Ogre = dmg but low hp kill with hammerspam or glaives spaced out.

Tanks tend to have a slower start so you could try using this to your advantage to capture more of the map for extra income. All the units you described do poorly in uneven terrain and move relatively slow, asides from ogre. If there is a terrain advantage against them I would use a handful of raiders to pressure the firewalker/lance and draw fire, while keeping them spread out to avoid them all being killed. Artillery/bomb units can be used to take out the lance, orgre and firewalkers while units dealing slow damage or long range damage would work better against the surviving heavy tanks.

Thing is I can't get past the Firewalker death zone and especially not with units as light as raiders. And Ogres are such a strong unit in general that I can't really build up a good enough force that fast to keep my territory that short into the game. At most I have maybe a squad of 10 raiders at the ready when that happens and I'm not kidding when I say this is like in the first 10 to even 5 minutes of the game. The only viable option would be to take a guess at the beginning of the game and go with tanks myself to even stuff out, but that's honestly not what I want to do.

Ogres are strong once in range but they're slow with short range and are comically easy to kite. Nearly any skirmisher will kill them with ease, like a ronin, recluse, or rogue.

To kill the firewalkers, raiders *are* a good counter to them, but you need to micro them to stay out of the fire and out of range of any riot.

Heavy assault units like the minotaur, grizzly, or fast lighter assaults like the ravager, are also counters to both the firewalkers and the ogres. You just need to make sure they don't get kited by skirmishers and have good support from faster raiders.

In terms of your army setup, if you only have 10 raiders at 10 minutes into the game, something is going terribly wrong with eco, or it's a really low metal map. Don't forget to have a diverse army composition or else you'll continue running into units that you just can't counter.

Hmm my mistake for the 10 raider thing, I do usually have a good bit more at that point yes, but nowhere near enough to put it all into escorting my builders without leaving myself dangerously exposed. I exaggerated, sorry.

How would you suggest I get past choke points in that case? I figure that trying to go around the fire works, but it becomes tricky when that isn't possible because of the only ways in being a choke point that's under constant fire from them or being deep in enemy territory that would require an army on its own to get past. Raiders are done for if I send them in, with heavy units already appearing damaged if they manage to get out and will be picked off afterwards by the other accompanying units.

I was thinking spiders for their ability to traverse almost any terrain, but they tend to be very slow and not all that beefy aside from crabs which are quite expensive and not something I'll just have lying around early on. I would have one, maybe two or three at the 5 to 10 minute mark.

Another strategy I was thinking about was just dirtbagging off the other entrances so I can lock it down, or just straight up terraform a small bit of inaccessible terrain to keep it to myself.

And for a bit of extra clarification since I notice I haven't actually mentioned it yet. This is on Akilon Wasteland, a map with tons of ramps and otherwise straight up choke points to every factory aside from spiders. And of course feel free to tell me to just try these things first as well.

I personally don't do much escorting builders. If my builder dies, that's not because I failed to protect him, but because I failed to have ample radar and scouting to be ready to pull him away from danger and move units to defend the position.

Just played a round on Akilon Wasteland to see how it plays. I agree, it's tough to defend and difficult to get line of sight and radar in important places. It's especially annoying to attack if they have artillery because their artillery can easily retreat back towards their defended positions and you don't have any possible ways to flank with raiders.

I think there are multiple phases of the game that need different army comps to effectively deal with what the enemy has built up.

In the early game, emphasis on raiders and skirmishers are definitely good. You can harass their economy and have the speed to react to surprise attacks. A few riots too, to have some heavier units to kill their swarms of raiders efficiently.

In the mid game, I would start putting more assaults into the mix. At this point, they have the eco to start porc'ing up if they choose to. This can be easily broken with a lot of assaults or some mild artillery. They might also have some dangerous concentrations of artillery too; assaults will be necessary to absorb the blows for long enough to reach them and kill them.

Firewalkers and other artillery only tickle your assaults, and ogres just get out-dps'd and out-tanked by them too.

Building your own artillery is definitely a valid option too. If they keep running back into their base, then just keep shooting them when they're inside their base. Always fun.

I don't have much thoughts about late game because I didn't play this map into late game, so I'm not sure how the round would change from there. If you're still tied with them at this point, generally you would start speccing into heavier and heavier assaults, striders and artillery until it becomes a game of who can build the biggest piss-off weapon first.