it must be possible, because there is a archivement for a 2vs4 (where you even need a Eldar AI as partner) and vs3 scenario. but than ppl tend to cheese alot for the archivments with startoptions.

You can play with another human for Troublemaker Twins.

I have never done a 2v2 with an AI, but I don't see any reason it would be impossible.
That said your language "I manage to stall and hold my ground" tells me you don't play very efficiently.

You should spearhead into the AI and crush them. If you don't, you don't make a good enough army.

Yeah turns out trying to beat a 1v1 on ultra is similarly difficult. The difficulty I can beat is very hard, not ultra.

Originally posted by Jey:

You can play with another human for Troublemaker Twins.

I have never done a 2v2 with an AI, but I don't see any reason it would be impossible.
That said your language "I manage to stall and hold my ground" tells me you don't play very efficiently.

You should spearhead into the AI and crush them. If you don't, you don't make a good enough army.

It is not so easy on ultra hard. The AI will have overwhelming force from the moment you meet them, and can usually double or even cuadruple your production going by the end game graph. Often times even maintaining ground is a struggle.

I've read some guides for impossible (if it works there should work in ultra, right?) but all I could find used custom map settings, with very fast speed and huge maps. Maybe the key is not actually meeting the AI too early.

Also I tried to find a recorded playthrough but no much luck. A lot of people will claim impossible and then mess with the AI settings. Either upping their advantage or lowering the AI's. That is not in fact impossible. That's just playing roughly on very hard

archivment hunters will messing hard with map settings, because messing with the difficulty level settings on the players side dont triggers the archivments when they a are difficulty reliant.

Another 2v2 attempt. Team Astra militarum vs team Orks.

This time I tried the largest map, largest neutral spawn and lower region size. Standard speed.

I founded a third city at around turn 70 and a fourth at 105 or so.

Contact was made with the orcs roughly at turn 100. The delay on the first contact did allow me to have a better economy.

Despite my partner having a superior position at the start, it was a slow decline for about 30 turns until the AI managed to destroy the fist city.

The AI will constantly shift the offensive so it is rather hard to defend a single front. Once you have made a defensive line they will push somewhere else.

And so even though I tried to support my ally as best I could, I simply could not Advance through the massive front, and he could not trade properly with the orcs, losing ground very rapidly.

Funnily enough, the Astra militarum AI will create a lot of trash units, and send them to the front to die. This allows the orcs to quickly regain morale. They will also clog the lines with useless stuff like a commissar blocking a good defensive position.

And when I reverse the scenario and it's me playing the orcs, the AI will mass useful units like the big t3 bomber, which for the orcs is hard to deal with.

Also as a final observation, the allied AI doesn't seem to build the crane for extra building speed. They seem to be coded to build loyalty buildings (at least 2) first, despite being swimming in 60 loyalty.

My fourth city did not manage to be useful before the first allied city fell. I had a baneblade on the way to the front, and another in production, but it was simply too late.

Originally posted by Disciple.:

Third city around turn 70 is a massive problem regardless of the strategy you want to use against the enemy AI, I have a feeling you are using crane buildings and I'll advice you to ignore them. Try using this build with either faction and see where that gets you:

Book - Ore - Settler

If you want to be aggressive make military buildings 1st city after those 3 buildings, another options is making military buildings on the second city and keep the 1st one as your eco city. I personally do not like playing on giant maps against the AI because while you can tech rush and play with only T8+ units, the enemy AI is going to have a higher count T8+ units for a while and also have lots of lower tier units moving around making the game last for ever.

Try playing on a medium map size (is for 4 players) in a 1vs2 with lower difficulty settings, this should give you enough room to move which is important because the AI has no object permanence, if you need to fall back you can send 1 sacrificial unit in one direction and move your army the opposite way and once they lose line of sight they will forget where you were.

Once you get used to it keep ramping up the difficulty, personally every now and then I like doing 1vs2 against 1 Ultra and 1 Very Hard AI and is not too bad. Having an AI teammate can create some problems because the AI is usually focused on killing neutrals and they are not together, once they see a player they will end up making a death ball and dealing with that makes everything harder.

Originally posted by Etrusco:

Originally posted by Disciple.:

Third city around turn 70 is a massive problem regardless of the strategy you want to use against the enemy AI, I have a feeling you are using crane buildings and I'll advice you to ignore them. Try using this build with either faction and see where that gets you:

Book - Ore - Settler

If you want to be aggressive make military buildings 1st city after those 3 buildings, another options is making military buildings on the second city and keep the 1st one as your eco city. I personally do not like playing on giant maps against the AI because while you can tech rush and play with only T8+ units, the enemy AI is going to have a higher count T8+ units for a while and also have lots of lower tier units moving around making the game last for ever.

Try playing on a medium map size (is for 4 players) in a 1vs2 with lower difficulty settings, this should give you enough room to move which is important because the AI has no object permanence, if you need to fall back you can send 1 sacrificial unit in one direction and move your army the opposite way and once they lose line of sight they will forget where you were.

Once you get used to it keep ramping up the difficulty, personally every now and then I like doing 1vs2 against 1 Ultra and 1 Very Hard AI and is not too bad. Having an AI teammate can create some problems because the AI is usually focused on killing neutrals and they are not together, once they see a player they will end up making a death ball and dealing with that makes everything harder.

I have been indeed building cranes as a priority in every city, as well as trying to expand fast. That's mostly the information I could gather from guides and such.

Although I am getting the feeling this is actually not great advice.

As of late I've tried the guide for chaos space Marines on impossible, (although this time it was a huge FFA with teams of two players, and one of the teams was a neuron team on ultra hard) and this particular guide* features no cranes and only two cities at least until turn 170, which seems not great but I think the results are better. I've successfully beaten the ultra hard team mostly on my own merits as wells (the AI teammate didn't build good units at all)

* https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007818177

After finishing this current match I will try your recommendations as well.

Well, I've done it. Won a 2vs2 on ultra. Adeptus mechanicus and space marines vs chaos space marines and Tau. Standard map, lowest trees and ruins and wire weed, standard wildlife, fast speed.

My initial build order was book - ore - settler as Etrusco suggested.

Made a second city as soon as possible. I also built a second book as a first building there, as I found i kind of need it to keep up with research. From there onwards the build order adapted to whatever was convenient given the outposts each city had.

Ignored cranes and found out you really want to start producing heavier t6+ units
At roughly turn 50 (on standard) or turn 40 (on fast). I needed both books in order to reach that tech levels.

Kept producing units with 3 vehicle buildings. Ignored infantry for the most part as I didn't have the food nor the population to produce it anyway.

Never made a third city. I am still trying to figure out when it is better to make one and when it is not.

I advanced very slowly and methodically. Allied AI kept massing infantry instead of tanks and using them very poorly. There was a big patch of forest in the middle of the map that made advancement very difficult and took several turns in order to clear. After clearing it allowed me to destroy one of the big chaos cities.

Chaos AI kept trying to build new cities to keep pressure on all sides, but I destroyed them swiftly.

Close to roughly turn 100 I made yet another pair of book buildings, so I could transition to produce super heavies. I found it was maybe too much research and maybe a total of 3 would have been enough.

By the endgame I had 4 crusader knights, about 4 tanks, and a few surviving dunecrawlers. Production slowed down a bit as I focused on fixing loyalty and getting in the positive before getting more troops.

Congratz on the victory, about the 3rd city if you can build it as soon as possible is nice to have and it will boost up your economy and help you "patch" resources you could lack due to RNG outposts or even get extra military buildings if needed.

It does have an important drawback, having 3 cities means being forced to build loyalty buildings fairly early (usually after pop building for example and loyalty is better the bigger your cities are) which has a considerable opportunity cost, an upfront cost to build it and an important energy upkeep. Most of the time the 3rd city will be in charge of providing power which you are going to need once you build pop + loyalty buildings.

Most of the time I play with 3 cities regardless of if I'm playing PvE or PvP, but I like ignoring population and loyalty building on my military city. If you do not only are you going to save the base cost of those 2 buildings but once you turn off the crane building in total you will save 7 energy production.

I recommend you give a try if you feel like 3 cities does not seem worth it, also don't forget about trying to play solo 1vs2 (not vs 2 ultras yet, just 1 ultra + something lower) the freedom you get when playing without the AI ally is well worth it.

Originally posted by Etrusco:

Congratz on the victory, about the 3rd city if you can build it as soon as possible is nice to have and it will boost up your economy and help you "patch" resources you could lack due to RNG outposts or even get extra military buildings if needed.

It does have an important drawback, having 3 cities means being forced to build loyalty buildings fairly early (usually after pop building for example and loyalty is better the bigger your cities are) which has a considerable opportunity cost, an upfront cost to build it and an important energy upkeep. Most of the time the 3rd city will be in charge of providing power which you are going to need once you build pop + loyalty buildings.

Most of the time I play with 3 cities regardless of if I'm playing PvE or PvP, but I like ignoring population and loyalty building on my military city. If you do not only are you going to save the base cost of those 2 buildings but once you turn off the crane building in total you will save 7 energy production.

I recommend you give a try if you feel like 3 cities does not seem worth it, also don't forget about trying to play solo 1vs2 (not vs 2 ultras yet, just 1 ultra + something lower) the freedom you get when playing without the AI ally is well worth it.

In my next game I'll try to tackle a 1vs2 with ultra and maybe hard or very hard. I'll update the thread after finishing that game.

Maybe try Space Marines as allies next time? Granted, their starting units are no match for the superheavies, but they're sturdy enough to be at least semi-decent meatshield.

Did you guys know, you can actually COMMAND your AI friend army?
CTRL+Left or Right Mouse Click
It gives you Waypoint arrow on the map.

AI friend sees it and it walks it's army Straight to the Waypoint. It even amasses it's army around waypoint arrow (use for defense), and then moves army to next New waypoint arrow.

It is coded AI behavior, and it read only one time in Patchnotes ~2-3 years back.

Originally posted by Verkava:

Did you guys know, you can actually COMMAND your AI friend army?
CTRL+Left or Right Mouse Click
It gives you Waypoint arrow on the map.

AI friend sees it and it walks it's army Straight to the Waypoint. It even amasses it's army around waypoint arrow (use for defense), and then moves army to next New waypoint arrow.

It is coded AI behavior, and it read only one time in Patchnotes ~2-3 years back.

I've tried to use the arrow commands but to no avail. The AI simply doesn't know how to position its units and unless it is massing tanks it doesn't know how to use them.

For example they'll reposition a devastator marine squad to kill a dying chaos space marine squad. Then the expensive devastators will get killed and have had zero impact on the fight.

There should be commands in combination with the arrows. Something like "hold ground", "advance", etc. If you ever played red alert 3 it featured a fun co-op AI (I wish more games would do this)

So the AI is it's own wild animal for the most part.