Command Powers

Command Powers

When a newbie first joined an alliance and received his/her five Nuke attacks, and test-drove in their battlefields. Almost everyone would say “Wow, that’s awesome!” right?

And the second thing in E&A academy training that Zynga taught you is what? Beside of troops deployment?

Yes, bingo! The answer is Command Powers! 

There most players will use Command Powers to take down enemies defenders before they deploy their troops into a battlefield. This makes Command Powers become their pioneer to reduce enemies strike back ability against their attacks. Then how many shots and what kind of command weapons you can use will depend on how many command points you have collected in total. 

Command Points are the key to driving control on the battlefield and are earned by several ways. Build Weapons Command, and keep upgrading its level to maximum in each HQ level is the most basic way to earn command points. Beside of that, apply one strike force member onto Weapons Command building can also gain 3 more command points. Purchase bonus command points from war factory will get you ten extra command points for each battle to use within 24 hours. 

In addition, Ion Canon builds from war factory can give you one free Orbital Strike in each battle during its service period at your base, which benefit your offensive power from its double features. In the recent version, there is also a Special Command Power called the Gunships X-250 that you can get from Operation Hammerfall, which give you an extra aerial attack to against all tough destructive bases. 

Either use Laser to burn down buildings or use Auto-cannon to kill ground troop units. However, during the usage of Gunship, all troops you deployed to the battle will be disconnected for a while. That mean they could have destroyed within this short moment. To avoid this happening, better use gunship before troops deployment.  

To calculate how many command points you have in total and command strikes you can use in battles, see the following diagram:

Once you got the total number of command points, then you can lookup the following list to see how many command powers you can use in each battlefield.

Orbital Strike – cost 10 points

A-10 Strike – cost 3 points 

Hellfire Missile – cost 5 points 

EMP – cost 6 points 

Medpack – cost 5 points 

Combat Stim – cost 3 points 

Flare – cost 1 point 

Tactical Nuke – cost 25 points 

Camouflage – cost 3 points

For example: if you have 29 points in total, then you suppose can shot one Orbital Strike (-10), two A-10 Strike (-6), two Hellfire Missile (-10), and one Combat Stim (-3).

Strike Forces

At HQ4, players unlock strike force, the ability to recruit and assign allies (friends and alliances members) to their home and war base structures or troops to temporarily enhance their combat capabilities, and to make them stronger and faster.

To use Strike Force, tap on the icon, which has two swords in a shield, in the bottom left corner of the screen, to expand the Strike Force slots. When the slots are empty, just simply click on any open slot to import your alliances members into them. Same with the Facebook slots, click on Blue F slots to import your Facebook buddies into them. Once people loaded into these slots then you can drag them onto a buildings or troops on your base to activate the Strike Forces.

If you don’t have Facebook friends then you’d better find some, or you will leave these Blue F slots vacant. I recommend you talk to someone in alliance chat to see anybody willing to add you as Facebook friend.

Offense: (Home Base only)

• Assigning allies to Troop Tarmacs will boost your offensive Unit’s Health and Damage.
• Assigning allies to your Weapons Command will boost three Command Points you start with for each battle!

Defense: (Home and War Base)

• Assign Allies to your Defensive Weapons to boost their Health and Damage.

BTW, many clans asked me which defensive buildings should Strike Forces be applied. It actually has no exact answer for that. However, when doing Strike Force in a base, I suggest players assign them onto Domes because most of the time attackers aimed Command Strikes at Metal Rain, Ion Canon, Artillery or Patriot. If you assigned Strike Forces onto these defenders I mentioned above, then you will possibly waste your Strike Forces once they got destroyed.

On the other hand, many folks think there must be better idea to assign higher rank clans as strike forces, since they have stronger offense/ defense abilities. (That was including myself !) However, I recently found out there actually no different in their rank. From Zynga official answer, regardless of the game level or HQ level of the player you will be assigning, the effect of Strike Force in your base will remain the same. 

Therefore, please make sure you guys assign different allies as your strike force each time, to give everybody a fair chance getting their Strike Force Reward crates.

   

   

Air Attack Strategy

Aerial Forces Attacking
 

Eventually I am a great pilot, as a aviation plans officer, in this section i would like to share my experiences about how to fight well by using airstrike units.

In E&A, there are only two kind of air forces you can have, Attack Drones and Apache.

At level 6 HQ, players can able to deploy Attack Drones (I called it Fly) into battlefields. Attack Drones are light, fast swarms that hunt and kill enemy defense structures. Weak vs anti-air defenses and enemy infantry; strong vs ground targets.

Apache appears at HQ12, which provide overwhelming airborne firepower that can win any battle; Weak vs Patriots and Domed Aerial Defenses; Strong vs ground targets. 

Both air force units have pro and con, so you’d better know their strengths and weaknesses before making conclusion to go either aerial force or ground force as your majority of squids strike.

(PRO) The most selling points of Attack Drones and Apaches are their great mobility, which can let them able to fly across the screen in rapid speed. Plus they are easy to lock on any ground targets; so you can assign Alpha, Bravo and Charlie group to attack several targeted objects individually.

Another great advantage is these air force units can ignore attacks from heavy fired ground defenders, such as Railgun, Metal Rain, Artillery and Guard Tower. Landmines are also under its immunity. On the side of base defenders, Spider Drone, Tank and MLRS will not attack airstrike attackers at all. 

(CON) However, They are not perfect units in some reasons which makes most players rather select ground forces instead of air. Air units were easily trapped by Stealth Tanks and EMP. Once they got trap then they will freeze at the air, any anti-aircraft defensive units which closer to them can destroy them with no resistance. 

Beside of Stealth Tank, other ground units like Domed Sentry Gun, Domed Aerial Defense, Patriot, Ion Cannon, Striker VI, Commandos, defensive Apache and Hunter MK.I, which has anti-air ability can also kill airstrike units in no time. In addition, I have recently found that the explosion of Shock Mine can even freeze them when they fly though the EMP burst where it released.

Air Strike Strategy:

Now you understand both pro and con with airstrike units. The essential elements to win any airstrike battle will depend on how much you can take from advantages and how much you stay away from dis-advantages. Therefore, targeting your right opponents has already been half way through your victories. For Example: When I search and scout my target bases, i will always concern all these following conditions before my planes attempt into any battlefield.

First, how many rally flags of stealth tank are there? Let say I see a HQ14 base has 2 troops and 2 spiders, that means two stealth tank rally flags are there because HQ14 suppose to have six rally flags in total. Or if I see a HQ13 base has no troops at all, then it means all five rally flags are stealth tanks, etc...

Don’t forget stealth tanks in this case are your natural enemies, so I will try to avoid them. In most cases, I will definitely fight the bases which have zero non anti-aircraft rally flags, like some players setup six groups of tank (12 tanks), or six groups of MLRS (6 MLRS), or these units mixed with some spiders. Without zero attacks from rally flag units, then I just keep focusing on destroy all anti-air defenders

However, there not many players will only setup one kind of rally flag units. So my second option will  lookup some bases, which have less rally flags of stealth tank on it. Let say If I have 14-16 Apaches on Tarmacs then I will consider to attack a base which has two rally flags of stealth tank. (6 stealth tanks) What about three rally flags of stealth tank? Maybe, depend on how much resources it contained because it takes some risks. More than three rally flags? Oh, No No, forget it! There is totally not a good idea to attack four to all stealth tanks bases except you are super lucky or you have any special skill to get rid of all those stealth tanks attacks. 

Attack Drones somehow have less restriction with stealth tanks because of their number of planes. Each stealth tank can only lock up several “Flies” at once, then the rest of “Flies” still able to move and attack stealth tanks to rescue their buddies. But they still have very high chance to get all frozen up by the large groups of stealth tanks.  

 

Second, how many command strike points present in this battle, which should take out how many anti-air defenders? (For how to collect and calculate command points please see Command Strikes section) As I said in above, non anti-aircraft defense buildings you don't have to worry about them since they don’t attack your air units. Therefore, use command strike weapons only against anti-aircraft buildings such as Patriots and Domed Sentry Guns or Aerial Defenses, and Ion Canon. (To verify which one is Ion Canon or Airmed Drone Hive please see Home Base Data section as well) 

Since you only have limited number of command strikes in each battle, so enemies base layout also is part of your concern. You need to plan ahead before you attack them. Remember, always look for chances to apply a single command strike into several air defenders at once. For example: use Orbital Strikes to burn down Ion Canon, Patriot(s) and any nearby Dome(s) which built within 2 tiles apart all together. Or use one to two A-10 strike(s) to bomb as many Patriot(s) with Dome(s) which built within 6 tiles diameter as possible. See example pictures in below...

If you have to attack some bases which contain stealth tanks then don’t send in an entire squad at once. You should start send in couple tarmac aircraft at first to see any stealth tanks around. Once u got freeze then add another tarmac aircraft to attack these stealth tanks, got freeze again then add more aircraft to rescue....but remember, either fly in from their side or their back to attack these stealth tanks. Otherwise, your planes will be trapped together with all other aircraft that reached the EMP bursts.

For Apache players, I found a simple way that can max out all resources an enemy base contained. It works effectively in most higher levels there people usually have high demand in steel and tech for their upgrades. What I use is the greatest advantage from Apaches – Mobility.

First, I attack a base normally, apply strike forces in troops and command building, use command strikes to take out defenders, etc...Once HQ down then I use Alpha team (about 8 Apaches) to take out Steel, Supply, Tech and Oil stockpiles and factories barely in this sequence; and leave Bravo team (about 6 to 8 Apaches) attacks freely to clean up rest of the buildings. If time is short then I will have both teams work on resource buildings only. This way you might only get two starts but mostly you will get all resources from each battle.

BTW, I have tried using both air units as well. the reason why I picked Apaches instead of Attack Drones is because of two facts. 1) Once you level up your Apaches then you can use them in both offense and defense. 2) Retraining cost of Apaches are more cheaper than Attack Drones. If you can control them well then you can save them all without any losses from battles. However, there will be some losses in Attack Drones no matter how careful you use them. And they take tons of oil for retraining, which I found you may even spend more oil in retraining then you make from wars.

However, I do not suggest players use all Apaches as their Rally Flags defense. Why? That is because Apaches are weak to against Rangers, Strikers and Stealth Tanks from attacking. If you really want to use them then you had better pair with other defenders like commandos, Stealth Tanks or Spiders.