Dreadlords campaign building weaponless defenders

Also, experience points and ship level don't advance

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was curious about how the new combat system would impact play. I converted my first survey vessel into a weaponized cargo hull, with four Laser-II, and sent it to take down the Drengin defenses preparatory to invasion. That Beam-4 cargo hull took out:
  • Economy starbase (unarmed)
  • Military starbase (no upgrades, it was built last turn)
  • Colonizer
  • Two unarmed scouts
  • Nine unarmed defenders

About halfway through the defenders, I fleeted it with an upgraded tiny scout (three Laser-III by then) and the two of them finished off the rest of the defenders.

For all that combat, neither vessel earned any experience points, nor level gains. At the end, they both had experience:0 and level:0.

Also, I wondered if the Drengin were broke, or had no weapon tech, so I checked, and they had Laser-III (which I bought from them!) and about 4,000bc. No shortage.

If you wish to check out the game, here is a QuickSave during the battle. Unzip it to your "My Games\GalCiv2\Dread Lords Campaign" folder.

3,445 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
[bump] Defenders should be armed, yes?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have this problem too. Throughout the whole campaign, the only combat ships the Drengin AI has built are unarmed defenders. Makes for a pretty un-fun campaign. What's the deal?
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wait till you get to the final mission, where the opponent never builds a single ship! Link

Sorry to spoil the end of the campaign for you, but it sort of spoils itself.

However, the missions in the middle can be a lot of fun just for the way you have to plan out a strategy with weird goals and lots of starting money, ships, and tech. I'm not sorry I played the campaign, just sorry that it wasn't challenging on Masochistic.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Search around and you'll find many posts on this topic. The first few missions and the last one are really lame, even on Painful and above, for the reasons mentioned above. The ones in the middle are pretty fun though...
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hey, for fun I decided to surrender the mission where the Drengin don't build weapons on their defenders and try the alternate mission. That mission is basically the same scenario with better allies, versus the Yor. The Yor AI does not do the same stupid thing as the Drengin do. It built one defender per planet without weapons. When I blew those up with my cargo hull, it replaced them with 7-power defenders. It didn't wait for a year to pass before redesigning, either.