Defences and Attacking

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Trooper1005
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Defences and Attacking

Post by Trooper1005 »

Hello... I have quite a significant problem. I lack an understanding on when to attack.

I can quite happily research using 5 research centers all the way to heavy lasers and dragon body armor... However I lack the understanding required to attack earlier than this. I also find it difficult to control the map. My opponent usually punishes me with tanks whenever I venture outside the base to take additional oil sources. So my questions are: What technology to attack at? How to take over large chunks of the map successfully? How much research oil spending compared to unit production oil spending is appropriate?

Also as a side question...

What is the optimum body for trucks (when you're reasonably far into body research) to ensure that your trucks don't get destroyed by artillery fire but maintain the speed necessary to quickly react to threats?

Thanks for your assistance.
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aubergine
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by aubergine »

If you're doing too much research, your enemy is able to build big armies and thus dominate the map more than you.

It would be better to limit your research in the early game and build larger tank armies. In the early game, limit yourself to say 2-3 labs. You also need to keep an eye on what your enemy is researching (what units / defences are they making?) and research to counter that. If they are making lots of cyborgs, you need anti-personnel weapons, if they are using flamers, you need thermal armour, if they are using lots of tanks you need anti-tank research, and so on.

(Question: Why has nobody written a guide for all this stuff yet?)

As for trucks, there's no point in going over the top with them. I tend to use medium bodies on hover propulsion -- they can sustain some damage whilst zipping round the map, and are relatively inexpensive to produce. Obviously, earlier in the game, just viper wheels will do, but once you get more tech it's easier to mange if using medium hovers.
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by Nameless »

http://guide.wz2100.net/????

Also I heard that someone out there at some point thought about doing something like that but AFAIK his computer died or something. Haven't heard much about that or anything like though :wink:
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Iluvalar
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by Iluvalar »

You need an army between 3 minutes at start to 8 minutes near neuronal brain worth of power production and you need to research just slightly more than your opponent whatever what that is.

To answer your question direclty,
in 2.3 this is between 30-60% at start down to 15-40% later of your power production.
In 3,1 it's between 20-70% at start up to 10-60%. Since the devs added 2 more minutes of blindness that make the game mainly driven by luck.

The reason why the ratio change during the game is due to the bad research tree that have his outcome decay constantly during the game. In such a way that when you reach the power generator, you upgraded half of the maximum power upgrade possible. So at beginning, upgrading a smaller army is good, while later you can bet more on number.
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Rommel
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by Rommel »

You must move forward, establish defenses as far forward from your base as you can, at natural choke points in the map so that you can concentrate the enemy into a small space and hammer him with your defenses. The thing to remember, if you are only concentrating on defending your base (waiting for research before building units, etc), the next thing you will know is that the enemy is at your doorstep and it's all over bar the singing. From your first post I can see you know the feeling of helplessness when the enemy is outside your base, surrounding you and you have nowhere to go...

In light of this, it is very rare that I will fortify my actual base very much - maybe at the start of the game, just enough to withstand a rush and mg towers will normally stop this. What I do is after first getting my basic base up and running is; I move some trucks as far forward as I can, trying to make the center point between myself/the enemy and then start building my defenses there while moving my combat units up as they are produced (you will see later why you should protect these trucks with the first combat units you are producing).

With these combat units I will start sending out feelers to gauge what the enemy is doing - you catch his trucks, you kill them straight away as this will impede his defenses as he is probably trying to do what you are (it is worth noting that killing trucks is of value enough to warrant sacrificing units, the more trucks you can kill the better because it disrupts the enemies plans in a big way). Keep moving forward until you encounter significant resistance - if you don't encounter anything just keep moving forward, you may have been lucky and caught him with his pants down and you can move straight to his base. Also take into account that an encounter with an enemy can prompt him to all out attack - this can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what defenses you have up and the size of your army - if you can gode him into an attack before he is prepared and draw him into your defenses all the better... if however you are not prepared, well this might not be so good...

When you do encounter significant resistance you may need to back off - if you have more units than the enemy you may be able to beat him, if not just back off to your forward defenses. In regards to tactics and engaging the enemy, I like to use a two step attack - first off I send cyborg flamers in to block the enemy and munch on his cyborgs and tanks, followed closely behind by my main tank group (close means like probably 5-10 tank lengths - you need to be able to escape his flamers if required, yet close enough to be able to fire at his units engaging your borgs (always set your firing range to long range). If the enemy has his borgs and tanks all together they will all be either destroyed or significantly weakened by your borg flamer attack, then you can mop them up with your tanks - your greatest danger at the first TI stages of the game is flamers / cyborgs - you need your cyborg flamer screen to counter this. Always retreat your tanks from flamers early in the game, they have a short range so if you have like machine guns they will kill the flamers while they are chasing you - the thing is that even a small amount of flamers can damage your tank group badly, remember they are not just attacking one tank, the flames are burning everything in their line of fire!

Side Note: if the game is at later stages, your screen will become heavy units, like cannon protecting a fast attack force of lancer hovers or other such strong attack/weak defense units. The heavy units block the enemy from attacking your weak lancers while your lancer fire thru your heavy units and devastate the enemy. You can also put in some mortor or artillery in this fast attack force to work on enemy defenses - all protected by your heavy units! Be careful though with mortar and artillary - they need to stop to fire and they also have area attacks so they can hurt your heavy screening units if the enemy is close to them - probably best to group these together and keep them out until you need to work on enemy defenses - cb and senor turrets can come into their own here. Also learn exactly how to research ripple rocket battery http://guide.wz2100.net/r/ripplerocketbattery, and concentrate on getting these as fast as possible, they are a game winner for later stages - you should mass build ripple rocket emplacements when they come available then you can use sensor turrets to creep around and pound at your enemy - ripples have a VERY long range and are the earliest long range weapon that you can get - the only other batteries that compare (in regards to range) are the ground shaker and arch angel missiles which take a LOT more time to research!

Ok back to what I was talking about before... If the enemy is doing the same thing and you have to back off, try and draw him into the defenses you have made, at this stage it is not about blocking him, it's about weakening his army without losing your army - ie you don't protect your defenses with your units, you protect your units with your defenses. In light of this I like to build defensive patterns that draw the enemy into channels so he keeps moving forward and getting hit - I usually use parallel lines to achieve this (can be mg bunkers, hardpoints, whatever):

0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0

as opposed to one line blocking the chokepoint or whatever

00000000

see with the second type of wall type defense, the enemy breaks thru and he is thru without further resistance, with the first channel type setup he will just keep moving forward and if he tries to rush thru his units are gonna suffer - and hopefully you have your fresh army waiting at the end for him :). Another thing with parallel channels, it does not impede your own army, you can move them thru the channels easily (or retreat thru the channels as well if you need). Remember that you defenses can impede you just as much as the enemy if not set up right (more so because you cannot blow them up like he can ;) - never completely block off an area with defenses unless you are absolutely sure you won't need to move units thru them. At times you can have 100+ units so if you have made your gate or area too narrow you won't be able to get thru fast.

Remember if he is rushing your defenses he is probably using the bulk of his army to do so, if you destroy his army, don't sit back, move forward, capitalize and if you can go right to his base (but don't get caught the same way he did ;) - but then again if you have killed most of his army, he won't have an army waiting for you if you break his line - so in that case go and win your game :) If his defenses are a bit strong yet, mass your army just outside their range and bring your trucks up and create a new defensive line (always moving forward remember!) - you should have mortar pits by now, whatever the case keep the ground you have gained (always try to retain the ground you have gained) and know when to stop pushing forward, you don't want to lose your army!

Remember first concentrate on getting your base built up to what you want so you can research and get power / factories etc - you don't want to be distracted by your base while working in your forward area, so try to get this set up as much as you can quickly, use cuing, etc.

Also that normally the biggest army will win, so mass your units - the best starting units I find is twin machine gun viper half tracks and cyborg flamers you send a massed army of these at the enemy early and he could be in deep trouble - this is why it is important not to wait too long before producing units, a hundred viper halftrack twin mg is gonna easily beat a handful of heavy body units, and that is all you will have if you have waited for the research to build these units.. neglecting to build any early units. Even waiting for twin mg and half tracks is a small gamble - an opponent working a rush so much that he spends all his early money on creating basic mg viper wheels could have a substantial amount of units coming at you by the time you get to twin mg - this does occasionally happen and if you are not prepared you are a goner - if you manage to repulse the attack you are in very good position to counter attack as he has neglected building up his base and researching to do the rush so you will be at an advantage.

Also if you encounter light defenses and you have a huge army, don't be afraid of them and back off, you can lose an important gain like this - just go thru the defenses and straight for his base - remember not to get caught in parallel channels like mentioned above, if he just has one line with some machine gun bunkers, etc just mass your units in one point and make a hole then go straight thu.

This advice is probably more for high oil mp maps (which I play the most), but the principles can work in low oil - remember in low oil it's about getting to the derricks early and protecting them (a little) but still massing your army and forward defensive lines.

oh and always evolve your tactics, if the enemy does something that really messes with you, integrate it to your tactic, use this knowledge in your next game, learn from your mistakes capitalize on your victories. Unlike real wars we are lucky enough to get another go at it :)

Disclaimer - I am not a pro, just sharing some things that have worked for me and stopped me getting spanked like a noob (well some of the time hahahaha).

Well I hope this is useful - ended up becoming more involved that I originally intended....
Last edited by Rommel on 23 Jan 2013, 16:26, edited 4 times in total.
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Trooper1005
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by Trooper1005 »

Thank you Rommel, that was very informative. :)

Thank you everyone else for lending assistance. :)
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Rommel
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by Rommel »

Trooper1005 wrote:Thank you Rommel, that was very informative. :)
No problem, look forward to seeing you in MP using my tactics against me :)
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Re: Defences and Attacking

Post by raycast »

Train yourself! Don't play the same style every time.

Choose some easy AIs, and give yourself the restriction to destroy the enemy using machine guns only. You are allowed to upgrade machine guns all the way, but you must not use rockets.

Obviously, you will want to attack before the enemy has a lot of rockets...

You should be able to overrun easy AIs on most maps with machine guns only. Because a well upgraded machine gun can kick ass. A fully upgraded Twin Assault Gun does 242.4 damage per second. A fully upgraded Scourge Missile does 207.4 DPS. But of course it all depends on playing them right: a twin assault gun will shred a lot of cyborgs, a lot of cyborgs will tear apart scourge missile tanks, but scourge missile tanks can blast away twin assault gun tanks. You need to be able to play each of these strategies, depending on what your enemy does.

After you've understood how to use MGs, try flamers. They have the worst range in the game, but if you get a large pack of fast hover-flamer tanks into the enemy base, they'll tear it apart just by driving through. And a flamer rush may give you a good chance to get your scourges in and also tear apart enemy turrets and walls.

Put some assault or HPV cannons on fast tanks (all-rounders are quite good against hardpoints), and you can easily take out a fortress without resorting to turtle artillery tactics or VTOL. The best way to attack a fortress is to keep moving around it. Keep it on turning so it can't shoot. Try to attack from multiple directions. This may not work for humans, but if you are already dominating an AI player, this may work just too well. First destroy some walls to open up the space, then try to circle around the fortress.
Usually they'll also prefer nearby units. While you are circling, other units may be able to approach from the primary direction and get free shots.

Learn about when to use fast units, and which weapons against which buildings. Never attack a wall with a flamer. But your flamers may be able to shred the bunkers and main base if they get through the defenses. Bunker Busters are exactly what they say: one of the best weapons to take out bunkers (in particular: AA bunkers)
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