So, I tried a slightly different tack in my last ranked game - I abstained from building nearly any point defense, and more or less burrowed in my first quarter section of Isis. My opponent, unsurprisingly, built up pretty significant armies to the top and bottom chokepoints. However, this gave me an interesting advantage. I was able to take my main force, send it to the North choke point, while his southern units were essentially worthless (I was building units quickly so I could reinforce the center faster than he could send his southern units). I pushed through there and was given a run at his main base, but he was just progressing through to Tech 3 Siege bots as they showed up.
I was playing as Aeon, and I used a lot of T2 mobile shield units to keep his attacks at bay though. Moving as a complete group of units, I was able to push on him with rockets, T2 tanks, T1 tanks, and T1 artillery - all under a group of shields. When I first launched my assault, I had 80 units which helped me push right past his 50 or so troops and on towards his base.
Then, he played a quick game of catch-up on resources, actually out-matching me for a while as I went through Tech 2 to Tech 3 growing pains. Finally, I decided I'd try a couple maneuvers. I airlifted a pair of support commanders to the north of his base (which I'd cleared out with T2 gunships) with a steady flow of siege bots to support them. They built a forward attack base w/ a heavy shield and a few T2 PD's. I knew his siege bots were mounting up, and when they arrived, my troops were in some trouble.
However, in the meantime, I wasn't just sitting on my laurels. I also built a T4 collossus experimental, and put him in front of an army of about 100 mixed units (mostly T3 siege bots, T2 rocket launchers, and a bunch of T2 mobile shield generators). We stormed through the south base, and fortunately my production was right on track at that point. All throughout the game, I'd been very aggressive in building T2 gunships, and by the time my attacks were under way, I had 48 of them. Even though his base was fortified with a lot of T2 air defense, there were only a few T3's that I needed to worry about. I pushed my gunships across the top corner of his side of the map, and then down right on to his commander. Took a few seconds after that for the game to be wrapped.
I've been really trying to get in the habit of building way more factories than I used to. I used to build no more than 3 land factories and maybe 2 air factories. This time around, I had 4 land factories and 4 air factories! Definitely made a difference coming in to the later parts of the game when I had the resources to really put a hurt on him.
Anyways. Ranked wins rule :)
