Map/Strategy: Pre-Deploy

For those of you who are offended over the fact that this post has 2 denominations it's because the topic couldn't be classified as one. . .thing, so I classified the post as a map examination and a playing strategy since this is going to include advice on both.

As you progress through the DoR Campaign many of the levels and maps you play on are pre-deploy maps, meaning that there are no factories, ports or airports to produce units with, forcing the player to use the units that they start with on the map. The reason that this is, is to force players to use a certain style of play against the AI, and it makes the game more challenging (if you're not far into the campaign, I might add IMPOSSIBLE). Sometimes on pre-deploy maps your enemy has the advantage of actually having unit producing infrastructure, so so start your outgunned, and then outnumbered. 

NOTE: Throughout this post, when I say pre-deploy map I mean maps that have NO unit producing buildings at all, as opposed to maps with neutral producing buildings that can be captured as the game progresses.

Sometimes we get lost as to how to use our units on pre-deploy maps, because if you lose that Md. Tank there's no way to get it back, you can't use factories, so we become a turtle and run away, that's probably the worst thing you can do. Allowing your opponent to gain ground on you, while you have a limited number of units spells certain death. You have to use tactics to hit your opponent, then quickly get out of harms way. Exploit weaknesses, figure out what your opponent does to counter your moves, and come up with a style to counter that. Does your opponent hit you with surprise attacks from artillery, or does he smash you with tanks and infantry? Does he try to surround you and pick off your units, or does he lack aggression? 

All of these factors must be considered when you are trying to conserve your units. Another extremely important thing to remember is to keep your infantry units alive. Even if this means sacrificing all of your best and most powerful parts of your army. Why all this for a poorly animated infantry? Well on pre-deploy maps we usually don't try to win via annihilation we try to capture our opponents HQ. And you can't do that without foot soldiers. If you have transports, load them with your mech and infantry, as they are safer in here, and have more mobility. Get a convoy going, this is what I usually try to base mine around:

2 Infantry Units

1 Rig

2 Recons

1 Tank

1 Artillery

Try to keep the stronger units on the outside, and the more fragile and important units towards the inside, almost forming a circle of protection, or as I like to call it: Sprite Night. Move your convoy down the map, and make sure to keep a couple units guarding your HQ. As your convoy advances, fend off any attacks as best as you can but don't ever stop to engage enemies that you don't have to, let them come to you. Once you unload your infantry on your opponents HQ, the convoy doesn't become useless, and go shoot at infantry on the mountains, they engage in their most important job: "Capping" the HQ. I believe I explained this in an earlier post, but let me draw some beautiful ascii art to vaguely explain the concept, then let me explain in words.

                                                                           TANK/RECON

                                                INFANTRY/RIG HQ/INFANTRY ARTILLERY/RECON

Uncase you didn't understand that, the HQ/INFANTRY in the middle represents an HQ with an infantry unit capturing it. The units to either side represent the units that would be surrounding the HQ. So the TANK/RECON above the HQ would mean you position a tank and recon unit there. Try to position your strongest units, so that they are facing the enemy. For example, if the majority of your enemies units, or their stronger units are at the west, put your tank and artillery on the west side of the HQ. 

The purpose of capping an HQ is to hold off your opponent for long enough (2 days) to allow your infantry to capture the HQ without being harmed.

Wi-Fi: Cheaters

Have you ever entered a match, and your opponent builds an infantry, then they move it, move it again, move it again, get to your base, capture it, all in one turn before you even get to make a move (no, this is not Caulder's CO power)? This is called hacking. On AWN I see a lot of you posting threads like cheatz help plzzzzz, and I see you post the exact same problem. I'll tell you how it's done. I want to let you know that I DO NOT encourage this kind of play at all, and if you have to cheat to win, I recommend going to the Tactics Room and asking Lin for some advice. 

It's done with a device called the Action Replay designed by Datel. The Action Replay is a card (much like a standard DS or DS Lite game) that comes loaded with tons of cheats for almost any DS game. Advance Wars happens to be one of them. There are cheats like Press L to Repair All Units, Max Funds, Unlock All CO's and Press Y to Move Again. These are only a few of them, plus players can design their own cheats and add them to the AR via their computer and using the Action Replay software.

Why use the AR? Again, it's useful for many games, when you're not playing online, like Pokemon, you can gain almost one level per kill, but I'm not here to talk about animals. The AR can also make gameplay simply more fun while granting players better in-game benefits. 

I'm going to tell you the truth. I used the AR in the AWDoR Campaign in the level were you fight on the Owl's Wings. Let's face it - that level is impossible! There's what? three waves of enemies, and they improve every time and you don't get repairs or anything? I'm sorry, but that's just way too hard. And to add to it, I didn't want to think that much at 2AM. 

And if you're thinking OMG that guyz a cheater im neverr gonna play him online cuz hes gonna cheat and kill me and meh record is gonna be bad well then I'll tell you that A) you don't have a record in DoR and B) I lost my Action Replay. Yeah I miss it. I also lost Pokemon. But AWDoR? NEVER! I will never lost that game, so you will see me on the AWN under the name Captain Brenner. Thanks for reading, and I think next I'll examine a map.

Id also like to thank Sealy for subscribing to the blog! You help keep it going. So please click "Follow this Blog". 

Campaign: Custom Campaigning

Your friend might have done it, or you might have seen it on the AWN Boards (www.advancewarsnet.com), but sooner or later your bound to come across someone's custom campaign. For those of us who want more than just the obvious a custom campaign is someone's own, made up story line featuring their designed maps. Usually they have existing CO's already. Custom Campaigns (I'm tired of typing that so from now on they'll be called CC's) can be simply a map with a little detail or paragraph describing the situation and the armies, to more than twenty chapters, each with it's own dialogue and map plus an amazing story line.

I, personally don't have time to make my own custom campaign (no, I'm just too lazy) all in one sitting. So I've decided to make one over time, right here in my blog! Every now and then I'll think up a new chapter and make it into a post, but in between I'll still continue to examine units, CO's and strategies etc. 

Back on track, custom campaigns over players a way to immerse themselves in the game more and it gives them something to talk about on forums or during a game plus it can also express your skills as a writer. Did you know that one of the writers of Advance Wars Series actually was a fan of the first, and made over twenty five custom campaigns with over twenty-five chapters each? It's pretty crazy, but people love it, and it can be done anyway you want it to, realistic or not. 

If you don't really know what I'm talking about here's an example of a custom campaign: http://advancewarsnet.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33972. This campaign is the best around in my opinion and was designed by delta_angelfire. 

So my conlusion is go ahead, I challenge you to make your own campaign, and if you do, email it to me at keithteeple@gmail.com or post it somewhere on the AWN Boards since that's were most of my readers come from.

And happy holidays!

Strategy: Hull Overload

I realize I haven't posted in a while and I'm sorry I'll try to keep it up from now on. Any who, today I will be focusing on the "hull overload" strategy. Many players prefer this strategy in high fund, high income games, or big maps with little cover (mountains, forest). The hull overload strategy is stockpiling your funds over a certain amount of days, then you unleash them within your factories and construct War Tanks, Rockets, Medium Tanks and so on. You get the idea - the most powerful units available all in one turn. It also happens that usually players place their CO in one of the units their next turn.

However, you can't just build these units all on the fifth day, or even the tenth, or even the fifteenth (in most cases). Here's my approach to it: 

D1 Build infantry

D2 Capture neutral buildings, build recons and infantry

D3 Send your infantry forward into combat, and to continue capturing with the support of the recons

D4 Continue to capture and kill (K&K, yeah I know it's a C but whatever), build a tank and a recon

D5 Continue the pattern

You get the idea right? Just defend yourself, gain territory, fend of your enemies, and try to discover a pattern in them, or penetrate their defenses. Also, to save your Hull Overload wave that's going to come later on in the game, I would always make sure to wipe their indirect attack units off the map because those may be able to chomp up all your expensive units. 

Once you have about 15,000F you should be ready to deploy your wave. But before doing so, there's a bit more then just click build, click build, click build. 

You want to deploy your units as close to each other, and the enemy as possible creating a wall, yet ensuring that they're close enough to defend each other in combat. Keep your strongest units in the front, and your indirect in the back. The more versatile units, like Md. Tanks should be kept around the edges to clean up those annoying Mech and Artillery units. If you run into a kink (such as a sudden outburst of rockets that appeared to have come out of nowhere) then halt the line if you're out of range, or if possible retreat to a safe area, and send up your weaker units to hack and shred at the rockets.

The purpose of this strategy is to take an edge later in the game, almost like a CO power. This strategy can serve one of two purposes:

1) To wipe the field of opposing ground forces

2) To hold and defend an area or other units (infantry and helping them cap and HQ)

The interesting thing about this play is that it can be "customized" (yes, that's the best word I could think of). What I mean by that is you don't have to always use the best units in the map. You don't have to use it for the causes above (those are just the best served purposes). For example, if it's a low income, FoW (Fog of War) map then build a wave of anti-air and recon units to scout and clear enemy infantry and mech units. 

Hope this helped, and one day I shall meet you on the battlefield.

CO: Caulder

This post will be focusing on the Commanding Officer Caulder. I've been playing DoR for a while now, and I once made the mistake of selecting Caulder as my CO for the game. Boy was my opponent mad (we were text chatting) he told me about how over-powered Caulder was, and how he was impossible to beat, and this was coming from someone who has only lost 2 out of 155 matches. That's a pretty impressive record. 

For those of you who have not yet unlocked Caulder and are unable to play with him let me tell you something - I can agree looking back, that Caulder is impossible to beat. First off, all the units in the CO zone gain defense up five stars, and attack up five stars. Literally, a squad of infantry can critically hit another squad and destroy them in one turn! And if that's not enough at the start of every turn, all units in the CO zone gain +5 health. That's half! That means the only way to destroy the units in Caulder's CO zone is to basically do what I call "nuking" them. 

Let me explain. You see, oh snap Caulder is in that Medium Tank Squad over there. So you build a bunch of rockets, and some anti tanks at a 3:1 ratio, build 6 rockets and 2 anti tanks. Putting your CO in a rocket if possible. You then disperse them over a defensive line so that each one can cover an area in front of it, and has enough range to defend the unit beside it. This way, to take one of your artillery units out, Caulder and his friends have to get hit a bunch of times, they may not even destroy one. But artillery barrages won't cut it. Once you have them in place, smash his front lines hard with anything you have, using infantry as "meat shields". 

I can't guarantee that you now have assured victory over crazy Caulder, but now you have an idea going into battle - but if you're ever playing on Wi-Fi with a friend, do us a favor (that "friend" might just be me) and don't use Caulder. It's considered a sign of being a "noob" or should I say noob.

Map: Designing Awesome Maps

Hello, this is my second post, and this article is going to guide you through making some pretty cool maps that you can enjoy playing with your friends from school, or from around the world. 

Step 1, choose the playing type, is it going to be land based, sea based, both are there going to be air units? 

Step 2, once you have chosen the playing type choose a size for your map. If it's just land based chances are your map doesn't have to be that large, but if it's naval and air, and land based you might want to make the dimensions bigger, which you can do from the start menu. 

Step 3, Choose the amount of players: 2, 3, or 4. 2 player battles are usually preferred over Wi-Fi because most veteran players hate battling the AI because they can out think them in a second. I'm getting to that stage. When I'm playing by myself, I like to do 2 or 4 player matches those are the most fun. 

Step 4, Ok, so you've chosen everything about your map except rules, but we should do that last one we've actually made the map and we know how many buildings there are. So let's play it simple, we'll make a land based map. Keep it the default size 20x20. We want to start by filling the entire map with plains which can be done from the Start Menu > Fill option. 

Step 5, Well your map is all plane and bare. Assuming this is a 2 player map, select a top corner of the map, add a Red HQ, 3 factories, and 3 cities. Do the same for your opponent on the bottom corner. 

Step 5, Cool, bases and all this map is ready for playing - woah hold up there. Not yet, your map isn't even half way. No one wants to play on a barren map with no strategy involved besides build a crap load of War Tanks and send them to smash into your opponents War Tanks. So, let's add some mountains in the middle 5-10 will do, and some woods surrounding them, this makes good placement hubs for artillery, and it forces vehicles to go around a set path, making it harder and easier for you. You also want to put neutral buildings that can be captured to increase your funds and give players a goal. Place 4 of these ensuring that each player has equal access. 

So far your map should have 2 bases, some mountains, forest which also prove useful for hiding in fog of war, and seeing, plus they give defensive bonus and you have some neutral cities. 

Step 6, Time to set the rules of your map. Judging by the size and amount of buildings that you start with, I'd make the income 1000, that seems fair. Or, if you'd like it even more strategic 500. Leave it clear sky, and planes for now, and that's that, an awesome beginner's map! 

Strategy: Infantry Flood

Hi all, this being my first post I would first like to make an introduction. This blog is about DoR, Advance Wars Days of Ruin, or as it's known in Europe: Dark Conflict. The aim of this blog is to help you familiarize yourself with the CO's examine new playing tactics, read about maps etc. Most of my posts will either be denoted by the following prefix: Strategy, Map, Unit, CO, Campaign. Who knows I may even add more. The purpose of these tags is so that you will be able to quickly scan the page, find a post you like regarding the topic you need, and quickly pick out information. Now, with all that said lets begin.

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Aw yes, the well known infantry flood, we love using it, yet we hate when it's used on us. The infantry flood (hereby known as IF) can prove very effective on many maps that are largely land based, like Bean Island or custom made maps. For those of you that don't know what the IF is, it's just what it sounds like: building loads of infantry and sending them to kill and capture everything in their path. They serve as good "meat shields" as veteran players call them, protecting other vehicles behind, or "capping" off HQ's. 

Most people don't use an IF throughout the entire map. Usually at the beginning you see a lot of Infantry and Mech units, which are used to disrupt the other players from capturing his or her cities, and also used for capturing your own buildings. Later on, once properties have been captured players begin to build vehicles. 

So why use the IF? Again, it's a good way to gain ground at the beginning of a game quickly, capture cities, then when you have a satisfactory income each day, you begin to build more sophisticated units that focus on cleaning up the others (being your enemy). 

Pros:

Good way to cover ground

Cheap units

Capture cities

Square off alright against Mech and Infantry

Cons:

Weak against vehicles

Low movement range

Can be destroyed by 2 infantry units

With that said, I would like to thank you for reading this post, and my next post will most likely be an analysis of a map. Thanks a lot!