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Hello,
All of the Total Annihilation strategy webpages I can find are either down, or are absolute crap (even some of the big ones). For example, all they discuss are unit combos and some sneaky cool things to do, but don't talk about build orders or timing or early/mid/late game strategies at all.
My friend recently forced me to install TA so we can play. Even though I've hardly ever played, I whipped his ass on low money maps after spending maybe 5 minutes my first game figuring out the units.
For old TA pros, I'd like to use this thread to discuss TA strategy at the SC level. I'd like to separate them out into 3 sections:
1- low money maps
2- metal maps
so far, I've been unable to win in metal maps because I just don't know how to kill him. Eventually after like an hour, I just get bored and my apm drops to 5. I've been practicing a little bit, and here's what I've managed to come up with for metal map strategy:
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starting out with 10,000 metal/energy
build order:
1- vehicle station
2- basic construction vehicle (BCV), commander (COM) assist building
3- geothemal: COM and BCV make. when geothermal is done, all startout energy will be exactly 0
4- vehicle station makes 2 more BCV. first BCV and COM make adv vehicle station, and then assist with making first advanced construction vehicle ACV.
5- as soon as first ACV is out, ACV+COM make moho mine. 1 BCV makes another geothermal. 1 BCV assists advanced vehicle station.
6- after there is a total of 5 ACVs, 2 geothermals, and 3 BCVs, make a cloakable fusion reactor.
*** notes *** adv vehicle plants and adv airfields consume energy at about -80 which is the same as ACVs that are building. In other words, 1 adv airfield with 4 ACVs repairing (the max I can seem to get to repair at once) will produce at the same rate as 5 airfields.
*** notes *** up to step 6, that is the fastest I've been able to get to moho/fusion as possible with any build order. It's straight up the tech tree similar to straight tech to tanks or whatnot.
*** notes *** airplane plants typically produce less quickly as vehicle plants, but airplane plants can easily use 4 ACV to repair while vehicle plants can't due to blockage. Therefore, my main SCV of choice after the 10 initial ACV are adv constructor aircraft (ACA).
*** notes *** up to this point, I feel free to modify the BO to make defense is necessary. Defending in TA is totally overpowered. There is no good way of harassing, and in a MIDgame fight between a harasser player and a powering turtle player, the turtle player will get to the high power units first. Then in the ENDgame, the dynamics of harass/turtle changes.
7-
------ at this point, I can use my 5 ACV to make either a nuke, which would turn it into a nuke build order cause this is the fastest possible nuke build.
------ or at this point, I can opt for a production based build order. if this is the case, I make 2 advanced airfields and make ACA from them with 4 ACV repairing each airfield. Then I go straight for krogoth after I have about 60 ACA. (You can count how many ACA you have by looking at how many have been built. I always queue 50 for each of my airfields. To see how many ACA I have, I see how many is in the queue and subtract that from 50.)
------ base layout: I'd rather make krogoth than berthas because they don't die and kill everything. I assimilate my geothermals after my fussion is up, so they don't get targeted and killed. moho can be put right next to eachother in tight fashion. adv construction places for vehicle and air tend to make a boom so separate them by 1 moho's width. krogoth facility also makes a boom so put it far from other booms. with the 250 unit limit, I only need 4 cloakable fusion reactors. I build these slightly outside my base in 4 corners and then cloak them so they can't be seen.
Considering that in my previous game with my friend, it took an hour for me to get bored and him to kill me, and that in my new BO, I can get to fusion in something like 4 minutes, and krogoth something like 7 minutes, I think I have a good lead. But I suspect that after he sees my replays, he'll adopt the build, and after that, the most important part to keep winning is to know timing windows in the BO for attacking.
----- unit selection notes:
"+switchalt" to select groups like in SC. hotkey a building to automatically hotkey all the units it produces (good for ACA).
"~" to toggle health bars on all things.
"+showranges" shows ranges. good for positioning ACV next to airfields.
"+shootall"
ctrl+w selects all war units.
ctrl+z selects all units of the type that is selected.
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I feel that these 2 build orders are the best so far. They are very fast to late game tech. I only make nuke if I see that he hasn't made a fusion yet. otherwise, i go straight to krogoth.
If he's making units, I make defense and laugh at how much time he needs to make units while I can pop up defense so fast.
If he makes berthas or buzzsaw or nuke (the only things that are good with anti-turtle), chances are, I'm higher up in the tech and production power than him (due to massing ACA), and I can pop out an army of airplains really quicky and destroy it.
If he goes mass air to try to kill a key structure, if I have good base design, he'll end up sacrificing huge amounts of air (and most importantly time) to kill one of my buildings which shouldn't cause a chain reaction boom due to good base design.
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I feel that krogoth is the only offensive ENDgame unit that can't be stopped with some cheaper form of defense, so my build is centered around it.
- nukes are good, but antinukes are cheaper and faster to make. so I only make these if i'm ahead enough so he can't build his antinuke fast enough.
- other offenses are completely useless against a good player who knows how to defend, and is just a waste of time delaying the krogoth. Keep them in the variations if the other person messes up (ex: he doesn't seize map control allowing me to make a bertha close enough to him.)
- first person to krogoth gains map control. walks up to his base and builds berthas and buzzsaws in range. gg. This is the only offensive strategy that I feel will work from the D- level all the way to the A level.
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you shouldn't be giving your opponent time to tech up to berthas or krogoths and he shouldn't be doing vice versa
build flash tanks you should be able to overwhelm him with those
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On February 22 2009 09:42 anotak wrote:
you shouldn't be giving your opponent time to tech up to berthas or krogoths and he shouldn't be doing vice versa
build flash tanks you should be able to overwhelm him with those
this is on the map over crude waters which is basically an alleyway map. Also, most metal maps are extremely large. flash rushing on these maps is like going 12 pool on a huge mucho money map.
against flash tanks, build missile towers behind solar collectors. flash can't shoot over solar collectors or wreckage while missile towers can.
his first wave of flash will delay him significantly more than my missile towers will delay me.
if he goes for any form of land army on "over crude waters", i'll just build a solar collector wreckages to block all the alleys around my base.
Also, like I said, I think defense in TA is totally overpowered, especially on this map.
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lol, no way you can rely on missle towers to defend you on Over Crude Waters, it's a huge map and there's some many routes. You NEED Flash tanks to control the map. As Anotak says, any competant player's gonna rape you before you tech to w/e
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"+switchalt" to select groups like in SC. hotkey a building to automatically hotkey all the units it produces (good for ACA).
OH MY GOD
I hated TA so far because I didn't know about this!
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question: what rapes mass stealth fighters in this game?
you can stack a hundred of them micro them like mutas except easier and have them constantly reinforce as they come out of the aircraft plants hotkeyed
edit: btw i think i was wrong with the post up there... you're probably right.
also why would anyone build the defensive towers that aren't the missile tower?
ps. anyone on TL play this shit?
i'm trying to figure out strats because this will be one of the games at upcoming local lan and I want to win an easy 50 dollars. I probably can beat them all already at it but i wouldn't mind some actual human opponents.
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hmm apparently the flakker has a ground-to-air AOE attack?... meaning that mass stealth fighters in a giant stack will all die in one hit... unfortunate. I need to be able to test this stuff because I have no way of telling.
On February 22 2009 09:34 Polyphasic wrote:
All of the Total Annihilation strategy webpages I can find are either down, or are absolute crap (even some of the big ones). For example, all they discuss are unit combos and some sneaky cool things to do, but don't talk about build orders or timing or early/mid/late game strategies at all.
this is pretty typical of non-sc
back to your problem with your turtling friend:
build more nuclear missile launchers than he has nuke defense...
edit: also have you tried rushing to an air transport and stealing his commander and then if you don't have it on commander-death victory conditions just like fly his commander over his own base lategame and it'll get shot down and explode like a nuke
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http://spring.clan-sy.com/
forgive the linkspam, but this is the most active community of former TA players anywhere.
there is a lot of competition: ladders, boneyards-like setup, etc.
dl some replays and you'll learn a lot.
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btw.... default starting resources should be 1000 metal 1000 energy.
and the only overall strategy that you should consider for ANY game normal or metal map regardless of size is Tier 1 unit spam.
Basically, vehicle fac --> spam a rotating build order of flashes/gators + con vec --> expand (grab metal spots), hold enemy army at bay, harrass + contain economy with fast units. once you get enough metal/territory, more T1 vehicle factories, and you can try going air to make a death blow on enemy comm or production center with hidden stockpiled bombers.
This is the bread & butter of any high level TA. The game will only progress into the late game if the players are evenly skilled.
Everything after kinda evolves like Go. There are no build orders or tech paths that you should follow everything becomes pretty much instinctual. The mindset is like that of an AI, neverending cycle of geometric economic expansion, while making sure to use up every last resource. typically stalemates end with some kind of strategic blow to your opponent's economic heart. This can be some kind of unstoppable, well-supported T2/T3 land push that will simply overpower his army and crack his defenses, T2 bombing runs (which can be escorted by fighters and tons of scout plane "chaff") which can target things like fusion plants or antinuke facilities in anticipation of some well placed nukes, or really well-planned surgical attacks e.g. drop ships into his fusion-moho metal maker swarm, amphibious unit crawls that bypass his defensive boundary, gunship attacks that are flown in from the edge of the map, etc. The thing that you must appreciate while you plan and carry out various strategies is that your economy MUST be growing in the meantime with abundant use of shift-queuing. This is really important because production power can completely make up for any deficiencies in battle strategy/tactics. A lot of players get overwhelmed in the late game with the amount of stuff you have to do, but you can never stop laying down unit labs/moho resource fields.
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EPT
