How to win a round in Battle DawnSo, you have been playing for a while, perhaps been part of a good alliance, you might have lead an alliance that made the first page of the high score, but you still have not won a round in battle dawn yet? This is a guide on how to do so.
Who should read this? Established players and leaders of mid ranked alliances
I won’t go over the basics. You should know about attack and defence, spy traps, etc. This guide will just be concerned with one topic – how to lead an alliance towards collecting 10 relics.
Who am I?My ingame as well as forum name is Xeeron. I have been playing with the alliance “SoLD” for a long time now, including leadership and co-leadership for several rounds.
We won Earth3 in ages 2 (shared with FEAR), 3 and 5 (and handed victory to our close allies FEAR in ages 4+6), won Earth2 in ages 8, 9 and 10 and won Fantasy5 in what was probably age 6 (they are no longer counted and posted …). All in all, out of 10 rounds we played, we won 7 times and finished second 3 times.
When to startWinning a round does not start in tick 1. It starts way before. Typically, as an alliance leader, you should scout the new world you will start in while the previous round still runs. Check who your opponents are, whom they are friendly with, where there hive are, and who has a grudge against whom. Of course this is easiest if you stay in a world where you played before.
Then, you need to assemble your team before the round starts. Top alliances never do much recruiting in-game. Usually you will have a completely filled roster by the time the ticks start. You need to recruit people who are loyal and good (in that order!). Don’t fill your roster with lots of people who are new to you.
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Who is a good player?A good player is active, communicates and helps the team. Accordingly, look for online times, heavy use of chat, and that player defending your infrastructure. DO NOT LOOK AT SCORE OR ACHIEVEMENTS! It is easy to get both a high score and plenty of achievements while being a terrible player.
Inform all your players of the starting date of the new round and make sure that everyone is online on time to place their colony in the hive. Also make sure that everyone has a mean to use your alliance communication - some common form of chat room (IRC, MSN, Skype, etc) is a must.
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BoostingBoosting is not needed to be a top player (I never bought any tokens, and got several top rankings before I started using tokens I won or traded in-game), but there is no denying the fact that boosting does help. If you have any tokens, use them right at the start to get maximum value for your bucks.
Starting positionAfter you have assembled your team, you need to pick your hive position. In this section, I’ll talk mostly about Earth, but the basics carry over to the other worlds as well.
A good hive position is more important than most people probably imagine. What you want is a position that is easy to defend, close to the “farming grounds” where noobs spawn and strategically well situated.
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DefensibleThis basically boils down to one word: Islands. Ideally, your hive should completely fill up an island (such that there are NO OUTPOSTS close to your colonies), with the island being far away from the next continent. The archetypical example is New Zealand on Earth. This hive position is almost impossible to capture if well defended. Being close to the corner of the map is usually an advantage as well, since you’ll have 2 secure sides that way.
If you do not have enough colonies to fill your immediate hive, surround it by camps (not other forms of OPs).
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Farming groundsFarming is the basis of your armies, so you want easy access to as many noobs as possible (for this guide, noobs are all those yellow colonies that are not at least in medium level alliances and pose no threat on their own).
On Earth servers, the best farming grounds are usually Europe and Northern America, on the fantasy server, the big centre island.
Successful PODing (see below) makes this indicator less relevant.
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Strategically well situatedYou don’t want to be “sandwiched” between two or more strong other alliances. Additionally, you want to have as much buffer space between you and any possible opponent. Therefore, it is always advisable to chose one of the corners of the map, that way you can never be backstabbed from behind.
A short evaluation of typical Earth starting positions (5 stars is best):
Alaska:
Defence: ***
Farming grounds: *****
Strategic situation: *****
Antarctica western end:
Defence: **
Farming grounds: **
Strategic situation: *****
Antarctica eastern end:
Defence: **
Farming grounds: **
Strategic situation: ***
Central America:
Defence: **
Farming grounds: *****
Strategic situation: **
Greenland:
Defence: **
Farming grounds: *****
Strategic situation: **
Iceland:
Defence: ****
Farming grounds: *****
Strategic situation: **
Madagascar:
Defence: ***
Farming grounds: ***
Strategic situation: ***
New Zealand:
Defence: *****
Farming grounds: **
Strategic situation: *****
Spitsbergen (the island north of Norway)
Defence: ****
Farming grounds: *****
Strategic situation: ***
Russian far east:
Defence: **
Farming grounds: ***
Strategic situation: *****
The best overall spots are Alaska and New Zealand. Funny enough, Madagascar is often picked by good teams, despite being quite a mediocre location. Remember that you want to be on an island because it is small enough to fill with colonies. Madagascar is too big for that. If you know where other top teams will settle, put a big premium on having your hive far away from them (e.g. if you know that top teams will be in Alaska, NZ and Europe, then locating in Russia far east or western Antarctica can be a good decision).
SoLD has played in New Zealand for most rounds, although we went for Spitsbergen once. Our opponents are usually in Madagascar, in Alaska, Spitsbergen or Greenland.
From my knowledge of Fantasy, the best spots are the two top islands (North-East and North-West), with the small islands at the southern edge of the map being ok as well.
HiveOnce you have deployed, one of the first tasks for your alliance is to secure the hive. Conquer and relocate everyone who is not part of your alliance, a sub or a loyal friendly alliance. Some basic rules that all hives should follow:
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No OPs directly next to the colonies!Every OP is a potential place of attack for enemies. Put one colony right next to the others, with no OPs in between.
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No training bases, no gates, no nukesNeither of these are allowed in, or close to (think ETA3-4), the hive. Nothing is worse than an enemy capturing one of these close to your hive.
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No noob armies near the hiveDo not allow yellow colonies to build up armies, even in a medium distance from the hive (think ETA6-8). Kill those, even is the colony is already conquered.
If you do all of the above, you should be able to keep only a minimum (2-3 squads) in each colony, while having the bulk of your army fighting wherever they are needed.
PODsPODs are parts of infrastructure (which could include some colonies), that are placed apart from the main hive right at the start. The quick but risky version includes some colonies, the somewhat slower but safer version only training bases.
The idea behind PODing is to extend the reach of your farming grounds and set up infrastructure in places far away from your hive. Successful PODing is the key behind getting an early lead in terms of income, and thus army strength. However, PODing can also be very dangerous, since you are spreading your forces thin.
Resource OPs, crystals, conquersThe basic ordering of these is:
Resource OPs > crystals > conquers
Never waste more than a handful of armour units to get a conquer. Crystals are worth a bit more (since they add resources for the full ally, not just one colony, and don’t delete), but resource OPs are best and should be given a priority.
InfrastructureInfrastructure is essential, both for farming and once you enter a war. This is the main difference between top alliances and “also run” alliances: Most medium alliances are content to securing the area around their immediate hive. This is not good enough for a top alliance. Whenever playing with SoLD, my goal was to extend radar&gate coverage to the full map.
A good infrastructure lets you farm all the good spots, allows you to attack your enemies close to their hive (keeping your own farming grounds unmolested). It is also essential for quick movements when the relics drop.
A good part of the value of your team members can be measured simply by looking at the my alliance screen and counting the numbers of outposts they own.
SubsSubs are a part of Battle Dawn life. Most hate them, but most top alliances also use them. Here is some advice on how to make subs work.
Never “take in” an already running alliance to become your sub. Also, never invite some person you don’t know to make a sub for yourself. These kind of subs are at best useless, and at worst, will backstab you. More then once did I PM the leader of a sub of our opponents in some big war, basically saying: “Look, the war is going bad for your side, how about making a NAP just between SoLD and you guys. We’ll go directly for the main and leave you in peace.” You’d be surprised how often I got a “yes” as the answer. If you sub leader does that, you have failed.
If you want to set up a sub, pick a reliable player whom you know for a long time to lead it (I have played as a leader for one as well in rounds where I did not have time to play in the main). Do not treat your subs as meat shields. A good sub should act just like the main alliance, except that its members might be a bit less active. Subs are also perfect to invite new, in-game recruits to. A good sub leader can teach them the basics of the game, and you can check out whether they are good enough to move to the main alliance later on.
Include your subs in your chat, and keep them informed of what happens. If they don’t feel like they are involved with the main alliance, they have no incentive to fight for you…
ArmyNot much to say here: Obviously, all players in your alliance should use the same chassis. Whether you pick infantry, vehicles or tanks is pretty much down to preference, but my personal favourite is infantry.
In general, a good ration is 1/3 armour, 2/3 ranged. However, when you are fighting close battles, it is optimal to increase the amount of armour units.
It can be very worthwhile to have your subs pick a different chassis than your main, that way it is harder for enemies to tailor their army specifically to kill you.
DiplomacyDiplomacy is an integral part of Battle Dawn. No matter how good you are, you can not win against everyone at the same time. Therefore, you need to make friends, and engage your enemies one at a time.
The basic rule of diplomacy is: Keep your word!
That implies no backstabbing, which in turn implies: Don’t promise stuff you can’t keep.
Breaking your word might give you a short term advantage, but if you develop a reputation as a liar, your days as the leader of a top alliance are effectively over. Also learn to be vague enough that your words will not be used against yourself.
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Other alliances When doing diplomacy, it is important to distinguish 3 types of opponents:
- Farms
Farms are harmless colonies that never pose a threat. Sometimes some farms band together to form a powerless alliance. Don’t give a NAP (non aggression pact) to these people, conquer them.
- Mid level alliances
Mid level alliances are those that are coordinated and strong enough to be able to hurt you, while they are too weak to go for the win. It is these guys that you want to be friendly with. Be honest and forthcoming with them. Make NAPs. Especially if they are somewhat near your hive (of course no other alliance should ever IN your actual hive). These people are in it for the fun and honour. Give them that and you should gain some valuable allies.
- Top alliances
Top alliances are usually limited to about 4 or 5 per round. These are the people you are playing against when going for the win. Be very careful when making NAPs here. Don’t agree to deals that “split the map”, unless you absolutely have to. Always try to be at war with only one of your competitors at a time, but also always watch out for backstabs from “uninvolved” top alliances.
WarUnlike conquering, in a war, your goal is not to gain crystals. It is to destroy the opposing alliance by killing their units. Taking their crystals and relics is only the reward you get for achieving that goal.
In general, it is best to be on the overall offence in a war, but easier to defend in each individual battle. I won’t have enough space to go into great detail here, just some pieces of advice about top level war:
- It is essential to disable the opponents infrastructure (gates, radars) and, likewise, essential to defend your own gates and radars
- Spam units (squad of just 1 armor infantry) are insanely powerful if correctly used. They give cheap battle reports, confuse the enemy and can obfuscate your army movements
- Getting a training base up and running in the middle of the enemy infrastructure (usually by capturing it) is devastating, since spam units can now be mass produced cheaply.
- When offline, every player needs to “park” their army at a secure spot, far from the front line.
- Nukes can be useful in some specific situations, but are usually evaded by top alliances. “Nuke fields” put up for defence near your hive never work and are bound to help your enemy more than yourself
- While big battles give awesome battle reports, it is actually best to pick of your enemies’ armies one by one (if you can manage to do so)
- Spies and spy protection are of supreme importance
Keeping your alliance informedAs a good leader, you should keep all your alliance and sub members up to date on world events which they might have missed. Mass mail big battles, NAPs, anything of importance. Although maintain the morale. People are not working for you, but trying to have fun. In a top alliance at war, you will probably ask members to be online for many, many hours a day. Keep being around a nice experience.
WinningOne final word: Once you have made it, be a graceful winner. No one likes gloaters.
- Xeeron
EDIT: In the above, I was pretty short on wars. This is still not a complete treatment of wars, but here is some more detail on a lot of typical war tactics:
Why have a war?Sometimes, you have no choice, because someone else attacks you. If you attack, it might be to gain their relic, or crystals, or simply to knock out some alliance that could become competition later on. And, of course, wars are the real fun part of BD.
Before the war startsAs a leader, you should prepare your alliance for the war. That means, first of all, you need to have a rough idea when it will start. This is easy if you are the ones attacking, or when a timed NAP runs out, but even in the case of someone attacking you, try to guess it. Look around the map to check who would have an advantage in attacking you, who is in the position to attack you, who is building OPs that are dangerous to you.
Then, tell your alliance when and where the war will happen. Have everyone more their units close to the border with your enemy (but not right at the border!), at some safe parking place. Advise them to get spam squads ready, to build up oil and energy, and to allocate more time for BD in the comming days.
When the war startsA lot of ground can be won in the very first few ticks of the war. If you can influence or know the exact tick it will start, get everyone you can online. Once the war starts, you want to overwhelm their inbound radar with attacks. Send out as many spam attacks as you can. Every single one of their OPs which is withhin ETA6 or so of one of your OPs should be under attack.
There is no need to scan targets that are attacked by spam, but it is a good idea to scan some target and send full squads to them. This forces them to do incomming scans on all targets for defense.
Of course, if they spam your OPs, you also need to defend. Have sat scans up on the main battle fields, in case you get jammed (jamming their colonies is usually a waste of energy that you need for more important tasks, but quite a lot of alliances will jam you non-the-less). Radars and gates are the main priority in this phase.
If you can upgrade or capture a training base behind enemy lines, you can easily produce a lot of spam squads to form a "spam bomb".
While the war is runningAfter the initial rush of spam squads, you will pretty soon be left with 3 parts of the world:
- Zones that you control (no enemy OPs)
- Zones that they control (none of your OPs)
- The battle zone in between
The main goal in a war (apart from killing their units of course) is to expand the zone you control and push them back to their colonies.
In your zone of control, you can: Farm, take spawning relics, move long distances and, most importantly, park safely without fearing their your units will be killed while you are not online. The larger this zone, the better for you.
ParkingBiggest noob mistake of all: Not parking at a safe place.
There should always be an ally-wide known parking place. This needs to be a good bit away from their nearest OP (think ETA10) and even farther from their nearest gate/silo. If possible, all players should park here. The parking place should have lots of spy protection.
Parking close to the enemy is a bad idea for obvious reasons, but even if you are not very close to the enemy, parking alone is a bad idea. If they can place an OP and move to your army in less then the time you'll take to be back online, you can not park alone.
Staging OPsIn a war, spies will be everywhere, and getting spy trapped is one of the surest way to lose your army. If you want to move into enemy territory, and need to stay on an OP for longer than 1 tick, you should place a new OP of your own. This staging OP will not have any enemy spies on it (still put 50 spy prot, because they might move spies there soon) and is an ideal starting location to attack enemy OPs from.
You can also use staging OPs to assemble several players' units for a big attack.
AttackingYou should only ever attack if you have overwhelming odds. In a very close war, you *might* attack if you will lose some ranged units, but usually, this is to be avoided.
Keep all your attacks short range (ETA3/4). Have others close to your starting OP, so they can back you up if you are about to be ninja'd.
Attack targets are:
- Badly parked enemy armies that can be wiped out
- Gates/radars/silos to be taken over
- OPs at the edge of the enemy front line (to expand your own safe zone)
A war dayA "typical" war day will go like this:
1. You log in and find your army at your parking place. Ideally, this is an open gate.
2. Log into your chat and ask others where the enemy is/what the current goals are.
3. If any gates closer to the front line are open, gate there. If not, move to an own OP close to the front.
4. If others have placed a staging OP, consider moving there.
5. Scan enemy OPs, try to take over undefended ones, try to kill units on defended ones, all other war business.
6. Once you have to log off, tell others and intel you might have gathered (placement of enemy units, etc).
7. Move your army to your new parking place (I like to do this with ETA2 delay always, to keep the enemy unaware I am offline for 2 more ticks).
Some random war tactics:Spam Bomb - Attacking all enemy OPs with single unit squads without scanning. Also very effective to trigger enemy colony shields
Spy trap - Trying to lure enemy armies onto an OP where you have a high infiltration spy
Scouting - Sending a spam squad to an enemy OP with the intention of getting a BR to know their exact army composition
Fake defense - Sending many spam units to an OP under attack. Since units sent to friendly OPs can not be scanned, the enemy has to guess whether you are defending for real. Always send to arrive at the same tick as attacker
Ninja - Attacking an enemy army that is returning from an attack (either because it attacked a colony, or had to turn from a defended OP). Since the enemy can not recall anymore, his only hope is for his team mates to help him.
NOTE: This is the reason why you should never attack long range in a war. Too easy to ninja you, if you do.
Suicide squads - Attacking a big enemy army with only a few ranged units after the big army has been hit by a nuke or spy attack. Your units will die, but more enemies will die with them.
A suicide attack. Notice how the attackers wipe out a force more than 3 times as large.
nukes - Nukes usually do not hit anything if your enemy is a top ally. They are still valuable though. Either to force them to spend energy on ions (if you manage to nuke an AFK army), or to downgrade gates/radars that are hindering you.
If you attack with a nuke, attack 1 tick AFTER the nuke hits, that you know whether it was ioned or not.
- Xeeron
