Safety in Numbers
 Unless
you're playing a strategy game that does away with an economy entirely (like Ground
Control or Myth),
the most critical part of your game is establishing the economy behind your
forces. You can't go gallivanting without building that army first! Military
strength depends on production. You create worker units and order them
to extract resources off the map (e.g. chopping trees, building mines,
harvesting asteroids, etc.) and use the proceeds to build the factories to churn
out more workers and fighting units. Any player who neglects to do this basically
gives the game away. Building a strong economy and maintaining it through thick
and thin is one of the most important ongoing jobs on your road to a win - right
up to the last minutes of the game. The bigger your economy, the more options
you will have. An adept player who plays their units extremely well on the field
will still be disadvantaged against a foe who's hopeless with their units but
who commands a bigger economy.
All other strategic elements pale in comparison, since your
economy is underwriting everything. Napoleon once proclaimed an army runs on
its stomach: your force runs on the resources you extract from the map. Your
miners and workers are the source of your strength but also your weakest link. Losing all your fighting units means little if your economy can quickly
rebuild them, but if your workers or your mines get nailed you're in serious
trouble, regardless of the size of your army. Reinforcements and repairs are
essential - without them you can only get weaker.
When dealing with hostile units most of the time, you should
be thinking about those enemy units as nothing more than a hindrance that gets
in the way of your real goal: ploughing into the heart of that enemy
base and demolishing that economy. Otherwise, you're only locking horns with
the "symptoms" of your opponent, not the "cause" of them! And likewise, your
esteemed foe is trying (or should be!) to do the same to you. |
