Best tips and tricks - no cheats !

[supremesaffgee]

Well I'll go ahead and start a thread which I hope will be populated pretty quickly. Any decent tips and tricks for the game, stick them in here for all to share.

I'll begin with an obvious one - but important nonetheless:

ALWAYS deactivate your military build facilities when not actually building any units - saves stacks of cash ! One thing to watch is that you have to activate them again through the facilities screen (bug) rather than the fabrication screen.

[high empty]

To clear that up...

Always do it, not to save cash, but to save face.

You may have unlimited missles, cause i've never seen a missle take land!

Tech trading is a must.

Research ANY thing that gives you a complication bonus FRIST!

Light Inf 2 are kick ass.

[monty845]

Here are some, all are at least somewhat explotive, judge for yourself if they rise to the level of cheating:

WS-1B/2 Artillery, buy the plan from china, build 20-40, and pound your enemys in to submission with the longest artillery in the game, use recon units in advance of them to spot and trigger garrisons. If you are careful, they will almost never face direct attack, and the AI fails to respond effectively. (make sure you have a 1:1 ratio of trucks)

Consumer goods, agressive manipulation of the consumer goods market can net you trillions. Based on available resources, consumer goods prices will rise, you stockpile as they do then sell a massive amount, causing a crash, stockpile again, rinse and repeat. I can pull in 4-500B every cycle (maybe 2-3 months) if you have enough consumer goods production. Basically using this method you can expand world consumer goods production signifigantly, without causing the price crash that the supply increase *should* cause. (target price for sale $50-60k/unit). Make sure you sell before the price starts to drop, it will hit a point were demand decereases eventually, if you don't sell before this, you wont be able to move much inventory at top price. Depending on your production capacity, you can ride the price back down to around $40k/unit before cutting off sales and stockpilling

Same as above, but for OIL/Uranium/Maybe something else, works best with consumer goods though...

The AI likes to send units off in to the wilderness, if they have, and the unit is out of gas bypass it, move on, you save the ammo, and when the nation looses, you get free units.

Use recon units to trigger the garison units to bombard them down, they withdraw when the new day starts, so keep moving around the target, coming in to the second hex out, causing ZOC creap and triggering the garison for more artillery fun.

Merge units bug... you can split units in half, when you merge them back they have 100/150% strength and will heal up, you can increase them to 150/200% by merging half of a third unit, so with 3 units, you can get 2, 200% strength units (1 full unit of strength for free after repairs are done). When used with transport aircraft, paticularly the 747-ERs, you can carry alot.

[Stylian]

Take advantage of what ever resources available in every single town hex of your region if possible. This means, when ever you want to increase production of a certain good build needed facilities in a hex of an existing town and avoid if possible the construction of an additional industrial complex. This means, even in the case you need to construct six new coal mines, do this by construction two coal mines in in three cities which have the resource filter has a light red indication first.

This does not only saves you funds, it also helps you keep "inflation" at bay and in addition allows you to exploit a town's resources before it is too late. I have noticed that if i build two factories in an otherwise virgin town, I am not allowed later to exploit the available resourses such as ore, food, timber etc.

So, first the resource in a town, then the factory, and then the industrial complex.

[Chris30]

@stylian how do you build mines in towns? i always get red circles in empty towns when i try to build a mine there.

[Stylian]

@stylian how do you build mines in towns? i always get red circles in empty towns when i try to build a mine there.

In my experience, the town has to be completly a virgin in terms of development first. Then you can build a mine there.

[Mitchell]

The only way it's going to let you build a mine is if there is at least a minimal level of the appropriate resourse (depending on the type of mine you wish to build) in that hex. The same goes for any hex on the map, whether there is a town, industrial complex or military base there or not.

[Chris30]

The only way it's going to let you build a mine is if there is at least a minimal level of the appropriate resourse (depending on the type of mine you wish to build) in that hex. The same goes for any hex on the map, whether there is a town, industrial complex or military base there or not.

hmm i dont get it. there a lota high red resource fields for ore and coal in the "Ruhrgebiet" in west germany and there a lota virgin undeveloped towns on those fields, but i dont get to build there any kind of mine, tried to build there a mine in land development and the production menu, always denied with red circle. What am i doing wrong?

[Mitchell]

Sorry - I was answering the question from the other way around - why you couldn't build if there were no resources present. I expect that mines (and perhaps other types of facilities like timber and agriculture) can only be built around a military or industrial hub.

It seems that other installations, like research centers and factories, can be built with a town/city as a hub. Makes some sense, I suppose...

[Stylian]

The only way it's going to let you build a mine is if there is at least a minimal level of the appropriate resourse (depending on the type of mine you wish to build) in that hex. The same goes for any hex on the map, whether there is a town, industrial complex or military base there or not.

hmm i dont get it. there a lota high red resource fields for ore and coal in the "Ruhrgebiet" in west germany and there a lota virgin undeveloped towns on those fields, but i dont get to build there any kind of mine, tried to build there a mine in land development and the production menu, always denied with red circle. What am i doing wrong?

I have tried this too on the german map an indeed it does not work with mines and timber. But it does work with farms and water production. For this, especially if food and water is a scarce resource, first develop any available potential in towns before you build any other improvement there. If you build a power station and a factory for instance in a town hex that could afford 4 or 6 farms or water production facilities, you will not be able to build any of the latter and thus you will have to find an alternative location, pay the construction cost for an industrial complex and miss in addition the benefits of the town population that generally results in to higher supply levels and thus more productivity...