My first impressions

Hi. I recently bought this game. I managed to get some time to play today. Here are my thoughts:

I was expecting something like Starcraft. However, this game plays a lot like Supreme Commander. Supreme Commander, from what I understand, plays a lot like Total Annihilation. Maybe its like that because frogboy likes that game. It doesn't matter, I've played games like this before so I was able to quickly figure out the basics. Some buildings provide a constant stream of resources, and you can spend resources at different rates. You can even stockpile resources. Factories seem to have tiers, like tier 1 units, and tier 2 units. There were other factories for building other units. There was a tech building, but 1 didn't unlock everything. Since there wasn't more types of tech buildings, I figured I would build more of those tech buildings to see if it increased my tech level. It worked.

Oh wow. I must be sounding like I joined in not knowing much about this game other than that it was an RTS and knowing a little bit of the lore.

Anyways, when I made a small army, I went out to explore the map. I discovered the enemy at the doorsteps of my base (later, I figured out that it was something like creeps, at least based upon my later experiences). I secured the local area and increased the size of my army. I saw that the enemy could build units at those base structures, but I couldn't do the same. When I felt I was ready, I advanced on my opponent's base. I managed to blast my way through the regions and secure them. When I was near the enemy's base, I finally met the enemy army. They managed to destroy my army. Shortly afterwards I came to realize the the forces that I destroyed on the way was not their army but instead creeps. I also realized that by making such an aggressive advance, I cleared the way for them to advance on me. Nonetheless, I managed to build an army capable of stopping them when they got close to my base.

I observed that there were glowing lines connecting regions (or not glowing depending on region ownership). I figured that there were some benefits for controlling adjacent regions. Maybe a requirement to get power and resources. Regardless of the purpose they served, I found it was a good way to find new regions. The lines lead strait to them. I also found that it was kinda difficult to determine what parts of the land were edges of mountains, and what bits were slops you could travel up.

Something that annoyed me was how the units seemed to be slow to move. They kinda hover there until they start building up the momentum to get good speed. I was expecting things to almost instantly responsive. I find how they move right now to be most inconvenient. If I had the option to do so, I would equip my units with wheels or legs, anything for them to move quickly.

As I was learning the game, the enemy began to attack with a tier 3 unit backed with an army. It took out some of my army. I quickly realized that I couldn't defeat it at this time. I had hopped to distract them by using what bits of what was left of my army. I took another route to advance on their base and take territory as I went. I didn't except to take their base, only to cause enough inconvenience to get them to want to scratch an itch. It worked. It work a little too well actually. It seems that the AI doesn't know how to go in for the kill. It seems that they might perpetually take regions instead of trying to win (I assume that losing my base is a bad thing). Regardless, as they moved away, I rebuilt and became much better prepared to steal territory, leaving builder units (whatever they are called) where ever I could hide them. As the enemy moved away, I would retake territory and build new resource extractors. I would build sensor buildings so I could see where they were at a all times.

I raided the enemy base, but I didn't finish the job. The enemy was getting close. In a way, it might have been just as effective. I had destroyed their resource collecting buildings, and left them with an air base. They must of used up their remaining resources on air units because I never saw them do much rebuilding after that.

It wasn't long afterwards that I started producing tier 3 units and supporting units. I was preparing to pick a fight with their roaming army using 5 tier 3 units, but then I won because I had gathered enough victory points. Not bad for my first game. Still, I would have liked to have killed that roaming army and then take out their base. Maybe there could be an option to keep playing once you get to the victory screen.