Greetings. I am new to GC2 and bought the Gold edition with the new campaign. I realize everyone is playing Dark Avatar right now but I wanted to start out with the old campaign so I could get a feel for the game. I have already had some successful test games and was doing fine on the DL campaign until I hit Apocalypse. I could only find 4 relevant posts on the topic so far. Any of you old hands out there know if its normal to get blasted by a DL battleship before you can actually get your planets up and running. I had the game on beginner, simple and am scaling down now to "retard" mode. I try and build a fleet and the DL ships come and wipe them out immediately.I cant seem to get to the say 35th turn. Its fun, cruel and really annoying. Was the AI changed for the gold edition? I had one stalemated game I retired from since it was a real war of attrition. I had reached a fairly high level and was consumed in defending two remaining planets from take over.

I am set as an industrialist with maxed military capacity at the moment. I initially start colonizing and building Defenders which is all I am capable of at the start. Once I get up to about 12-18 ships the battleships arrive and spank the hell out of them. I tried building freighters to buff my economies they just get shot after a few runs. I usually try and open up logistics early so I can make fleets as fast as possible.

Any tips would be appreciated.