by
SPOOK
Tips from : Genie, Toto, Hummel, Shasa, Ant, Glynis
Welcome to the MK tip page .. Now I hope you will learn something in here.
Few things that you should remember.
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The Ideas and tips in this page is not all my ideas, most of it comes from postings in the MK BBS. so if you posted it .. THANK YOU. |
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You will not find a cheat in here. This is all skill related tack ticks and will only work if you use it correctly. |
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If you have some thing else that you can add to this page , let me know and I will put it in here. |
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Lets use the knowledge to become better players. |
| Metal Knights Home Page |
| Metal Knights Poll Page |
| Metal Knights Committee |
| The Mokeman's Metal Knights Philosophy and Strategy Page |
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It is vary important to expand as fast as you can. |
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Each city and resources in your possession will generate income next turn. |
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In the beginning expand using Transport and Soldiers but don’t forget that it is better to expand with Panthers and, Hurks. |
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Use a Cargo and Soldiers to expands on water maps as well as the other 2 combinations (remember you can use a Cargo to move units in side continuous cities and resources). |
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Don't be afraid to sell Units before they have used up all their moves, to be able to expand more in the first round. (Selling a unit will give you 50% of its initial price). This can enable you to have 14 cities and 100 resources as to 6 cities and 40 resources in turn one. (Again all depend on the map) |
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Remember that expansion goes hand in hand with technology. Your aim is to expand and build more new Technologies. |
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Expand to your opponent's base faster than he can expand to yours. |
Placing your base is the most important deciding factor in any game.
Take the following into consideration:
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Placing next to a City or a Resource. |
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This could jeopardize the safety of your base should you opponents take that city or resource form you. Remember that if your opponent takes your city, he will only need 20 units (any units) inside that city or resource next to your Base to get the maximum surrounding effect, thus increasing his attacking strength. |
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Will you be able to expand in more than one direction? |
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Do you need to build roads to get to the resources? |
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Will you need to have access to water? If so can you put your base on the water edge or can you take a city and build a factory in it at a later stage? |
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If you have Resources you must collect the income from them or your opponent will. |
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STOP ASSIGNING TRUCKS. |
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Assigning trucks will cost you a lot. |
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If your opponent takes that resource he will not have to buy a Truck to collect the income from that resource. |
Every dime you can save/get counts in MK.
When you have a Factory and/or a University in one of your cities it is important to try and keep that city in your possession and to try and hide it from the rest of the players.
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Hiding your City: |
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Expand in a few directions to keep the opponent guessing where the Factory/University is. |
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Fortify a few cities around the Factory/University city (Even a few pork's in each can help to divert his attack at the wrong city). |
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Should you have to pork up your Factory/University city, do it well 15 pork's or more. Just like your Base. |
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Build Forts in all your Factory/University cities. |
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It is important to get rid of those cities with Factories close to your Base if there function is no longer needed. You can do this by over taxing the city a few rounds. In a few rounds the city will become a ghost city. Now retake the city and use it to get Tax from it. |
What can I say?
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Practice, Practice, Practice |
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It is important that you do not go in to a map blind. Play it in local mode. |
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Get to know it. |
Try and find out from other players where to place your Base, then go and practice it again.
Using a Tax Scheme will increase your city income each turn (That is if you expand and get more cities).
You can gain up to 50% more city in come each turn if you use a Tax system.
Look at Tax in this page and you will gain some useful info on TAXING
Using your Radar you can see up to 8 units in a Base.
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You can see the first 4 units in a Base/City when you go in to the round. |
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Exit and re-enter you will see the last 4 units in a Base/City. |
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All the Units in between the first and last 4 will not be shown to you even if you go in and out a 100 times. |
The Units don't rotate they just reverse. So you can only see the top 4 and the bottom 4.
Lets say a city has units A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I (1-9)
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When you first enter you'll see A,B,C, and D. |
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If you exit once and re-enter, you'll see I,H,G,F. |
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On the next time you enter you'll again see A-D etc. |
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That is, you should notice Unit 'E' will never become visible. |
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Also notice how the second time, unit 'I' was first (reverse order). |
To see more you can do the same by using a Commando Unit. This will allow you to see 7 Units every time you spy on the Base/City. So you will see up to 14 Units with the Commando.
Remember
You can only do this if you are not the last to play in that specific turn - else the turn flips (naturally),
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Use long-range weapons to identify which cities you can just move into with an Infantry Unit by attacking the cities with the Long Range Unit. |
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When there isn't an air threat, use Hawkeye's for target identification first, before using ground range weapons. |
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One Artillery unit can identify ten unfortified cities and still make an attack; the other range weapons can identify at least one. |
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This will eliminates much wasted effort and movement. |
If the opponent's unit is surrounded, its efficiency is decreased. Its attack and defense power drop by 10% for each unit surrounding it.
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You can use any unit you like for surround. Porcs, hercs, flags and also soldiers. |
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Every unit counts as 1 so 20 flags would do the surround you need to get to 200%. |
Thus surrounding a City, Resource, Unit or a Base will improve your attacking strength of your units.
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Max Surrounding effect = 200% |
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20 units (any units, cities, flags and Mines) will give you the 200 % |
From here all you need is a few units i.e.: Tigers (Cheap and very effective with 200% surrounding effect in place) to take out those Porcs.
Ok, consider this. You have your factory in your city but it is surrounded by enemy units like this with the enemy units being X's and your factory being B and your unit's as 0's
xxx
xB
xx
Let's say that we want to kill all the enemy units (the X's) around the base with M-31's by selecting the M-31's from our base and attack by moving the cursor over the X and clicking to attack. This results in your unit taking the place of the enemy unit like so....
000
0B
00
The problem with this is that you are going to lose movement points by sending your transport or units around the M-31's that just attacked (the O's).
To solve this problem you do the following :
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Select the unit from inside your Base. |
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Press A on the keyboard |
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Move the red X over the unit you want to attack and click your mouse button. |
The unit will attack but when it kills the enemy unit it will stay where it is.
Did you know that if you put a few pork's in a city, and you fortify that city.
The defense bonus of a pork goes from 200 to 240. Now there is but only a few units that can generate a attack big enough to take such a pork out in one attack.
By now you should know that TAXING your cities can be the difference between a win and a lose. With the effective use of a tax strategy you can gain between 50 and 100 % more income from your cities.
Believe me you will need it in the first few round in a Fast moving game.
100-89-88-75-63-50-45 Strategy:
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Go into the ML (management lab) by pressing "V" on the keyboard. |
Setting the 89 % Tax
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Click on the Population tad. |
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Select all the cities between 1270 and 1150 and set the tax to 89% |
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Note that these cities will bring in 8 - 9 $ |
Selecting 100 % Tax
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By using you Shift key select all the cities with a income less than 8 $ |
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Click on the tax button and set to 100% |
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Click on the "REV" tab to sort Income |
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Deselect high income cities .. 8-10$ |
Selecting 88 % Tax
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Redo the process you did for the 100 % |
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Select all cities less than 8$ and change to 88%. |
Selecting 75 % Tax
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Redo the process you did for the 88 % |
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Select all cities less than 7$ and change to 75%. |
Selecting 63 % Tax
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Redo the process you did for the 75 % |
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Select all cities less than 6$ and change to 63 %. |
Selecting 45 % Tax
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Now first do 45 % and then 50 % |
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The reason is that some of the cities with 45 % will give you 4 $ income and its the same as the 50 % tax but with a better growth for the next turn. |
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Select all cities less than 5$ and change to 45 %. |
Selecting 50 % Tax
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Select all cities less than 4$ and change to 50 %. |
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all these cities will now give you 4 $ |
Take note that depending on the map, I may sometimes build up my population in one city to 5000 ( gain Double Tech).
I do not believe in a build up strategy .. What I mean is, you are losing HEAPS of $$$ while you are trying to make them grow!
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Build up: |
Some maps offer plenty of farms. With this type of map the opposition becomes more challenging because there is less room to mess up their taxation strategy. Other maps have only a sparse few. On these fifty/fifty maps, I apply both bleed down and build up strategies.
Most games that I play last on average about ten turns. I can think of only one negative point about building cities up. (And this is a big point) That is, the loss of initial expansion income. There are two positive points I can think of: Metro's by turn eight and cities that produce more than four dollars So! You ask: "If your games average only ten turns, why then do you even bother to build up the cities?" The money I invest into Metro's later pays off when I purchase expensive tech's. If the game is a Nuke game then I will set aside three or four cities to later become Metro's. If the game is a non Nuke game then I allocate only one city. Sometimes I don't allocate any. The only other reason I build up cities is to grow them to a point where I don't have to worry about them any longer. As you have probably figured out, managing taxes is a huge energy drain.
Although I do build up some of my cities, I don't support the strategy of building up cities for later use, or to tax heavily in a tough situation later on. I do it because I can get away with it. Aggressive expansion and blitzkrieg attacks lead to one thing - winning. I can generally tell who will win the game after turn two. It takes those initial sums of taxation money from appropriate taxation to attain the lead in a game.
I have found it interesting to search for the 'marginal return' at different populations. At some point in the games I play, I know that I will win. It is at this point that I will start to neglect the taxation duties of my empire and simply set most everything to 50, 55 and 56 percent.
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Bleed down: |
| Initial Tax | ||
| This strategy is used for maps with little or no farms. | 1160 = 56% | |
| I never purchase farms on those maps that don't | 1170 = 56% | |
| include them unless I will benefit strategically. My | 1180 = 67% | |
| goal after initial taxation is to have the farmless cities | 1190 = 69% | |
| at a population of 1150 for the second round. Once | 1200 = 69% | |
| at 1150, I set tax to 56% which allows me $5 for the | 1210 = 75% | |
| next two rounds. On the fourth round I set tax to | 1220 = 77% | |
| 100% so that the resulting population equals 1000. | 1230 = 79% | |
| Round five will see me set tax to 57% and round six | 1240 = 87% | |
| to 55%. For cities that have initial populations | 1250 = 89% | |
| between 1020 to 1120, I set the rate to 63% to | 1260 = 89% | |
| receive $5, then alternate this with 50% until the | 1270 = 95% | |
| fourth round where I find the tax rate that will leave | 1280 = 95% | |
| me a 1000 population for turn 5. | 1290 = 96% |
I apply a similar bleed down strategy to maps that have an abundant amount of farms. With starting populations that range from 1210 to 1290, I set the initial tax to 67% which gives me $6. After that, I set the rate to 56%. I alternate between 67 and 56% until the population reaches 1200 at which point I leave the tax rate at 56%.
There are times when aggressive bleed down is favourable. Here you will find me using the higher tax rates, but rarely 100%.
After completing 50% setting in your Tax System, go back to the top city of your Management Lab and resort your cities by food making all starving cities appear at the top of the list.
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Select all starving cities and set their tax rate to 57%. |
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Remove any cities that status change from starving to status 0 food. |
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Selecting all starving cities and set their rates to 59%, |
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Remove any cities that status change from starving to status 0 food |
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Selecting all starving cities and set to 60% |
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Redo the process with 63% then 65% then 67 and so on until there are no more starving cities. |
Cities with 990 Polulation and with no Farms and no 0 Food.
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Set to 55% tax to keep there population at 990. |
The cities that was starfing in the prefious round.
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On your next turn all those starving cities will have 0 food and there tax rates will be set to 55 with the others. |
The latest move that came over my path was the one where you can capture any of you Allies City's with ANY UNIT.
Thus u can use a Predator (Truck, Bulldoze any unit) to capture one of his city's and then use it to expand from there.
Remember that when you are in a alliance game to communicate with your buddy.
Each unit in the game is in fact a group of 8 sub-units. When under attack, this number decreases in proportion to the inflicted damage. If the number reaches zero, the unit is killed and disappears.
There are two ways to attack an opponent's cities, resources or units:
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You can simply move your unit on the opponent's unit ( your Unit will take the place of that Unit if it kills that Unit) |
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You can use the ATTACK mode (Hit the A key while the unit is blinking).(Your Unit will stay where it is after the attack, even if it kills the other Unit) |
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When a Unit attacks a nother Unit and causes some damage to an opponent, the unit acquires experience worth one point (represented by a star). |
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If this unit completely destroys the opponent, it acquires 2 experience points. |
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Those points raise the skill of the unit and increase its following performances by 5% (Up to a increase of 40 % increase with 8 stars). |
Shooting at Farms and Roads will :
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Takes one moving point from your unit. In other words, one artillery can take out 10 farms, or in short, $100 if your opponents need them to keep his cities alive!!! or it might ghost his city, or s/he can't tax that city as high the next turn. |
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In any case, on rich city maps with plenty of farms, always a useful tactic. (Shasa) |
Patriots are extremely important because they always counterattack –
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Any transport unit loaded with a patriot will not be the unit defending against the attack, the patriot will. |
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While you're cruising hostile land, skies or sea, stick one or more patriots inside the transport unit. |
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While you're moving your transport through enemy territory - allot of the time the patriots inside will have nothing to attack as they're often just there for protection. So, if you're within' range, aim those patriots at some roads, ESPECIALLY roads that are traveled by transports and trucks to collect resources. |
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You can capture Enimy cities by loading a soldier ( or Panther or Commando) in a Transport. Move the transport next to the city. Select the Unit inside the Transport. Press the "A" key and click on the city. This way the city will become yours .. BUT .. The unit will not move out of the Transport. |
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You can place your Base on a Farm. |