>>2121702
That mission is a complete crapshoot if you don't know what you're doing. Look up on Youtube how it looks, it's mission 8 "Dark Tempest" of the Iron Plague expansion. Here is a screenshot of my last offensive on the enemy base, note the placement of my units on the minimap.

It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do, instead of creating a beachhead on the western island as soon as I could I kept sending troops into the meatgrinder to the lodestone(generator of the only resource in the game) in the middle of the town and tried to establish base there. I only figured out later via scout units that there is a battery of enemy bastions and guard towers that would make this impossible, on top of mobile catapults, so I spend god knows how long trying to invade the island the traditional way, probably taking thousands of casualties trying to break thru thinking the barrage of enemies was ever going to end.

Truth is, what you're supposed to do is create a beachhead with your initial troops, then start pumping out prism laser turrets that have the range of nearly the entire island and then aerial scouts to increase visibility. Fly around with the scouts and let the lasers kill the insane amounts of enemies coming your way while you create ground troops to tackle the enemy towers in the back. Very slow map and the game doesn't teach you just how powerful the laser is beforehand. Oh, and the entire time you have sea units to the southwest trying to interfere so you have to take your attention away and deal with them every once in a while. This all sounds way harder than it actually is once you get what you're supposed to do, but I heard some still consider it the toughest mission in the game. Not me, that would be mission 34 of the base game, I already wrote in another thread months ago why, the stats on that map were even worse.