INTELLIGENCE
Although you can win a war without knowing where the enemy units are until you run into them, you make it very difficult for yourself if you attempt to do so. It is far wiser and cost effective to gain a measure of knowledge of where your opponents units are and what they are capable of. Having said this, it is also very wise and cost effective to confuse your opponent by showing them what you want them to see while doing something else it secret. This holds true just as much in the world of Metal Knights as it does in the real world. And there are a few very important tools that aid the player in the accomplishment of these goals. The first of these is radar. Another is the spying ability of the commando. The final tool is invisible units. In this section I will go in depth of how and when all of these tools are used and how to plan against them (because nothing is foolproof).
Radar is probably the most
effective intelligence gathering tool available to a player. Without it, you can only see
which cities and mines that your opponents own and the "topmost" of any any
units in the squares outside of any cities, resources or bases. Also, Porcupines and
Sharks are invisible to a player without radar. Radar isn't perfect though. You cannot see
Commandos or Furtifs with it, nor can you see which enemy mines have a truck assigned and
which enemy cities are fortified and/or have a factory (which is where Spying comes in...). Also, you can only see 3 or 4 of
the units in a city, resource or base. The "Radar" section of the "Status
window" shows enemy cities, resources and bases as well as regular units. Sometimes
the icon for the city, resource or base will appear along with the units. If you see 3
units icons and a city, resource or base icon then it only means that there are at least 3
units in that place instead of at least 4. It does not in any way imply that there are
only 3 units there!
OK, so that is the basic properties of the
radar. So when do you get it and what do you use it for? I'll start with when. The latest
you want to wait to get a radar is just before you go to war with someone. The earliest
you want to get the radar is the soonest possible time that any opponent could move any of
his units into attack range of yours. Usually, you will get the radar at some time between
these two extremes. Rarely, you will wait until after you have attacked someone else, but
this is only in such unusual situations as when an opponent is crowding you or is very
close and you must start to fight very early in the game (before Turn 4). In practise, the
time that you buy the Radar is sometime between Turn 3 and Turn 7 on most maps. On the
faster maps, you may be making so much money that you can have the Hercules on Turn 2 with
money to spare. In this case, and if you have any enemies in strike range, you may very
well buy the Radar on Turn 1.This is not the norm however. If you wait until after Turn 7
to buy your radar, you probably started in a very remote area of the map and did not
advance towards your opponents at a fast enough pace. If you don't have enough money to
buy the Radar on Turn 7, something has gone horribly wrong!
Now you should have a fair idea of when you
would usually get your radar and why. To make the most informed decision on this, you
still need to know what you are going to do with it (of course). Here is a list of some of
the things that a radar can do for you:
Preserve your expansion rate. A nearby opponent that you have signed a peace treaty with can thwart your expansion with a few well placed and otherwise invisible units. Without the radar, you are quite likely to find yourself forced to waste movement points going around invisible obstacles or returning to a place where you can go in another direction. You shouldn't just attack the enemy unit to get it out of the way in most cases. You would have to pay to break a treaty, which is highly counterproductive to your expansion rate and exactly what your opponent is hoping for! With a radar, you can spot enemy Porcupines and Sharks and go right around them without being slowed down at all. Obviously this is what you want to do. Note that there is no countermeasure against this use of the radar.
Give you a clue to the location of enemy factories/universities. This
usage sometimes also gives you warning that your opponent is planning an attack and where.
Take a look at the enemies cities. If you can see a city that is close enough for your
opponent to attack you from if they built a factory and it is filled with units (even
basic expansion units), that is a pretty good clue that they have built a factory there
and are planning to attack you. Some slow witted types even put porcupines in soon to be
factories in an attempt to protect their investment. This is a dead giveaway. If you see a
city full of Porcupines within 14 squares of your base, you KNOW that they are going to
attack your base next turn. You can then either protect your base adequately or go on the
offensive and take their city before their factory matures (and then protect that!). The
same goes for universities. If an opponent is close to you along a broad front an you can
see cities with flags or Porcupines in them, chances are they aren't gathering fairy-dust.
Chances are your opponent is trying to protect his most valuable cities.
The most obvious countermeasures to this usage of the radar are quite simple. Only use
units invisible to radar. The most obvious one of which is the fortification! A
fortification cannot be detected by anything but an attack or spying. And if your opponent
does either, they better be trying to put you down for the count anyway! Another
countermeasure is misdirection. Put your Porcupines in several cities instead of just one.
Then your opponent has too attack them all to be sure that he finds your factory (and if
he has to go through several Fortified and Porcified cities, he may run out of cash
first!). Make it look like you are building up in one area and then build you factory
somewhere else totally different. Your opponent will probably not have strong enough units
to crack your fortified factory city and will then swiftly succumb.
To protect universities, it is probably better to build them in an out of the way corner
of your empire, where no-one else will reach until they have taken out most of your empire
anyway. Then because you don't have to put anything in them, your opponent has no clues as
to their location. The final countermeasure against this use of radar is pure and simple,
brass balls style boldness. That is, build your factory in the closest possible place to
your opponent at the earliest possible time and make no special (and therefore traceable)
efforts to get there or protect it. Many opponents just aren't paranoid enough to be
looking for this and you may wind up leaping down their throat before they suspect
anything is wrong. Of course, this is very risky and you could lose everything, but the
gamble pays off remarkably often...
To tell how well an enemy base is protected. In the early stages of the
game when players usually only have one base and everything else is relatively lightly
defended, it is a relatively simple matter to determine how well an enemy base is
protected. Simply take a look at the statistics screen to see how many units that opponent
has, and then use your radar to count up all the units that are outside their base. How
many units are unaccounted for by this are the maximum number of units that could be in
the enemy base. Some units may be invisible and make this count higher than it should be,
but it certainly won't lower the maximum number. The same goes for cities and the like
that are heavily protected and have at least three or even four units in them. You can
reduce this uncertainty by spying these cities, but that is another story... With this
information, you can determine whether or not it is worthwhile to attack the enemies base
or go for their empire instead (or even whether it is worthwhile attacking at all!).
The only real countermeasure against this use of radar is misdirection and confusion.
Having several places that have at least 3 units in them can confuse your enemy. They may
assume you have a factory in such a place and so attack that rather than your base. They
may assume that you have fewer Porcupines in your base than you do and so attack your base
before they are fully prepared to take it (at which point, you make mincemeat of their
units). They may assume you are bluffing and you have no factories and your base is too
well protected. Finally, your opponent may assume that he just doesn't know enough about
what your defences are like and leave you alone for another vital turn! Of course, you do
need the units to back all this up... If you have 30 units unaccounted for, your opponent
is going to be a lot more uncertain than if you have 3 units unaccounted for and having
300 units unaccounted for would probably send anybody mad (if you could buy that many) :)
Help you decide who to attack. On most maps, you can be in range to
attack several different opponents before going to war, depending on where you build
factories. However, you don't want to waste money and you want assured kills. So you need
information about who is protecting themselves properly and who isn't. So you take a look
inside everyone's base to see what is there. If there are 0-2 units in there besides the
base icon, that is all there is and they are ripe for killing. You build a factory near
these suckers first (assuming they have an empire worth conquering). If everyone has 3 or
more units in their bases, then you need to use the technique outlined above to determine
the maximum number of units in each opponents base. As before, you can then pick the
target/s who are the worst defended and most valuable to conquer to build you factories in
range of.
The best countermeasure to this tactic is to protect yourself better than anybody else and
at least well enough so that it is impossible for anyone to kill you in their next turn or
two (if they have the chance for a double against you). Of course it is always a good idea
not to get killed, but it is just as good to make yourself look unkillable by a swift
strike. Then you can let others go to war and attack them at their weakest :)
To help plan an attack. This is a bit of a no-brainer. If you know where
the enemy units are, then you can blow them away with a minimum of fuss and won't get any
horrible surprises (like running a Hercules full of Metal Knights into a Porcupine in the
open). If you don't, then you will either spend to little money to get the job done or
waste large amounts of money using the wrong units for the job (which leaves you open to
the next guy).
The only possible countermeasure against this commonsense usage of radar is to use
invisible stuff like Fortifications and Furtifs to protect your cities and otherwise give
the opposition a nasty surprise. Neither of these are terribly effective though, because a
good opponent will usually take these factors into account when planning their attack.
Commando's have the ability to spy enemy cities, resources and bases. If you attempt to move them into any of these and it is defended by units or a Fort then you won't attack and will instead spy the location. Spying is relatively ineffective against resources, because you can use radar to tell what is in there for up to four units anyhow and the resource screen only flashes up for a second (units are not displayed on the resource screen, so it is irrelevant). However, this is not so with enemy cities and bases....
CITIES: The city information window comes up and you can get a lot of information. First and foremost, you can see what it actually in the city. At least the first seven units anyway. Beyond that, you can get a pretty good estimate, because the scroll bar for the units is still, there you just can't use it... To determine how many units are actually there, just estimate how many times the scrolly bit would fit into the full length of the scroll bar and multiply that by 7. You can also tell if there is a bank in the city by checking out the tax rate and the population and seeing it that adds up to give you the same amount of money as listed under "Tax Income". Once you are used to what tax rates give approximately what amount of money for any tax rate, then it is pretty easy to tell if someone is getting more than that and must therefore have a bank. Finally, you can take a look at the pretty picture at the top of the screen to see if there is a factory, fort, university, bank and/or farm in the city.
BASES: When you spy an enemy base, you get some very useful information indeed. You can see exactly how much money they have in their budget and whether or not they have bought radar (look for the radar in the pretty picture). However, the best part is that you can swap between the various tabs in the window and see what technologies your opponent has learnt as well as being able to estimate how many units your opponent has in his base (both of these things are done by estimation with the scroll bar as with cities)! If your opponent has technologies that you don't, it may be a good idea to attack their cities until you can find it instead of trying to take their base (which could leave you open to another enemy)....
With this spying ability,
Commando's can be highly useful. They are the ultimate backup to the intelligence
gathering powers of Radar. Once you have determined that now is a good time to attack with
your Radar, you use Commandos anywhere that additional information would be helpful in
taking out your opponent. In some cases, you'll only use the one Commando to spy out the
cities on the way to the enemy base and the enemy base itself. In other cases, it will be
necessary to plow through the defences of a fully prepared opponent. In these cases, you
will probably need one commando per attack group to scout out enemy cities (Panthers will
do for the resources).
As far as countermeasures go, there is only one
way to stop a Commando from spying your cities and bases. Find it and kill it or stop it
from getting anywhere near it's target :) The information the Commando garners is of a
highly specific nature and cannot be confused. It is however, very local in nature. It
actually has to be there doing it's thing to get the information and there must be war
between you and your opponent for him to accomplish this, so you can freely blow away the
Commando (even though they are invisible, if you use a long range unit to target every
square that a Commando could possibly be, you'll get it eventually...
There are many things you can
do with invisible units to degrade the intelligence efforts of your opponents. Most of
these are only effective if your opponent is an idiot however :P I'm only going to talk
about the ones that are actually effective and the Porc Star.
The first thing you can do is deploy invisible
units in surprising places. The only unit that is very effective in this role is the
Furtif as it is truly invisible and actually kicks a fair amount of ass in combat. A
Furtif placed where an enemy transportation unit can run into it can be very useful. It is
also very hard to plan a proper attack when half the enemy units are invisible Furtifs.
Simply put, they could be anywhere! On the one hand, they could be blocking your attack
routes. On the other hand, they could be parked somewhere within attack range of your
base, just waiting for the chance to roar in and blow your inadequate defences away...
With enough money to field this highly dangerous unit, you can pull of some really sneaky
stuff.
The second thing you can do is put your
invisible units in really surprising places :-) Just think about what happens to an
opponent you makes a drive right at your base because it appears to be virtually
undefended, only to find it filled with Furtifs and/or Commandos (if your feeling really
poor). If you are lucky, he will have blown all his money on that effort and you can then
turn on him and destroy his units with ease.
The third thing you can do with invisible units
is to simply have some. If your opponent can't see all your units, he will have to assume
that your bases are more heavily protected than they actually are. Because of this, you
may survive another round as they wait to get more power.
And now about the Porc Star. It isn't a legend,
it really does exist and it does uses Porcupines. The hard part about making it is placing
your Base in the right spot so that you can make it at all and placing the Porcupines in
the right order and in the right way. Also, it isn't very cheap. You need to have at least
$113 to make it, and much more if you want to be able to hide most of the evidence right
away. More than that I'm not going to say :) I will however say this: There are only 2
occasions upon which it is worthwhile making the Porc Star. The first occasion is to annoy
newbies after you kill them by showing them that you too know how to use it. The other
occasion is when you are absolutely mindlessly rich and can afford to do it just for fun
:)
As a defence the Porc Star is almost completely
useless. If you build it straight away, anybody can tell almost exactly where your base is
anyway by figuring out where your centre of expansion is. If you build it any later,
anyone with half a brain will have memorised the location of your base already even if
they haven't written down it's coordinates on a piece of paper. Yeah coordinates, Sunny
Jim. Where it has written "pos (x,y)" in the bottom right hand corner of the MK
window, the x and y are the coordinates of your cursor on the map. Just put your cursor
over the enemy bases and record the coordinates you get and you'll always know where the
enemy Base is even if the use the Porc Star...
Of course, there is another big flaw to the
Porcupine Star. The base may be invisible, but the units inside it do not also become
invisible. You can see them as plainly as if they were out in the open. And if you click
on the square where a base is and there are at least 4 units in there, it is a good chance
that is where the base is. Of course, you could leave the base totally unprotected (and
pay the price of your utter stupidity) or protect it with invisible units (easily killed
compared to the same dollar value of Porcupines), but neither idea is particularly great.
The only situation in which the Porc Star may
be useful is on a map where you can afford to buy a bunch of Furtifs and the Nuclear is
disabled. Your opponent may believe your base to be undefended and attack you on that
supposition only to get a rude surprise. However, if you are depending on this, you may be
in for a bit of a rude surprise yourself. If you can afford that many Furtifs, your
opponent can probably afford to blow them all away! It is definitely not useful when
Nuclear is not disabled on such maps, because they can pretty much blow you out of
existence the moment they figure out what you have protecting your base (and exactly how
much if you spy it with a Commando). In such a case, you would be far better of to use
your money killing them instead of trying to fool them.