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Khral vs. Saps large airial battles
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lion37

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lion37

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I am currently playing Khrals vs. Saps and have a very large arial battle standoff. My opponent has 12 Helis. I have 12 Garudas and 8 swarmers.

What is the best strategy for Khrals when fighting a very large force of Heli's?

1) Should the Khral player build mostly Garudas, mostly Swarmers, or a mix of both?
2) What formation should be used? I have a line of Garudas in front and a line of Swarmers directly behind them. I plan to add a third line of Garudas which would form a "Swarmer sandwich" (TM). Is this the best formation?
3) Should I attack first or wait to be attacked first?
4) Is there any point in putting some Wyrms in the back? Seems like they would be easy targets for the Heli's once the battle started. Our map is mostly ocean in any case.
5) The longer we wait and build up our army's, which side benefits more?
6) Right now there are 5 hexes between my front line and my opponents front line so neither side can attack. Is it best to advance 1 hex at a time, or several hexes, or wait for them to advance, etc?
7) Is it better for either side if the formation is a straight line or a zigzagging line?

I am looking for specific, well thought out answers that explain why one strategy is supperior to another here.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Sep 21, 2009 05:28

The Reaver

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The Reaver

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Odd, but what you should do is keep the Swarmers in the back and fire from a distance to get the GangUp bonus while using your Garudas to form a wall and kill weakened Helis before they can flee and repair. If you have any weakened Garudas, don't bother attacking--just repair. 2 repair per turn isn't bad. I'm pretty sure that you have the advantage in the long run because you can pump out cheaper aerial units.

The "Swarmer sandwich" wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to replace fallen Garudas. As such, make more Garudas than Swarmers, but make sure you have spare Swarmers in case your opponent breaks through your line.

Advance your Garuda line forward slowly and keep the Swarmers directly behind it to make room for more Swarmers. Wyrms aren't really your best choice in this situation. They're too expensive for their damage output against Helis (I think it's 4 damage without GangUp, but I'll have to check again), you can pump out two Swarmers for every one Wyrm (and I know for sure that Swarmers do 2 damage against Helis), and you won't really be able to use the Swarmer sandwich tactic with the Wyrm.

Building an Underling or two when you have enough tempo wouldn't be a bad idea to counter any Batteries your opponent decides to build.
Hachiman

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Hachiman

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I havent played this exact situation but I have played Khral vs Saps quite a bit lately, and almost always won with Swarmers, even vs high ranked (1900+) players.

At the moment I think the answer is: Spam Swarmers, with perhaps some Garuda to finish off weakend Heli's.

Swarmers have the advantages of being able to do significant damage without being hurt in return (weakening your opponents counter attacks), to be able to make more attacks on the one target due to range, and to cost less.

The last is significant because if your opponent does not kill his targets in one turn, you have more units to screen your damaged units while they repair.

I'm not sure about how to manuever, but I'm pretty sure you'd like to attack first with your Swarmers at range, if possible. They will weaken his counter attack without taking any damage. Garuda are obviouly better in the front line if you get attacked first, especially if he doesn't gang up.

As in most cases, it is more important to kill 1 unit than damage 2. Don't attack if you will get hurt back in the attack, and you won't kill your opponent. 1 on 1 Garuda are better of being attacked first, then healing against Heli's - but it changes a bit with Gang ups (2 Heli's will kill a Garuda in a turn).

Lines are better than zig zags, because they limit your opponents ability to gang up a little.

If you can crowd your opponent to his edge of the map, it can mean you have room to retreat and heal your units, while he does not (might not apply in a big open map).

I think the advantage is with you the more things build up, because it increases the advantage of concentration of fire you can bring to bear (and the Heli's will start getting in each others way with their second moves).

Please bear in mind this is mostly informed supposition - I haven't been in your exact situation, and the air war balance has changed a bit recently.
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gunther84

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gunther84

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...ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US....
Isolation

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Isolation

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To update with current unit stats. If you are facing down mass helis you should mass garuda mostly and focus your attack on gaining the +2 gangup bonus as you are about 35% to kill a heli with two garuda and +1 gangup bonus. I like to have a wyrm in the background as it becomes very dangerous after a couple of hits and I often have buried underlings around the place which I either use for marines or to restrict helicopter movement with timed resurfacing. I've actually beaten players before purely on resurfacing an underling to block the helis retreat and then smashing them up with garuda, as the sapien advance was dependant on being able to run away easily.

Swarmers are useful only if you can't get the +2 gangup bonus as if you lead with a swarmer you'll often be able to take down a heli anyways even with +1 gangup. Ideally you will use a unit combination and target heli which then allows you +2 gangup on another heli and so on until you've destroyed as many helis as you can. Recently I played a high ranked player who I'm not naming and he made a mistake with his advance which allowed me (with 7 garuda and 3 underlings against 5 helis and 2 marines) to destroy 3 helis in one turn and knock a 4th down to 5 health.

Garuda on a cost for cost basis destroy helis, the only advantage helis have is move after attack and that requires a shield of marines which obviously gives you a chance to adapt your build and be slightly more orientated towards underlings. All things being equal though, if your opponent is making nothing but helis then just make nothing but garuda and maybe work a wyrm in if it gets to ridiculous numbers (as 4 damage to a 10hp heli and taking 0 in return is alot better than 4-5 damage and taking 6-7 in return).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 24, 2010 06:53

ggggg

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ggggg

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I agree. If you build nothing but garudas and your sapian opponent builds nothing but helis, you will be able to build garudas about 40% faster than he can build helis (350 vs. 500 credits a piece). Given that in head-to-head battle, a garuda will deal out nearly as much damage as it takes, this will go in your favor. Furthermore, having more units than the opponent makes it easier to take advantage of the gang-up bonus and the repair rate of two is very nice as well (just move the damaged units to the rear to repair and let the units in from serve as a shield - garudas have the same mobility as helis, so they can't be outrun).

Because of this, of course, as strong sapian opponent will not simply build heli after heli if you build garuda after garuda, but will adopt some other strategy instead. As a sapian player on the other side of the battle, I find marines an excellent counter-strategy to garuda spam on maps with lots of forest and mountains. A marine in the forest can attack a garuda on roughly equal terms, but since the marine is 3 1/2 times cheaper, this is a steal for the sapian player.

I recently won a sapian-vs-khlarian battle in chato hill by building two helis, one battery, and almost nothing but marines from the rest of the game (with a very occasional marauder). The marine spam just ate up his garudas and the helis were primarily used to finish off damaged units that I couldn't convienently attack with marines.

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guolin

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guolin

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Marine spam is by far the main reason Khrals can't rely on Garuda spam against Saps. Recently, my best try against Saps is mixing in some Swarmers with my Garudas - they can repel a few marines here and there and deal a bit of damage to helis. The main issue is that both helis and marines (espeically on mountains) cripple a Swarmer, and the Swarmer just can't repair back up like the Garuda.

However, on maps with lots of water, Khrals stand a chance due to Marines' inability to help much. I just make sure my Garudas can double team as much as possible. Destroyers are something to watch out for though on some maps, though I tend to focus fire on those things as long as I don't lose more than 2 whole garudas (retreating weak Garudas and plopping 10h Garudas in front of the weak ones works great to bring those garudas back up).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 12, 2011 20:53

eltdrgntmr

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eltdrgntmr

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yep marine spam is really really effective against any aerial in open ground. i learned that the hard way =(

oh and btw swarmers arent really too effective against helis. does at most 3 damage each, and that's being really lucky.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 28, 2012 12:39

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PurpleLlama

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PurpleLlama

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What I would say, is that you should simply counter air with air. I fend off heli's very easily when using garudas. another strategy would be to use wyrms. you would have to make sure the wyrms are protected though.
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