Nintendo/Advance Wars General

I guess Advance Wars is falling into Star Fox canon dispute territory then?

Although you'd have a point when it comes to faction competition; Wars World is pretty much the four nations vs Black Hole (with some of the latter members defecting to the former), and the war between Rubinelle and Lazuria is over as far as second-hand reading goes for me.

Hard to continue the Rubinelle v Lazuria war when the entire planet got fucked by space, the two most competent leaders got assassinated and fucked by a nuke, the rest of surviving society got fucked by a General Ripper and a batshit insane scientist's bio weapon, and what remains of both armies gave up on the war and allied to take down said general and batshit insane scientist.

Tabitha's fate is still left up in the air though, and of course there could always be a prequel to show the actual Rubinelle v Lazuria war.

edited 30th May '17 10:46:52 AM by TheAirman

Waylon's also AWOL, with nobody finding any body.

I always figured Lin just capped him off screen considering what she does to Greyfield in the next mission.

I imagine Waylon escaped, and for the sequel, he and Tabitha would team up to be the next villains.

I wouldn't mind an Advance Wars that is a prequel to Days of Ruin.

So I bought Days of Ruin through Amazon.

When in the campaign do I unlock the CO Zones and powers?

Mission 16.

So in other words, you cannot use CO powers until after the last battle with the Lazurians? Shame, because all those times playing Brenner could have benefited from his CO power.

Correct. They seemed to have liked the idea of marrying a new mechanic to character development for Will.

Such a shame we can't use Brenner's CO Power because he gets himself killed before the CO Powers are introduced. Would have been super useful during the Beast and Lazurian arcs too.

So I'm stuck at Sunrise in Days of Ruin. Any suggestions?

Also, it's a shame we can't control more COs than Will a great majority of the time, especially concerning their CO Powers.

Pick a god and pray.

Alternately, look up a walkthrough and follow it to the letter. Lord knows that's the only way I managed to beat Sunrise.

I'm doing just that. Attempting to rush the furthest cannons with a Bomber, but something always gets in the way. Not to mention that even more things get in the way when I attempt to go for the other cannons.

It's been a loooong time since I've last played Days of Ruin, but I think I know what you're talking about - I believe it's the final mission where you face off against Caulder in his armed-to-the-teeth lab, right?

You'd want to draw Caulder's free AoE attacks away from your main offenses, so that means clumping up a lot of low-value units like AA gunners and Medium Tanks together where his cannons can see them. Then you'd have to rush the side cannons as fast as possible with solo bombers, because otherwise the cannons will target the bomber instead. Aside from that, I can't give you much more - if I remember correctly, mech spamming isn't as effective in DoR as it was in Dual Strike or the GBA games. Then again, it's mainly because Sami doesn't exist...

Mech are slightly cheaper in DOR so they are effective on maps with mountains.

Ahh, Sunrise. It's been many years since I played that map, but I still remember a few things.

What I did, first, was play it multiple times to figure out how the base defenses worked. The turret lasers are pretty easy to predict. Fire, rotate. I forget if the front door lasers fire at set times, or if they adjust if destroyed (That is, the left one fires on Day 1, middle on Day 2, and right on Day 3. Do they keep this order if one is destroyed, or keep going so one fires every day?)

The mortar cannons are the biggest worry, so you really need to learn how they operate. Note that while the threat range indicator shows them covering the entire third of the map, they only launch the typical 5x5 diamond shape of missile silo missiles. Meaning you can avoid a good deal of damage by grouping your units against the edge of the blast zone, where it can only tag one of them.

I remember building a missile truck and using that as bait to lure the bombs away from my other units, and counting the cost value of all other units to make sure. I'm not sure if the targeting is based on cost or some other value, but cost seems likely.

One thing I did find is that, unlike Rachel's missiles from Dual Strike, Caulder's bombs don't consider his own units at all when targeting, rather than calculating them at negative value. I had one situation where a bomb could have hit a few units of mine (I forget what they were, probably a single tank and some soldiers) but instead targeted a wartank of mine, even though it was surrounded by his units, doing a ton of damage to his own side.

I'm quite certain the factory doors pump out a prearranged assortment of units, but I didn't account for that in my playthrough. Still, it's probably good info to know exactly what they'll spit out (And perhaps use some test playthroughs to figure out if this order is adjusted.) One dirty trick, though hard to pull off, is to block a unit by surrounding it when it comes out of the factory doors so it can't move or attack, preventing other units from coming out8. It's cheap to stop a Fighter from leaving by surrounding it with infantry and tanks, but Caulder's cheap already.

In my experience, Caulder almost always boards a Fighter plane. Aside from bombers, don't worry too much about having an air presence. Caulder is almost always going to have air superiority. On the bright side, if you can tag him with missiles, even with his absolutely absurd defensive bonus, I've found doing so tends to scare him off, at least for a little while.

Got very lucky today.

I got a copy of Dual Strike preowned for $15 dollars from Eb Games. Very nice when they go for 40-50 on eBay.

It was the only copy they had in the entire country, so I got lucky it was only about an hour away by train and I had nothing else on today.

That's the only AW game I didn't own already.

Double post, but I think it's been long enough for it to be alright.

I beat the normal campaign today. It was a lot of fun, especially the last few missions. I was a bit puzzled that I only had 25 medals at the end, before I checked what the requirements were and realized you just need to either play loads or cheat and use the design room.

I found Crystal Calamity to be the hardest one of them all. It took me about 6 attempts because I kept getting screwed over by the enemies C Os firing one of the silos during their Dual Strike. It was the only mission I got lower than a A in annoyingly. I still got an overall S rank, so it was alright though.

I'm not sure if that was just me though, since a friend I talked to found that one easy, but found a bunch of other ones I thought were simple difficult.

Crystal Calamity is probably one of the hardest for sure for the reason you stated above. It's one mission where you'll definitely need to use Sasha's regular CO power a lot.

The next missions are all infuriating as well but for different reasons: Dark Ambition and Pincer Strike have crippling Dual Strikes courtesy of the enemy COs you face, Ring of Fire's second front is extremely difficult, Surrounded and the final mission have a turn limit, and the penultimate mission... you'll see for yourself.

edited 23rd Sep '17 7:52:44 AM by CybranGeneralSturm

Ring of Fire was a cinch for me. I just sent up the Anti Air's I started with and that was sufficient to clear out the top with I think only 2-3 other units for back up.

It helped that I used Grit for the bottom, so Koal never got closer than the north west and south east corners of the volcano.

I think I used Jess up top since I didn't want to waste that missile unit.

edited 23rd Sep '17 7:57:50 AM by 32ndfreeze

For Ring of Fire, Grit for fighting Koal and Javier for fighting Clone!Kanbei is the safest bet by far due to the Com Towers in the latter front.

Pincer Strike is pain incarnate without the right CO setup and rushing/blocking strategy.

For the Future! isn't all that difficult if you use the blue and green armies properly; it's the red one that will get its ass handed to it.

edited 23rd Sep '17 10:43:39 AM by RainingMetal

Unless you use Javier, in which case Red can take care of itself.

Double post and necro at the same time, but this is one heck of a surprise and it's worth it, at least in my opinion.