Tessa's Cove

Zordracian Advanced Cliffnotes

So now you have played a few games, you understand a bit better. You've maybe even killed a few players.
Here are a few more things to consider when playing. It is up to you to decide when to apply these ideas to your best advantage.

Expansion:

When playing an ultra-high income map (for example, Topologies), most everyone has high income due to the map's wealth. Income becomes somewhat incidental and expansion becomes the key. Don't forget that farms only take one move and can increase your range of movement.

Capture a city, buy a farm to continue onto the next city. In doing this, even across harsh terrain, you can travel 24 spots in a single turn(hercule for 14 moves + 10 for a commando) if your path is planned out. This also makes your factories easier to defend once you get in to contact. Do Not do this if you are battling, your enemy can follow this path as easily as you.

Using farms for movement can be done most economically moving left to right, or top to bottom on the map.
Farms will be built on the tile starting to the immediate right of the city and continue around in a clockwise motion.

Farms can be used to allow you to capture someone's base or key factory from a distance on a surprise attack in the same manner. You can then literally capture their base from 24 spaces away (or 28 if it is from the water). This is a big advantage, as they are unlikely to be expecting it.

Defense:

Don't leave units undefended, especially transport units (hercule, cargo, transports). Whenever possible put them in a city and unload the units they carry. Put a porc in a city with a transport unit. Put patriots in hercules while flying in hostile territory. And if you are attacking someone with Artillery (11 attack, 3 defence), try to put at least a couple of porcs in the city/resource where they are.

Consider keeping a Scorpion inside a Hercule in a factory under attack - but ONLY if you have adequate porcs to mean that the hercule won't be attacked. This is an exception to the rule of unloading units.

If you capture someone's base, try to move all of the attacking units you used into the base (e.g. M31s/Grizzlis), both so that you can use them later on (especially if there is another player nearby waiting to attack your new base), and also as extra defence in the base. Sure, they are easier to kill than porcs, but they increase the base unit count and defense is defense.

If someone is attacking your base: Try to wipe them out of your base area. By first buying 20 porcs in your base for surround, then using long ranged units (Tigers preferred) from inside a transport 1 spot from your base (or another adjoining city or mine), and then re-capture your city next to your base, putting the attacking units back in to your base. But don't go too far when doing this.

If you can't wipe someone from your base, attack theirs, and porc up your base.

On naval maps, protect bases/factories defensively by building roads around them.

Consider using Captains for defence. They move 22 spots through the water, have 15 attack and 13 defence, and are the cheapest with 13 defence. Very hard to wipe out from a distance. If possible try to kill a unit or two (flags work well) with them and increase their experience making them even harder to kill. This can be used even if the base is not next to the water, and may cause them to rethink their attack strategy.

Try to avoid keeping Scorpions in factories under attack. They will be the first things that are wiped out.

Use Artilleries for attack, then protect them with porcs. They will be the last thing that can be attacked. Use these in preference to Scorpions.

Protect your area in preference to purely protecting your base. Try to keep a nice safe radius around your base. Once they get in, they can wipe out your cities/resources and wipe you out of the game.

If you have a factory chain heading in to your base, assume that it will be taken, and porc up your base. Protect some of these factories, but not all, so that they don't know for sure where they are. Also consider putting porcs in other cities that you don't have your factory, and leaving your factory empty (other than fortifications), to trick them.

Factories close to your base that are no longer needed should be ghosted. Buy a soldier there first the turn before to retake the city when it ghosts and your opponent will never know. Additionally you may also want porcupines ready (loaded in a transport unit) to add to the reclaimed city. If they attack it without spying they may go through the entire cost to take the city only to find a factory missing, and income wasted.

Four porcs in a factory means that they don't know how many porcs are in there from just a radar peek. Put 4 in any factory you intend to defend. Considering going up to 20, or even 50, depending on the circumstances. They won't know until they spy it whether it is 4 or 50.

Where possible, count your opponents total visible units before attacking a base. This will give you a good idea of how many units they have in their base, and whether you will be able to take it.

When defending, assume that they can take out 1 porc for every $50 - and don't forget about the double turn, about them selling units, income from newly captured (enemy) cities, and having resources that they haven't mined yet.

If being attacked by huge incomes, buy enough porcs so it can no longer shows how many porcs are in the base (about 200). Do this for crucial factories too. Boredom may stop them from taking your base, impatience may cause them to use Metal-Knights to wipe out your porcs, or Scuds, or other units that are more powerful than they need to be, and the sheer quantity can be intimidating.

When you have a huge amount of defence, consider using different kinds of units. Having an Eagle or a Furtif in there can throw off their attack. Eagles can only be wiped out by anti-air units, which they may not be able to get from a distance. Furtifs are not as potent, but will only appear after porcs are wiped out. Also consider something like an Apache, or simply Hercules. If nothing else it may cause them to waste one attack.

Offense:

When under heavy fire, make a factory 14-15 spaces from the last one (or 13 if you have to), putting porcs galore in the next one, but don't forget to protect your last one! When making these porc-protected factories, also try to move hercs filled with porcs in another direction - with no factory in there! That way, if you lose your furthest built factory, you still have the previous one and the advanced hercule. Attacking these cities are costly, yet they can't afford not to, putting them in a near impossible situation. Optionally you can skip every other factory and rely on herc 'trains' to transfer stuff across the map. Protect your hercs heavily and preferably have more than one group going. Once you are safely beyond those factories you may want to consider ghosting them.

If you see Artillery or Scuds, or any other high attack/low defence units, try to wipe them out. Use units with no range to prevent counterattack damage.

Commandos can sneak around, and never be detected. Try to have them sneaking around as often as possible. Consider moving a hercule 13 spaces and then dropping a commando off, and selling the hercule. They will have no idea that the commando is there. Move the commando without capturing anything until you are within striking distance of their base. Then play a double turn for a surprise win.

Use Furtifs as anti-hercule units. They are invisible, and are especially useful for when someone moves a loaded hercule around, straight in to the furtif, and wipes out all of their troops. They are expensive, but this tactic can seriously annoy an enemy.

Although expensive, eagles wipe out patriots from a distance and slow down hercules. Eagles won't be hurt by patriots, but try to use surround as well.

When wiping out patriot-filled hercules, try using close range ground troops. Grizzlis are very good for this purpose. Try using 3 hercs filled with grizzlis, then 1 hawkeye to wipe out the herc.

Even on naval maps and air maps, use the ground troops (army). They are the most potent.

On naval maps, stop their attacking factory by building a road around it.

As a general rule, consider that you can take out 1 porc for every $100 you have (assuming that you have techs up to tiger and can reach their base). 1 porc will take about $400, 4 porcs will take about $600, but 20 porcs will take about $1700 or so. You can also sell units if necessary.

Other Stuff:

Consider assigning trucks to wood mills/gold mines in pod maps (e.g. Pilot's Dream). When you have clustered mines and no nearby cities, build a factory in one mine and use a truck to unload the resources from the rest in the assigned mine.

Try to see the benefit for absolutely everything in the game. There is nothing in the game that is totally useless. Fortifications can help sometimes. Factories, banks, setting tax at 0%, setting it at 100%, ghosting cities, they are all useful. See if you can find a good way to use every single element of the game.

There are 3 key elements to the game - Expansion, Income (from cities and resources) and Technologies. Use a sensible balance of all 3.

As near as possible, try to stay competitive with Expansion, Income and Technologies with others in the game. Keep an eye out for how well they are going and try to match and defeat this. This may not be possible if you are in close combat while they are not.

If in doubt, copy. On a new map, start off the same as someone else who is doing well. See if you can match their moves. Note that it is easier to match their moves after you have killed them - much harder to do it if they kill you (then it can remain a mystery).

Whenever you kill someone who was a hard battle, see what they have done. See what their tax strategy was, where they built their technologies, etc, and see what you can learn. Likewise, whenever you lose, try to see how it happened, and what you could have done to prevent it. Also see if you can figure out what they did to kill you, especially if it was a surprise.

Whatever you do, don't surrender. Fight it out. You learn nothing from surrendering, but you can learn a lot from a loss.

If you must miss a turn, try to keep going on regardless. You will probably lose, but see what you can learn from the game, just the same. Occasionally, you might win after missing a turn, and then you learn a lot.

In allied play, help out your allies at all costs. Don't let any of them die.

Allied play is all about controlling the game. Ideally, have someone who plays first, and someone who plays last, all the way through. Then you know how to control what your opponents are doing. When you need to, all of you can attack the same opponent, making it impossible for them to stop you.

Don't neglect the allied crowd, especially in unbalanced maps, or when the opposition has one good player and several less-than-great players. The crowd may wipe out both players, but if done tactically, it can really help out your team (and hopefully allies can get there before you die).

Use allied tech share, and use allied factories. Tech share can get you sharks and hercules very quickly, and can be essential to victory on some maps. Stealing factories can give you much needed support or allow a stronger allie to leap across the map into battle. The best unit for taking allied factories is the predator! Even if your ally doesn't have a factory, send a predator out there, take a few allied cities and build your own factory for next turn. Very useful.