The Ultimate Guide to War Commander «123» Go

LarsB

Hello Commanders! Finally it is there, the Ultimate guide to War Commander! It is mostly aimed at lower lvl players, but also contains lots of information that could be interesting for higher lvl players.
I made this guide for my 10,000th post, as a big (and maybe final) contribution to the War Commander Community. It's there as help for players that just started playing, or that want to know more about War Commander. The guide does not go very deep into most topics, although most of the time it provides links to threads that do.
Happy reading!

Table of Contents:
-Basics
-Unlocking/Upgrading
-Units
-World Map
-Platoons
-Defending
-Attacking
-Tips&Tricks

Basics
If you are totally new to War Commander, first try to check out the Field Guide (http://forums.kixeye.com/faq.php?faq=wc#faq_fieldmanual) to learn how to play. This section carries on on the basics of War Commander.
The Basics of War Commander starts with a explanation of the basic screen, to show what everything is and does:

1: This is where your in-game name is displayed. You can change your in-game name by clicking on the Command Center, then click 'set nickname'. Beware that the first name change is free, but every other name change after that costs you 100 gold.
2: This is where your xp bar is displayed. It shows how much xp you need to gain before you can lvl up. Hover with your cursor over the bar to get more information.
3: This is where is displayed how much metal you have, The blue bar shows the amount of Metal you have, and the total bar shows the maximum amount of metal you can hold. Upgrade your Metal Storages to increase the maximum amount of metal you can hold. Hover your cursor over the bar to get more information.
4: This is where is displayed how much oil you have, The blue bar shows the amount of oil you have, and the total bar shows the maximum amount of oil you can hold. Upgrade your Oil Storages to increase the maximum amount of oil you can hold. Hover your cursor over the bar to get more information.
5: This bar shows the amount of Power you're consuming at the moment against the total amount of Power your Power Plants are providing at that moment. The first number indicates how much power your buildings are consuming at the moment, the second number shows the amount of Power your Power Plants are providing at the moment. Upgrade your Power Plants to increase the amount of power they give. You can also put your power Plants on overdrive (click on your power plant, then click on 'overdrive'). Power Plants on overdrive will produce 50% more power than they normally produce, but they will also slowly get damaged. It will self destruct in 4 hours.
6: This shows the capacity of units you have on your base (first number) against the total capacity you can have on your base (second number). Upgrade your Command Center to increase the maximum capacity of units you can have on your base.
7: This shows the amount of Gold you have. Gold can be bought with facebook credits (so they cost real money!) and you can use Gold to speed up repairs or upgrades, or to purchase items from the store. (Click the 'Store' button for that). You can add Gold to your War Commander account by clicking on the '+' next to your Gold balance.
8: Number 8 includes all 6 blue boxes on the left side of your screen. These boxes show all buildings that can build/research things and your dozer, and it will show the time remaining when the building is active. When you click on the arrow it will immediately take you to the appropriate building.
9: This is the Chat box. You can use it to communicate with other players in your sector.
10: This shows the mission box. It contains a number of missions, varying from unlocking certain units to looting a certain amount of resources. When you have completed a quest, it will be marked green. If a mission is marked green, you can click on it to receive free resources!
11: This contains all 4 blue buttons above the mission box. The platoon button will open the Storage building for you, so you can quickly go to and alter/deploy your platoons. The buildings button will open the buildings tab which will show all buildings you can build. The Store button will take you to the Store, where you can purchase items like base expansions and resource compressions using Gold.
12: This contains all the small buttons in the top right corner of the screen. From left to right on the top row: The most left button is the Fullscreen button, which you use to go into or out of fullscreen. The second button is the Music Button, which you use to turn the Music off/on. Right next to it is the Sound button, which you use to turn off/on the the Sound. The most right icon on the top row is the Save icon. When it's red it means that the game is saving, and when it's grey, it means the game has finished saving. On the bottom row from left to right, you have the Updates Button, which will open a screen where all update message are displayed. Using this you can scroll to older updates. Right next to it is the Zoom button, which you use to zoom in/out, although you can only zoom in/out in small screen. The most right button in the bottom row is the Settings button, which you use to change settings in the game.

Now let's talk about unit management. There are 2 places in the game where can manage your units: the buildings where the units can be build and scrapped (the Barracks for infantry units, the War Factory for vehicles and the Airfield for air units), and the Storage, where you can create platoons of the units you have built (more later on creating a platoon).
First, let's talk about building units. If you want to build an unit, you have to open the appropriate building (the Barracks for infantry units, the War Factory for vehicles and the Airfield for air units). A screen like this should pop up (this is the Barracks):

As you can see there are 2 tabs on top. Make sure to have the Train/Build tab open.
The let's go over the numbers:
1: the left side of the screen shows you what infantry units there are and which you can build. In this case I have unlocked all infantry units, so I am able to build all infantry units. Under the pic of the units there is a number that indicates how many of that unit you have already build, but is not yet used in a platoon.
Hover your cursor over the unit you want to build to get information of that unit on the right side of the screen. If you want to queue the unit for building, click on the left side of the screen on the pic of the unit.
2: this shows a picture of the unit, with the level stars under it, indicating the lvl of that unit.
3: next to the picture, information is given on the building of the unit. The upper 2 boxes show the amount of metal and oil it costs to build the unit. Beware that build costs increase when a unit is upgraded. The 3rd box from above indicates the time it takes to build that unit. Build times can be decreased by upgrading the respective building the unit is build in. The lowest box indicates the space the unit will take up when you have build it.
4: These 4 colored boxes are called 'Damage Filters'. If you hover your mouse over the icons, you will see how effective the unit is against each target: Infantry, Vehicles, Air and Buildings. These icons are damage modifiers, and increase or decrease the damage done to the different targets. The exact percentages are not known (yet).
5: This part shows the basic stats of the unit: speed, health, range and damage.
6: This box shows how much space is already occupied in your Storage and how much is left.
7: This is where your build queue will be shown once you have queued up some units for building.
This screen is exactly the same for the War Factory and Airfield, although the Airfield has an extra tab 'Repair', which I will talk about later.

But what if you build an unit, but you don't want it anymore? In this case, you go to the Dismiss/Scrap tab to get rid off the units. Making a scrap queue works similar to making a building queue. Once you've queued up the units you want to delete, you click on the big yellow button that reads 'Dismiss'/'Scrap'. Left next to the button the boxes show how much resources you get in return for Dismissing/Scrapping the units. Beware that scrapping damaged units gives you less resources and scrapping dead units gives you no resources.

Now I will teach how to repair your units. When a platoon contains units that are damaged, the health bar of the platoon shown when you open the Platoon screen will indicate this. To repair a damaged or dead platoon, you hover your cursor over the platoon in the Platoon screen, and then click the 'Repair' button.
If Air units are damaged, they are repaired in the Airfield. Open the airfield and click on the 'Repair' tab. Then click on each damaged unit to automatically add it to the repair queue.

LarsB

Unlocking/Upgrading
To become better in the game, you need to get better weapons. To get those better weapons, you have to unlock better units, or upgrade the units you have already unlocked. In this part I'll show you which units are important to unlock and upgrade.
First of all, you need to know that Infantry units are unlocked and upgraded in the Academy, and Vehicle and Air units are upgraded in the Tech Center. This means that you have 2 buildings to unlock or upgrade units in, so use that advantage! Always make sure that your Academy and Tech Center are both active all the time. This way you can unlock/upgrade more units then your opponents and you will have an advantage over your opponents because you have better units. To keep both buildings busy, it requires some planning. First if of all, try to plan your upgrades in such a way, that each upgrade finishes at a time you are online, so you can immediately start a new upgrade. Some hardcore players even set timers so they can wake up in the middle of the night to start a new upgrade!
Another tip is to upgrade each unit you're planning to use to lvl 6. Why lvl 6 you ask? Because at lvl 6, units get their maximum range, and range is a very important stat in this game. Here is the complete list of what stat increases each lvl you upgrade. Excluded from this list are: the Suicide Bomber and the Attack Dog (they upgrade speed instead of range), the Raptor (it upgrades multiple stats each lvl) and the Kondor (it only upgrades health and damage, it does not upgrade speed or range).
Here's the list:
lvl 1: _
lvl 2: damage increases
lvl 3: range increases
lvl 4: health increases
lvl 5: damage increases
lvl 6: range increases
lvl 7: health increases
lvl 8: damage increases.

Now, let's talk about what units are important in the following level categories. You will notice that some of the units listed here can not be found in your Academy or Tech Center. These are units you can only win in events. There is an event every month, and in those events you have the option to earn prizes from previous events. (For a complete summation of all the events that have been held, check this link: http://warcommander.wikia.com/wiki/Special_Events) So if event units are listed here, it means you should try to win them in the next event(s).
I divided the levels in 3 categories, and I will list what units are important around those lvls and why:
Lvl 1-20:
-Riflemen: Riflemen are cheap and easy to build, so they can be used for lots of purposes.
-Humvees: Humvees are very good infantry killers, so they are very useful in low lvl play. They also serve as early on AA units, so they are very multifunctional.
-Rhinos: Rhinos are your first tank. They have good armor, good damage and good range, so they are very useful in low lvls to kill buildings with.
-Razorbacks: Razorbacks are one of the longest ranged units in the game. At lvl 1 they already have 330 range, enough to outrange lvl 6 Gun turrets. At lvl 3, Razorbacks have 363 range, enough to outrange any lvl Gun Turret. At lvl 6, they have 399 range, enough to outrange any Gun turret, while also staying out of the range of a Mortar (of lvl 8 or lower) placed behind the Gun Turret.
-Attack Dogs: Attack dogs are event units, that come in helpful at every lvl. They're very multifunctional, because they can dig up mines, and they can also serve as mortar bait because of their speed.
-Copter Drones: Copter drones are your first non-fixed wing unit, and as mentioned later on, non-fixed wing units are very important for destroying enemy Tanks or Mortar Towers.

Lvl 21-28:
-Razorbacks: razorbacks stay important until your opponents start having lvl 9+ Mortar Towers
-Attack dogs: as said, attack dogs stay important all game
-Paladin/Challenger: since Rhinos are not sufficient enough anymore at mid levels, you need a higher tank. You can either choose the Paladin or the Challenger, but upgrading and using both costs too much time, and you won't be able to keep up with your opponents. Paladins have higher speed and lower repair times, but Challengers have more armor, damage and range, but they do have much longer repair times. Which one you choose depends on personal preferences.
-Gatling truck/Hercules: at mid lvls, it's very important to have sufficient enough AA units defending your base and platoons. The Gatling Truck is technically the best AA unit in the game, but since it is an event unit, not everyone has them, and the Hercules is a good alternative.
-Cobras: Cobras maybe seem worse than Copter drones space-wise, but the extra range of a Cobra is really worth it. Where a copter drone can only attack Mortar towers with a Gun turret behind it from the angle directly opposite to the Turret, a maximum range Cobra can destroy the Mortar tower from angles up to 45 degrees left and right from the angle the Copter Drone needs to attack. (PIC coming soon)

Lvl 28+
-Mega Tanks: Mega Tanks are still the top unit in the game, so eventually you will need to start using them to keep up with your opponents.
-Attack dogs: again Attack Dogs, since they stay important
-Gatling Trucks: in high lvls you definitely need Gatling Trucks to continue to provide sufficient AA defense to your base and platoons.
-Hellfires: Hellfires can be very useful either as support unit or frontline unit, so when you're a high enough lvl, try to win them in an event.
-(Elite) Warhawks: in higher lvls, the damage of the Cobra is not enough anymore, and you really need a helicopter that can pack an extra punch, aka the Warhawk.

If you want to know more about these units, read on!

Units:
Units is what the game is about. As already said, there are 3 types of units: infantry, vehicles and air units. Each unit has it's own niche and use in the game. To read the pros and cons, and the use of each unit, read my Unit Guide: http://forums.kixeye.com/showthread.php?t=161906

There are many roles and classes of units, but I will go over 3 of the most important classes of units in the game:
-Tanks: tanks are for many players the main unit to hit bases and deposits. Tanks have high armor and health, long range and high damage. Units generally considered as tanks are the Rhino, the Paladin, the Challenger and the Mega Tank. (so not the Laser Tank!)
Tanks are overall average against infantry, and good against vehicles and buildings.
Because they have a long range, all tanks (except the Rhino) can outrange lvl 10 turrets when lvl 6. It's advisable to use Mortar Baiting when attacking with tanks. (more about Mortar Baiting later on)
-Air: Air units are divided in fixed wing units and non-fixed wing units. Fixed wing units are the airplanes. All air units that are considered fixed wing units are the Wing Drone, the Thunderbolt, the Raptor and the Kondor. All non-fixed wing air units are the Copter Drone, the Cobra and the Warhawk.
Most players prefer non-fixed wing air units over fixed wing air units because they can be controlled easier and they can hang still, which makes them very useful as precision weapon.
Air is overall mostly used to destroy mortar towers and tanks, especially the non-fixed wing air units, but they also have many many other uses.
-Anti-air units: Anti-air units are units that can hit air. And as simple as that might sound, there are not many units that can hit air in the game, and any unit that can hit air, has its anti-air capabilities as priority. Here is the list of all Anti-Air units in the game, in order of usefulness (from useless to most useful): the Rifleman, the Heavy Gunner, the Humvee, the Hercules, the Gatling Truck and the Flak Tank. Air units are overall also very good against infantry, so that's mostly their second role. It's always very important to have AA units on your base, since air is very important in attacking to many players.
As additional information, all AA units get a range boost vs. aerial targets, so don't be surprised when a Humvee is able to outrange your Warhawks!

LarsB

World Map
To explain the world map, I will use this screenshot from the world map to explain all its functions.

First I will explain what all the colors mean. Blue means everything you own. Green means everything your friends own. Red is everything that is not owned by your or your friends, and therefore by the enemy. Yellow is everything that is owned by the computer-controlled rogue factions.
Now the screenshot:
1: This is your own base. Bases are shown by a bunch of buildings, which can be identified as: a Command Center, a Go-Go Bar, a Barracks, a Power Plant and a War Room (a building that was removed and replaced by the world map). Rogue faction bases also show buildings, but they're different from the buildings shown on player bases. The Rogue Faction buildings can be identified as: 2 Bunkers, an Oil Storage, the Repair Shop (a building that was planned but never added) and a yet to be identified building. Lower lvl bases do not have all of the buildings posted here, but higher lvl bases do.
2: When you click on your base, these 2 buttons appear. The button indicated by the number 2 is used to enter your base from the world map.
3: This button is used to deploy a platoon when you're on the world map.
4: This is one of your own platoons. Platoons can be recognized by a combination of units shown. The combinations shown differ according to what's in the platoons.
A single rifleman platoon consists of only a few infantry units.
A double Rifleman platoon consists of only a large amount of infantry units.
A platoon indicated with 1 Rifleman and 1 Humvee consists of an unspecified amount of infantry units and a small amount of vehicles.
A platoon indicated with 1 Rifleman and 1 Tank consists of an unspecified amount of infantry units and a large amount of vehicles.
A single tank platoon consists of only a small amount of vehicles
A double tank platoon consists of only a large amount of vehicles
A single dog platoon consists of only Attack Dogs. So far tests have proven that a double dog platoon is not possible.
5: This is an enemy platoon. Following the rules just stated, this platoon should consist of an unspecified amount of infantry units and a small amount of vehicles. I scouted it and it indeed consisted of 5 Riflemen, 5 Heavy Gunners,3 Rocket Launchers and 2 Humvees.
6: This is an enemy base, identifiable by the red color.
7: This an enemy deposit. Deposits can be identified by the main deposit building that is shown. This deposit is an Oil Deposit looking at the type of building shown. The building that is shown is bigger when the deposit is a higher lvl. More about deposits later on.
8: This is a friendly Oil Deposit. Judging from the size difference in both icons, this friendly deposit is a higher lvl deposit then the deposit from number 7.
9: These are Rogue Faction Bases. They're identified by the buildings (as already talked about) and the yellow color. Rogue Faction bases are computer controlled bases. Because there are so many of them, and most of them are very easy bases, they form an easy source for resources.
10: When you click on a base, deposit or platoon that's not your own, these 2 buttons will come up. The first button, the Scout/Attack button, is used when you want to scout and/or attack a base/deposit/platoon. You can only scout or attack something when you have a platoon adjacent to the target. The second button is the bookmark button, which will add the target to your bookmarks. (more on that later)
11: This bar shows how many platoons you have deployed. If you hover your cursor over this bar a list of your platoons will appear. The list will show the icon, the name, the travel time (if necessary), the current coordinates, the health bar and the capacity bar of each platoon. Click on any of the platoons to let the game bring you to it on the world map.
12: This bar shows how many deposits you own. If you hover your cursor over this bar a list of your deposits will appear. The list will show the type, the size, the coordinates, the health bar and the capacity bar of each deposit. Click on any of the deposits to let the game bring you to it on the world map.
13: This box tells you the coordinates of the hex your cursor is on, and it will also tell your sector. You can jump sectors by clicking on your Command Center and clicking 'Relocate'. You can move to sectors your friends are in, but you can also jump randomly if you want. You can also jump in-sector to be closer to a friend of your choice.
14: This is the button that will open your bookmarks. To add something to your bookmarks, click on it and then click the star icon. When you open your bookmarks, a list of all your bookmarks will appear, along with the name of the bookmark and the location. If you click on a bookmark in the list, the game will automatically bring you there. You can re-name your bookmarks by clicking the pencil in front of the name, and you can delete them by clicking the trash can icon next to the location of your bookmarks. Your recent attackers are also automatically bookmarked, and can be found in the 'Recent Enemies' tab in the bookmarks. All the friends that are in your sector are also automatically bookmarked and can be found in the 'Friends' tab in the bookmarks.
15: The function of these two buttons is pretty obvious. The first button will bring you to your base automatically on the world map, and the second button will allow you to enter your base from the world map.

So now you know what everything is on the world map, let's zoom in on 2 aspects of the world map: attacking deposits and attacking platoons.
Since the release of the world map, deposits have formed a totally new part of the game, and provided a totally new kind of target. Deposits contain only the most basic defensive structures: Gun Turrets, Mortar Towers, Bunkers and a Mine Factory (plus mines of course). Check out this amazing guide, written by the hand of Stevemac, because it contains everything you need to know about attacking deposits: http://forums.kixeye.com/showthread.php?t=205075.

Platoons have also filled in a totally new aspect of the game. They form a new target for people, and improve the 1-vs-1 real time playing time. Because the map is real time, you are directly playing against other players when you're having platoon battles on the world map, although the attacking of the platoons itself is not (yet) synchronous.
The first thing you need to know is that the attacker is able to deploy their Air units, so you will only need a simple scout platoon to kill any platoon, as long as it doesn't contain AA units. But the opponent also knows this, so most platoon wars are between scout platoons.
In platoon wars, what matters most is who clicks the first. so always make sure you have an as fast internet connection as possible before starting on important platoon wars.
To attack a platoon you have click 2 buttons: the scout/attack button, and the 'Attack' button. The time between clicking this 2 buttons is the time your opponent has to move their platoon away, so try to train yourself so you can click those 2 buttons as fast as possible.
The most important rule in platoon wars, is only to attack platoons you moved to yourself, and to always move away if your opponent is moving a platoon to you. This is because of a little trick used much in platoon wars. If you move your platoon to an enemy platoon, you can already have your cursor on the scout/attack button, and you can click it immediately when your platoon arrives, giving you a big time advantage. Because your opponents can of course do this too, it's mandatory to always move away if a platoon is coming to you.
Since you will use multiple platoons most of the time in platoon wars, it's important to be able to quickly finish off enemy platoons, since you can't move your other platoon while you're attacking. To accomplish the quick kill, you will have to use a combination of fixed wing units like thunderbolts or raptors to quickly kill low health units, and high damage non-fixed wing units like Warhawks to kill high health tanks.
The last important aspect of platoon wars is the end of the attack. What is very important, is that there is absolutely no room for complacency when the attack is over. 9 out of 10 times the enemy has a platoon waiting outside to snipe and kill your platoon when you're done attacking. That's why you have to keep concentrated, and you will have to move your platoon away immediately when you end the attack (always try to end attack immediately yourself when all units are dead so you have control over the moment, instead of waiting till the 'end attack' screen pops-up) without thinking, just to be safe.
The rest about platoon wars comes through experience, so try to help in platoon wars of your alliance (if you have one) to gain that valuable experience.


Platoons
Now we will discuss platoons and platoon organization. Platoons are groups of units you can deploy on the world map. Only ground units can be used to make a platoon. Air units can be automatically deployed in each attack using the Aircraft tab on the left side of the screen.
To create a platoon, click on the 'Platoon' tab above the rewards screen. Then click on 'Create' in the window that opens. This window will pop-up:

I will now explain how to make a platoon. On the left side you'll see the units you have in your storage, on the right you can see the units that are in your platoon. To add units from your storage to a platoon, you have to click on the unit's icon on the left (1). You can also split your platoons up in different squads, by clicking on the '+' (2). When you've made your first platoon, you might have noticed you can't add more units at a certain point anymore. That's because platoons have a maximum capacity. You can increase the maximum capacity of your platoons by upgrading your Storage building, and with a lvl 10 Storage, the maximum capacity is 1,500. At the bottom bar (3) you can see how much space of the maximum capacity you have filled already.
If you want to delete your platoon and put all units back in the Storage again, click on 'disband' (4). Next to the 'disband' button you can see the map speed of the platoon (5). The map speed is based on the slowest unit in the platoon, and units with a high speed overall also have a high map speed (but the combat speed and map speed are not directly related!).
Last of all, the coolest part is that you can name your platoons! To do that, you have to click on the pencil next to the the platoon name (6).

Now that you have learned how to make a platoon, let's take a look on how to make a good platoon. This part is meant for people who have unlocked most units already.
First of all, you should know the 2 different types of platoon organizations. The first one is that you put all you need in one platoon. The second is to make different platoons for each unit you need in attack, so a platoon of tanks, a platoon of minesweepers, a support platoon, etc. Both have their pros and cons. An all-in-one platoon is easier to control, defend, and fight with. The con is that they're less versatile, ad you have less options in an attack. The split-up platoons give you more versatility in an attack, provide you more options, and you will always have back-up units available. The cons are of course that they're harder to control and defend. You can also combine both ways, so you have all-in-one platoons, but you also use support platoons with them.

If you use all-in-one platoons, make sure you have enough units of each type you need, and use the squads to split up the types of units. If you use split-up platoons, make sure you can deploy all units you need in one attack.

Here are some examples of the different roles platoons can have:
-Scout: these are the most common types of platoons. They usually consist of only 1 Attack dog, or another fast unit. They're used for quickly scouting bases, but also for platoon fights. Since you can deploy your air units when you attack a platoon, you can kill platoons filled with mega tanks while only using a platoon of 1 Attack dog.
-Base Hitters: these mostly consist of tanks, or whatever unit you use as a frontline unit, and they can also contain support units.
-Deposit Defenders: deposit defenders are specially made to defend deposits, They mostly contain tanks, lots of AA units and sometimes also infantry to put in the bunker(s). Suicide bomber are not uncommon either.
-Support: Support platoons can contain minesweepers, mortar bait, riflemen, etc. It's just what the player chooses to use as support units in an attack.



Some important units to use in your platoons:
-Always make sure to have enough AA units in your platoons, to defend against air strikes. Although smart players can still take your platoons, it takes them more effort and more time.
-Your main attack force. I think that's self-explanatory
-Minesweepers, if you use them of course. Attack Dogs are natural minesweepers, but riflemen also do the trick.
-Make sure to have enough mortar bait with you if you use that tactic. You don't want to find yourself running out of mortar bait in the middle of an attack.
-AA units! Although In already mentioned that, it can't be said too much.

LarsB

Defending:
Defending your base is a key aspect of the game (especially when you're a high level). To read all about base building, read my Base Building Guide: http://forums.kixeye.com/showthread.php?t=161578
To save lots of time reading the guide, I will post the key aspects of the guide now.
First of all, you should make sure that each Gun Turret is covered by a Mortar Tower and Vice-versa. This is because Gun Turrets are good for hitting air units, and Mortar Towers are good for hitting ground units. We do this by pairing a turret up with a mortar, like this:

It's also important not to place the Mortar Tower on the outside, because it can then be easily destroyed by air units.
When designing a base, you should make sure that the pairs of towers cover each other as much as possible, since high Concentrated Fire (CF for short) is good.
But to accomplish this, you can only protect the most important buildings:
-the Command Center: it's very important to protect your CC, because your opponent will loot 20% of each resource when he/she destroys it.
-the Resource Storages: it's important to defend your Resource Storages, because your opponent will loot 10% of the respective resource when he destroys 1.
-the Power Plant(s): it's very very important to defend as much Power Plants as needed to power your whole base. Because if a power plant is to be destroyed, it does not give power anymore, and when your power plants do not provide sufficient power anymore to power your base, your defenses will only work at 25%.
-the Go-Go Bar: since shortly it is important to protect your Go-Go Bar, because your Go-Go Bar now gives a Damage boost to the units on your base. But when the Go-Go Bar is destroyed, the boost is gone, and that's why you should protect it.

Another vital part of your defense, are your units. Especially tanks, AA units, suicide bombers and snipers are good for base defense. That's why I will tell you what the best places are to put these units:
-Tanks: tanks are usually used to defend against other tanks, so it is advisable to put them on Gun Turrets to protect them from enemy tanks. Remember to put them on stand-ground stance! (This is available with CC lvl 3+)
-AA Units: AA units can best be placed on Mortar Towers to protect them from air units, or you can also hide them behind other buildings your opponent might attack with air units. But Heavy
Gunners and Riflemen can best be placed inside bunkers.
-Suicide Bombers: hide them behind trees or other decorative features outside your base to give your opponents a nasty surprise! It's best to put them on normal or aggressive stance.
-Snipers: Snipers are there to kill mortar bait and minesweepers quickly, and can best be placed in bunker to exploit their long range even more!

Attacking:
Attacking is of course a very important part of a WAR game. In this part I'll talk about attacking in general, and also some tactics that can be used.
First of all, there are 2 types of attacking a base:
-First destroy all (or most) of the defenses, leaving the rest of the buildings alone, then finish off with a looting wave. The advantage is that you can be sure you don't trigger dp too early, but the disadvantage is that you won't have any resources at all when you get sniped, ninja'd, or the opponent comes online, and you're attack was useless.
-Loot while you're killing the base: now you don't save up the storages for the last attack, you just take them whenever you can. The advantage is you at least got some resources when you get sniped, ninja'd or the opponent comes online, the disadvantage is you may trigger dp too early.

For the first type (killing defenses first, then do a looting wave) you also have two ways to do that:
-First killing all (or most of) the Mortar Towers, then do a looting wave with ground vehicles
-First killing all (or most of) the Gun Turrets, then do a looting wave with air units.
The way that is best depends on the design of the base you're attacking.

Additionally, these are several tactics you can use to attack a base with

-Unit Baiting: Unit baiting works only when the opponent does not have his/her units on stand ground stance. Because they are not on stand-ground, they will chase any target that comes close, so using this you can lure units away from their base into the fire of tanks/air units.

-Mortar baiting: Mortar Baiting means you distract a Mortar Tower with a cheap, fast unit, dodging the mortar shells, so your tanks can attack targets without getting hit by Mortar Towers. A more detailed explanation can be found in this thread: (http://forums.kixeye.com/showthread.php?t=232620)

-Sniping: Sniping means taking a long range unit and engaging a target from a certain angle, that you don't get hit by other defenses. This happens most with tanks attacking a turret, or non-fixed wing air units attacking a mortar tower.

-Spamming: Spamming is sending Wave after wave of 1 unit type without Support and Strategy(Lots of repairs included in this)

-Damage tanking: this means that you tank the damage of a defensive tower or unit on a high health unit, while other units are attacking the tower/unit.

-Tank Spreading: Tank spreading is an advanced form of tank spamming, and means taking your tanks and Spreading them so they don't all take damage at once(Like This: ) If you notice in this Image only a few of the Challengers are being injured...if you stacked your challengers(or any tanks you use) right next to each other they all would have taken damage...

-Thunderbolt spamming: This is officially considered an exploit (that's why it will not be in this guide, Also with the Thunderbolt Range Nerf "TB" spamming is fixed)

There are lots of other tactics you can use when attacking a base, but these are the most important/most used ones.

LarsB

Tips&Tricks
To conclude my Ultimate Guide to War Commander there is (of course) a Tips&Tricks section. It contains the most basic and the most important tips. If you have any additions to this section, post your tip below please.

-Chat Commands: Besides basic chatting, there are several chat commands to use. First of all, when someone is really annoying on chat, or uses abusive language, you can ignore him/her. Hover over their chat message, and an icon should appear on the right. Click that icon. A message screen will pop-up, giving the user id of that person (useful if you want to report the player for chat abuse), and a question if you are sure you want to ignore him/her.
To unignore users, type '/list' in chat, and a list will appear of all the players you are ignoring. Hover your cursor over the name, then click the icon that appears.

For the world map, several commands can be used in chat. Typing in coords like this '****,****' will turn it into a link that will bring you to the coords when you click on it.
Typing in /base will post 'My base location (****,****)' in chat, showing your base coords to everyone active on chat at that moment.
Shift-clicking on a hex in the world map will post 'Target location (****,****)' in chat with the coords of the target.

-Power management: one of the most basic rules in base defense, is to upgrade 1 Power plant high enough that it can power your whole base on its own. When you have done that, you will only have to protect that one power plant, leaving the others undefended because they are not necessary. This ensures you can make your defenses tighter, improving your base defense drastically.

-Quests: It still keeps necessary to point people the quest system out. in the lower right corner of your screen, your quest list is displayed. The list contains quests like 'Train 2 Jackrabbits' to 'Destroy [an x amount of] Rogue Factions'. If you finished a quest, it's highlighted in green in the list. If you click on the finished quest, you can collect free resources or units as reward! Many people don't know about this and therefore they miss out on a lot of free resources!
Also, the resources gained by quests can take you over your maximum resource capacity, so they might help you out if you have an upgrade that costs more than you can hold.

-Resource Dumping: resource dumping is something invented to make you a less wanted attack target. Resource dumping is something you use to keep your resource amounts low, so people will less likely attack you. To dump your resources, you first need a large amount of resources you want to hide from the opponent. Instead of letting this large amount of resources just sit in your storages, you use it to pay for a long expensive upgrade, one you're not planning to finish. Many people use upgrades on the Hercules for this purpose, because the Hercules is an expensive unit to research, but is also made obsolete by the Gatling Truck. Once you payed for the upgrade, you let the game save and you sign off. While you're away, your resources will be low because they're all in the upgrade, so people will not attack you very likely. When you come back to your base the next time, you just cancel the upgrade, and get all your resources back!

-Finding out Building levels: sometimes it helps to know the level of enemy buildings when you're preparing for an attack. You can find that out by using a little trick. All you do is send a unit like a thunderbolt to attack the building you want to know the lvl from, and immediately end the attack when the unit hits the target. Then check the attack log, and it will say 'a lvl x [building] was 1% damaged'. This way you can find out what lvl your opponents buildings are!
Credits to Vova2000 for this tip!

That was about it for the tips&tricks section for now!






Thanks for reading! This must be the longest guide ever made in WC, but this is the end.
If you have suggestions how to improve the guide, don't hesitate to post! If you discover spelling or grammar mistakes, please point me to it, English is not my first language and therefore I make mistakes more often.

I hope this guide has helped you in any way, because that's my intention.
Again, thanks for reading and have a nice fight!

Credits to Alec Huskey for helping me with this guide!

LarsB

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LarsB

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LarsB

Placeholder 3. That's about it, you can post now!

DestrroyerX

Great Guide Lars, And congratz on the 10000th post Great addition to the WC community keep it up

LarsB

Alec Huskey wrote: »

Great Guide Lars, And congratz on the 10000th post Great addition to the WC community keep it up

Thanks man. Thanks for your help on this guide too

DestrroyerX

LarsB wrote: »

Thanks man. Thanks for your help on this guide too

anytime

PS this is defiently sticky Worthy *cough Chris *cough *cough

KIXEYE CM Chris

OH SNAP! IT'S HERE! Excited to read this

Thanks for being such an active and engaged member of this community Lars. Great to have you!

Rhyso Oberding

congrats on ur guide!!!!!!!

Vova2000 - TheRussian

Great Guide Lars. This will help anyone who wants to play War Commander.
P.S. Oh and thanks for crediting me.

Nagudz565

Congratulations, Lars

zolex

congratz on your guide mate (Zolex - Sector 76 - level 31 - Untouchables Clan)

SGT_HAM

great effort lol
thats a lotta typing for sure
awesome guide! will help newbies and everyone a lot
good job man

ChaximelOld

Good guide

LarsB

SGT_HAM wrote: »

great effort lol
thats a lotta typing for sure
awesome guide! will help newbies and everyone a lot
good job man

Marsigne wrote: »

Good guide

Thanks guys

Nyen

Perhaps this should be added onto the field manual?

TacomanWasTaken

Man you are freaken amazing o.O

Romeo17

Best. Guide. I. Have. Ever. Seen.

And that is from a user!!

Originally I wanted to explain hidden game mechanics, like splash damage, unit types, etc. but I never have the time or the dedication to do that.
At least that job is done. Thank you.

LarsB

Romeo17 wrote: »

Best. Guide. I. Have. Ever. Seen.

And that is from a user!!

Originally I wanted to explain hidden game mechanics, like splash damage, unit types, etc. but I never have the time or the dedication to do that.
At least that job is done. Thank you.

Thanks, and no problem

diamondrmp

Great guide thank you. I have a question...what is the range of a maxed out mortar tower?

LarsB

diamondrmp wrote: »

Great guide thank you. I have a question...what is the range of a maxed out mortar tower?

No problem. Max range of a mortar tower is 498

Matthew Knowler

Congratz on the 10 thousandth post and the nice sticky too.

Jerry Schull

how do you get to map 2 to make alliances

Vineesh Chandanattil

how can we defent sniper??? pls help vineesh level 10...

nightstalker1300

Nice work! You have an alliance? How do you join? My chat is unavailable. Do you know how to get it to work?

LarsB

Vineesh Chandanattil wrote: »

how can we defent sniper??? pls help vineesh level 10...

What do you mean with 'how can we defent sniper'?

LarsB

nightstalker1300 wrote: »

Nice work! You have an alliance? How do you join? My chat is unavailable. Do you know how to get it to work?

Thanks. Yes I have an alliance, Total Anarchy. You can join by following the link in my sig, but we are only taking players of lvl 25 or higher.
And what chat do you mean? Game chat? That can be fixed by repeatedly pressing the top right button of the text box, to put chat off and on again.