Supreme Commander

How should I have stopped this rush? :x

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Damn, you really fought until the bitter end...

Good use of land scouts by Cauldron, combined with an early force of raiders designed to gain the upper hand in economy and initiative.

You turned him back with your commander.

What it came down to is that you were just to slow when it came to devoting resources to pumping out units. Build less factories early on and focus on producing more units faster from fewer factories. All those factories don't do you much good if you don't have the economy to pump units out of all of them at a reasonable pace.

Cauldron was smart to exploit his advantage by fortifying a position right outside your base.

When he's on your doorstep like that and has the unit advantage, it's usually time to build a few PDs to give you an edge.
But you solved the problem with a bold calculated risk to rush with your commander and whatever units you had to dislodge his from that position.

You made a strategic mistake in keeping your right flank tanks idle for so long. You should have used a land scout or airplane to see what the situation was ahead of you. Then you would have been able to take down that area before he could build PDs to defend it.

You do the right thing trying to throw up a few PDs on the left of your base, but Cauldron is one step ahead of you and already has T2 missile launchers churning out. Thanks to his early economic gains over you, he's gotten these out faster and will be able to use them unchallenged for a while before you get some to match.

At that point your best bet would have been charging his missile launchers with everything you had, because they were really only defended by his commander. You do eventually do this, but you were a bit to slow and just didn't have enough units.

Cauldron once again demonstrates his strategic thinking skill by placing a tactical missile defense near his staked out zone, recognizing that your next likely move will be missile launchers of your own. Followed up by a T2 flak for good measure in case you go air.

This whole time you could have been doing significant damage by raiding with your forces on the right, even though he has PDs on the right, you could have gone around them and still taken some stuff out.
At the very least you should have sent them down south to aid in trying to take out his missile launchers. It would have been a very effective two pronged attack considering how few ground forces he had there to defend with.

Once he has them protected by a T2 PD it's all over.

He is even able to overcome your tactical missile defense by simply building more T2 mobile missile launchers.



Verdict? There was no magic build order that he rushed you with - He just out thought you at every step of the strategic chess game.

I give Cauldron gets a 9/10 for a masterful performance, combining effective raiding with positional warfare and using the right units for the right job.
Scaffy gets a 4/10, for a very average performance.


Overall 6/10 for being a good demonstration of how one can overcome the typical Aeon strategy of ground spam through strategic thinking and positional warfare.

Not that you played badly, its just that being on the defensive is a losing battle unless you already have a defense waiting. It hardly matters if you destroy a bunch of his units, he can make more. While he can hurt your infrastructure you can't do anything to his.

Phoenix is right. Had you used that small force of tanks on your right, that sat there all game doing nothing, you could have taken out his hydro plant and perhaps some T2 mexes.

Also I noticed that you built T1 mobile AA when he didn't even have any planes in the air, maybe a scout. Aeon T1 AA is not worth it, spam intercepters when needed, you get much better results for your cost.

But my hat's off to Cauldron. That was a very nice game on your part.

Have you ever compared the build time and ressources for interceptors and t1 aa ? If not, do so.

Fair enough. I guess I should have been more specific.

IMO unless you overload on T1 AA it really doesn't protect you from air attacks. By the time T1 AA kills the bombers or whatever you've already lost some key stuff.