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Players and what they'll do kill you

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13 years ago
In the same spirit as the thread with the same name on the Achron forums...

Kron said: "this thread is about discussing where anyone can post a quick guide to a player's playstyle."

Basically, we post our own tricks and rules of thumb we use when playing. Hopefully, people who are new can read this thread and gain some measure of "experience" or learn how the game is played.

And those of us who post our tips and tricks can refine them under review.

To start with, here's my own. I'm not too good, so this is not a "win strategy". =P

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What I will do to kill you:
I nearly always start land.
I am not familiar with air starts nor the use of athenas-as-fac and sea. Often, I will leave this to other players unless land is saturated and no one else wants to play sea/air.

I often play cloaky bots or light veh. Second factory is nearly always air or gunships.

On a wide open map, expect one army to push forward while raiders continually try to probe the flanks and find open ground to harass from. The core army is often riot-covered artillery. I don't build enough assaults (oh hey, I should... right?)
If it goes to mid game and I haven't moved forward fast enough, I will try cloaked units. Expect to see snipers and scythes attempting to hit key defences and units or raiding economy behind lines. Especially snipers. I love them.
As light vehicles, I will be using merls so don't expect shields to last long against me.

If I see air, I will often throw AA into my build queue. Fighters/rapiers only if I have air already.

I hate defending and rarely build more than 1 HLT, if at all. If I appear to have the momentum, I will not build anything heavier than llts and missile towers.

Likewise I dislike large cost units and buildings. Dantes are rare, I will often use the athena for behind lines attacks. You will not find a singularity in my base unless I am winning or feel secure. (and even then, I often forget)
This often means I never morph my commander. I use it as a mobile radar and hence all 6 commander builds feature the field radar module as the level 1 module.

I love two-stage attacks and decoy techniques. Missile silo with EMP + napalm is a favourite when the front is stalled. Expect attempts to bait units into overextending. Later, stiletto + bomber runs; if I have the economy, decoy fighters as well.
If possible, I will attempt to sneak snipers under shields to hit the shield generator.

How you can kill me:
A few patrols around your flank and possible avenues of approaches can uncover snipers and cloaked units (don't expect me to run into them blindly though)

Since I usually don't start air, an athena can seize ground from me in the early game although I will often queue in an artillery unit if this happens.

Complex techniques and front-line snipers are fun and hard to block but they consume alot of micro. I can be easily prevented from doing this by attacking me on multiple fronts so my attention is divided. I never have enough micro.

Disliking defence means I virtually never build anything heavier than HLTs. You won't see more than a few shields either. It also means that my territory serves as a strategic buffer. My army will often decline to engage in a pitched battle and if you can push against me, I will find my economy crumbling very soon.

I am often surprised by tech switches and heavy units. A supported dante can reverse my momentum or the sudden usage of a swarm of gunships when I have not seen air (but 'ware me scouting it out) can spell victory.
And despite my liking for cloak techniques, I am also surprised them.
And bombs too. Those often get me.

I am weak in unconventional games like duck and speedmetal. Small maps can take advantage of my relatively weaker commander and speedmetal... well, let's just say playing conventionally on speedmetal does not work.
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13 years ago
I think I do whatever direction I think the metagame should go in... Currently I'm starting air more often as an air player is a reasonable requirement in a large teamgame.
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13 years ago
Speedmetal is a completely different beast than a normal game, Its probably not worth mentioning here for "good strats"

I usually start with a few scouts/raiders to see where you are and kill any undefended structures. Any towers I see will be noted and avoided until my main army comes marching in to destroy them. I keep my scouts alive, only take pot shots at unguarded mexes or the like, and get a good idea of where everyone is and which factory they begin with.

While you are distracted by my scouts, I easily expand and build up my infrastructure, producing more mainline units depending on the factory (thug/rocko/outlaw, venom/recluse/flea, hammer/scythe/warrior, fighters/napalm/prec bombers, etc.) and send them to the frontlines immediately so they can be used when needed. (not wallowing around useless in my base)

If the situation calls for it, I will switch my unit composition to prevent hard-counters. (adding in cloggers vs vehicles, spies to take out supercoms, cloak+tick for lulz, emp bombers for porc, etc.) sometimes a techswitch is needed so I can get bombers/penetrators/moderators/snipers etc. to really throw my opponent into a bind. By using synergistic units I can take out unorganized armies with ease.

I avoid defenses until they can be shot down with artillery or overwhelmed with assaults taking minimal losses. By keeping my units alive and not throwing them into hardened defense I can easily pick away at them until you have only whats left of your army from before you ran back to your sissy line of towers.

By the time any walls of porc have been destroyed the game is usually over. so gg.

How to kill me:
Don't make porc. a few towers for defense are fine, but anything more than 1 llt spaced at max range from another llt is overkill and wasteful. (unless you are losing badly, but then that will only delay me, not win you the game) You will LOSE THE GAME if you over-make porc against any decent player and your allies aren't there to protect you.

Make a good composition of units for your army -- don't have a single exploitable weakness in your composition.

If you can, scout and raid as early and as much as possible. I usually don't make a lot of defenses and if you know what I'm about to throw at you you can prepare for it. P.S. raiding != throwing some units to their death at the frontlines. It means bypassing the frontlines and going deep into enemy territory to scout and do damage
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13 years ago
Ah yeah, I immediately thought of the Achron thread when I saw this thread title.

I'm with Google Frog though, I'll change it up based on what I see people doing. There was a time when there were 2-4 Athena-starters on each team, during which I would rush a fighter or two at start to snipe them. Seeing how BD is popular recently air seems pretty important now too.

Something I do when I know someone is going to heavy com-push is go shieldbots, and then send out ~3 clogger and a roach to the center, with the clogger advancing to get los, and set the roach down on my best guess as to where he will go, and follow up with my com. A lucky roach will 1-shot a com, but a decent hit will bring him down enough for my com to finish him off or at least get him to retreat.
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13 years ago
If I play 1v1 at a large map I will make Athena, drop rectors all over the map and make usually 1 or 2 mexes - dependend when the con is finished and after that one llt.

Most times, I will get one con out before others finnished even an Avenger, My slow com wil make energy and depended on what my early fleas dedect, I make 1 defender against avengers, 2 against up to 3 avenger / gnats, and try to get your weak spot.

I prefer to build a single unit type that you don't expect, attack you and switch imediatly to another unit type, unless this unit is a key part of my tactic or you are unable to counter it.

Sometimes - especially fast gunships - I will reclaim my units to boost the production of the next wave, raiding your AA bots you wasted to protect yourself against something I didn't want to use till I have enough ressources that they are no real counter even against Gunshipsspam :)

At the main Front I will use as much micro as I can do, to fight in a way that let don't give you anything to reclaim.
At this Front I will get my Veterans and Heroes, but you haven't any chance to surprice me there - only brute force :)
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13 years ago
How to kill me:
Tell me about a critical bug in planetwars, springie or something like that .. i will try to fix it midgame
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13 years ago
It is much easier to kill Licho[0K] with posting this link:
http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/issues/list
^_^
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13 years ago
i will make glaives and attack you all the time in every place at at once because i know you wont be able to keep up with me >:). You desperately try to make defenses but they are shut down as they go up so you can never expand. In the mean time i camly claim the rest of the map. Then, when i have all but 5 mexes, i'll spam you to death with whatever unit i feel like using that moment!

bwahaha
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13 years ago
However, I'll make raiders and riot units to stop raiders spam.
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