Mechanized Assault & eXploration Reloaded

Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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Post 13

Against good players, like in chess, you need, except in rushing games, a lot of little tricks to gain and build up an advantage.
So here here are some for use:

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trick1 (from Tutenchamun)
When you start with more then one surveyor, you like to post them, as any other unit, as near its optimal square as you can. Look at the attached picture below to get the connection between the startmenu-number and its correlated square.
You would like to have e.g. the second surveyor as number 5 or 9.
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trick2
I play a game against an opponent, who will have to updated his stationary defense, when I attacked to meet my force in a optimized way, like getting the attack value 5 points higher to kill a bomber in 2 shoots et cetera.
What I do is, I fly in with mark VII models first. I see him acctually upgrading his units just in the way to meet me economical, saving the rest of his gold for his own plans. After that happens, I fly in with my main fleet of mark VIII bombers. So I force him to update his units twice!
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trick3
When you attack with tanks, put some ACPs into the army to catch enemy fire. Like attacking with submarines, your light-plants can in this way support the output of your heavies or shipyards.

Thumbnails of attached images:

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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Thank you for these excellent posts. I particularly like the tip to leave 2 free rows when using a surveyor. It is such a simple, simple idea. Yet, it is so extremely useful. I am embarrassed to say I always surveyed every single spot until reading your tip.

I also like your tip to save up research and then use it in response to threats. I do that already. Still, it is very fun to upgrade the range of a turret when the enemy is just outside range and then kill it.

My favorite suggestion is the one where you say to do all our upgrades at once so you don't waste gold. Or, fly in a lower version unit so the enemy does an upgrade and then fly in your main force so he has to upgrade again.

Thanks for posting these!

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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I found a new trick/exploid. I consider it not to be a bug, therefore I post it here and do not report it as such. Nevertheless in our max-community we decided not to use it.

When You are in the starting section where You can chose and buy Your stuff, chose e.g. 6 pioneers or constructors, go forward and chose a location on the map. Hope You are faster than Your oppponent and then go back with the button in the top left corner.

You will have your starting money back plus the already chosen units. REPEAT!

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I think I have to translate all the German posts from the parallel "strategy and tactics" post and vice versa. They do not cover each other at all.

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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Of course it's a bug! And it is already fixed in my local working copy

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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Excellent. Bug and fix. for finding this as well.

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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And not me for introducing it...

Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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You did? From what I understood is this bug years old..

Even so: Doesn't matter. We love MAX. This isn't eSports, right?

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Subject: Re: strategy and tactics

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On working with infantry

Introduction
In this long (move 189) game I am losing. Tutenchamun could fire with his stationary missle launcher for the last 80 move always one quare further. Although I have 2/5 of the map and more minerals/gold he has far more science stations. I made a lot of mistakes on this 112x112 with water between the two parties (so late engage) map.

First mistake:
You had to get minerals only early!
But I got distracted and built mines on high gold squares in the beginning. Now I still have 380 gold in vaults. I had spent additional ressources on gold-vaults and gold-refineries (far more than I normally need). I even lost gold in one of my opponents attacks.

Seconds mistake:
As I always do, I built to early science stations. This slows my expansion down massivly and although I had price 20%, when he had none science station yet, he easily overtook me later.

Third mistake:
I simply forgot that under maxr stationary units are heavily favoured as against mobil troups.
Explanation: Under .104 You can get infantry into APCs or tanks, mobil-launchers into planes close in to the enemy and despite him having all units on sentry, You shoot first! Under maxr it is the otherway around. So You deploy all you infantry on land and they are dead instantly.
You need far more for the same job - Nevertheless You can work a little bit with them, catching shoots from opponents 2-shoot misslelaunchers etc...

Some ideas on infantry:
You can land on a mine out of a APCs and will not explode.
You wait until he fires all slots onto your buildings, when he just upgraded DISTANCE.
You stay hidden in the waterline and deploy some infantries on shore until nothing autofires anymore.
Then you sacrifice you empty APCs to make sure nothing fires anymore with closing in to enemy buildings (thread).
Hope You got enough with You, push the second wave on land and destroy connectors or buildings.
When You havent got enough men with you to stay alive after "Turn End" (remember in next turn stationary units shoot first, not alternating.)
evacuate! Load the survived infantry into APCs and dive into save water again. Movement of ACPs is critical, but as with depot-lines, you can use a APCs chain to transfere infantry with no movement left from APCs to APCs back into the water.

I was forced to attack prematurely, because he spotted my APCs with blind bomber shoots (?), I dont know how, maybe there is a corvette in the radar shadow. I would like to have finish this attack off with some mobil missle launchers from planes in the south. But I am 2 moves to late for that.

Thumbnails of attached images:

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