How to Play

From CustomWiki

In Advance Wars, your goal is to defeat your opponent by either destroying all his units or capturing his HQ. To claim victory, you'll need to capture properties to fund your war effort, build the right units to take control of the map, cleverly exploit your CO's strengths to defeat your opponent's forces, and use your CO Powers at the right time to claim a decisive victory.

Custom Wars uses the same mechanics as the Advance Wars games that veterans of the series are familiar with, and instead seeks to build upon the successful formula by offering new content.

1 Starting Your Turn
2 Building Units
3 Moving Units
4 Attacking the Enemy
5 Capturing Properties
6 Repairing Units
7 Joining Units
8 Opening the Menu
9 Using Powers

Starting Your Turn

When the day begins, you recieve funds equal to your income, which is determined by how many properties you've captured. The default is 1000G per property, but this can be adjusted when setting up the game

Building Units

To build a unit, click on a production building and a menu with the units available will pop up. Click the unit you want to produce, and it will be built on top of the facility. You'll need enough funds to buy it, of course. Units that you build can't move until next turn. Units are built at full strength, at 10 HP.

Moving Units

To order an active unit, click on it. The squares that highlight show which tiles are in the unit's movement range. Click on the tile you want your unit to move to (or just click on the unit if you want it to stay still), and a command menu will pop up. There are a number of commands your units have available, depending on the type of unit. Most of the time, you'll want your units to Fire and attack enemy units, or Wait to end your unit's move.

Attacking the Enemy

Choose the Fire command to attack an enemy unit. There are two types of combat units: directs and indirects. Direct units can only attack adjacent units. Indirect units attack from a distance, but cannot fire and move in the same turn. When a direct unit attacks another direct unit, the enemy direct will perform a counterattack following the attack. Unit attack strength drops as HP goes down, so make your primary attacks with high HP units to avoid painful counterattacks!

Capturing Properties

Taking control of the various structures on the map is the key to victory. To capture a property, move a footsoldier on top of it and select "Capture". Properties have 20 capture points, and a single footsoldier must Capture repeatedly without moving until the capture points are reduced to zero in order for you to take ownership of the property. When a footsoldier Captures, it reduces the capture points by an amount equal to its HP, so a full HP infantry can capture a city in 2 days.

Repairing Units

At the start of the day, any of your units on friendly properties will recieve repairs, which restores 2 HP but costs you funds according to the value of the unit. Repairs can be used to keep your army numbers up, but keep in mind that damaged units are still useful because they can block enemy units from getting to yours.

Joining Units

Another option for repairing your units is joining them. If you move a unit on top of damaged unit of the same type, the join command appears. When you join a unit, you combine their HP, fuel, and ammo. If the HP total would be more than 10, the excess HP is instead converted into funds for you to use.

Opening the Menu

To open your menu simply click on a tile with no units on it. The following commands appear:

CO: Lets you view the dossiers of each CO in play.
Intel: Shows you the power meters of each CO, their income and funds, and the number of units they have.
Options: This opens a small in-game options menu.
- Delete: Lets you delete units. You cannot delete units you have already moved.
- Yield: Choose this to surrender. You lose the game if you yield.
- Music On/Off: Toggles music.
- Visual Mode: No effect (dummied out)
- Resize: Changes the size of CW's gameplay window (obsolete, doesn't work properly)
- Scale: Toggles CW between four zoom levels. Gameplay can slow down quite a bit at high scaling.
- Save Replay: Saves a replay of the game so far.
- Test Replay DEBUG: As it says, for debugging. Don't mess with it.
- Exit Map: Quits the game and goes back to the main menu without saving.
Save: Lets you save the game.
Load: Lets you load a saved game.
End: Choose this when you are finished with your turn.

Using Powers

Each CO has both a unique CO Power (COP), and a stronger Super CO Power (SCOP). As both players deal and take damage to their units, the power gauge fills up, which is illustrated by the star meter next to your CO. When the small stars fill up, you can open the menu to activate your COP. When the large stars are filled up as well, you also gain access to your SCOP. The effects of powers are unique to each CO, and can win you the game if used at the right time! While powers are active, your power meter does not increase, but your units gain a small default stat boost. Each time you use a power, the next one will take longer to charge.