Our tips for under-utilized strategies

In another thread Ivan posted the then current distribution of strategies people are using:

Quote:

Tank General 874
Perfect Defense 483
Naval Commander 197
Master Of Stealth 126
Imperialist 113
Guerrilla Warfare 70
Sky Menace 52
Blitzkrieg 7
Lucky Bastard 1

I was thinking that this could be a general thread for the users of the less popular strategies to post our tips and tricks for using them and maybe drum up some interest in people for trying those strategies out.

I'll start with Guerrilla Warfare. This strategy is best for those maps or countries with high manpower and low industry. Start by building as much militia as you can in the early game. With 5A and 5D, the massive number you can produce should be able to take on any opposition without much support. Remember to consolidate your gains and not advance too far too fast. It's easy to overextend when your troops move so slow. Because of militia's slow speed, be sure to think ahead a couple of turns. If your eastern front is well in hand, don't send more militia over when they'll need to slog across your country to defend an attack on your western front. Finally, in the mid/late-game, use the money you've saved by buying militia to purchase as may 100pt marines as you can to sneak around enemy lines to cap objectives while your militia defend the home front.

I've just started to use Blitzkrieg and am still working out the kinks, but what I've found out so far is to never let up on the attack. Once you do that, the -2 to defense for all units comes into play and your fronts collapse faster than Germany's eastern front did post-1943.

So what are y'all's tips for your favorite strategy?

I used imperialist sometimes, all i have to say is that dont use it if you are playing in an europe only game.

I've been using Blitzkrieg for a while now and I don't see a problem with it. As you pointed out if you go on the defensive you're screwed, but you are using Blitzkrieg as your strategy, you shouldn't be on the defensive. I think the main reason that strategy isn't used is because it is expensive as fuck, and a lot of players cry their eyes out of their units don't have insanely high stats, I mean just look at how marine users cried like hell when marines got 7/3 stats. So while it's under-used, I don't think it needs any buffs or anything, it's simply a strategy most players don't like. I'm sure those seven of us who actually use it realize how good it is.

Playing with Blitzkrieg some more and here's what i learned so far:

On some maps it's an unsuitable strategy, ie in Africa where you can't build tanks without bursting your budget it's really hard to anything with your 5/4 infantry.

Furthermore I have to reiterate, never defend. A near 40 strong tank stack of my was wiped out by about 15 infantry while trying to hold an enemy capital. It's better to just sally forth, militia and all, to intercept the largest enemy stack heading to reclaim the capital. Take it back next turn and repeat until there are no more enemy units nearby.

Finally, here's something you won't be able to do every game but is great fun when it works. If you have peaceful relations with or an ally in southern china the the three cities in the North-east province of China can produce 21 tank stacks a month. Send these 21 stacks along the line of Russian cities in Siberia which no-one usually makes the primary focus of their expansion. This line of cities is like a rail-gun and wave after wave of 60 strong tank stacks comes out the far end to rain destruction on Europe or the Mid-east. Again, this doesn't work all the time (and probably will even less now that I've posted this tell-all ) but it's hilarious when it does.

No strategy is perfect and I stand by the fact that blitz works perfectly as is intended. As you said, Yaddo, you don't defend with blitz, you intercept. You always attack cuz you can move faster then anyone else.

Sky Menace.

This is my evil master plan.

I buy one plane transport at the start, put into this 1-4 inf(you only need one militia) and buy as many bombers as I can. You can now whizz around capping towns with this stack, adding more bombers as you go. Attack militia towns first because bombers still have trouble against the neutral inf.
You can then go on to make more stacks like this or make one large stack of bombers with the transport. I recommend at least 15 bombers in a stack, I think the most I ever had was 230 or something.

The down side of this is you are normally pretty slow at capping as you only have a few stacks to use at once, instead of many stacks of tanks this can really hurt the rate at which you can make points. These stacks are hard to micromanage so using very complex plans and a large mix of units late game might not be possible. It is also very expensive. Don't lose those bombers!
If you start a game with less than 10000 it can be a slow and venerable start.
Other players are scared of bombers and will often team up against you!

The upside is the bombers are very powerfull when attacking other players stacks and have great movement to react to any problems. As you can afford to react to surprise attacks because of your speed, you can spend less on your city's defence.
Not many players can stop a stack of over 100 bombers!

Sky Menace is quiet hard to use but once mastered is one of the stronger tactics.


Oh and I got the idea for this from playing with Jebo, pm him with questions about this as he is the master.

Y'know, I wish all the strategies gave detailed information. Like Sky Menace or MoS just go "hurp they r bettar unitz!", I hate that and it keeps me from buying other strategies. Every strategy should be like blitz or imperialist where they specify what the strategy does. Sky Menace: Air units gain +2 movement and bombers gain +1 offense while infantry and tanks get -2 offense/defense

Obviously that's probably not true but that's what I mean, I wanna know WHAT the strategy does so I know if I should buy it or not. Cuz that sky menace strat sounds kinda fun, but I don't know any details about it.

Geschreven door Colt556, 28.01.2011 at 09:37

Obviously that's probably not true but that's what I mean, I wanna know WHAT the strategy does so I know if I should buy it or not. Cuz that sky menace strat sounds kinda fun, but I don't know any details about it.

Sky Menace gives -1 attack to infantry and tanks. Both bombers and stealths have 8/6 and range for them and air tran is boosted by 2. Air transportation has doubled stats (to 2/4). Bombers have -30 to cost and stealths and air transportation costs are decreased by 50.

While it would be nice for strategies to be more descriptive, kinda hard to fit that in one line no?

Wouldn't be that hard to fit that in the space provided.

Decreases attack of tanks and infantry by -1, increases stats of bombers and stealths to 8/6 and range of air units by 2. Cost for bombers/stealths decreased by -30 and air transports by -50, transports have double stats.

That's no longer then some of the descriptions used, and hell you can cut out the 'transports have double stats' since unless it's double capacity, nobody gives a flying fuck lol. It's all about how you word it.

Besides, not like they can't just modify the UI to provide enough space. I mean the lack of details is why I've only bought Blitz, because Blitz actually gave details on it. I simply don't know what any other strategy actually does. So I wont waste my SP on something without knowing what I'm getting.

A good solution to this problem would be to have a section in the forms called information. It seems like you guys got a good start here good job

I've been using guerrilla warfare for quite a while now, and what I've found is this:Militia are OPed. Wether defending, or attacking. What I normally do is mass militia the first turn, group them together and start taking capitals and cities the second turn. After that I continue moving, capturing, and making more militia, when you have a tidy empire and somewhere close to 150~200 militia, start mass producing marines and I mean mass producing. When you have about 150~200 marines, build yourself enough transports or air transports and start making drops, form a wedge out of your huge army of militia and distract people by advancing with that. I suggest choosing one target at a time. You wanna go for speed here because speed is the key, especially if you're out numbered teamwise or against someone bigger speed is key. Drop your marines at key points and cap cities to make more marines or if you need to make militia to defend key points to stop them taking the cities back while your main militia are always pushing a head.


If things end up going badly, you should at least have done a significant amount of damage to the person(s). At this point, start mass producing militia again and if someone's attacking you, use your airtransports to transport mass militia to every city, they're cheap and you can always get tons more. You want to bleed your opponent if they're coming for you so by the time they get to your capital you can walk some marines out and destroy whatevers left of their army.


I tend to use variations of this strategy and obviously it won't work for every situation, and you're going to adapt it to your playstyle and to how your game is going, but this is the basic core of using this strategy. Also, if you're fighting in a whole world its best not to use this. Unless you can secure a huge area, mainly north/south america, all of egypt, china/russia or europe I don't recommend using this generally 400+ tanks with the tank commander strat will rip through you unless you can mass 500 militia, and that does require quite a bit of resources. Will do a guide for imperialist and naval next. More guide's as I get strategies.

Imperialist: Personally one of my favorite strategies right now behind sky menace. This is the strategy for people who start in small places but want to build big. Generally anywhere is okay to start with this strategy, I recommend anywhere but africa really. With this strategy since you have a -1 penalty to attack on every unit you need more units then you'd normally make, I suggest starting with a few tanks and taking everything as close to you as possible, make alliances where needed, and draw defensive borders. Now, I generally just take everything I can, and mass tanks to roll over people and that usually works. On occasion, such as starting in the america's or any other country that requires you to build boats to get to the action, and especially if you have all of north and south america you should build a decent navy, anything from 40-80 battle ships and send them out in squads to hit cost cities for you to gain a foot hold, places like Africa, india, japan especially for its income and the ability to just make a ton of bombers there and drop everyone, thailand, really anything costal that doesn't look heavily defended. Or if you have allies, just drop your units there.


Be warned though, with this strategy your units will be weaker and at this point the only way to really counter that is to go in with the larger foce. I also recommend keeping a few squads of bombers around your tanks to disable any counter air tactics or drops for that matter.

Also if you're rich enough, with this strategy mass bombers is pretty viable, tho I'd recommend menace of the sky more for that, it still works pretty well if you want to go aerial. Especially if you're doing drops, this is a nice strategy.

Sky menace: This is one of my favorite strategies; because I happen to really like planes. Now you may think this is just a counter part to tank commander and naval commander and you'd be completely wrong. This strategy requires you to have a huge income and it would be preferable to control as much territory as possible starting off, I personally don't use it in small europe or eurasia only games and I think its better when used with whole world enabled. That being said you can still use it for those small games its just a mite harder.


With this strategy you have access to stealth bombers and both they and regular cost a bit less with a boost to attack and defense. When you start, make sure you build a few infantry that are within walking distance of the cities you want to capture, then use all your other cities to stack about 5-10 bombers, regular ones, and bomb that city so your infantry can take it with no casualties. This is how you're going to go through most of the game. Keep taking cities in this manner, all the while building more bombers.

Now, when it comes to attacking other players the advantage you have right off the bat is mobility and surprise, bombers have a huge move radius and can attack from unexpected angles. One of the best ways to do this, is to ignore the huge advancing army your enemy has fielded and fly your stack of bombers behind them to their capital with a few transports full of infantry, generally, even they do have a somewhat decent defense it will fall to a good amount of bombers and you can use your air trans to drop in and hold the city before they can turn around and run home.

Now conversely, if your planes are out fucking shit up and you suddenly notice that there are 150 tanks about to knock on the front door of your town you can abandon whatever you're doing to slam into those tanks with your stack of bombers, and if thats not enough you can drop some infantry to clean up or run into your town to defend it.

Any strategy you take with land units, you should know the tip how are for example britain and france connected. you just drag your units to lamanche and drag them from lamanche to britain, that way are also connected spain and africa, denmark islands, sicilia and italy ....

Geschreven door Yaddo, 28.01.2011 at 07:57

Playing with Blitzkrieg some more and here's what i learned so far:

On some maps it's an unsuitable strategy, ie in Africa where you can't build tanks without bursting your budget it's really hard to anything with your 5/4 infantry.

Furthermore I have to reiterate, never defend. A near 40 strong tank stack of my was wiped out by about 15 infantry while trying to hold an enemy capital. It's better to just sally forth, militia and all, to intercept the largest enemy stack heading to reclaim the capital. Take it back next turn and repeat until there are no more enemy units nearby.

Finally, here's something you won't be able to do every game but is great fun when it works. If you have peaceful relations with or an ally in southern china the the three cities in the North-east province of China can produce 21 tank stacks a month. Send these 21 stacks along the line of Russian cities in Siberia which no-one usually makes the primary focus of their expansion. This line of cities is like a rail-gun and wave after wave of 60 strong tank stacks comes out the far end to rain destruction on Europe or the Mid-east. Again, this doesn't work all the time (and probably will even less now that I've posted this tell-all ) but it's hilarious when it does.

Now realize I haven't used blitzkrieg before, but I loved tank general for awhile. Anyways, its impossible to ALWAYS intercept the enemies, especially since it is kind of luck some of the time. The best way to defend is to just set up a defensive line. Sacrificing two or three tanks, and then being able to get the counter attack with your 17 or 18 other tanks is usually more effective than your entire stack being mutilated

Wow, thanks for skymenace

How much SP u need to get it?

Geschreven door VozdKaradjordje, 18.02.2011 at 18:32

Any strategy you take with land units, you should know the tip how are for example britain and france connected. you just drag your units to lamanche and drag them from lamanche to britain, that way are also connected spain and africa, denmark islands, sicilia and italy ....

I can't get this to work. Can anyone provide screenshots? I'm pretty sure my units were in the right place but I still couldnt go through.

Geschreven door Anderkent, 14.03.2011 at 12:27

Geschreven door VozdKaradjordje, 18.02.2011 at 18:32

Any strategy you take with land units, you should know the tip how are for example britain and france connected. you just drag your units to lamanche and drag them from lamanche to britain, that way are also connected spain and africa, denmark islands, sicilia and italy ....

I can't get this to work. Can anyone provide screenshots? I'm pretty sure my units were in the right place but I still couldnt go through.

It doesn't work anymore.

Naval Camander

With this stratagy your navy is really strong vs almost all other stratagys Unfortionatly is rather expensive to build large stacks. Its a great stratagy on maps where capitals are located along the cost. you can play it 1 of 3 ways.
fist you can build stacks of distroters that your oponent has to go around forcing them to move there troops out of there costal citys eirly in the game or looseing them all.
Next you dont need alot of subs just enuff to take out those key citys when your ready to move on your oponent. the merine will take the inland citys for you while your distroyers work on the cost.
finaly adding 1 transport to each stack with a group of tanks alows you to blits the costs of most countrys
this stratagy works well in eupope if your playing britton or sweeden.
the week side to this stratagy is it makes your capital far weeker then those people playing with stratgys designed for land units so watch your capital closely.

I always use GW on Europe only games. It really helps if you are turkey, because most countries you capture early on have capitals that are close to eachother. Marines have been the death of many an unprepared players capital, and militia have saved me more than once from an army marching towards my cap during a lack of funding.

Tank General:

Attack with your tanks, don't let them be attack or defend with them. In important capital cities and your main capital, make infantry to defend it.

Also at borders you may make infantry to make it harder for enemies to take it over.


Perfect Defense:

Great against Tank General or any other attacking strategy. Use it when you are going to start inbetween people or when you pick a mid-income country such as Turkey. Low-income countries may work in your benefit too.

Always think defensively, your units are not made to attack with. Expand as much as possible with big stacks while defending with stacks when you see the enemy coming.

If you play well you should always be the one with the most units, do not always defend, attacking is the best defense you can have, just let their units attack you if you want them to die more quickly.

If you take over bad defended countries and let his tanks try to capture it back, your infantry may kill his tanks by accident and if not you have a free country anyway.

Infantry is something you will use mainly.


Master of Stealth:

Attack enemies with your marines, since they cannot be seen that easily your enemy will be surprised. Use this to your advantage and always take over bad defended cities / capitals.

Use larger stacks to attack countries that may seriously weaken off your enemy and make sure you eliminate their attacking forces with them.

Use infantry in important capitals and your main capital and perhaps also use them near borders to prevent the enemy to take you over easily.



Guerilla Warfare:

One of the cheapest to use and is equally bad at attack / defense. Attack to expand and take over countries and defend if you are going to be attacked.

After gaining enough income, attack with marines.



Lucky Bastard:

Only pick this strategy in mid- or high- income countries, since making units takes it's toll.

Attack the enemy and weaken him off with tanks and take over as much countries as possible to maximize your income.

Place infantry on only the most important capitals and also make some militia for extra defense.


Well I haven't really use any other strategy or not enough to write something about it.



Imperialist:

Make tanks if you have pretty high income and make infantry if it's low. Always attack to maximize your income and it really helps if your stack is big, since your units aren't as good as some of the other strategies.

What does Lucky Bastard do? And how much SP does it cost? I'm quite interested...

Geschreven door Cascadiaball, 21.03.2011 at 17:13

What does Lucky Bastard do? And how much SP does it cost? I'm quite interested...

It costs 40000... go to the list of upgrades to see what it does

Lucky Bastard now only costs 15,000sp and was changed to give +4 to ARB and +20 in cost.

Also, fresh from Amok here's the current distribution of strategies:

Tank General 1482
Perfect Defence 891
Naval Commander 350
Imperialist 228
Master Of Stealth 208
Guerrilla Warfare 186
Sky Menace 115
Blitzkrieg 24
Great Combinator 15
Lucky Bastard 3
Iron Fist 1

Wow.... lucky bastard is doing better that iron fist...

Right, erm... well, Urlander Pendragon's guide for Naval Commander is, to be perfectly honest, not good. Using tanks? wat? Tanks get a nerf in NC, you're better off using Marines if you really want a strong attack force. I've gotten to where I am using mainly this strategy.

The earth is covered in 70% water; whether or not to use Naval Commander seems like a moot point to me. You should use it on the large maps.

Early on:

1) As Urlander said, start in a place that has excessive amounts of coastal capitals. These areas include: East Australia, East Asia, South-East Asia, Northern Europe, East and West America, the Carribbean, West and North Africa, the Persian Gulf to some extent, and the Atlantic coast of South America.

2) Don't make subs. Subs suck early in the game, since you need to load them with expensive Marines to go cap cities. Prefer the vastly superior Destroyer, one of the best units in the game. 8 destroyers is 90% of the time enough to cap a city of 8-9 infantry, so get capping! In west Africa, keep 1 or two reinforcements to capture the weak inland capitals of Abuja and Yamoussoukro, in order to have reinfircements from the great ports of Abidjan and Lagos (Ivory Coat and Nigeria, repsectively). Same in Vietnam, which has Ho-Chi-Minh City and Burma, with Yangon.

3) Don't worry too much about your capital: as long as your enemy doesn't capture it just before reinforcement week, make sure you have destroyers nearby and recap it asap. (Unless of course the game rules are instantcap to win). Use only stacks of 15 infantry to cap inland cities. 14-15 infantry is more than enough to cap a city of 8 neutrals. Spread inland fast too - this will be useful later on.


Later on in the game

Right, so let's assume you've become a regional power. If you're in Africa, you've expanded to Europe and South America for money, but don't forget the east coast of Africa (Somalia, Tanzania, South Africa); if you're in East Asia, you now have all of China and south East Asia, as well as the Koreas, Japan and Russia: Far East. don't forget Taiwan - wouldn't want a latejoiner to ruin your empire, eh? If you're in America, Atlantic coast, go all the way to Chicago overland, and make sure you send forces down to Cuba and then Texas. Mexico is pretty bad for Naval Commander, but it's good to have it rather than your enemies. California is a great boon, as it has many high-reinforcement ports (San Diego, Frisco, Los Angeles). If you're in Europe, I'm gonna assume you have all of Europe, or you're sharing it with an ally by now. Make sure you get the North African cities of Algiers, Tripoli, Benghazi, Casablanca and Alexandria (implies having Egypt). Also try and get Greece (Athens - 8 reinforcements) and Turkey (Izmir, Istanbul). Lebanon can be a good call too (Beirut - 5 reinf.)

Now, unles you're in Europe or America, you won't have enough money for legions of subs and marines. I prefer a more brutal route: just tons and tons and tons of Infantry. Make all the infantry you can, and walk them to a port nearby. Case in point: East Asia. Make Infantry from all neighbouring inland cities, and move them to Tianjin (China: North). In Tianjin, make enough transports for all those, and top it off with Infantry and/or Destroyers. Move your impressive stack out and south. Repeat this with Seoul and neighbouring inland cities (China: North-east), Fuzhou and Guangzhou. By the time your first boat has arrived in the Malacca strait (near Singapore), you should have a force of about 200 units. Make sure your expeditionary force is accompanied by 20-25 destroyers for protection. Land in India, grab it for yourself and now the game is going in your favour. Push on through the middle east, but make sure followiing waves hit Arabia and Egypt. Get a foothold in the Middle East to correctly strike at Europe.

In Africa, you may want to go for a full destroyer approach from the ports of Conakry, Abidjan, Lagos, Douala and strike South America's Atlantic coast.

In Europe, you'll want to conquer the Middle East fast, or you can colonize Africa for maximum reinforcements. Colonize it from both ends (i.e: down the West side, and the East side).

Now, America is pretty unique. Conquering Asia with fleets of subs and Marines is much easier for america than it is for Asia to conquer America. From America, prioritize. It's often better to conquer the south and the Carribean, and then navally expand to Africa, and from there go north to Europe with tonnes of troops, helpiing with stuff from America. Trying to attack a strong europe head-on can be very hard, I wouldn't recommend it. Take Britain first, and Spain. Morocco is often poorly defended bu can be a great asset. Unless they've blocked off the Mediterranean, go in through there and cap those mediterranean countries as fast as you can, with stealth or with destroyers. Again, take the important ones: Greece, Turkey, egypt. Go as far as Ukraine through the Black Sea and start cutting them off, force them to fight a two-front war. Slide in through the north, go and grab St Petersburg with Destroyers. Take all those ports in the north: Stockholm, Oslo, Umea, Helsinki, Malmo, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Göteborg, Bergen, Gdansk, Riga, Tallinn. Now you have Europe on the run and beset on all sides: you've basically won.


Good luck using the best strat. Next time: specialised guide of starting Guerilla Warfare in Pakistan.

Stealth spam from asia. Easy counter.

Perfect defense gives the 2nd most cost-effective army possible. 2 Infantry have 8 attack and 4 ARB and cost 120, while normally tanks have 8 attack and 3 ARB and cost the same. And each infantry is unparalleled in defence, beating everything in ever situation (except anti-aircraft which have 2 more defence vs. aircraft, which isn't overwhelming).
So as long as you have a descent income and tons of production available (such as in Eastern Europe, the Near East, and to some extent India/Pakistan and Central America), it's the best way to build up a force that can attack well and defend incredibly.

Guerrilla Warfare, on the other hand, gives you the absolute most cost-effective army, so if you have vastly more production than income, it's the strategy for you. Militia alone have 5 attack, 5 defence, and 1 ARB for 20!!! And Marines are at half price, making them roughly as strong as normal tanks, but cheaper and invisible! On the downside, transports become much more expensive limiting your mobility a lot. Also, tanks and infantry both become worthless (infantry literally is worse than militia in every way), so your inflexibility can be a huge problem vs. an enemy who can afford to hop from city to city with air transports and bombers. But on a map like Middle East or Africa (or even on a 3k or 5k start in Europe), Guerilla Warfare is a force to be reckoned with!

Geschreven door Psychostick, 21.03.2011 at 17:16

Geschreven door Cascadiaball, 21.03.2011 at 17:13

What does Lucky Bastard do? And how much SP does it cost? I'm quite interested...

It costs 40000... go to the list of upgrades to see what it does

if you don't have 40k SP then you can't see upgrade

Geschreven door Mijatovic, 20.04.2011 at 14:17

Geschreven door Psychostick, 21.03.2011 at 17:16

Geschreven door Cascadiaball, 21.03.2011 at 17:13

What does Lucky Bastard do? And how much SP does it cost? I'm quite interested...

It costs 40000... go to the list of upgrades to see what it does

if you don't have 40k SP then you can't see upgrade

If you're a beta tester, you can.