Can't solve Construction Yard level

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble solving the Construction Yard level.
I can't get rid of the viruses near the construction device itself. The Virii and Centipedes wouldn't be a problem, but the Spiders attack me as soon as I get a squad there. Generally I manage to kill one Spider per try (I have to blow up my squad with grenades detonating nearby, as the Spiders immediately jump right into my squad and don't go away anymore), but getting a squad there activates the egg shooters. So as soon as I get the next squad there, there's at least one new spider. But as long as the Spiders are there, I can't get close enough to kill the shooters.
My next control tower is far away and it takes some time until the squads reach the battleground. There's no other tower nearby, except the ones at the two incubators near the construction area. However, I can't get engineers there, as the Virii immediately kill them.
I've been playing this level for hours now and I just can't solve it. Anyone knows a solution?

I got three squads over there, then just spammed the heck out of the area with grenades.

Spiders I kill by moving to the side as they jump, put all grenades on them and run away before they go off.

You need to be very aggressive or the eggs make more spiders. Once all the spiders are gone it's easy.

Usually on every level with Triffids, I try and take them out before anything else.

I've managed to use a combination of engineering rushes (put 3 or 4 engineers on those incubator towers, and they can do at least a little bit of taking over before they die, eventually past the 1/2 way mark you can spawn them right there, along with squadies) and engineer pulls. Gets me a base of operations that I can start spawning Darwinians from, which generally mop up the viruses. There's usually a lot of spiders, but I can take out the triffids pretty easily by then, and if the Darwinians have grenades by then, they can generally take care of the spiders without too much help.

Bnej: Is there a way to control more than one squad simultaneously? And apparently yours are faster than mine. I can neither evade the spiders nor the grenades.

grunadulater: I can't reach them, that's the problem.

mrxak: The problem is that the engineers generally first encircle the towers once or twice before they start working on them. They bump into it several times until before they find the panel. That gives the dozens of virii nearby enough time to kill them.
The problem is that these damned spiders are immune to laser shots.

I guess it's one of these threshold levels, everything afterwards is much easier again.

Arion, on Apr 3 2005, 04:54 PM, said:

Bnej: Is there a way to control more than one squad simultaneously? And apparently yours are faster than mine. I can neither evade the spiders nor the grenades.

I don't believe there's any way to control multiple squads. Spiders don't always jump onto your squad (if they do they can kill them all instantly!) so what I do is to keep moving; when a spider jumps chuck a few grenades at where it's landed, and one slightly nearer to you, then run. For this reason I haven't upgraded my Grenades.

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mrxak: The problem is that the engineers generally first encircle the towers once or twice before they start working on them. They bump into it several times until before they find the panel. That gives the dozens of virii nearby enough time to kill them.

I reckon this happens if you direct the engineers to a point too close to the tower. If you just put them slightly further away they will find it more quickly. That's my theory anyway...

Michael B

Spiders always jump at me as soon as they notice me.

No matter, I solved the level. My mistake was that I tried to attack while the triffids were shooting already. And the spider eggs were all fertilized because of the many souls.
If one sends engineers before attacking, it works.

Michael B, on Apr 3 2005, 04:08 PM, said:

I don't believe there's any way to control multiple squads. Spiders don't always jump onto your squad (if they do they can kill them all instantly!) so what I do is to keep moving; when a spider jumps chuck a few grenades at where it's landed, and one slightly nearer to you, then run. For this reason I haven't upgraded my Grenades.

Erm, you do know that after upgrading grenades, you can still toss them close, right? Where you click is where the grenade is tossed. Upgrading grenades is good, because then you can attack virii from further away - I've managed to kill spiders with 2.0 grenades before they even moved, because I approached from behind and tossed grenades at them from far away.

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I reckon this happens if you direct the engineers to a point too close to the tower. If you just put them slightly further away they will find it more quickly. That's my theory anyway...

I would guess the same thing. If you click on the tower, the engineer is trying to get to the middle of the tower. If you click next to the tower on the close side, the engineer goes there, stops, then starts working on the tower.

I beat that section by mowing down a path to one of the control towers with a squad, clearing an area around one of virii, then summoning engineers and defending them. It took a few tries, but I got control of a tower, then I was able to kill the triffids.

Aranor, on Apr 3 2005, 10:56 PM, said:

Erm, you do know that after upgrading grenades, you can still toss them close, right? Where you click is where the grenade is tossed. Upgrading grenades is good, because then you can attack virii from further away - I've managed to kill spiders with 2.0 grenades before they even moved, because I approached from behind and tossed grenades at them from far away.
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I've done similar. What I meant was that in the heat of battle (at about 2 fps) I had trouble running away from the grenades if I threw them too close - have to be careful to aim downhill where possible.

Getting there gradually - now to attack the ant island...

Squads are expendable.