As mentioned above, this guide is really relevant to people who are bored of Rushing in the early
game and enjoy playing longer matches with all available units, techs and structures being fully utilisied as the game gets played out across the map. It might also be useful for struggling Achievement Hunters who desperately want to unlock the "Epic Loss" Steam achievement.



Almost inevitably in a longer game, you or your opponent will attempt to build your faction's Epic unit for your existing army to rally behind and send forward into the fray, tearing a pathway through the enemy's army to your opponent's HQ and allowing you to snatch victory.

But....

What if you're on the recieving end of this appocolyptic catastrophe?

Faced with the ultimate challenge, how do you defend your base using the seemingly powerless units you have and turn the game around when facing off against an enemy Epic?

After reading this guide you will know a lot more about the various Epic units that you will come up against in-game, and how you can best go about hunting them and taking them down.


Splat. The Purger gets squashed.


The absolute BEST thing that you can do to effectively counter Epic units is to scout your opponent relentlessly and harass them as soon as they start to build their Epic unit. Building an Epic is a long process and sucks in a huge quantity of resources, so your opponent will be particularly weak and defenseless at this point. Counter their Epic by simply preventing them from building one if possible!

If it's too late for that and your opponent already has a fully-fledged Epic unit up and running, remember that all Epics have an Armour score of 10, so units with high penetration scores are needed to effectively attack Epics. Don't under any circumstances counter an Epic with Tier 1 units, unless you just plan to distract your opponent with them and redirect your opponent's Epic's firepower away from your more useful units!


General

• The building of Large Factories with tech attachments near an enemy base probably won't be used for normal unit production. Bear in mind that forward Large Factories are less likely to be prodcuing Epics than those entranched in the enemy's base.
  
• The enemy army is largely inactive and has been very withdrawn, indicating that the opponent is keeping their units close to the Epic whilst it builds up.
  
• Your opponent has a large economy, often at the expense of their army. Small numbers of units but a large number of extractors indicate an Epic is on the way!

Faction-specific

• A Human faction enemy will build all of the tech attachments for Tank, Artillery, Air and Stealth units early. They can later easily teleport them onto a Large Factory so that the effective build time of their Alpha is reduced as they don't have to wait as long for the prerequisite structures to be built.
  
• A Beta player will probably build their Epic behind manned walls for extra defense. If you find a particular area which appears to be sectioned off from the main base by guarded walls be highly suspicious.
  
• A Goo enemy will have a large number of mobile Mother Goos/ Proteans heading in what seems to be the same direction. A Protopurger will likely be placed in an unambiguous corner behind mountains or near brush by wise opponents so that if their sacrificial Goo units get spotted they can sneak away quickly. Keep visibility on all cataylst vents using scouts.
  
• A Shroud enemy can easily get to Stage 1 without being noticed but something to look out for are any Crucible structures with three nearby Amplifiers and a relatively defensible position. It will probably be built close to brush so that the Dirge unit can be hidden easily. You should notice a Stage 2 Dirge, as it will need to kill your units to evolve (!), and an easy way to do this is by attacking and killing your harvesters - so pay attention to your supply lines.

To start things off lets take a look at the different stats and abilities of the various Epic units in the game, so that we have a vague idea of what we're going up against.


The Human Aplha has the lowest health of any of the fully-developed Epic units in the game but it more than makes up for this with its diverse range of weaponry. The Alpha has a beam cannon as its main weapon, then also has an energy burst (a.k.a. "reverse-gravitation emission") attack to deal with close-range enemies as well as an anti-aircraft attack.




Special abilities:

• Detects Stealth

The Hand of Ruk packs a serious punch. It can be thought of as a mobile lauch pad for nucelar misslies, although its movement speed really is quite slow so "mobile" here is open to interpretation. It can train ground units and has six positions in which to mount units into (e.g. Guardians/ Predators/ Cloudbursts) for mid-to-close range defense.




Special abilities:

• Detects Stealth
  
• Can produce ground units
  
• Can mount up to six units

The Purger is the ultimate Goo unit with a corrosive close-range effect that damages nearby enemy units, as well as a long-range tentacle rampage attack. Like the Hand of Ruk, it is fairly slow to move around and fire, which helps to balance out its devastating attacks. Mother Goo's can feed off of the Purger (without hurting it), allowing them to consume resources at the same rate as it they were on a cataylst vent when within close enough proximity. It's production can be accelerated by sacrificing Small/ Large Proteans and Mother Goo units to the Protopurger, so expect to see this coming your way if a Goo opponent has a high number of Mother Goos and a strong resource economy.




Special abilities:

• Detects Stealth
  
• Can feed Mother Goos
  
• Slows and damages enemy units close enough to be consumed
  
• Can move over impassible terrain (e.g. Mountains)

The Dirge is initially a very vlunerable Epic, comparable to the Protopurger in Stage 1 of it's development and only improving slightly upon reaching Stage 2, but amzingly it can be hidden in brush in these developmental stages. When it gets all the way to Stage 3, this Epic is not one to be underestimated. It can heal itself by destroying structures and can fire powerful, all-consuming black holes at the enemy.



Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Special abilities:

• Detects Stealth
  
• Can hide in brush in Stage 1 and 2

All Epic units are vulnerable to ordinary units, believe it or not. However, to take down an Epic with ordinary units requires one of two things: either a heck of a lot of micro-management of specialised, small groups of units or a heck of a lot of units which you can just swarm the Epic with, have them fire once, die and be happily replaced by a fresh, newly produced unit.

The latter option is obviously incredibly inefficient, in terms of build times and in terms of resources, whilst the former option requires a degree of skill which can only be gained by practicing. In reality, the average player will want to find a middle ground between these two strategies so that they can still overcome the Epic but not have to wait for half an hour for a sizeable counter-attacking army to be built. Importantly, the middle ground here is also the most fun for the average player, giving you some degree of control and a sense of accomplishment (for the sad people like me) when you eventually conquer the beast without relying too heavily on your resouces!
We will talk in deatil about the unit-spam strategy later in the guide in the relevant faction-specific sections, but for now lets focus on how to effectively micro-manage your force to maximise damage to your opponent's Epic.


Epic units are strong, but they're not invincible


Firstly, note that the Alpha is the only Epic unit with its own anti-aircraft attack - all other Epics require anti-air support in order to counter air attacks and so are inherently vulnerable to air attacks. In particular, it is a particularly good strategy to use a fleet of aircraft against the Purger as you will be able to keep visbility on it if it tries to climb over a mountain. The Hand of Ruk can carry anti-aircraft support units along with it in one of the six mountable slots that it has, so try to establish the units it is carrying (if any) before commiting to using ground- or air-based units to attack. The Alpha's anti-air attack has AoE damage associated with it, so if you do decide to try to use aircrft to knock its health down then be sure to divide your air fleet into very small groups and spread them out around the Alpha so as to reduce the impact that the attack would have on your clustered units.


Watch out for the Alpha's anti-air attack. Other factions Epic's are easier targets

Secondly, the Dirge and the Hand of Ruk (without mounted units) are both vulnerable to close-range swarming. Both of these Epics have amazing long-range attacks but rely on the support of other ground units for close-range defence, so if you can dodge their attacks as you approach with a swarm of suitable units, or if you are able to sneak up on them, then they will struggle to counter without further support from ordinary units. The speeds of these Epic units are so slow that they won't be able to retreat easily and you should press any advantage that you have at this stage.

A trick here when playing as the Human faction is to teleport a group of units right next to the Epics so that your units don't even have the chance to be targetted, or, when playing as the Goo, to try to get a Mother Goo close enough to attack the Epic, which will further decrease its speed to essentially 0 and make it a sitting duck for you to whittle down. The Gravitic Manipulation tech upgrade used by Echos when playing as the Shroud could also help you to slow down these Epics and prevent their retreat.

Unfortunately, the Alpha and the Purger are different beasts entirely and have a strong close-range game. The Alpha unit can unleash an energy burst which radiates out from the Alpha causing heavy damage to nearby units, whereas the Purger will consume any units that get too close to it in an identical fashion to Mother Goos. Beacsue of this, close-range swarming of these Epics is definitiely not recommended!


Swarming Epics can be an effective strategy if they don't have the option of a close-range attack and they are left on their own

Finally, now that we have covered using aircraft and close-range swarming, we need to think about how to attack these Epic units from mid-to-long range.

In the mid-range scenario, a common strategy involves using a group, or several groups, of tank units or units with relatively high speed and damage scores. The idea here is to micro-manage these small groups relentlessly, anticipating where the Epic unit will attack next and moving out of the line of fire of its attack. Whilst moving (or as soon as your units are clear of the Epic's attack) you fire at the Epic to reduce its health as its attack recharges, moving constantly in unpredicatble lines so as to confuse your opponent and slowly grind away at their Epic's health. You will inevitably lose some units whilst doing this (although I bet the very best players will have this skill nailed down) but by carefully anticipating when and where the next Epic attack will be you can do a lot to reduce the damage that your units take. This anticipation aspect is the key idea here, and can only be improved through practice and through an understanding of the Epic's Rate of Fire and AoE radius values, listed in this guide. By recognising when an Epic is just about to attack, by knowing the Epic animations for example, you can effectively kite the Epic and do a lot of damage with just a few dedicated units.

For long-range attacks, bear in mind that the Epics typically have very very long ranges on their weapons, so generally if you can fire at them with ordinary units then they can fire back at you - and with much more force! Make sure that any artillery units or other long-range units are kept somewhere discreet, maybe using a smaller distraction force to keep your opponent focussed on expendible, unimportant targets. Brush cover is recommened and, if possible, try to fire over impassible terrain such as mountains or ravines to prevent the enemy Epic from getting too close.

You can see that the Alpha is just about to attack. Moving the circled units down and to right will move them out of the way of the Alpha's beam cannon and reduce casualties. Shooting the Alpha as its cannon reloads slowly reduces its health over time and saves your resources.

You might be surprised to learn that the Human's Alpha is the only Epic that can't be healed!

The Hand of Ruk from the Beta, the Purger from the Goo or the Dirge from the Shroud can in fact regain health if they aren't pursuded and completely killed, so don't let them escape if their health gets low!

To heal the Hand of Ruk, a Beta player can simply rest it on a repair pad. To heal a Purger, a Goo player must first unlock the Symbiotic Pool tech upgrade and then use the healing pool left behind from Cresent projectiles (which can be targeted near to the Purger by Alt+right click) to heal the Purger. To heal the Dirge, a Shroud player can either kill enemy units or structures for an automatic heal (killing units heals at Stage 2, destryoing structures heals at Stage 3) or unlock the Soothing Pulse/ Protected Investment tech upgrades and have the Epic slowly healed up by placing it next to an Aversion Field or Extractor respectively.




Purgers can be healed by Cresents after unlocking Symbiotic Pool, the Dirge can be healed by Aversion Fields or Extractors after unlocking Soothing Pulse or Protected Investment and the Hand of Ruk can be healed on a repair pad

By ensuring that you destroy as many of these key structures or supporting units as you can - particularly those which are very close to your base or which occupy strategic positions on the map - you will prevent or slow down the rate at which these Epics can heal after you have damged them. Cresents can climb mountains so be sure to have air-based scouts to gain visibility on them to allow your ground units to target them easily.

Whilst the guide so far has dealt with the tactics and general dos and donts associated with killing Epics efficiently and with few resources, we haven't yet looked at the stats of the ordinary units available to each faction and thought about which ones we should generally use to attack the Epic with. Of course, every situation is different, so don't just rush in using the "best" anti-Epic units without giving any thought to your current situation in-game.

The next section looks specifically at the beautifully inefficient spam-loads-of-units-and-eventually-kill-the-Epic approach. In this approach, we assume that each unit hits the Epic target only once before dying, so this data should be considered as representing a worst-case scenario where you simply can't/ don't micro-manage any of the attacks that your units make on the Epic and see all units as highly ependible.

When you're looking through the tables in the next part of the guide, bear in mind that the following assumptions were made when calculating the values.

Assumptions/ Considerations

• Each unit hits the Epic only once and then dies immediately before being able to fire again. As such unit health and unit speed values are ignored - in reality these are equally important factors when trying to micro-manage the right units.
  
• The "Shots to Kill" column tells you the minimum number of shots from the unit concerned that are needed to kill an Alpha.
  
• An Alpha was chosen as the "model Epic" for this calculation as it has the lowest Health value of any of the developed Epics, so is likely to be the Epic with the lowest health that you come across in matches. If you want to apply these number to other Epics then the relative scores of the ordinary units listed and their rankings will remain the same, so the rankings given are consistent across all faction's Epics.
  
• The rankings given are my opinion only and are very simplified and generalised. You may find your own preferences for different units in certain scenarios, but for me to go into that level of detail would take a guide one hundred pages long.
  
• Units ranked as "strong" should be your primary unit choice for attacking Epics with, whilst "OK" and "Weak" rankings are largely unsuitable for attacking Epic units with. Use these units to kill any support that your opponent's Epic has or to run interference on your opponent's economy whikst the "strong" units deal with the Epic.
  
• The build time for each unit is given in seconds
  
• The total build time for each unit is given in minutes and tells you how long it would take to build the required number of units from one Large Factory (or equivalent), so by building two Large Factories the quoted time is halved, by building three Large Factories the quoted time is reduced by a third etc etc...
  
• Units which can't target an Epic (e.g. Shroud Chime/ Siren) were ignored. Units that could target the Epic through unlocking a certain Tech Upgrade were included and are marked with (TU)
  
• If the total pop required is in excess of the 200 population limit on each faction, then you will have to use multiple runs of units to attack the Epic with, replacing them quickly as they die.
  

The Beta's Avalanche is without a doubt the best anti-Epic unit in the game! Taking just 12 shots to kill an Alpha, a relatively small squad of these units will pose a serious threat to any enemy Epic. The Nimbus can provide more mobile firepower and will help you to keep vision and control on larger maps.

Use less important units to distract your opponent and then deal some heavy damage with alternating Avalanche/ Nimbus attack waves.

The Humans bring some solid options to the table, in the form of the Scimitar and the Lancer respectively. The Humans have the advantage of relatively mobile units too (in comparison to the slow and lumbering heavy units of other factions) because the fast-paced Scimitar can be used to attack your opponent's Epic whilst you teleport in up to six Lancers after gaining vision to quickly put pressure on their Epic. Most Epics are vulnerable to aircraft or close-range units, and with the Human faction you can easily work both of these angles for an effective attack.

The Goo really seem to struggle to find good anti-Epic units. The Cresent seems to be the most promising and their ability to climb onto mountains can indeed provide a great tactical advantage as well as control over map sections to restrict the movement of your opponent's Epic. Consider using spare Mother Goos/ Large Proteans to get close to your opponent's Epic to slow them down, then use strategically placed Cresents and maybe a micro-managed group of Destructors to inflict as much damage as possible. Drovers can still be put to good use a quick distraction force, swarming close to the Epic to take advantage of any close-range vulnerabilities and using their speed and "fires whilst moving" ability to deal small amounts of damage as they dodge attacks.



TU = Tech Upgrade required for targeting of the Epic to be possible

With the Shroud the Mach and the Fugue come out on top. For unguarded Epics, create a distraction, attack with Fugues and then try to bring in your Machs from behind as the Epic retreats. Always use the Machs first if the Epic moves with a defensive force to kill off as many of the support units accompanying the Epic as possible. If you notice that your opponent has little in the way of anti-aircraft support then a group of Shrieks can fare very well too, they just need time to set up and target the Epic without being targeted themselves because they are quite slow and also quite expensive.