Not going to get too extensive with this guide as probably not a lot of people actually buy or play this game. It didnt get much attention at launch and the studio that developed it went under not long after it was made, so this game is virtually unknown to the world.

My opinion of it: Its not a great strategy game but its not bad either. Theres some fun in here but also some wonkiness and unintuitive mechanics that can throw new players off.

This is a turn based strategy game where you control one of 7 factions vying for dominance of the USA after Washington DC is nuked and the nation descends into a new civil war.

Theres three gameplay modes. As I mentioned this game is hella obscure so good luck with multiplayer. Smirmish mode pits you against one AI player for one battle and Campaign mode is the juicy centre of the game.

In campaign mode you start out by picking a faction on a map of America and then you have the option of buying equipment, invading another factions territory or just passing a turn without taking an aggresive action.

You win campaign mode by wiping out all other factions, but thats a long slog before you get there. First thing you have to know is how to win individual battles.

Oh and you will likely have to consult the steam discussion page for this game for a fix for getting it running on newer machines.

So you have an army and you invade another factions territory with it. This takes you to a map where the defending faction has deployed a bunch of units to defend their cities.

You deploy your own forces in the coloured deployment zones and once that is done you get to move first, because you are the attacker.

Most units are fairly slow so you will almost never engage the enemy on your very first turn, instead you must advance across the map and wipe out any opposition you find. If you destroy all of the enemies units you win and take control of the territory, which will give you a cash bonus as well as small discounts for buying new units. These discounts stack the more territory you control.

When deploying on the map you will notice that cities have numbers over them of different values. Some cities might only be 30 or 40 points while others might be 80 or 100 points. When you start the battle there is a point total, ussually 0/150 or 0/200 or something like that.

If you push all enemy forces out of a city and have your attacking forces sitting on top of it you gain the point total of that particular city. If you control enough cities for your point total to reach the maps requirements at the end of the defending teams turn then you take control of the territory and the defending forces have to retreat.

After you take an enemies territory you can repair your units, buy more or pass your turn by clicking on the hour glass button. You can unfourtunatly only invade another territory once per turn and the same is true of the AI factions, they can only invade once per turn as well.

BUT... If they are all adjacent to your territory then there is nothing preventing all of the AI factions from using their one attack per turn to invade your territories 5, 6 or 7 times in a single turn. This almost never happens but it is a possibility to be aware of.

More commonly you will find that you will be attacked at least once or maybe twice a turn, so a good rule of thumb is to only attack with half your army, so the other half can be used to defend your territory that turn.

There you go, thats pretty much all there is too it. Now theres just the non obvious wonkiness and strategies which I will get into below.

*You have infantry, light vehicles, tanks, artilery, anti air, helicopters and planes. Planes are deployed in their own unique way but everything else moves across the map at whatever its movement speed is. Infantry are the slowest units and helicopters the fastest. In between the two are vehicles, which generally have to move across roads or open plains to get anywhere.

*Different terrain has different effects on your ability to move and defend against attack. For moving roads and cities are the fastest followed by plains, forests and hils with rivers being the slowest terrain to move on. The terrain that gives the highest defense bonuses are forests and cities, plains are neutral, roads are bad and will give you a penalty and rivers are the worst places for units to be when they are attacked.

*Infantry like Engineers, commandoes and Heavy infatry are GREAT on defense and terrible on offense. If you are defending you want to place them in cities and forests at the start of your turn and NOWHERE ELSE. Infantry that is out in a field or on a road is very easy to kill, while infantry thats in deep cover can survive multiple attacks and pay it back with interest. For this reason I recommend using infantry solely as defenders while using vehicles for offensive stuff.

*Engineers have a special ability to place mines, barbed wire and anti tank barriers. Just press Tab and this brings up a menu where you can select these options. Placing mines on roads is an excellent way to devastate an attacking army. As far as I know the AI players will never make use of this themselves.

*General rule of thumb, commandoes, engineers and light vehicles like the humvee can only shoot one space. Bigger tanks and heavy infantry can shoot two spaces and anti aircraft units and artillery can shoot anywhere from five to eight spaces away.

*Air planes are stupidly expensive and if you fly them into an area that is protected by anti air units they will get shot down and you will be out a LOT of money. UNLESS you are bombing that anti air unit and manage to destroy it completly before it can fire back. As a rule of thumb, Avenger AA units dont have enough health even at full health to survive a bombing strike but all other AA units do, try to cut their health down using other units and then bomb them if youre feeling brave or just blow them up first before sending in the bombers.

*This also applies to firing at all other units in the game. If they have enough health to survive your attack they get a chance to fire back. But unless they are AA defending against planes they can only fire back once.

*One of the best units in the entire game is the Warrior Helicopter. Not because it has huge damage, its actually pretty weak, but because it has a huge flight range and sight radius. If you dont have any of these just buy a bunch of Humvees and in the immortal words of George Patton "Drive down that road until someone shoots at you.".

*Dont overextend your helicopters. If your helicopters are way out in front when the enemy gets to start their turn this gives them a chance to run an anti aircraft unit like the Gepard or Chapparal up and shoot down your helicopter. Or if they dont have one handy all they need to do is get sight of it and then call in a Jet Fighter to shoot your helicopter down. Of course this works both ways and the AI often delights in kamikaziing its attack helicopters into your army.

*One of the most powerful abilities in the game is being able to shoot at an enemy without giving them the chance to shoot back. Artillery does this by shooting from outside of their range and air units do this by abusing the fact that MOST(not all) units in the game have really poor anti aircraft abilities. But other units like Tanks and Heavy infantry that can shoot two spaces can also abuse their range advantage. You could also be really cheap and decide to resign the battle before your enemy even gets a chance to shoot back.

*The airfield is a great defensive unit. It takes forever to kill and can provide anti aircraft fire across pretty much an entire city, great for defending a map along with some infantry, but you only get an airfield if you deploy planes on that map.

*Special abilities and special tanks are faction specific and not really all that noteworthy with a couple exceptions which I will explain here. Pacifica has a special tank that is incredibly fast and about as powerful as an Abrams. This tank is so fast it will leave the rest of your army in the dust trying to catch up. The other special tank of note belongs to the Great Plains faction and it is an artillery tank. It basically has all the advantages of artillery but none of the weaknesses because its able to defend itself and is difficult even for air units to destroy.



*Let me emphasize one last word to finish this guide: ATTRITION

If you attack into an enemies territory and lose 300k worth of units while your opponent only loses 100k then it doesnt matter if you gain the territory or not. A territory will only pay out around 10k in funds each turn, so it would take that territory 30 turns just to pay back what you lost in taking it.

Taking territory is less important than reducing the size of enemy factions armies. So it is viable to attack into an enemies territory, do a whole lot of damage to their army and then retreat before they can return the favor and damage your forces.

This is also why infantry is a great option on defense. They are cheap and when stationed in cities they can cause damage to an attacking force completly out of proportion to how much they cost.


And thats about it. I dont expect more than five or ten people to read this guide but at least now theres something in the steam guide section for this game. :p