Total Annihilation: General strategies

I’m going to wrap up my Total Annihilation series (at least for the meantime) and focus on coming up with guides for older video games. I apologize for letting it drag on for about three days. The allure of playing Total Annihilation again was just too damn irresistible. Although, I must admit, playing the game with a group of friends is better than a skirmish with the best AI.

So before we bid adieu to Total Annihilation, let’s review some general strategies implemented by veteran players of the game:

Let’s start with what veteran player Andrew Griffin, author of what is probably the most extensive guide to Total Annihilation, calls “Evil Strategies,” or “How to Lose Playing Buddies in Seven Minutes” (because that’s the only amount of time your gaming buddies need to find out what an a$$ you are by using these strategies in what is supposedly a friendly game).

I’ve already mentioned the Commander Snatch in yesterday’s post. Andrew calls it “the worst strategy in TA (in terms of retaining your friends).” What do you need to implement this? An aircraft plant to build a transport plane (Atlas or Valkyrie), a good grasp of map mechanics (or knowing where your foe spawns), a few resources (energy and metal), and the guts to pull off something you might end up regretting.

To make it work, you’ll need to determine the general area of the enemy base (with the use of a scout plane or a very fast walking Kbot). Once this is done, order your transport plane to fly to your foe’s stronghold with the intent of looking for his commander (you know, that giant robot that spawns at the start of the game).

If you manage to spot the commander, order your transport plane to pick it up. Now comes the interesting part. If you’re playing one on one, you can just bring your transport plane (with the enemy commander in tow) to the middle of your foe’s base and order it to self destruct. Needless to say, the explosion will take out half or more of the base. If you’re playing with two or more foes, you can use one enemy commander to deal a crippling blow to the other by ordering the transport plane to self destruct in close proximity to the other enemy commander.

The result: You’ll not only manage to impede the resource collection and base construction efforts of one enemy but also destroy both commanders and the base of the other enemy. Yes, truly evil.

And then we have the Commander Bomb, or taking your own commander on a suicide run to the enemy base, again with the use of a transport plane. The risk here is that your opponent may have already constructed defenses that could shoot down your transport plane. Of course, if this happens, you not only lose your fastest builder, you also fail to cripple the enemy.

Thus a variant of the Commander Bomb has been developed. Each commander is armed with the almighty D-gun (disintegrator gun). You’ve got the tool, use it. Set your commander down at the edge of the enemy base and start slicing through his defenses like a hot knife in butter. Just make sure your forces are moving behind your commander so that his sacrifice won’t be in vain.

Next, and last (since we want to keep blog posts short), we have what I personally call an efficient-inefficient strategy. Yes, it’s both efficient and inefficient at the same time. Efficient because it deals a lot of damage in the least amount of time and inefficient because it takes up a lot of resources that you may not have at the early stages of a skirmish.

This strategy involves rushing the construction of the Big Bertha (for the Arm) or the Intimidator (for the Core). These two weapons of mass destruction are themselves massive. They’re very big guns and, as I said, the damage they deal is pretty, well, massive. Construct it within the range of the enemy base and you’ll gain the ability to bombard the foe constantly and relentlessly (at least until your opponent finds a way to disable your phallic monument big gun).

The downside is that the construction of these monster weapons entails the use of a lot of resources, both energy and metal, and when they are finished and already on a rampage, they eat up energy like there is no tomorrow. They are also very inaccurate, as all artillery are. Remember, though, that it only takes one direct hit from either the Big Bertha or the Intimidator to kill your commander and destroy most buildings in your base.

Well, that’s it for my Total Annihilation series. If you still can’t get enough of the game and have need of guides, I suggest you go visit Andrew’s excellent guide on gamefaqs.com and another Total Annihilation guide at Strategy Wiki.

Huh? What about me? Well, I’ll continue playing the game with the computer and continue reminiscing about those moments when my Core army dominated the universe.

Oh, and here’s the continuation of the video I posted above: