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[MrRoboto75]

Yeah, experience is really only noticable in the SP campaign, skirmishes and MP just don't last long enough to make experience matter.

Eh, if you can get a good commander or two going it's still pretty noticeable, iirc. They're useful for other stuff, too, though I kinda' forget the details. They're things that were easy to overlook and able to be done without, but if you can work out how to use 'em they were quite the multiplier. Pretty sure they come in tower form or something like that for base defense, too? Been a long time since I played last...

You might be thing of sensor units/sensor towers, which artillery can link to to use as a spotter.  Commanders were a seperate thing, which I don't remember there being tower versions of.

[Frumple]

There's definitely the sensor thing for towers, yeah. Thought there was a commander style one too, but that might just be misremembering. Helpful in any case if you got a decent chunk of artillery (and if you don't, I'm not sure we're thinking of the same game ), those towers.

Commanders were just kinda' sexy once you figured out how they worked, though. No clue if that's still true these days or not, but I'd think they would still be.

[Jopax]

Commanders were basically a more advanced form of control groups that allowed some nifty stuff, plus a fairly good tank on their own since they came with tons of HP. Also repair turrets are a thing and they're pretty good for keeping an army alive a bit longer when needed.

Also Robsoie, you're doing it wrong dude, you don't need early units, just rush out with some trucks and build walls in chokepoints. Early on they're tanky enough that a single truck can sustain a wall against a dozen enemies without much trouble, and they're way cheaper than any amount of units you'd need to defend against the early rushes. This in turn allows you to tech up like crazy and get some stuff like mortar emplacements which then allow you to just start pushing out from the safety of your walls with zero risk. Just try and do that in a timely manner, before the AI gets their hands on planes and starts harassing you constantly, won't be doing much damage at first but they're fairly hard to get rid of unless you teched into a decent amount of the AA weapons.

As for the game itself, yeah, this thing was so goddamn far ahead of its time that even now, over 20 years later not a single RTS has approached the level of complexity and replayability of this thing. A handful have tried and some were ok (The early Earth series get an honorable mention) but none have manged what this game did. Amazingly enough, this thing had a PS1 port, because that's how I bloody found out about it, a friend had it and I played it at his place all those years ago, then went on to find the PC version was a thing and jumped on that shit fast and hard.

[Robsoie]

Also Robsoie, you're doing it wrong dude, you don't need early units, just rush out with some trucks and build walls in chokepoints.

I like that idea
It reminds me of old AOE2 in which a super annoying tactic was to just wall ressources locations close to enemy base, such an annoyance for workers as that takes lot of time to bring down all those cheap and normally weak wood wall

[martinuzz]

Yeah, experience is really only noticable in the SP campaign, skirmishes and MP just don't last long enough to make experience matter.

Eh, if you can get a good commander or two going it's still pretty noticeable, iirc. They're useful for other stuff, too, though I kinda' forget the details. They're things that were easy to overlook and able to be done without, but if you can work out how to use 'em they were quite the multiplier. Pretty sure they come in tower form or something like that for base defense, too? Been a long time since I played last...

Yeah apologies.. Commander units experience is indeed also significant in multiplayer and skirmish sessions, because you can link larger armies to them even at low XP levels.

I was talking about experience for regular combat units.  You won't see elites outside of the campaign (and even in campaign mode they highest ranks are really hard to reach unless you carefully micro keeping alive and upgrading your veteran units.

But no, there is no commander tower.  I think you are confused with the (late game) tower (IIRC it's called the nexus link tower) that can convert enemies to your side.  It's firing animation does resemble the command turret.

You can link indirect fire units to the various sensor towers though.

[MrRoboto75]

Also Robsoie, you're doing it wrong dude, you don't need early units, just rush out with some trucks and build walls in chokepoints. Early on they're tanky enough that a single truck can sustain a wall against a dozen enemies without much trouble, and they're way cheaper than any amount of units you'd need to defend against the early rushes. This in turn allows you to tech up like crazy and get some stuff like mortar emplacements which then allow you to just start pushing out from the safety of your walls with zero risk. Just try and do that in a timely manner, before the AI gets their hands on planes and starts harassing you constantly, won't be doing much damage at first but they're fairly hard to get rid of unless you teched into a decent amount of the AA weapons.

Bullocks, walling in bought me all of about 2 minutes.  AI just rushed rocket batteries and knocked them over.

In fact, I can't get anything done as no matter what the AI outnumbers me at least 3-1.

[Jopax]

You probably played with the advance start on?

The tactic mostly works on the nomad start where the early minutes are spent building up a base of production/tech and you can easily do that more efficently than the AI. If you're both starting with bases then you do need units because the initial rush comes much faster and harder.

Also early mini-rocket arty isn't terribly great against most things (only really being dangerous to big buildings and massive clumps of units where the accuracy doesn't matter much), and by the time they have that you should have access to a decent stationary option, either mini-rockets of your own or a wall-mounted cannon of some sort that can reach out and blap the offending piece.

Additionally the strategy depends on the map you play as well, certain open ones will be much harder to expand on aggressively without figuring out which routes the AI likes to take most of the time.

[Robsoie]

At some point of my skrimishes test i used the "random" setting and once started a skirmish i noticed that my trucks could build everything and that i had already lots of techs.
The AI too as its attack involved some strong units impossible to field so early. So i guessed the settings were randomly changed to enable such thing.

After going into the skirmish options and reverting them to default, regardless of the base start and power level , same thing most techs are still researched and building are available from start.

It only fixed itself when i exited the game and relaunched it, so i guess there's some kind of bug floating around the dev build version.
Other than that it's running really greatly.

[MrRoboto75]

You probably played with the advance start on?

The tactic mostly works on the nomad start where the early minutes are spent building up a base of production/tech and you can easily do that more efficently than the AI. If you're both starting with bases then you do need units because the initial rush comes much faster and harder.

Also early mini-rocket arty isn't terribly great against most things (only really being dangerous to big buildings and massive clumps of units where the accuracy doesn't matter much), and by the time they have that you should have access to a decent stationary option, either mini-rockets of your own or a wall-mounted cannon of some sort that can reach out and blap the offending piece.

Additionally the strategy depends on the map you play as well, certain open ones will be much harder to expand on aggressively without figuring out which routes the AI likes to take most of the time.

It was truck only start on Startup (tall 1v1 desert map).  I was able to push up to about mid with just machinegun viper wheel spam but ended up losing it quickly as the AI got tech.  Its hard to outpace the AI when it aggressively goes for oil ponds even before they stop burning.  The AI will send trucks to ponds even if my entire army is parked on it.  It's honestly safe to assume by like minute 3 the AI has all the oil you don't have.

------

I am able to beat the first scenario/challenge, which is an advanced start on HighGround.  I can beat it in about a half-hour.  Only strat I can get working is to spam a lot of light cannon viper halftracks, with tech mostly going into mortar pits, cannon upgrades, and tank armor.  The tanks are usually good enough and well rounded enough that taking the hill should be easy enough.  The AI would usually answer with mortar cobra halftracks but it neither uses sensors nor protect them very well so they can be dealt with.  Mortar pits with sensor towers on the hill's ridge can deny one of the AI's oils.  I don't bother advancing to medium cannons or more and just build more light cannon vipers.  Eventually I can hit a critical mass of them they can just flatten the enemy base.

I used to pair the tanks with some mobile repair tanks, but they just don't live long enough to do much.  If you tell the whole group to attack something the repair tanks will just give the enemy a big hug (and die), and they only try to heal if the whole group is parked.  I think the AI is smart enough to target them first anyway.  Building repair cranes on the hill ended up being better, and I think the building heals faster than the turret does.  I also tried handfuls of flamer cyborgs but they just don't live long enough to do anything, and can't really hurt cobra halftracks.

I've also tried using sensor tanks with attached grenade cyborgs and mortar tanks.  It's pretty effective but micro intensive, and eventually I ran out of momentum as the sensor tanks couldn't live long enough to properly assault the enemy base.

[Jopax]

Right, tried the same map against Nullbot, first one was a rather hilarious loss as my initial rush succeeded and I managed to wall them in, the problem was a single enemy MG tank got trough somehow and killed my one truck repairing the wall, didn't get a replacement there in time (tho I probably could have) since I had spares around the map, but they probably would've died to that one tank. What followed was a literal river of MG tanks pouring out their base, like 20+ somehow.

Second attempt went better because I realized where that one tank got trough, on the very edge of the map is that area of higher-ground and that basically allows access from their base to the entirety of the map unless you wall it off asap. Afterwards it was just the busywork of capping all the fuel nodes, teching up until I got bored of it and proceeding to steamroll them with a handful of Python-Inferno tanks which were super tanky and spitting fire like it was going out of style.

[MrRoboto75]

I beat the "back to basics" scenario again, this time trying spamming rocket pods.  I beat it in 38 minutes, slower than using cannons.

The AI answered with cannon cyborgs, which don't die all that fast to rockets.  I tried mixing in some flamer cyborgs myself but I dunno.  Flamers seem to always get stuck in my crowd of tanks somehow out of range of everything and never seem to pull the damage the AI does with them.  At least flamer upgrades are cheap power-wise so I still had plenty power to build/research more rockets.  Flamers can also kill bunkers.  I built defensive rocket arty (and mg bunkers to fend off the cyborgs) but I still found mortars a bit better.  The AI also used cannon cobras but those weren't a big problem.

Maybe going to cobras instead of vipers faster could mean beating the AI faster, as getting those helped in sieging the base and getting the kill.

[martinuzz]

Haha, nice strategy here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH-3TtO6Rjs

This game never grows old