This thread is for any general tactics and theorycraft (that is: looking at a units stats and abilities on paper and guessing how they could be used) that you think might require attention.

For example, I have not been able to adequately test if the Transports and/or Troopers are visible when under the effects of a Cloak AND are in self-destruct mode. Has anyone tried that against a human to see if they remain invisible?


The AI taught me that the Shaman's Cripple ability is quite good, it paralyzes a group of enemies for several seconds, which is devastating when Shamans are mixed with other units.

• The Warlocks are pretty good at providing supporting fire without any of their abilities researched, better than I had thought at first.
• However, the Warlock's Cloak ability seems mediocre. The Warlock is not that great - it's a fragile unit, so sending it, or a group of them into an area while cloaked will probably just get them killed, and its speed is the lowest in the game so the cloak doesn't last long enough for it to get very far.
• For example, the middle isthmus on Dragon Pass - cloaking it at one of the Recruitment Centers in the middle and sending it towards the other side, it only gets a little way past the opposite recruitment center before becoming visible again. If you were to cloak it for a retreat in the face of advancing foes, it would only get a little head start because every other unit is faster, and they enemy could overtake the cloaked units on their way to attack the rest of your base.
• Has anyone found a good use for the Warlock' cloak? All I can think of is landing a Transport stacked with them near an enemy base, cloaking to get in and dropping meteors on buildings/turrets. I should try and see if that's effective.
• Theorycraft time: What if instead of the cloak being a self-use only, A Warlock could target a single allied unit to cloak? It's possible for all unit types to be cloaked thanks to the Zeppelin. If the usual precautions of preventing units from firing or using abilities are implemented, would it be balanced to let Warlocks cloak single units?

The various types of mines - has anyone used those, or tried to use those?


What other useful combinations things have you discovered, or not-very useful abilities or combinations, or ideas for things that might be exploitable?

I've been using the bomber's mines against imp fighters.

What I think is funny, is to send a single trooper on a transport, cloak the transport and send it the enemies base. Have a massive army of hunters with teleportation ready and you have yourself a very effective sneak attack

That reminds me of starcraft and nukes Would tell you a story of the first time I played starcraft and not having any clue of what I was doing or the different armies type but it would probably bore you. It has to do with nukes and only being ableto build one army.

I've only spent time with the AI so far. Rapid expansion will dominate the AI in 1 v 1's, and hunters do that the best.

IMHO, the hunter is looking like a very powerful unit.

I might be interested in performing controlled experiments, like throwing a single unit against another, etc. to learn factors, if anyone wishes to.

I'm not all that great of a RTS player, so I guess I'll list some Dragon Form tactics here

1. I Haven't gotten too far into the game yet, but I suggest going for the passive abilities first, then going for either support or offensive dependent on play style.

2. When I attack I always click the mouse button instead of holding it down, until the attack is almost overheated, then I hold the mouse button down, as this prevents overheating, and essentially gives you infinite fire power, though I suggest clicking over holding normally.

3. Hunters tend to attack in coop, and if your not careful you can have full health one second and die the next from a barage, to avoid this I always circle and come in from behind, wait for them to turn and use the jets to get away, and fly back around

4. The best skill I have found for a dragon form orientated player, is the Leach one, that gives you 25% of attacking power as health, without this your dragon won't make it long

I may be wrong about some of these, if I am Sorry, will update as I play more

Questions-

A few times I have hit R again instead of dying in dragon form and it takes you back out, does this give me the recruits I spent to enter dragon form back?

@demidevil : No, it doesn't give your recruits back, BUT you can reincarne your dragon for free

I would rather that holding the mouse button down in Dragon form fire almost as rapidly as rapidly clicking - if not exactly as fast. If that runs the risk of overheating, so be it. I am glad Larian put in the option to hold the button down, but adding the holding for continuous fire didn't really improve the experience much because rapidly clicking is basically still always better.

Researching the Scales of Steel upgrade improves the Dragon's survivability to actually reasonable levels. It still takes damage pretty quickly if you fight the wrong units, but you at least can fight for more than 3 seconds without dying. I think that the armor level for Scales of Steel should be the base level of the dragon before upgrades.

EinTroll - I'd also like to participate in those kind of experiments.

I'd love to try out those experiments too, hook me up from the beta steamgroup sometime

To make sure that you win a skirmish you just have to be efficient. Do things which cost him more population than you. At the end he goes out of population while you still have units and resources to defeat him, but he cant do anything.

They've upped the population for both modes a lot, so just sitting back and waiting for your opponent to exhaust themselves is risky. I think the best way to win in Skirmish is to constantly be building units - especially important right before you enter Dragon form. Hit the build troops button a ton so you'll end up with units. This is the hardest thing to remember. Once you secure a steady income, you must remember to spend it. If you find yourself with 1000 in the bank and there are still recruits on the map, you're probably on the verge of losing.

Ok. I'm playing multiplayer-lan against one ai and given that I totally suck at rts; I could use some simple tactics
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So far the only way I've been able to win is setup a front line and force the ai to exhaust himself then conquer. I think perhaps I'm using the wrong unit types - I mostly use devastor and grandier though I'm thinking I need to research bombers.

List of things to try:

• The Campaign Dragon's survivability versus various amounts of Hunters and Grenadiers. How weak is it without any survivability upgrades?
• Variations on the Armour’s short-sharp Shock Skill versus various-sized groups of Infantry units - is it a suicidal and weak skill, or quite powerful?
• Can Battleships launch Nukes when cloaked by a zeppelin?
• If a Zeppelin uses its AoE Cloak skill just as a nuke (Imp Bunker Buster) is launched, is the nuke invisible? EDIT: Preliminary test seems to suggest that no, the nuke doesn't get cloaked.
• Do Imp Fighter cards increase the chance of winning an auto-resolve battle even when no air units exist?
• What is the effective Radius of Grenadiers Enhanced Explosives upgrade? (Test on units that can't attack, like Shamans or self-destruct-mode Troopers)?
• What is the effective radius of the Enhanced Explosives upgrade for Balloon Bombers.
• Balloon Bombers vs Hunters – but with Bombers Enhanced Explosives researched – I tried equal supply, but forgot that the Hunters had an upgrade and the bombers did not.
• On the army matchup screen – can you mouseover the units and see what upgrades they have available?
• What abilities can units cast while under the Zeppelin’s invisibility? Test every single skill.
• Can the Shaman's Charm skill cancel out an enemy Shaman's Charm? It should! Can the Aegis skill shield from Charm?
• Troopers Spoils of war upgrade: Can you cast it on buildings from a distance or do you need to be up close? I had trouble with this in a skirmish mode. EDIT: It seems to work fine.
• The Zeppelin – use it in a mix of units to see how well Mustard gas works, and see if having it in a group lets it live longer.
• Cloaking units which are engaged in combat – do they keep firing, or do they automatically stop?

I'll update this list with results as I get around to them, or you can try them yourselves and see how these work.

The changes to the Shaman and Warlock to let them move over water, and let Warlock cloak any unit instead of themselves is interesting. There are now effectively five Naval units. Juggernauts laying siege to a base backed up by a group of Shamans is a scary sight.

No longer are Ironclads (and maybe Kamikaze Transports) the only counter to Ironclads. Warlocks can't be targeted by the Ironclad's torpedoes, but have two abilities useful against them.

The Dragon has a few auras that boost troops. It also has Chameleon Hide so it can avoid being targeted. Maybe relying on that and auras would be an intersting combo. The cooldown on the Dragon cloak is only 15 seconds, so if you have to do some thing quick, you can probably get back under soon.

I typically only buy passive unit abilities since i have trouble micromanaging the eventual horde of units i assemble. At most i get a combination of units that work in tandem (grenaders and troopers work well initially, then throw in some hunters/armor later when you can afford it). The only exception probably to this rule would be Devastators but thats more to manage to place them in seige mode at key points.

Would be nice to be able to assign certain units into groups 1-0 like or have shamans auto-fire their heals to wounded units. Units able to auto-fire their special abilities in EAW Force of Corruption was a nice addition.

But im not gonna try to micro-manage a small group of shamans healing a few front line units. Let them die in the meat grinder so i can focus on keeping the horde on the move and replenished with fresh souls.

good combination of cards:

200%/250% increase in revenue in capital + 75% discount in unit cost: SPAM in campaign maps.
I could build 20 juggernauts in one go!

You can assign number groups to your units (ctrl+number of choice)...

Nope, only 8 max from a capital production site.

My campaign strat is take 2 full trooper transports shortcutting from the west side of the map to east side and taking out the southeast capital turn 4. I'm saddened that this always works.

A group of Armours and Devestators are the best for just invading the base. use the heal pillar to heal them = no shamams needed. weak against air. but often people dont have much air or use some grenadiers beetween them.

Nope, I built 16-20 juggernauts depending on how much income the country is getting.

Like I said, using two cards in one country. Production slots or queue per turn is dependent on the income the country is earning. If you use the 200% (making the income to 16) or 250% (20) you could build up to a maximum of 20 units in one turn.

I'll try what you've said about capturing the enemy capital.

Skirmish:

--Suprise Hunters--
- use the warlock to cloak a unit
- move the cloaked unit into/near an enemy base
- tp massed hunters to said cloaked unit
- cause hell >:D

Strat Map:

--Zerg Rush--
On the map in the beta, all the capitals are close to each other because of the map wrapping around. So load up an army in transports and invade your enemy where they least expect it! Using this strategy it's possible to win a 1v1 extremely fast. Note: the top right starting place is the safest from these attacks because of how the spaces are around it, and this strategy can be countered by a naval defense.

--Capital Lock--
- Take a capital
- use a card that makes it where it can't be invaded
- result: your enemy doesn't get a chance to recapture their capital

id realy like to tell you i got any specific tactic but just rushing hunters is the easiest way to win in the campaign mode...

If a Shaman has Charmed one of your units, try having a Warlock use "Meet the Beetles" to polymorph it, so your own units will be less likely to target it.

Shamans being able to cross water lets them heal naval units, making Juggernauts even more intimidating.

Warlocks out-range Devastators even in siege mode, making their "Meet the Beetles" or "Death From Above" good ways to remove pesky Devastators from a fight.

The increased Cloak duration and spellcasting range makes Warlocks suitable for a strike team. Their ability to hover over water allows them to approach from different angles. Warlocks can also attack Ironclads without fear of retaliation, being too high for Torpedos, and too low for anti-air.

Cloaks

- Warlocks and units cloaked by the Zeppelin can now attack without decloaking. It's only using abilities that decloaks them.
- This only applies to abilities that you activate while the cloak is active, so you can activate the kamikazi "For the Empire" ability, and then cloak and you are invisible.
- The Grenadier's Chemical Warfare, even if activated while cloaked, does not break cloak until the shot is fired.
- A Devastator can also enter siege mode and fire while remaining cloaked.


The Dragon's Chameleon Scale

This is also a type of cloak, but obviously it works differently and attacking still breaks it. Nonetheless, there are some clever uses for this for a more passive Dragon:

- Stack on auras like "Restoration" and "Annihilation" and hover over your own army while cloaked, buffing them and directing them while remaining undetected.
- Use the "Aura of Frailty" aura and invisibly hover over the ENEMY army to reduce their range. The other commander won't know what the hell is going on!


Fire on the Move

4 Hunters are 36 support, as are 2 Devastators. When you have 2 Devastators side-by side, they can do heavy damage to the Hunters (and even kill them if they are in siege mode). But Devastators fire very slowly. If you have the Hunters constantly moving around the Devastators, the Hunters can beat the Devastators easily and take almost no damage.


- No Recruits left on the map? destroy the Recruitment Centers anyway in PvP. You need at least 1 Recruitment Center to spawn your Dragon, so if you take out the enemy ones, or he sells his, then he can't spawn as a Dragon