I love
ARMED. It is a turn based strategy game currently exclusive for Windows Phone. I never expected a mobile game to be so cool and make me play it for so long. However I have a problem with it. It is not challenging anymore. I hardly hit anyone who can beat me on the ladder. At the moment I am writing this I occupy the first place and I have lost a total of five games (not counting all the cases I accidentally hit the search button). So I decided to create this strategy guide hoping that other players will read it and improve their game. I do not claim that this is the best and only strategy but I was able to get first on the leaderboards by using it. I would be happy if more players manage to beat me either with my own strategy or one devised to counter it. For the rest of this article I will assume you have have at least played
ARMED! the tutorial.
Disclaimer: Due to changes in patches and evolution of the metagame this opening is not as good as it used to be. It certainly can work and I believe it is still the best on at least one map but it will lose to better openings on most maps. The principles outlined in the article still apply but the specifics are not that clear. For example the optimal unit composition currently involves strikers and it is possible to rush for your opponent's resources with early pushes that this article assumed were impossible. I will leave it as an excercise to the reader to find on which maps the opening works and on which it does not.
Economy-based Strategy Game
An economy-based strategy game is a strategy game in which the most important aspect to getting better army is the economy. In this kind of game you are able to produce more numerous, better upgraded and higher tech army by acquiring and spending more resources. Note that not every strategy game is economy based. For example WarCraft III is a mixed bag because there is the hero. Even if you have worse economy you may still have stronger army if your hero is higher level.
ARMED! however is pure economy-based strategy game.
The main rule in an economy based game is that you want to invest in economy as much as possible and have just enough to stop your opponent's attack. Assuming you stop his attack with at most equal casualties you should be able to produce better army later because your early investment in economy will pay off. The opposite strategy (sometimes called "rush") is to try to catch an opponent who has invested in economy too much off guard and defeat or severely damage him early. The reason a player who has invested in economy should win in theory is that there is a distance between the bases. If it takes 5 turns for a tank to get to your base this means that you can start making tanks 4 turns later than your opponent and still have equal number of tanks to what he can bring to attack your base at any given time. You can invest these 4 turns in economy.
The economy in
ARMED! is represented by capturing resource nodes. The best way to invest in economy is build drones. Drones are fast and can fly over obstacles so they can capture more resources faster than any other unit. The smallest distance on any
ARMED! map is 5-6 tank turns and the opponent needs at least 1 turn to build a factory. This means that we can safely invest in factories and drones in the beginning. I choose to open with 2 factories on the first turn and build 2 drones on the second. I place the factories closest to the nearest resources and closest to the middle of the map. I then go on to capture the closest resources. On the third turn I build two more drones and rally them to capture the next couple of resources. Immediately after capturing the first and second resource nodes I send the two drones to resources in the area of the opponent. If the opponent has opened with fewer drones I usually manage to steal a resource node at least for some time. This allows me to catch up with tanks from my two factories because I have much higher income. I use the drones' speed to avoid tanks. My opponent cannot possibly have tanks everywhere so if he is investing in tanks there will be a resource node that is undefended. Even if I block the resource node and do not capture it this still gives me higher income. In addition drones are useful in the late game as they can spot for units in certain location. I sometimes sneak drones in the back of the enemy base and steal undefended resource nodes. It works quite often.
After the initial 4 drones I start producing tanks from both factories. Unless the opponent does the same strategy he is forced to pull tanks to side resources to take them back because I have stolen them with a drone. If he pulls more than two tanks I have a numbers advantage in the middle and push for one of the middle resources. If they don't pull tanks I just wait for the resource advantage to kick in and push the middle resource with sheer numbers.
This strategy works best on open maps because you can use the drones more effectively. This strategy can be stopped relatively easy on Riverted because it is easy to keep all resources with a small number of tanks and the forests near the bridge provide easier way to defend with fewer tanks. Still you can use it to split the map in half. On Deserted there is the option to take the middle resource early and set up defenses there. Despite the fact that the player who opens drones will have more resources early on it is really hard to break this position and the person defending the middle can easily take his half of the map later.
So this is the basic opening that should make the average
ARMED! player much better. This is not my entire strategy. I may post more if I do not see enough improvement on the ladder, if there is interest and if I have the time.
I hope better understanding of the game will make it more interesting for everybody.
P.S. Please support the fight against the absurd behavior of the Search button which is by far the worst part of Windows Phone by upvoting the
issue on the feedback site.