DeadLock Hints, Cheats and Tips
Robert Camp
9/21/96
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. Heres 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.
If you like this game and have anything to share about it, email
me at themagi@best.com.
