Anomaly - Warzone Earth (e)

Anomaly: Warzone Earth Guide to Game Mechanics and Strategy, 
An Unofficial Guide for new players by DrGinx
(FINAL)  

Copyright 2011 Xing Gao

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Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a reverse tower defense game by 11 bit studios
By reverse TD, you direct "creeps" and navigate through various types 
of tower setups. As your "creeps" destroy enemy towers, you gain money
which can be used to upgrade your units and buy additional units.   
Your commander or hero have special abilities and is free to wander away 
from the set route.  

I beat the game recently, and I have to say it was a lot of fun.  
  
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About the Author:  This is my second time writing a faq.  First one
is on gyromancer.  I think I like writing faqs for smaller Indie games.  
I've gotta be bored out of my mind to do a faq for Dragon Age or Mass effect 2
That my friend is for Pros. 

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The Basics

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Units:

The first thing to understand is Unit composition.

Your units is composed of six different type of ground units.  None of these 
are too Sci-Fi like the enemies you are facing.  They travel on roads, and 
march in a single file in a set speed that cannot be changed.  The order of 
the file however, can be changed. Units can be upgrade 3 times total.  First 
upgrade cost the unit's purchase price, and each upgrade cost double the 
previous upgrade.  

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APC

Cost                	$100
Start HP            	120 
Max Upgrade HP      	300
Start Attack        	60
Max Upgrade Attack  	96 
Upgrade - $100 - $200 - $400 Total cost 800 for a fully upgraded unit

Pros: HP, Rate of Fire
Cons: Damage, Range

The APC is the cheapest unit you can buy and upgrade.  Starting with 120 HP
that can be expanded up to 300 HP.  APC's machine guns have a short range, 
lower than all enemy towers!  APc's machine gun locks on quickly and fires 
rapidly, but each upgrade only gives you 12 more attack power. This unit is 
your damage soaker.  Don't expect it to take down an cluster of towers by
with only APCs.  

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Crawler

Cost                	$125
Start HP            	70 
Max Upgrade HP      	112
Start Attack        	85
Max Upgrade Attack  	280 
Upgrade - $125 - $250 - $500 Total cost 1500 for a fully upgraded unit

Pros: Damage, Range
Cons: Rate of Fire, HP

The Crawler is the most damaging unit you can get into your team. Fully
upgraded it can take out enemy blaster tower in 1 hit.  It is my favorite
Unit, it's low HP can be off set by shield generators.  It's long
range allows for Sniping.  In fact it has the higest attack range of all of 
your units.  However the crawler takes time to change targets
if turning is required, and it's rate of fire is very low.   

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Shield Generator

Cost               	$150
Start HP               	125
Start Shield HP        	40
Max Upgrade Shield HP  	80 
Upgrade - $150 - $300 - $600 Total Cost 1200 for a fully upgraded unit

Pros: Protect other units
Cons: HP, can't attack

The second most favorite unit is the shield generator.  The shield generator
provides shields for itself, and the units directly infront of it and behind 
its Shields will auto recharge when the unit is not being fired on. All 
damage must first deplete shields before the unit itself takes damage. 

The shield generator has no attack, it's HP cannot be upgraded.  

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Tank

Cost                $200
Start HP            140 
Max Upgrade HP      308
Start Attack        75
Max Upgrade Attack  165 
Upgrade - $200 - $400 - $800 Total Cost 1600 for a fully upgraded unit

Pros: HP, Damage 
Cons: Expensive to Upgrade

The tank is a like a APC but with more damage potential. Tanks fire a bit
slower, but do much more damage.  A fully upgraded tank has the highest
HP among your units, although only beats a fully upgrade APC by 8.  
The cost difference is huge.  An fully upgraded tank could buy you 2 fully
upgraded APCs!  So do you go tank or APCs?  The question your should ask is
How much money do I have.

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Dragon 

Cost                $250
Start HP            120
Max Upgrade HP      220
Start Attack        65
Max Upgrade Attack  123 
Upgrade - $250 - $500 - $1000 Total Cost 2000 for a fully upgraded unit

Pros: Attack both sides, Burn enemies
Cons: Short range, Extremely Expensive to Upgrade

This unit is kind of interesting.  It's got two short range plasma flame
throwers that allow it to shoot at 2 different enemies at the same time.
The damage is okay but it's steady.  Did I mention how short the range
on those flame throwers are?  They have the shortest range in the game.
So if you put them in front you are liable to give the bad guys many
free shots.  

HP of the Dragon starts off low and increases in large chunks with upgrades, 
but it is extremely expensive to upgrade.  A fully upgrade Dragon can buy 
you 2 fully upgraded Crawlers! 

Okay there is the good part about this unit.  This unit can engage 2 enemy
towers at the same time!  The plasma flame thrower can also sets the enemy 
on fire.  And they keep burning even after your units have moved past.  
This damage is also increased in upgrades.  It's a nice feature, but my 
approach is to leave nothing behind, so I tend to prefer crawlers over 
Dragons.   

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Supply Truck

Cost                $175
Start HP            120
Upgrade order       Repair - Smoke - Decoy - Airstrike
Upgrade - $25 

Pros: More commander abilties
Cons: No Attack, takes up a slot

If your have the supply truck, everytime an enemy is destroyed, it fills a 
gauge.  When the the gauge is full an ability is available for your 
commander to pickup.  Upgrades cycles through the different upgrades, 
repair is first, then to smoke, decoy and airstrike.  Upgrades after 
airstrike will go back to repair.  Do know that different abilities cost 
different numbers of kills to fill. If you don't fill and upgrade, what you
had will carry over.

The truck is very useful on harder difficulties when reinforcements are not
as common.  It's more useful with a large horde of enemies.  
Also the truck's HP cannot be upgraded.   

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Enemy Towers

Priority: Enemy towers will fire on the commander, but if your units are also
in range their priority will switch to your units. The highest priority
is a decoy that is in range, all enemy towers in range will switch to 
targeting the decoy if able.  

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Blaster

HP		Low
Range		Medium
Damage		Low
Turning		Fast
Rate of Fire	Fast
Special		None
Weaknesses 	Smoke

These are the most tyical enemy towers, have the lowest HP and damage.
They can be destroyed easily with a single airstrike.  However in clusters
these towers become much more dangerous.  

Blaster towers are weak against Smoke, as they have no area damage they
will miss their target and even a large group of them can be easily defeated
with a well placed Smoke.  

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Scorcher

HP		High
Range		Very High
Damage		Very High
Turning		CANNOT
Rate of Fire	Very Fast
Special		none
Weaknesses 	Approaching from the side

Scorchers are a long range unit that fires a nasty plasma beam that quicky 
fries anything in its way.  It is a stationary unit and cannot change the 
way it is facing, so approaching it from the side would be best.  Head on 
attacks will result in unit loss unless abilities are used. It's a tough unit
1 airstrike will not kill it.  Scorcher detroys Decoys quickly and will only 
miss some of the time in a smoke screen. 

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Behemoth

HP		Very High
Range		High
Damage		High
Turning		Slow
Rate of Fire	Slow
Special		Radius AOE
Weaknesses 	Decoy

Behemoth units have massive HP and are hard to kill.  It's AOE attack is 
very damaging.  The best way to fight it is to take advantage of its slow 
turn speed.  The tactic I use is called the double turn.  

C=commander U=your units B=Behemoth > = direction behemoth is facing
D=Decoy #=range

First I run up to it with my commander before my units are in range, and
get to the opposite side of the behemoth.  

U###########C

When your units are in range the behemoth will slowly turn to 
attack your units.

U######D

Once he is there he still has to shoot it. After he destroys the decoy he 
still has to re-acquire your units.  

This tactic provides a huge bracket of time for you to fire on the behemoth 
without it being able to returning fire.  Once your commander drops the 
decoy, he is free to engage in other support options.

Smoke screen is not very effective against behemoths as your units will still
take AOE damage.  

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Storm Ray

HP		Medium
Range		High
Damage		Medium
Turning		Fast
Rate of Fire	Very Fast
Special		Drain shields, Slow commander, Secondary target
Weaknesses 	Decoy

Storm Rays shoot a long range beam of lighting that deals continuous damage.
The beam also jumps onto any secondary targets with in 1 space of the primary
and deals a smaller amount of damage.  The beam sucks shield away off in 
seconds.  In addition your commander will be slowed if he is hit by the beam.

Storm Rays can be fooled by decoys, but if you decoy is too close to your
own units they will be hit by secondary beam.  Smoke screen is also 
an imperfect counter, the primary beam will hit the ground nearby but 
secondary damage can still occur to your units.  1 Air strike will not
be able take this unit out.  Overall this is one of the tougher enemies
to face.  

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Hacker

HP		Very High
Range		Very High
Damage		None
Turning		Perfect
Rate of Fire	Slow
Special		Radius AOE 
Weaknesses 	Decoy?

This unit does no damage but it is very troublesome.  First it can attack from
a long range, creating a big AOE field.  If you units and your commander
are both in the field, your units will switch priorites to attacking your 
commander.  If you units are well upgraded, a successful lockon could mean 
instant death for your commander.  Your unit's attacks are not affected by 
smoke screen. So this means your units are not attacking enemy towers, and 
your commander can't get close to use support abilities without risking death.

Hacker's attack homes in on the target, and will follow the target even
out of it's normal aggro zone.  Its effective field last quite a while.
At maximum it might be able to maintain up to 2 of such fields.  Hacker units 
are affected by decoys, but you have to get close to it 
so the decoy radius covers the hacker unit.  

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Energizer  

HP		Low
Range		Very High
Damage		None
Turning		Perfect
Special		Neutralize Abilities, Revive Towers
Weaknesses 	Airstrike

The Energizer unit is a very annoying one to face.  It does no damage,
However, if your commander is in range and not blocked by a building it will
lock on to him.  Once locked on if your commander deploy any ability then 
the energizer unit will start draining the ability's power and make the 
area of effect smaller,  After 3 seconds it will regenerate all dead enemy 
towers in the region.  Which believe me, really sucks.  

The key to fight it is to run past other enemy defending towers to reach the
Energizer tower, and place an airstrike right next to it.  Yes it will
drain the airstrike.  However airstrike activates before 3 seconds, so 
it will not resurrect.  A single airstrike is enough to destroy the unit.  
Also be sure to place the airstrike right NEXT to the energizer unit so you 
dont lose coverage when the area gets smaller. 

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Commander Abilities

All abilitis are deployed from the position of the commander when he activates
them. The commander's HP is quickly regenerated when enemies are not firing 
at him, so he can basically not die standing under a behemoth or a blaster
tower.  StormRays will kill him.  If the commander goes down, he comes
back after a set number of seconds.  Your units will get no support during
the time he is down.  

All abilities have cool down, it is not possible cover the field with
say...decoys all at once.  So timing is important.  

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Repair

The repair zone is the smallest of the abilities.  It doesn't last very long 
either, but the HP gain is significant.  With the right placement, you can
heal an unit completely with a single repair no matter how badly damaged.

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Tactic 1: Corner Repair 

The amount of repair done in a repair zone is based on time.  Since your units
can't stop, the longer the route, the more time, and thus more HP.  If you 
put the repair on a corner, the units spend more time in it thus get more HP
back.  

When you are trying to repair a single heavily damaged unit, it's best to
place it right before that unit enter the zone, so it traverse the full 
distance.  When you are trying repair multiple units that are moderately 
damaged. File these units one after the other and place the zone on top of 
the first damaged unit.

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Tactic 2: Combat Repair 

Repair is based on percent of Max HP, not total HP.  Thus a 50% damaged 
crawler and a 50% damaged APC heal at different HP rates but at the same 
percent rate.  It's best combat repair an unit with high HP than one with 
low HP.

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Smoke:

Smoke screen will cause enemy to miss when firing into the smoke field.  It
is very useful when your units are passing through an road heavily defended
by enemy towers.  

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Tactic 3: Zone stacking

By other abilities with smoke you can increase your survival at a cost.

Version A: Smoke Stack Repair

This is your ultimate defense. stacking Smoke + repair ensures less damage 
and regeneration, if done well you can survive anything thrown at you. 


Version B: Smoke Stack Decoy

Now your enemy sees the decoy and wants to kill it, but it can't hit! So they
have to wait till the timer runs out.  This is great for distracting a single 
clusters of tough enemies such as a combination of stormrays, behemoths and 
blasters.

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Decoy

Decoy has creates a fake unit.  Only enemy towers within the radius of the
decoy prioritizes the decoy.  If they are with in range of the decoy but 
the decoy is not within firing range or blocked by terrain, the enemy towers
are still free to shoot at your units. 

The decoy have a timer and HP. if either runs out, the ability ends.  It will
quickly die if multiple enemy towers are firing on it.  Therefore it is best
to use decoy to distract one single enemy unit than to use it draw the
attention of multiple enemy units.  

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Airstrike 

This is when you are desperate to finish a few key towers that is 
giving you trouble.  The area is big enough to cover maybe 2 adjacent towers
and there are no normal towers that can stand 2 airstrikes in a row.

In addition, the airstrikes do not cause damage to your commander or your
own units. 

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General Strategy: Unit composition

What is the right mix of units?

Crawlers are too frail, APCs can't kill anything. What's the right mix?
At higher levels of difficulty, these questions become more and more important.
My favorite line up: (well before that let me do a legend)

C=Crawler A=APC S=Shield T=Tank D=Dragon X=Supply

I ususally go with 2 Crawler 1 Shield 1 APC 1 Supply, but I might add sixth
unit.  

Do I need a long line?

Yeah. I think a 5 unit line is definitely needed. Longer the line, the more
room for restacking.

Some may ask: it seems like a simple game, but where is the strategy?
Well there is a lot of it, just in how you line up your units!

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Selling units and what doesn't work.

You may have noticed, that you can sell your units at full price with 100%
refund of your upgrades.  That's great, and I thought of a plan to exploit
that at first.  

Since buying and selling is instant....What if I sell a unit that is heavily
damaged in combat, and immediately purchase a new one at full HP?! 

Well I discovered that selling units are based on % HP.  If you sell at unit
at 50% health, you get half the refund.  So if you want to sell an unit, 
best heal it up to full before you do it.  

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Tactics 1: Combat Restack

This is where the meat of the game is.  You can restack a unit and move it out
of the way in the middle of the fight.  

C=Crawler A=APC S=Shield T=Tank D=Dragon X=Supply >> = movement direction
#=space between your unit and enemy Tower

Example A: 

This is a hypothetical setup

A4-A3-A2-A1>>###Enemy Towers

A1 move in and get shot up. But you can change the order

A1-A4-A3-A2>>#Enemy Towers

Now A1 is out of range, and you are now forcing enemy towers to shoot A2. You
can always repair A1 later. 

This is the basics of restacking. Now for some units with different range.  
Say enemy blaster tower has a range of ###, your crawler has a range of #####
and your APC only have range of ##

Now at A4-A3-A2-A1-C1>>#####Blaster Your C1 fires. 

your units move closer A4-A3-A2-A1-C1>>###Blaster. Your C1 fires again but
now enemy tower is locking on.  You restack:

A4-A3-A2-C1-A1>>###Blaster

Your frail crawler is out of enemy range, and your enemy will be shooting a
tough APC. But my Crawler is still able to fire.   
So now my units move closer.
 
A4-A3-A2-C1-A1>>#Blaster

Now my A1 opens fires on the enemy tower, but I restack:

A4-A3-C1-A2-A1>>#Blaster

Now both A1 and A2 are in fire range, and so is C1, with 3 units attacking

Basically long ranged high damage units are frail, but short range ones
are tough.  So the plan to restack is to:

Keep long ranged units in front on approach, and restack them to the 
back later and put the short range units into reach.  

This maximizes usage of firepower, and minimize damage to your frail units.

Crawler sniping is another tactic I use, mostly when shooting an enemy 
relatively far from your route. 

		Enemy
		#
		#
		#	
 		#
A1-A2-A3-A4-C1-C2>>

My C1 and C2 Fires and move past, enemy tower still alive, but now it is
are out of range. My APCs can't reach enemy at all.

		Enemy
		#
		#
		#	
 		#
       A1-A2-A3-A4-C1-C2>>

I restack:

	        Enemy
		#
		#
		#	
 		#
       C1-C2-A1-A2-A3-A4>>

Now My crawlers gets another pass.

		Destroyed
		#
		#
		#	
 		#
       	        C1-C2-A1-A2-A3-A4>>

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Tactic 2: Shield Swap 

The point in this game, is not to lose a single unit.  Losing units is losing
money, you can't allow that to happen if you want the strongest army possible.
Say you have a formation of A1-C1-S1-C2, both C1 and C2 has max shields.  
If you change to C1-A1-S1-C2, now C1 is out of range and loses all shields.
However, A1's shield will start at 0 and only start to charge.  

If you stack the formation to

A1-C2-S1-C1, or C1-S1-C2-A1, Shields remain.  

So if I fight an enemy and C1's shield is depleted.  I can quickly swap C1
with C2, maintaining the shield unit in the middle.  Then the enemy is forced
to shoot C2, who has max shields.  Now the enemy has to beat 2 layers of 
shields before causing a single point of damage.  

So what do you do if you see a storm ray? 

Say I start with:

A1-A2-C2-S1-C1>> Enemy Storm Ray.  The Ray attacks and damages shields of 
C1 and S1.

I restack to:

C1-S1-C2-A1-A2>>

Now my crawlers are in the back recharging their shield while shooting back,
while the enemy tower can deal some ping damage to my 2 APCs in front.  

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Alright that's all folks, happy gaming.