Midwinter II: Flames of Freedom - Guide THE STRATEGIC OPTIONS hich islands should you liberate? Your ultimate onjective is to destroy Saharan Armada before it reaches your hoe island, Agora. Unless you place some obstruction in the Armada's way, you will have little chance of defeating it. You have two basic options. Option one is to liberate as many islands as you can. This forces the Armada to make its attack through territory that your forces occupy. The attrition rate is high in such areas and the Armada will dwindle rapidly. In addition, each island you liberate contributes to the war effort, making the Armada's attrition rate even higher. By choosing your missions carefully, with just eight successful missions in the right places, you can liberate nearly all the islands in the archipelago. Option two is less obvious, but allows more leisurely attack on the Armada. This strategy is to force the Armada to take the longest possible route to Agora. The Armada's attrition rate will not be as high as in option one because it is always passing through friendly territory. However, the route it has to take is almost four times as long! The slow but steady attrition rate will ensure that only seven small, elite battlegroups reach Agora even if you do nothing at all in person. And, when it comes to attacking these battlegroups, you have all the time in the world to destroy them. To implement option two, you must personally liberate no less then 13 islands. THE ISLANDS THAT YOU MUST LIBERATE ARE: Djourm, Satara, That, Beni Mazar, Mororito, Hemet, Cajamarca, Ausia, Almirante, Iquuitos (which liberates Gamboa), Maracay, Calabar and Dhafra. If you have still time left before the Armada sets sail, it is useful to liberate LOBOS (which liberates Panao & VIc enza) and Galva (which makes a large contribution to the war effort). The Armada route in option two is 16 islands long: Chazai, Khash, Carmago, Muar, Angara, Cristobal, Nicobar, Bourem, Gran Paradiso, Sikasso, Vitoria, Maji, Corozal, Argora. Try this option out in strategic training and you'll see just how the Armada dwindles away! GETTING A HEAD START ON YOUR MISSION The key to a quick and successful mission is knowledge. Once you know where the important characters are, your task starts to become easy. However, life being tough, when you start on your mission, you know virtually nothing. On most islands, your intial contact will introduce you to other characters, who will then introduce you to there friends. By exploring this network, you will eventually gte to know everone on the island. However, this can be a long and time consuming task. Characters often have friends in far-flung places and as you journey from one corner of the island to another, the clock ticks on and on. Hours turn into days and days turn into weeks. Frequently, the character you must want to find is the last sociable of all. When you are criss-crossing the island, building up your network of social contacs, the temptation is to always use the Quick Time option which take you straight to your destination. However, this is also the way to miss opportunities. If, from time to time, you Autoroute instead, you then get the chance to look around on your journey and to watch your radar. Often you will be able to spot new, unknow characters, if you do, interrupt your journey to go and talk to them. Chance meeting like these are a golden opportunity for a short cutting the intricacies of the island's social network and getting to know people quickly. To further increase your cances of meating people, switch the village infomation on when you're looking at the man and deliberately set your route to pass through as many villages as possible. Characters are almost always near buildings. Finaly, you'll often find that key characters like to hide themselves away on tiny, offshore islands. If you're finding it particulary difficult to locate someone, a visit to one of these can be very rewarding. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK how to attack and destroy the Saharan Armada The first and foremost rule of observe is simple; DO NOT ATTACK THE ARMADA AT ITS MUSTER POINT. When the Armada sets sail, every single battlegroup is gathered at the muster point, making your attack suicidal. The important thing to release when attacking the Armada is that not all enermy units will it to Agora. Even if you sit back having a cup of tea rather then fighting Armada, a lot of enermy units will get destroyed by your own forces. So, the secret in attacking the Armada is to only engage the dangerous units - in other words, those units that will certainley reach Agora if you do nothing about them. Atacking units that will get destroyed regardless is a complete waste of time and energy. But how, I hear you ask, do i know which units will make it? The Armada is organised into battlegroups, some of which are small, elite units (which will ALWAYS make it to Agora) and some of which are conscript units (which suffer a high attrition rate). If your Island liberation strategy has been sound, most, if not all of the conscript units will fail to reach Agora. The problem then is to sort out which units are elite and which are conscript. Now i can reveal a secret never revealed before! All the elite units have either a General of an Admiral as there commanding officer. Occasionally, a a large conscript battleground will also have a General or an Admiral in charge but a unitwith a lower ranking officer is ALWAYS a conscript untit. So, as a rough rule of thumb, your primary targets should be small energy units with a small General or Admiral in charge. Another rule of thumb is to always go for the lead battlegroups, being closest to Agora, the vanguard of Armada is always the most dangerous element. Destroy the vanguard and you have more time to deal with te rest of the Armada, working your way steadily down its line of attack. During combat, it's obvious down to down to your own battle skills, but you must still keep a strategy eye open. One of the worst scenarios is to destroy, foe example, an enermy helicopter unit andthen find you're running out of ammuntion. More often not, you'll be far out to sea and the journey to find more ammuntition will be long and time-consuming. When you're running low on ammunition during a firefight, your priorities must change. You are no longer hell-bend on destroying every thing is sight. Instead, you should be looking for an alternative vehicle. Leap into the enermy helicopter with fresh shock of ammunition BEFORE you destroy the whole unit. DEFEATING THE ARMADA - IN BRIEF 1) Wait until the element of the Armada have dispered from their muster point before making your attack. 2) Concentrate your attack on a small, elite units with high-ranking officers in charge. 3) Wherever possible, make you attack on the vanguard of the Armada. 4) Avoid getting stranded in the middle of nowhere without ammunition.x --- Typed by _/aybee!!