Defending your spice fields

[jcylok]

I read guides and posts in this forum. Everyone says NEVER leave your spice fields unprotected. But exactly what size of army do you send there to protect them? And what types of units are good for spice field-guarding?

(Living world off, just fending off enemy troops)

[Mr_Hangman]

During the first phase of the game, most of your troops should be going there anyway.  If you keep them in your base, why would your opponent even bother?  He'll just go for harvesters until the economy difference catches up to you and you get overwhelmed.

You might be worried about them slipping something into an unprotected base entrance.  On many maps it isn't easy to just go around troops in the spice, but you can't depend on that.  The solution, I think, is to avoid going high tech too quickly.  Take the Atreides for example.  Their victory almost always hinges on minos, but it's usually foolish to build them right away.  Which would defend you better at the start of the game? 3 minos? or 9 sandbikes and 30 light inf?

Minos, kobras, and missile tanks/inkvines are too slow to chase the low tech units.  If you build them at first you'll be choosing whether to protect your base, or to protect your spice, and of course the unprotected one is going to be what's attacked.  It's crucial to have an army that can move quickly until it's large enough to be spit up.  If your strategy early on is to send some to watch the spice and leave some in the base, you'll die.  It's pretty amazing how one army can annihilate an equally matched one if first one can fight the second in two groups.

Later in the game, spice fields need mostly air defense.  You'll have enough troops sprawled around that any ground attack will have to meet them, so your opponent will look for a weakness.  Air drones or air dropped devastators can do a lot of damage if they can run right through your AA defenses.

[spicy]

attack ure enemy and this way u keep him awy defending his spice  ,,,

if u lose the combat then his better than you and will get to ure area sooner or later..

if you win you will be in his area in few minuets and it will be hard for him to

counter  in emp  put all of ure power in offense not defence ... 

[alchemi2]

Good point Spicy, I tend to be a reactive player and often lose But when i play proactively i often win or at least put up a better showing.

As to what units to use to protect your spice a good mixture of units that you are producing be them low tech in the early stages or high tech later in the game. Mixed forces are generally best.

[spicy]

everything in this universe have its weak points ,, when you defend you give the

attacker the chance to find ure weak points like no air defence or open spice

when u attack massively  you can close all those weak points behind you

and force the enemy to keep looking/sending at the point that you are attacking

its like when the goal keeper in football advance forward at an attacker

to close the angles on him and force him to shoot at him ..

i know some players that usually uses the reaction strategy and win specially with

atr but believe me its almost impossible to break their defense as they hardly have

any weak points ... and they use this strategy because they have the ability to

see every unit that you make and make the unit that will kill it and that is

a job only the so called elites players would have  the speed to do it ...

then when they are ready they will start counter attacking you with a deadly

force ..

[serhankhan]

if u are atreides, u can defend ur spice farming area easly

u hawe to use fedaykin troopers but dont keep stay them togather and enable guarding mod

[desertway]

It also depends on who you are defending from. If defending another atr than u will most definately need aa cover for drones. Drones are the biggest factor for an atr player to disrupt ur spice. If you're defending against ordos...you will want to make as many sand bikes and inf as you can to stop lazers and dusties. Against hark you will pretty much want to do the same thing. It never hurts to have a fast army.