Deadlock

                     Author Robert Camp

Contents

1. Introduction
2. How you start the game is critical
3. Developing Resources and Technologies - Time is of the Essence
4. My favorite Attack Strategy - so far this has worked every time
5. When all else fails, Cheat!

1. Introduction

I am an avid WarCraft and Command and Conquer player. I have never
played Sim City, Civilization or other empire building games. I
really like Deadlock. I have been playing it for about a week now
and thought I would share some of the things that I have learned.
It is pretty easy to beat the computer, though each game takes a
long time, just by using a few techniques. I am sure there are
others and if you have some, please feel free to share them with
me. Who knows? There may even be some cheat codes or something
that Accolade hasn't told us about yet.

I should tell you that my approach to winning Deadlock is always to
destroy all of the enemy forces. You can win by building the most
City Centers first, but I am a war gamer and I play Deadlock to win
by destroying the enemy, one by one. The strategies presented
herein are employed with this in mind.  In the beginning I lost
most of my games because I wasn't familiar with the paths to
upgrading my technologies. I wasn't even familiar with what the
technologies could do, and honestly I have been playing as a human
mostly and am not familiar with the special abilities of all the
races.  Once I was familiar with the technology pathways, I learned
that it is fairly easy to win if I just got off on the right foot.

2. How you start the game is critical

First and foremost is where I start building my first settlement.
In a game against 2 or more computer opponents, it is going to be
a lot harder to win if I have to take them both on at the same
time. I have learned that if I situate myself so that I only have
to deal with one of them at a time, it increases my chances of
winning greatly. I usually pick a corner of the map where there
will only be one computer opponent to deal with at first. Once I
have defeated him, I can move on to the next one. The other
advantage of this technique is that sometimes the other or more
computer opponents will get into fighting each other and leave me
virtually alone while I build up my forces.

Having some time at the beginning is important since the computer
opponents start out with more guys than we do. I try to leave some
distance between me and my enemy's settlements so that I can
prepare a defense before they attack. The more spaces between you
and them, the more time you have before they are close enough to
attack you.

The AI seems to know if I have a weak defense and will come into
my settlement and attack early in the game if that is the case.
Remember that before you build a factory, Colonizers are the best
defensive unit you have. I try to have a couple of them patroling
critical settlements until I can build other units and defensive
weapons.

3. Developing Resources and Technologies - Time is of the Essence

Once I have started a game in the right way and have some time to
develop resource I make it a priority to get a good supply of the
basics right away. I don't do much offensive planning until later.
You really need higher technologies and a lot of resources to wage
war.

I usually go for Synthetic Fertilizer then Molecular Bonding and
Nuclear Fusion first. I inspect each square before I build a Farm,
Power Plant or Surface Mine to make sure I get the most resources
possible from that square or group of squares. I will sometimes
colonize an area that is several sectors away from me just so I
can take advantage of better sources of Food, Wood, Iron, etc.
Before I colonize any area, I inspect as many areas as I can to
check their resources and to look for Shrines that contain free
technologies.  Even if they may be several (as many as five) areas
away, I will usually opt to go for an area that has a Shrine.
Getting a free technology right in the beginning, along with the
ability to immediate begin researching other technologies is a
real boon early on in the game and well worth the risks involved
in creating a settlement somewhat distant to your City Center.

4. My favorite Attack Strategy - so far this has worked every time

As the enemy begins to move closer to my City Center, I also build
new colonies closer to him, trying to end up with one colony that
is two areas distant to him. This colony will be my
offensive/defensive front.  Hopefully, I can engage the enemy from
that colony and he will not attack me anywhere else. Here I build
a strong defense with Laser Defense at first and my first research
for weapons is Rocketry. Once I have Rocketry I build for silos
for launching rockets. I also build four more silos on an adjacent
colony so that I can launch 8 missiles at once if I choose. Each
colony can launch a maximum of 4 rockets at once. Each Scatterpack
missile costs $100 and 25 tons of iron so you have to have a good
income of both money and iron to employ this. But I love this
strategy because it basically incapacitates the enemy until you go
in and take him out.

I start with 4 missiles each turn, targeting the nearest colony of
the enemy and build up to 8 missiles each turn, hammering away at
the same colony over and over. This keeps him busy repairing his
colony which costs him resources and usually consumes all of his
attention. Usually he will not attack back, unless he too gets
missiles, in which case I speed up my attack strategy. I hate
missiles coming at me. By this point in the game the opponent
usually has Energy Deflectors and AntiMatter Deflectors. However,
the missiles still do damage that drains his resources and keeps
him off of my back while I prepare for his downfall. The continual
missile volleys alone will often debilitate his colony to the
point that you can just waltz in and take it over with a small
army. I have destroyed City Centers with the missiles alone.

I then begin developing a small army of SAM Troopers and Fusion
Cannons.  Once I have about 6 - 10 troopers ( or Battle/Assault
Troopers ), and four or more Fusion Cannons, I am ready to take
out that colony of his for good.  I hammer him with 8 Scatterpacks
while attacking with the troopers and Cannons. That usually does
the job - an entire colony of 5,000 enemy taken out in one turn.
As a human it is important to give each trooper the Bezerk command
for attack.

5. When all else fails, Cheat!

Here is a cheat that I found in the program that will work wonders
most of the time in battle situations. Here's how it works:

Each time at the end of your turn when you press the End Turn
button, the computer saves the game in a file called Autosave.sav.
If there is a battle to be fought, the battle will be the first
event to occur after the game is saved. Therefore, you can fight a
battle and if you don't like the results, Load the Autosave.sav
game back in and replay it. Each time the battle is played out,
there will be a different result, probably because of the random
factors programmed into the AI. I have played some battles as many
as 8 times and watched the outcomes. In many cases, I will win or
lose the battle depending on the random factors. There are MANY
RANDOM FACTORS that you may not be aware of. If you try this a
couple of times, you will see what I mean. You may not always be
able to win a battle using this method, but you will get your
choice of the most favorable outcome available.

There is more I could talk about, but I think this is enough for
now. There is still so much that I do not know about this game.
There are a lot of things that I would do to improve it too. I get
tired of all of the micro managing of resources, probably because
I am impatient. At least we don't have to micromanage each unit
during battles.

DeadLock Hints, Cheats and Tips Robert Camp 9/21/96. If you like
this game and have anything to share about it, email me at
themagi@best.com.


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