Important things to know:
Stars: Stars are the main currency you use for buying stuff. You get a certain amount of them every few seconds, with the amount you gain increasing as you increase in level. As the end-of-battle screen shows, the AI has a higher passive star gain than the player.
XP / Rank: Every time you fill up the xp bar near the bottom of the screen, you get medals, a promotion in rank, and a choice between 3 randomized rewards.
First trench: The trench right outside your base
Second trench (and so on): The trench to the right of the (first, second, third, so on) trench
Second to last trench: The trench to the left of the last trench
Last trench: The trench outside of the enemy base.
Shotgun: Explained in the next section well enough; Second (from left to right) unit on the bottom HUD
Sniper: One of three selectable units to the 4th and fifth unit slots. Has farthest shooting range in the game of any unit.
Artillery: Two* unlockable weapons which cause certain areas to be bombarded by artillery. One of them has only one shell but is quite precise, the other fires three shells but is quite inaccurate. They kill everything in their blast radius, and deal tons of damage to tanks.
Gas: An unlockable AoE attack you can put down anywhere for a certain period of time which kills any unit which does not have a gas mask or is not in range of an officer. Tanks and machine gun bunkers are immune, however the unit which hauls the machine gun is not.
Machine gun bunker: Not so much a bunker as a tool. It is rather weak however it has extreme firepower. It has (from what I know) the second highest range of any regular unit, aside from the Sniper. Shoots rather fast but is limited to trenches and cannot move, while also taking quite a lot of time to build (as a unit has to haul the machine gun out to the post for it to be placed)
Tanks: There are three** types: Regular Tank, Machine gun tank, and Heavy tank. Reg Tank explodes things, Machine gun tank shoots things with a mobile machine gun bunker (but slightly weaker), and the heavy tank has tons of health, is really slow but has both a cannon and a machine gun, making it the most dangerous unit in the game. Tanks are slower then most regular units and cannot defend trenches making them only suited for attacking.
Upgrades: Upgrades are unlocked using XP that you get while playing. Once you've unlocked an upgrade, you have it unlocked forever but have to activate it again each match with medals. Upgrades are found in the panel opened by pressing the rank button next to your star count and medal count. Please note that the AI can also activate upgrades during battles.
Factions
Each faction gets their own special perks, units and upgrades; here's a comprehensive list of them all:
Russia: For beating every map on brutal, if you really want to you can stop here. I cover this more later in the section on the 1.4 update, but if that's too far in the distant future and you just want to 100% the game right now, pick the Russian faction, upgrade the infantry spawning rate to the max, and just push forwards with your human wave offensive and win. Now for the people who want to read the whole guide, back to your regularly scheduled guide. That's the gimmick of the Russian faction - They can spawn more infantry per infantry. They have a line of upgrades that increases the amount of infantry spawned when you summon infantry. This is about as silly, dangerous, and overpowered as it sounds.
France: The tank faction. You get more tank options, tank upgrades, and tanks are cheaper.
United Kingdom: The Artillery faction. You get more artillery options, artillery upgrades, and artillery is cheaper.
Germany: The quality-infantry faction. You get more infantry options, the most random of upgrades, and infantry cost less medals to unlock.
Austria-Hungary: The Tank Rush faction. Cheaper infantry (60 instead of 70 for standard riflemen), and tanks with reduced medal costs.
A small note on Weather:
This guide does not cover any differences you may encounter when weather and Day/Night Mode are activated. Assume this is played with Sun and Clear Skies.
Generally Weather will make strategies more difficult but make it easier to defend, if a bit more risky.
*: Unless you are playing the UK which has the unlockable Creeping Barrage which is just a straight upgrade to the other two mentioned but costs 400 stars.
There are a few more units and mechanisms but this mostly covers all relevant info for the less general strategies.
**: With the addition of the French faction, there is now a new tank: the Medium Tank! Basically, just the Heavy tank but a bit faster and with a little less health. Almost always better than the Heavy tank except for tank-on-tank combat.

Added thanks to the nightmare that is RUSSIA, here's a basic section on how to identify what faction you are fighting and what you need to know about the AI of that faction:
Britain
Troop Color: Black
Artillery focused, prepare to lose literally any and all tanks you have in a single barrage.
Germany
Troop Color: Red
Uh. Standard. You won't get any surprises from here.
France
Troop Color: Blue
(in theory - I have not actually seen any faction spawn any tanks recently) More tanks, and their tanks will be better than yours.
Austria-Hungary
Troop Color: White
Earlier tanks and more infantry.
Russia
Troop Color: Yellow
A nearly unstoppable wave of infantry. Only rush strats will work, you cannot afford to let the AI reach the 5 infantry per infantry.

These maps generally are defined together because they share only a single trench surrounding your spawn and all have two strategies, slow and fast, each with their own advantages.
Fast:
As the name implies, it's a very fast paced strategy and requires some skill, timing, and knowledge of the AI. Recommended for people trying to get more maps and show the brokenness of certain mechanics. (and of course speedrunners)
This strategy revolves around a single unit: The shotgun. The shotgun is a unit specialized at clearing trenches, and that's why it is the backbone of this strategy. The shotgun, when attacking, will fire before any other units, meaning if you have more shotgunners then your opponent has units in the trench, You will win any engagement provided not bad rng. You start off by unlocking shotgunners, and pumping out as many, as quickly as possible. You keep your shotgunners in the first trench until you have around 1~2 more than the enemy has in their farthest forward trench, and then the fun begins.
You then order an all out attack. Show them no mercy. When their first trench inevitably falls, push them back to their second to last trench. Take it, then retreat one trench all the while pumping out more shotgunners. Wait for the AI to retake that trench. Repeat taking it and retreating until you have a sizable force well enough to take the final trench, and then order an all out attack. If you fail on this step, fall back to the slow strategy.
With 1.20, I recommend making heavy tanks as a backup or finisher. The AI has in fact gotten MUCH stronger than before, and on certain maps this may be nonviable (E.G: Maps 4, 10, 11, 12).
With 1.30, the AI has not gotten noticeably stronger however the new buffs of the German Faction make it ideal for this strategy
Slow:
The slow strategy for these maps generally consists of building up a sizable defense over multiple trenches (preferably) and keeping a machine gun in the first trench all the time. Get around 2000 stars and 10 medals, and summon all the tanks but staggered. The heavy tank will typically carry the game, however in longer matches will require troop backup, which can be exceptionally hard to coordinate on brutal. The weaknesses of this strategy is that it is the ideal target of artillery and gas, however very little can be done about the former, and the latter can on occasion destroy your defense.

These two strategies remain more or less the same across all maps, aside for a few exceptions mainly pertaining to the sniper, however since the sniper isn't too powerful those exceptions are rather minor in my opinion (however do comment your reasoning for snipers if you wish)

These two maps get their own section for a fun strategy I like to call:
"mg op pls nerf"
(though do feel free to leave suggestions as to the name)
This consists of placing a machine gun on a certain spot where it can shoot into the next trench over but not be shot back at. This is much easier on map 5 than on map 4, but is still useful on map 4 (just not as useful). On map 5 you just don't spawn any units -aside to take the trench back at times- until you feel as if you have enough resources to crush the enemy AI, and on map 4 it mostly consists of the Slow strategy with minor retreats to save resources.
Note that the less troops you build the less the AI builds, so if you wait for a long time you can just skip to heavy tanks.

Map 8 is special and deserves its own section simply because it is the only map where Snipers excel... a little too well. The AI for some reason or another thinks 3 normal riflemen versus 1 sniper is a losing fight for them (the side with the riflemen) which is obviously not the case. This strategy doesn't work so well that it's game breaking, as snipers are ineffective at best and terrible at worst for taking out the Enemy base, and since snipers cost medals to produce is remarkably expensive (and slow)
The strategy is simple: you make a sniper right at the start. You move the sniper until it can shoot at other units. You wait until you level up. You make another sniper, put it with the first sniper. Rinse and repeat until you have enough money and medals to win. It's boring, but it's cheesy and easy.

These are some of the hardest maps in the game! The uneven design combined with 2 rivers per map (Something only Map 4 featured before) makes for an exhilarating experience which is quite refreshing to play after beating every single map on brutal.

There are three strategies for these maps:
A: The slow method, same as described before.
B: The fast method which on these maps is much harder
C: The French method, which uh works for the earlier maps but came out more recently and I don't want to add it to the earlier sections. The French method is probably the best way to beat these maps, and I'll show you why.

But first: What is the French method?
The French method uses a quirk in the AI that I briefly mentioned for Map 8 as the main gimmick, but it's a lot to explain. Quick aside, the other guide (the "How to always win" guide) does in fact mention this method, just with a little less precision than how I will explain it.

The AI has a threat meter that fills up the more troops you spawn - The higher it is, the more likely the AI is to spawn tanks, launch artillery, and upgrade trenches, as well as increasing the amount of troops it will summon and their quality - increasing it a lot is usually not a good idea on Brutal. However, there are a variety of actions you can take that won't increase the Threat Meter:

• Upgrading trenches
  
• Upgrading your home base
  
• Launching artillery
  
• Buying upgrades
  
• Unlocking units

None of these increase the AI threat level despite the fact all of those most certainly increase the danger the AI is in.
The AI also does not use the amount of Stars or Medals you have as a factor in the Threat level meter, even if you have 500 or 5000 stars in reserve the AI will not care and will view it with equal threat - That is, weirdly enough, none.
Remember the second bullet point? The thing about upgrading your home base? Well despite the fact the Threat level doesn't change, the AI attack patterns do in response. The AI takes in consideration how much your base/trench is upgraded when choosing to attack or not. This means you can basically put up a wall that says "No AI troops past this point" and sit back, farm stars, shoot artillery all without any consequences because the AI can't summon anything more powerful than a rifleman.

Turns out the medium tank is really good. For some reason being able to summon three tanks at once, two of which have machine guns AND mini artillery is REALLY GOOD. Combined with the upgrades that the French get? Insanity.
Light tanks go even faster, medium tanks get more armor without any movement penalties, and heavy tanks can be spawned faster.
This strategy is doable with the UK, but it's much easier with the French.
Oh, I forgot to mention: Do not use Germany with this strategy - I'll elaborate further later.

I've compiled a step by step process with exact numbers that will give you the resources necessary to beat any map on brutal with little difficulty:
STEP ONE: Pick France, and hope that you get Clear Weather and Sunny Skies (I personally play with weather off however)
STEP TWO: Upgrade your base until it is maxed. At the same time, unlock artillery.
STEP THREE: Pepper the enemy forces with ARTILLERY ONLY (DO NOT SUMMON TROOPS) until you have leveled up enough to get all three tanks (MG variant, Medium tank and Heavy Tank (10 medals total)) and enough medals to summon them all (exactly 2 medals, adding up to a total of 12 medals needed, 17 with upgrades)
STEP FOUR: Cease the bombardment, save up to exactly 1930 (310 (Artillery) + 430 (MG tank) + 540 (Medium tank) + 650), and summon your tanks from slowest to fastest with a bit of delay each time. I recommend using trenches and rivers as benchmarks for when to summon (e.g. summon medium tank when heavy tank gets past the first river)
EXAMPLE:
This is what it should look like when you are ready - Tanks and artillery unlocked, 2 medals exactly, only thing missing is the 1930 stars.
STEP FIVE: Continue summoning tanks whenever you can. If possible, save up for the medium tank instead of the MG tank. Your heavy tank may become separated from the Medium and Small tanks but when it is needed it will be the bulwark of defeating the enemy base.
If everything is done correctly, the end screen should look like this:
Almost no units summoned, killed all enemy units, almost no casualties (even better if you manage NO casualties, one to two tanks still alive, and many abilities used)

Example video:
Note: This uses a lite version of the steps listed above, and is generally going to be faster then the above strategy, though it does end up with more losses. You don't have to watch it but I recommend watching it if you want to understand this strategy.

I like Germany, and I like the idea the developers were going for when they gave Germany its faction buffs, but Germany is by far the worst of the factions overall. It is a mostly infantry based faction with no major bonuses to things that aren't infantry which is just so disappointing. While the words "The Heavy tank gets a Flamethrower" makes me really happy, the fact you have to spend 9 medals to get the UPGRADE ALONE (By the way it costs 15 medals in total to make a single flamethrower heavy rank) makes me really NOT happy, especially since one of the upgrades is for a unit I rarely if ever use. I'll speak more on my opinion of the Stormtrooper later, but it's very lackluster.

Even with the extra damage of the flamethrower, why not just get a medium tank instead, get an extra cannon and a ton of extra health FOR CHEAPER? If you want to do a tank rush to the max for France compared to for Germany, let's go over the numbers: 6 medals for secondary tanks, 5 for the Heavy Tank. (Note: The UK can only spawn a MG tank and a Heavy tank, so it's numbers are a bit skewed) Since France unlocks Tank research for one medal cheaper, we already get our first saving for picking France over Germany: G: 10 medals, F: 9, UK: 8. That's just for unlocking things. Upgrades: You can skip an entire upgrade with the french side, so that's G: 9, F: 5. (With the UK you don't even need upgrades - there are no tank upgrades, but you could upgrade the artillery however you want). Summoning: G: 1 medal, F: 2, UK: 1. This is the only area Germany saves a medal for a max tank rush.
For a 3 max upgrade tank rush with artillery:
France: 16 medals, 1930 stars. (With the extra 4 medals you save [relative to Germany], you can save 800 stars!)
Germany: 20 medals, 1860 stars.
United Kingdom: Assuming all artillery used, (3+3+3+4+5=18), and all upgrades used, (2+3+4=9), along with 1 medal summoning cost, 28 medals used. Any cost saving you may get by not having a 470$ mg tank is wiped out by the extra 8 medals lost compared to the German numbers (which are rather generous themselves) which would be an extra 1600 stars if converted which itself covers the majority of German costs. Plus the 800 saved by choosing France at the start, you most likely would be able to both unlock AND USE the regular barrage with France if you got the 28 medals needed for a regular UK push with tanks and artillery. Despite the extra costs, all the extra costs go straight into making a better push making a UK push far far stronger then a Germany push.

The only time I've had over 20 medals spent in total was the time I went for every single infantry upgrade - The choice could not be clearer.

tldr; france outpaces the competitors for this strategy by miles.

This section is important as 1.2 has changed a LOT of things compared to 1.1:
Assume the following items are for Brutal Difficulty

• Tanks have been nerfed in favor of the AI.
  
• Accuracy has been nerfed in favor of the AI.
  
• Upgrade system
  
• Grenades

GRENADES
Let's just get this out of the way: Grenades are overpowered.
It is 100% worth it to get all the way up to the maximum tier of Grenades, and you will see why.

Let's say a heavy tank is coming.
No wait, that's not bad enough. Here, make that TEN heavy tanks coming... all at the same time. Artillery is on cooldown. You only have infantry right now to defend your trench.
But you have the Anti-Tank Grenades upgrade. The more infantry the more grenades.
The tanks arrive and you just PUMMEL them with grenades.
Their health falls to 0 almost INSTANTLY

No more do you dread tank pushes as you just explode them away!

Short version of my thoughts:
The UK and France have vastly superior benefits compared to Germany.
If you like tanks and want them to be better and cheaper, pick France, they have an excellent late game buff for the cost of tanks.
If you don't particularly want to blitz the game, but also don't want tanks and want amazing late game benefits to artillery, pick the UK.
If you like rushing, Germany and France are the best.
Long version:
France's buffs help with games that aren't too fast or too slow, and the research tech it has makes your tanks even better, however it's potential isn't as great as the buff that the UK has.

The UK has the best long term benefits since its faction buff specifically makes all artillery cheaper and therefore is much more useful in late game situations instead of the very limited buff that Germany gets. I recommend the UK for every single map.

Germany gets a rather lackluster buff - It gets one new unit that isn't particularly good - running while firing isn't very useful when the range where you still run but also fire is very small. The other buff it gets - the one that reduces medal unlock cost - gets vastly outpaced rather swiftly, leaving Germany behind only for those who want to go remarkably fast - Shotguns with no medal cost are extremely good for the blitz strategy.


The Stormtrooper is the German Unique unit, and it fails. It tried to break into the attacking niche that the Shotgun and Tanks already completely filled. Like I said a moment ago, running while firing isn't useful when the range where you can still run but also fire is very small - There is almost no benefit to running while firing because of the minimum range. They don't run in circles to reduce the accuracy of those circling them, they don't intentionally spread out vertically, they don't do anything special once they reach the minimum range. It's just a slightly worse Machinegunner unit without the defensive buffs. The stormtrooper is just... mediocre. It doesn't fill any new roles or do existing ones better, it just exists.

So remember what I mentioned in the intro about the Russian faction being OP because it can spawn obscene numbers of troops?
Yeah. That's this update.
So, basically they completely ruined their own game balancing by adding the Russian faction who absolutely always stomps with minimal effort. Turns out, someone being able to spawn 5 infantry every couple of seconds isn't very balanced. They tried to balance it by limiting what other upgrades a player playing the Russian faction could get, but that doesn't really make up for the sheer numbers of the Russian faction.

Notes: This section is still a work in progress. Some information may be inaccurate.
So, you might remember the tank section of this guide if you've been here before. If you're new, skip this part. I deleted it because the French faction got debuffed to no longer be able to unlock tanks right off the back. Well, uh.

New faction:
Austria Hungary
+Cheaper Infantry
+Less medals required to research tanks
-No specialized research section

This is actually a big problem.
Tanks aren't as powerful as they used to be but Austria-Hungary can now summon them after waiting (If the star collection hasn't changed since France was the faction of choice for this) 23 seconds.
With lucky rank ups (Like me getting a nice, happy, free mg tank from one of mine) and way too many medals (I was straight up exchanging medals for stars just to get more tanks out) to count you can beat every single enemy faction on the shorter maps (as tested by me, beating Russia, which nowadays is somehow an accomplishment). On longer maps, you'll probably be unable to push through the absolute nightmare some factions (cough cough russia cough cough) will put up to stop you but it definitely works as a rush strategy.

Feel free to comment suggestions or new strategies for certain maps, as I will read them (I don't exactly have that many mail notifications so I see every one)