No Mans Land 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.
Shortcuts
Learn these shortcuts to enable you to quickly view different buildings, or cycle through your tanks.
These are:
C - Construction Yard
B - Tank Base
O - Oil wells
P - Observation Post
T - Turrets
N - Tanks
Space - Jump to location of last warning message.
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 tbe selected. Units can be added
to the current selected group by holding Shift down while selecting them. Holding down Ctrl while selecting a single unit
reselects the whole of the multiple selection, if any, that that unit 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 this 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.
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