Prequel to Advent Builds: Advent Ship and Strategy Analysis

Are we talking about the same Advent here? The one thing I *HAVEN'T* found lacking in Advent has been DPS. It's just a qualitative assessment at this point, but having played all 3, I've always felt the Advent did more damage than most anyone else, it's the armor department they were a bit short on.

Well, I'm still a noob but I've been liking the Advent a lot. So far, it's been like this.

Disciples are your best fleet for the early game, and they are pretty useful until you do get to unlock other things.

Sieges are meh because they're taken down easily, but if you ever noticed a place unchecked, you can spawn about 10 of them and send them to a location of your choice, it makes a decent disturbance strategy.. at least for me, anyway.

as far as the other units, Crusaders are pretty nice later on, and Guardian is useful, but Disciples and Defense are the two main. Sieges comes in for random disruption strat if you can manage one.

As for Capital Ships, The Mothership really takes it home for me. Malice and Shield Regen have been the most useful to me so far. However, I usually pick up Revelation for the Concentration Aura. I'm pretty sure they stack and they have a large range of usefulness. Pairing the two together usually pulls me through large fights.

I guess I should clarify.

With enough cap ships, Advent becomes pretty nice, with malice and various AOE spells to wipe out large groups of ships.

But before then, if you look at raw dps figures, Advent is really lacking. They don't have the shield pierce/missile swarm/power up that the Vasari have, or the cheap LRMs + gauss + raw DPS of the Mazra.

Uhm, you forgot about carriers. Are they easily counterable? Yeah, but they can wreak alot of destruction too.

Culturespam really needs to up gun the tax dollars it gives, or otherwise be a great deal cheaper if it's supposed to be a viable alternative to tradespam. There ought to be perhaps a cheaper cost to build on worlds with the same culture.

vasari and tec do more damage than advent. whats your point? they are meant to do more damage.

Advent seems a bit more defensive for early game. That's just how I play it. Of course you don't want to do it for too long, but usually I just colonize two to four things. Go insane with Logistics for a while, Adding Hangar Defense (which only needs one hostility tower and the upgrade needs two) everywhere. Then after I've gotten a large enough force, I go for whatever I see fit to take.

Of course, this is just basic Human vs CPU tactics. Actual people would probably play better than that, but that's what's been working for me. I can't go very extensive on it sadly. =/

What are you guys talking about? Disciples are worthless early game against anything but Militia. Anyone can pull out long range frigates and fry them! Once they get ability to steal antimatter, they become a lot better. They are not good DPS ships thou.

Advent are definitely best played defensively. I'll usually turtle up and attack with culture, get some trade ports down. Then I can tech really high in weapons and get good Illum upgrades and then go rampaging across the galaxy with some Illums, motherships, and drone hosts.

You are wrong my friend.

Though they tend to be on the weak side once initial colonies are established and mid game reasearch begins(lvl 3 and 4 mil) they become a force to be reckoned with.

Alright, here is my strategy for advent in larger games. Obviously you may need to adapt depending on your enemies/starting position, but generally this is what I like to follow.

Basically the startup focuses on gaining an early economic advantage and countering LRM spam, then you can start adapting/trying different strategies with your superior economy.

If I know I'll be first, I'll immediatly buy 200 crystal, and then do the civilian upgrade on the homeplanet for the increase in tax income.

Build a capital ship factory and the resource extrators, and queue up the Progenitor Mothership and a few Seekers. The first seeker set to auto-explore, and possibly the second if its a larger map. Make enough seekers to support the Mothership in taking over the first asteroid/planet (yes, early game my main fleet consists of Seekers, while doing less damage than disciples, they have better hull/shields for the price, and will save you metal for later, all while being an effective counter to LRM, just make sure to turn their auto-attack ON).

Once your capital ship is complete, give it the colonize ability to avoid wasting resources on a missionary vessel. Scuttle the cap ship factory for some resources/logistics slots and build 2 temples of harmony. You should be taking your first asteroid/planet now. As far as that goes, I like to destroy any siege ships first, and colonize even if there are other enemy ships still around, it'll give you jump-start on the population and upgrades. Upgrade the civilian infrastructure and logistics slots first while the Motherships colonize ability has reduced the cost (it seems to take effect around 10 seconds after colonizing the planet or so).

From there on, build the extractors and your third temple of harmony at your new planet, then research trade centers, and build at least 1 trade center on each planet (I prefer 2 if possible, and your homeplanet still has enough free logistics for the first center if you scuttled the cap ship factory). During this your fleet should be advancing/taking new planets, upgrading civilian infrastructure to eliminate the new planet tax penalty takes priority over research/ship production.

There, keep building trade centers for a longer route, and you now have good credit income, are able to field fleets of seekers (which only cost credits) and able to counter early LRM spam. Now you can adapt easily to the other players and do what you want (I personally focus a bit on culture first if my enemies aren't aggressive.)
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As far as capital ships are concerned. I personally love Progenitor Mothership + Rapture Battlecruiser + Guardians + any attack frigates. The mothership and guardians work great together for the shield regen/shield projection combo. The rapture makes that combo even better with Vertigo, -30% to hit AND firing rate for the enemy. Add in culture bonuses and/or shield/hull techs, and you have a nigh invincible fleet.

Lol? Illuminators do not blow,their much better then lrm's.

As for capitals....The Revelations has the highest base damage if i recall correctly,alhought radiance and mothership are still the best.

As for the guardian...it's not steep....if your playing advent you w ant your shields at their best, and they only requires 3 labs, well worth every penny.

Anyways onto the maps...

Small map 1 vs 1....

4 disciples, a mothership, and 2 temple of harmony so you can research the evangelism things, expand fast and hard, making sure to get your capital all the experience it can get, then research the guardian, illuminators and defense vessels, should take you about 30 minutes, at which point you need to figure out what to do,as it gets situational.

I usually get the shield one first, because that way I can use the mothership to take on insane amounts of local militia and snag Terran planets. By the time you blow up all the militia, you usually level to 2 and can get colonize.

What about the Halycon Cap Ship? I don't think many people enjoy the tactic of spamming bombers or whatever, but they're useful in their own right.

ever though of an early rush with advent? why else would advent have their planetary bombardment frigate require only 1 research facility?

the advent carrier capital ship is my first choice for the auras.

Great guide. Can't wait to see what you write in the future!

One of the best ways yall could illustrate your points is through posting replays.

By showing what you or the other guy did, yall can give your arguements a more grounded basis, and just show off in general

Note: I only play vs computer, no PVP so my comments are on AI only.

Radiance is a self-leveling beast. Grab the anti-matter burn and armor as you level up and clear all planets near you. By time you need to get Terrans cleared you should be level 4-5 and start grabbing agro, let your Disciples do damage while you are the center attention.

I rarely need more cap-ship firepower than Radiance + Mothership together, I could play entire games using just those two (per fleet). Add in a couple guardian and you quickly have max level Caps, able to destroy entire fleets of frigates in a hurry with brillance. Once you've wiped out the frigates your own units can whittle down opposing caps (and coupled with economy drain of culture puts you ahead in an attrition war).

As I don't have to face out-right "LRM Spam" I don't need to build my fleet to oppose it but combination of cruiser-carriers with fighters, Defense frigs and a high-level Radiance that will crush all of them in one fell swoop (unless he micro's to keep them split) should be able to counter them fairly effectively. Without having to resort to extreme fleet builds (I do balanced fleet builds) I easily can counter AI fleets. Worst case I fight a retreating battle, giving up planets short-term, while destroying as many frigates as possible to put an economic and resource drain on opponents, win via attrition.

I like this thread. I've gotten some great tips here already that i'm eager to put to the test. Thanks everybody.

Actually, the Advent is currently the only race i have any desire playing. Once i feel (if) i've mastered it, then i'll try another race. The Advents' ships just look so much better to me than the others (human ships look really boring) and i enjoy the whole aesthetic of the race and find the various female UI voices soothing throughout the game.

I always like to get an earlyish culture push in.. can sometimes make it hard for your opponents to take over planets near to your borders - and you can get the culture tech very early in the game.

and I too prefer the advent aesthetic over TEC, and the voices over the painful vasari one in particular.

The only problem I've ever found with the Advent is the voices. Oh god, I have little psionic Children of the Corn girls piloting my ships!!

I don't mean to be... an ass.

But responses like this:

"Small map 1 vs 1....

4 disciples, a mothership, and 2 temple of harmony so you can research the evangelism things, expand fast and hard, making sure to get your capital all the experience it can get, then research the guardian, illuminators and defense vessels, should take you about 30 minutes, at which point you need to figure out what to do,as it gets situational.
"

That's not a small map 1v1. That's HUGE MAP 4V4.

Small map 1v1s end in under 20 minutes. This advice is... poor.

I've never played advent in small map 1v1, and I'm going to start doing so to understand the intricacies about the race. I was HOPING for some... enlightened comments on how the race works instead of vague, mostly stupid, statements.

First, you NEED missionary vessels for neutral extractors, which are VITAL to a war effort. So that part is nonoptional.

Second, I have posted tons of replays, including a 2v2 replay in the clan wars section, where my Vasari takes out TWO of the LOS guys, 1v2, even though I went FOUR imperial labs at the beginning (I was rushing Dark Armada, got caught doing it, had to SCUTTLE ALL FOUR LABS, and STILL won 1v2). Why? Because ADVENT SUCKS. I have plenty of high quality replays lying around in the forums. Look around.

Third, Illums suck. They Suck. This is not really a debate. They suck so goddamn hard. They're NOT MICROABLE. Which means, a pro playing them is the same as a newb. Which means you can't focus fire, which means you kill NO UNITS.

Fourth, I like defense frigates, but I'm unsure how to use them. Right now, my plan is defense frigates and drone carriers.

Thoughts? Opinions?

This is me with the kid gloves on. If I get more crappy responses like the one above, I'm seriously going to start flaming. You have been warned.

Just randomly brought out a question about the guardians, doesn't their shield bubble stack? Which is more effective: x numbers of shield all together? or 1 by 1? assuming it's in very big battle.

Oh, and i find the manasteal ability of their Disciple pretty useful as well.

The Advent suck. Now tell me how to play them.

HuntingX, I think you need to review your analysis of the Advent a bit more carefully. Look at the numbers, you can figure out how to squeeze out more DPS with Advent.

Anyone building temple of harmony early on a small 1v1/2v2 map really fights the wrong opponents.

Currently to me the best to go with is Progenitor(Shield), disciples and defense vessels.
Asap spam defense vessels if the opponent is going LRM/Assailants.
Make sure to get the first shield techs, the rest is up to you and your opponent.