MAKING THE BEST OF YOUR MOVEMENT

        In this section, I will be divulging just about everything I know about the little tricks that allow you to move your units that little bit extra each turn (and therefore expand faster, collect more cities, resources and wrecks and collect more ore from your resources). I'll try to leave thoughts on how you blend it all into one big master strategy to the Individual and Alliance Overall Strategy Pages.

    PLANNING

        While not totally inobvious, I thought it would be a good idea to state this at the outset. You will be able to move your units much more efficiently if you plan! This means that you should plan what you are going to do with your units in one area during that turn and what you vaguely want them to do in the next turn before actually moving them. You need to do this to be able to take full advantage of all the points I have outlined below. If you can somehow take full advantage of all the points I have outlined below without prior planning, what the heck are you doing wasting your time on a simple game like this? Go play 6 Dimensional Chess or something...

THE COMBINATION
(Using Transportation Units)

        This is one of the best ways to enhance the range and overall movement of your units. Simply put, you use a Transport, Hercules or Cargo to carry your units to their destination. But it is actually slightly more complicated than that. The question you need to ask yourself is "Which units?". The answer varies depending on what you are trying to do and which Transportation Unit you are using. If  you are using a Transport, chances are you have one of three things in mind:

1. Expansion: At the start of a game, I will always send out Transports with a Soldier, Bulldozer and Truck on it. You use the soldier to collect cities, the bulldozer to capture mines and build roads and the truck to collect and sell the ore from the newly captured mines. Best of all, it only costs you $100 so you can send out two of these even in a no peace game! It also links in with other techniques that I describe later.
   If there are no resources in the direction that you plan on sending your Transport, then you would change your package so that you used 2 Soldiers and a Bulldozer. Use the Soldiers to capture cities and the Bulldozer to build roads so you can move everything faster.
   In some very rare instances where there are heaps of roads and cities, you may just load up your Transport with 3 Soldiers. This will rarely be desirable though.
   Note that when you have sufficient technology, you may desire to upgrade your Soldiers to Panthers. This is not necessarily desirable though as it may not actually be a waste of cash if you are doing everything right!
2. Resource Collection: If you are just going to collect resources, then all you will need is a Transport with one Truck on it. Using a technique outlined later, you will collect your resources more efficiently in this manner that any other way.
3. Attack: In this case, you simply load your transports up with whatever you need. I describe that elsewhere.

        If you are using a Hercules, chances are you are thinking along similar lines as with a transport. The main difference is that you have higher technology, more range and more cargo capacity. Generally, this means your load would be more like this:

1. Expansion: Instead of the Soldier, you should certain use a Panther. In addition, you would have a Bulldozer and a Truck for collecting resources. Depending on the number of resources and cities along your path of travel, you would then be able to determine on a case by case basis as to the desirability of adding in additional Panther/s and/or Bulldozer/s.
2. Resource Collection: Depending on just how many resources are along your flight path, you would purchase one or two Trucks.
3. Attack: Same as with Transports. Load your Hercules up with whatever you need. Described elsewhere.

        If you are using a cargo, your thinking will usually be different from the other two:

1. Expansion: Not particularly useful in the earliest stages of no peace games. If you have enough cash however, it can be useful to have a cargo strike out along a waterway and drop off Soldiers or Panthers (depends on your Technology level) on each side of the river. You may want to bring one Bulldozer along so that you can extend the distance that you can reach beyond the end of the cargo's range (see below).
   In some very rare cases there are chains of resources that you can move a cargo along. In such cases it would be useful to have 1 or 2 Trucks, 1 or 2 Soldiers or Panthers and a few Bulldozers (no more than 4 usually).
2. Resource Collection: There are a few very rare cases where it is actually possible to collect resources with a Cargo. This occurs when you are able to buy a factory or place your base in such a position that a Cargo can be moved into a chain of resources. As you may know, Cargo's cannot move on land or uncaptured resources and cities. They can however, move into and out of captured resources and cities. I assume there is some sort of canal system running through captured cities and resources that isn't there while the city or resource is in its original state. In any case, you can probably use 2 Trucks at the most and 1 Truck in most such cases.
3. Attack: What you want to load up in here is described elsewhere of course.

LOADING/UNLOADING IN CITIES

        It is a relatively recent innovation to the game that you can actually load units onto Transportation Units in the City and Base Screens. This is done by clicking on the desired Unit and dragging it into or out of a Transportation Unit. You can even drag a Unit from inside one Transportation Unit and right into another. The benefits of this towards movement should be obvious. If you capture a city that your Transportation Unit would be passing through anyhow, instead of wasting a point of Movement putting the Infantry Unit back into the Transportation Unit,  you can simply load the Infantry Unit back into the Transportation Unit while it is in the city. It is possible to double the city collecting power of an infantry unit in this manner! A Soldier could, if there are enough cities along the path of travel actually capture 4 cities rather than the measly 2 that is the maximum otherwise. Other benefits of this fact are described later.
        You can also load a unit with 0 Movement left into a Transportation Unit or unload it. This is useful in two cases. Firstly, when you want to keep your Combination together, but your Transportation Unit still has one or more Movement left, you can load up any these Units with 0 Movement and carry them along inside regardless. Secondly, if you are in reach of the enemy, then you may want to move your Transportation Unit into a city and unload everything inside it at the end of the turn. If you have such things as Porcupines in the Transportation Unit, you would then be in no danger of losing the whole lot in one easy shot. You would however, be able to put it all back into the Transportation Unit next turn and continue on with no loss of Movement.

RESOURCE COLLECTION AS AN AID
(Using Trucks)

        Now the reason why I usually choose to expand with a combination of a Transport with a Soldier, Bulldozer and Truck will become clear. When you collect the ore from a resource and sell it in a city, you get the money from that sale instantly. This means that you can even get additional cash on Turn 0! In many situations it is possible to make enough money to be able to send out additional Combinations (or buy some Advances). Generally, for every 3 Combinations you sent out to begin with, you should be able to buy one more Combination. Usually you wind up with some odd cash, but never fear, I have a plan for that too. The advantage of this whole technique is of greater meaning in no peace games where you are scraping for any advantage you can get, but it is useful in any situation.
        The reason why I have put this information under Movement is twofold. Firstly, if you follow this rule, you can get a lot more of it done overall. Secondly, I want you to have this thought foremost in your mind while moving. Although not directly "saving" you Movement, it helps dictate where you should move your units.

RESOURCE COLLECTION WITH COMBINATIONS
(Using Trucks Effectively)

        You must move a Truck into a City manually (thus expending 1 Movement) to sell its Ore, but you don't need to move it out of a City manually. To collect ore from a resource, you must have a Truck (that isn't too full) in the Resource. You do not however, need to have moved the Truck into the Resource manually. This is two opportunities for you to save Movement! You can move a Transportation Unit into a City where a Truck is and load the Truck into the Transportation Unit in the City for no loss of Movement. You can then move that Transportation Unit (and therefore the truck) into a Resource and collect the ore from it at no loss of Movement to the Truck. The benefit of this is the ability to potentially collect Ore from 10 Resources every Turn.

TRANSPORTATION CHAINS

        A Transportation Chain is something you should be developing as the game progresses. Basically, what you do to achieve it is send out a Transportation Unit (of the same kind as the rest) along the same path as the lead Transportation Unit every Turn. This allows you to send Units into an area without having to build a Factory there. While very long (in practice, more than 4 Units is definitely too long) Transportation Chains are not desirable, short Chains are useful for moving up expansion units and getting Porcupines into a city near an enemy base without using a Factory Chain (in Individual play, this would be a string of 2 or more Factories that are 15 or less squares apart allowing one to move Units from one place to another without selling them. In Alliance play, Factory Chains are used in different, more desirable ways). Generally speaking, the use of a Transportation Chain is to get things where they need to be faster. With a bit of forward planning, you can usually see in which directions it would be useful to have a Transportation Chain and in which directions you needn't bother.

FARMS, CITIES AND RESOURCES

        Farm, Cities and Resources all overlay the terrain on which they are placed and allow you to move into the square that they are in for the cost of only 1 Movement. Bases have the same ability, but it isn't very common to move through your own base! Such motion stinks of a lack of decisiveness ("should I go this way or that way?") and is usually undesirable. Most Roads also have the same ability, but Roads through Snow and Desert only allow you to go through the square at a cost of 2 Movement. I'll talk about ways around that in the next bit. In any case, given that it only costs 1 Movement to move into such squares and it costs 2 or 3 Movement for other kinds of squares, it should be obvious that you want to plan your path of advance to coincide with as many of these squares as possible while keeping up the maximum rate of advance capable to collecting all resources and cities along that path of travel. While this may be a mouthful to say, actually doing it should become second nature after a while. It is one of the differences between a good expansion technique and a bad one.

COASTAL SQUARES

        Something that isn't immediately obvious is that any square which is partially water costs 2 points of Movement to enter for Naval and Ground units. This is worse for Naval units so you should generally avoid it, but in cases where the Forest and the Ocean have a transition you can save 1 movement point per square on ground units. This can obviously make a great deal of difference!

GROUND UNITS CROSSING OCEAN SQUARES

        Yes! This is possible. The secret is the use of Bulldozers. As long as there is a Road in an adjacent square, you can move a Bulldozer into an Ocean square at the cost of only 1 Movement. Using this technique, a Bulldozer can build right across short bits of Ocean (4 squares of Ocean). At times, this can allow you to make a surprise attack, to save Movement vs going around or to get that extra distance out of an Infantry Unit (so as to capture a City where you can build a Factory usually).

Using a Bulldozer gets you across those pesky channels

SNEAKY TRICKS WITH ROADS

        When you are expanding, you will want to lay down sections of Road so as to make following up with Resource and/or Combat units faster and more efficient. However, there are things you can do with Road that allow you to save Movement points that you probably didn't even know you could.
        Firstly, because it is coded so that Roads built in squares diagonally adjacent cause another Road square to be built so as to link them all up, it is possible to move to capture a resource (usually), build a road and then be able to follow the Road to square that ordinarily would have cost you 2 or 3 Movement to enter. This is obviously very helpful if you needed to enter that square to reach another Resource or a City. However, sometimes this trick won't work because there is a transition square (possibly), a City, Resource or Farm at both diagonals.

        Secondly, because there are only the map tiles for Roads built across a terrain transition, if you happen to build a Road along a transition square (2  or 3 adjacent  transition squares are now Road) all the adjacent squares will turn into a Road on a Grass Tile. If previously it was actually a Trail (which costs 2 Movement to move along), then you have saved yourself 1 Movement in all those squares!

Before	After	Before	After
Examples of the use of Sneaky Road Trick #2

ODD CASH

        When you don't have enough cash left to send out another full Combination, what do you do with it all? At later stages of the game you would spend it on Farms for Metropoles or on Porcupines for your Base or a Factory. In the early stages though, where every last dollar counts in terms of Expansion, using this odd amount of cash correctly is vital. My favored technique is to first buy a new Transportation Unit. If cash is left over after that, one would buy first a Bulldozer (if possible) and/or then an Infantry Unit. What you do with an empty Transportation Unit is send it as far as you can in a direction you want to expand. Next turn, you can send out a loaded Transportation Unit and transfer the contents to your first Transportation Unit. You are now able to captures Cities and Resources a full Turn worth of movement further away than if you had done nothing with that Odd Cash! The same rule applies in a different way to Transportation Units that you couldn't put an Infantry Unit and/or Truck into. You would fill the new Transportation Unit with the right units to look after the first Transportation Unit and if possible to expand in several directions from that point, you would then fill any spare spaces with other Units.

ODD BITS OF MOVEMENT

        Of course, if you have 0 Movement then you can't move at all, but if you have 1 Movement then you can move into squares that normally cost 2 or 3 points to enter. If you plan your movement carefully, you can take advantage of this fact in two different ways. Firstly, you can use the last Movement Point of a Transportation Unit to move into a 2 or 3 Movement point square. Sometimes you can't do this, because your most efficient line of travel in the next turn forbids it, but usually it is possible to take advantage of these "free" Movement points. Secondly, you can use the last Movement Point of a Bulldozer to move into a 2 or 3 Movement Point square. It runs out of Movement this Turn, but next turn you will be able to build a Road there and then move your Bulldozer back into the Transportation Unit which takes advantage of it. This can save you a movement point here and there. Finally, you can use this to get a final  move out of combat Units or Infantry that are expanding unaided through a difficult area.

INDEX