This guide will explain you how to beat medium/large maps extremely fast. Note that 9 out of 10 maps, regardless of objective, can be beaten this way. Making the game rather repetitive.


- Populist class + infrastructure starting item + Alan's Psycedelic Breakfast.
- Capture all 4 corners of the city as fast as possible.
- Use 4-8 AP per turn for capturing, spend remaining AP on exploration.
- Basic workshop > Auto Turret > Rush Electric Fence. Defensive tree is optional but recommended to save on real-time.
- Build Basic workshops until you researched the Basic Lab.
- Beat large map every time in 12-20 turns.


- Take (if available) the Populist class with the sniper rifle. If not then take the Scientist (battles will be harder with scientist). The sniper rifle has the highest early-game clear-speed in the game and does not require any consumeable to solo beat all of the encounters with just a lvl 1 sniper rifle. Make sure to aim for their heads.
- If you have, get the "Alan's Psycedelic Breakfast (+10/+10/+10) starting bonus. If you do not have then the "Hydra" is decent (allows you to skip the optional workshop path). If you also do not have the "Hydra", then take something like +$ or "Arcology" or anything that boosts infra/research/gold. Do not bother with the "Heir" bonus because you will not even be lvl5 by the time you beat the entire map unless you skip the workshops but even then it will barely be of any use to you.
- Best starting item: anything with +infrastructure.



In order:
- Optional (recommended): Basic Workshop > Auto Turrets
- Basic Lab > Advanced Lab
- Optional: Basic Trading Post > Freelancer Guild
- Master Lab > Electric Fence

The workshop route saves real-time at the cost of wasting some extra ingame turns. Do NOT take this path at all if you start with the Hydra starting bonus. Hydra's will almost always 100% protect you until you beat the map and w/o workshops.
I recommend getting the auto-turrets as it saves you a lot of time and it makes the map way safer as it more than halves the battles per map at the cost of only roughly 4 extra turns and having less xp.

Tip: If you do not take any kind of defense, remember near the end you can just forfeit sectors as long as it is not a corner sector or a sector that you need in order to reach corner. The game finds it okay to have gaps between your cities and you "magically" teleport between areas. Too bad the game has no auto-resolve feature because most of those zombie attacks at turns 1-20 = joke.

ONLY research the the gold income path when you've got an annoying objective that drags on the game a bit. This way you get more gold than you can ever spend by working. Do NOT bother building Trading Posts (ever) unless the objective requires it. They are totally underpowered.

By the time you finish researching Electric Fence you should already have captured all 4 corners of the map or at least do it that very turn (unless you are a scientist in which case the research might even be a little bit too fast).

Always check the shop on turn 1 as it might have good items.

Prioritize buying +research items as this can end the game 1-2 turns earlier. If it is very early in the game you might want to consider buying a +gold item if it pops up in a shop.
+Infrastructre items are generally not required and in my experience are just a waste of gold since you already have soooo much infrastructure income from the Populist and the starting item combined.

Optional: Buy a +10/+20 accuracy mod for your sniper rifle if you are having trouble or if you are just lazy in battle. If you reach level 4 and happen to get a weapon skill of lvl4 and happen to have a lvl weapon of that type then feel free to switch out the lvl1 sniper.

If you are having problems with battles you could buy a 500$ consumeable, preferably a grenade as those can/should help you across multiple battles for just 500$.

If you went the workshop route, then first build Basic Workshops. As soon as you unlock the Basic Lab, build those instead. After that build the highest tier of laboratories you can afford. If you lack the gold to build Adv/Master labs then just build basic ones because you need the infrastructure income from it (especially on large maps).
Sell anything you don't need to build the Electric Fences. Do NOT build the fences unless you already completed your objective. Build them in the turn you plan on ending the map. Even sell your weapons, items, your improvements, your crystals, whatever to build the fences and end the game.

Do NOT spend any AP on scouting. Spend 4-8 AP on capturing cities and spend the leftovers on exploration and pray to rng for +infra or +research outcomes. Also pray for lots of early survivors when playing the populist as this will boost you enormously. RNG is the difference between ending on turn 12 or on turn 20. Yes it is that huge. It's not skill or tactics it's pure rng.



With average luck, if done right, you will beat a large map on turn 18-20 all the time. If rng is with you, you could in theory (very unlikely) beat a large map on the 12th turn.

You can not even build Auto Turrets here so ship the defensive tree. Just rush fences fast. The "Thinking Ahead" mission is a good candidate to research the "Freelancer Guild".

If for any reason you were slow and you let the game drag on beyond turn 48 then bring Repair Kits (more = better) when invading so that you can repair the barricades that start at 1hp. Regarding defense just mass gattlings so that you never have to defend or just again bring repair kits. But best is just to rush, rush and rush before the dangerous zombies or the map mods kick in.
Alternatively (for defending only) you can research a tech that will heal your owned territories by +5hp / turn but I do not believe this is worth researching.

Do NOT take slow firing weapons like grenade launchers and stuff because you can encounter (several) soldiers during your first encounter already.

Not having a merchant is not a problem at all as long as you end the map within a reasonable amount of turns (~ < 35). Your sniper rifle lvl1 will do just fine all the way to the end. You can use the equipment screen to purchase an extra member-slot if you need. Note that exploring can still yield merchants.

• If after researching the Electric Fence you suddenly decide to not end the map yet, then research Smart Turrets instead of Gattling Turrets. They will have around 80 power (because you have so much research income) with 42 toughness and cost 4.
  
• Having too much gold? Buy recruits and let them sit in your pool for +infrastructore per recruit.

• The sniper rifle is by FAR the strongest early game weapon.
  
• The level 5 glowing weapons are insanely strong.
  
• The level 5 glowing shotgun is so strong that you can solo the entire endgame with it (when turtling) and it never requires time to reload. Just spam LMB+RMB but hit the LMB like 1/10th of a second faster. This way the shotgun reloads at the same time it shoots. Smells like an exploit but not confirmed so let's assume this is intended :).
  
• Infrastructure is the only limiting factor in this game. You will never get so much Infrastructure that you need 12AP per turn anyway and the other resources can be obtained fairly easily (or are not required at all).
  
• The "Freelancer Guild" is so insanely overpowered that you do not even need to build any trading posts. Sure you will get less crystals (who cares about crystals anyway?) but you will have more money than you can ever spend. With he overtime perk you can get easily 3k gold per turn from just working by spending all 10AP. That combined with the passive gold income from territories is just total overkill.
  
• The grenade launcher recruit is total garbage.
  
• Some starting weapons (shotgun, grenade launcher, machine gun, etc.) are so awful that early game it is possible (if you run into a horde that spawns somewhat unlucky) that even though you aim near-perfectly, you still can not beat the battle without resorting to consumeables. But the sniper rifle lvl1 with a simpel accuracy mod will last you until endgame...
  
• Many objectives are so silly. Like finish map x without building some useless building y (that you never build anyway!). There is almost no diversity in gameplay.
  
• You won't even see any special zombies. You (almost) always beat the map way before they are allowed to spawn. So you beat the entire campaign but only saw like 5 zombie types? Doesn't feel right.
  
• A lot of timed missions give us like a 100+ turn timelimit... Feels kinda weird right if we beat the game in under 20.
  
• A lot of weapons get only +1 ammo from both the +10% ammo and the +20% ammo mod. Basically the 10% is very strong for it's value (because this is often already 20% due to the game rounding it up). So sell the 20% and equip the 10% if this is the case for your gun. Free gold.
  
• Even if you do not use my tactic, every tactic I tried so far totally facerolls the zombies as long as you use at least 1 of these imbalances. This game needs some serious balancing or at least come with different difficulty levels.
  
• There is too much to list here...