For anyone that might have missed it, there's an official post with some tips on playing the game that can be found here.

The above steam blog post goes over some important foundational mechanics for how the game works including: Camera movement, map specific commander levels, population limits, keyboard shortcuts for ending turn, cycling units, and toggling region badges, how to view tooltips for units, buildings, and terrain, how to view various specific information for regions, buildings, unit and units, and how ammunition functions.

I'd suggest giving a look over the information there first because I'm only going to go over things that aren't covered there.

With regards to the faction specific sections of this guide:
This will not cover everything that a commander can do with each faction. Part of playing strategy games is coming up with your own tactics and I've already seen some people playing factions differently than I did. The intent here is to give people food for thought for how the faction can be used to provide a foundation for playing the game and then they can take things from there.

The R button to see regional information and logistics network paths only works as a toggle when a region is not selected. This button is a great way to see if any of your captured regions have available slots, as it lets you see all regions at the same time rather than having to click on them.

The E button will show what units still have actions to take. While the tab button will cycle through units that still have actions available, there's a better way to look for units that need orders. The e button makes it much easier to identify what units a commander hasn't issued ordered to yet, as any action that a unit is still able to take will be color coded depending on if it has a normal or a surge action available to it. Yellow indicates a surge action, gray means it has no action of that type available.

Holding ctrl will hide tooltips. You don't need a screen shot for that.

To view the amount of resources that are in storage, you can either click on a unit that is in a controlled region, or click on a controlled region.

View of resources when a unit is selected:

To transfer resources to storage, it needs to be in a unit or buildings inventory. If it's on the ground, something needs to pick it up. Not all units can pick things up. Once the resource is in a unit or buildings inventory, hover the mouse cursor over the resource. There will be a little arrow in the upper right corner. Clicking this will transfer the resource to the inventory of the region the unit is in.

To remove a resource from storage, a building or unit that can carry the resource must be selected. To the right of the objects inventory where available resources are shown, clicking on any of the resources will transfer them into the units inventory if it is something they can carry.

There is no indicator for this in game until a commander loses a region they had control over. Regions keep track of the resources they've gathered or that have been placed into them by the player before making them available to the global total for the other connected regions. For example, if a unity player attacks a base, captures the region, and puts all the scrap into their storage, it is stored in that regions storage and then made available to the global pool of resources. If a faction loses control of a region, they will also lose the resources that were gathered in that region. Selecting the lost region will show the commander what resources that region is holding and they will be added back to the total if the region is retaken. This is important to keep in mind if you're doing a skirmish against another player and want to potentially deny them the ability to access specific resources. Most of their primary resource ( alloy, whispers, motherboards ) will be stored in regions that have resource nodes in them.

Logistics units ( storage sheds, builder drones, The Multitudes, summoners, listening post, etc) extend the range of nearby regional storage. They do not connect unconnected regions to each other. This is an important distinction to make. A commander can make ammunition and resources available to units that are multiple regions outside of friendly territory by using logistical units to extend the logistics network outside of friendly territory. A commander cannot use these logistical units to connect two distant regions to each other.

In the below example, we have a builder drone that is in a captured region, but the region to the left of it is neutral because it only has one listening post (he green box behind a tree ). The extension of the logistics network allows the builder drone to have access to resources outside of friendly regions which is why it was able to build listening posts in an unconnected region. However, since we are not able to connect distant regions to each other, we cannot build a drill on the resource nodes here.

Terrain has cost associated with moving through and seeing through it. Highlighting any terrain tile will show the cost incurred on a unit for moving or seeing through a tile and these will be subtracted from their movement or vision total when determining how far they are able to see or move. The first time a player runs into this in a way that will offer meaningful impact to their gameplay it towards the end of chapter 1.

The commander isn't the only thing that levels up. Units do as well. Like the commander, units will start at level 1 at the beginning of a chapter or skirmish and gain experience through various actions. As they level up, they'll gain bonuses to their statistics. The number of bonuses they get and the levels they get them at will be different for each type of unit, but all units of the same type will get the same bonuses as they level. Some units only have a few bonuses as they level with other types getting a whole bunch (yeah I'm looking at you, pathfinder)!

Some units have the ability to surge action either their movement, their attack, or both. The way this works is that the unit will consume some of the globally available action points ( seen at the top of the screen as lightning bolts ) to move or attack again. The cost of this is tuned differently for each unit and ability so it's a good idea to check the cost before using up AP for a turn. Some units are really efficient at using surge abilities and some are horrible or don't have any. Each commander will need to gauge for themselves if the AP cost of the surge is worth using for the tactical situation they find themselves in.

An important note about how this works: units that have the ability to surge can do so on the turn they are created which is important to keep in mind both defensively and offensively. Offensively, it means that a unit like a Cherubin can be made on the battlefield by another unit and use its surge move and surge attack to be immediately useful. Defensively, it means a commander that has enough AP can build and surge a unit to aid in defending against attacks.

It's important to remember that AP is a finite resource when building out an army composition, as commanders have to balance the AP usage of their surge actions with building units and structures.

The efficiency of how much ammunition a unit uses per point of damage it is important to keep in mind when building out an army. This needs to be balanced against the efficiency of how much damage per population cost a unit does while also keeping in mind how much ammunition is being generated per turn by structures a commander has built. Having a large amount of population cost efficient units might also be ammunition inefficient.

Not all units need ammunition. One of the scary things about melee units in this game is that some of them don't need ammunition which allows them to extend themselves well ahead of an army to try and take down high value targets or be used to infiltrate areas to take out fragile infrastructure ( such as flags, talismans, listening posts, healers, and builder drones).

Units apply different amounts of pressure when being used to capture a region. Some, such as units built by the Shepard, don't apply any at all. Some units, such as the conscript or the builder drone can create objects that apply pressure. It's a good idea for a commander to be familiar with how much pressure the units in their faction can apply to a region so they know what's needed to capture it.

It's a good idea to plant enough banners/listening posts in a region to ensure that control of the region is maintained in the event that one of the buildings is destroyed. This is because at some point, a commander may decide that they want to change their army composition or that their current composition needs more of a certain ammo type. Having these free pressure generating objects will ensure that control over the region is maintained when destroying a building in order to swap it for another. Shoal doesn't have an equivalent to banners or listening posts for applying pressure so if they need additional pressure in a remote region, they have to make use of Summoners, Talismans, or Gnashing Dens to summon a unit back to a region to apply pressure if a unit isn't close enough or can't be built.

This does not apply to People of Sun and Shadow.
Unity and Reign factions have static buildings that they use to mine resources. Once the resource node runs out, all that building is doing is giving the commander population cap which means that it could be more useful as something else. So in addition to building pressure objects, it's also a good idea to build a storage shed or a listening post in regions that have mining infrastructure in them. These objects both provide limited vision around them while costing no population and without requiring a building slot. Vision is required to build in a region, so by placing these it will allow a commander to swap from one building to another without having to move a unit across the map to a potentially remote region.

In the event that a region has multiple resource nodes in it and the commander has opted not to mine all of them at the same time, it's a good idea to position the vision objects near the other resource nodes for this same reason.

In regions that have multiple resource deposits and multiple slots for buildings, it's not always the most optimal choice to put a drill or refinery on multiple resource nodes. If a commander needs more of a specific resource to fill out their army and doesn't have a pressing need for their primary resource, it may be better to use the other available slots for tech rather than mining.

An overview of this faction can be found here.

The Reign is probably the easiest of the factions to learn for users that are experienced with strategy games. This is partially because the faction is comprised of things that we can easily understand. Infantry, tanks, artillery, etc. We see these units and can pretty easily internalize what they do.

It's also because their tech tree is the closest to what one would consider a traditional model for a strategy game. Cantata doesn't explicitly say that a player needs X building before they can build Y, however the Reign buildings all require some kind of resource that is provided by another building. So in that sense, they have a bit of a traditional tech tree for how the player gains access to more advanced buildings and units. The other factions do not do this with regards to their base building.

As noted earlier, we aren't going to go over all of the buildings because the developers have given us a blog post for that. Rather we're going to note a few important callouts for the faction.

Headquarters:
A feature of note for this faction is that their headquarters building provides a +3 to their population cap where the other factions get a +2 for their equivalent building. It's a distinction worth keeping in mind because it allows the Reign to have a slightly higher population cap than the other factions given the same amount of region control.

Arms Factory:
With the exception of the Anusiya Melee, pretty much all Reign units require ammunition. So if a commander ever has a turn where they haven't used all their available AP, it's a good idea to use whatever is left on generating some additional ammunition at the Arms Factory.

Engineering:
The Reign has the worst healing in the game. Their single target heal is on par in power with the Unity, but it comes from this building so it can't move and can't be scaled up as much as healing from the Unity builder drones can be. The healing range on the engineering building is the longest ranged heal in the game, so it's only an issue on large maps. On smaller maps like the 1v1 multiplayer map, it won't be as much of a problem. Keep this in mind when choosing where to position an Engineering building as it is one of the few sources this faction has for healing its units.

Tower transports:
These are technically a unit but they're listed on the building UI so we're going over it here. If there is an area of the map that is of high strategic importance in a multiplayer map, dropping a tower transport is a good way to establish a control zone. Surrounding it with conscripts and turning them into encampments so that it can get them some extra health can be a good way to hold onto an area if reinforcements aren't close by. In story mode, they aren't as useful because they're slow and can't traverse the large maps all that well so I mainly used them as drop pods to replace my conscripts that had died.

Once a Reign commander levels up enough to have 8 or more AP available, it opens up the ability for them to do loaded Rikshaw hit and runs. This is by no means an efficient usage of energy, as the Commander is using 8 AP to do 6 damage. However, this tactic allows a commander to snipe high value units that have 6 or less health by driving a rickshaw in, spending 6 energy to unload conscripts, have them attack, load them back up, and then spend 2 AP to surge the Rikshaw back out of the combat area. It's best reserved for being used to focus down important support units that hide in the back of an army such as healers or builder drones while simultaneously providing scouting information for other long range units such as Bombards or Anusiya Ranged. If this tactic is being supported by Bombards or Anusiya Ranged, it can also be used to focus down higher durability strategic targets like The Multitudes, Summoner, or Shepard's.

Gunships are slightly more efficient alternative to this tactic. They do less damage overall at 4 instead of 6 in comparison to the Rikshaw hit and run, but it's slightly more efficient at an AP cost of 6 instead of 8. They also do not have a lot of health so if you aren't doing hit and runs with your gunships they are probably going to die. The main focus of doing hit and runs like this though, is not to do damage but to scout enemy positions to locate high priority targets so that a commander can plan out what they want to do with the rest of their army.

Tanks have a two turn cooldown on their attack but the pattern hits an area that is shaped like a T despite the tooltip saying that it has a range of one. Because of this, they are great at two things. Burst damage and clearing out clumps of low health units. With a 3 damage attack and a 2 turn cooldown, their damage might not seem all that high but when we look at how much damage per population cost they do, they are one of the best burst units the reign has. If at any point, they are hitting 3 or more targets with a normal attack, they become the number one damage per population cost for the entire faction while only using 1 ammunition per attack. This increases even further when they're used to surge attack. When considering the efficiency of their surge attack, keep in mind that while it seems expensive at 5 AP, it is also one of the most efficient damage per AP cost surge attacks the Reign can do if the tank is hitting enough targets. However, the fact that they are using 5 AP per surge attack means that a commander can't just spam tanks to win against an opponent and needs to mix them together with other units.

The efficiency of the tank can be further improved by having a Anusiya Melee follow a tank around to grant it a -1 to its surge attack cost via its support aura. Which should definitely be something that you do because for single target damage, the Anusiya Melee is the most efficient damage per population cost that the faction has.

Bombards and Anusiya Ranged have attack ranges that are greater than their vision range so in order to be used effectively, they need units in front of them scouting out the combat area. As appealing as a Bombard might seem, they're best used for focusing down high value targets in a single turn so that they can't be healed after an attack. Given their hefty population cap cost, inability to surge attack, and long cooldown of their normal attack, their damage per turn per population cost is not that high.

And finally, Conscripts are good. It's easy to look at them and say "you are weak and your bloodline is weak and history will forget you" but let's keep something in mind. They cost 1 population, do 1 damage, are used to extend the Reign logistics network, and help capture regions faster. Ignoring surge attacks, their damage per population cost beats Rikshaws, Bombards, and Anuysiya Ranged for damage efficiency, and kinda beats gunships when you consider that a gunship needs to be surge moved to not die in a large engagement. Like the Gunship, they are pretty fragile for their cost but unlike the Gunship, their movement range sucks so they are vulnerable to being picked off without a Rikshaw to help them escape. They are also not efficient damage per round of ammunition so they should be mixed with other units. What about the encampment ability? In my opinion, this ability is best used for multiplayer because in the story mode, the AI doesn't tend to be aggressive enough for the player to need static defenses. In multiplayer, the ability is great if paired with something that can heal, as the conscripts do not gain health when they transform.

An overview of this faction can be found here. With that in mind I will call out that the contents of this overview are not entirely accurate, as torches now have 0 pressure so they cannot be used to capture or hold regions.

Many peoples first experience with this faction in Chapter 2 has them wondering one of two things: How do I build? How do I mine?

If you're having issues figuring out how to build, it's because the story doesn't let the commander build anything until they've advanced through a few regions. Once that's accomplished, here's my advice for an opening:

1. Build a Living Shrine near some resources.
   
2. Build a Watcher's Chapel as close to the Living Shrine and the same set of resources as possible.
   
3. Build a Ghost at the Living Shrine.
   
4. Load the Ghost into the Watcher's Chapel ( this is why we want the Living Shrine and Chapel close to each other).
   
5. Build a Healer.
   
6. Move the healer so that it's standing on top of the resources ( this is why we want the Chapel near the resources ).

Congrats! You're mining Whispers. These are your primary resource. Make more healers. They're the foundation of your economy and are also the most powerful healer in the game with the ability to heal 8 health per turn if circumstances require it ( one single target heal for 4 and an aoe heal for 1 to 4 targets ).

Now, we've got the basics started. It's time to look at the buildings for this faction and get accustomed to them. Take some time to look over the building cost and the units each building provides for you. You should notice some key differences for this faction in comparison to the humans.

• The Living Shrine is less expensive than its counterparts from the other factions, costing 25 Whispers.
  
• Unlike the humans that have a resource dependent tech tree to unlock other buildings, all buildings for this faction are built with whispers.
  
• Unlike the other factions, every building in this faction can create a unit.
  
• Almost every unit in this faction costs either whispers, or a ghost to build ( which costs whispers)

These are crucially important to remember for this faction because without whispers, the commander cannot expand their population cap or build most of their unit types. For long, drawn out games that might run the risk of depleting resource nodes, this means that the commander needs to have enough Living Shrines to provide them with a supply of Whispers. This isn't a problem that commanders will run into often, as the story mode provides more than enough resource nodes. However, it's still something that must be kept in mind in case you find yourself playing a multiplayer match and your resources are drying up.

Now, what comes next for your third building depends on the tactical situation a commander finds themselves in. Since we can build everything from the start with this faction, it's important to look at the cost it takes to build units before deciding what building to make.

If it's a large map, the immediate thing to do after making healers is to get a Gnashing Den to make Summoner. I tend to make at least 3. 2 for infrastructure and one to follow the army around. The reason for this is because once your healers start to deplete resource nodes, they may need to move a significant distance to get from one node to another. They have the ability to summon units but more importantly, they have the ability to make a Talisman that can summon units. Using the 2 infrastructure summoners, I set up a network throughout my controlled regions that allows me to move my healers across the map in a single turn by placing each Talisman inside the others summoning range. The third summoner follows the army around because they are also this factions method of extending the logistics network to units outside of friendly territory. Their Talisman can also heal. They're basically an uber support unit. Get it? Uber? Because they transport things? Never mind. Try to put the Talisman in places where they will be hard to find because if someone sneaks behind you and kills one of them in a multiplayer game, that's a hefty cooldown.

If the map is smaller, Garden of Madness can also be an ok third choice for a building. The problem here is that it will take 4 turns to get the resources to build a Berserker, but it can be a valuable alternative to a quick summoner. They have a ton of health for their population cost, but they don't hit all that hard so they're great at murdering early game low health units. Late game, they're also great and walking into an enemy army and killing off low health support units like worker robots, storage sheds, conscripts, etc. This also allows you to start accruing the resource you need for your healers 4 health single target heal.

The Temple of the Lost is another possible third building choice that allows you to get a Shepard. Wrex? No, not that Shepard. One thing to note about this structure is that it has the ability to reveal nearby tiles, so on a large map, it's better to position it towards the front of a base. Shepard's don't fully shine until late game because in the early game if we assume this is the commanders third building, the Shepard will only be able to build a single Finback per turn and it costs 3 turns worth of resources to do so. A Finback has less health than a Berserker but does the same amount of damage if we ignore special abilities. This means that if a commander decides to go for a Shepard, it will be 2 turns before they have the resources for a Shepard and another 3 before they can build a Finback for a total of 5, vs the 4 it would take for a Berserker.

The late game is a different story. Shepard's are crucial to a commanders late game economy because they can pick up corpses and put them in the faction resource storage. Take a look at the Living Shrine. It can build Ghosts by using two corpses instead of whispers which picking up corpses and transferring them to your faction storage allows a commander to make units cheaper. Another thing to keep in mind is that every unit that a Shepard can build will leave a corpse when it dies. With a robust enough late game economy, the Shepard can build 4 units every turn and throw them at an enemy. They're practically one man armies that can cut the cost of the units they build in half by picking up their corpses after the fight is over and putting them in storage. This ends up being really important for this faction because they have no static defense and the Shepard can help fill that gap by throwing units at a problem.

Personally I prefer Summoner. When I go quick Summoner, I follow it up with and Evolution Font as my fourth building. The Gnasher Den and Evolution Font combo allows the commander to build Pathfinders which have a 2 tile forward thrust that deals two damage. They also have the best attack of opportunity in the game both in terms of range and damage. In a multiplayer match, stick these in bushes, trees, or fog and they are great at establishing map control by getting free damage against unknowing victims. The Evolution Font also gets you the resource you need to use the healers AOE heal.

And lastly for our buildings, we have the Umbral Cave. This building is towards the end of the tech tree for this faction because Hunters take resources from 3 structures to be able to build them. Hunters have one of the highest single target damage per population cost in the game with a pop cost of 2 and a damage of 4. The only units that tie or beat them at population cost efficiency have AOE attacks and have to be hitting multiple units to do so.

What about scouts? This faction has no scout because every unit is a scout. Make torches in difficult to see places so you will know where enemy units are!

An overview of this faction can be found here.

Like the other two factions, this one works pretty differently and some of the things that are important to know about this faction isn't obvious from the UI.

• Unlike the humans that have a resource dependent tech tree to unlock other buildings, all buildings for this faction are built with motherboards.
  
• Almost every building in the faction has the ability to create Cherubin using motherboards.
  
• Unlike the native faction, buildings require higher amounts of the primary resource.
  
• Unlike the other factions, The Unified Spirit has the ability to create static defense towers ( the Ophel and the Eye ).
  
• Only half of the buildings in this faction create resources
  
• Most of the units for this faction require resources from two different resource buildings to be built, but also require no motherboards.
  
• Everything in this faction leaves behind scrap when destroyed and you will want to pick up as much as possible.

The opening is a bit easier for The Unified Spirit than the prior faction, as we're back to having a static building that mines for us but that's where things being simple ends. This is because in order to be able to make anything that isn't a Cherubin or a Builder Drone, a commander needs to make at least two resource production buildings and in some cases, an additional production building.

It's difficult for a commander to make a decision as to which buildings they want to make without knowing what the units of The Unified Spirit do, so we'll go over that here to allow educated decision making to be made.

Builder Drones:
Multiple builders per turn can be created from The Heart without any additional infrastructure and with no cool down. These have a 2 health heal, can use AP to create listening posts with no cool down ( unlike conscripts that have a cool down on their Banner ) which apply pressure to a region and extend the logistics network, and they can give up all of this to permanently transform unto a static defensive structure. This means a single Builder Drone can apply a huge amount of pressure to a region in a single turn given enough AP is available. There should always be a few Builders following around any army. While they're fragile, they're also fairly easy to keep safe because their movement range is huge and their surge move is cheap. Use them to heal up your units so that you don't have to spend scrap healing.

The Multitudes:
This is the unit I tend to go for first for a few reasons.

• They are the mobile logistic extension for this faction.
  
• They can spend AP to create resources which can help to make up for any imbalance in production in the early game.
  
• They can be placed on resource nodes to create scrap.
  
• They have a huge pickup range which is useful for picking up scrap and storing it for later.

Samson:
4 population cost 2 damage ranged unit. Similar to the Bombard, the damage per population cost of the Samson is not great. However, it has a 3 tile ability that can grant +1 damage to units that it's used on and it only costs 1 AP. Not including its 3 AP surge attack, that can bring this unit up to a more respectable 5 damage per turn if it manages to use its damage amp on 3 units per turn.

The Wall:
I use these as sacrificial attack units. Not because they're bad, but because they're slow. At 3 population cost with 4 damage, their output efficiency is pretty good but they have no surge move which can cause them to get left behind by the rest of the army on big maps. They also have a debuff aura localized around themselves that reduces the movement speed of enemy units. Because of this, I tend to send them in as part of my initial attack wave so that they slow down enemy units and prevent them from getting to my back lines. Afterward I collect the scrap left from their death to make use of it for later.

Psalm:
These are great support units. While they don't do much damage, they can build a Verse and grant vision for areas that need to be scouted. The verse is a great scout, as it has a move of 6, a sight range of 9, a surge move cost of 2 AP in case a commander wants to have it retreat to keep it alive, and an ability that it can use to remove 1 targets ability to attack every other turn. I typically keep at least one verse with an army at all times so they know what they're walking into. If the psalm has the ability to build another Verse, using these as a sacrificial scout is a great idea because it will generate more scrap for a commander to pick up.

Ophel:
This isn't a unit. It's a static defense turret so don't go thinking you're getting a unit from building The Thinker. With that said, The Thinker has a pretty considerable build range to the point that it can be placed on the front lines and be used to offensively place Ophel turrets to attack the opposing army. They have a cross shaped attack, 9 health, and the ability to exhaust both attack and movement of one target every turn with a population cost of 2. These things are strong!

The Eye:
The only way to build this is to transform a Builder Drone into it. When this is done, it cannot change back. It permanently changes into a 2 population, 10 health cannon that does 2 damage in a 3 by 5 area measured from where it is placed. The attack has a 2 turn cool down so if there's a lot of enemies coming it might be better to wait for them to get closer.

Judgement:
This is a tank, except with no surge attack and no attack cool down. It's got the same T shaped attack pattern, health, and population cost. Because of this, it's great to use at the front of the army to absorb damage and kill off squishy, low health, or clumped units.

Cherubin:
There's a reason I saved this unit for last, as it's part of the reason why a Unified Spirit commander should be collecting every bit of scrap they ever see. The Cherubin is the most efficient damage per population cost in The Unified Spirit army at a population cost of 1 with a damage of 2. This puts them on par with Hunters as one of the most efficient damage dealers in the game but they only have 3 health.

The Reign has Rikshaw to help move their slow conscripts around the map. The People of Sun and Shadow have Summoner to move units around the map. What kind of fast travel does The Unified Spirit have? None. They get none. However, they have the best static defenses in the game and the ability to build an army of Cherubin anywhere on the map where they have at least one unit. Even Cherubin can make other Cherubin. It costs a few scrap and 2 AP which means a max energy commander can create 7 Cherubin per turn if they have the scrap for it. So if someone attacks a Unified Spirit base in a place that that the commander can't get to quickly, they can use a heart to summon a few builder drones, morph them into Eye's, spawn some Opehl, and place down some Cherubin to try and hold off the attack for a bit.

Scrap is important for other things as well. It's used by almost every Unified Spirit unit and some of the buildings to heal. Personally I don't tend to use scrap to heal until I'm at max population for a very simple reason. Most units use 1 scrap to heal 1 health. However 2 scrap makes a 3 health Cherubin. Simply put, making Cherubin generates more of a health pool than healing does. One exception to this is if I have a high level unit that I don't want to lose.

Because of this, with late game Unified Spirit, I tend to move my production buildings as close to the front line as possible to throw units at a problem ( a bit like having a static Shepard ) without caring too much about if they die because I can collect the scrap after the engagement is over.