Hello everyone my name is Troublmaker and I’m here today talking about artillery.
USES OF ARTILLERY
Artillery have two purposes.
The first is to deal area of effect damage. For this purpose artillery gain a late game advantage because there are more units to splash with damage.
The second use of artillery is morale damage.
Morale is this little stat you have probably noticed on your units that informs you of how much or how little they are keeping their “cool.” Once a unit completely panics he will “Rout” or “Retreat” in a random direction.
In a late game setting a unit that “routs” will immediately get blasted by the front line.
Types of Artillery
Artillery can be broken down into three sub-types.
The first is your standard artillery. It has long range, has medium cost effectiveness, and a medium sized spray. This is most often used for killing infantry.
The second type is mortar type. These are short range, high cost effectiveness, and small sized spray. This is most often used for morale damage.
The third type is rocket type. These are short range, low cost effectiveness, and large spray. These are most often used for end game killing grouped units.
Mortar and standard artillery are most cost effective rallied out early because of their cost efficiency.
Rocket types however are only cost effective later in game because of how much it costs to fire them.
Let’s look at the Buratino and its cost.
Using Artillery
With mortar and standard types you will want to have them firing more often. Since they only strengthen tanks they should never be aimed against tanks.
Mortars and artillery should only be used when a rocket based weapon is available to destroy a routing unit.
Rocket based artillery does insanely high damage. However if the number of units in the area is too small you lose a lot of supply cost.
If you are winning you should spend the last 5 minutes of the game doing nothing but non-stop artillery barrage on select areas.
If you are losing you should try and prepare for an attack with artillery supporting for extra morale damage.
In the Year of the RTS we see another release. This one a sequel to the cult followed Wargame: European Escalation launches with a brand new engine, new campaign type, mass 10 vs. 10 battles, and a new class of aircraft (fixed wing aircraft).
But is this enough to lift the old Wargame: European Escalation from its inherent launch weaknesses?
Unlike Wargame: EE which had a most definite plot, Wargame: AirLand Battle is a game in which you choose how to play.
The basics of the Wargame universe is that the Cold War didn’t stay cold, in fact it blew up in the late 70s/early 80s spamming across the entire European and Asian theaters.
In this version of the game the Scandinavian Theater is opened up by the Russians in which NATO now gains support from Denmark and Sweden. Added to the fray as well are the Canadians.
You are given a campaign map similar to Total War in which you must manuever around the map to gain more points per turn. Points can be used to deploy armies. Stronger armies obviously cost more points.
There is also an ability to trigger events like nuclear strikes, spying and the like.
You decide all the moves you will do and then hit your turn button. After you have issued all the orders armies will move simultaneously.
This triggers close up battles in the classic mode. For those unfamiliar Wargame gives you a tonne of points to dish out immediately and will give you small amounts of points over time. When building an army think of how you would build any modern army (excluding nukes of course) and they’re all available.
Battles are fought with counters just like in any strategic RTS. Each type of unit has its own unique niche that it does and does well.
The match is won by accumulating a certain number of points or wiping out all of the enemy AI’s commands. If you are unable to accomplish this it becomes a stalemate and both players stay in position for the next battle. Although I will say that the AI is a little wonky and will often run commands as far away as possible to avoid just outright losing.
Each army can only deploy so many units. If a unit is destroyed it is destroyed forever. So in this way a single zone can be fought over 10 battles in which each side slowly is diminishing. This adds an interesting dynamic to the campaign completely missing from the linear previous storyline.
Interestingly enough the weak point of this game ends up being the multiplayer. Multiplayer ends up being a giant stalemate off.
It’s a shame because the multiplayer was actually the strong suit of Wargame: EE. In this game however artillery is so weak that you can just soak the hits with ease but defense is so strong that you never see a need to move anywhere to attack with anything. The whole thing just ends up being dreadfully boring.
Overall the game is quite good. It’s a much greater improvement on their previous title and with fast patching on the way it looks like it will have some staying power.
This game most definitely receives a thumbs up from Troublmaker.
Control groups are a fundamental component of RTS games.
Control groups are used in order to limit the total number of orders you are required to give while also allowing for fast selection of units.
The standard for control groups in any RTS game is the Control Key and a number (Example Ctrl+1). By binding this you can now quickly select that group by pressing the 1 key.
There are two main uses for control keys in Wargame: AirLand Battle.
The first is for fast access to units. Units such as helicopters and artillery are used very specifically and require timing. Every single helicopter cluster should have its own key binding and all artillery should have a keybinding.
Unmicroed units such as infantry often do not require any keybindings at all.
Tank battlegroups will require keybindings. These are often moved and used as soon as a unit is within range of them.
For the vast majority of a battlefield control groups will not be necessary. Sometimes quick groups for your flanks may be necessary just to highlight what you have and quickly move to them in place of using a map.
If you read forums, blogs, and watch videos you will find that overwhelmingly people believe that infantry are in fact useless.
This is not the case.
The reason why people believe this is because of a match between Tigga and Fiva55 at the Wargame Cup. Tigga was regarded as the favorite to win the whole thing with only a hand full of players even near his skill level. Fiva55 seemingly came out of nowhere and blind sided him with a infantry heavy rush with some helos and some vehicles.
The infantry were absolutely crushing and at first people were angry and felt this was a weak tactic that is easily counterable. However after Fiva55 used infantry to win the next 7 games and eventually the finals these infantry heavy approaches grew to dominate the game.
So when people say infantry suck in Wargame: AirLand Battle it is under the context that infantry were the most powerful unit in Wargame: European Escalation.
Basically in a Wargame a unit must trade for cost with its counter, but a large number of its counters should be able to take one of it out.
This just so happens to be how Wargame: AirLand Battle works. Infantry will counter most things in close quarters, however if there is a far higher supply of the counter sitting around, infantry will get torn assunder.
So what use is infantry?
General purpose infantry are those that run around with 1-2 assault rifles and an RPG. These bad boys when in close range can deal with nearly every single unit in the game at cost.
I should note, at cost.
Because these units are generalists they do not have that habit of getting insanely high trades.
When placed in buildings they gain a bonus to defensive stats that make them very tanky and hard to remove. In close quarters they can trade at about a rate of 2:1. This means if you have 4 motostrelki (60 points) they should be able to destroy an Abrams tank (135 points).
But the further you get away from this ratio the more massively destroyed these general purpose infantry become.
General purpose infantry have a few functions on the battlefield.
The first is frontline securing. You cannot just rush your tanks forward so having these warriors run forward and take forests and towns becomes very valuable. They are often in jungles wiping out anti-air and anti-tank weapons.
A second use is to act as a shield for weaker infantry types, more on this later.
A third use is for spotting various paths. Sometimes they can be placed in buildings just to spot for a flanking manuever. A 10 point general purpose infantry will easily pay itself off if you are covering the whole map in vision.
Flamethrower Infantry
Flamethrower infantry are sometimes referred to as anti-infantry infantry (AI Infantry). These are used for destroying infantry. They have a secondary function in that fire causes high morale damage so on weaker vehicles and tanks they can cause vehicle malfunctions and retreats.
Flamethrower infantry however are primarily used against infantry. Because of this they die very easily to everything and should never be at the front line.
Flamethrower infantry can be used in towns. Towns are collections of buildings usually at very important locations. A flamethrower infantry would sit behind a general purpose infantry (where it is protected) and if the enemy engages with infantry the flamethrowers can be moved in to mow down your opponent.
This micro based approach means that flamethrowers are not about holding a position but about being mobile and being active on the map.
A second function for flamethrowers is to lead the way through the jungle.
Generally speaking people will have infantry in forests. By having flamethrowers lead the way they can clear out the forests so that you can place your own anti-air and anti-tank weapons in those woods.
Flamethrowers have a limited range of what they can do, but what they do they do the best.
Anti-Tank Teams
Your anti-tank teams do the same thing as anti-tank vehicles.
The difference is that AT teams are very difficult to see in woods and can be used to ambush enemy tanks.
As well when placed in towns and buildings AT teams become more tanky and able to take hits, AT vehicles on the other hand will die much faster.
AT teams compared to most infantry soak up a lot of supply and sometimes it might not be worthwhile to resupply them.
Anti-tank teams are also well deployed in forward forest locations overlooking large open areas.
Once again AT teams have limited uses, but the places where they operate they do the best.
Anti-Air Teams
Anti-air teams are clearly the one infantry that isn’t the best. Quite the opposite… they’re the worst.
Their missiles have a lower average range than others.
Their secondary weapons do not shoot up.
They cost a lot of supply to maintain.
They are, awful.
So what are they used for?
A typical anti-air team cost 10 points. On larger maps this means you can spread out these cheap infantry to cover a large range against helicopters and jets. They are not your main guys but since the are very stealthy they can get into places that might be riskier to move a Marder Roland or a Tunguska.
Overall you will only use these to fill in the blanks.
AA teams are more valuable for the next selection.
Vehicles Rock!
Very few great players will have a tonne of vehicles in their decks. This is because infantry come in vehicles.
Vehicle selection is important. AA and AT benefit very heavily from expensive vehicles with rockets or tank destroyers mounted on them. This allows for cheap AT solutions.
Flamethrowers and general purpose infantry however do not value these expensive vehicles so much. Most of these favor the 1-point vehicles that act as only carriers or lightly armed vehicles for a little bit of ground support.
Overwhelmingly a lot of your infantry choices will come down to what vehicles you will get if you choose that infantry.
At the end of the day the biggest strength of the infantry is the thing that drops them off.
This tutorial focuses on the mathematics of macro.
Macro (in RTS games) refers to the overall vision and economic holdings of a player. A macro oriented player is one who seeks to have more stuff. Even if a person doesn’t want to focus on a macro strategy having a good idea of how the economics of the game works will most definitely help you make better decisions.
Necessary Terminology
If you are going to be a pro at the game it is important to use the right jargon and terminology.
Command: This refers to any vehicle in the game that when placed in a zone will earn points, Command vehicles are marked with a star and are often the focal point of your defenses.
Zone: Also referred to as strategic points, zones are marked on the map with parallelograms and rhombuses. These are marked with numbers, numbers and an arrow or an arrow.
Reinforcement Points: Also referred to as a reinforcement zone these are zones with arrows on them. After selecting which units you wish to reinforce they will arrive from whichever one of these reinforcement points is closest.
Points: Also known as command points these are spent on army units you rally out.
Expanding: This refers to the process of purchasing a new command in order to secure a new zone.
Command Transfer: This occurs when you wish to move a command from one zone to another.
How Many Points Does a Zone Make?
This is easily one of the most asked questions by people wanting to learn how to min-max out their army.
So how many points does a zone make?
Zones have variable values.
Each zone has a number on it from 1-10. Middle reinforcement points are awkwardly have a number 0.
Each of these numbers indicates how many points you will gain every 3 seconds. So a 1 point base gets you 1 point every 3 seconds and a 10 point base gets you 10 points every 3 seconds.
These numbers may seem tiny but a 10-point base will gain 200 points in a minute and a 1 point base 20 points in a minute. Over a 30 minute game this will add up fast.
In a team game you can split that number based on how many people are playing.
0 and 1-Point Bases
The hardest question when dealing with expansions is, are 0 and 1 point bases.
The answer to this is not all that obvious. The best players in the world seemingly always take forward 0 and 1 point bases. The question might be why.
Before going into that, why these bases are bad.
On most single player maps you will either have 2-4 5-point bases, 2 1-point bases, and a mixed number of 3-5 point bases.
So let’s look at the math of the 1-point base first.
Income is generated at a rate of 1 point per 3 seconds, or 0.33 points per second.
With games averaging around 30 minutes long it means this command tank will only pay itself off at the front line if it is very quickly placed there, otherwise it becomes very overwhelmingly bad.
Even once it is there the number of points it will generate is going to be mediocre. Assuming it takes 1 minute to get there and takes 12.6 minutes to break even and an average game is 30 minutes…
After 16.4 minutes it will generate 325 points. This is of course under perfect circumstances in which you take it immediately.
325 points is evidently not a lot considering that this is over 16.4 minutes and roughly 80% of this will be functional income for the game.
0-point bases are of course much worse as they offer 0 income and will never effectively pay themselves off.
Command jeeps of course are not nearly as bad. Costing at lowest 100 points and at most 140 points these make taking zones far less risky and far more worthwhile.
Roughly 6 minutes. Once you start getting out of purchasing high cost commands 1 point bases will not seem as bad. The downside is that this is an opportunity cost. Command jeeps can be randomly sniped by artillery and bombers. If this happens suddenly you are down. On the plus side it is so cheap to rally these out and a 1-point base can get you the income to replace this Command Jeep after only 6 minutes (or about even with the 250 point command tank).
5-Point Bases
Looking at 5-point bases the mathematics start to look far more favorable.
A 5 point base will generate 5 points every 3 seconds or roughly 1.66 points every second.
So let’s throw in that command tank:
250 points ÷ 1.66 points/seconds =150.6 seconds
OR
2.5 minutes. A command tank pays off insanely fast. Jeeps are even more ridiculous.
100 points ÷ 1.66 points/seconds = 60.4 seconds
OR
1 minute.
As a macro player this means that if you want the biggest bang for your buck you will always want to get these higher point bases.
The 1-point bases will not net you a profit until far into the game. Under this guise it means it is far more valuable to take more big point bases and far less 1-point bases.
If you think to any team game you play a lot of players seem to favor taking a reinforcement point and another base. Maybe next time you join in a team game you organize your team to take more big point bases and less reinforcement zones.
A 5-point bases pays itself off after maximum 2 minutes. So assuming 1 minute to move to the zone and an average 30 minute game, that means you will have 27 minutes of profits which will amount to 2700 points over the game. The difference is staggering.
The Opportunity Cost and Denial
So we have shown that 5-point bases are REALLY good and 1-point bases are REALLY bad.
So now the big question. Why is it that the best players in the world take 1-point bases.
The answer is tactics.
A good player knows that 5-point bases are really valuable and 1-point bases suck.
The 1-point base represents a dual opportunity cost. If you get that 1-point base it gives you a forward position to launch operations to get another 5-point base. So essentially for this you will have two commands and two points.
So:
Total Income = (250 points [command tank] + 100 points [command jeep]) ÷ ((1 [1 point base]+5 [5-point base])÷3) points/seconds
OR
Total Income = 350 points ÷ 2 points/seconds
Total income = 175 seconds
OR
3 minutes
When paired off like this the benefit of having a forward base seems obvious, it gives you an opportunity to grab a base that will pay itself off and your forward position very easily.
1-point bases do have some other advantages. The most major is that you can quickly reinforce to the front and very quickly counter units your enemy is deploying in an attack.
A second less regarded value is that you are not using fuel to travel there so you are costing less supply overall. Throughout a game this reduced supply could save up to 140 points presuming you have no FOB and presuming you resupply your vehicles at all.
A final value that is once again disregarded is that your opponent also has this opportunity cost.
In game’s theory everyone acts the same way when put in the exact same situation. So given that almost all maps are mirrors everyone should act the same way given the situation. This means everyone will always take that 1-point base realizing they can nab a 5-point base.
As a result this means it becomes advantageous for you to grab that 1-point base and deny them the 5-point base so that they do not have this income advantage over you. On some maps this means being aggressive on their 5-point base while defending your own on another flank.
The overall cost of a 1-point base does not make sense in a macro game, however if this 1-point base can be used to leapfrog to a 5-point base it becomes very worthwhile.
It even makes sense after securing a 5-point base to command transfer from the 1-point base to the 5-point base for the much higher income, as if you need to rally in units close by it is just a matter of retreating that command back to the 1-point base.
Time Matters
The Wargame Cup 2012 taught us overwhelmingly that time matters. How many times throughout the tournament has a player decided to rally in a command with 6 minutes left in the game, a time when there is absolutely no time to cash in on having extra commands.
As a rule in a game with a time limit if there is 10-minutes left in the game cut yourself off from purchasing another command. Every single time you are purchasing a command look at the clock, if it is under 10 minutes, don’t buy it.
If you have tones of time left in the game a command will make sense, if you have little time, it won’t make sense.
Also remember that your macro ties into your over-arcing strategy.
If you intend to be aggressive getting a command will hinder your aggression.
If you intend to be heavily defensive against an expected push (let’s say you scout a tank build up), then suddenly a command can hinder your defenses.
Playing macro isn’t simply about taking expansions and getting a lot of units, although that is the core of it. Playing macro also involves making smart decisions and knowing when to expand based on your existing information. Time is one such bit of information that will help you.
If your opponent has taken a zone and you want to do the same, it is wise to take a new zone yourself. If you are prevented from doing so it also makes sense to attack.
Making simple money decisions can be the big decider on whether you win or lose. When you want to do some gimmicky flanking attack or a cheesie push you will need to worry about your income and your opponent’s.
TheGameGuru.Me 