Deadlock

                                 Contents

1. Introduction 
2. How you start the game is critical 
3. Developing Resources and Technologies - Time is of the Essence
4. My favorite Attack Strategy - so far this has worked every time
5. When all else fails, Cheat!

1. Introduction

I am an avid WarCraft and Command and Conquer player. I have never played
Sim City, Civilization or other empire building games. I really like
Deadlock. I have been playing it for about a week now and thought I would
share some of the things that I have learned. It is pretty easy to beat the
computer, though each game takes a long time, just by using a few
techniques. I am sure there are others and if you have some, please feel
free to share them with me. Who knows? There may even be some cheat codes
or something that Accolade hasn't told us about yet.

I should tell you that my approach to winning Deadlock is always to destroy
all of the enemy forces. You can win by building the most City Centers
first, but I am a war gamer and I play Deadlock to win by destroying the
enemy, one by one. The strategies presented herein are employed with this
in mind.

In the beginning I lost most of my games because I wasn't familiar with the
paths to upgrading my technologies. I wasn't even familiar with what the
technologies could do, and honestly I have been playing as a human mostly
and am not familiar with the special abilities of all the races. Once I was
familiar with the technology pathways, I learned that it is fairly easy to
win if I just got off on the right foot.

2. How you start the game is critical

First and foremost is where I start building my first settlement. In a game
against 2 or more computer opponents, it is going to be a lot harder to win
if I have to take them both on at the same time. I have learned that if I
situate myself so that I only have to deal with one of them at a time, it
increases my chances of winning greatly. I usually pick a corner of the map
where there will only be one computer opponent to deal with at first. Once
I have defeated him, I can move on to the next one. The other advantage of
this technique is that sometimes the other or more computer opponents will
get into fighting each other and leave me virtually alone while I build up
my forces.

Having some time at the beginning is important since the computer opponents
start out with more guys than we do. I try to leave some distance between
me and my enemy's settlements so that I can prepare a defense before they
attack. The more spaces between you and them, the more time you have before
they are close enough to attack you.

The AI seems to know if I have a weak defense and will come into my
settlement and attack early in the game if that is the case. Remember that
before you build a factory, Colonizers are the best defensive unit you
have. I try to have a couple of them patroling critical settlements until I
can build other units and defensive weapons.

3. Developing Resources and Technologies - Time is of the Essence

Once I have started a game in the right way and have some time to develop
resource I make it a priority to get a good supply of the basics right
away. I don't do much offensive planning until later. You really need
higher technologies and a lot of resources to wage war.

I usually go for Synthetic Fertilizer then Molecular Bonding and Nuclear
Fusion first. I inspect each square before I build a Farm, Power Plant or
Surface Mine to make sure I get the most resources possible from that
square or group of squares. I will sometimes colonize an area that is
several sectors away from me just so I can take advantage of better sources
of Food, Wood, Iron, etc.

Before I colonize any area, I inspect as many areas as I can to check their
resources and to look for Shrines that contain free technologies. Even if
they may be several (as many as five) areas away, I will usually opt to go
for an area that has a Shrine. Getting a free technology right in the
beginning, along with the ability to immediate begin researching other
technologies is a real boon early on in the game and well worth the risks
involved in creating a settlement somewhat distant to your City Center.

4. My favorite Attack Strategy - so far this has worked every time

As the enemy begins to move closer to my City Center, I also build new
colonies closer to him, trying to end up with one colony that is two areas
distant to him. This colony will be my offensive/defensive front.
Hopefully, I can engage the enemy from that colony and he will not attack
me anywhere else. Here I build a strong defense with Laser Defense at first
and my first research for weapons is Rocketry. Once I have Rocketry I build
for silos for lauching rockets. I also build four more silos on an adjacent
colony so that I can launch 8 missles at once if I choose. Each colony can
launch a maximum of 4 rockets at once. Each Scatterpack missle costs $100
and 25 tons of iron so you have to have a good income of both money and
iron to employ this. But I love this strategy because it basically
incapacitates the enemy until you go in and take him out.

I start with 4 missles each turn, targeting the nearest colony of the enemy
and build up to 8 missles each turn, hammering away at the same colony over
and over. This keeps him busy repairing his colony which costs him
resources and usually consumes all of his attention. Usually he will not
attack back, unless he too gets missles, in which case I speed up my attack
strategy. I hate missles coming at me. By this point in the game the
opponent usually has Energy Deflectors and AntiMatter Deflectors. However,
the missles still do damage that drains his resources and keeps him off of
my back while I prepare for his downfall. The continual missle volleys
alone will often debilitate his colony to the point that you can just waltz
in and take it over with a small army. I have destroyed City Centers with
the missles alone.

I then begin developing a small army of SAM Troopers and Fusion Cannons.
Once I have about 6 - 10 troopers ( or Battle/Assault Troopers ), and four
or more Fusion Cannons, I am ready to take out that colony of his for good.
I hammer him with 8 Scatterpacks while attacking with the troopers and
Cannons. That usually does the job - an entire colony of 5,000 enemy taken
out in one turn. As a human it is important to give each trooper the Bezerk
command for attack.

The human047.sav game that is included with this text file demonstates this
stategy beautifully. You can see the battle on Purple Plains being won
while I am hammering away on Delta Swamp, softening it up for the eventual
kill that will come later. In this game I was up against three computer
opponents. Check out the resource production levels, the number of missle
sites, etc. and you will see how this works.

5. When all else fails, Cheat!

Here is a cheat that I found in the program that will work wonders most of
the time in battle situations. Here's how it works:

Each time at the end of your turn when you press the End Turn button, the
computer saves the game in a file called Autosave.sav. If there is a battle
to be fought, the battle will be the first event to occur after the game is
saved. Therefore, you can fight a battle and if you don't like the results,
Load the Autosave.sav game back in and replay it. Each time the battle is
played out, there will be a different result, probably because of the
random factors programmed into the AI. I have played some battles as many
as 8 times and watched the outcomes. In many cases, I will win or lose the
battle depending on the random factors. There are MANY RANDOM FACTORS that
you may not be aware of. If you try this a couple of times, you will see
what I mean. You may not always be able to win a battle using this method,
but you will get your choice of the most favorable outcome available.

There is more I could talk about, but I think this is enough for now. There
is still so much that I do not know about this game. There are alot of
things that I would do to improve it too. I get tired of all of the micro
managing of resources, probably because I am impatient. At least we don't
have to micromanage each unit during battles.

DeadLock Hints, Cheats and Tips Robert Camp 9/21/96. If you like this game
and have anything to share about it, email me at [email protected].