Chapter 20: Waylon Flies Again

This one is frustrating from the get-go, and quickly devolves into quite a slog. The keys here are to hold as many of the central cities as you can, build up your economic base, and then make a late charge across the southern edge of the map with tanks and air units in an attempt to wipe the enemy out.

Keep in mind that you lose the game if all of the blue units are destroyed. This makes for some panic in the early stages, as the blue units will charge forward, heedless of the enemy hordes coming their way. Luckily, though, a single blue missile unit will hang back on their HQ, so that you don't really need to worry about losing because of blue's stupidity.

Day One

Start moving all of your infantry units across the mountains to the west. You have basically no units to start this map with, and you have no production facilities, forcing you to fight a retreating battle at the outset. You should be able to start capturing an airport and a factory on the first day, while the other infantry and mech unit can begin moving towards other properties in the area. The bike unit can move far to the south and begin moving towards those properties, as well.

The anti-air unit stays in the middle here, and will act as a bit of a roadblock to the enemy air units. It won't stop them for long, however; they're awfully cagey at avoiding your fire by hiding in the mountains.

Day Two

Do your best to get to a property with your bike, and continue moving your infantry backwards. The anti-air unit almost certainly won't have anything to fire at here, and will probably get bombed by the enemy bomber on their turn, but there's not much you can do about that. You may simply want to keep it on a city, where it'll absorb some of the damage and be repaired on your next turn.

Day Three

The attacks start! Take them as best you can. The enemy blue units will counterattack a bit. You should be able to start making units now; the best that you can afford will be an anti-air unit at the factory and a missile unit at the airport. They won't live long, especially the duster, but they'll hold up your foes a bit.

Day Four

If you built the anti-air and duster unit, then you may be pleased here when the enemy fighters and choppers in the area start to retreat. Try to ensure that you stay within the blue missile's protective aura, but don't worry too much about it; most of the blue units are still going to rush forward at this point, and eventually die, but they will push back the enemy air forces as they do so, giving you a bit of breathing room.

Finish It!

Hah, don't get your hopes up yet: you won't be able to finish the map for a good long while yet. Unfortunately, there are so many enemy units that giving you a blow-by-blow description of what happens on subsequent turns would probably be incorrect for your game.

Your basic goal here is to build up a large air force first and foremost, using fighters and missile units to hold back the enemy airforce. You don't need to attack, but use the units and make a wall on top of the mountains in front of your base. That'll prevent the enemy forces from approaching or reaching back into your rearguard; they'll usually just hang back and let their ground units swarm into the middle. You should obviously be capturing all the properties on your side of the field with your infantry units.

There will be a long but necessary build-up section of this fight in which you occasionally trade blows with your enemies, but for the most part will simply be constructing more units for the eventual assault on the enemy base. You're going to need cash to win this fight, so it's fairly important to try and keep as many of the central cities as possible. Doing so can be difficult, since the enemies will often drop infantry units off from helicopters and capture them quickly if you're not in position to destroy them.

Generally speaking, the best way to keep the central cities is to protect them with rockets, and to protect the rockets with missiles and fighters. The two northern cities can be covered by a rocket unit that moves into the little gap to the east of the factory on the northern side of the mountain, while the southwestern city can be hit by a rocket that's based one space to the west of the airport. (There's unlikely to be anything you can do to save the southeastern city, alas.)

Enemy bombers and dusters will come for the rockets, though, even if they know that they'll get blasted, so if you have the resources, try to place a t-copter in front of the rockets so that the enemies won't be able to blast through. You'll probably wind up losing the t-copters eventually, and this will tie up one of your airports for a turn while you build them, but trading a t-copter for an enemy fighter or bomber is obviously a good trade for you. Just be sure that your missile fields overlap so that there aren't any gaps in the firing solution. You'll probably want to have three missile units in total behind the mountains.

The defensive solution won't work forever, though; eventually you have to win. You'll want to alternate your cash resources between bombers, fighters, and w-tanks for the southern road, with some b-copters thrown in for good measure. The basic solution here is to amass a fleet of five or six w-tanks, march them along the road to the center of the map, and group them together with four or five fighters and two or three bombers. Concentrate on building up the w-tanks first, since it's much easier to reinforce your air force from over the mountains; it'll be basically impossible to build new tanks and get them to the front without capturing an enemy factory. Be sure that Lin is loaded up onto one of the w-tanks, obviously. Don't neglect to build a rig or two and have it trundle along behind the forces; you're definitely going to need to refuel and resupply some of your units by the time you're done.

Luckily, the enemy usually seems to retreat in the face of your incoming forces (assuming you match up the tanks with fighters and bombers; a ground army by itself will be pounded). Follow the road to the center, and when you think you're ready to make your move, start sending your w-tanks across the mountains to the east. There's a gap in the road that will slow them down a fair amount, unfortunately, but if you've been using Lin's tank to blow up units, then you should be able to activate her CO power to extend your range a bit and charge into the enemy heartland. When you attack, go for broke; do your best to charge back to the enemy production facilities, destroy the units on them, and get a fighter jet or another fast-moving unit on top of it to prevent the enemy from building more units.

This is a tough mission, and you won't know what your ranking will be until the very end, so it can be frustrating to try if you're shooting for an S-ranking. We managed to S-rank it on day 37, but our speed score was around 75; you'll need to either be quicker or be pretty good about making good trades with your enemy if you want to get an S-ranking here. If you don't care, then simply fill your side of the screen with units before attacking.

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