Mars Attacks

The Beginning

As the Martian player, you start with only one base surrounded by several low-resource sectors. Your pods will drop down in random sectors, carrying random units for you, so you never quite know what you'll get. Establishing a base in sector 7 should be of high priority, you need access to resource-rich sectors to the south as soon as possible. Try and gather all your offensive units in one sector as soon as possible. From there, send them out to attack one human sector at a time. The earlier you can do this, the fewer defences they will have. When this tactic works well, I will get you to a comfortable position where your forces are operating from sector 10, destroying any human approach into the adjacent sectors, while your Handling Machines get your resource gathering operations up to speed.

Don't get any ideas about Ironclads going away even though they can't reach your Comms. Centre, they won't. If you lose your offensive units, self destruct your base and save yourself some time. It's annoying, but it seems there's nothing else to do.

What to Build?

For starters: definitely not defences. Send your Digging Mechanisms to some distant sector (I like sector 1) where they don't consume the resources of a border sector. You shouldn't be defending anything north of sector 10 long enough to build any defences anyway, so don't waste resources doing that. Once you get down toward sector 13 though, you may find use for defences there to allow your units to concentrate on attacking.

As for units, you may want to get another Handling Machine somewhere early in the game. Otherwise, I go for Fighting Machines and, once I've researched them, Bombarding Machines.

The Long and Winding Road

In my eyes, the best way to advance seems to be through the inland sectors. Gather your forces in one, then attack all adjacent human sectors, starting with the ones with bases in (you can tell from the borders of the sectors). Move a Handling Machine in and build a base in one of the sectors. Don't leave units to defend the sectors you don't build in, even if the enemy takes them back quickly he will still have to construct a Command Post before he can attack from them. If you revisit the sectors regularly, he will never gat that chance. Once the base is completed, advance another step if you have enough forces. The coastal sectors can be utilized by your Handling Machines later on.

In the Warzone

The golden rule of concentrated fire goes for the Martians as well, have your units attack one opponent at a time instead of everyone shooting at different things. However, because of the size of the Martian units, it might be more effective to split an extremely large force into two if you manage to handle both groups effectively. Otherwise, there will always be a group of units which are unable to fire because they are unable to get close enough. A good way to avoid this is of course to get yourself some Bombarding Machines, they'll never have the problem of blocking eachother very much.

As for attacking there is a very simple strategy which proves very good: go for the Command Post! As soon as you spot it, throw everything you have against it. You may take a beating but, provided you have enough units, you will win the battle. This may be combined with first taking out any Human units straying outside the range of their defences.

Dead London - Yours Tonight!

Taking London, sector 30 that is, seems to be somewhat easier than conquering the Grampian Mountains as the humans. when you reach this far, you should have a good load of Bombarding Machines. To the right of the Houses of Parliament there are a bunch of nasty Heavy Gun Emplacements, attacking from the right makes it easier to take them out. Also, the city is easier for your units to pass from the right than from the left, but you will still need to destroy a few houses (use force fire to do this) to get through as quick as possible. The Houses of Parliament can withstand lots of damage, so cleaning up all guns able to reach your Bombarding Machines is a must.

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