Supreme Commander 2

Here's a replay demonstrating my absolute helplessness ;_; .

Got to rank 1900 by beating mostly UEF and cybran people, but then I got my butt kicked repeatedly by illuminate players. For example: This guy did this to me twice or 3 times before. I didn't bother with air cause I remember what happened the first time I tried it (it didn't turn out well).

Maybe I'm doing something wrong? dunno.

Also at the end: I had about 85 anarchists with training 2 or 3, range and health upgrades (and direct fire turret ofc) + 2 AC 1000's. My anarchists simply dissappeared thanks to the HUGE splash damage of bombers and OC. The 2 AC's didn't stand much chance either.

you could've gone for a fairly quick cruiser I suppose. That should've atleast killed his expansions. However I understand those are easy to overlook in the heat of battle.

I don't really care about the ending too much. My main objection is the early game, where the strenght you showed and had, should've won you the game. He held you off too easily with a few bombers and 4 pd's. That shows the true imbalance here, I think.

You are not wrong, I am doing a 1v1 marathon with illuminate to prove that Illuminate are overpowered. I had never played either Illuminate or 1 vs 1 ranked before, yet despite that I now have a rating of approximately 1700 with 13 wins and 1 loss. My single loss being to another Illuminate player.

I think that aeon is not OP but instead that UEF is a little bit weaker than the 2 other factions. Cybran can compete easier against aeon because mobile anti air has a powerful shield and their air units are multi function like Aeon.

You also lost too many units on his commander, you should mix a little bit with tanks and use your commander on the front.

From my point of view, Aeon is the best faction if you are high skilled player (but you need to deal with slow units), cybran is the easiest faction (fast and multi function) and uef is the weaker (but powerful in late game).

Dunno about you, but I never have problems with cybran as UEF.

As for making a cruiser...it's a blind BO. You have to build a shipyard directly to make it work, and versus standart illuminate tank play the cruiser just doesn't pay off (they hold them off very easily with tanks and cruisers + shipyard are resources that you aren't putting in tanks -> you get outnumbered whilst you didn't damage his eco at all).

Maybe you won't be able to kill anything with your cruiser against a Illu land build, but think of it this way:

If he has to chase you around with 10 tanks early on, that's 400 mass right there he can not use against you. Given that you micro your cruiser enough so he won't be able to catch you.
That almost pays for your shipyard and 1 cruiser.
You can also count (a bit) the factory shields he's making to keep your missiles from damaging structures.

All this means that he can not push you as hard on land.

So the only negative point I see in this build, is that you have less time to micro other stuff. If you can micro good, and multiple areas at the same time, there is no downfall.

If he doesn't do anything like this, most of his structures are fair game, and you can build multiple cruisers to also defend against air.

EDIT: This just is theorycraft on my part. My micro is probably not good enough, and I don't play UEF often.

Well Benno, believe me I tried to go cruisers on markon's and finns vs illuminate, but it just doesn't pay off. You are left early on with a lot less units than him, have only 1 cruiser and we know cruisers suck at naval combat. It won't be able to snipe mexes on it's own because engy's repair structures at a decent rate and only 5 tanks or so will chase you away (ok perhaps a tiny bit more).

I agree that markon sucks, not convinced about finns though. But thats based on my Cybran matches where I went with a few quick destroyers.

However I don agree that against Illu(tanks on water) and UEF(subs) it was far less effective then against cybran.

Destroyers do decent damage with their cannon, not mastodons.