After-Action Review of my First Game

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T-C
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After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by T-C »

I just finished my first full game of Warzone 2100. I discovered the game a week ago and started the campaign. After only a few missions, however, I decided I wanted a less constrained playing experience, so I started a single-player skirmish on the Rolling Hills map. I lost badly, again and again, very early in each game. Finally, I realized I was playing an unbalanced older version. I installed the new version and found that I was finally able to survive to the end. For those interested in reading after-action reviews, here is the story of my first war:

My starting location was the bottom left corner. I researched Machinegun first and made about 8 units for scouting. In addition to the four oil resources at my base site, there was one nearby to the north and another to the east. I grabbed all six quickly and researched Power Module to give myself a good start in power production. I decided I'd focus on missile weapons, so after Power Module, I researched Mini-Rocket Array and some rocket upgrades and started creating my first army. Then I researched Research Module.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good. I'd left my furthest oil resources undefended. I figured that if either one of those resources were attacked, I'd send my army there, then pursue a war in that direction. By the time I had a dozen missile units, however, I still hadn't been attacked, so I decided I'd take the battle to the enemy. I created a commander unit which I intended to lead a raiding force.

Unfortunately, things didn't go according to plan. About the time my commander rolled off the assembly line, some grey team Machinegun and Mini-Rocket Pod units wandered into my base from the north. Since my entire force was still in my base, I assumed I'd eat them for lunch. However, they proved to be very difficult to kill. The battle started in my favor, but a steady trickle of enemy reinforcements turned the battle against me, even though I was producing new units as fast as I could from my two factories. I discovered that my troops were very poor at conducting battle in the cramped corridors of my base. My units fired into my own buildings, bumped the repair trucks into the enemy kill zone, and caused traffic jams when engaging and retreating. My commander would put himself into the line of fire until he was injured, then retreat for repairs, drawing all his troops away with him and causing terrible traffic snarls. Most of my force was wiped out before I could change tactics. I was left with only my commander and one Mini-Rocket Array unit against two Mini-Rocket Pod units. I retreated my two units to my command center and waited for new units to come out of my factories while the enemy destroyed my base structures. The grey team was receiving reinforcements too, but I figured I could still win if I played it smart. I let the enemy destroy two of my oil derricks, then pound away at my factories until one was about to fall. By that time, I had five units plus my commander. I moved my units around the outskirts and engaged the enemy in the open to avoid congestion problems. My force was smaller, but armed with better weapons than the enemy, and I had a repair unit boosting their health, so I was optimistic for success. Nevertheless, my guys were wiped out in a very close battle. Only my commander survived. Shortly after my defeat, the enemy destroyed both my factories, and I gave up the game for lost.

Then something unexpected happened. Several more grey reinforcements arrived, but they didn't attack my base. Instead, they left my base by the eastern exit, apparently pursuing a yellow cyborg that appeared there. About a dozen more grey units did the same thing, coming in from the north and exiting to the east. Then the few grey units that had been destroying my base followed them. Then all was quiet. After winning the war, the grey team seemed to forget about claiming my territory.

I figured I'd never recover from this weakened state, but pride required that I fight to the end, so I decided to rebuild. All my trucks and factories had been destroyed except one truck near the northern-most oil derrick. I moved him down, rebuilt my factories, and built a bunch of trucks. Then I built walls, hardpoints, and bunkers at both the main entrances to my base. I put in Lancer hardpoints to stop vehicles and Machinegun and Flamer bunkers to stop cyborgs.

While I was doing this, the yellow team took my undefended northern oil resource. I built a Sensor Tower and a couple of Mortar Pits on a hill and started a slow, but effective, bombardment of his derrick and defenses there.

Impressed with the effectiveness of the grey team's Mini-Rocket Pods, I put a few on some hovercraft bugs, and I sent them out to cause trouble. There was a lot of enemy traffic in a nearby valley, and I thought I would try some hit-and-run tactics with my fast bugs. I also thought the bugs might be good at luring the enemy into my now-overpowered base defenses. Turns out, they weren't good at either of those jobs. Mostly, they just fired their rockets harmlessly into the dirt. I put them on guard duty by the northern oil derrick and regarded them as a failed experiment.

Since I wasn't having much luck with rockets, I decided my new army would be composed of cannon. I started creating an army of first Light, then Medium Cannon Cobra Half-Tracks. I kept the army in my base, expecting that I'd need to defend the base soon. However, that army became obsolete before it ever got used. It's only engagement came when a prospective intruder tried to get in through the eastern entrance. Despite the fact that the intruder was on the other side of a wall, my Cannon units fired at him, and in one volley they destroyed one of my trucks and an entire wall section, leaving the intruder unharmed (and later destroyed by a Lancer hardpoint). Overall, not a stellar record for the troops.

Eventually, I felt that I was back to full strength, so I started thinking about an offensive strategy again. I created a raiding force of Medium Cannon Cobra Hovercraft. They were surprisingly effective. I sent them far across the map to destroy a few enemy oil derricks. They also destroyed several isolated enemy units. I thought I would lose them when, after I took my attention off them for a while, they chased an enemy into a heavily-fortified canyon. They took a lot of damage, but all survived. Hooray! I was learning how to make effective combat groups.

Then, the airstrikes started. The yellow team sent a large squadron of VTOL aircraft to destroy my oil derricks. I was completely unprepared. I immediately began researching anti-aircraft technologies. Then I built a couple of Hurricane AA sites along the enemy approach path. The Hurricanes destroyed, at most, one aircraft per wave. Meanwhile, each wave was destroying one or two of my oil derricks. I rebuilt oil derricks as fast as I could, but I was soon down to only one derrick and completely out of energy. As an inexperienced player, I didn't know I could recycle units and structures for energy, or I would have done that. Instead, I decided to focus my meager energy income on a single item -- a Sunburst AA Site. It turns out that was a good choice. The Sunburst was far more effective than the Hurricanes at taking down enemy aircraft. I followed-up with a few Sunburst Bug Wheel units, and I was eventually able to knock all the enemy aircraft out of the sky.

I also noticed that the aircraft were firing into my oil derricks with a very low angle of attack. In response to this, I speculated that walls might protect the derricks, so I built walls next to each one. However, my Sunburst defense was preventing the enemy from reaching the derricks by now, so I was not able to confirm whether or not this was effective.

Eventually, the yellow team gave up its air attacks. I had survived, but I was in bad shape. For a while, I had to spend all my energy income rebuilding and preparing for the next attack. Meanwhile, the yellow team sent a force to take my eastern derrick and destroy the Sensor and Mortar Pits on the eastern edge of my territory. I kept my army in my base because I was certain the yellow team would continue its push into my base, and I didn't want to engage them until they were weakened by my fixed defenses. However, the yellow team didn't attack my base. After taking my oil resource, they left me alone. Once again, I was spared defeat by an enemy who just couldn't be bothered to finish me off.

After the yellow team retreated, I sent my Medium Cannon Cobra Hovercraft team to retake my eastern oil resource. It was successful. After that, I began to think, for the first time, about trying to take and hold an enemy oil resource. I didn't feel strong, but I reasoned that I'd rather battle over a distant oil resource than battle over my own territory, as I had now done twice. I chose an oil derrick held by the grey team on a nearby mountaintop. I sent a truck and several Mortar Cobra Hovercraft units. Then I built a Sensor Tower nearby and let the mortars destroy all of the oil derrick structures. I defended the mortar units with my Medium Cannon Cobra Hovercraft team. I intended to retreat if faced with any real opposition force. However, the grey team gave up without a fight. I took the mountain and built my own oil derrick on it.

It turns out my new mountain was well-placed. It oversaw a valley with a lot of enemy traffic. I built a sensor and a few Mortar Pits on top. I also positioned my hovercraft mortars on top. They were able to stop most traffic in the valley. They also destroyed a few fixed defenses owned by the black team on a nearby mountain.

At this point, I started experimenting with aircraft. I created some bombers and I targeted the black team's mountain fortress, but the black team had an AA Flak Cannon, and I took many losses. I found that a better use for aircraft was to attack mobile enemies in my sensor range, destroying them or softening them up before they reached my units. To make the most of this tactic, I researched the VTOL Strike Tower. That tower turned out to be a mixed blessing. When it targeted an attacking enemy, it worked great. A few Lancer Scorpion VTOL could usually destroy any approaching enemy. However, the VTOL Strike Tower would often send my aircraft following enemies within range of enemy AA fire. I lost a lot of aircraft to the black team's AA Flak Cannon while I was figuring this out.

Unable to take the black mountain fortress with aircraft, I decided to take it with artillery. I sent an improved artillery team (this time with Bombard Pythons) to assault the mountain. They took it easily. However, I couldn't hold it. My plan was to station some aircraft there until I could build fixed defenses. Unfortunately, I was still working out the rules for aircraft behavior, and I couldn't figure out how to make them stay put. Also, although the mountain was close to my first mountain, its only approach was far away. The bottom line is that I bungled the logistics, and after clearing the mountain I failed to claim it, and the black team moved right back in.

I was distracted around this time by a new threat: super-strong enemy units. I started encountering cannon units built with Collective bodies. They appeared in only ones and twos, but were strong enough to roll past my zone of control without being destroyed. They could do major damage to my mountaintop structures and any units stationed there. I took this as a sign that I should boost my defenses. I redesigned my mountaintop fortress. I took out the mortar pits and covered the top of the mountain with walls and hardpoints to protect the sensors there. I chose Hyper Velocity Cannon Hardpoints over Lancers for their range and damage rate. I also stationed two trucks there to repair the walls, and I put a Repair Facility there to heal the trucks. I'd like to say that all of this worked, but it didn't. Any super cannon unit rolling by would put my walls deep into the red and sometimes destroy a section. Despite taking damage from four of my Hyper Velocity Cannon Hardpoints along the way, I would still need an air strike to take him down.

I decided that finding an effective defense against these super cannon units was my top priority. From browsing the online guide, I knew that cyborgs are good against cannon, so I made a force of Cyborg Lancers and put them under a Scorpion Hovercraft Commander. I was a little disappointed that there was no Cyborg Commander, but the Scorpion Hovercraft worked fine. He led the cyborg squad to victory again and again with no losses. I set him to guard the center of the map, which I now dominated. Super cannon were a problem no more.

Then I benefited from a bit of good luck. A grey squad destroyed a yellow oil derrick and most of the structures defending it, but was badly injured, and was destroyed by my aircraft while retreating. This left an oil resource free for the taking. I took the oil resource and guarded it with my cyborg squad. Then I started to build a sensor and walls on an adjacent hill.

Around this time, I suffered a user error incident. I noticed that some of my units weren't retreating when injured. I figured I must have neglected to change some of my new units' "Do or Die" orders. To fix the problem, I hit ctrl-u, then comma. However, I forgot to deselect all units. The next time I clicked on the map, every one of my units started moving out of position. I hadn't saved the game for a while, so I decided to play on, despite this snafu. I moved my cyborg squad and my artillery units back into position, but otherwise let all units assemble in the big valley where my staging operations were taking place. This left my base empty and highly susceptible to attack, but by this point in the game, I had lost respect for the AI, and I doubted it would capitalize on the opportunity.

That clicking error, by the way, was just one of many. My most common mistake during the game was clicking on a unit while another unit or squad was selected, and thereby giving unintentional guard orders, or unintentionally assigning a unit to a commander. I'd say the likelihood that mistake is my number one complaint about the game.

At this point in the game, I made my first howitzer. I didn't realize until then that howitzers have a great range. From within my safe area, my team of four howitzers were able to finally devastate that black mountain fortress which had been troubling me for so long. I started to create several howitzer units, but then I realized I really wanted fixed-position howitzers and I researched, then built, the Howitzer, Ground Shaker, and Hellstorm Emplacements.

With about eight fixed howitzers and eight mobile ones, I felt very much in control. For the first time, I envisioned a strategy to win the game with artillery. As an experiment, I put my four mobile Ground Shaker units under command of a Python Hovercraft Sensor and sent it to the yellow team base. I assumed I'd lose that squad to the yellow team's defense forces or to an airstrike, so I didn't even bother to send an escort along. However, the artillery team was wildly successful. Those four Ground Shakers destroyed every structure in the yellow team base. The yellow team had apparently gone big in cyborgs because there were dozens of cyborgs standing at the ready inside the base. Instead of attacking me, they just stood their ground and let me destroy them with artillery fire. Thus, the yellow team suffered an ignominious defeat.

After defeating the yellow team, I figured I was on my way to victory. However, the grey and black teams continued to get stronger. They were now sending super-duper cannon units against me. These cannon had striped barrels -- I don't know what they were. They could wander right into the center of my main army and destroy several units before falling to artillery fire and air strikes. However, my main army was now obsolete and mostly irrelevant, since I was having so much success with artillery. Thus, I decided to ignore the threat and continue to press the war against the enemy bases.

By now, I noticed I had lost several trucks while trying to claim the oil resource on the mountain that had been the black team's fortress. I finally figured out that this was due to friendly fire. I would build a derrick on the oil resource. Then grey or black trucks and combat engineers would show up, apparently dispatched to claim the resource while it was still available. My howitzers would target the enemy units and destroy the oil derrick and my own truck with splash damage. This pattern repeated itself many times before I clued in. It turns out I was suffering a lot of friendly fire. Several of my howitzers would target enemies in narrow canyons, requiring the shells to graze the hilltops. If I had walls or other structures on those hilltops, they would be destroyed. I never figured out a solution to the friendly fire problem. By the end of the game, I suffered far more damage from my own artillery than from the enemy.

Although the yellow team conquest was easy, it was a little tedious. I chose a different strategy to defeat the grey and black teams. I decided to build undefended sensors and Hellstorm Emplacements at strategic points around the map. I figured that every point on the map would soon be covered by at least one sensor and multiple howitzers. Thus, I could destroy all the enemy's units, and eventually their base structures, without having to manually target each one.

To execute this plan, I researched the Wide Spectrum Sensor Tower. I also created a Cyborg Transport and a team of combat engineers. I could create only five engineers because of the control limit, but five was enough. The flying engineers went from hill to hill, creating sensors and Hellstorm Emplacements according to plan. The grey team sent some cannon to destroy the structures, but I built them much faster than the cannon could destroy them. Eventually, the grey team base was within range of about 16 Hellstorms, and it fell quickly.

The black team fought back a little. It had created a super-weapon structure with a huge range. I accidentally let my Cyborg Transport get too close, and the super weapon destroyed the transport with two shots. I tried to create a new Cyborg Transport, but I couldn't -- the option simply didn't appear in the VTOL Factory build list. I don't know why. So, I created some hovercraft trucks and continued building sensors and howitzer emplacements with them.

While I was pushing my sensor range into its territory, however, the black team was destroying my base with airstrikes in an odd way. The attacking aircraft would enter my base, then inexplicably land. My own howitzers would fire on the grounded aircraft and destroy them, along with one or two of my base structures. Friendly fire again. I wasn't worried about it, but in a different game, it could have been a big issue.

Meanwhile, I lost a lot of trucks trying to build a sensor close enough to target the black team's super weapon. After a few tries, however, I found the sweet spot and built the last sensor needed. By this time, there were about 20 howitzers within range of the black team's remaining structures. With the last sensor in place, it took only a few seconds to finish off the black team with artillery fire.

Victory to me!

In this game, artillery was extremely effective, but I'm not experienced enough to know whether artillery is always the winning strategy. If the AI were smarter, I think it could have sent airstrikes to destroy my sensors and emplacements faster than I could build them. Also, those enemy cannon units were really strong. If the enemy had sent them in concentrated forces, instead of ones and twos, I think they could easily have pushed me back, even very late in the game. I'm eager to play the game again and see if things unfold differently.

-TC
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NoQ
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Re: After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by NoQ »

A nice story! Sounds like people still play the game, and story-telling art isn't dead yet (:
I'll just say a few banal things here ...
I started a single-player skirmish on the Rolling Hills map. I lost badly, again and again, very early in each game. Finally, ...
I think it's an appropriate place for my standart reply.
I researched Machinegun first and made about 8 units for scouting. In addition to the four oil resources at my base site, there was one nearby to the north and another to the east. I grabbed all six quickly and researched Power Module to give myself a good start in power production.
If you want to improve on this phase, you should also think of timing. That is, questions like "At what minute of the game did i get the power module?", "When would i have got it if i started the game with building a research facility and teched straightly to it?", ... And, you know, there are very few people who actually try to research such things. But understanding them is a very important part of the skill.
I decided I'd focus on missile weapons
Rockets are poor against cyborgs. You should choose at least two complementary branches of weapons in every game, like Rockets+MGs, or Cannons+Flamers, to be able to counter both cyborgs and tanks. In fact, the AI doesn't realize this simple rule, so the easiest way to kill the AI is to spam cannon cyborgs (with enough upgrades of both cannons and cyborg armor); with just a little micromanagement (which includes retreating for repair and keeping distance from enemy flamers), they're almost impossible to kill with the weapons AI uses. Alternative AIs like DyDo are free of such obvious flaws.
commander
Commanders are certainly fun, but when you're playing against humans, they turn out to be pretty useless. The reason is easy: humans will always try to kill your commander first.
I discovered that my troops were very poor at conducting battle in the cramped corridors of my base. My units fired into my own buildings, ...
Curiously enough, this depends on the game version. In current stable, v2.3.7, you can shoot through your own buildings, but not through enemy buildings, so hiding your units behind the base buildings gives you a good advantage. Such possibility is removed in the current testing builds (see also "master"), but this still is a matter of debate. But i've heard of no version of the game where you can actually fire "into" your own buildings (unless you use alt+click to explicitly target them or hurt them with splash damage).
The Sunburst was far more effective than the Hurricanes at taking down enemy aircraft.
That also depends on upgrades. Rocket upgrades are applied to sunburst, so, since you have emphasized rockets, it certainly should have been effective. Hurricane has its own line of upgrades, but they're worth it as well; don't underestimate them ;)
Then I built a Sensor Tower nearby and let the mortars destroy all of the oil derrick structures.
Try also mobile sensors. They're a bit more effective in offense.
At this point, I started experimenting with aircraft. I created some bombers and I targeted the black team's mountain fortress, but the black team had an AA Flak Cannon, and I took many losses.
Try to have a look at the later bomb bays. The first two are pretty weak, but the next get much stronger. Plasmite bombs can be really deadly, even if just one VTOL reaches its target. Many people even hate them (for seeing them in enemy hands too often).
I researched the VTOL Strike Tower
Try also patroling (alt+click).
I chose Hyper Velocity Cannon Hardpoints over Lancers for their range and damage rate.
Damage rates can be deceptive. I would have prefered lancers in this case, for their being AT (depends on upgrades, of course)
From browsing the online guide, I knew that cyborgs are good against cannon, so I made a force of Cyborg Lancers
Yeah, that's much better (:
I figured I must have neglected to change some of my new units' "Do or Die" orders.
I use "Retreat at medium" hotkey pretty often, so i even reassigned it to my numpad enter (to be pressed with the thumb).
My most common mistake during the game was clicking on a unit while another unit or squad was selected, and thereby giving unintentional guard orders, or unintentionally assigning a unit to a commander.
Hmm, this reminds me there was something like "warcraft-style mouse controls" option somewhere, but i couldn't find it instantly. Maybe some config file option still remains?
Instead of attacking me, they just stood their ground and let me destroy them with artillery fire.
Yeah. Another AI flaw. They keep little cyborgs for defense (which is not that bad), but they don't actually know how to use them effectively.
They were now sending super-duper cannon units against me. These cannon had striped barrels -- I don't know what they were.
Let me guess. Like this?
I tried to create a new Cyborg Transport, but I couldn't -- the option simply didn't appear in the VTOL Factory build list. I don't know why.
Let me guess. Not enough factory modules?
In this game, artillery was extremely effective, but I'm not experienced enough to know whether artillery is always the winning strategy. If the AI were smarter, I think it could have sent airstrikes to destroy my sensors and emplacements faster than I could build them. Also, those enemy cannon units were really strong. If the enemy had sent them in concentrated forces, instead of ones and twos, I think they could easily have pushed me back, even very late in the game.
Yeah, you're perfectly right about artillery. It can't do anything against VTOLs, and does very little damage to heavy tanks. It is also very expensive both to build and to research, and you need a bunch of it to win. But AIs gave you enough time and didn't know how to counter it, so you made a good use of it. In any case, artillery is a good pressure weapon; even if it doesn't kill anybody, the enemy can't just ignore it.
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Re: After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by Jorzi »

Very nice review of your game, you are a quick learner :)
I think NoQ explained most of the things pretty well, but I'll add my two cents when it comes to your choice of hpv cannons over lancers:
Lancers are theoretically better against tanks, but since you had researched a lot of cannon upgrades, the hpv cannons were propably better in this case, since they are also pretty effective against vehicles, with a limited AA capability as an additional bonus.
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-insert deep philosophical statement here-
T-C
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Re: After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by T-C »

NoQ and Jorzi,

I learned a lot from reading your replies. I did not realize, for instance, that AA weapons benefit from upgrades for other weapons. That is good to know.

I need to figure out why I lost that first battle. Your advice to get a fast start is helpful. I suspect that early battles are just a numbers game -- weapons are mostly equal, so the larger force wins. The next time I play, I plan to build 4 factories instead of 2 and try to outnumber my opponent.

I'm playing version 2.3.7, and I may be mistaken that my missile troops were firing into my own buildings. In the heat of war, it is hard to know what is happening sometimes. I'm certain that my cannon troops destroyed one of my walls, but on reflection, they may have shot through the wall, hit the enemy, and destroyed the wall with splash damage.

I'm sorry to hear that commanders aren't useful in multiplayer. I would hate to play without them. I'm only a beginner, but I've already formed some definite ideas about the role of commanders in the game. As I see it, they serve two purposes -- they add a gameplay element by earning experience quickly and by boosting the abilities of their troops, and they offer a user interface benefit by automatically routing new troops and troops that retreat for repairs. The gameplay feature is appropriate, but the user interface benefit, not so much. I believe that in a strategy game, all user interface features should be free. That's because, in a strategy game, competition should never be about who can click the fastest, or navigate the map the fastest, or keep track of micromanagement details about which units belong where. It may be that the developers of Warzone 2100 intend for it to be a hybrid of strategy game and arcade game, in which case they should disregard my ideas. However, if they intend to make a strategy game, then I believe the routing benefits of commanders should be automatic and available from the very beginning of the game. I'm not sure the best way to implement this, but one option is to allow any unit to be designated as a "leader". Leaders would automatically collect units from factories and gather followers that have gone for repairs, but would not get extra experience or a follower bonus -- in other words, they would act like a commander in the user interface aspects, but not in the gameplay aspects. Commanders could still be researched and built, as now, for the experience benefits. With a system like this, commanders might still be useless in multiplayer, but you could at least have leaders which help you organize your combat groups. Just an idea.

I'm excited to hear that there are alternative AIs. I'm eager to try the DyDo you mentioned.

-TC
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Re: After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by 3drts »

T-C wrote:NoQ and Jorzi,
I need to figure out why I lost that first battle. Your advice to get a fast start is helpful. I suspect that early battles are just a numbers game -- weapons are mostly equal, so the larger force wins. The next time I play, I plan to build 4 factories instead of 2 and try to outnumber my opponent.
The AI is so bad, that it has built in free power cheats on anything other than minimum difficulty. The AI doesn't play smarter at higher difficulty, it just cheats more. This makes the start harder before you have many options to capitalize on its stupidity.
Leaders would automatically collect units from factories and gather followers that have gone for repairs, but would not get extra experience or a follower bonus.
Yes, this would be nice. Or it could be some sort of calculation that determines where the center of "group 1" is (perhaps ignoring units that are retreating for repairs, or still returning), and sends units two and from that.
So no leader unit would be involved at all, just where the group is clustered.

With more work, you can get a similar effect - you know you can click on the factory delivery point and change it right?
You can do the same with the repair facility triangles.
So set your closest repair facility to send units back to approximately where your group is, also, do the same for your factory delivery points.


Also note that upgrades play a huge role in WZ, a fully upgraded weapon can be over 10x as powerful (when damage and ROF bonuses are considered together) as its un-upgraded form.
Switching between weapon trees is a costly endeavor.
If you have been upgrading one type of weapon heavily, and then switch to another type, its going to take quite a few upgrades before that type is competitive.

Also, artillery's effectiveness depends on the map.
High oil maps with basically flat terrain are dominated by artillery late in the game - you never have to leave your base for oil, and you can spam nearly impenetrable defenses - they degrade into artillery wars.

Well, there is typically an early tank/cyborg spam/rush phase, but while thats going on, trucks are building defensive lines, and at a certain point, tank pushes stop being viable.

VTOLs also become marginally effective- if you catch your enemy off guard, they dominate, but late game - going up against blocks of fully upgraded AA 4 tiles deep - it doesn't work so well- even with massed vtol waves of heavy splash damage bombs, its marginally effective, if the enemy spaces his AA rather than using mass blocks, forget about it.


low oil maps are different. You wont have the power to spam artillery, and if you try, enemy heavy tanks are likely to role right through your weak defensive line at take out your artillery with very little damage.

Lower oil maps are strategically much more interesting. High oil is a tech and build queue race.
T-C
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Re: After-Action Review of my First Game

Post by T-C »

3drts wrote:
Leaders would automatically collect units from factories and gather followers that have gone for repairs, but would not get extra experience or a follower bonus.
Yes, this would be nice. Or it could be some sort of calculation that determines where the center of "group 1" is (perhaps ignoring units that are retreating for repairs, or still returning), and sends units two and from that.
So no leader unit would be involved at all, just where the group is clustered.
Making units return to the group center is an excellent idea. Come to think of it, perhaps the biggest benefit for least effort would be to simply make units remember the group they are in. When a unit retreats, it removes itself from its group, and doesn't rejoin the group unless you manually tell it to. What if, instead, units automatically rejoin their groups when healed? I think that change alone would reduce the micromanagement a lot.
3drts wrote:With more work, you can get a similar effect - you know you can click on the factory delivery point and change it right?
You can do the same with the repair facility triangles.
I did not know that about the repair facility triangles. Thanks for the tip.

-TC
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