Greetings Commanders, Friendly Fixer here!

This installment of our Fair Play updates will focus on the world map. While this won’t be our last update to bring more interesting gameplay to the world map, the changes seemed like such an improvement that we didn’t want to wait for the more complicated changes. I’ll start with a bit of history, then into world map updates and finally wrap it up with a knock knock joke.

Several years (and multiple lifetimes) ago War Commander had a problem with platoon vs platoon battles. They lasted too long, the attacker had all the advantages and didn’t have to even deploy anything! This was a problem because players often used rings of platoons to defend their bases by having them attack each other, not deploy anything and stay blocking a hex for 7 minutes. But (!) It wasn't just defending that was broken by this confluence of systems. An attacker could try to move a platoon into position only to find themselves attacked instantly and lose their advantage.

Back then we made a number of changes in order to make combat more fair and less easily  exploited. 

• Battles dropped to 3 minutes

• Attacker could only bring in a single ground platoon and it was automatically deployed

• A platoon that didn’t gain victory would have ‘low morale’

  • Losing with low morale would send the platoon home

• You could use the ‘A’ key to start a battle without requiring a scouting operation

• You couldn’t attack an alliance members platoons

Almost all of these changes exist today but for various reasons the ‘A’ key was removed. The issue is that it was only really removed as a shortcut while the system changes to support it were left in place. This means that a player can still technically access it by using an external program to modify the game, and that isn’t fair play. So, to make it fair we are changing the game to make this available to everybody. To do it you can do one of the following:

• Hold Ctrl and click on a hex on the world map

  • This will pull up the platoon deployment window and allow selection of a platoon for attack

• Hold Alt and click on a platoon to select it in ‘move’ mode

  • Find a target and hold Ctrl while clicking it to select it as an attack target

• Select the ‘move’ platoon button from the context menu and then hold Ctrl when clicking a target

• Hold Ctrl and click on a platoon to select it in ‘attack move’ mode

  • Find a target and click it for attack

If the target hex has an enemy base or platoon then a battle will start once the platoon arrives. The platoon will automatically deploy without requiring a scout action, or even requiring you to join the battle. Once the combat starts it will appear on the top bar like all other battles.

For those eagle eyed readers; the Alt-click for ‘move’ mode is an existing feature of the game. I wanted to make sure to mention it here as I’ve learned it isn’t a well known feature.

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

I am

I am who?

Are you having an identity crisis?

Sleeplessly yours,

FriendlyFixer