 Alright, trying that again, there is a really fiddly emulator bug that I can possibly fix later by changing the renderer, but that is not worth the effort right now. So I'll go back two days of ruin, which frankly, as I said, is the good advance wars for multiplayer. Alright, let's try another one of these trick maps, maybe. This one is the hardest map in the entire game to get an S rank on, so let's not do that one because it's a very fiddly and difficult path. The map is trivial to win, and almost impossible to get a good rank on, for a bunch of reasons. What a good ol' dual falls is always a fun classic one. Let's just do it. Alright, so we got Gage. Gage is power, with the mission info. See, so naval and indirect units get a boost in the CO zone. And this is a puzzle map, so you can see it's pretty symmetrical. Blue obviously starts with an extra factory up here, because otherwise the AI can't compete with the human, nor can it really compete with the... Oh, it actually starts with fewer cities on blue, which is interesting. Really interesting because first player in all the advance wars games has an extreme advantage. So really the goal is to hold a majority of the cities, so hold this line, and because of the shape of this map, with these little S-curves and the water, plus the fact that the game plays us as the long range guy, this one really expects you to leverage this water to put interdiction attacks with artillery and rockets over that water. So that's going to be the strategy. So of course we start with just babies first to maximize the economy, and get these factories as soon as possible down here. And for good measure, we could get a transport copter to accelerate that further. And actually I think it's worth waiting on. I don't remember if that's the right player now, but we'll find out. Alright, now we should look at what this other guy's commander power is. So it's pretty much just attack and defense up, but it's a big zone compared to his little zone. I don't need to put him in anything yet. See, this space can capture here, and then, see how it can attack, it'll be able to capture here next. So this guy, meanwhile, can move here, even though he's further away, and the next round will be able to move up here. That is how you maximize the economy. I doubt there's a better start to this map. Let's get a bike first to start moving up around the corner there. Let's not build big units back here, I can always build them up front a little later. I'm not going to build aircraft yet, I'm actually going to keep this nice and simple. I will build, however, a couple more bikes back here to just slowly make their way across. Airport. Now we want to build something, see he's got an anti-air, he's got that, so I'm going to build a tank, so it can just be up here in the way of those infantry that are coming. Now, but that's fine. I'm just moving these guys forward, and otherwise we're going to build almost all our units near the front. You won't be able to get any more of these cities if I just keep sending tanks around. Spectre. The furthest away guy. Use him, that way you have more latitude to move the other guys up. They'll be able to capture these two cities. Now let's start building some rockets. See that range? I can just park a rocket here, and it'll cover this area, and it'll keep itself in supply on the city forever. I'm just going to keep building rockets and cover the whole map with rockets and things to prevent air attacks. So he's got this guy who can't get over here yet, but next round he would destroy the rockets. I'm going to build an anti-air in the middle for now. I'll let him capture his city or two. And he can probably optimize that start a little bit. Partly see what the AI does. I could weaken this anti-air, so it won't be a threat to my infantry. Or I can deny him one round of economic development, and I'll have to waste a turn attacking that. I could actually build a missile. If I build a missile, this thing will just attack it. I actually do want to build the anti-air first. Now what I don't want to do, the alternative to denying him a round of economics up here, would have been to build here an air unit, maybe a bomber or a fighter. Not an attack helicopter. But then I would have needed this to weaken that thing first, which is what I did not do. We'll see if this was a smart move or not. But for good measure, let's build a fighter all the way back here. And that'll be an ace in the hole. I can just park it right here. And the AI really won't be able to send air units after me without ground support. He's still going to get it, or a little bit later. I'm going to watch the range of these things. They can move farther than new things. See what that is? He's got to stay just out of range of that. Go ahead now and build another rocket. I can't actually get there. Keep him there. So this thing's going to waste its time. And we have a medium tank. That'll be a mech or two, or that plus the rockets will take care of that anti-tank. Eliminated that. I'll look where these guys can get. Not too far, too far, but it's actually OK to back off. It's a tiny bit right now. We can get to that rocket. The other rocket's healing. And this rocket is fully protecting most of these units. Everything else is just in some of the positions One way to go is to have the rockets and the ground war come around the corner. Got transport copters waiting to jump in sitting along these edges. I don't remember if that's a great idea or not, but I think I'll go for it. I think I'm just going to focus on a much simpler game. Wait there. So now nothing can get through unless this thing attacks that first. For risky. Now, for now, I can move this here. They're mutually accompanying. He won't do any area units for a long time. Remember, you can't lose this map unless you really eff it up. This is all about how do you maximize your score. You can destroy that, or I can weaken that. So now that anti-tank is going to have a choice. If it attacks this medium tank, I'll take significant damage, but also it won't be able to move forward because I'm not going to build a unit, and let's build nothing back there. So I have a lot of options here, but let's prioritize the rockets taking out the anti-air. But he's got nothing new about my air, so check out the bomber. Look how useful that is. This guy can actually safely retreat. This anti-tank could just retreat a little bit and do a come out. This guy can move through his home. He's not going to move for a bunch of the rest of this game, unless I completely conquered that side. I built another bomber. I might be able to do this not the way the game told me to. Good measure. I can do some significant damage to that anti-tank. He's got almost no military units already. I'll square a few days, remember? I haven't decided what I want to do with that bomber yet, so this guy can't make it around in time. So my fighter still has free reign. Yeah, it's built nothing but anti-air. There's nothing left. So I could have had a quick cap waiting down in the wings here. That anti-air is pretty well covered, so I'm just going to need to build a duster. Oh well. Now that we see how the score goes on this one, we can do it again. No reason not to start moving this guy around, actually. This map seems to start you with so much economic power that you can't lose no matter what you do. Sacrifice one anti-air. One bomber. Can I get over that bridge? Yeah, kind of. If I do this, I'm going to lose that guy. Like that. And then I can do something like that. I do not reserve enough units to block that, though. Which is just a pure oversight on my part. Take through, get the weak bomber. Of course, it builds more. Play this again. We always need to focus on captaincy. We'll just focus on wiping out these enemy units. Just get a bunch of aircraft to pop on top of those things. You can't build anything, and that's the end. Because look, we make $11,000 more than him. And doing it the way the game told us to. Because this does already feel like a bad score. We lost way too many units along the way. There's three anti-air. One weakened in capacity. There's two weakened... Oh, the CPU did a rare thing. See how it combined the two weakened units into a stronger one? Huge move that very rarely do people think to do. It feels sloppy, and will kind of just work. Only kind of. We've got things out of ammo, so we actually have to go back to the place where I was building that airstrip. There, because all we can really build now is off that fighter. Nothing else matters. And that was boring, and probably a terrible score. What? How was that an S-rank? Okay, that was a better take. We could do way better than that. I could get the score of a 400 easy. All right, S-rank it is. Not doing anything that the game told us to do. So let's try to make that more efficient. How can we do that? First, we still want to just capture stuff. You don't need to worry about the economic development that much, because we'll just always be ahead of a simpler plan than usual. We still want to just build infantry and bikes back here. Probably does make sense to have one transport helicopter in old story before. So we don't need the immediate... Normally, because we can't be behind by any amount of money, or it's just over. But here, we start 13-9 on income. So while I did just do that first time, I'm actually going to go down and then take an extra turn to finish that thing off first. I think that is a more optimal route. Still transport helicopter, anti-aircraft, etc. Let's build. We have infinite monies. It's not a matter of money. Let's build... We build an anti-air now. It's good against infantry. It'll also make it unlikely. Another anti-air just awaits that helicopter more effectively. I've got a factory down here. We build the rockets. And the rockets will move up here just to keep those infantry at bay. This guy is going to come over to be ready for a quick cab. These guys will just ensure that we do have a good economy. We'll put it on this city. It won't be supplyable. But instead of taking out that transport helicopter, I'm going to engage in a little bit of economic denial. Pedium tank. Also, missile. Virgin Air Force effect. All this guy. See how that thing is threading the needle? Not that it matters too much. The helicopter is still annoying. One more anti-air. I'll use the transport helicopter. It's no big deal. But it might still be for the quick cab at the end. Building that factory is likely to be blocked. And that's the end of the helicopter. That'll take some significant damage. This guy can get over here pretty well where the rockets come in. See, I just want these overlapping fields of fire. So we'll have to stick to this corridor over here. I'm just going to hang back. I will have to deal with this. One anti-air back there. See, one cheapo artillery wouldn't be a bad idea. Alright, let's see what the AI does. Okay, it got distracted and it retreated. Fast out, quick cab attempts. This is all still just big. I actually got to get rid of that CO. For good measure. Also, I don't think building structures impacts your score in any way. So you might as well drop landing strips around when you've got free cycles. Now it's avoiding me. Now I'll move on to that city. Overlapping field of fire. There's one safe spot right there. It's in the way. What you might well probably do is attack that medium tank with the MegaTank, getting it out of range. With everything but the bomber. A little bit. I'll shuffle units around to get some healing in, especially when your resources are unlimited. Now it has to move. That is an excellent trap that's set there. In fact, this guy is better off going here. It does leave a gap still. Yup, it attacked the medium tank as expected. In the CO zone. Let him have that city. It actually doesn't matter that he has that city. I'd rather go to the CO zone. I also have plenty of latitude. Stop it from catching the city. Another bomber. This anti-air is going to come over here. Look at that. It's almost like bombers are good at everything. Staying out of range. Now I've just marched up the field. Those have an overlapping field of fire. There's only one safe spot. That is easily addressed with a fighter. I have to land it here so I can't build another bomber. See that tank? That tank? That didn't seem like it would do much. Suddenly really useful. There is no more danger up here at all. So I might as well just move this guy forward toward the end. I just want to move everything up. Still could have set this up to go faster. I really got to just spend a couple of dollars building a quick trap and have it hang out in the sea. It's pretty moot. So there's no way for him to get close enough to lose with these bombers. Increase the range of all indirect attack units by two. On two. I can use that to end this probably. It'd be enough to do it. See how we couldn't build as many anti-air because I spent more time building rockets and holding the ground first. Alright, I always forget if I use this, then this guy can't shoot. I never use CO powers in this game. It's a pretty big range. We've got to get rid of the anti-air before anything. Just sit on his base. Pretty much be the end of it. I didn't even need to build that many units without moving. Got faster and a lot cleaner, but it could be cleaner still. See, we also could have done it faster. If I had a quick cap set up, it would have gone even faster. We can do one more little toy map maybe. Some of these will take a long time. Save those for another day. Here's a little toy one. Alright, so I don't remember the deal with this one, but I'm pretty sure I want to capture that radar dish regardless. Definitely want to be able to capture this. If I want to use that thing. Get these guys in the mountains. Alright, I don't remember what the deal is with this map specifically, but I'm really just going to focus on playing it cool. Alright, you got caught by the trap. And now that unit's in deep shit. Okay, lots of little units. Let's just use this now. That seems like the best bet. Okay, he can still see me. I should have... What should I have done differently? Maybe nothing? Let's see what else he's got down there. Destroy, damage that. Okay, so there's a medium tank down there. Alright, we can try that again now that we know there's a medium tank that's going to show up. Let's see what that looks like. A medium tank might be the biggest thing he's got. So we can try this one again. Knowing that it'll be there. Alright, there is one more unit somewhere. Alright, that can't be an S. It's an S, okay. Oh, we could have done that way better. We lost way too many units. Alright, so now we know there's a medium tank hidden. So instead of what we did before, let's actually make a trap. I can send some over to get that missile later. About 100% kill. Let's see what happens if I back off a tiny bit. See, he got trapped because he couldn't see my guy in the radio tower. These guys healed up. Sacrifice that guy. If I could have left one of those guys to use the missile or call, these things just reveal. They give you income, but they don't do anything else. Get that rocket just like before. Alright, let's see what that looks like. Oh, he did get to it. I think you do want to waste the inventory on the radar early. Still not too bad of an outcome. The first run by luck was better. Yeah, I let him have that. Still doesn't really matter. I wonder if that damage even comes against my score. I actually never really knew for sure. Oh, that took a turn too many though. Yup, and I took that extra hit. Well, luckily wherever it is, I'll bump into it. Oh, it's going to get me there. I'm invisible in my own city. See how it'll just stall for time like that? Guaranteed to win, but it's just ticking away at your score. Alright, we can do that faster. Let's do that one more time. Alright, now we're going for maximized score. We know the lay of the land. That guy will go back there. This guy will go capture. That guy will go capture. Still want to get that radio tower. You hide in the mountains so I can see what's coming. Everyone else just scatter into places where the enemy will be caught. I know that is not going to get the medium tank. It's definitely not going to be just sitting there. Still let that happen. That guy hiding down there. There's the medium tank. See how the blue one could make a lane even though it got caught on the trap. Now other units can pass through it. Alright, now we can that. Get rid of that tank. I'm mostly focusing now on weakening everything to reduce the amount of damage we take from stuff. Medium tank is still pretty powerful. Oops, meant to build an anti-tank. That should have been an anti-tank which we got in the essence of the A. Only build the recon at the end for a mop up. In that case, I'll just build the rocket. Alright, I should actually think about what would this look like. So the medium tank, where do they start? All in here. The medium tank always comes into the second wave. It's always outside a range of that. So you wait on that one more go, possibly. You leave the artillery hidden up here. I should look what the maximum score on this one is. Anyway, I think that's enough for today.