Problems on Siege.

That mission is a pain. There's a discussion at Link.

If you can't beat it, there's always the alternative mission. The Torians will thank you for at least trying to beat Siege , so they don't hold it against you.

Hey thanks for the reply and link. I actually ended up beating it after a couple more tries. I got fed up and went all out with troop transports (with upgraded engines) and just spammed the target planet till I took it. Unfortunately now I'm stuck on the next mission where the target planet is a dread lord planet.

Oh well, having to improvise makes it fun!

I rushed to the center planet, rushed research labs, got to troop transports and sent 3 with escorts to the target planet, put a star base down for the final needed range, and took the planet as the DL were taking my planets. Very quick game and I spend all the $$.

The mission after siege isn't actually that bad. After the first time you do it you know which are the better planets, so go for those only and let your allies colonize the size 4 and 5 garbage. The main advantage is you have fewer planets to defend, and it forces your allies into the fight as a sort of buffer between you and the dread lords. Support them as you can, but mainly charge up the tech tree and develop industry to crank out the ships you need to clear the dread lord ships out, and then just mob the target planet.

I played the "achilles heel" mission and let my allies do the fighting. They would lose a planet to the DL then retake it stealing a better technology, which they'd produce on new ships. Soon the DL's just couldn't handle the numbers and I won without ever seeing their homeworld.

I've just completed the siege mission, I didn't find it that hard. I went with rushing to colonise the three planets on the way to the dreadlord planet and then getting logistics techs and building lots of fleets of tiny fighters and then overcoming any ships the the dreadlords sent by sheer numbers. Having 40 attack doesn't matter one bit if you destroy the ship before it can fire, alternatively the overkill was so great that you would only lose a couple of ships before it was destroyed.

Then I waited for my allies to invade the planet...
and kept on waiting...
Then I got bored and sent my own ships out there, only when my allies realised that I was about to take the remaining planets did they decide to send their own transports and take them from under my nose ah well, onto the next mission.

I had main 3 planets with big population so they are hard to take. If you loose one buy transports and quickly retake. Keep ships on the bottom middle of the map so DL dont kill them. On unprotected DL planets use mass driver invasions with quick transports. Then trade crappy planets away to Dreign cause the DL will take em back anyway. Soon they are like class 2 planets and you can take them quickly and get awsome techs each time.