Infinity (level)

[Terrial]

To be honest I didn't get very far at all. I took 2 other asteroids and then the AI had like 70 seedlings and mine were like 1/4 the size of theirs.

[annikk.exe]

Cheers Blueskirt :>  Glad you enjoyed it.

[riotpatriot]

Holy hell, this is the only map I've raged at in the whole game. 

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When I started out, I went on dominating the current area when I found the rotating asteroid. I tried getting one onto it to see what happens, but I missed it, so I was thinking "oh well, maybe it'll return"

It did. With 90 enemy seedlings.  (I quit the match)

The second try I had 20 scouts on Transport A. I was monitoring the asteroid for quite a bit and found Transport B. 20 went from A to B. Found the enemy hive, went to the safety place, saw in horror that it just sent 100++ seedlings to transport B, found out I had only 30 seedlings at the starting area.  (quitted)

The third try I captured the upper 2 asteroids first (Just to save up on seedlings) and sent all (50-ish) to Transport A. Didn't hop from A to B. Found spikeland (sent a scout to the safe area). Found the land where they had some unoccupied space. Dyson'd the two just in time when my starting area got overrun. Had a happy family of 80-ish. Fended off waves of low-energy-but-high-attack-and-speed seedlings in 150's. Got to their main production house (with 8 trees), captured it. Received 500 enemy seedlings from transport B.  (also quitted)

Fourth try was the same as third, just that I managed to get better astroids (so much so that I made 2 defence trees on the first neighbouring asteroid to try to buy time). Didn't work. See try 3.  (quiiiiit)

After reading this thread, I thought maybe I should take things slowly. Made more dyson trees on the starting usual 3. Only managed 25 on A this time. Went on to attack spikeland. Broke the lone defence tree, but didn't have enough to sap. Quickly gathered the 100++ I had waiting for B. Got all of them to B while they started the attack. They capped the first 2 when I just arrived. Was racing against time to sap spikeland 1 when they capped my starting point. (too late to quit. crashed)

Thanks for making me WANT to win this! It's hard, REALLY hard, but hopefully luck and timing is on my side on one of the rematches.
(and yes, I might tweak the starting asteroid stats to cheat a bit. I'll be keeping the original map)

[blueskirt]

Don't be scared by the big numbers. It's not that hard when you remember some facts:

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-1- The defending player always has the advantage over the attacking player
-2- The tighter the attacking formation is, the more effective the attack will be

The key to win this mission is to keep these two facts in mind and pay attention to what happens when an army, any army, get on/off the moving asteroids. I took my time, it took me around an hour and half but I finished it on my first try.

[annikk.exe]

Thanks for playing, Riotpatriot.  :>

One thing I would suggest is

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try to charge the enemy at the start - build 1 tree on each asteroid, the minimum you need to reach them - and try to take over 1 asteroid from them immedietely with your remaining crappy forces and whatever seedlings grow on the trees you planted to get there.  You should be able to take it from them, and that will immedietely put you at an advantage in terms of the number of asteroids you have access to - it cuts them off from the rest of the home galaxy.

Take control of your home galaxy as quickly as possible.  The enemy will probably send about 50-150 seedlings to attack you after about 12 mins of game time has passed.  Assuming you have completely colonised your home galaxy by this point, send all the seedlings you can onto the comet as soon as the enemy attacks.  Sure, they'll take an asteroid or two from you, but because they have to sacrifice so many seedlings to bomb a core, they will swiftly run out of steam after 1-2 asteroids.  As soon as they've taken one of your asteroids, move all your forces to another friendly asteroid and look to see where they are attacking next.  Later on, when they send 500+ seedlings per wave, this tactic becomes less viable.

When you have that under control, take a look at the comet.  Leave your seeds on it, don't jump onto the other comet as you pass it.  Skip the first galaxy you come to (the one with all the defensive trees).  Get your seedlings onto the galaxy opposite your home galaxy, and try to colonise that.  The earlier you can get a decent amount of seedlings up there, the greater chance you have of successfully prising it from the grasp of the infected.

Hope this helps.. :>

[blueskirt]

Strange. I'd suggest the complete opposite.

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Take control of your home galaxy ASAP as you suggested, then you turtle. You hoard a massive army on the big, inner most asteroid. Whenever the comet appears in your screen with the enemy's massive army, you move your army back in your home galaxy.

The trick now is to play with the AI. If you split your troops evenly in between the asteroids that are threatened by the comet, the AI will be scared and won't attack. You don't want him to do that. If he doesn't attack, all the units that didn't attack you this time will be added to the next wave. You want him to attack you now, while his army is weak. There are 3 asteroids that are threatened by the comet:

The big, inner most asteroid you cannot plant a tree on (the AI never attack this one)
And two asteroids in your home galaxy.

Move your army on one of the two asteroids, leave the other empty, to bait the AI into attacking it. When he takes the bait, quickly move your army on the asteroid he's attacking.

You see, the comet screw up the attacking formation. Every units will need more time to reach your asteroid, the slowest units can land on your planet 2 minutes after the attack was initiated. 500+ enemy seedlings charging you might be scary on paper, but attacking with 500+ units, when the attacking formation is spread on a column that will take 2 minutes for all units to reach the target, is entirely pointless, the enemy may as well be attacking with 100 waves of 5 units each, most of the enemy seedlings will be obliterated the moment they'll enter your asteroid's atmosphere. By the end of the battle, your enemy will have lost 10-20 times more units than you did. It's a lot like the battle of Thermopylae.

Keep on turtling until you have 700 seedlings. The next time the enemy attacks, move 350 seedlings on the comet and keep 350 at home to defend your base. Don't worry if the enemy tries to attack the comet your army is on, defending the comet is just as easy as defending from an attack launched from it.

Go in the top left corner of the galaxy, land your units on the big, inner most asteroid in front of the enemy base. If you're lucky enough, the enemy might even move all his units on the comet, leaving his base completely defenseless. Don't make the same mistake as the enemy and wait for all your units to land on the big asteroid before attacking his base. If the enemy base is too well defended, just wait for the comet to come back, the enemy will move his army on it, giving you the opportunity to attack

When you've conquered it, turtle a bit and launch another 350+ seedlings attack on the base in the top right corner, then the bottom left corner, repeating the same thing you did in the above paragraph.

That's it. The moment you realize the comet screw up with the attacking formation, all those 500+ seedlings waves stop being scary.

[naschi]

best map ever... but it crashed after finishing it

[BC wins]

best map ever... but it crashed after finishing it

yeh indeed
i player it al out and won was really awesome
all those comments make it look so hard when it's not

but when i won and the 3 minute show started after a little bit of time the game crashed

[annikk.exe]

Keep the crash reports coming.  Still no idea what exactly has broken following the latest game patch.  Thankfully it only happens at the end and doesn't interrupt players during the level itself.  Other levels like Return To Fluffy Land are completely broken.

[Ytaker]

I had a crash too. Weirdly, I didn't have a crash when in a later replay, I used developer's mode.

[Jazz Ad]

I just wanted to point out that I finally managed to beat this level, which makes me kinda proud of myself.
It was a lot of fun. Thanks.

[annikk.exe]

Thanks for playing! :>

Hopefully your experience was good, and it didn't crash on you, as others have been reporting..

[Aino]

This map is damned hard, but I destroyed the map, litterally cause it crashed when I won xD

[Jazz Ad]

No crash issue for me.
The map quickly reaches the 4096 =seedling hard limit.
In this situation, the engine is prone to crashing.

[Don]

...oh, now that, was inspiring -- this level was one of the best strategy games I've ever had
the pleasure to play, excellent work! Being a crossover/wine user, I'm a bit belated getting
around to this (we were borked behind the need for .net service pack supports), but now
winecore has such, Eufloria behaves exceptionally well with wine on linux...and licking this
custom level, -has- to be one of the pinnacles of the game itself....

...that said, (and why I'm posting here), is wrt the lock-up event described above ; in linux
using crossover 11 (close to wine-1.4), that's a routine mishap with this level, in fact, it's
about the -only- place Eufloria crashes on the current winecore. The crash happens for me
at 2 places -- when you fail miserably and the universe flies apart and asteroids start gravitating
about, and, when you actually beat the thing and the universe rejoices and asteroids start
moving about. I see it firstly as a .NET error, which once dismissed results in eufloria.exe
itself crashing out, and one ends up needing to kill that process to regain sanity...

...mind you, any way you look at it, tackling this level, and winning == a game of some long
duration, and somewhere along the way you should actually learn to know when the AI has
you licked, and it's best to back out and start the level again ; that, works fine without any
issues, so no big deal... would've been nice to see things spin out for 3minutes instead of
3seconds  tho' at the end, having finally won  =)...

.... great stuff..