Campaign: Khansus Pyre - how did you do it?

[The Founder]

I am stuck at this mission and still not certain how to beat it while staying on cores side. The main issue, is that there is too much Lava Terrain. Currently it gives -6 Happiness.

Being a Promethean, L0G3N-1 can easily ignore this.

Being not a Promethean, everyone else - the player included - has to work it's way through the Social Tree, up to the Tier7 Tech Adaptive Exploitation to even have a Economy.
The cities I did get were either:
- the one at the Celestian Shrine, as it gave +12 Happines.
- some dedicated Cosmite extraction bases I kept at 1-2 Sectors
- stuff I conquered from enemies. But only the other assembly player even had a starting zone of non-lava terrain. So most of those turned into one of the above.

So how did you do this mission?
Went non-Core and Allied with L0G3N-1?
Had luck with him spawning on the same landmass, so you could disrupt him early?

 

[lisk]

I used the same method as for other second missions - overpowered (with top mods from first mission) heroes rush 3 heroes on Lightning Riders (Positron Discharge Shield, Quantum Support Nanites, Reassembly Module, Shield of Remorse), LOG3N-1 was defeated on turn 18.
I think the AI should have bigger starting armies and/or always keep 2-3 stacks in HQ and with commander.

 

[mr_stibbons]

Running through it myself going non-core, I feel like I might have got a bit lucky, and was able to have 2-3 cities with a couple sectors each without taking lava territories. Then I got the Science from death doctrine up and beelined the lava tech. While doing this I was knocking over one of the syndicates and the amazon player, who both started with a good area of non-lava territory around their starts-with all the ships on the first map I had t4 weapons on all my starting heroes, which let me effortlessly do the rushing. That gave me some decent colonies to run.

I'm not sure the problem is the lava terrain- the problem is that there are a bunch of assembly factions that hate you and declare war on you, which tanks your race happiness. You may be better off founding syndicate colonies on lava. But really aggression is important. Kill off the neutrals even if you're going core and don't have to-then migrate some of their cities to boost race happiness.

 

[wingren013]

I rushed the lava tech and used stacks of flyers to ignore the need for teleporters. Also focused on building happiness buildings. Once I got syndicate cities I added in floaters. It was a real slog of a mission though because I was doing the independent path. Actually fighting L0G3N-1 would have been easier.

Oh and pump your allies for cosmite. I didn't realize this earlier but the AI is happy to trade away 100's of cosmite.

 

[The Founder]

Something I have been thinking about:
What if I went for 0 Happiness and just used Martial Law whenever it is avalible?
I would mostly be running on ML penalties, but in this case that might be worth it (at least until I get Lava Sector Tech).

 

[Van-d-all]

Allied with L0G3N-1 for neutral alignment in final mission (like with all the other commanders) then rushed the Kirko commander around turn 25, then Proton around turn 40. Medium difficulty. To my own surprise this (having 3 own cities and 2 x 2 conquered cities) turned the mission to be the easiest one of all the second tier campaign missions.

 

[Vind7]

Spam cities and force people to happiness slots while beelining for lava sector research. Without it you cant do much anyway.

 

[The Founder]

Allied with L0G3N-1 for neutral alignment in final mission (like with all the other commanders) then rushed the Kirko commander around turn 25, then Proton around turn 40. Medium difficulty. To my own surprise this (having 3 own cities and 2 x 2 conquered cities) turned the mission to be the easiest one of all the second tier campaign missions.

I figured as much. Every AI except L0G3N-1 is screwed over. And he is only fine because he is Promethean.

You said siding with him is only neutral? As siding with the other two is clearly CORE side, what would be the Carmina choice in this situation?

Spam cities and force people to happiness slots while beelining for lava sector research. Without it you cant do much anyway.

Interestingly a recent upgrade to teh Beta Patch has "share all" sell the excess food. So I can now limit how many people will life in a city.

 

[Van-d-all]

You said siding with him is only neutral? As siding with the other two is clearly CORE side, what would be the Carmina choice in this situation?

I wandered that myself.

 

[The Founder]

I wandered that myself.

I never finished that Amazon Questline in the Previous mission.
And that one Amazon on Khansu indicated she wanted to "talk about science and stuff." Maybe those two are related?

 

[Van-d-all]

I never finished that Amazon Questline in the Previous mission.

I did. Like all other choices in first mission of given faction it just changes the secret tech for the second mission. In this case to celestial.

 

[The Founder]

I did. Like all other choices in first mission of given faction it just changes the secret tech for the second mission. In this case to celestial.

I had the Tech changed to celestial despite not making this mission. That part seems fixed (or it was just bugged). Personally I would have prefered staying on Synthesis. It seems way more usefull for Assembly then Celestian (even if that one has it's advantages).

And there are other effects. i.e., how you decided to deal with the Syndicate on Leave-6 gives you a modifier on Diplomacy for the 2nd proper Vanguard Mission.

 

[Keioel]

I just accepted my people would be unhappy for most of the mission. Prioritized knocking out the other Assembly near me. Once they were gone moved my forces to Logans borders and then moved in on him and took him out.

Edit: Also celestian was a god send on this mission as their units and mods are powerful.

 

[Elgareth]

Strangely I didn't have any happyness Problems at all. I'm playing the campaign on medium if there are happyness penalties on hard like many 4X do. But rushing to the Lava Research by only taking one sector upgrade per Tier, the cosmite and happyness Upgrades kept my cities pretty much fine, even when going with central biofarm and a Food sector.
I sided with CORE, and had a teleporter next to the celestian Landmark, that took me 1 1/2 sectors away from logans capitol, so that was a quick Takeover. Afterwards I offered him a non-Aggression pact and he accepted
So I had his City, and he wouldn't retaliate.

I kept on expanding on my continent and rebuilding my army (because I did lose all but my OP commander in the fight for the capitol...that's why I desperately Needed the non-Aggression pact :-D) and then suddenly: "You win." Turns out someone else killed Logan xD I think it was the Syndicate.
Yeah, was a WAY easier Mission than the second Syndicate one. Oh god, all those teleporters x.X

 

[lisk]

Yeah, was a WAY easier Mission than the second Syndicate one. Oh god, all those teleporters x.X

I think second Syndicate mission most boring mission in campaign (although I have not played final mission yet). And the worst thing about teleporters, logistic AI using them in real-time. So if you click destination far away from current (next HQ for instance) in turn one, AI paves the way across the whole map. And if some exits are blocked on next turns, AI paves new way, and again, and again. So instead of 2-3 turns of direct travel to target your units stuck in endless cruise...

 

[Elgareth]

I think second Syndicate mission most boring mission in campaign (although I have not played final mission yet). And the worst thing about teleporters, logistic AI using them in real-time. So if you click destination far away from current (next HQ for instance) in turn one, AI paves the way across the whole map. And if some exits are blocked on next turns, AI paves new way, and again, and again. So instead of 2-3 turns of direct travel to target your units stuck in endless cruise...

Yeah, this Mission would really Need some Special win condition I think. I wanted to go unifier victory first, but the incredibly messy map along with all those AIs, most of which never accepted even a non-Aggression pact even though they were at +800, I thought screw it and just went doomsday. Those instantly appearing armies next to your cities thanks to everchanging teleporters that the Player never understands, but the AI perfectly knows... yuck.
I think I found a pretty exploit-y Thing though: When you stand with a stealth unit on the teleporter (maybe it even works with just any unit), the enemy seemingly can't use it. I know that I once immediately entered a battle with NPC Questmobs when going through a teleporter, so that doesn't disable teleporting.
In the end I had a single Scout on every teleporter of my Islands, and two fleets of maxed out ships that wrecked everything coming on a Transporter, and just waited out my Research and the doomsday Countdown...
Easily the worst Mission of the campaign, by being the only Mission that I didn't enjoy playing (the rest of the campaign is amazing for a 4X game IMHO).
I'll Play the final Mission this evening, hoping it'll be better :-D But it said 100% land, 0% water, so should be fine ^_^

 

[The Founder]

Yeah, this Mission would really Need some Special win condition I think.

For me "Doomsday Victory" was explicitly an option. I went that way in Syndicate 2 and the Ai had issues retaliating.

 

[mighij]

When you stand with a stealth unit on the teleporter (maybe it even works with just any unit)

Works with any unit, beat the campaign on very hard and it's a must to block the teleporters this way.