineer here and there and using engineers to assist factories/armories. I also used 2 engineers to build a series of 12 Quanta Arrays (is that their name?) as soon as the two factories were rolling. I had engineers building metal and radioactive extractors. I built one sensor array near a key point with some Smartys. Otherwise, engineers were all assisting factories and then I had 2 (eventually 3) engineers building one Dread factory and stay to assist.
I essentially took two Tirinium cores early and hesitated to take the third thinking that might provoke the AI. Early-to-mid-game I took the third and rolled my first Dread up there in a small army to support.
I ended up with two Factories, Four armories and one Dread factory. I eventually paused the original Factories.
Early Quanta upgrades were Logistics, of course, as well as damage, followed by health. With two engineers building my queue of Quanta Arrays that seemed adequate. I might consider having three engineers take care of that next time.
At any rate, I absolutely crushed them. Would this work multiplayer? Absolutely not. Would the pausing be necessary on a much larger map? Probably not. Could I handle this with creeps? I don't believe so. At least I don't have a plan to handle that type of game in my head yet.
Anyway, thought I'd share. Maybe it'll help someone else. And, trying this a couple more times I think I'm ready to step up the difficulty - with these same settings, that is!
Love the game, thanks!
