Karkand Strategy Guide
This guide is written to improve your strategic skills and will make you a better player. You will notice that if "everything works" and the battlefield frontline shifts quickly to your teams benefit, the game is a treat to play and gives lots of fun!
US troops
Start of the game:
Infantry (not mechanized)
At the start of the game your opponents want to deploy mines at the corridors to Hotel.
Try to prevent this by storming out the spawn point on the right side and throw grenades at the corridors.
Have at least of few engineers spawning to remove any mines if deployed. When removed deploy somewhere down the street to prevent car bombers reaching our own mechs (APC's).
Make sure to have a lot of medics to heal and work in teams!
Mechanized Infantry (APC's) - Tank
Pick up as much infantry spawning at vehicle base. There are two secenarios:
1. 1st attack to capture Hotel flag.
2. Enemy armour is already near Hotel, using the APC to ride alongside the river bed and directly go into the island.
First to discuss 1.
When passage through is blocked by enemy mines then protect engineers clearing the mines. When cleared do not hold at entrance (typically noob behaviour) but postion to parallel raod on left side to guard enemy spawn points and protect moving infantry.
Try to ride in pairs and only as ENGINEER in order to repair each other. Engineers might deploy mines in front of the APC's to protect against car bombs.
The tank is placed either on main road towards hotel flag, in front of fence opposite alley or on the rtight side overviewing the enemy spawn point in the alley.
Engineers to repair armour when hit from AT weapons.
By now the teams should have secured the Hotel flag.
Option 2.
When no progress is made then APC's might try to move to the hills next to the river and try to run free for train flag or preferably to gate house or any other flag on the island. This wil divert the enemy and ease the job of getting the hotel flag. When ever a flag on the island is captured ignore all other flags on the main land first to get as much as possible flags and primarily the factory flag. When this flag is captured then enemy has no access to armor and the balance is shifted completely to the US troops.
NOOB behaviour
The most common noob behaviour is:
- Mines deployed by the enemy are not cleared.
- Even if no mines are present armor does not want to take positions as described earlier. Ususally this happens if they are hit by AT weapons and are afraid that continouing would make them loose their vehicle. Fact is that they are sitting ducks for AT personnel and are more harmful then when moving.
- Snipers in the first phase. Of all possibilities it is better to have medics storming for the flag then to have a useless sniper lying close to their own spawn points. This is espacially valid for the phase when enemy armor is defending the hotel flag. More then once I was hit driving a tank or APC by a sniper, giving away his position and therfore be food for my firepower. Better to be equiped with an AT weapon.
- Selfish behaviour. People loitering on armor spawn positions and when they finally have acuired an APC or Tank they do not want to give it up quickly by a bold action so they tend to stay in the backyard. Punishment is complety OK here and C4 will do the job to teach those cockroaches or toads as I like to call them :-). Teamwork is vital and selfish behaviour is good for the single player mode.
- When breaking free from the main front in an APC then you should leave your squad and create a new one enabling other people to spawn. Noobs forget this usually.
- Fragging ignoring team player positions on the mini map.
- Not healing other players when they play as medic.
- etc. etc.
Next steps
One common mistake is that people want to capture flags in a sequential order, i.e. first Hotel then Square, Suburb, Train, Gate house, Cement factory, Warehouse and Factory. What will happen is that after capping the mainland flags a stand-off situation will arise blocking progress toweards the island due to the only 2 ways reaching it which by that time are heavily guarded.
There are several good strategies but quickest way to defeat is to cap all island flags first. It usually goes wrong when the factory flag is captured and suddenly most players decide to go for main land flags again. Move the front from the factory flag to gradually capture all island flags and immediately destroy enemy commanders assets.
Deploy mines on factory entry points and do not forget the "backdoor".
Commander
The commander position is in fact the most vital position. A good commander helps the troops to accomplish victory with great speed while bad commanders slow down progress or even never create a positive power balance.
The rules for a good commader are actually very simple:
1. Never zoom in in order to not loose the overview of the battlefield. (only maybe in that rare occasion that you want to drop the supply crate or vehicle very accurately).
2. Scan continuously. When a scan is finished and available again, scan again and always repeat until the end of the game. Point out enemies, espacaially the APC's and Tank. When our APC makes the river bed run they want to know if there is enemy armor on their path.
3. Drop supply crates when they are available for armor. Ignore requests from non mech infantry. They only need medic care or ammo which can be obtained by supply and medic personell.
Srop supply crates proactive, i.e. when e.g. an APC makes a clear run towards the enemy mainbase it would be a nice gesture if there is already a supply crate waiting.
4. Arty when available on a concentration of troops or positions that are not properly guarded, or in case trying to take suburb, train or enemy mainbase then arty to get rid of the towed AT weapon.
5. Direct squads to positions.
Remember: WHO DARES WINS!
