 And we're live! So today, we're gonna take a different attack here. We're going to explore how to actually get a good score at Advanced Wars. Now, once again, I don't want to talk about math, I don't want to talk about, like, how much damage, what percentage this unit will do, and, you know, move exactly this here, this all that kind of crap. I also don't want to talk about the equations and how these scores that you're seeing up here are actually calculated. Because we're gonna play this game intuitively, heuristically, using kind of real-world, or at least real-world, feeling tactics. So, you can see a bunch of scores here for different maps, but the one we're gonna do is a map that has been at Advanced Wars for a while, and I think it's a good learning one. Right here, Lands End, T-25, T-2-25. So, let's get right in here, and I'm gonna take you through it, I'm gonna play this, and I'm going for an S-Rank. Uh, it's gonna be real embarrassing if I don't get an S-Rank, but I'm assuming I can Babe Ruth it here and just get an S-Rank on this thing. So, what I'm gonna do is play this map from Orange, try to get the S-Rank, explain in excruciating detail exactly what it is I'm doing the entire time. Then I'm gonna play it again from the blue side to show you the only possible way blue could actually win this thing. Now, unlike the other streams I've done before, this one is part of the campaign mode, at least in Advanced Wars days of ruin. So, what that means is that this one has sort of a predefined AI pattern, and the AI is gonna be a lot more apt than it is in those other sort of versus maps. Also, this map has been balanced for a score, so there's sort of a par, I'm expected to complete it in a certain number of days. So, the first thing that's striking about this map is that I'm Tasha, and I'm playing against Will's. This is Will over here, Will's blue. The first thing you should look at in any map that you're gonna win like this is the disposition of the cities. There's one defensible block of cities here for blue, there's one frontier area here, with just two cities in it, one factory. There's sort of another little frontier area here, there's one kind of back area here, and then there's Orange's block. And what should strike you immediately is that Orange has 10 cities, but a total defensible area of 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 20, 22, 23, so Orange has got 23 cities pretty much safe if he doesn't fuck up. Meanwhile, blue, while they start with more 14, they max out at 16 in the safe area, maybe 18 if they can hold onto this. So, blue has to strike a decisive blow in here early, or the game's already over. But we're being timed, and we're being scored, not just on winning, because all these maps you can win trivially if you're even remotely capable at advanced wars. These maps are not about winning, it's about winning well. So, we have to maximize our three scoring attributes to get an S-rank, we need more than 300 points, and there's a par 100 in three areas, technique, speed, and power. We'll talk about those kind of as we play, but again, no equations, you can do this without doing math. So, I'm Orange, I want to win this and I want to win it quickly, so I want to maximize this economic advantage, and I want my cities to be way ahead of his as soon as possible. So to do that, you can see here, what I'm going to do is follow a very precise pattern, because these cities are all of certain numbers faces away from each other, and the first thing I want is this helipad. Helipads are worth the same money as cities, they give you a thousand gold a turn, but also they let me actually build airports I guess, they actually let me build units too. So this infantry is going to go here first, next round I'm going to build a bike. Down here, I need to get to that factory as soon as possible, that factory is the key to winning this thing, that factory is the key to everything, I cannot let blue get to that factory. So I'm going to build two bikes, and those two bikes are going to rush up toward that factory, and I'm going to build two infantry, because you'll notice that's how much money I have left. No reason to build bikes out here, because bikes suck going through rough terrain, and these two infantry are just to capture these two lagging cities here. One of them is going to then go over here to guard my base, and one of them is going to slowly work his way up here. Alright Will, yeah, you're certainly going to handle this one. Now look at this, right away the AI built a transport copter. They got to take advantage, blue, of their money advantage while they have it, because it's going to go away quickly. He's going to take that transport copter, he's going to try to get an edge in over here somewhere, and this guy is going to make a beeline for that factory. So I have two options here. I could try to prevent him, deny him this factory, but that's kind of risky, and it's going to be kind of tricky to get my guys over here and do it. It'll also hurt my technique score. So what I'm actually going to do is play a very standard conservative strategy, and I'm going to focus on economy early. Notice I'm just moving these guys up as far as I can. Now I'm going to build an anti-air right here, because I won't have these factories right away. And while I have this factory here, I've got to spend three more rounds building infantry out of that thing. So the biggest danger is if blue uses all this money to build some battle copters right away and send them over and get in the way of my infantry. This anti-air will be extremely powerful, and I can slowly move it toward the front, covering this coast the entire way. And that's really all I can do. And with my last little bit of money, build a bike. Sure enough, make it a beeline. And he's got a medium tank. Probably not the best move. He's doing it to get in here and cover this quickly, but if I were blue, I would do it differently. So now these guys, again, just moving as far as possible, I will skip that city because I have more advantage of taking these cities and having these bikes in a position up here. In the thick of it, because this is the choke point right in this area. And the infantry down here, as soon as he captures this city, is going to worm his way up here and go after this city and this city, because I don't need these two cities. I can make $20,000 a month or a day just with everything but these two. These two are just bonuses. I'm going to move this guy as far as possible to, again, be covering as much of my frontier as possible. And take this airport. And I got some money at $11,000. So if I don't spend any money, I could actually build something like a bomber next round. So this is already a juncture. I can either build another bike and the next round I can send this guy here or I can build a bomber next round. I am actually going to build the bomber and I'm going to save the rest of that money for later. Now, in a lot of maps, early bombers are not great but notice how this map is kind of setting me up. Tasha here, her power, her CO power makes air units better. Will makes ground units better. The map is telling me, because this isn't just like a versus map. This is in the campaign as a bonus map. It's telling me to use my air power. Oh, what's this? Look at this. My economy is already matching him, 14 and 14. So I'm going to build that bomber and I've got a tiny bit of money left that isn't useful yet. And blue has already lost this. Now it's just a matter of getting points. Blue has lost. Oh, in fact, so there's nothing else to do. I could build an infantry here. It might as well save the money right now. Oh, he's got economic superiority again. He's got that factory. Now look, I built a bomber. He immediately built an anti-air. Anti-air is one of the most important units in advanced wars. I'm going to move this guy over here because the last thing I want to do is have to remember to pay attention to this area. Because he's going to keep building these copters probably. If you get an infantry over here, I can't actually move guys from here over here quick enough and he could get a snipey stealth victory. So I'm going to have one infantry just hang it out of my base just protecting it. Well this guy moves up to capture these two bonus cities. Now you'll see once again I caught up city-wise 17-17. I'm putting my CO in this bomber. One I want to charge up my CO as quick as possible. And I want to be able to take out anti-air with bombers without taking damage. With the bonus that I get for having my CO in this bomber, I will be able to destroy an anti-air in one hit. As long as the anti-air doesn't attack me first, I'm in a really good position. Now I can't build much else fancy over here. And he's going to send these units in quick. Can't even build a copter because it costs so much money. What I did just there, I'm going to build a bike to be able to capture these cities now. Not building anything else because I want to save money for the fact that I'll have this factory available next round. Oh, there's a bunch of people watching. Look at that. There's a whole ton of people in here. Hey guys. So anyway, you can see now while you could write a fact for how to do this map like unit move or unit move, there's a little bit of fuzziness in what the AI will do. And two, that's not fun. Don't play games like this, like that. Play them like they're a military sim. So look at this. Look what's going on here. This bomber is invincible. The only unit that can challenge it, this anti-air, can't get there for one more round. So this bomber, I could either deny him economy or I can really fuck up his day. That charged my CO meter quite a bit as well. Not that I'm going to use it. The CO powers in this game mostly suck. I almost never bother with them because frankly, as I fill this meter, the radius that my CO's power extends to help other units grows. I'd rather have a big radius. So now, I think it's time to talk a little bit about how I'm going to maximize my score because now we're kind of into the thick of the actual combat. So power is pretty straightforward. Basically think of it this way. Destroy a lot of enemy units per round if you can. One hit kill enemy units whenever you can. And generally, you want to have a round where you destroy like four, five, six enemy units with one hit kills. That's how to maximize your power. Just be really aggressive. Take out units. Don't attack things that you're not strong against. Now, he hasn't built any air units that are a threat to me yet. So I'm not going to build a fighter. I'm actually going to build another bomber. Speed, there's just a par. A number of days. I'm on day six now. I think I have to beat it by day 20 to get the full 100 points. I suspect I'll beat it around day 15 or 16 at the rate we're going right now. Just beat it quickly. The quicker you beat it, the better. The technique is a little more complicated, but all you really have to think about here is that the technique score is basically something like the ratio of units that you build versus the units that the enemies build. So in general, be elegant. The best way to think about technique score is to be elegant. Build as few units as you need to build to win the map. So when you get toward the end, if I'm playing as a human being, no, I'm building fucking bombers every round because fuck you. Bombers, bombers, bombers. I'm going to make sure that I win no matter what. Every fucking inventory, 50 units on the map all the time. But to get a high technique score, you want to beat the map as elegantly as possible. Build fewer units. Once you are winning, once you have victory assured, stop building units. The drawback is if you stop building units too soon, if you get overconfident, if you fuck up, it's over. So once again, look, he's responding to the fact that I'm building all these bombers with a bunch of anti-air. And now that anti-air is going to threaten my bomber. I'm going to hide up here, but I'm going to take out that anti-air. Because again, my CO is in here, I can one hit kill them. And you can see that the anti-air can't get to me because of this messed up terrain. So I've got another round to get into position. I could block right now. I could block him from building more units. But he could attack my anti-air with this mech and it would fuck my anti-air up. I'd like the anti-air to be available. Also, this tank, while he can't attack it yet, is going to be able to get right up in my grill real quick. Actually, he could. So what I'm actually going to do is take that mech out now. And I'm actually going to do some suboptimal attacks. Let's get rid of this guy. Bring the bomber in. Now I could either, once again, we have a juncture here. I can either just keep building bombers and keep building air units and try to cleverly contain these anti-air is going to keep building. Or I can build a few ground units to supplement. I'm going to build a medium tank to slowly get him working up there. And I'm going to build another bike because the one thing about days of ruin that's really different from the old ones is that you have this bike unit. It's a vehicle. It can't be loaded in helicopters or whatever. But close infantry support and combined arms are now an actual tactic in advance wars. So you want to always remember, especially on big maps, if you're making a push, if you've got a bunch of units coming forward, moving through an area, getting far away from your supply lines, augment them with a couple of bikes. Just following those tanks. You want infantry following the tanks. Tanks alone can take an area, but they can't keep it. They can't take cities. They can't actually do much but block, deny or destroy units. They've got to have infantry support. This guy's slowly worm his way in to catch my bonus cities. Now he is fully focusing here. So he has not built any air units that are a threat down here in a while. If he does, I'll build an anti-air. But for right now I'm totally safe. No reason to build any units at all. That guy's just going to hang out there. All right, so that was a pretty equivalent exchange there. See? Anti-air, anti-air, anti-air. He's coming down at me again. He's coming down at me with an infantry. He's going to try to take these. He's got no air support units, so I don't have to care about that right away. I can deal with this later. I'm going to ignore that guy for now. Now I'm going to one-hit kill these two anti-air because they're still the biggest threat to my power. That guy can't actually get in. He can't actually attack me. So now I want to capture this. I don't want to fire, I want to capture. I don't want that guy to die. See, this guy, if I was playing against a human, I could stick him somewhere just to draw fire away or perhaps to just block or tank or whatever. But I don't actually want to do that because I'm worried about score here. I want to be elegant. So I'm going to do this. And this guy's not going to attack. He's just going to move back and hang out in these protected woods. This guy's going to hang out on the mountain. This guy's just going to move forward, as is this guy. And, oh look, I have a bunch of money. What should I build? Well, he hasn't built any fighters or anything, so I might as well just keep building bombers. Because he's not building fighters, I don't just have air superiority, I have air supremacy. There's nothing I need to do. Yeah. All according to K-cock. Okay. So now look, now finally the AI is doing the smart thing and build a fighter. That fighter is going to fuck up my day if I'm not careful. And he's got a guy here ready to take out my business. And I've only got $24,000. So first things first, what I'm doing here is risky. You got to make sure, you know, by leaving this all undivided here, I got to remember to not forget to go over there or I could easily lose a factory. So this still needs six to complete. Let's combine units here. That anti-air can't get in here. So my bombers still have complete free reign to do basically whatever they want. So this will, I'll lose this anti-air, but I'm blocking him. Blocking him can come in. Now these bombers are starting to run out of bullets. I got four shots here and two shots here. I'm going to need to resupply them. And because that air field is so far away, I don't want to do it by sending them back there. So sometimes soon I should build a couple of rigs or APCs because those can both directly refuel and I can build a temporary air base or two to heal in case I do get attacked. So how should I handle this? This fighter is going to fuck my day up next round. He's going to come in and then he can just start taking out my bombers with impunity. So what I'm going to do first, I could build a fighter to go after him, but I do need to worry about this guy. I'm going to build an anti-air here. That'll make this area, it'll take out both of these units, make this area invincible, and that means that fighter can't come down here and menace this air field. So I can use this air field to build some fighters to come up here in a couple of rounds. Also going to build an anti-air here. Now I could have waited around or two and built it here, but by building it here I can then move it up and already my bombers love an area to fall back into because next round I can move this guy up like here and I can pull the bombers back. There's nothing else interesting to do, but since I have some money, build a battlecopter. They're just generally useful. See what the AI does. Alright, so that fighter's hedging. That fighter's just there menacing everything. Not actually the best place for a fighter considering where we stand right now. So I got to prevent this guy from taking the factory, otherwise it's over. I've got to move this guy up here. Now sure, that leaves this area undefended, but the enemy has literally nothing that can hurt me over there, and oh no, he moves this fighter over here. Don't care. Let's keep this guy a little bit north out of the baleful gaze of that fighter. Oh, now I've got the factory. It's over. It's just a matter of mopping up. So this guy's a danger. And now, that guy is covered by these anti-air. I could take it out in one shot, and then my bombers are forfeit. So now we're going to back off a little bit. A big part of Advance Wars. A big part of being good at Advance Wars. Oh yeah, I still got some shots here. So while I could, and probably should build an APC right now, I'm going to build another bomber instead. And I'm going to... Even if he comes in with this fighter and takes out one of my bombers, I can then take out the fighter with my two anti-air that are hanging out. Now watch this. These guys can only move that far, right? So what I can do is move this guy up here. Oh, he's out of ammo. Shit. Okay, doesn't matter. Forgot he was out of ammo. I'm going to move this bomber here. Sure, he's almost out of ammo now too, but this guy can't come through. Nothing can hurt that bomber. So I'm blocking for free. If I blocked my medium tank, this guy would just fuck it up. But anyway, as I was saying, one of the important things about Advance Wars is knowing when to pull back on your thrust. You want to thrust in, attack, take an area, but later, once you've secured an area, once you've got some stuff, don't overextend. I could have pushed in here. He would have made a counter attack or taken some losses. Why not just wait for him to come in and then counter attack him? Knowing when to attack and when to pull back is 90% of being good at this game. I'm assuming you understand the basics like economy. Interesting, that fighter is trying to menace my base for no reason. Alright, he didn't take my bait, and I can't actually attack that thing. So I am thinking about building a fighter here right now, because then this guy has to retreat. If he does, I'll follow him with the fighter, and he can't really retreat over here because I got a bunch of anti-air. Yeah, I'll do that. And if he attacks me, he'll do a bunch of damage. First strike matters a lot, but then the anti-air will destroy it and this guy will heal, so it'll be fine. Let's get my anti-air right here for maximum coverage. Now what to do? He's building a ton of anti-air here, and I don't want to lose any bombers, really. So let's see, he can come in about that far, and he can get on top of this. However, I got this guy who can get on there. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to use this fresh guy who's got more ammo. Now see how he didn't completely destroy it? This anti-air was in a defensible place, a factory. Factory has three stars of defense. Two, it wasn't in my CO zone, so it was just a normal bomber. It wasn't an augmented bomber. Now there was a slightly more, I don't know, efficient way to handle that, what I just did there, but I think what I did instead is a little more demonstrative of how the game works. So you can see this guy is going to come in and attack that weakened bomber. But now my other bombers and everything else are here. I've got my rig to build a temporary airport. I've got my new bomber coming in, and because I really haven't been taking any losses, I can actually afford to take a bunch of losses if I want. So there's really nothing else I can do except... Bonus City. So watch, he's going to take all this bait. He is going to attack that bomber. So, why was that a good idea? Now he can't build anything there. He covered his own factory, and now he can't build anything on that factory. Now look, he's building expensive air units to try to counter my air superiority. Not supremacy, because he does have fighters. I can't just use my bombers willy-nilly. I gotta be careful. This fighter and this guy. I don't want to be in the range of both of them, but I want to be in the range of his right there. That way, this anti-air can cover anything. If I get attacked here, I can cover it. Because I can also attack there. It's a beach by moving this guy out of the way when he attacks. And I'm threatening his fighter, but his duster is not threatening me. Only his fighter is threatening me. Over here, he's got two anti-air left. I can probably afford to lose some of these units now. I've only got a little bit of ammo left. So what I'm going to do, move this guy in a little bit. I'll move this guy up here, because what I want to do, is come here and build an airstrip. I could rush in, but I have an economy advantage. I might wait another round. Wait for him to come a little bit closer. Or fuck it, I can just go in. Don't use the long-range unit. When I short-range unit, it will suffice. Now I'm going to protect this guy. He's going to get everyone's way. See what I did there? These units can't really get in here and attack my things effectively. I'm not going to go in with this bomber, because I'd like him to be ready. He might as well hang back a little bit. So even though the airstrip isn't done at the beginning of the next turn, this will automatically refuel and resupply both of these guys. So I've got a bunch of free resources here. I could build a bomber, and I will, but equally valid at this point would have been building one rocket here and slowly move it forward. Or a medium tank would have also been okay. My goal is to destroy the rest of his units and win the map with the maximum possible efficiency. I've got a little bit of money left. I will build a bike, because bikes can come in here and block factories at the end. So another factor here. This was something kind of new in this advanced wars as well, but you'll notice some of these units have little Vs and Is next to them. So you can turn this on or off in days of ruin for normal matches versus matches with humans. But the idea is that as a unit fights and survives, it gets stronger. So veteran units do a little bit more damage, have a little bit more defense. You see it shows here, level veteran, attack up, defense up. This guy, level one. So you sort of are rewarded for keeping units alive. Now see, I lost a bunch of stuff here. He took a really strong position, but I was able to get the factory. And now my main goals are to take out these anti-airs and preserve my bomber fleet. And notice how he's building basically nothing but anti-air. This guy is a danger, because I can't get my anti-air in to stop him. Now I need to build a bunch of fighters. You see what happened here? Let's force him to choose. Is he going to go attack a bomber? Or is he going to come after my weak fighter? Stay here, so if he attacks me with an easy range of those anti-air, I'll build another bomber. Because whatever. Alright, so how can I manage this? Because I'm in the CO zone, I can trivially take out his CO. But see, I can't get the anti-air down there. But I can still do a bunch of damage. Make him choose. He should send one of the anti-air up to stop me from capturing that city. Let's sacrifice a bomber. And everything else is just moving forward for the final assault. I've got to come in with overwhelming force to get a good score. I've also soon got to stop building units and just assume that everything I've got is enough to finish. Oh, he came after my fighter. That is perfect. So he can't build much per round anymore. So now it's time to take out these anti-airs from positions of relative safety. See this veteran unit? Even though he was in a city with two defense stars, this was a veteran unit, a tech up. Now, even when they're weak, you generally don't want to attack anti-air with helicopters. Helicopters charge butter next to a hot anti-air. Let's just get everybody in. I'll lose the bomber if I do this. But that unit on the start of his turn is going to have to heal. And because it's going to have to heal, it's going to take a significant chunk of his already dwindling funds. He's only getting 15,000 this round. Well, let's just even take that thing out entirely. Why not? At this point, I need units to block. And you see I left that strip there just in case I need it. Probably won't at this point because I used my one-week-in bomber as a sacrificial lamb. This guy doesn't really do anything important. I'm just having to move around over here. This guy is still a real danger. He's probably going to come on here and hurt one of my bombers significantly. But they're leveled up and or within the realm of my CO. So they won't take that much damage. And I can destroy this guy with this anti-air. And more importantly, he does not have the funds to build any fighters. I will move this guy back over here to hang out and kill that guy next round. We need to build units at this point. I'll build one more medium tank just for good measure. Thus ends the reign of Blue's single duster. Let's deal with down here first. This is a simpler situation. Next round, unless this retreats, I'll destroy it and then I'll kill him. Let's move this bomber in. See, I did all that so I can use this non-leveled up bomber in the zone of my CO's power to one-shot that anti-air. This bomber, I am going to move back to heal so I can bring him in if I need to for a final assault. And I should be able to get it down to 1 or 0. Yep, I one-shotted him too. Now... See, I don't want to attack from the road. Road has no defense. Roads suck. Roads are even worse than planes. Roads are actually way weak positions. He will have to come attack me. These guys are just moving in to mop up. Just in case, I'll start capturing. I'm going to build a recon because it can move the furthest and it can just get in and block one of these things. I'm going to move this APC in for the same purpose. Just to block a factory. He's parking on top of it so we can't build anything. It's a good idea to always be moving even your kind of auxiliary backup useless units way in the back because if things go wrong, it's always useful to have a couple of units slowly creeping up somewhere. To maximize my score, I'm going to not build any more units at this point. I should be able to just win this. See, he spent his attack stopping my capture. He built some useless anti-air. Now I have to position my units such that they block him. So we can't build more units. That is even more important than destroying units. Might as well heal that guy, even though it's pretty much over. So there's nothing left to do. Pretty sure that was an S-rank. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a relatively high S-rank. He can build one unit. He is probably going to build an anti-air. Maybe... We'll see what he builds. So I'm going to have to take that guy out. That's a pain. Doesn't have a lot of fuel left. I wonder where he's going to go. I got to build one more unit just so I might... Because I don't want to risk this guy running off somewhere stupid and me having to spend several days waiting. I'm not building any more units. And it's over. Alright. Yeah, it would have been real embarrassing if I didn't get an S. Alright. That is not my highest score ever but I think the mathematical maximum is 450. You're not going to get that pretty much effort. So the way this works... Really. Speed, there's a par. Like a number of days. If you beat it in those days, you get 100 points. You need 300 points to get an S-rank. So if you get above 100, it means you did better than par in that metric. So in this case, I beat it earlier than I needed to. I destroyed a fuck ton of his units in a really efficient manner. I could have probably beaten it quicker if I had built more bombers and taken more losses because my technique score is so good. I could have taken a lot more losses. I could have used my bombers and let them be destroyed and just powered over him and I would have gotten a higher speed and power but lower technique. Of course we won. So you can see also I like this disposition. So look, I spent that much money. I lost that much money. Look at how much he lost. And look at what he built. I basically built mostly bombers. And then a handful of supporting units. So it's bikes, bombers, and everything else which is support units. He built a whole bunch of stupid ground units that weren't really that effective. These mega tanks did not buy him much. So now, it seems like orange wins no matter what. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into the regular battle versus mode. Play the same map with the same COs from the opposite side and see if I can beat the orange powerhouse. So I got to do that in free battle. Let's see, it's 20. I'm using a keyboard so my mappings are a little weird. I think it's under trial, yes. T25, lands and... So let's make it exactly the same. So this is Tasha. Will. Except you'll be the CPU and I'll be. All right. I'll leave the AI normal. I could try it with other AIs too, but basically all the AIs are equally shitty. Let them have balanced behavior. Oops, I left Fog of War on because I'm stupid. We're not playing this with Fog of War. My strategy would be completely different if this were Fog of War. Now because we're playing free battle, we're not going to get a ranking or a score or anything. So I'm going to vaguely play with the idea of getting a good score, but I'm going to play like I'm the AI because Orange wins this map no matter what. Orange's goal is to get a good score. Blue is just desperate to win. So I'm going to use the kind of dirty, rough tactics that I would use against an actual human. So everything we talked about before, I've got a huge economic disparity and I've got to take advantage of my superior economy right now. So I'm going to build a bike because I have to take this factory or it's over. If I can, I really need to deny Orange that factory. I've got to get a presence in here desperately. So I'll build... See, I could build a bike here and go for that factory right away or I could build a recon and go attack his guys. I'm going to build a bike. Now I do need to catch these, but not immediately. I need to harass him quickly. I'm going to build a transport copter, a battle copter and just come straight in and try to deny him as much economy as possible. With my little bit left, I'm going to build a bike just to get up there. It's all my money. Now, if I were blue, if I was looking at this, if this was a challenge map and it had a ranking score, I would assume there's a clever way to beat it. And I would try to build transport copters and units such that I could sneak around here and suddenly strike and take his capital. But I'm not going to try that now. So what did he build? He did build that anti-air. He's only got one. I've just got to avoid that anti-air. So let's just move this guy in and see what he does. See, I've got to get over here as quick as possible. I've got to get behind these lines, too. I've got to attack that thing. I'm going to build another battle copter just to come straight across here and cut this line right here. And I want some infantry support. So I'll build another bike. I've got a little bit of money left. I'm going to hold onto it. All right. Get my factory. Get my other guy in here. All right, I've got to avoid that anti-air. So I'll just skirt the edge. So he's not built any anti-air over here yet. But as you recall, the biggest danger to me if it does the same stuff that I did is it'll start building a bunch of bombers over here and just send them straight across the top. So I'm going to build... He does not have strong ground units, so I don't need a strong ground unit response. I'm going to build an anti-air. Both your dissuade bombers are coming over here. And to be able to take out these guys. And I'm going to save up to build a fighter just in case. Oh look, he's caught up to me economically. It's no good. He built a transport copter. He's going to try that same bullshit and come up here on me. Good luck, dude. Oh yeah, the AI made a crucial error here. So see this anti-air? Can't actually get in there. I can deny him that factory. It'll cost me a helicopter to do it. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because you won't be able to finish that in time. In fact, I'm going to go down there and see if I can capture that thing. Might be tough. Alright, so what's going on down here? He's building some ground units to slowly move in. That's dumb. He doesn't have any big air units yet. Our transport copter is not much of a worry either. I should probably have some more ground units to spin around over here. I'm going to take a big risk. I'm going to build a bomber to come straight across that way. And another bike to start trying to capture his economy. Oh yes, Andrew. I was making mistakes, was I? Well, my highest score ever on that map is something like 398, I want to say. And yeah, you can play this map over and over again and really optimize it. There's probably a very specific path through to get. I don't know if a 450 is possible. 450 is not possible on every map, just by the way they're designed. So I got this bomber here. There's still nothing opposing my bomber. He has no fighters and these anti-air are not that much of a threat to bombers as you saw when I was playing. So I'm going to lose this guy too, but the factory is safe. Let's just start capturing stuff. Build another anti-air first before I start building real units. I just want to defend this area as much as possible. If I can deny him economy in this region long enough, while simultaneously maintaining reasonable unit attrition, meaning he loses more units than me, or at least more dollars than me, I can actually win this despite the fact that this map is 100% orange. I'm using this for much yet. I should build something. I'm going to save up and I'm going to start building a couple of fighters and things to come over here to deal with these guys. I'm also going to build right now though, a tank. So see, I gave up those helicopters. Oh, a bomber. He presented me with an interesting conundrum. I'll let that helicopter be for now. No, don't attack from the road. Oh, that doesn't matter in that case. Alright helicopter, you're going to finish the job, you're going to get out of the way. Look at this, look at this. I'm going to let that anti-air hang out there because I don't really care that much. He can't get back around. Oh no, look, if I destroy a unit he could actually move in here. He's got nothing else going on over here though. Just this guy who's going to sneak up. Let's threaten him. See what he does. I don't need a real fighter, I'll just build a duster. That's plenty to defend against that threat. Doesn't have enough ground units here to be really worthy of building anything significant. I'm going to build a mech and I'm going to slowly move over that way. Yeah. Now look, his economy is still better than mine. But see how I made all these inroads? I penetrated deep because I've got to disrupt his chain. I've got to prevent him from getting that economy. I've got to force him to earn every city he takes. Alright, how can I do this optimally? So that bomber is not in good position. Alright, tanky tanky. So he's going to get that city now. Come on behind and just start bombing stuff. Just hang out right there. He'll have to backtrack and attack me. Can't attack everything. I always got some units here, but it's mostly still anti-air is the best unit I can be building right now. Yep, so you can see I'm taking many more losses because I'm playing a very disruptive strategy. Because the unit, the map's very one-sided. It's my only real chance. See now I've built a bunch of anti-air down there. So I kind of tricked him. He's going to come over behind and continue to take these units out. It was just a free attack. I don't know why he did that. So I don't want to be in range of that thing. I'm going to be just outside of range. He still does not have any significant ground units here. So anti-air is right here. Are still a very effective tactic. He also doesn't have any anti-airs over there. It'll take those a while to make their way up. So I think I may build a fighter now. I don't really need one. I can take out all these helicopters with this stuff. These guys aren't much of a threat. I'll just build an infantry to take that out. I'll let him keep his transport copter. I'll just come over and menace these guys. Now I'm going to spend the money and have my CO. And these medium tank brothers are going to roll in. Mega tanks just have all but useless. Mega tanks don't have enough movement or attacks. Interesting. I could deny him that economy. I want to stay here and prevent him from building units. Battle copter. Alright, whatever AI. See that was very poorly placed. I'll let those artillery be there for a little bit. Just keep on moving in. Now my goal is to capture some of that economy. And what better way to do that than a bunch of bikes. There's nice roads. Very open terrain here. Those anti-airs are nowhere near a threat yet. So I might as well do some damage there. I'll have to pay to repair that at the beginning of the round. I'm going to keep that guy there and just prevent him from building ground units. If I can get an economic advantage, I'm going to hold it long enough to build enough of an army to then push. And all those battle copters. The battle copters are going to come up here and attack my base, aren't they? Well, I need a fighter anyway. But scare him away. See, if I'd had more close infantry support, if I'd been able to pull that off, I would be more in a position to capture this stuff right away. However, note this. We'll lose this medium tank probably. But you can't really build stuff in that factory now. I could move this guy here. He could bomb, bomb, and it's not worth it. I'm just going to move over this way. Just can't let him build there. And these guys just have to start capturing cities. I've got a spare money, so I'll build an anti-tank. I'm just going to move in and just kind of hang out in this area to protect in general against units coming in in case he builds tanks or anything. I mean, I pretty much actually won at this point. Yeah, he made a series of very poor decisions. Alright, helicopter invasion force. Oh, he built a fighter. I just want to stay out of that fighter's range while being a threat to a bunch of different things. And now I can start capturing all this stuff. I'm going to run over there to get that factory. I'm just going to cover that. I'm going to let them advance over there near my sea. I'm going to retreat and pull back a little bit. Pull back, heal. Well, my units get into position here. And if they move forward, they're moving forward into a choke point and they're a very poor combination from what I'm going to be building up next. And because he no longer has any offensive air units that are feasible, let's seal the deal with some rockets that are going to come down here. Not really worried about the rest of that stuff yet either. Here comes the CO. Alright, there's a little strike force coming. Strike force that can't do anything to me. It doesn't have any transports with troops. So, sure, fighter guy. Just come right up here. Into anti-air land. Come over here to threaten everything, but stay out of the way of all those anti-airs. And now, devastating blows to his economy. See, by joining, I maintain the damage I already did to that city towards capturing it. These anti-airs can start moving down this way to be a serious threat, actually. This guy is almost out of everything. He needs... Very soon. To be resupplied. So, I got to capture this and build an APC first. I will also build an APC now. To start moving in. So, it is decidedly over for Orange, because I have economy superiority. Yeah, I kind of left that rocket right out there. But I have economic superiority, so I can just outspend him. And I'll win no matter what. Alright, tank. Luckily, you're in range of my anti-tank. See, that fighter is protecting this guy. I'm going to let that guy go wherever it is he's going. I don't know what the AI was really thinking here. He could land here and drop a guy on that. So, just for good measure. They're anti-air. These anti-air are just going to protect my entire coastline, so his air units can't actually make a beach head. Oh, who's got a city? They're hanging out there to get refueled. You capture the airport, sealing the deal, 100%. You go up here and get ready to get healed by the APC. You and you just defend those guys. Oh, this guy's almost out of ammo. Alright, I'll just go down here, threaten everybody. I'll send this guy up here to heal. Save the rest of my money. I guess I can build another bike. Capture some of that economy quicker. Alright, so how do I end this as quickly as possible? Right now, by capturing preferentially the cities he built. Alright, so this guy's refueled. I'll refuel that guy. I'll take out the unit there. And for now, I'll park this duster just to prevent him from building units. I'll back this guy up to heal. Oops, let that guy keep healing. Start building an inventory to capture all that. This guy's just going to continue to move in and be threatening. Oh, he's building battle copters. The fighter's just hanging out there. And that guy made a mistake. I've got a lot of money. Let's build another fighter so I can take these units out and go for the final push. I want this guy to come in just out of range of that fighter. Just threaten him a little bit. Of course, now he's threatened by this fighter too. He's threatened by two fighters. So fuck it, let's just force him out. And because... I don't need to build any units. There's not a lot left interesting to do sadly. It's just a mop up. Alright, I got the fighters. He's building a bunch of mechs, I guess. He's building fighters. That's good. They'll be useless and they'll slow down his war machine. So up here, the best thing I can do is ruin his economy as quickly as possible. Build an airstrip there to heal these guys. He's got no anti-air over there really. And that fighter sort of covers it but not completely. So I might as well do a little damage. Alright, he's got a bunch of fighters. He's threatened those fighters. With my fighters. See how they react. Let these guys heal up a little bit. And this guy, so I'm not a fuel. Let's just be a threat to the fighters from the other side too. One more round, I'll be in position. Let's finish that airport before I do anything. So by reducing his economy so much, he won't be able to build an air force. The air force he's got, those few fighters over there represent the majority of his remaining assets. And those fighters can't defend against this bomber. Let's build an overwhelming force and finish this. So the only guy that can attack me really is this guy. He's out in this forest. Now I'm a threat to everybody. Now he's got to move him. Wow, AI. Actually, the AI is acting a lot like people I play with, I guess. Alright. Well, finish the economy. Oh, this guy's starting to threaten me a little bit. My bomber. My poor little bomber. He's probably about to get attacked. I don't want to get this anti-air. With this anti-tank too close to his infantry. The one thing these things are wreaking against. They're basically, they're super powered area denial defense weapons. Because they have the range of an artillery, they attack indirectly. But they can also fight with an counter-attack direct unit. So if a tank attacks them, the tank still gets fucked up. The drawback is, they're trivially taken down by even moderate swarms of infantry. So they need some backup. Alright, I'd like to protect that bomber. So let's threaten it. Let's threaten that duster. This guy's almost out of fuel. He's been hanging around for a while. Got the infinite money at this point. Let's build a bomber. Coming straight across here and straight down. It is interesting watching a battle like this and how the... It seems like a sure win from both sides. I'm not going to play this map against myself. That would take forever, it would not be fun. For you. See, I can even get away with being super sloppy here. Alright, I'll lose the units. Just to end this quicker. Bomber over there. Got the fighter. These guys are just going to start coming down. I'm just going to start massing units. Just going to start capturing the lingering economy. I'll get that guy into the APC next round. If I'd planned better, he would already be in the APC. If I really want to put pressure on him too, I could build some missiles along the coast, but kind of already won, so it'd be kind of pointless. See, he can't afford to build areas anymore. So while I basically lost these fighters, he doesn't have anything to counter me now. We'll just come in and maximally threaten. See, my CO meter is huge now. Alright, you need ammo. And healing. You can just go hang out in that airstrip. Just got these guys out to heal. No sense in wasting them. Either heal or block. And for good measure, let's send guys in to finish this. Alright, a bunch of chats. Alright, let's finish this. It's over. Completely over. You'll see I'm playing a much more sloppy send guys in, sacrifice units. That's the way I play against humans, because we're playing against a human. Hopefully they're smarter than the AI's. But more importantly, there's no score. Oops, I left that guy to die because I wasn't paying attention to his fuel. I've got plenty of money. Plenty of Pargon. Just hang back a little bit. And then rush in. They'll kind of come up from the rear and be ready. Alright, that fighter was hanging out down there. These guys can just kind of wait. So you don't want to go here, because that's the beach. Anti-air can just drive right up there. Now, I went in there because this guy can do some damage to me. I want to get up close to him and mess him up. I'll leave him in the APC for now so he stays at full health. Sure, I can stand to lose that bomber. I've got plenty of bombers. So he attacks to do maximum damage of course. See, I really wouldn't have liked to have that mech get hit by this over here. I don't care about damage to the APC. The APC is useless to me now. Let's get this guy over here and get ready to take the capitol and just end it. So at this point, hopefully you can sort of intuit what I'm doing, but I'm pretty much just trying to minimize losses to my own units so that they'll be in a position, they'll be fresh to take out and because it's almost over, bring my veteran bomber back down. Duster is as long a range and it can come into block in this last little assault, not for its fighting characteristics at all. So he doesn't have enough units to stop me from capturing the capitol. So at this point, Mudd as well just rush the capitol. This fighter here, check this out. Go nuts, dude. It's probably good I'm not a real general. I sent a lot of soldiers to their deaths in this game. I'm tempted when you've got this helicopter here to attack like that anti-air. Not gonna go great for you most of the time. Oh right, he's out of ammo. No wonder he didn't do anything. He's out of ammo, good. So now he's basically useless. All right, hot shot, anti-air. What you gonna do? What you gonna do? Two sort of victories are happening at the same time. I can destroy all those units so I can capture that base. They can't easily build units really anymore. And he can't actually stop me. So see, by blocking there, I can just sort of freely take it and there's literally nothing he can do. The game is literally over. There's no possible set of actions to prevent this from happening. Nothing else I do even really matters. Just over. I guess I can get rid of this guy for fun. I can send some more units over here to Harry. Not that it matters. Again, because next round he'll destroy this bomber. He can't actually get in there. See? And it's over. So that wouldn't have worked against a smart human. That wouldn't have even worked against a well-programmed AI. It worked because this was a free battle so the game didn't really have any like saved strategies. I guess I could try it again on the all-out AI but I have played the all-out AI on that map before and as I recall, it just stupidly sends a bunch of battle copters at me all the time. They're just trivially taken out by missiles, so this map, if you can play this map and win it with a score of at least 350 or so, I'd say you're pretty good at advance wars. But you can see, unlike when I played orange, here when I played blue, we actually lost about the same value of units. Like almost identical losses, except I lost a small number of high value units. He lost a shit ton of really cheap units. The moral of this strategy pretty much never works, especially on big maps. So, I think we're pretty much done here. Maybe I'll do one more little map and then we'll call it a day. Nerdination, why the vertical line with the aircraft there? Yes, that is true, so I'll answer some comments from people. Why the vertical line with the aircraft there? A horizontal one would limit the space I could attack and also block more of his movement. The reason was, if I were a human in that situation, I would not have tried to go past the line because there's nothing past the line to attack. So I didn't need to limit his movement. If you went north past my line, that would have been great because he would have been out of the area that actually mattered. I made the line so that if he went laterally, I could fan out into a diagonal and catch him. So whichever way he went, I could catch him. If he went past me, I'd ignore him and build an anti-aircraft. And then my only goal was the next round. You saw he was moving the line down and fanning out. So vertical lines of battle, a line of battle coming at the enemy can be useful if you don't care if the enemy goes past you, you care more about directing into wherever the enemy actually does go. And it mostly only applies to air units. Yeah, watching Rembitov on McBaby, toddler AI, and Advance Wars as McBaby toddler. The only thing that keeps it interesting against AI is to play in the campaign mode and to go for S-Ranks or like mega scores of 390, 400, whatever. Yes, the music does sound a lot worse. That's why it's so quiet in the background. DS emulators are not there yet and probably aren't going to be there any time in the near future. I've got this thing turned way down and the worst part is it's not even using all my CPU that's poorly made. I mean, you can see here, it's not maxing out my cores by any stretch. I have a reasonably powerful machine people waving at me. All right. Any more quick questions that I'm going to get out of here because I got another two videos I got to make. Both of which might surprise you guys. They're not live streams though, unfortunately. All right, guess we're out. See you guys around. Maybe I'll continue this series with a huge map fog of war because it's going to be boring because you can't really see what's going on on the other side. Maybe I could get Scott to play with me if DS, D-E-S-M-U-M-E has network play, which I suspect it does not. It does not look like it has that because we could do hot seat. Anyway, I think we are done for the day and I'm going to stop the stream.