Supreme Commander Talk

I’ve been watching many replays recently on Winters Duel where air superiority has proved to be absolutely key. I’ll take a look at two case studies (both happening to involve Unconquerable as a participant) and offer up some arguments to support my assertion that air superiority is more important on Winters Duel than nearly anyone imagines.

First of all, remember that Winters Duel is a highly constricted map. There’s only one route to your enemy by land, and there are multiple excellent defensive positions along the way. A slight edge in land units that would usually lead to a victory on other maps just gets fed right into the stalemate meat grinder on Winters Duel. You need to either win with air units early on or T3 land units as the match progresses into its later stages. Unless you’re facing a bad player, the early land rush will not reliably win it for you.

Case study 1: Unconquerable v Hysteria

In this match, Unconquerable loses to Hysteria within ten minutes of play. The match evolves on an equal footing for the first bit, with Unconquerable actually in the slight lead. Both players have a single air factory that they are using to pump out interceptors and two land factories for land units. But Hysteria quickly goes for a second air factory and uses it to establish air superiority. Once his interceptors rule the skies over Unconquerable’s base, the fate of the game is sealed. Hysteria’s bombers start ravaging Unconquerable’s base, and there’s nothing Unconquerable can do about it because he’s not playing as the Cybrans (the only faction with effective T1 anti-air units). Unconquerable gets too distracted with trying to defeat the imminent threat by air, and he starts losing the battle on the land front as well. Even if he had built a lot of T1 anti-air in his base to ward off the bombers, the impending rush of land units would have still dominated him.

Case study 2: Unconquerable v Hibernating

This match is great because it shows how air superiority can defeat even the most intense forms of early land rushing, the light assault bot stampede. Unconquerable uses the standard one land factory and one air factory build order while his opponent goes immediately for two land factories and starts pumping out light assault bots with the assistance of several engineers. Unconquerable thus owns the air by default. However, he is quickly overrun by Hibernating’s light assault bots and commander, and Unconquerable starts taking damage to his base and commander. But remember that little thing about air superiority? Unconquerable quickly churns out some bombers which he uses to bomb Hibernating’s commander into oblivion.

This match was pretty close, but it appears that air superiority wins against even the most dedicated land rusher. Hibernating was using a pretty optimal light assault bot rush and still lost. Take heed of this finding! Air superiority is essential on Winters Duel!

My recommendations

After watching these and other replays on Winters Duel, my conclusion is that air superiority is vitally important on Winters Duel. I would recommend a starting factory build order of land, air, land, and air. Once you control the skies with your interceptors the bombing fun begins, and unless you are playing against a Cybran player, there is nothing he can do. Of course, if you are playing against a Cybran player, this strategy isn’t really recommended, as it’s pretty much impossible to establish early air superiority above a Cybran’s base. All they have to do is just pump out Sky Slammers and your planes drop like flies. So against Cybrans, the second air factory may not be worth it. But at all other times I would recommend it. Cybrans are an especially viable faction to play as on Winters Duel because of their effectiveness against attacks from the skies.

One more pro tip: build air scouts, and not just for scouting. They fly faster than interceptors (so they are harder to hit) and cost less resources and take less time to build as well. Yes, scouts cannot shoot, but they can distract enemy interceptor fire. Given two air forces of equal resource costs, one that is pure interceptors and the other a mixed force with scouts, the one with scouts will win even though it has fewer combat units because the scouts are effectively shielding its own combat units from being destroyed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 1:43 pm by Cyde Weys and is filed under Multiplayer, Replays, Strategy. Keywords: Tags: air superiority, Cybran, Hibernating, Hysteria, interceptor, replay, Sky Slammer, Strategy, Supreme Commander, Unconquerable, Winters Duel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.