Strategy Guide
Managing your army
Before you think about how to deal with the enemy you need learn to manage your own forces effectively.
Building
When you start building, half the money is taken up front, the other half is taken gradually as the building work is completed. If there is no money available for this second half of construction the building work will stop or slow down, be very careful you don't go spending money elsewhere while it is still needed to complete building work.
You will also notice that the when starting building your balance can go negative, use this feature with caution, when your balance is negative all current building work will stop until it is positive again, also all tank production will halt until the balance is positive again.
The most important time to remember the above points is when building your first one or two oil wells, be very very careful not to spend money that is required to complete building of these early oil wells. Any delays in getting these first oil wells up and running may well prove fatal.
View buttons
Use the view buttons at the top of the screen to quickly view the last warning location, different buildings, or cycle through your tanks. To learn what each button does hold them down for a second or two and they will display their function. In order they are
View next tank
View next oil well
View next turret
View next observation post
View next construction yard
View last warning location
Selecting units
Learn the distinction between the use of dragging the pointer to select units and tapping to command them to move. To deselect the currently selected units either drag on an empty area of the screen or press escape.Multiple units can be selected in one drag simply by dragging a box around all units to be selected. If a keyboard is available tanks can be added to the current selected group by holding Shift down while selecting them. Holding down Ctrl while selecting a single tank reselects the whole of the multiple selection, if any, that that tank was last selected as part of.
Know thine enemy
The important point to take in is that computer AI works along exactly the same rules as you, depending on the scenario it may have better or worse oil fields available than you, a higher or lower fixed income, but other than this the rules are the same.
Think about what harms you the most, chances are the same thing will equally harm the computer.
What the computer player can see follows the same rules as for the human player. If you can prevent the computers reconnaissance units from seeing your wells and base it won't know where to attack. It can also suffer from out of date information, if the last time it saw one of your oil wells it was undefended it may launch an attack on it, only to find you've now increased the defences and can inflict heavy damage on their attack force.
The computer player does not always follow the same strategy, it randomly decides how much effort to put into building oil wells or tanks. It randomly decides on whether to go for an all out massed attack or to send out smaller skirmish squads, or to simply sit back and amass a larger army before attacking.
Resource management
The critical decisions you have to make, particularly in the early stages of the game, are whether to build more oil wells, more defences or more tanks.
There is no one correct strategy, not only does the best strategy vary between scenarios, it can also be affected by how the computer decides to play the game each time around.Do what you do well
The important thing is to make sure you do what you do well. If you go for an early build up of tanks make sure you use those tanks to make an early and effective strike on the enemies oil wells. If you spend your money on early tanks at the expense of oil wells but fail to make proper use of them you are heading for a sure defeat.
If you choose to go for an early build up of oil wells make sure you can defend them. Turrets are far more cost effective than tanks in a battle, one or two turrets per well plus a small squad of tanks that can be summoned to help out as required can often be sufficient. Then again in other cases they wont be, it depends how strong the enemy is. Oil wells that are a long way from your base are very difficult to defend as you wont be able to send the tanks out in time when they come under attack. In general you shouldn't build up wells too far from the base until you have sufficient resources to defend them properly.
Reconnaissance
To be able to make the best decisions you need as much information on what's going on around you as possible. For this send out tanks in ones or twos as reconnaissance patrols, find the oil fields, find which ones the enemy is building on. Without this information your ability to make the correct decisions will be seriously dented.
Fighting talk
The upper hand
Whenever possible only fight when you have the upper hand, if two groups of tanks meet whichever is the stronger will not only win the local conflict but they will also suffer the least overall damage. So don't be afraid to run when you meet a stronger force.
Make sure your attacks count
If you're going to launch an attack make sure it counts, if you attack an oil well make sure you have the strength to destroy it. When under attack the computer will call up any available nearby reinforcements to help out, you may initially think you have the upper hand, but when these reinforcements arrive you may find your attack force annihilated. If you aren't strong enough to attack properly then don't.
Make the enemy pay for their mistakes
If the computer launches an attack on your base or wells that they can't win make them pay the highest price possible. The attacking force will try and retreat once they know they are beaten, anticipate this move by placing you tanks in their way. If you can trap the enemy forces between your tanks and defensive turrets you may be able to massacre the whole attack force.
Even if the enemy attack is successful and destroys an Oil well, Construction yard or Tank base you can still fight back. If you are strong enough you can still take out as many of the enemy attacking units as possible, even though you have lost a building, you may have still won the battle if the enemy has lost a large number of tanks. However, if you are out numbered don't be afraid to admit you have lost the battle and retreat.
Counter Strike
If you have just inflicted heavy losses on an attacking force this will mean they have a seriously weakened army, this may well be your best opportunity to attack. If you have sufficient forces go for it now before they can rebuild.