Strategies

(Partly based on forum posts)

= Playing against the computer = andyglest: (added by andy0101 manually (not from forum)) If you wanna beat man - think like a man! If you wanna beat computer - ... I'm not sure how you should think then! :) I will give you an example on Tech. Computer makes many small units rather than a few big. I saw CPU produce 20 archers, while I was researching Robotics. So, maybe it is better to have a different tactic than the CPU, and make strong units when the time arrives. But don't do that in the beginning! First make some small units. Here is one more example: This is a tip for the Water world settlement map: There is no way to attack than by air units. So here is what to do:


 * 1) send one worker to build a farm, send others to mine, order producing 5 workers
 * 2) send these workers to mine and produce more workers. DO NOT send any worker to repair/help the builder. There is enough time to build it.
 * 3) make a blacksmith, but don't upgrade anything! All upgrades are for land units.
 * 4) make a technodrome
 * 5) produce 3 technicians
 * 6) research advanced architecture.
 * 7) send an technician build a aerodrome, and one more to repair (help) building.
 * 8) send another technician to make an air ballista.
 * 9) research robotics
 * 10) produce 2-3 ornithopers.
 * 11) make more technicians, more aerodroms.
 * 12) produce 2 airships.
 * 13) make one more air ballista
 * 14) send an ornithoper to discover enemy bases. When you see an enemy, don't try to attack - run away and search for other bases. Run away again to your base.

While doing this, throw your eye on your ally a bit. WHAT DO THEY DO?? I saw my ally fill his whole island with units, and then produce ONE dragon! See? You shouldn't think like a computer here(!) but after you attack with your air units, you probably won't win. Thats because they have so much land units that they are stronger(!) than you. Attacking with 5 air units on 50 archers is suicide! What now? if you were acting like a computer you wouldn't be able to attack for a very long time! At the end I closed my game because everything convulse because of so many ally and enemy units!

No discussion page, so I'll append my comments here:

0) you should have said what scenario and what version of glest you're talking about - I didn't encounter anything like you described yet, so perhaps it has even been dropped...

1) this looks like a how-not-to to me - you say you ended up in a tie situation and you stopped frustrated - so obviously you didn't have a winning strategy.

2) you didn't understand the phrase "when you want to beat a, you have to think like a " - it doesn't mean you have to act the same way, it means you should know his/her/its thinking and use the weaknesses this reveals against them... e.g. will a computer enemy unit keep following you, even if that means running into a superior force... that's how the programmer tried to implement useful rules... which they might be most of the time, but we humans should be good at finding the exceptions and use them :) Irii 07:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Learning from how AI plays
andyglest: "the best way is to begin a game with this:
 * 1) human - magic - team 1
 * 2) cpu ultra - magic - team 1
 * 3) cpu ultra - tech - team 1
 * 4) closed

Now watch how the cpu ultra plays and do the same. Also, while playing you can watch and attack.

First make many initiates, few deamons, start building energy sources, then summoner guild, then libary. at same time make few battlemages. attack with 10 battlemages and 5-6 deamons, 5-6 magic armors and a 1-2 drakers.

Magic and tech are the same difficulty, however you need to learn how to use it. For beginners, tech is easier because it is similar to real life; magic doesn't exist in real life, therefore you need to explore it."

About watching the cpu ultra:

As I found in a forum, the CPU ultra plays exactly the same as a normal CPU, only it is able to produce/mine faster - I don't understand why there isn't a "human ultra" as well, so you have an easier stand as a beginner. I actually feel that the "CPU ultra" is like having someone cheating...

I doubt that tech is easier because it is "more like real life" - how many archers/horse- and swordsmen have you seen in your life? Irii 08:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Using (Magi) Golem against AI
andyglest: "Golem is great for defense! walking takes too much ep, but i know how to use it! move a initiate near a enemy, and then ritual a golem :) walk with that golem to enemy, and when they see u press hold position. golem will not move, but they will come to you because they saw u. u will defeat many enemy units then, and weak it."

Fast upgrade rush to dragon call against Tech
HomerJ (Magic): "I found succes in fighting an Tech AI by building up a good defense with some Golems and some drakes behind to cover a fast aproach to the Archmage Tower and... Dragon Call.

If you can stop the AI long enough to produce some Dragons... you can kick serious butt! Only these orni... copter..., ehm... you know what I mean, only they are able to take out your Dragons in the field, airships can't attack air, archers are too weak.

If you want to win over Tech AIs you gotta move over the field slowly with your golems. Back them up with a few dragons and drakes... you're unstoppable."

Horsemen and gyros(ornithopters)
barnaby (Tech): "I had more than 3 times the kills of all CPUs combined Smile

I did it by producing nothing but horsemen and gyros. When they attacked I sent the gyros in to bombard them, and then ran the horsemen straight to the back to take down catapults/robots, then used the horsemen to take down the archers, then sent horsemen back to base and left the gyros to deal with the rest. After that, if it was daytime I sent my healthy units to their base to take down their castle, then retreated and repaired my injured units so I could keep elites. When things were quiet I'd send my near elites to the de-castled bases to kill pigs 'n stuff to get elite Smile

So, from this, there's a couple of bits of feedback:

1. Horsemen are the only worthwhile ground units Horsemen have same production time as archer/swordsman but are much more powerful and are easily worth the extra cost. Robots take too long to produce (and require more attention) and aren't as fast. Horsemen are easily better than robots when used properly, their speed makes it easy to surround loners and move on before reinforcements come to help.

2. Gyros are only worthwhile air units Gyros can only be hit by enemy gyros and archers. Horsemen make short work of archers, so as long as you have more gyros than the enemy, the gyros are virtually invincible. Blimps are too slow and can't shoot gyros, so they're very vulnerable. They might be useful for going on a quick suicide mission to take down an enemy castle, as long as you have a few gyros to draw the archers/gyro fire. Gyros are more useful in defence though, so it makes the 500 gold price tag not really worth it.

3. Would be nice if units surrounded their target When you've got a group of horsemen and you click an enemy unit, they tend to line up on one side, rather than surrounding the enemy unit. I usually click just behind the unit to make sure the horsemen surround them. Gyro's do the same thing, which makes them more vulnerable to archers.

4. No good base defences The air ballista kicks arse (probably a little too much), but in general, the base defences aren't worth building. You need to do a fair bit of investment (blacksmith -> technodrome -> advanced architecture) just to get an archer tower, and they're not very useful. I find 3 archers to be much more potent than a tower, and you get the advantage of being able to move them. I think the tower should shoot the gyro flames (do they do more damage?) and you should be able to build them from the beginning. It seems like their should be more defence structures, maybe moats/barricades.

5. Technicians should have auto-heal It's quite time consuming (and hard at night) to get the technician to heal my units after a raid. Would it be possible to make the technician move on to the next nearby unit when they finish healing the current one? Could do something similar with building repairs too.

6. The Gyrocopters aren't 'gyrocopters' They're Ornithopters"

Default Custom Game
Glest Version: 3.1.2; Human magic player against one computer tech player

In this scenario you have the magi and are playing against tech. I have found it impossible to just purely out-grow/out-build the computer-AI, specially at the beginning. Also, surprise attacks from my side didn't allow me to destroy any useful amount of enemy structure. I finally resorted to blatantly using the stupidity of the computer-AI for winning.

What can help you build similarly fast as the computer?
 * 1) Use the pause key whenever you can - you can still zap around the map and even select units and give orders to them. Additionally you can reduce the game speed - still, whatever you do, you will at some point find that you stopped producing initiates and/or a couple of them are standing around uselessly.
 * 2) Watch the four values for energy (greenish circle) gold (yellow circle), stone (gray circle) and wood (brown circle) - they are the resources you should not run out of.
 * 3) Let two workers harvest gold, one build an energy source (keep expanding energy sources as you need them - do it early enough, you will not be able to produce anything when running out of energy!)
 * 4) The golem won't be able to move much at first, because movement costs EP and the golem starts out at 0 EP. It is specially annoying to move it around the energy source already present (if you want to avoid this, restart the custom game and exchange computer and human player against each other - keep playing magi, though). Now move the golem northa as fast as possible, so that it's between you and the enemy.
 * 5) It's probably a good idea to produce 1-2 daemons in this time and possibly produce a 2nd battlemage.
 * 6) Now run northwards with your daemon until the enemy sees you, turn back sharply and run back south (not too fast! Take care not to lose the enemy unit, the daemons are slightly faster than the swordsman and quite a bit faster than archer).
 * 7) Run towards the golem, where your battle-mage(s) together with the golem will take good care of the enemy without losses on your side.
 * 8) Repeat :)
 * 9) Whenever one of your daemons drops to less than 100 hitpoints, use a battlemage to kill it. The daemons don't regenerate, they cannot be "repaired" by the initiates and I have found no other way to bring them back into shape - but a battlemage will become "expert" (more powerful) after collecting three kills - and this includes the kills of friendly units! So as your daemon is already pretty much dead and cannot be recovered the best value you can still get out of it is to promote your other units.
 * This has a couple of consequences: it will buy you time because your enemy has to replace the lost units and cannot build up enough strength to attack you, while you can go for becoming able to build dragons, golems and wicker behemoths. It will generally slow the enemy down, because you start leeching units very early and they must be replaced - so the gold used for replacement is also lost for building up technology.


 * 1) While repeating this trick, you can keep moving the golem until you are coming to the river from south... at this point, you will probably be able to add another couple of golems to your attacking force and promote your battle magi to archmagi.
 * 2) When it is clear that the enemy hasn't got enough resources to attack (because your golem has advanced enough), you can increase your gold mining speed by adding another mage tower close to the gold containing rocks slightly north of your original home. When you have about 10 dragons and as many behemoth men and archmages, it is time for the final attack.

As far as my experience goes, a sufficient amount of archers can indeed take out your dragons... and while dragons and golems have thousands of HP, they heal as fast as normal units - that means when they have to take a lot of damage, they'll not heal in a reasonable time.

Irii 08:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Anarchy Scenario
= General strategy = Chimaira: "it isn't too hard to survive the onslaughts, you just have to know how to mass produce, if you play other games you should know to do this, constantly make workers and military."

Magic strategy detailed
RV-007 (Magic): "1. You do your harvesting as usual with wood, gold, and stone.

2. You get enough worker units not just for resources but construction as well. You remember to time budget the work shifts for the initiates.

3. You aim for finishing the magic library

4. You continue to harvest as much as you can for the 'Ancient Summoning' ability

5. You finally got it. Time to recruit the 'MAGIC ARMOR' not the daemons with the use of your summoner.

6. You start to invest less in the magic armors and save more money for the final building. Now is the time to give your armors defense training with the regular use of work shift and recruit more initiates (activately).

7. You invest in building up to the tower, save more harvests and wait a bit. You still have to buy 'dragon summon' and meet the summon costs for dragon. You go into less spending with initiates and armors.

8. You finally got the dragon summons and prepare to wait more for the dragon unit to arrive.

9. You got the dragon, time to invest in harvesting for more dragons for a better defense.

10. You decided that it's time to scout (actually, sabotage the enemy's resources). So, you sent your 1st dragon to look about for the enemy base. Your enemy faction will now trip once you find it, it's time to escape. Let your first dragon to camp in safe distances from the base and near a neighboring mine crop (of gold).

11. You find that the enemy has ran out of mine crops and will now explore for more. If your calculations are correct, the enemy will sent scouts. You hide from the enemy scouts and later attack the enemy miners when they are present in your dragon's area. The enemy will trip again and sent in ranging units, and that means FLY away till they are gone.

12. You have been summoning a plenty of dragons while your enemy struggles with resource exploration. Now you wanted to make your dragon scout area a more secure place. You sent your other dragons to the area and start to defend it valiantly against all enemy invaders (especially the rangers and workers). You wanted to make your raid and assembled all your armors to march to the out skirts of the enemy base. MORE time passes by while your armors dog paddle across the land.

13. You said FINALLY when all combat units are in position. You decided to wait for the enemy AI to sent out the remaining troops for its last stand (that part gets epic). You march your armors snuffing any resistance around the base. You decided to bring in the dragons to break down those annoying towers one by one. From there, you achieve victory, taking some screenshots of the last stand and a downfall of a tired outpost. You enjoyed a splendid one punch win.


 * Disclaimer: don't (always) rely on this with the Glest 2.0 version, this is to give you a fighting chance. I hope that there is a Glest version without the Tech (horseman and air units) and Magic (golem, raptor, anti air tower, and demon giant) added characters still out there for free download.


 * as for the Tech faction, it's almost the same except for using the Workers, Knights, Technicans, and Battle Machines. Gaining a scout area is NOT likely to happen with the techs. Refer to the version 1.3 (I think).


 * I hope these general hints help you enjoy this game.


 * Please try the 'Skyface Flats' and 'Water world settlement' maps in the Glest download contribution section. You will enjoy them in time."

Magic strategy 2
ATIRuby77:(Magic) This is a good strategy against Tech. Ultra Magic has too many Summoners, Plus their regular army.

Attack 1:"Attack with 48 Daemons, and 16 Battlemages. they might not get killed, but it really works. while they are trying to kill your Daemons, your Battlemages will own them."

Attack 2: "This time, send 16+ Ghost Armour, and 16 Archmages. The same thing will happen as the other attack, only this one will most likely kill them."

Magic strategy 3
Ray:(Magic)

After trying several frustrating methods my final advice: Be fast. Don´t allow the KI to built up any infrastructure and workers. Make 2 deamons and 2 inits, let one init do the gold job and convert the rest to battlemages and overrun your enemy. That gives you time. At the end let your golem do the final work.

Tech strategy
Bisurge (from the forums):(Tech) Tech is easy. I just like making a swarm of archers and letting them rip. At the beginning however you need a few Guards to defend your base, so make a blacksmith ASAP. Swordsmen are useless, weaker than Daemons for their cost.