Beating insane really only requires you to match a lot of jewels and spending your points them on units (I would suggest the last 4 units of the bottom row). You actually DO NOT need spells to beat Insane AI. I would suggest just training yourself to see patterns in the jewels, and to get good at spotting 4's and 5's. I would also suggest creating an order that you sweep the board in. For example, I start at the top left hand corner, and work my way in a zigzag down the board. Then, when I reach the bottom of the board, I go back up to the top, which has now been refreshed with new jewels. This will enable you to look for different matches even if there is a cascade going on. I would never look at the actual battles if you are going up against an AI.
It does take quite a bit of speed to pull it off, but it is a very good exercise for mouse accuracy and keeping your eyes moving.
On June 04 2011 23:39 Flight wrote: I once had trouble beating Medium. Just got against Insane today, saving 1000 for 2 Colossi, then spamming hidra/roach.
I got lucky right after the Colossi poped, getting some big combos, then I reached the critical mass and just had to keep it up.
Had to reset the board once. Also paused twice to help on some hard matches. I didn't watch the battle at all.
At the end my total energy was 4600, against his 6400. Game last 3:16 (blizzard time).
this is actually pretty good - i made thie achievement in the 3rd or 4th try with this
just get 1000 - look for the next jewels , then spawn 2 colossi
after the 2 colossi came out just SPAM A + W ( Like this : awawawawawawawawawawawaw )
then you dont need to focuse what your units are doing since roaches and hydras get spawned 50:50 so u got a good mix ( probably u will get more roaches cuz they need less minerals but even better - they tank the damage )
then u just need to focuse on the jewels - if it doesn't work - try again , you might get better stones
i actually never looked at the battle screen til the end *lol*
have to agree , only found this forum today and already i was doing the roach, hydra and collosus combo. dont take ya eyes of the board and dont be affrayed to reset the board just keep the jewels matching , the roaches are like little tanks thay are armoured and ranged and just munch on every thing Num Num Num , good luck all
Last edit: 2011-06-23 10:31:42
iNCuBuS_ United States. June 24 2011 05:21. Posts 897
I finally got this just now. I went with the 2 colossus into spamming roach/hydra approach. I started off with 1000 energy and waited until the enemy got close to my cannons and sent the colossi, then started spamming roach hydra. I definitely ended up with many, many more roaches because they use the energy before it gets up to enough for a hydra while just spamming wawawawaw over and over again. They started to slow my push down, so I just saved up to 1000 again and when they got near my cannons again, I sent two more colossi and spammed roach/hydra again. It was a long attempt (7-8 minutes probably), but I got it. I had 11880 energy and the computer got 13740.
Have this achievement for a long while now already but seriously this took me like 75+ Tries Atleast, I was getting so mad in the end unblievable 8D. But with a little luck and focus I was able to manage it. Tried out diffrent of the strategies which were suggested on this topic, started off trying the tanks one but it always failed for me and so did the rest.
Also in the beginning i wasn't clicking fast enough atleast not for the insane mode and the problem was if you start off at a good tempo after various game(s) youre reaction (atleast for me) was starting to slow down and I started to get troubles with finding pairs.
How it worked for me:
Now how I started off with this was like alot suggested; Try to get as much pairs and as fast as possible constantly and reach 1000 energy.
I then spawned 2 Ultralisks, they pretty much cleaned everything but from here on it gets a little tricky if the insane AI starts getting alot of units it might become more difficult, You need to be able to get enough energy all the time to keep healing them when there starting to get like under 65-70%. Eventually I almost breached trough his defences when he suddenly starts pushing again, my ultras near dying but then I got a big combo filled my energy back up to 1000 able to heal them + spawned an extra Ultralist (So 3 in total now) And that was a life savior, with the 3rd one backing up I was able to beat it.
This try i was hitting up pairs like a maniac constantly.
I was about to give up on this stupid achievement. Mutalisks didn't work for me. Tanks +hydra/ghost ate up almost a 100 losses. Roach Hydra was an even sadder attempt.
Then I read above tip, and got the damn thing in 2 tries! HA! ^^
Almost everything the AI spawned on the ground gets eaten up by the ultras. Easier to manage my money when I only need to heal the ultras every few seconds rather than pumping out units. When I had extra money, I spawned mutas which couldn't be reached except by the cannons, which were being eaten up by the ultras anyway.
BTW, thanks for the tip Draycott! Although, now that I think about it, I think I read about this tip in a different forum... But beating that insane AI just fuzzed up my memory ^^
iNCuBuS_ United States. June 26 2011 00:28. Posts 897
Like Draycott mentioned, you might start having trouble in the middle of a game finding sequences. In those situations, someone else mentioned you can pause to look at your next moves without needing to worry about speed. I havent tried this, but I dont see why it wouldnt work if you need the extra little help
Tweleve United States. June 26 2011 05:29. Posts 644
One of the biggest problems is that regardless of what composition you go for, you need to have marines constantly backing your units up. That's why it's more important to focus on completing sets as fast as you can. Also if you're playing fast enough, a complete energy dump into roaches or banshees is really good to gain momentum.
When you use Ultralisks, your marines actually survive all the way to the end of the base coz the Ultras are tanking. But then again, you need to save 250 constantly for the heal ability. Finished it in less than 4mins. It's like an all in actually, coz if you fail, the most that would be left on the opponent's side would be a single cannon. Apparently, you can't damage their main base until you finish up all the cannons first. But even if you do fail the first run and the enemy starts pushing back, just rinse and repeat since there's only one measly cannon left to worry about anyway.
Nevertheless, to each his own.
* Just finished again! 3mins flat this time ^^ yeah!
PhantomR32 Netherlands. June 26 2011 10:57. Posts 16
*yawn* 4am but I finally got the very hard Starjeweled achievement. Not even going to bother with insane seeing as how much effort this took (probably >5 hours today, tried all the approaches: mass tank, mass banshee, ultra with healing, 2 collos followed by awawawaw, but in the end it was 1 collo + zerg what finally allowed me to push to the end) destroyed the tower with the 3rd or 4th push, had to keep matching to build up to 1000 every time. Pretty tired now! But thanks for the tips, whoever it was
On June 26 2011 10:57 PhantomR32 wrote: *yawn* 4am but I finally got the very hard Starjeweled achievement. Not even going to bother with insane seeing as how much effort this took (probably >5 hours today, tried all the approaches: mass tank, mass banshee, ultra with healing, 2 collos followed by awawawaw, but in the end it was 1 collo + zerg what finally allowed me to push to the end) destroyed the tower with the 3rd or 4th push, had to keep matching to build up to 1000 every time. Pretty tired now! But thanks for the tips, whoever it was
got it the first time i tried (against Insane) using the colossus + roach/hydra strategies. Couldn't get it with the tank.
Really, just watch this video and copy the strategy, it's easier
Finally beat it. Tried tanks but never even got to their first cannons. The AI matches too fast and the tanks waste shots on marines.
So I tried for some splash damage. Colossus worked pretty well but i still couldn't finish it cuz the AI would just crap out 2 utras and a colossus so fast.
Eventually finished it with ultras. Just keep 200 energy so you can make a quick match and heal your ultra and prison their ultras when you can. Put out more ultras when you have 700~ energy. It was incredibly easy. The only way this ever fails is when the ultras chase the little line of marines and ignore the cannons; then they get shot up by 4 cannons and die. If your ultras hit the cannons, it's win.
Cyber_Cheese Australia. June 27 2011 12:53. Posts 3598
After so many tries of 1-2collussi +roach/hydra, (this seems to require staying even in score with comp), i switched to ultras, heal them and if you get over 700 energy get another ultra
The moment you lose confidence in yourself, is the moment the world loses it's confidence in you.
SugarBear United States. July 01 2011 12:34. Posts 842
Hey I just lost this game like 80 times then a friend mentioned all you have to do is spam zealots. Well I kept hitting A instead of the zealot key but it worked anyway. I was just making way too many roaches for him to deal with and ended up pushing all the way across the map unimpeded.
I tried a bunch of other strats including ultralisk heal and 2 colossi and it would all just fail. Mass t1 is the way to go right now for sure.
Staff vVv Gaming | "So what did you do today?" "Oh not much, mined some minerals, harvested some gas, spawned some zergs, the usual"
Chylouk United Kingdom. July 02 2011 17:36. Posts 22
I did it a few weeks ago. All i used was stored up to 1000 then got 4 tanks, carry on making tanks until you have 8/9 and then just spam ghosts if you lose a tank just replace it and its done without any problem. It took me 4 attempts for this to work
I made it by massing ultra and then use spells such as storm, the lockdown and heal. I think im pretty good at finding the sequences also so that might have contributed.
On June 26 2011 10:57 PhantomR32 wrote: *yawn* 4am but I finally got the very hard Starjeweled achievement. Not even going to bother with insane seeing as how much effort this took (probably >5 hours today, tried all the approaches: mass tank, mass banshee, ultra with healing, 2 collos followed by awawawaw, but in the end it was 1 collo + zerg what finally allowed me to push to the end) destroyed the tower with the 3rd or 4th push, had to keep matching to build up to 1000 every time. Pretty tired now! But thanks for the tips, whoever it was
got it the first time i tried (against Insane) using the colossus + roach/hydra strategies. Couldn't get it with the tank.
Really, just watch this video and copy the strategy, it's easier
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