Commander Guide

From Savage 2 Strategy Wiki

Translations: /de DEUTSCH

Contents 1 Commanding 1.1 Commanding Overview 1.2 Tech Tree 1.3 Building Placement 1.4 Base Defense Placement 1.5 Build orders 1.6 Journeymen and Saplings 1.7 Hell Shrines and Journeymen/Saplings 1.8 Basic Tips and Info 2 See also

Commanding

As the commander of your team, you have chosen or been chosen to act as a guide, caretaker, and leader for your team. Your team is dependent on your keen situational awareness, strategic guidance, structure placement and maintenance, and buffs and debuffs. As commander, you operate from an overhead view with a user interface that is similar to traditional RTS games.

• Left-click to select units and structures (by clicking on the unit or the unit's portrait at the top-left of the screen).
• Click and drag with the left mouse button to create a selection box to select multiple units.
• Select squads by clicking the "select entire squad" button above the squad portraits at the top-left of the screen.
• Left-click empty terrain to de-select units.
• Right-click to give selected teammates context-sensitive orders:
  • Right-click enemies to issue an attack order.
  • Right-click allies or terrain to give a move order.
  • Right-click on structures with builders, conjurers, journeymen, or saplings to give build or repair orders.
• Selected units show their status at the bottom-middle of the screen.
• Hold ALT to view basic status information for all units and structures on the screen.

Commanding Overview

This section details some of the basic decisions that you'll need to make as you progress through commanding a match.

1. The first thing you'll ever do as commander is place the gold mine structure at the gold mine near your base. This will be your first source of income and generally has a significant gold harvest rate, allowing your team to get off the ground and start placing structures. Having this fully built before moving to make your first garrison or sublair will allow you to immediately place a gold mine next to that garrison or sublair as you will have harvested at least 500 gold by then.
2. Once that gold mine has been placed, you might want to consider building a worker unit (journeyman or sapling) to speed the construction of your initial structures. As beating the enemy to construction and teching up can give your team a large advantage early on, this might significantly help your team. However, if it is killed early on, you've thrown away a lot of gold at an extremely critical time. Alternatively, you can skip building a worker unit and use the gold from that to fund your second gold mine.
3. Scout around to determine which gold mine you'd like to claim next. Generally commanders will either go for one of the side mines near their base (safer) or a mine in the center of the map (usually more risky, but will have more gold and a higher extract rate). You'll need to send at least one or two players there in order to clear the NPCs which guard most gold mines.
   • If no suitable gold mines are available (especially if your team lacks the ability to defend anything outside your base), it may be preferable to conserve your gold and put it towards an armory or nexus. This is generally a last-ditch option as the gold income from expansion mines is extremely valuable and skipping out on it could leave your team at a significant disadvantage.
4. Speed buff a player (preferably an officer) so they can reach a critical location such as your first (and aforementioned) expansion gold mine.
5. Use the reveal spell near the enemy base and try to determine where the enemy players are going. Try to ascertain whether or not they're moving around for an initial sneak attack (or rush) and which expansion gold mine they'll be taking first. You'll want to slow enemy officers and worker units, and potentially use the life leak debuff as well (usually if the target player is about to reach NPC's as they'll likely die and be unable to clear their target area).
6. Check your teammates to see if the enemy commander has debuffed any of them. Usually the enemy will also be scouting for players to buff and debuff early on, and you may need to put a stop to that with the dispel commander spell.
7. Once your team has reached your first expansion mine, you'll want to make sure that they've cleared the area and that it is still safe from enemy attacks before placing a garrison or sub-lair. Make sure that the blue circle around the garrison or sub-lair is more or less touching or encasing the mine as that circle indicates where nearby buildings can be placed (including mines). You'll also want to hold the right mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the sub-lair or garrison so the exit is facing The most likely source of enemy attacks (usually forward/towards the enemy base) is the best option.

After this initial series of events, your options expand and you have much more freedom in deciding the best course of action.

Tech Tree

It's important to know what structures are available to be built at any given time and what benefits they can provide. The following images show all of the structures, units, and unit abilities that become available over the course of a battle. This information is commonly referred to as the "Tech Tree", "Technology Tree", or "Research Tree".

Building Placement

Building your base to enable your team access to the more powerful units, weapons and abilities is an important part of commanding, coming second only to the active support of your team through orders and buffs. When placing buildings, you need to ensure they are not going to obstruct the pathways of your teammates. Constructing buildings in clumps, directly in front of the Stronghold/Lair is not a good idea, as they will easily get in the way of your team and impede their progress.

One important thing to note when placing buildings is that if they are close enough together, enemy players may be able to attack multiple buildings at the same time. Because of the arc of a melee swing, buildings very close to each other can easily be attacked at the same time by a single enemy unit - because of this, make sure you have an adequate distance between each building, to avoid inadvertently doubling the damage output of the enemy.

Technology buildings (everything other than Mines, Garrisons/Sub Lairs, Defenses and Hell Shrines) should all be placed in your main base, and kept as far from the fight as possible. These buildings simply unlock units and abilities and offer no bonus based upon where they are placed in the battlefield, but your team will lose and bonuses given by them if they are destroyed. As such, keep your tech buildings out of harms way in the main base, and be sure to let your team know if they are about to become under attack.

Base Defense Placement

The placement of your base defense structures in relation to your other structures is of prime importance. As commander, you generally will have the best idea of where enemy players will be coming from and need to place your base defenses in a way that best prevents enemy attacks.

A very important thing to note when placing base defenses is that they cannot shoot through buildings and as such, players can attack buildings from the opposite side to the tower without sustaining damage. Be wary of this when placing towers, especially in your main base where technology buildings can provide a lot of cover for the enemy team. You need to find a place for your defenses that maximizes the amount of time it can spend attacking units, not necessarily simple proximity to your base.

In your main base, one way to organize your defenses and tech structures is by planning for two separate groups of structures: one to the left of the Lair/Stronghold, and one to the right. Make the groups quite far apart, but not too far from your Lair, which serves as a spawn point for friendly base defense. The purpose of making them far apart is so you can create two of each tower.

We already know that a single Chlorophilic Spire or Shield Tower can not protect all of your tech buildings; if all of your tech isn't protected, the enemy will attack your least-protected structures first. To ensure even protection, with proper planning you can make room for all of your tech structures to be protected by only two Shield Towers or Chlorophilic Spires, and these towers/spires can each be protected by a pair of Arrow Towers/Strata Spires and Cannon Towers/Static Spires on either side. This is a deadly combination of placement that makes your base very resistant to all but siege units.

Build orders

Choosing the ideal structures to build at any given time is of prime importance. Making the best choices for which structures to build can fill in gaps in your team's capabilities and give you a large advantage over the enemy team.

The tech tree in Savage 2 is mainly linear, but there is one choice that must be made by the Commander than can create a huge impact on the game. Both the Predator Den/Academy and the Charm Shrine/Siege Workshop are available to the Commander at the same time, following the construction of the Sanctuary/Monastery. When these two buildings become available, the Commander needs to make the decisions of which to build first, based upon how their team is performing, and what units the team needs to win, or push for that next gold mine.

Some questions to ask yourself when presented with this choice as commander are:

• Is my team unable to advance because of towers? If so, it may be wise to get access to siege units. Revenants are also exceptional at destroying towers from a safe distance.
• Is my team being constantly destroyed by enemy action players? If so, it may be a better decision to build the Predator Den/Academy and give your team access to the stronger units.
• What units does the enemy team have access to? If they have siege units in your base, it would be generally unwise to build siege as well, as siege is a poor counter against action players.
• How close is either team to victory? If you are making a final push to their base, it might be preferable to get siege and finish off the enemy team. If there's a long battle going on over certain points of the map, perhaps the stronger player vs. player units would enable your team to push forward.

There is no obvious way to tech, it depends on each individual game, and what is the best decision for your team at the time.

Journeymen and Saplings

While commanding, you will have the opportunity to recruit up to 3 journeymen (humans) or saplings (beasts), which are essentially miniature versions of the builder and conjurer units (respectively) which can build and repair as well as attack enemies with basic melee attacks. Neither unit has access to the ranged weapons and abilities of their player-controlled counterparts, but they are nevertheless extremely crucial for building structures.

Unless nearly dead or unaware of their surroundings, most experienced players can kill journeymen and saplings with barely a scratch, so use them in melee only as a last resort. The risk of engaging them in battle is 650 gold each, and that is too much of a risk for a unit that has a very high chance to die in battle.

Instead, journeymen and saplings are meant to be used to help you build structures faster. Conjurer and Builder are usually an unpopular class for action players to select, due to their low attack and move speed. Your buildings are extremely vulnerable while in the construction stage, and loss of a building under construction still runs you 50% of the building's total cost. To minimize the risk that an enemy player will discover your buildings under construction and destroy them, you should always use journeymen or saplings on your construction projects.

Hell Shrines and Journeymen/Saplings

Journeymen/Saplings are vital for Hell Shrine construction and repair. As soon as your Hell Shrine starts to build, it will change the in-game music for everyone, including enemies. This usually results in a large enemy rush to attempt to destroy your Hell Shrine before it can be used to spawn deadly Malphas and Devourers. To ensure that your path to destruction occurs as planned, you should use all three of your journeymen or saplings, combined with at least one action player as a conjurer or builder on your team, to get the Hell Shrine active as quickly as possible.

It is often worth waiting for all three Saplings and your Conjurers or Builders to arrive at the build site before you begin constructing the Hell Shrine. Additionally, using your Reveal ability centered on the Hell Shrine will give you advanced warning of incoming enemies. Ping the map on any threats, and encourage the team to either defend the Hell Shrine as an aggressive unit (Predator, Legionnaire) or to help build it.

Even after the Hell Shrine is complete, enemy units will continue treating it as a very high priority target - only slightly lower than, say, a Malphas. Keep a close eye on your saplings or journeymen to make sure that the enemy does not try to kill them; they are your means to keep the Hell Shrine alive even after your action players have moved on to other tasks.

Basic Tips and Info

• Make sure that you're familiar with all of the commander spells and how they can be used. You can give your team a major advantage by boosting your team and hampering the enemy.
• You can more easily use single-target commander spells on teammates by selecting the spell and clicking on a player's portrait in the team overview at the top-left of the screen. This allows you to assist your team without having to keep your view centered on your teammates at all times.
• The most important part of Commanding is assisting your team in battle, not watching your base build. Ensure that you always keep a close eye on the battle and have your commander spells at the ready.
• The mini-map is an invaluable resource when playing as the Commmander. In the heat of battle, it can be hard for an action player to notice enemies creeping around to the back of your base, it is the Commander's job to make sure he keeps an eye on the entire battlefield.
• Good use of the reveal ability is a must as a Commander. Frequent use of the reveal tool on key locations such as gold mines, Hell Shrines and even the enemy base can ensure you're always one step ahead of the enemy Commander.
• Never forget that when Commanding, you're up against the Commander on the opposing team. Keep in mind they have access to all the same abilities that you have - making the dispell ability highly important.
• When you do not meet upkeep, Shield Towers and Chlorophilic Spires are just dead weight; they serve no purpose in this condition. So if the game is in Sudden Death mode, or if you think your team won't be able to acquire a gold mine with remaining gold, you should not build Shield Towers or Chlorophilic Spires.
• Every point of damage your team does to enemy buildings gives your team gold and experience, and steals gold (in the cost of repair or replacement of structures) from the enemy. The reverse is also true. Defense is often necessary in the early game, but in general, the value of defense declines as the game progresses, while the value of offense rises as siege units and hellbornes become available. Keep this in mind when thinking of what orders to give your team.

See also

• Commander Errors