If you read forums, blogs, and watch videos you will find that overwhelmingly people believe that infantry are in fact useless.
This is not the case.
The reason why people believe this is because of a match between Tigga and Fiva55 at the Wargame Cup. Tigga was regarded as the favorite to win the whole thing with only a hand full of players even near his skill level. Fiva55 seemingly came out of nowhere and blind sided him with a infantry heavy rush with some helos and some vehicles.
The infantry were absolutely crushing and at first people were angry and felt this was a weak tactic that is easily counterable. However after Fiva55 used infantry to win the next 7 games and eventually the finals these infantry heavy approaches grew to dominate the game.
So when people say infantry suck in Wargame: AirLand Battle it is under the context that infantry were the most powerful unit in Wargame: European Escalation.
Basically in a Wargame a unit must trade for cost with its counter, but a large number of its counters should be able to take one of it out.
This just so happens to be how Wargame: AirLand Battle works. Infantry will counter most things in close quarters, however if there is a far higher supply of the counter sitting around, infantry will get torn assunder.
So what use is infantry?
General purpose infantry are those that run around with 1-2 assault rifles and an RPG. These bad boys when in close range can deal with nearly every single unit in the game at cost.
I should note, at cost.
Because these units are generalists they do not have that habit of getting insanely high trades.
When placed in buildings they gain a bonus to defensive stats that make them very tanky and hard to remove. In close quarters they can trade at about a rate of 2:1. This means if you have 4 motostrelki (60 points) they should be able to destroy an Abrams tank (135 points).
But the further you get away from this ratio the more massively destroyed these general purpose infantry become.
General purpose infantry have a few functions on the battlefield.
The first is frontline securing. You cannot just rush your tanks forward so having these warriors run forward and take forests and towns becomes very valuable. They are often in jungles wiping out anti-air and anti-tank weapons.
A second use is to act as a shield for weaker infantry types, more on this later.
A third use is for spotting various paths. Sometimes they can be placed in buildings just to spot for a flanking manuever. A 10 point general purpose infantry will easily pay itself off if you are covering the whole map in vision.
Flamethrower Infantry
Flamethrower infantry are sometimes referred to as anti-infantry infantry (AI Infantry). These are used for destroying infantry. They have a secondary function in that fire causes high morale damage so on weaker vehicles and tanks they can cause vehicle malfunctions and retreats.
Flamethrower infantry however are primarily used against infantry. Because of this they die very easily to everything and should never be at the front line.
Flamethrower infantry can be used in towns. Towns are collections of buildings usually at very important locations. A flamethrower infantry would sit behind a general purpose infantry (where it is protected) and if the enemy engages with infantry the flamethrowers can be moved in to mow down your opponent.
This micro based approach means that flamethrowers are not about holding a position but about being mobile and being active on the map.
A second function for flamethrowers is to lead the way through the jungle.
Generally speaking people will have infantry in forests. By having flamethrowers lead the way they can clear out the forests so that you can place your own anti-air and anti-tank weapons in those woods.
Flamethrowers have a limited range of what they can do, but what they do they do the best.
Anti-Tank Teams
Your anti-tank teams do the same thing as anti-tank vehicles.
The difference is that AT teams are very difficult to see in woods and can be used to ambush enemy tanks.
As well when placed in towns and buildings AT teams become more tanky and able to take hits, AT vehicles on the other hand will die much faster.
AT teams compared to most infantry soak up a lot of supply and sometimes it might not be worthwhile to resupply them.
Anti-tank teams are also well deployed in forward forest locations overlooking large open areas.
Once again AT teams have limited uses, but the places where they operate they do the best.
Anti-Air Teams
Anti-air teams are clearly the one infantry that isn’t the best. Quite the opposite… they’re the worst.
Their missiles have a lower average range than others.
Their secondary weapons do not shoot up.
They cost a lot of supply to maintain.
They are, awful.
So what are they used for?
A typical anti-air team cost 10 points. On larger maps this means you can spread out these cheap infantry to cover a large range against helicopters and jets. They are not your main guys but since the are very stealthy they can get into places that might be riskier to move a Marder Roland or a Tunguska.
Overall you will only use these to fill in the blanks.
AA teams are more valuable for the next selection.
Vehicles Rock!
Very few great players will have a tonne of vehicles in their decks. This is because infantry come in vehicles.
Vehicle selection is important. AA and AT benefit very heavily from expensive vehicles with rockets or tank destroyers mounted on them. This allows for cheap AT solutions.
Flamethrowers and general purpose infantry however do not value these expensive vehicles so much. Most of these favor the 1-point vehicles that act as only carriers or lightly armed vehicles for a little bit of ground support.
Overwhelmingly a lot of your infantry choices will come down to what vehicles you will get if you choose that infantry.
At the end of the day the biggest strength of the infantry is the thing that drops them off.
Without knowing what Disciple 1 or 2 was or reading any review or even bothering to look at the images on the Steam page I for whatever reason purchased this game.
As it turns out Disciple 3 Renaissance is a turn based 4x type game with turn based combat with middle earth (high elf) type armies.
In fact it’s not even remotely close to what I thought it might be (an RPG) it turns out to be a part of the one genre I can’t stand to play.
If this game is like one it is like the incredibly popular Heroes of Might and Magic series which as of writing this is on their sixth installment (over 30 years keep in mind).
So these games work like this. In an overworld you get resources to build up armies. Your armies move around the map taking over territories that will give more resources. You face off against in a hexablock based battlefield in which you need to use the roles of your units to beat out your opponent.
Each block can be hit from six directions. So it becomes important to create flanks and protect weaker heroes. As well there is a cover system in which your heroes will take reduced damage from ranged attacks if behind someone.
This kind of game features overworld magic in which you can use a magic resource to damage an enemy army before you engage them. This is used to give serious advantages in combat.
In the overworld management often you are building structures to help boost the gathering of some sort of resource or creating structures to build various units.
The game feature your leaders who often play some epic role like a rogue, warrior, healer, or mage leading a band of various class types. Each hero class unit gains experience which they can sink into attributes of their choice.
This game features four campaigns. A short tutorial campaign, an Empire (human) campaign, a dark lords type campaign, and an elven campaign. The four campaigns combined will amount to about 40 hours of gameplay, not too shabby.
On the plus side this series does have a fairly good story. Obviously if you hate high fantasy you will hate this. But it does make an effort to tell the events of a single story from three different view points. This is a very strong feature for this genre.
But like I said, I really don’t like this genre period.
I’m not entirely sure why this game was called “Renaissance” when it has little or nothing to do with the Renaissance period. There was nothing in this game to hook you in, it’s sort of just the same stuff.
Make sure to not add this game to your bucket list because it simply doesn’t do enough to attract people to this genre.
This tutorial focuses on the mathematics of macro.
Macro (in RTS games) refers to the overall vision and economic holdings of a player. A macro oriented player is one who seeks to have more stuff. Even if a person doesn’t want to focus on a macro strategy having a good idea of how the economics of the game works will most definitely help you make better decisions.
Necessary Terminology
If you are going to be a pro at the game it is important to use the right jargon and terminology.
Command: This refers to any vehicle in the game that when placed in a zone will earn points, Command vehicles are marked with a star and are often the focal point of your defenses.
Zone: Also referred to as strategic points, zones are marked on the map with parallelograms and rhombuses. These are marked with numbers, numbers and an arrow or an arrow.
Reinforcement Points: Also referred to as a reinforcement zone these are zones with arrows on them. After selecting which units you wish to reinforce they will arrive from whichever one of these reinforcement points is closest.
Points: Also known as command points these are spent on army units you rally out.
Expanding: This refers to the process of purchasing a new command in order to secure a new zone.
Command Transfer: This occurs when you wish to move a command from one zone to another.
How Many Points Does a Zone Make?
This is easily one of the most asked questions by people wanting to learn how to min-max out their army.
So how many points does a zone make?
Zones have variable values.
Each zone has a number on it from 1-10. Middle reinforcement points are awkwardly have a number 0.
Each of these numbers indicates how many points you will gain every 3 seconds. So a 1 point base gets you 1 point every 3 seconds and a 10 point base gets you 10 points every 3 seconds.
These numbers may seem tiny but a 10-point base will gain 200 points in a minute and a 1 point base 20 points in a minute. Over a 30 minute game this will add up fast.
In a team game you can split that number based on how many people are playing.
0 and 1-Point Bases
The hardest question when dealing with expansions is, are 0 and 1 point bases.
The answer to this is not all that obvious. The best players in the world seemingly always take forward 0 and 1 point bases. The question might be why.
Before going into that, why these bases are bad.
On most single player maps you will either have 2-4 5-point bases, 2 1-point bases, and a mixed number of 3-5 point bases.
So let’s look at the math of the 1-point base first.
Income is generated at a rate of 1 point per 3 seconds, or 0.33 points per second.
With games averaging around 30 minutes long it means this command tank will only pay itself off at the front line if it is very quickly placed there, otherwise it becomes very overwhelmingly bad.
Even once it is there the number of points it will generate is going to be mediocre. Assuming it takes 1 minute to get there and takes 12.6 minutes to break even and an average game is 30 minutes…
After 16.4 minutes it will generate 325 points. This is of course under perfect circumstances in which you take it immediately.
325 points is evidently not a lot considering that this is over 16.4 minutes and roughly 80% of this will be functional income for the game.
0-point bases are of course much worse as they offer 0 income and will never effectively pay themselves off.
Command jeeps of course are not nearly as bad. Costing at lowest 100 points and at most 140 points these make taking zones far less risky and far more worthwhile.
Roughly 6 minutes. Once you start getting out of purchasing high cost commands 1 point bases will not seem as bad. The downside is that this is an opportunity cost. Command jeeps can be randomly sniped by artillery and bombers. If this happens suddenly you are down. On the plus side it is so cheap to rally these out and a 1-point base can get you the income to replace this Command Jeep after only 6 minutes (or about even with the 250 point command tank).
5-Point Bases
Looking at 5-point bases the mathematics start to look far more favorable.
A 5 point base will generate 5 points every 3 seconds or roughly 1.66 points every second.
So let’s throw in that command tank:
250 points ÷ 1.66 points/seconds =150.6 seconds
OR
2.5 minutes. A command tank pays off insanely fast. Jeeps are even more ridiculous.
100 points ÷ 1.66 points/seconds = 60.4 seconds
OR
1 minute.
As a macro player this means that if you want the biggest bang for your buck you will always want to get these higher point bases.
The 1-point bases will not net you a profit until far into the game. Under this guise it means it is far more valuable to take more big point bases and far less 1-point bases.
If you think to any team game you play a lot of players seem to favor taking a reinforcement point and another base. Maybe next time you join in a team game you organize your team to take more big point bases and less reinforcement zones.
A 5-point bases pays itself off after maximum 2 minutes. So assuming 1 minute to move to the zone and an average 30 minute game, that means you will have 27 minutes of profits which will amount to 2700 points over the game. The difference is staggering.
The Opportunity Cost and Denial
So we have shown that 5-point bases are REALLY good and 1-point bases are REALLY bad.
So now the big question. Why is it that the best players in the world take 1-point bases.
The answer is tactics.
A good player knows that 5-point bases are really valuable and 1-point bases suck.
The 1-point base represents a dual opportunity cost. If you get that 1-point base it gives you a forward position to launch operations to get another 5-point base. So essentially for this you will have two commands and two points.
So:
Total Income = (250 points [command tank] + 100 points [command jeep]) ÷ ((1 [1 point base]+5 [5-point base])÷3) points/seconds
OR
Total Income = 350 points ÷ 2 points/seconds
Total income = 175 seconds
OR
3 minutes
When paired off like this the benefit of having a forward base seems obvious, it gives you an opportunity to grab a base that will pay itself off and your forward position very easily.
1-point bases do have some other advantages. The most major is that you can quickly reinforce to the front and very quickly counter units your enemy is deploying in an attack.
A second less regarded value is that you are not using fuel to travel there so you are costing less supply overall. Throughout a game this reduced supply could save up to 140 points presuming you have no FOB and presuming you resupply your vehicles at all.
A final value that is once again disregarded is that your opponent also has this opportunity cost.
In game’s theory everyone acts the same way when put in the exact same situation. So given that almost all maps are mirrors everyone should act the same way given the situation. This means everyone will always take that 1-point base realizing they can nab a 5-point base.
As a result this means it becomes advantageous for you to grab that 1-point base and deny them the 5-point base so that they do not have this income advantage over you. On some maps this means being aggressive on their 5-point base while defending your own on another flank.
The overall cost of a 1-point base does not make sense in a macro game, however if this 1-point base can be used to leapfrog to a 5-point base it becomes very worthwhile.
It even makes sense after securing a 5-point base to command transfer from the 1-point base to the 5-point base for the much higher income, as if you need to rally in units close by it is just a matter of retreating that command back to the 1-point base.
Time Matters
The Wargame Cup 2012 taught us overwhelmingly that time matters. How many times throughout the tournament has a player decided to rally in a command with 6 minutes left in the game, a time when there is absolutely no time to cash in on having extra commands.
As a rule in a game with a time limit if there is 10-minutes left in the game cut yourself off from purchasing another command. Every single time you are purchasing a command look at the clock, if it is under 10 minutes, don’t buy it.
If you have tones of time left in the game a command will make sense, if you have little time, it won’t make sense.
Also remember that your macro ties into your over-arcing strategy.
If you intend to be aggressive getting a command will hinder your aggression.
If you intend to be heavily defensive against an expected push (let’s say you scout a tank build up), then suddenly a command can hinder your defenses.
Playing macro isn’t simply about taking expansions and getting a lot of units, although that is the core of it. Playing macro also involves making smart decisions and knowing when to expand based on your existing information. Time is one such bit of information that will help you.
If your opponent has taken a zone and you want to do the same, it is wise to take a new zone yourself. If you are prevented from doing so it also makes sense to attack.
Making simple money decisions can be the big decider on whether you win or lose. When you want to do some gimmicky flanking attack or a cheesie push you will need to worry about your income and your opponent’s.
So upon loading up this game I get a little menu that pops up. I decide to click on input and see what the controls are:
Well it turns out they are blank…. this probably won’t go well.
Next on the list of OMFG THIS GAME SUCKS I get to see this:
How could I be so foolish, you ask. How could I not know this game was created by the single worst publisher on the face of the Earth, Paradox Interactive.
Paradox has their army of Euro nerds constantly defending them because some of their games are playable. My response is Sword of the Stars 2, Gettysburg: Armored Warfare,
But this game is developed by Pisces Interactive, a studio I have never heard about. So maybe I’ll give them one shot and then never play again. They also made a pretty sexy trailer for this game.
So after getting past this I get to a user login screen…
Now maybe someone can explain why a $10 game needs a user login screen to me. On top of that they want to register my email so they can send it off to all the hackers. More than likely it is for future Paradox product information that I have no interest in. AND they want me to confirm with a validation code. There is no copy and paste feature here so I have to alt tab constantly in order to get this thing inserted.
Okay so none of this has to do with core gameplay, it has to do with dodgey DRM related practices that make this whole process as obtuse for gamers as humanly possible, thanks Paradox.
You start off being prompted do you wish to play the tutorial, the answer for this kind of game is always, NO, I don’t… but I will anyway… in case it’s actually complicated… but it won’t be.
So upon clicking on tutorial it leads me to this screen:
Unfortunately all the buttons are greyed out and nothing can be selected…. I restart the game hoping I’ll actually get to play. So I load it up and it gets stuck on here:
And it gets stuck here. Yes Paradox we are aware you make shitty games.
So 30 minutes into gameplay and I haven’t played a game yet. It continues to freeze up at various phases.
So after this is all done I can finally play the game, yay.
So you control a fleet (one ship is a fleet!) of ships. Each ship when you click on it will display it weapons. Each weapon has an aiming direction. So the portside guns can only fire portside, the broadside guns only fire broadside, the forward guns only fire forward and the aft (rear) guns only fire behind you. This means that in combat you will need to rotate your ship around a bit to fire off multiple guns. Alternatively if your opponent moves around you, you will fire off guns.
The guns do fire off automatically and the only point in choosing what to fire upon might be so that you hit one ship over another. But since you are fire to a region instead of at a ship you are most likely almost always going to miss because except for AI, no one just sits in position… unless their rotor is down.
For funzies you’ve been given a force field you can deploy on one of the four flanks of your ship. It lasts one turn and can soak all the damage. It has a cooldown and can be used about every three turns, once again for funzies.
Other funzie features include invisible mines and stealth.
Navigation is controlled by dragging a green arrow to go forward or a orange arrow to go backwards.
Both players do their turns simultaneously. This can be compared to a turn based game like Civilization in which both players go one after the other. This format wouldn’t work well because it would mean whoever goes first gains a serious advantage… except they don’t since guns all fire automatically anyway. The downside is that the actual strategic elements of turn based combat get ruined and truthfully this game could have just been done in real time combat.
So the game has a 3 mission tutorial in which you go through the painstakingly simple gameplay and a 9-mission campaign.
The 9-mission campaign is really hard. I mean really really hard.
Turn based games are known for having insanely hard campaigns, but this one is super hard. It almost feels like you need a second player there because of how hard it is. Which you can do, co-op campaigns. Unfortunately just not enough people play this game to do this.
On the plus side the game is cross-platform between iOS, cellphones, and PC. On the downside the games actually take too long to be a very good iOS game. The multiplayer lobby must be confusing on the iOS side because any time I get in one I sit there with Ready clicked for about 30 minutes and then nothing ever happens.
Turn based combat just got sexy
There’s also something REALLY weird about the actual lobbies. I was able to start up no less than 14 lobbies simultaneously until I realized that I had to individually “Discard” each game. Once again I think this is something for the app side but it just doesn’t make sense on the PC side of things.
I think this is another terrible Paradox Interactive game and no one should buy it on the PC.
As for the tablet and smartphone.
I wanted to see if this game was available on Blackberry and it is in fact not. Overwhelmingly smart phone and tablet apps are super expensive for what you get. Angry Pigs (that’s all Blackberry has) cost about $10.
Unfortunately one of the odd features of the game is an always on DRM. This normally doesn’t have any effect on me because I have great Internet but I could see how this might be a problem for tablet and cellphone owners who pay tooth and nail for bandwidth.
But like I said, had I not had great Internet… I wouldn’t have noticed it.
So one day my Internet was particularly slow, my provider was doing an upgrade on my service and strapped me with low quality Internet. Boy was it ever noticeable. Everything was slow. Turns took forever because they had to be recorded online first (in single player). Shields seem to work forever or never. There was even a weird glitch in which shields would block all four sides.
So I’m playing the campaign and suddenly this pops up:
So no I do not recommend this game for PC, and I suspect it won’t work that much better on a tablet.
The first bonus is to limit by nation. Limiting by nation will grant you extra points and special prototype units (such as the T80U for Soviet).
The second is to limit to a type of unit such as airborne, mechanized etc. This limits the types of units you can use and will also grant you extra deck space.
Activation points are what decide how many units you can get. In each category as you are more points additional units will cost more points. This is to deter all in decks and promote combined arms approaches.
This guide will be split up in two different ways, first required types of units and second customized categories.
Command Armor
In Wargame: ALB there are three different types of commands.
The first is the command jeep. This vehicle has no armor, is insanely cheap and moves very quickly. This selection has a few advantages, the most important is its ability to retreat and advance very quickly.
Command jeeps also cost very little. It means by deploying a command jeep you will have more points for units. The first command you will get on the map is whichever is your lowest so a 100 point command will give you an extra 100-150 points at the beginning of a match.
The obvious downside (and why you might not even want them) is that they are very easy to kill and can be killed by one bomb, one rocket, or a few volleys of anti-air.
The second type of command is the command armor. Most command armors come with an anti-infantry weapon (although you usually turn it off) and have medium armor. This allows them to take several hits.
These are also the most common command as it removes the risk of randomly losing them to artillery fire.
The final type is the command tank. Command tanks will generally only allow for one. These are heavily armored and very hard to kill. On top of that they actually have a very powerful main gun that can be used defensively in engagements.
A good deck needs to have at least two commands. it should be noted that you should take between 3-5 zones on a given map.
Supply Trucks
The FOB (Forward Operating Base) is a giant cache of supply. It is only useful to get if you are in a match in which you will use all of that supply.
If you intend to defend air with a lot of air an FOB will become useful.
If you intend to defend tanks with a lot of anti-tank rockets, an FOB will become useful.
If you intend to have an artillery unit, an FOB will become useful.
However if you do not want any of that stuff in a large mass you will not need an FOB.
If you do get an FOB it becomes important to get supply trucks that move fast so they can quickly move resources to the front of the battlefield.
If you do not want an FOB slower trucks are acceptable, however you will want trucks that carry more resources.
As well if you are not getting an FOB you should have a second supply truck in your deck, supply trucks with armaments on them do well because they can be used as weapons in pushes once they run out of supply.
Having no FOB however having enough supply becomes important. Make sure to look at the stats and denote supply differences.
Recon
Every single flank should have at least one recon. Additional recons can be used for hunting down infantry.
You will need a minimum of two recon but often a good deck will have three.
The first recon should have Exceptional Optics. Optics is the stat that states how well they see. You will want a strong exception optics recon on your main attacking flank so spot units you can pick off to weaken the opponents defense.
The second type of recon you should get is a cheap spammable one. Cheap spammable recons should be deployed across the map to spot various flanks while remaining hidden.
A third recon that is optionable is an anti-infantry or anti-tank recon to use to hunt down vehicles and infantry while being mostly hidden in large jungles. These are often very expensive and are entirely dependent on value on the map.
Anti-Air
Anti-air obnoxiously represent three different categories of the game. Overall you should have three anti-air units. Mixing up various types will become very valuable.
You will want at least one type of rocket based vehicle. Rockets cause splash damage to air (AoE) meaning they will deal insanely high damage to clusters of air forces.
Some rocket based vehicles carry only rockets. These often have much higher ranges and much higher attack speeds. They however can only be used against air. These units should be accompanied by recon to spot the incoming aircraft, otherwise they die.
Hybrids will include an anti-air gun that will allow for autocannon damage as well as the rocket. These have lower ranges and can be used against infantry as well as anti-air.
A second category are the anti-air helicopter. The AA helicopter is often also an anti-tank helicopter. This means you have a hybrid that can deal with high armor counts and high air counts. The NATO unit the ADATS also works like this however it is ground.
The AA helicopter is also mobile which means that you can move them to vulnerable spots or use them more effectively while pushing forward.
The downside is they are very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and are most often a target for jets. They can go into ground mode to mitigate anti-air weapons however. This means the AA helicopter is very heavy on micro and requires very fast response timing.
A third category of AA are the infantry AA. Infantry AA have a unique feature (of AA) of becoming very tanky when placed in towns. On top of this they become very effective in forests. As another advantage they are very cheap. This means you can deploy a lot of these across a very large area.
On the downside the infantry AA is largely immobile meaning once placed they will rarely move anywhere, not in any reasonable amount of time anyway. With 1 point vehicles being in the game these units are insanely cheap and easy to deploy for some extra AA.
AA infantry generally have longer load times and shorter ranges, something that makes them not the most powerful unit vs jet planes.
You will want three of these. Which you choose will depend on your deck, if you have enough anti-tank more rocket based AA will do very well.
I should also note there are some tanks with limited anti-air capacities, do not rely on these as one of your three.
Tanks
Tanks take a lot of damage and can dish it back out. These are the core of the army and are used in pushing. These can also be used for wiping out infantry and vehicles. Tanks also end up being one of the most complicated groupings in the game because of the variety.
There should be at least one heavily armored tank. These are generally going to be more expensive than most. As a tactic these units lead the charge and as the approach comes they pull back. The goal is to make them soak opening blows from the enemy while your other units can get into position.
A second choice is a long range unit. These units will do a lot of damage and will generally have less armor. These tanks can also be used (with recon) to pick off enemy units and weaker enemy defences.
A third type of tank to get is a cheaper bulky tank. Rocket based defenses are very good against single heavy tanks. However the more targets they have to hit the more rockets that get wasted. In a push you need some fluff to decrease the chances of rockets wiping out your army.
As well cheaper tanks can be deployed around a lot of flanks in order to help clean up infantry and act as defensive fluff against the target.
Infantry + Vehicle
Each infantry comes in a vehicle. The choice of vehicle is just as important as the kind of vehicle.
If you only want the infantry and have a very specific purpose for it you can select a 1-point vehicle to simply drop off infantry. If you want your infantry to be used for taking over towns and forests this will be a preferred option.
However anti-tank and anti-air units are often deployed away from the front and so having some vehicles up front can be helpful.
If you are lacking in anti-tank options you can spam out anti-tank vehicles to fulfill that particular miss.
There are only two infantry that are required, an anti-infantry and an all-around infantry.
The anti-infantry infantry generally has a flamethrower (napalm) and are responsible for cleaning up enemy infantry in forests and towns. These are best paired off with all purpose infantry.
All purpose infantry can destroy tanks and vehicles very easily in close quarters. All infantry are harder to detect and become very tanky when in towns. Combined with anti-infantry infantry they can take any forest location or any town.
After this you can mix in more of any type of infantry depending on what you are missing. Generally these units will be placed in towns and in forests to avoid detection and sneak up on enemies. The downside is other than when they are in towns they are easy to mow down.
Artillery
Not covered in the video are artillery.
Artillery have a few features. The first is a difference between four main weapons.
One main type of artillery drop a cluster of shells in an area and do great damage against infantry and vehicles but generally do not do much damage to tanks.
A second type of the rocket based. These are very inaccurate and hit a very wide area. However if they actually hit they can do massive damage to all units. On the downside these cost a lot of supply.
A third are mortar type. These are very short range artillery units but deal a lot of damage and are very cheap on supply.
A final type of napalm. Napalm will burn a section and cause damage over time to any unit in this area. This has many uses. One of the big uses is controlling where the enemy has forces
A secondary feature of most artillery is smoke. Smoke can be used when attacking to obscure vision and allow for your lesser ranged units to get into position.
Artillery is very important when playing defensively to chip away at the enemy’s army but can also be used when attacking to cause morale damage, smoke an area to obscure and to burn an area to make the enemy’s units move into the open.
Artillery however eat up more supply than others so having more than one artillery unit in your deck is not recommended.
If you have artillery however you need to have enough supply trucks and an FOB to keep this thing going.
Helicopters
Choppers are the big end game unit. Once you can eliminate most or all of your opponent’s AA you can rally out a lot of helicopters to finish off the enemy’s army.
This means your helicopter choices should be very expensive powerful units.
However you can also get the AA/AT helo as suggested earlier.
As another option you can get cheap helicopters for some early game skirmishing. One odd use is to force your opponent to send in some jets while you have AA staged in the area.
Overall there is a strong preferences towards very expensive potent helicopters towards the end game. However less than 5% of games will ever reach end game.
Jet Fighters
Jet fighters come in two useful categories, bombers and interceptors.
Very potent interceptors are very good at just destroying stuff.
However just one powerful interceptor will lose to multiple. It becomes important when winning air battles to have some bulk to your air army. This way when engaging you are likely to trade cheap jets instead of expensive ones.
Bombers are used for destroying infantry and generally do not fair very well against other jets. You need these to wipe out AA. They are often very expensive and require precise micro to work well.
Bombers are risky for newer players and are entirely used as skirmishers.
What happens when you mix the most obtusely designed hardcore simulator game franchise with the casual market?
The answer should be something horrendous that pleases nobody at all.
But Bluebyte Studios has done it again, they have created something remarkable. That is remarkable for a browser based game.
Much like their successful The Settler’s Online, Ubisoft has really captured the feel of Anno in a browser based game. This can be compared to a game like Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances which looks nothing at all like the game it models after.
So Anno Online is modeled after Anno 1404 (the game befoer Anno 2070).
Some favorites missing from this game is multi-factions, which was present in Anno 2070 and an unlockable intermittent faction (The Arabs and S.A.A.T.) that offers new and more complicated building options.
This is Bluebyte’s second attempt at making a multi-player Anno experience. Anno is the game of the anti-social gamer. It is a game that each playthrough gives over 200 hours of play and one that sees no need to interact with people.
Their attempt in Anno to make multiplayer simply did not work. The multiplayer scene was empty and isolated to a select few friendly Europeans.
One of the big things about multiplayer is that you cannot force it on a game. The game has to be designed around the need for people helping each other. First person shooters, MMORPGs, and strategy games have always benefited heavily from having more than one person play. Other genres have had a hard time breaking in.
So how do you solve this riddle?
Quite simple, as it seems.
Make it so that your resources are very limited and you need people to talk with while you wait on resources to accumulate.
No not quite the multiplayer we were expecting. It seems that inter-city trading is something they will be implementing in later. The game works under the basic formula of Anno. You lay down homes and your people demand various products. You provide those products. Certain services they may request will only work in a certain radius. This means city planning gets complicated as more services become available.
Inter-player trading really only makes sense in the first day of playing the game. After this you become more than self-sufficient so clearly in that beginning of the game you will need to implement trade there.
After you meet all the needs of a home they will advance into a different higher taxing kind of home. This new kind of home will have it’s own demands.
People will not overwhelming move into this new housing type until you fulfill their needs. As you get more of this type of person their needs expand until eventually you have met enough needs to evolve them to another type of citizen… to do the same thing with.
There are four types of citizens with the final one taking almost two weeks to obtain.
Buildings have their own resource cost to build. Some of them include wood and stone. Each of these buildings have money maintenance costs. A goal becomes balancing your costs with increasing your ability to expand.
When you are completely out of resources you do have the ability to expand by purchasing resources using rubies. Rubies can be earned by completing quests or can be purchased via micro transactions.
As an alternative you can just turn off the game and resources will max out while you sleep. Having a large warehouse means you can hold a lot more resources when you log in. Upgrading warehouses clearly becomes a pillar of this game. One thing about this game is that it largely will not appeal to the hardcore Anno crowd. People who only play religiously will really not enjoy this game.
The game gets even more complex with the addition of islands. You can discover and colonize off-map islands that will provide other resources. One player can hold 9 islands, although it seems two of them are unlockable only with rubies.
The supply chains are simple. The game is not obscure by any means. There isn’t much of a competitive dynamic to it. And truthfully Anno 2070 and Anno 1404 are just all around better games.
It will however appeal to the massive casual games crowd. It offers more complexity than anything else currently on the market and can be played over hours or over minutes. If you’re looking to get into Anno this is definitely the friendly way to learn how the game is played.
I’d definitely recommend purchasing Anno 2070 over it. I’d also recommend playing this game over almost any other browser title on the market. And I’d also recommend playing this game if you’ve never tried Anno 2070 and if you find yourself addicted to this game, give Anno 2070 a spin.
I should state as a final note this game is still in beta, however the core game mechanics will stay the same and if this review needs an update it will get one post launch, but as far as I can see nothing will change post launch.
When Mass Effect 3 came to an end people were clamoring about how bad the ending was.
Having never played any of them the debate really had no interest to me.
So one year after the release of Mass Effect 3 I decided, I should probably play them.
I’ll be playing them all in order and playing them to the fullest. Since these games require you to beat Normal Mode to unlock Hard mode and Hard mode to unlock nightmare mode… I’m only doing one playthrough.
It’s weird that Bioware stated only 5% of the population actually did their hardest difficulty setting without looking into WHY so few people played their games on the hardest difficulty settings.
Regardless, three brief reviews of three Bioware games.
Mass Effect 1
Sheppard you have to prove your worth and will be observed on your mission.
Mission failed
Promoted to SPECTRE!
What?
Yeah that’s how this story begins.
Highly unlikable shallow characters galore.
Worst yet the game is constantly reminding you that you can choose as you want. The Council (who are like your bosses) are always reminding you that they do not care what you do or how you pursue your mission. However at the end of every mission they will make sure to lambast you. HOW DARE YOU SAVE THOSE PEOPLE they might say… if they find nothing wrong with what you did.
Much like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic you can just go wherever you want with no absolute path. One of the things I was immediately attracted to this game was how you could travel to so many planets that had nothing to do with the story at all and chase a bunch of red herrings.
The game allows you to pick various characters to bring along with you. In my experience it seemingly did not matter which characters I brought with me. There were unique conversations but nothing major.
The game features a moral system. I of course, hate moral systems. You get dialogue choices in which one line of questioning is rather neutral, one is kind of dickheadedish, and one is kind of nice and friendly. The problem is the words you are given don’t always indicate which is which. Sometimes you might get something like “Keep talking” and then suddenly Sheppard will jump on that person in a very negative manner.
No time to dance when you’re saving the universe
But you get two moral leveling options, Good and Bad (real names? who cares). Supposedly these moral choices have an effect on how things go.
The combat system is pretty bland. You get behind an object and fire at dudes. You hit a spell button and hit dudes really hard. The grenades are annoying. You throw them straight and have to activate them. While waiting for them to hit the right location you are left exposed and fired upon while watching.
The RPG elements in the game are pretty weak. I think a good RPG needs to have a large number of mostly useless skills. Skyrim is the perfect example of a game full of mostly useless skills. In this game you get Charm and Intimidate. So I maxed out charm and every now and then as long as I followed the path of good I’d get a unique option to get extra cash and XP.
On top of this you were allowed to customize your team mates. This is where the bulk of those useless talents kick in. The default option is auto level… which is what I used. 99% of the time I didn’t have enough “Electronics” to salvage anything.
Overall Mass Effect is a great game and a great start to a series. With every single unlock completed it took me 14 hours to finish the game. Once again however I am playing each game through three times so I can do all difficulty levels… that’s just retarded game design at work.
Had I bought this game in 2007 at $60, I might not be so enthusiastic about how little play value I get out of it. But as of $5 Steam sales this game is pretty good.
Mass Effect 2
I tried my hardest to keep my save file from the previous game and play with it here but no matter how hard I tried I just could not get it to work. So I played the game fresh with no information from the previous game. It was a little disappointing because apparently it made some major modifications on the game.
But whatever. You open the game and Sheppard dies, the end. Except he’s kind of cloned back to life. His entire team has disbanded and he has to pick a new team. I was desperately hoping that my krogan was still alive. I took a path in Mass Effect 1 that allowed me to keep him alive.
The game however was successful in making sure Kaiden was dead. I hated Kaiden so much so I was happy to see him go.
Since Mass Effect 1 seemingly killed off the big bad guy who successfully killed off the Protheans it is essential for them to create a new threat that is large enough to make bringing Sheppard back to life worthwhile. The new threat are a bunch of garbage men… I’m sorry collectors. This brings Mass Effect into the oh so common path of having insectoid enemies.
So a man, an Illusive Man, sends Sheppard on a mission to kill all the bugs. You know, like Starship Troopers. The switch is now Sheppard is working for the bad guys and of course everyone knows there are some devious evil corporate terrorist stuff going on here.
The character creation was just so much better. Apparently I could have picked a class in the first game, I had no idea until I played the second game and found eight classes. I played as an Adept so that I could shoot lightning balls at people and be a boss like Goku.
Unlike the previous game I could play this on hardest difficulty. The big change is that enemies have so much health you run out of ammo and you are forced to Goku blast people to death.
The talent trees are really tiny compared to the old ones. Basically you can completely max out your talent tree by the end of the game.
This ruins replay value because it means you can’t try and play the same class again with a different build. Yes it means you can only replay just the 8 classes, what a sad sorry world we live in (that’s sarcasm).
I tried my hardest not to have sex with anyone while playing but dear god you play the Paragon role and it’s guaranteed you will get every single female on the ship guaranteed (and maybe even a gay lover or two).
The game mechanics changed around quite a bit. The old infinite ammo heated weapon mechanic was replaced with actual ammo clips. The downside is… you run out of ammo, a lot. Head shots are in which is cool but massively downplayed by the insanely high amount of damage you wield through powers.
Some cool new things I liked is the ability to position your squad. It makes you feel like you’re actually commanding a squad that matters as opposed to a bunch of people that sort of just do their own thing and subsequently die all the time. It doesn’t matter how many times you command them to stay out of fire in cover, as soon as you move they seem to just change position. This of course makes it all around less tactical because honestly what’s the point of ever bringing the sniper (Garrus) if he always run to the front of the fight and dies.
They also changed up the planet scanning mechanic from being a collectible to being a way of customizing your weapons. Truthfully this was the part of the game I cared least about so any change to this won’t matter to me (unless they remove it). I scanned every single planet in the galaxy before embarking on too many missions and truthfully the game would not let me upgrade heavily… so it seemed pointless.
They definitely have more lineararity to the game. In Mass Effect 1 you could leave planets at any time. There could be zombies everywhere chasing you down and you could be like, yeah I’m leaving this place. Mass Effect 2 locks you in. Once you enter a zone or a planet you are locked into that zone or that planet and you may never leave. To make it feel more like levels you get a status report at the end telling you all your rewards for completing said mission.
But to make it feel a little more open ended The Illusive Man informs you that you can choose whoever you want to be on your team, he is merely giving you dossiers of the galaxy’s most qualified men. So you get all the missions in blocks to complete.
Unlike the previous one you don’t have a ruling council sitting at the end of every mission going REALLY MAN YOU’RE SUCH AN ASSHOLE!
I’m uncertain how I feel about this. I didn’t particularly enjoy the sandbox style of Mass Effect. It seemed kind of tedious and pointless. Sandboxing to me feels like where you should be able to do everything or it sucks. And that’s kind of the problem I had with Mass Effect 1. It feels like the far more linear storyline of Mass Effect 2 works out.
There are some Easter Eggs but I mean they’re so obscure and hidden 99% of people won’t get it. The Miranda/Sheppard love story takes dialogue directly from Team America World Police. There was also a reference to Star Wars I noticed and then there were tones of Easter Eggs so obscure not even I’ve heard of them.
It was about my third day on this game I spotted this:
Why yes it is in fact the lofty promise that everyone references that Bioware made (that there was seemingly no evidence of) that your decisions would create your own individual specific ending… except that’s not what it says.
Good time to shift over to Mass Effect 3!
But before doing so I should note that my copy of Mass Effect 2 (on Steam) came with all of the DLC. The standard copy gave 30 hours of gameplay, the DLC added about 5 more hours.
Oddly enough the DLC isn’t listed on the Steam page despite the game containing it.
When you compare to the original it just makes Mass Effect 2 that much more amazing.
But yes, time to move on to the grand finale, Mass Effect 3.
Mass Effect 3
Is it just me or did they give Williams a sexy make over?
Mass Effect 1:
Mass Effect 3:
Yes let your hair down Lieutenant Williams because it’s time for Mass Effect 3!
So right off the bat a lot of the annoying things from the Mass Effects are gone, mainly scanning the galaxy for minerals this was a tedious boring grind and I’m happy it’s gone. In its place is a zone wide scan to see if there’s anything interesting (extra missions). Far bigger improvement.
I’d also like to announce that I was able to transition all my data from Mass Effect 2 to 3…. yay I would have flipped my shit had it not worked.
Immediately the first thing I notice (and most people do) is the game is structured a little less sandboxish. There is about 20 hours of extra side missions to do, but you can opt to skip all of them and only complete the main objectives in 20 hours. Yes I did the side objectives anyway.
The upside is that it means you are getting 40 minutes of well scripted voice acted content. This can be compared to Mass Effect 1 in which you ran around in a dune buggy and killed a bunch of people at an outpost 100 times as your side missions.
Or this can also be compared to Mass Effect 2 in which you went across the entire galaxy scanning every single inch of every single planet in hopes that one of them would have a compound for you to attack that would have a few enemies in it to kill.
Having these side missions scripted gives them context and meaning in the overall story. I never felt at any time I was doing a mission which only involved me killing stuff.
Also there are less options as far as crew members go. You might remember that in Mass Effect 2 you had nine different crew members to choose from. This approach was actually really dumb on Bioware’s part. I’m sure many people shat on Bioware for not including their favorite new champions in this game, but I like it. With as many champions as there were in Mass Effect 2 I feel I didn’t get much of a chance to meet the reptillion guy or the matriarch woman or well… most of them. Cutting down the roster also means the various champions are very specialized as opposed the the vast number of copies that I saw in Mass Effect 2.
So story. Well the reapers are finally here and they are… zombies. The first wave of guys were robots. The second wave were proteon bugs. The third wave are space zombies. They’ve pretty much covered every single scifi villain race.
The reapers randomly show up and simultaneously invade everything Sheppard is re-commissioned to the Alliance Army to unite everyone under his banner to do battle with the reapers. To make matters worse Cereberus is evil again and doing all sorts of bad things.
One major difference in storyline elements between this one and the others is that the others featured a lot of unknowns. It wasn’t entirely certain what they would face when they reached the end. In this one they know exactly what they’re facing because it’s just always around.
To this extent the storyline writers had to make some major stylistic changes to how the story is told and added in a lot of hipster bullshit stuff that was seemingly unnecessary. On top of that they’ve also made sure to elevate every single average character or champion from the past games to some massive status.
It goes like this.
I MET SHEPPARD ONCE, HE HELPED ME MILK A COW!
Promoted to General.
But seriously the story of this game is REALLY good. A lot of people are going to dislike that it moved further and further away from sandboxing. To me the Mass Effect series is great for someone who likes well written stories. This can be compared to Elder Scrolls which has all around terrible story telling but really great sandboxing elements.
So.
The worst Mass Effect is…. Mass Effect 1.
Hands down out of the three this is the worst. There are tones of terrible design elements that don’t fit. Mass Effect 2 is so clearly the best Mass Effect. Despite having way too many champions it made for an insanely satisfying experience. Mass Effect 3 just might have been too cinematic. Just the shear amount of time spent on cinematics is insane. It could have easily been over 50% of the game.
So closing this one out.
My favorite thing about the Mass Effect universe is easily the Morden. When you first get him in Mass Effect 2 he is a scientist who carries a shotgun, gunning down any mercenaries that come to his clinic. He thought like a utilitarian seeing things in terms of results.
We find out that he engineered the deadly genophage virus that was killing off the Krogan population. But over time as he travels with you and sees the consequences on people’s lives that he is causing he slowly changes his mind.
By Mass Effect 3 Morden is so pro-Krogan that he leaks information to the Krogan clans of a cure.
It is because of this transformation from psychotic sociopathic doctor to caring and guilt ridden scientist that his death is so tragic. It is interesting to know that only 5% of people opted to murder Morden, goes to show how much people got into this moment.
There is no single statistical choice as low as this one. Every single person wanted Morden to become a better person.
It is stories like these that made people rage so heavily at the end of Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect from start to finish has had a very emotionally invested storyline in which you are introduced to a large cast of very likable characters who you personally have an impact upon.
To me I was more upset about the ending of Mass Effect than Mass Effect 3.
In the end the game offers what people wanted, a different story every single time. After finishing all three I decided to look up Rachni Breeder Betrayal. As it turned out had I saved the Queen in Mass Effect 1 the Queen would have appeared in Mass Effect 3 and not betrayed me.
The game offers tones of permutations and alterations. So what if the game ends the same way every single time. If you really cared about the ending of an RPG you probably haven’t played a lot of RPGs. Skyrim ends the exact same way every single time, and yet you never hear people complain about how absolutely crappy the ending is to that game.
In the end Mass Effect 3 is not a bad game. It’s not the best of the series. But it’s definitely worth purchasing the entire series (on sale of course) and playing through all of them.
