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!