Teams All Welcome players rarely talk about strategy with their teammates. Teamchat is full of intel-related communication like strider callouts and pings on raiders, but in most games the only strategy content you'll see in teamchat is the occasional call for help. Does that mean there is no team strategy going on, only chaos? Hardly.
SpecializationIn a 1v1, each player must do every job for their team or else it doesn't happen. Big team games allow players to specialize in a single main role, while limiting each individual player's economy to the point where they don't have the resources to fill every role. The main element of team strategy is
assigning roles to players, which a team coordinates by having players watch what each other are building and where their units are going.
The most basic role is a
Lane, the responsibility to take and defend a certain part of the map. Holding part of a lane means your team gets to extract metal from it and the other team does not, but it also blocks the other teams' attempts to attack other places by passing through the lane. Almost always, your lane will overlap with that of one or more opposing players who will be your main opponents; if it does not, you should
push the lane by taking responsibility for a larger area until it does. Your lane might also overlap with a teammates, in which case you can take responsibility for specific threats based on your factory's strengths, for example by making all the lane's anti-air units so your lanemate can focus on anti-ground. Usually, half or more of a team will have lanes, because the local resource disadvantage for facing twice as many opponents in a lane will generally cause the lane to fail to the detriment of the whole team.
Other players are
Roamers, mainly responsible for offense. Their job is to destroy enemy value wherever it might be, and they accomplish it by going to wherever the enemy's weak and surprising them. Often they'll have a one-dimensional composition, for example almost all artillery or fast assaults, and strike and retreat before the opponents in that Lane can take advantage of the composition's weaknesses. But they can also play defense in response to enemy movements, in which case they're relying on the team's nearby laners to cover those weaknesses; catching the enemy units damaged and overextended is a good way to destroy them.
Backliners, taking responsibility for a narrow set of tasks across the entire map. Airplanes are the most natural backline role, since their ability to move around the map is their main strength. However, some maps have enough metal spots behind the lanes that it's worth dedicating a player to tending them so that the other players can focus further forward, and likewise with making high efficiency power generation for overdrive - at first. But the eco backline tasks get less valuable as the game progresses, and anti-aircraft units usually proliferate to the point where it's not worth devoting a full player to bombing, so backliners will usually need to find a different role as the game progresses.
The main point of strategy for a particular player is choosing when to change roles. The backliners are a team's main source of strategic flexibility, because they have no defensive responsibility nor commitment to a composition, and because their natural roles tend to expire. It's a source of great frustration for frontline players when the back line wastes this flexibility! Conversely, a team will need to replace lane players on the front from time to time, because their armies get destroyed by enemy action and need to be rebuilt. Usually it's a Roamer acting as a replacement because at least they have a standing army and they can secure enough reclaim with a counterattack to round out their composition, but a backliner can bring a complete army forward instead. Also, if a lane has been secured with mainly static defense and cannot push further, its occupant can leave a small guard force and move their attention and most of their army into an adjacent lane.
Wait, isn't the backline a lane?Technically yes, by these definitions, but it's different from the others in that it's far bigger and it faces a different threat profile.
The top threats to the backline are:
1) Cloaked units
2) Odin and other suicidal air threats
3) Nukes
4) Small groups of units leaking through frontline gaps
Antinukes are the one essential defense in the rear lane, because there's no other way to stop a nuke. Air defense is best handled by a network of Chainsaws and Artemis, which can guard a wide area behind them and also support the front, but highly mobile anti-air like Raptors can also serve to fight air threats over a large area if their owner is attentive. Either way, the goal is to team up with the front's local air defense to stop deep threats while they're still near the front and thereby protect all the rear targets at once.
Leakers and cloaked units like Scythes often get handled by units that have become obsolete on the front, like Commanders and light bombers, or by the units coming out of frontliners' factories. If a dedicated defense becomes necessary due to a Newton ramp launching jumpbots or persistent Scythe use, it needs to be mobile enough to cover the whole backline, meaning raiders or gunships. Static defenses other than long-ranged AA should be reserved for high value assets only, and even then their job is to keep Scythe-like threats from destroying it before the highly mobile defenses arrive; Solar walls, defensive terraform, Faradays and Newtons are most efficient here, although one or two Lotuses make a cheap stopgap. The backline can sometimes see a threat coming in time to flash-build static defense to block it, but should reclaim that static defense after it's done its job.
And the same dictum applies to the rear lane as the front ones - if you aren't being challenged, push the lane until you are.
Teamwork by DefaultThis is an elaboration on a Cold Take of the same name, which is a good read for the design end of the issue.
Teammates mainly coordinate with each other by their actions within the game. Each team member may have his own local strategy, but the team's overall strategy emerges from the things each player does that benefit the whole team.
This mostly happens because players' units naturally and automatically cooperate within the team towards some important goals:
* Intel collected by one unit shows up on the maps of all players on the team.
* Damaging units helps your teammates kill them, and killing them keeps them from interfering with anyone on the team.
* Local energy surpluses fill teammates' energy storages to fund repairs anywhere, and can increase overdrive on distant metal extractors.
* Metal extractors share income with teammates.
* Area shields and cloak fields protect teammates within them.
And the non-economic points add up to another, bigger one:
* Space controlled by one player can be freely used for maneuver or protection by that player's teammates.
Therefore, players focusing on a single role assist the players in other roles as a side effect, even if they aren't aware of it. A Laner gathers intel to show his team's Roamers where to strike, and provides a safe staging area to assemble, then the damage being inflicted by those Roamers allows the Laner to push the lane alongside them. Metal extractors made and protected by distant players increase the efficiency of a Backliner's investment in overdrive, and that income helps everyone. The threat of bombing forces the opponents to make anti-air, which is a defenseless target for the Roamers and unable to threaten or resist the Laners. And adjacent Laners protect each other from flanking attacks. And none of this cooperation requires action that the respective players weren't attempting already in service to their individual plans.
Playing for teamwork, therefore, starts from keeping an eye on your allies for when they accidentally enable you. Look at the intel they collect, look for the damage they inflict, follow up on both when you can, and make those Metal Extractors.
FlexingNow that the individual pieces are in place, we can talk about moving those pieces.
First - who should go in which role? Well, some players will claim roles regardless and stick to them. But initial roles are mostly decided by the factory plop - where it is, and which factory. A majority of players will initially take lanes that are more or less in front of their factory, and on terrain favorable to it. Certain factories - Cloakbots and Rovers, for example - have units better suited to roaming than to holding a lane, so they'll switch to that quickly. And players who intend to speedrun the backline metal spots will plop near a cluster of them, as will air players.
In other words, your pregame factory preview is a vital act of communication. Your teammates will plan their own early play around what you're indicating that you want to do, and may have those plans upset if you actually do something else. Later in the game, this communication mainly comes from where you put your units.
Each player will have a mental list of what the team needs, and will usually step in to fill pieces of it that aren't being addressed. As the game continues, they'll have specialized armies and the strong ones move those around to whichever lane they can do the most work in. Further, a player can take on extra roles, temporarily or permanently. A Laner whose lane is currently not threatened can roam in adjacent lanes with most of his army, without abandoning his original lane, or a Romer can take over defense of a collapsing lane. As previously mentioned, Backliners eventually need to throw their weight to some part of the front, because they're the team's major source of flexibility. And any spare resources can go to more specific or situational roles. One's specific skill at large teams is the ability to flex - to put one's limited resources in the most important places, without accidentally communicating a claim to a role one can't fulfill.
The purpose of pings, then, is mainly to communicate that one cannot serve a role that one still thinks is important. Basic pings get teammates to look at the problem, at which point the ones with the resources to solve it can decide how to try. "Help" pings, on the other hand, communicate that one is going to keep trying to do the job but it will be inadequate without support, and one's teammates can assess the situation and decide whether to sends support and how much.
The Triangle DanceAggression destroys Passive Value (Eco), Defense beats Aggression, Passive Value takes advantage of defense.
Bombers kill artillery, ground-based anti-air kills bombers, and artillery kills ground-based anti-air.
Antinuke blocks Trinity, Missile Silo shuts down Antinuke, Trinity destroys Missile Silo.
The game is loaded with counter triangles, even on a team-wide level. A team can lose just because it was too defensive in the face of greed, or because it didn't have enough air to force AA, or because it got nuked for lack of Antinukes. Fortunately, a team's resource allocation isn't set in stone; rather, entire players can switch roles trying to give their team a position on one of the triangles that gives their team an advantage over the opponents' position.
Laners typically have the least flexibility here - most of their resources are tied to holding their ground. They can plate for a few planes if necessary, or make a modest investment in anti-air, but if they have too few ground units they will get run over; and they need an already secure position to even consider building an Antinuke much less a full Trinity. Nonetheless, a Laner who thinks a strategic triangle move is necessary can chip in a portion of their resources towards the movement.
Roamers, in contrast, can put their entire income towards a strategic shift, or even reclaim part of their army to fund them. But they suffer afterwards, because their army has taken losses that have not been made good. If a roamer's contribution to a strategic shift is static, like an Antinuke, he won't want to stick around and defend it afterwards, because it removes his army's flexibility, unless he entirely switches to a Laner role.
Backliners can cause massive strategic shifts, but that's because they usually start from an extreme position on the triangle to begin with - pure eco or pure air. Should a Backliner want to cause a strategic shift that requires a ground army, he must build up for several minutes before having a useful mass. This at least comes with the advantage of being able to survey the situation and plan the entire composition from scratch, or build the army around a big investment into a strider without creating a corresponding vulnerability.
(this guide is incomplete but still useful in its current state)
