Basic strategy guide

[Ganen]

So after experimenting with stuff, the manual has little to mention about, I decided to share what I have learned, may very well save other people's time doing so.
So here's a collection of information and strategy tips for playing in Hard difficulty.

1) The Strategy map (Turn base planning portion of the game)

-Give priority of your gold to building units, your generals are useful but they are rarely worth their fee over you playing the real time strategy battle or just using people's army auto-resolve, don't ever buy cards, its pointless, and only build building once your lands are secure and the building itself is of use.

-Most buildings are useless most of the time, they are expensive especially once stacked (more than one of its kind), and their uses are long term.
There are uses for 3 building:
Gold mine for boosting your gold production early on (use it only on lands with 3+ gold base production)
Parliament for generating strategy cards (least useful ones, but of strategic value
Tavern for generating free "backup" or "emergency" troops that you can place in any battle.

-Cards are extremely powerful, use them wisely, you can use them to limit enemy troop real and turn based phase movement, to cripple enemy production by sabotaging gold mines and factories, deny them card production in the same way, boost your own production, cripple or boost population or friendly and enemy lands (will explain this value later on) etc
Dragon cards unlock abilities that you may otherwise not have access to, and some dragon abilities are quite powerful, tho, dragon cards being too random and the "relevant abilities" being fewer make them hard to be of value,

-Look and Plan your movements, pay attention to the lay of the land, its important to know where and when to bottle neck/turtle and when/where to rush.
if there is a land that is hard to access or get around for being too big, that's a good place to bottle neck enemy advance, keep a large force there, use it to hunt down stragglers in the surrounding lands and slowly build a flanking force to take lands from completely different sides to either force the enemy army to divide itself to defend, or simply take easy lands and new territory to attack from.

-Sea territory is the easiest to defend or block enemy forces, unlike land where you need a force to match or overcome the opponent (auto resolve at least, not going to mention dragon until further down) in sea you only need 1-3 Ironclad ships to take it and 1-2 to steadily defend it.
Island territory is VERY easy to keep safe or to completely blockade, just keep a pair of ironclads (3 or 4 if its a capital or a hot zone for enemy navy) in the water territory in the vicinity of the island and you are set.
a good example of this is Chap.2 undead island right next to your capital, people struggle with its huge army at the start of the map when they fail to realize a single sea territory is all that needs be defended since his army cant fight in the water at all, ironclads there will make that capital a non threat for the whole map.

-A small force is better than no force, a single trooper in a territory in a land you are no sure is safe, you can use mercenary cards or use your dragon to defeat a force that is too big for a single trooper (yet battle wont even happen if you have no force at all there), the same is true for invading.



2)The Battle scenarios (real time strategy)

-Know your units, all units have their uses, even if a few dont befit certain situations, some units work better when amassed in a great army under a supportive dragon build, others work better being skirmishers, isolated hit and run tactics, support casters etc.
you can and should read the details of the units and its demo movies in the research screen, but heres the general idea:
>Troopers are your basic swarm unit, the only other use they have (with research) is ninja'ing abandoned enemy buildings, a group of 6 troopers can capture a deserted enemy base turrets and all, with advanced research they can also do suicide bombings, yet this is not effective at all, they die too much too fast too soon with little damage done.
they have low dps and low durability, are effective at swarming larger units or faceoff'ing other tier 1 units.
>Grenadiers are the rocket version of troopers and can attack air, they also have dps boost and a spreading damage ability that is quite good only it requires a bit of micromanaging to use, naturally.
they have medium dps and low durability, and are effective dps support units in general
>Hunters are your first medium unit, they have low dps and medium durability and are effective at negating tier1 units (troopers and grenadiers), with research they can also attack air and and detect cloaked units, this in my opinion is the perfect backbone army unit imo.
>Armors are your first heavy unit, they have medium dps and high durability, these are good at defending against other medium and heavy units, its good to have a few of this in front of your weaker units.
>Devastators are another heavy unit, but this one works better as artillery, they have long range and fully researched can keep a sizable army of tier 1 and tier 2 armies at bay, they are awesome at laying siege enemy fortified areas and "pulling" their armies towards you, or defending a base with lesser units.
they have high dps and high durability.
>Shamans are your basic healer, you should use about 4+ in a large force to keep it up, its worth mentioning his shield ability(research), if you are good at micro, it gives 50% damage mitigation to units.
not a flying unit.
>warlocks are a strange caster support unit and a fairly goo skirmisher, with research they can cloak, CC (polymorph if you are good at micro), and do small area aoe dmg, its base attack also has a long range.
you can use them as fire/caster support tho the micro requirements especially in large force engagements is hard, or you can use them has independent harassment units, in mid field cloak engagements and the like.
it has long range medium dps and very low durability.
not a flying unit
>Zepplins are just a support unit, they boost your army attack range and for this you should have 1 in any sizable force and they work well on their own with juggernaut ships and devastator artillery, with advanced research they can "cloak" armies in a smoke ability and have a quite powerful aoe damage ability.
this one is a flying unit with medium durability.
>Imp fighters are air supremacy units, with research they can also attack ground, a good idea to have 3 or so if even only to guard your other air units, but otherwise not a particulary useful unit, unless... you have a problem with enemy air where these become your greatest asset.
very high anti air dps, low ground dps, low durability, this is a flying unit.
>Bomber Balloons are pretty much the heavy hitter air unit, they only attack ground, but do so with extreme prejudice.
high dps high durability, this is a flying unit.
>Transports, self explanatory, they can bypass mines and whole armies with its cloak, and it can attack by itself too.
medium dps, high durability, this is a naval unit.
>Ironclads are you sea and air superiority escort ships, they are best against sea and good against air, they cannot attack land however.
high dps vs other ships medium vs air, high durability, this is a naval unit
>Juggernauts these are your mobile base cruiser super unit, this and the bomber balloon are the only tier 4 units, when fully upgraded, this unit by itself can lay waste to entire armies and bases, as it has a huge attack range with high dps attacking from the sea, while also being able to produce Imp fighters on itself, any naval engagement becomes easy with a couple of these guys.
high dps, high durability, this is a naval unit.

-Approval: you will notice your faction approvals changing depending on the raven board choices you make, the reason I put this in this section and not the strategy map is because so far as I noticed faction approval has no effect in anything on the strategy map OR any auto resolve battles.
On the other hand it has important effects on real time battle, where your supply will be greatly affected by faction Approval, the lower it is the less supply you have, potentially preventing you from whining battles as a Dragon due to never being able to have a force with minimal size required to beat the enemy army.

-Population: the population of a land in strategy map, turns slowly and depending on the number of citadels you hold in battle, into recruits.
Some cards can turn population lower (even none), good for when attacking or fighting in a area of low faction approval; others can boost it good for defending or when fighting in a area with high faction approval
Population is a common pool resource, meaning the total amount of population will supply both your recruits and the enemy recruits.
you do not need to capture all or even most of the bases to win a battle, when the enemy has no recruits and population is depleted the currently deployed forces will determine the outcome, if you defeat the enemy army and he has no recruits and no population, you win the battle regardless of how many bases he or you hold.

-Production and invasion force: you need a factory and recruits to produce a unit in battle, and that production as a timer, however invading force units do not cost recruits and have no production timer, they pop out instantly, they merely require the factory and available supply cap.
for example if you invade with 4 troopers, upon building your factory and queuing 6 troopers in the production queue, 4 will pop instantly because you had them in your invading force and the other 2 will be produced normally in the factory.

-Support/Supply: is how much a population of a land supports you personally, and it effects how many units you can have out at a time.
as mentioned above one of the prime factors to how much Support you have is faction approval, Citadels held in battle also affect this however.

-Army size: during battle the top middle bar in the battle UI will show you a graphic of how big the armies are, having too small an army depletes your resources (defections), so keep production up and keep your supply limit worth or troops.

-Recruits: recruits is your base resource generated by population, and are used to produce units in real time battle.
Holding more Citadels will increase the rate that population is turned into new recruits for you.

-having this into account, its clear that early map priority should be acquiring first and foremost a secondary base, UNLESS you can acquire a forward base that "chokes" the map, meaning if you hold that particular base, you block enemy advance to all bases between that base and your main.
but having at least 1/3 (ideally 1/2) citadels in the map early on is vital unless you have a force/dragon that can push for victory in the early minutes of the game.

-Watch what the enemy builds, I know the game is very messy and between managing your units, your bases, your production and your dragon is hard to do everything at once, but knowing what your enemy is going to throw at you is half way to stopping its advance, They AI is fond of going turtle and capturing a secondary early on, and then suddenly make a zerg wave of troopers, best counter to tier 1 is hunters, so if you see a zerg of troopers/grenadiers, get plenty of hunters on the front line, and if you can back em up with a devastator or warlock aoe or something.
if the enemy sends many armors with hunters (dangerous combo) get a few armors of your own to soak the front damage and spam troopers/grenadiers etc.

-Use Production Crippling tactics (people call this cheese, I dont care what you call it, war is war, and you do what you must to win, clashing forces is stupid, using superior tactics is smart, period)
Use cloaked transporters, warlocks, troopers sneak attack, dragon hit and runs, whatever you can, to capture or destroy enemy buildings, priority given to Citadels as the least enemy has the least he can build and the more you can build, then the factories to prevent production.



3)Dragon Guide
Now we come to the RPG'y part of the game, here is a list of tips/facts and dragon builds and strategies.
important to note that abilities will only be used in battle if they are placed in hotbar, and that includes passive abilities.

-Dragon types, the different dragons have subtle differences, you decide if they are relevant or not, besides looking different, and having different starting abilities, they all have access to the same abilities, and thx to the poster Stabbey, its been confirmed that dragons have different damage/fire rate(or better overload) and health amounts, Mountain having the lowest health, highest dmg per fireball but quicker overload (less fire rate), the zephyr being the oposite and the sabre a balanced version.

-Dragon builds
So early on your Dragon is usable, but very weak, its abilities while "good" only affect single units and that is a micromanaging nightmare, especially if you want to use other unit abilities too, but later on you get abilities that boost your dragons durability, attack and special aoe abilities.
in my experience the 2 most effective builds are one that specializes in raw power to solo pretty solid armies on its own with minimal support and another that specializes in escorting armies to make them almost invincible.

>Attack Dragon<
Key abilities-> Scales of steel (passive that increases durability); Blood Leech (passive that heals you for all damage you deal); Devastation (passive increase in main attack dmg); Fire Breach (resets your main attack overload and makes your attacks do more dmg against medium and heavy units and dragons); Eye of the Patriarch (very high dmg aoe fireball); pillar of flame (timed aoe damage); Dread roar (aoe fear CC); Crippling roar (AoE disable CC); Bastion (activated damage reduction ability)
Gameplay-> spawn in, swoop down, use base attack to soften targets up drop your aoe high hitters and keep using your main attack to keep yourself up while finishing up units.
only mass anti air is a threat to you, and even still a combo swoop in-> aoe CC + aoe hard hitters will prly seal the deal, the aoe disable works on anti air turrets aswell just like its single target version.
you can use this dragon to cause devastating damage on its own or support your armies the same way and CC.
note there are other weaker bu still useful abilities you can use while you dont have all these ones, acid breath for example is a good ability while you dont get breaching fire.
Advantages are obvious, your dragon becomes a second army on its own basically, disadvantages is that the game play is riskier, and potentially less efficient support/recruit wise, while also diverting attention from your bases and units as you focus in your dragon's combat.

>Support Dragon<
Key abilities-> Scales of Steel; Salvation (self heal) or Blood Leech; Bastion; Aura of Frailty (reduces enemy attack range); Aura of Restoration (heals troops); Aura of annihilation (increase troop damage); Dread Roar; Mass Restoration (targeted aoe heal); Pillar of Restoration (timed aoe heal)
Gameplay-> Spawn in every army engagement, keep your units buffed, enemies debuffed, and your troops healed, your armies will loose much less troops and be able to push much superior forces and fortifications.
Its important to know how to play the game IN dragon form, which I will describe bellow.
Advantages are your units will simply be much more powerful, less requirement in number, more effective in cost (as each point of recruit defeats more points of enemy recruits. and its much easier to manage your forces and bases.


-General Tips
>when fighting anti air, and you cannot CC them, try to strafe with dash when you see projectiles coming by, dash strafe-> launch attack, dash strafe -> launch attack
>if a force is too overwhelming even for the full upgraded dragon, use alpha strikes (hit and runs) swoops in open with a aoe CC drop your aoes and jetpack away
>use the Dragon (even if not assault build) to deny enemy base captures, for example, send your forces to capture a base, and either defend them if the AI sends a small but superior force, or if it sends a small force to capture another base you can CC/kill them
>Spawning the Dragon costs nothing unless its the first time or its been killed (costs 20 recruits if so) so dont be afraid to unsummon him if you need better battle control of units.
>learn how to keep pressure with your armies while giving your dragon's support, a support build dragon just providing auras and CC is immensely valuable when you are stuck in a a battle where you have disadvantage (like having too low approval/support)
to do so you need to learn to------ :
>use hotkeys to build and command troops you can define these hotkeys in the options, and its important that you learn to use the select units hotkeys the issue attack move order hotkeys and the production hotkeys (base are z, x , c to select ALL factory types, and g,h,j or whatever appears in the bottom right corner to start producing units)

Tis all for now, have fun being a Dragon, and rawr.


edit: added info I forgot about population, invading force production, army size depletion and fortification

[Kuskus Kiela]

thanks for this guide !
I have hard times with STR phases and some advices are always helpfull !

[Reaper]

Whoh.. thats allot if info.... ok ill do the same thing only better

Chapter 1 ... make only hunters and auto resolve til you got the enemy headquarters surrounded.

Then build a tavern each turn til you get like 100 merc cards.. extra money just make more hunters.

Chapter 2 faceroll enemy with Mech Cards and only make juggernaughts. Just autoresolve... dragon sucks

Chapter 3 rinse and repeat.

Anyone, and i mean anyone could do this, and if your having problems winning this game i suggest not playing more RTS at all.. and the Dragon in Dragon commander you will almost never use

If you play this game.. its for the political gameplay, great voiceacting and great raven"ingame ship" graphics

This way you also get all the ingame events that you dont normaly get since you win the game so fast

All difficulties are the same.. you wont notice any difference

[Stabbey]

Good post.

I also suggest that people turn the speed of the RTS down to Slow, that helps a lot in making it easier to micro units.

I find the cards that buff or debuff units to be of use as well. You can render certain of your opponent's unit types nearly useless with the right debuff card, or enhance the power of your own - preferably, debuffing the unit the enemy has the most of and enhancing the unit you have the most of or that counters the debuffed unit.


Kamikazi troopers can do significant damage, but only in extremely large amounts (20+). 5-10 aren't going to help much. They can be good to sneak into an enemy base through a cloaked transport, but it may not be worth the downside of the time it will take to produce them in a sufficient quantity to be worth attacking with.

Armours are a hard counter to Hunters (their dual cannons cut through the Hunters low armour) and Devastators shots aren't that effective against their high armour. But masses of rapid-firing slow units like Troopers can overwhelm Armours.

Armours and Hunters can fire while moving. This means that you can kite some units around while whittling their health down, but it also means that telling them to "attack-move" when you want them to retreat won't work.

Shamans and Warlocks do not count as Air units, but they areclassified as amphibious, which means they can move over land and water equally well (on the RTS map, not the campaign map) This means they're effectively the 4th and 5th naval units, and make excellent support for sea-based assaults. Warlocks can attack Ironclads, but the Ironclads can't hit back.

Bomber Balloons have the shortest range in the game, so are easy to kite for most units. Ironclads can shoot while moving as well.


The differences between Dragons

• Mountain Dragon
  - Health: 1620
  - Damage to Recruitment Center from single fireball: ~95
  - Overheats in: ~4 seconds
  This Dragon is a glass cannon. It's exceptionally good at dealing damage, but it has the lowest health and can't take damage very well. It comes with Rejuvenation, which boosts its rate of passive healing, Blood Leech, which heals it for a portion of the damage it does, and Acid Blaze, which replaces its breath attack with corrosive acid for a short time, letting the damage linger for 3 seconds. The Mountain Dragon gets the Warlock unit researched for free.
  
• Zephyr Dragon
  - Health: 2420
  - Damage to Recruitment Center from single fireball: ~44
  - Overheats in: ~12 seconds
  This Dragon is weak on offense, but has a good defense and has the highest health. It's intended for use to support your troops, but it doesn't do a lot of damage on its own. It comes with Purifying Flames, which turns the breath weapon into a healing spray that restores damaged units. Ray of Power creates a link between you and a unit that boosts the units damage. Friends with Benefits puts a shield around a unit, and damage that unit does heals the Dragon. The Zephyr Dragon gets the Shaman unit researched for free.
  
• Sabre Dragon
  - Health: 2020
  - Damage to Recruitment Center from single fireball: ~79
  - Overheats in: ~6 seconds
  This Dragon is the middle ground between the combat and support dragons, and can support your troops or deal damage, but not as good at either role as the others. It comes with Soar, which boosts its movement speed, Advance, which boosts the movements speed of all nearby friendly units, [s]and[/s] Sabotage, which disables the attack and abilities of a single unit or building. The Sabre Dragon gets the Hunter unit researched for free.

Shortcuts

• RTS: doubletap ~ -> toggle permanent icons
  
• RTS: shift-"any command" -> give your units queue'd orders (Example: hold shift, rightclick, A, B -> move, attackmove, execute warlock stealth)
  
• RTS: middle mouse button -> swivel camera
  
• ANY MODE: shift-enter -> talk to ALL
  
• ANY MODE: ctrl-enter -> talk to team
  
• ANY MODE: enter -> talk in current "mode" (all or team)-- default is all
  
• DRAGON mode: right click or spacebar --> cancels skill
  
• DRAGON mode: a unit skill hotkey while having unit selected --> execute unitskill
  
• RTS: esc when finished buildings selected with active build queue: cancel build queue of units according to (this is already in the list as a general "cancel" button)
  
• RTS: esc when building is still building: cancel construction of building (this is already in the list as a general "cancel" button)
  
• RTS: shift-leftclick to build units in any building: build 5 of each unit per click
  
• RTS: leftclick on a unit portrait in build queue: cancel unit
  
• RTS: spacebar --> go to nearest alert (red blinking dots on minimap)
  
• RTS / RISK: scrolling mousewheel --> zoom in / out
  
• RTS: ALT --> show HP bars on all units
  
• RTS: double click on unit -> select all of type on screen
  
• RTS: ctrl-click on unit -> select all of type on screen
  
• RTS: shift-click on unit when other unit already selected --> add to selection or remove from selection (if already selected)
  
• RTS: double tap control-group --> jump to group (camera position)
  
• RTS: double tap Z(W) X C or V --> cycle through type of building (camera position)
  
• RTS: click on portrait of unit in UI -> zoom on unit
  
• RTS: CTRL-1 through CTRL-0 --> set controlgroup
  
• RTS: SHIFT-1 through SHIFT-0 --> add currently selected unit to control group
  
• RTS: 1 through 0 --> select controlgroup
  
• DRAGON mode: ALT-1 throuth ALT-0 --> select controlgroup
  
• RTS: backspace: cycle through recruitment centers (with camera focus)
  
• RTS: click on icon of controlgroup -> select controlgroup
  
• RTS: doubleclick on icon of controlgroup -> camera focus on controlgroup
  
• RTS: q (a) -> attackmove
  
• RTS: h -> hold position
  
• RTS: o -> stop
  
• RTS: p -> patrol
  
• RTS: m -> move
  
• RTS: insert -> default camera position
  
• RTS: when building selected: J -> open research panel (skirmish mode only)

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Reaper:

Whoh.. thats allot if info.... ok ill do the same thing only better

Chapter 1 ... make only hunters and auto resolve til you got the enemy headquarters surrounded.

Then build a tavern each turn til you get like 100 merc cards.. extra money just make more hunters.

Chapter 2 faceroll enemy with Mech Cards and only make juggernaughts. Just autoresolve... dragon sucks

Chapter 3 rinse and repeat.

Anyone, and i mean anyone could do this, and if your having problems winning this game i suggest not playing more RTS at all.. and the Dragon in Dragon commander you will almost never use

If you play this game.. its for the political gameplay, great voiceacting and great raven"ingame ship" graphics

how very constructive of you... yes the game has many exploitable loop holes, spamming taverns in chapter one to get free armies and steamroll with auto resolve is one of them, no need for a strategy guide for that...
yet people who like this game and want to experience as many aspects of it as they can will find the tips here useful.

as for "the dragon is useless", loop hole or not, cheesing or not, is just a flat-out clueless statement, and one of the most original and fun aspects of the game.


@Stabbey, ooow thanks thats good info right there!!!

[Reaper]

Ok my bad ill refrase

i personaly think the dragon is useless

Becouse it makes controlling units a bit harder and if you have played allot of RTS like me... you will anyway have such a big advantage from the start.. that most games will be over before your even allowed to spawn into the dragon becouse of the timer.

Now you "can" ofcourse play like you do.. but if you play with your best abilities, and not "roleplay" the RTS game.. then you will not likely have any uses for it..

but ofcourse anyone decides how they wanna play the game
but you are most likely holding yourself back and that might not be the challenging rts experience i personaly like

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Reaper:

Ok my bad ill refrase

i personaly think the dragon is useless

Becouse it makes controlling units a bit harder and if you have played allot of RTS like me... you will anyway have such a big advantage from the start.. that most games will be over before your even allowed to spawn into the dragon becouse of the timer.

Now you "can" ofcourse play like you do.. but if you play with your best abilities, and not "roleplay" the RTS game.. then you will not likely have any uses for it..

but ofcourse anyone decides how they wanna play the game
but you are most likely holding yourself back and that might not be the challenging rts experience i personaly like

you say RTS, but reading your posts suggests you play auto resolve...
claims like "dragon is useless", "no challenge", "all difficulties are the same" leads me to that conclusion.

there are fights in certain situations where you CANNOT even win without using the dragon, and even others where you still cant win using it.
you act like a "RTS leet", but in all honestly, all I read is "I'm a TBS exploiter" :/

[Reaper]

Well i cant really prove to you that am good rts gamer.

So the only thing i can point is that the RTS is simple.

And even if i where a horrible RTS gamer, i still would ,as you say, have the tactical knowledge to make allot of tanks or hunters, say like 9 when i enter a combat.. and attackmoving with those into the enemy stronghold dont require much in terms of "leet skills"

The reason i turned to Autoresolve in the first place is that the combat where so simple that the whole combat thing became boring.

Now again this is in my opinion, but even you can admit that there might be a possibility that i actualy know what am doing and that the game is fairly easy... becouse i did it without "exploiting" the first time and it was much much faster run and i missed out on allot of the random
encounters

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Reaper:

Well i cant really prove to you that am good rts gamer.

So the only thing i can point is that the RTS is simple.

And even if i where a horrible RTS gamer, i still would ,as you say, have the tactical knowledge to make allot of tanks or hunters, say like 9 when i enter a combat.. and attackmoving with those into the enemy stronghold dont require much in terms of "leet skills"

The reason i turned to Autoresolve in the first place is that the combat where so simple that the whole combat thing became boring.

yeah, my advice: never mind your ego, or how good you are, focus on actually playing the game before passing judgment,
cuz if you dont think this game provides massive challenge in the RTS department, you HAVE NOT been playing it in RTS mode enough.
if you judge a couple of early easy battles and then go auto resolve for everything else, guess what, you are not a "RTS pro" you are a TBS'er.

come back when you tried taking a capital with low approval and high population or defending a low pop land against a huge army.

Now again this is in my opinion, but even you can admit that there might be a possibility that i actualy know what am doing and that the game is fairly easy... becouse i did it without "exploiting" the first time and it was much much faster run and i missed out on allot of the random
encounters

yeah it may be a possibility you know what you are doing, but there is no possibility that what you said actually corresponds to reality in regards to the RTS aspect of this game, regardless of how good you are.
simply because I am a RTS veteran myself I play RTS since a game you prly didnt even ever heard of-> "Z" (for the amiga), and after Homeworld 2 on hardest and SC2 on insane this game has quite a few conditions that makes this the most challenging RTS experience to date.

[Reaper]

Well thats the problem Ganen ill never get in that position becouse id have to intentionaly play bad to do it.
As i tried to said above that you blantanly ignore is that even if i play in RTS mode i would still have such a huge advantage .. EVEN if i didnt exploit anything becouse i have so much units to start with.

Commenting about my ego or whatever is not helping you prove your point and please read the whole thing before starting to type your retort.

You really think i started the game just autoresolving ? NO ofcourse not.. i did it after a while when the combat started to be a chore. And when i you start winning without loosing any units they stack up.. and do you really wanna go "rts" mode when its a 99% win chance and u need 90 sec delay to even get into the dragon? and you know the only thing you have to do anyway is right click the enemy headquarters

And i have to disagree, this game has the poor RTS elements, its saving grace is that its not all about RTS....how you can compare it to powerhouses like homeworld and Starcraft 2 is beyond me

Z i dont know much about but am the 1984 model

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Reaper:

Well thats the problem Ganen ill never get in that position becouse id have to intentionaly play bad to do it.

play bad?! you consider having low approval with a faction "playing bad"? that's funny, coming from someone who praised the game's political dilemma's...
having low approval of one race or the other is an EXPECTED gamelay condition.
like many other conditions like having weaker forces, lower/higher populations, ALL OF THESE aspects you are deliberately ignoring which again leads me to believe you use TBS based conditions rather than face RTS hardships and THEN you make comments about the RTS aspect being simple and easy?...

comon, listen to yourself, get real.
if you told me your roleplay a evil commander who sides with the undead/dwarves/imps every time and uses corvus to sacrifice and get approval with lizards and elves I *could* get what you are saying but.... ye

As i tried to said above that you blantanly ignore is that even if i play in RTS mode i would still have such a huge advantage .. EVEN if i didnt exploit anything becouse i have so much units to start with.

if you use all the TBS/Raven side advantages and loopholes to get max aprovals and huge armies yeah sure this is true.
yet playing normally, the RTS experience is very challenging in certain conditions, conditions that you yourself claim to bypass... and ergo should not be commenting on difficulty.

Commenting about my ego or whatever is not helping you prove your point and please read the whole thing before starting to type your retort.

I made no comment on your Ego, I merely advised out that YOUR ego/skill arguments are best left out of the discussion, since they have no relevance at all to begin with.

You really think i started the game just autoresolving ? NO ofcourse not.. i did it after a while when the combat started to be a chore. And when i you start winning without loosing any units they stack up.. and do you really wanna go "rts" mode when its a 99% win chance and u need 90 sec delay to even get into the dragon? and you know the only thing you have to do anyway is right click the enemy headquarters

you are arguing just to argue...
I didnt say you started with auro resolve, just the oposite, the early easy victories, you did RTS and then judged it "too easy" while auto resolving the hard fights, which you actually proven to be true, a 99% win battle in auto resolve may very well be certain defeat in RTS mode, simply because auto resolve battles only factor in unit count on both army sides, RTS factors much much more.

And i have to disagree, this game has the poor RTS elements, its saving grace is that its not all about RTS....how you can compare it to powerhouses like homeworld and Starcraft 2 is beyond me

I never said its RTS elements were "rich" especially compared to those games (nothing beats homeworld 2 best, most original, richer and amazing strategy series ever) , again you are arguing just to argue...
I compared the difficulty, nothing else, and if Homeworld and SC2 were intense games in terms of macro and micromanaging, this game is even more so, as its controls/interface are worse, and the amount of abilities/binds/clicks messier.


again play on hard, cuz if you say all difficulties are the same you have definitely not played different difficulties, and play the game "normally" no tavern spamming, no auto resolving the hard fights no nitpicking choices to have high approval on the fights you RTS in none of that crap.
again play a capital invasion, with low approval, play defense with low population against a huge army

[Reaper]

i donno what to say ganen, i feel this game is easy and you dont... even if am supposed to be forced to use rts all the time.. then it would be easy and boring. You dont .. thats fine..

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Reaper:

i donno what to say ganen, i feel this game is easy and you dont... even if am supposed to be forced to use rts all the time.. then it would be easy and boring. You dont .. thats fine..

you could try the truth?
that you find the game easy because you dont play hard battles? because you play it TBS style not RTS? that you really didnt like playing enough to give it a solid run through.
that the game is easy for you... gee I wonder why?
because you use the many mechanical flaws of the game to make it that way.

[Reaper]

Ok then mr.crazy ill show myself out the door

[Hupailija]

Only want to comment one thing on this thread.

There was mention that this game is most challenging rts because it's harder than Z or Homeworld (to be more exact I mean):

simply because I am a RTS veteran myself I play RTS since a game you prly didnt even ever heard of-> "Z" (for the amiga), and after Homeworld 2 on hardest and SC2 on insane this game has quite a few conditions that makes this the most challenging RTS experience to date.

I don't want to touch to spelling there BUT

I see here mention of 3 games: Z, Homeworld 2 and Starcraft 2.

Neither Homeworld or Starcraft 2 is tough. Z was but honestly, I didn't have that much problems in the end with it.

There is RTS games which are so insanely hard that they are nearly unplayable.

My list of toughest AIs I have faced (and lost) in rts is (notice: I know that most of these games are easy for RTS experts and can be easily beaten):
Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander (with AI mods)
Dawn of War (especially before winterstorm)

Then there is Company of Heroes what I haven't played but which is notorious of it's difficultiness.

Then again no matter how far I go I just can't seem to find RTS with AI which could compete with TBS AIs.

I mean if you have ever played against even mediocre Chess Simulations you know what Tough and Hard game means :)

[Ganen]

Originally posted by Hupailija:

Only want to comment one thing on this thread.

There was mention that this game is most challenging rts because it's harder than Z or Homeworld (to be more exact I mean):

simply because I am a RTS veteran myself I play RTS since a game you prly didnt even ever heard of-> "Z" (for the amiga), and after Homeworld 2 on hardest and SC2 on insane this game has quite a few conditions that makes this the most challenging RTS experience to date.

I don't want to touch to spelling there BUT

I see here mention of 3 games: Z, Homeworld 2 and Starcraft 2.

Neither Homeworld or Starcraft 2 is tough. Z was but honestly, I didn't have that much problems in the end with it.

There is RTS games which are so insanely hard that they are nearly unplayable.

My list of toughest AIs I have faced (and lost) in rts is (notice: I know that most of these games are easy for RTS experts and can be easily beaten):
Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander (with AI mods)
Dawn of War (especially before winterstorm)

Then there is Company of Heroes what I haven't played but which is notorious of it's difficultiness.

Then again no matter how far I go I just can't seem to find RTS with AI which could compete with TBS AIs.

I mean if you have ever played against even mediocre Chess Simulations you know what Tough and Hard game means :)

Homeworld 2 and SC2 on the top difficulties were not hard for you? yet supreme commander was?! and dawn of war?!

I will grant that compay of heroes is also extremely difficult (prly more so than the others) I totally forgot about that one, but to claim homeworld and SC2 were not difficult? sorry you didnt play them in top difficulty period.

as for TBS being "hard" I never played any that didnt have complex mechanics like diplomacy that didnt make them fairly easy...
and chess? really, who compares chess to videogames?! I cant argue either way I know the rules but simply dont play the game, the ones I know that do say its all about practice, patience and anticipating things, pretty far from the skill sets required to play TBS and RTS games.

Originally posted by Reaper:

Ok then mr.crazy ill show myself out the door

yeah its me thats crazy, not you the egotistical liar...