Just wondering!

Who here has succesfully done the little Judas Dance with the Gorillas in the final mission and completed the entire campaign without any cheats??

Took me 20 reloads to finally establish a presence in that darned room. No shame in creating a savegame every minute... right?

I'm still stuck in "Behind enemy lines" mission, I'm such a noob. Lol.

I've finished it. Wow that was so long ago. Anyway I just used a judas warlord to build up tons of gorillas and slowly push past forces, destroying the factories first. I think back when I did it I had around 4 gorillas attacking the controller. Takes a long time for them to take it down.

I have, few years ago when I was in college. I decided I have to finish what I started as a child when I couldn't get past Talontia 8. My mom first bought me the game for my birthday. Couldn't be happier at that time, as I played the demo over and over and over again! To me Machines is nostalgia on the highest level when it comes to games, and I hope to see it rise once more in the future with even more content <3

You need to get a Judas Warlord and start having all enemy machines you capture start attacking enemy factories. The enemy has a vast amount of resources. Capture constructors as well and have them deconstruct as you drive around using the treachery weapon. You need to keep moving and keep using the treachery device. Avoid wraith reapers as much as you can; I usually destroy them using the rocket launcher and device, assuming there are no other machines around.

Using the follow command for any machines you capture is a great idea, that way if you're in trouble you can fall back and have your followers destroy anything that tries to kill you.

I usually start the mission by going north and then attacking the factories to the northeast and work my way counterclockwise to the map.

Having more useless machines "stand ground" over where factories used to be prevents the enemy from rebuilding.

Primary objective: destroy factories
Secondary objective: always having at least one Judas

@Judas Yep, all this levelis is a test of speed and reflexes. Ditto all else that was said here, you just gotta get the Judas in first person, watch out for reapers - Judas is not well armored - and keep the treachery attacks going. I usually pull back any of the enemy's Judases that I have flipped over to save for the next round. Don't build anything but Judas warlords! It's a waste of resources, which are very scarce for the player but unlimited for the AI. You dont have to knock out those silly generators, that's largely a waste of time. 4 Gorillas and some knights/smaller units will do it. Just mine, and build Judases.

I have completed Machines without cheating and I must say it was extremely difficult at times. I only played it last year, if I tried to complete the full game when I originally fooled around with the demo when I was a kid there is no way I could finish it then.

The levels that stick out as being very hard to me;

• Military Research Fortress where you constantly get attacked by Gorillas and Eradicators from two direction and it is extremely hard to build a base and start a counter attack. The beginning in the woods is also very hard, because strong enemies immediately attack you and you only have a handful of units.

• Talonthia was also very hard, because you get attacked by Gorillas and other strong enemies all the time from different directions and all mining locations have very few BMUs, so you need to constantly expand and build new mines. Then at the end enemy starts attacking you with Ion Canon that can easily mess you up.

• Mission where you are rescuing the commander in the desert is also very hard. I couldn't pass the guarded canyon north-east to get to the enemy base. Gorillas and Eradicators always cause problems. Then I realized I should actually use the Commander himself to do some damage to the enemy base from the back first and slow down their production. Destroying the enemy mine or a smelter at the beginning is vital.

• Final Assault is also very tricky because you have very limited resources. This is the mission which forced me to capture enemy base to south, instead of building my own to save resources.

• The final mission took me whole day to finally finish it. This mission was interesting, because it also forced me to use new tactics and use Judas with treachery, which I never used before, and also showed how the first person view is not just a gimmick, but a has a high strategic value. The AI can not do fast sneak attacks and capture enemies as efficiently as you can do when you take control. In this mission the importance of Scavangers also comes to light and they are more important here than actually building mines.
  One big flaw of this mission is that when you destroy some enemy buildings, the enemy does not move production to new locations even though there is plenty of space. So, if you survive the initial attacks and destroy the buildings on the East the enemy will never recover even though it has unlimited resources. There is a lot of space for improvements in individual unit AI and global AI.

As I said in the beginning this game is very challenging at times and I like that in games, because it forces me to become a better player; learn how the game works, how to best use various units and develop new strategies. After I finish a mission there is a sense of accomplishment. Major drawback is that it requires a lot of time and sometimes you don't have enough time to spend with a game like this.

@antrad You are not alone! Those levels are very hard indeed.

I would add the one where you are in outer space and have to take the station while mining asteroids.
Also, cometimes the key to success is to get creative: I accomplished Behing the Enemy Lines by going through the bottleneck with an aerial APC twice; instead of destroying the enemy, I rescued the commander by flying in first person mode and dodging some fireworks. And on the surface of Midian, I used a Judas Warlord to infect enemy construction units to capture their infrastructure, while distracting military units by converting units close to them, also in first person mode.

@Pisarz The mission in space was very memorable, because it was so different, with being in space, building on the ship and asteroids and having to use flying units. I forgot to mention I also did use an APC in the Behind Enemy Lines. While the main force was in the canyon I flew in to release a small group inside the base. It was a fun mission.

I gotta try that APC infiltration thing... do you destroy the SAMs by the canyon first? I usually take them out with a first person knight as soon as I can ^-^

I was able to complete the final mission without using a judas warlord. After building a small base with two mines at one mineral deposit (for faster BMUS) I constructed three heavy artillery turrets at the left of the left pillar and three at the right of the right pillar to create a heavy battlefield just in front of my base. In the middle (between the pillars) I had some reapers and knights (just a few) to prevent the enemy from destroying the turrets. In case this actually happened I had a builder constructor at each side to repair or build a new turret quickly. In some cases I had to use First person knight to circle in the battlefield to keep the enemy machines busy firing at me, while the turrets took them down.

After the mines got empty I used of course some scavengers to pick up BMUS. The attacks from the west shouldn't be a problem. With me holding on the enemy slowly decreased their attacks, making it possible to build (with the picked up BMUS) an army of knights with three heavy plasma cannons. After a while I started attacking with I think maybe 20 of those knights I was quite easily able to destroy the enemy room bij room and finally destroying the controller.