High Funds Metagame

High Funds Metagame

As the more active part of the forum may have noticed, there have been efforts made in order to research the effect that high funds has on general AW gameplay. Basic information as well as a list of testgames can be found in this thread. What I am going to do is to look at a few of these games and try to theorycraft together unit roles and their respective strength with high funds.

Let us start with this game.

A game with 2k income per property, and the first thing that jumps into the eyes is how surprisingly [i]normal[/i] it looks. Apart from a few singular higher tech units, you see the same units you'd see in a 1k game. Tanks, copters, arties, AA. A bit less infantry than normal for the CO that is not Sensei, but that is to be expected. With only 36k income per turn on the split map, there seems little incentive to tech beyond the normal units, apart from spending the slight excess money you'd accumulate from only building 3 tanks + 1 copter per turn. The biggest change is that the airport seems to be a fully fledged production facility now, as using it every turn will be good for your unit count.

The next point of interest is how surprisingly alive Rachel still is. If we ignore the fact that she has 12k income less, she seems to be in a pretty good shape. And considering that Sensei is more or less a direct counter to Rachel (as his spawned infantry can divert missiles easily), it emphasizes the fact that COs with long, powerful SCOPs have a huge advantage over COs with short bars or useless powers. The bar charges up so fast that any form of power usage means that you "waste" the immense amount of charge you'd have gotten from whatever battle is going on. Clearly, high funds makes the game a lot more powerbased due to this, as well as due to the fact that inf on inf and tank on tank brawls are much less common. Minor boosts seem to be far less useful than normally, shifting the CO tier list by quite a bit.

But for now, let us look at the next game.

With 3k income per turn, it is fairly noticeable that high tier units are a lot more prevalent. Most important, I want to highlight three things. First off, the power of bombers. To give a small taste of its power to those of you who aren't familiar with its damage values. A bomber with one tower OHKOs every single ground unit on roads apart from the megatank (off which it still takes 35%). It cripples Bships and cruisers beyond usefulness. That much focused firepower coupled with the fact that is unhindered by terrain, has 7 movement and can't be shot at by the vast majority of units makes the bomber probably the strongest unit available in the high funds metagame (assuming that Stealths are banned). An important question will be the balance between building bombers and fighters from the airport(s) you have. At any rate, I predict high funds to be very air-centered.

The next point I wanted to mention is the megatank. Yes, it is slow, and also expensive, but it offers something invaluable. Seeing that it is near impossible to get rid of megatanks without some of your own, it is an incredibly reliable wall which makes it easy to gain position. It has to be noted though, that the probable dominance of bombers as well as their fabulous movement, crippling them on bigger maps, might make life hard for this unit.

And finally, the last highlight is the apparent total uselessness of sea units, as long as air is around. This won't surprise anyone since it was the same with normal income, but it at least can be seen as finally confirmed.


For the end of this post, I'll list the various units and the roles that they will have in the 3k high funds metagame. Everything only my opinion, of course.

Infantry: Capture stuff, wall stuff. You don't have as many of them anymore, but they'll still do the same.
Mech: Useless.
Recon: Useless.
Tanks: Essential to have a few around to kill AA and attack indirects, but far less dominant than in vanilla.
Anti-Air: Incredibly necessary, it wouldn't surprise me if people will build more AAs than tanks at some point.

Artillery: Still great and cheap support.
Rocket: Everything depends on how fast they can reach the front and on how good you can shield them. If fast and easily protected, they'll be a staple. If too slow, pointless and if too hard to protect, the abundance of air will rip them apart.

Md Tank: Useful defensive unit, but seeing that the only unit that they are good against are tanks, I don't think they'll be too essential.
Neotank: Same as above, although higher offensive capabilites. But why build these if you can have bombers instead?
Megatanks Great defensive unit, although as map dependant as rockets.

Bcopter: Useless, because the airport will be occupied by other units and the abundance of AA makes them suffer.
Bomber: Staple unit, no doubt about that.
Fighter: Even if the only thing they do is killing bombers, they do it pretty damn well.

Sea units: Useless, apart from transports dependant on map design.
Piperunners: Err, ok.
Stealths: Banned. Invisible walls are pretty stupid.
Black Bomb: Also banned because even more stupid.

So that's it for now, my next blog post concerning this topic will probably cover the CO tier list after more data has been gathered.

Yours truly, Hellraider