Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

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wobombat
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Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by wobombat »

Hi peoples.
I recently have gotten into deadlock again. It was a game of my childhood and I have very much enjoyed rediscovering the game, as well as many new strategies. Many of these strategies I have yet to see documented on the web, so I wrote a walkthrough, and I submit it to what few of you are left for your use and viewing pleasure:



Deadlock: Planetary Conquest :
How to win on 100% difficulty.
By: Jared Brinton

In this walkthrough, I will first lay out the general strategies that will improve your playing of the game. Then I will walkthrough exactly how I played the game to win on 100% difficulty.

Table of Contents:

1.0 : General strategies
1.1 : Which race is best?
1.2 : Aggression or Defense?
1.3 : Which units should I build?
1.4 : How do I handle Morale, Trade, and City Planning?
1.5 : Iron? Steel? Endurium? Triidium? Which is best?

2.0 : The Actual Game
2.1 : Initial Setup
2.2 : The Early Game
2.3 : Early Agression
2.4 : Mid-Game Development
2.5 : The Last Push

1.0: General Strategies


1.1: Which race is best?

This is an interesting question. All the races have their own strengths that, if used correctly, can be very powerful. However, in my opinion, one race is significantly better than the others, but sometimes we forget about them: the Humans.
There are three main reasons why Humans are the best. First, They are excellent at generating income from taxes and trade. Credits are almost always the bottleneck when using other races, but with humans, you almost always have enough. Second, They have very low transportation costs: half the normal rate without hoverway and absolutely free with hoverway. If you have energy or food or other commodities centered in certain territories, transportation costs can really add up and break your game. Lastly, the human infantry have the beserk command. At first, it doesn't seem great, but if you're following an aggressive strategy, you will often use more than 4 infantry to attack a territory. What happens to the extra infantry? They either are going to die in combat or be disbanded afterwards. In these cases, Beserk has no downside because you will not retrieve the unit, but it does give you a very good attack bonus. It is also useful to have when trying to obtain early game leverage to eliminate an opposing race or buy time in order to get a certain aspect of your economy or defense into place.
The humans' supposed downside is that they are vulnerable to morale problems with relation to the skirineen. This is easy to circumvent: simply use the skirineen in territories you control, but that have no population. There will be no backlash. Then you can transport anything you may buy, at the low price of free, to whichever territory you need it in, due to the humans' wonderful abilities.
I consider Tarth to be a very close second to the humans, due to their powerful armies and excellent food production, but they constantly run into credit shortage problems and sometimes stifling transportation costs. Humans easily circumvent these problems, and this benefit outweighs the combat bonuses of the tarth.
The Ch'cht are wonderful IF you have a lot of room to expand and if you can quickly destroy the opponents that are out teching you. If you start getting attacked by holocaust or disruptor cannons while you're still on fusion cannons – a common occurrence for the Ch'cht – your game is up.
The Uva Mosk have very excellent strengths in increased production, but this tends to mainly cause them to take a while to become aggressive. Unless you can wait out the first 60 turns or so without major military conflicts, the Uva Mosk are very hard to use effectively.
And lastly the Maug. Their technology bonus can be excellent at times, but they kind of suck in almost every other category. I've never found them to be effective until the mid-late game when you have holocaust cannons and everyone else is still on Fusion. On 100% difficulty, this is almost impossible to reach.
I find the Re'lu to be only good if you can pit other races against each other, while you secretly subvert their morale, mind control, and build up your economy, but with 100% difficulty this never is the case.
The Cyth suck terribly because you cannot use 1/5 of their workforce. The morale benefit is not enough, in my book, to recover from this downside.


1.2 Agression, or Defense?

This one is simple: Agression. Defense is extremely hard to pull off correctly: you have to somehow take and maintain 5 territories, while holding off enemy attacks, then create 5 city centers, with the last few costing exorbitant amounts. This is nearly impossible on 100% difficulty.
Aggression has a very profound advantage over defense: Conquering a territory not only means that you have weakened your opponents, but also means that you gained a large stash of valuable resources and buildings, which either can be integrated into your own economy or sold/demolished for a very nice profit. You gain at your opponent's expense.
Case study: Lets say you attacked a territory with 6 fusion cannons and won with 2 left. Your expense? 4 fusion cannons. At an iron price of 1 credit / ton, that's approximately 800 credits (plus labor) down the drain. But wait, the territory you conquered has 400 tons of food, 300 tons of energy, and 25 electronics, along with buildings that can be demolished for 500 credits. This, in total is worth 1250 credits to you, but it may be worth more if you have a particular shortage of any of these and are able to transport them back to your landing territory. You're already about 450 credits, more likely more, ahead as a result of this attack. But wait, we haven't considered your opponent. Since commodities are sold at a rate lower than their normal value and buildings are demolished for only half the price, this territory was worth significatly more than 1250 credits to your opponent. For simplicity, let's say 50% more. This means you took approximately 1875 credits worth of assets away from your opponent, not including any military units you destroyed. So from this single raid of a single territory, you got ahead by a net of 2325 credits. It normally takes several turns of economy in order to produce the same benefit.
Because aggression is so cost effective, it is much smarter to win by destroying your opponents than it is to acquire the required number of city centers. It also means that your main goal in the game is to, as fast as possible, produce the infrastructure needed to effectively attack and conquer your opponents.

1.3 Which units should I build?

This game has a very large number of units you can choose from. There are infantry, artillery, planes, missiles, and specialty units.
I have found that missiles and planes sacrifice mobility and speed for strength. These are tempting choices, but they are weak for their price and not cost effective. They can, however, be of use if you need to prevent a competitor from gaining 5 city centers, but they are unreachable in time by land units.
I have also found that laser cannons and laser squads are too weak to provide any real benefit during the early game. The base level factory that normally produces these two units is also extremely under powered. Avoid these. But wait, the best way to play is with aggression. How do I do that if I can't build the base units? You have to get to the next thing up as quickly as possible: the Fusion cannon, built out of an automated factory.
The fusion cannon is the bread and butter of any early game attack.. an army of 10 fusion cannons can completely wipe out another race's fully developed landing, and a group of 2 sent out around turn 20 can clean up many of the newly built auxillary settlements. But there are some downsides. In order to effectively churn out fusion cannons, you need to research nuclear fusion, fusion cannon, metallurgy, and automation. With a university, that is 12 turns of researching. This means that you need to get onto researching as soon as possible.
Fusion cannons are also metal intensive. Early on in the game, the best way to solve the metal thirst is to do an iron to steel conversion. 50 tons of iron takes several turns to harvest with a fully functioning surface mine, but 10 tons of steel, the same amount of metal value, only takes 4 people on an automated factory to produce.
Second up after the fusion cannon is the SAM trooper. The main drawback of the SAM trooper is that it requires electronics. This means you must divert researching power in order to create these troopers, slowing down your long-term progress or causing you to create more tech labs, which is an incredible drain on your energy reserves. However, once you require defensive units in a particular territory to be more than simply 2 fusion cannons, SAM troopers are necessary. SAM troopers are also very cost effective when used with beserk mode.
After these come Battle and Assault Troopers and Disruptor and Holocaust Cannons. These are all excellent units. Research them as soon as possible to get a distinct advantage over the other races.
Also, defensive structures can be extremely valuable in defending from early attacks. However, I rarely find it necessary to use anything more powerful than the laser defense, especially since doing so requires one to divert critical researching power to make the better defense buildings available.

1.4 How do I handle morale, trade, and city planning?

Novice players tend to get hung up on what morale and trade are and how to utilize them, as well as what buildings to create and where to place them.
Morale problems, with a few exceptions, is caused only by overpopulation, over taxation, and starvation. This means that, as long as you are providing enough food and being smart with taxes, there is absolutely no need to worry about morale until you reach a population of 2000 in any one territory. At that time, it is wise to create a museum. Cultural centers are neither cost nor labor effective: it makes more sense to go straight to the museum. If you are pursuing a more expansive strategy, which I will define as settling 3 or more territories, then it may be wise to also create an art complex. This allows you to gain an extra 10 culture points over the museum in any one territory and is very useful for recovering from any moral subversion attacks or taking care of morale problems in territories where the population is too small to support a museum.
Trade is extremely important in this game because it will become your major source of credit income for the mid and late game. The city center, by default, should be solely focused on trade, only changing this to build needed units or create culture when other methods have failed. If, for whatever reason, a map requires you to build a shipyard or an airport, always have them trading when you aren't building units. And make trade a priority with your factories, which brings me to the next subject of...
City planning. On most maps, your cities should be based on providing the necessary infrastructure in order to create as many factories as possible. In other words, once you have enough food, energy, research/electronics, and metal production, and housing, culture, and any defense are sufficient, spend the rest of your resources on factories. When in doubt of what you should build, build a factory. Don't build the large, underpowered base level factories, but rather start at the automated factory and work your way up to replication stations. Factories service the majority of your settlement needs: defense and aggression through infantry and artillery units, creation of steel (or triidium), and income through trade. As long as you have a museum, a farm or two, some power plants, tech labs, and housing, this is realistically all you need. As such, base your city planning on supporting as many functional factories as possible.
But where should I place my buildings? It is very important to understand terrain in this game. Plains are good for food and population growth. Mountains are good for metal production and, to an extent, energy, but are terrible at all the others. Marshes are excellent at energy production only, and Forests are excellent at wood production and mediocre at everything else. Cracked earth is good for energy production, plains for food, rocks for iron, light forests for endurium, and dense forests for wood.
If at all possible, place your landing site on a plain, however a forest could suffice, with good reason. Never place your landing in the mountains or a marsh, as your population will never grow to a reasonable size. Place the buildings you need in terrain types and square types that best support whatever you will be producing. For example, food icons in the plains will be the best at producing food, but a food icon in the mountains will only be semi-good at producing food. An energy icon on cracked earth in a marsh will produce massive amounts of energy, but the same thing in a plain will not produce as much energy.
If you have taken my advice and are playing human, then you do not need to ensure that energy or food producing buildings are made in the same territory where they are needed. Rather you can place these structures where they will produce the best, and forget about transportation costs, because once you research hover way, transportation will be free. However, if you do not play human, then you must ensure that you place enough power plants in a territory with a large number of energy consuming buildings, such as tech labs or factories. You must also ensure there is a farm in any territory with a large number of people. If you fail to do this, then you will incur high transportation costs every turn just to ensure that the materials you need are where you need them, and this will, in most cases, offset any benefits you gained by placing buildings where they will best produce.
When it comes to defending your settlements, it is wise to place your initial landing in an area where there are nearby bottlenecks. For example, if you can defend 8 territories from land attacks by placing defenses in only two, then you are in a wonderful situation. It is costly to have to defend all your territories from possible attacks.
It also is smart to place any defensive buildings in the bottom right portion of the territory. Anyone who has watched battles occur in this game know that this is where the attackers start out. By placing defensive structures here, you ensure that you are always attacking with your buildings and enemies will attack your defense buildings first, not your essential buildings.
If you have a territory far in the back of your area of control, it generally isn't smart to build military units from there, as it will take some time for them to travel to the front lines. Rather, use the factories in those territories for trade and metal processing, and configure the factories nearer to the front lines to build your military units. Likewise, expensive or essential buildings are best placed in the back of your territories, while low cost and little-needed buildings are best placed near the front lines.

1.5 Iron? Steel? Endurium? Triidium? Which is best?

This is a concept that took a little while for me to understand. At first I thought that it didn't matter which I used, so I often never converted iron to steel or endurium to triidium. Then, however, I realized that it overall costs much more and requires more buildings to produce and use iron and endurium, rather than to convert these to steel and triidium. An important thing to note here is that these conversions occur in factories, which means that you have more flexibility in configuring your economy. However, iron and endurium are produced in buildings that only create these metals, so you have much less flexilibity in configuring your economy.
So steel trumps iron and triidium trumps endurium, but which is better? Should I mine iron and convert to steel, or mine endurium and convert to triidium? When first faced with this choice, I found it very tempting to mine endurium over iron, because in essentially all of my mines, I could get a larger metal value by mining endurium over iron. However, in doing this I failed to look at the opportunity costs, or the potential value of the metals I mined.
Here is an example. Lets say you have a mantle drill that could either produce 30 tons of iron per turn, or 7 tons of endurium. At first, this seems easy: 7 tons of endurium has a metal value of 35, which is more than 30, therefore mine endurium. However, what happens to the value of these metals when you convert them to steel and triidium? The 30 tons of iron becomes 30 tons of steel with a metal value of 150, whereas the 7 tons of endurium become 7 tons of triidium with a metal value of 70. In other words, even though the endurium is worth more than the iron, the iron in steel form is worth over twice the value of the endurium in triidium form. The higher potential metal value created from iron also means that you can get by with significantly fewer mines than normal, because the majority of the metal work occurs in the factories where iron is converted to steel, rather than the mines. This helps to create the flexibility that is so beneficial in an economy that is centered around the factory.
To seal the coffin for endurium and triidium, mining these metals requires intensive researching through endurium mining and triidium processing, diverting researching from other essential technologies. Steel is king.




2.0 The Actual Game


So now that we've gone over the general strategies necessary to do well in this game, I'd like to go into depth on how exactly I played the game that led to my first victory on 100% difficulty. I've split up the actual game into 4 segments: Early game, Early aggression, Mid-game development, and The Last Push. Each segment of the game occurs over the space of approximately 30 turns.

2.1 Initial Setup
First off, in order to achieve 100% difficulty, have all 7 players, 5 city centers, supercharged AI's, and no fast production. I personally enjoy the random events, but you can turn them off if you so desire, as it won't change the difficulty.
I like to do custom maps, as it allows me to choose significantly more about the terrain. I personally like to have approximately 25% ocean, 25% plain, 20% forest, 15% marsh and 15% mountain. I never like to go below 15% or above 30% on any one territory.
When choosing map size, you need to take into consideration the possibility of an opponent on the other side of the map achieving 5 city centers before you even have a chance of attacking them. As such, you should avoid huge or large maps. I personally do a custom size map with size 20 territories, and either 20 width and 30 height or vice versa. I like having a non-square map, as it increases the potential for bottlenecks and helps to separate different areas. Ideally, there's just enough room such that all landing territories are not adjacent to each other, but this wasn't the case for my first game.
When it was my turn to pick, I had to choose a territory adjacent to an opponent's landing. Looking around, I noticed that the Ch'cht were placed such that they had only one territory they could expand into, a plain. As such, I chose that plain for my landing. Anyone familiar with the Ch'cht know that they are practically useless if they don't have room to expand. By placing myself there, I effectively crippled the Ch'cht, making it impossible for them to expand. That plains territory also happened to be next to mountain, forest, and marsh territories, so the potential for a full selection of resource nodes was very high.

2.2 The Early Game (Turns 1-30)
On the first turn, the first thing I do is look at all adjacent territories to my landing site to figure out which one I want to settle with the colonizer. In this particular game, I found a native shrine in the mountains territory, so I settled here.
I normally build a university, farm, surface mine, nuclear plant, and housing all in the landing. However, if a particular resource node is in my second territory and not in the landing, I wait until I've settled there and build that particular building there. In this case, I built everything but the university in the landing, because the native shrine acts as a university.
On turn 2, I started researching metallurgy in the native shrine and continued working on the buildings in the landing
On turn 3, the nuclear plant was complete, and I moved the labor over to complete the farm and surface landing.
The turns continued like this. After metallurgy, I researched automation. While researching automation, I created a laser defense in the landing to prevent early attacks from the ch'cht. I also mined a lot from the surface mine in order to ensure I had the 100 tons of iron necessary to create the automated factory.
As soon as automation was complete, I started researching nuclear fusion, and I built an automated factory in the landing.
Two turns later, I had an automated factory and I moved as much labor as I could over to start producing steel. I also started researching fusion cannon.
In case you haven't noticed yet, the whole point of my early game is to get automated factories producing nuclear fusion cannons in bulk. This not only allows me to defend against early attacks, but allows me to wipe out early attackers. I had the ch'cht to the north, which needed to be eliminated as soon as possible, since they had direct access to my landing. I had the maug to the east which were already building units, and I had the re'lu to the south. Looking at the maps, I figured that if I could eliminate these three opponents by around turn 50, I would control an area of about 7 territories that could be defended at only 3 key points, whch is ideal. So this was my goal: get automated factories and fusion cannons, then eliminate the ch'cht, then the maug, then the re'lu and secure that particular section of the map.
By around turn 16, I had fusion cannon researched, and at 2 turns per cannon, I can get 2 cannons out by turn 20. I also generally shut down my researching at turn 16 due to potential energy and food shortages and a desire to focus on metal and fusion cannon production. However, before I got out the first fusion cannon --around turn 17-- the maug came in and conquered my territory with the native shrine. In a way, this benefited me, as I was intending to stop researching anyway, and focus on improving my landing site. I also was fortunate to get a random event around this time where 400 natives joined my people at the landing site, effectively transferring the people lost at the native shrine to my landing.
Around this point, I got a second automated factory, such that one could devote its time to steel production, and one could focus on fusion cannon production. I also built a museum around this point, an extra laser defense, and a university, to research synthetic fertilizer as I was low on food. I also converted my nuclear plant into a fusion plant. As I got more fusion cannons, I expanded to the territories around me, since only 2 can be housed in any one territory. I got a third automated factory around this point, and had it also producing fusino cannons. By turn 30, I had 8 fusion cannons, which I used to march into the ch'cht landing and wipe it out. 1 down, 6 to go.
I expanded into the ch'cht territory, as it was fully protected by my landing. When expanding into previously occupied territories, I demolish all buildings I don't want, but I always leave at least one housing. This negates the need for a colonizer.

2.3. Early Aggression (Turns 31-60)
At this point in the game, my research agenda was this: research electronics, then chaos computers and create several tech labs (with fusion plants to go with them). Then Hoverway, SAM missiles, Anti-matter (upgrade fusion plants when this is done), then anti-matter rifles (to get battle troopers). I generally finish this research agenda around turn 60. In the meantime, I fully developed my two territories with as many automated factories as I could staff, as well as 3 tech labs, 3-5 fusion plants, 2 synthetic farms, 2-3 laser defenses in the landing, 2 museums, 1-2 surface mines, and sufficient housing. This whole time I was building fusion cannons as fast as possible, at 1-2 built per turn. Once I got artificial intelligence and robotics factories, this went up to 4 fusion cannons per turn. Once I filled up the 5 territories I had control over, I sent all 10 fusion cannons into the re'lu landing to the south and destroyed it in one swoop. Then I transferred any materials I was short on into my landing, selling the rest and salvaging the buildings. 4-5 turns later, I was back up to 10 fusion cannons, which I used to destroy the re'lu's secondary territory, which was fully developed at this point. To the east, I beat the maug back to the bottleneck and fortified the two territories there with 4 SAM troopers and 2 Fusion cannons each. A few turns later, I wiped out the re'lu in their third and last territory. This secured the third key point necessary to defend all my lands. After ensuring that I had sufficient units to defend my lands, as well as backups in my other territories should enemies breach any of the key points, I transitioned into the third phase of the game.

2.4 Mid-game Development (Turns 61-90)
At this point, I was militarily secure and leading the AI's in research. As such, I was able to stop building a steady stream of military units to focus on expansion and development. The two main goals I had at this point was to advance with technology and to create an infrastructure capable of producing 8-10 advanced units per turn. I expanded to settle a total of 5-6 territories. I focused on many anti-matter plants coupled with tech labs, an extra mantle drill or two (given I had molecular bonding researched at this time) extra farms, then as many robotics factories as I could reasonably support and staff. I also built museums and housing in each territory, and I built an art complex in one, ensuring to reasonably distribute the art throughout all the territories as it was created.
My research at this point focused on first catching up on any important low level technology I missed, such as molecular bonding or possibly hoverway. Then I worked to get the following technologies: Disruptor beams, cortex scanner, metal replication, assault armor, anti-matter beams. These are in no particular order and depended on what was occurring on the map at the time. If opponents were being aggressive, I would generally get disruptor beams, then metal replication, then cortex scanner, then assault armor. If I seemed to have more time before military attacks, I would generally go in this order: Cortex scanner, metal replication, assault armor, disruptor beams. Anti-matter beams take a very long time to research and generally are the last item I research in the game. Oftentimes, I either fail to research it entirely, or I finish researching it during the final push.
During this time I always get attacked to some degree, which requires the building of some military units and some defensive structures, but unless I deem offense to be the best defense in a particular situation, I do not expand at all during this time.
By the time I finish my mid-game development, I have all the infrastructure I need to push out 8-10 disruptor cannons and assault troopers per turn. To do this, I generally have around 20 factories composed of a combination of replication stations and robotics factories, 4-6 tech labs and collective tech labs producing the necessary electronics as well as research, and enough farms, power plants, defensive structures, and mines necessary to support them.

2.5 The Final Push (Turns 90-120)
At this point, I have my factories working full time to create disruptor cannons and assault troopers. Looking around the map, I found the uva mosk in a narrow strip of land to the south, wrapped around the main sea. They had been especially aggressive during the mid-game development, so I decided to take them out first. This also made sense because I wouldn't be increasing the number of territories I'd have to defend at any particular point.
I moved my disruptor cannons and assault troopers down to attack the uva mosk, making sure to use berserk when attacking. The uva mosk put up a surprising fight, and I lost a few battles, but I took them down within about 6 turns.
The tarth also settled along this one territory wide strip surrounding the ocean. Given their status as military behemoths, I found it surprising that it took only 4 battles to completely wipe them out. A notable battle was in a territory where only 10 squares were usable, the rest being flooded with water. The Tarth still managed to have 5000 colonists in this territory. Due to the compact state of the territory, when I went to attack, all the colonists were in one large mass, and overwhelmed my force with sheer, concentrated numbers. It was an excellent strategy on the Tarth's side, but unfortunately for them, I had another full army ready to attack the next turn, and that time I conquered.
At this point, I had eliminated 4 of my 6 total opponents. All that was left were the Maug, whom I had some battle with in the early aggression stage, and the Cyth, nestled in the northwest corner of the map. At this point, there was essentially no strategy involved. It was simply the utilization of my massive armies to overwhelm my opponents. I also had finished anti-matter beams at this point, so I transitioned from disruptor cannons to holocaust cannons. I also threw an occasional command corps into my massive armies of assault troopers and holocaust cannons.
I finished the game slightly earlier than normal, on turn 108. The final battle was epic. I moved 15 assault troopers, 1 command corps, 1 disruptor cannon, and 11 holocaust cannons into a single territory. Needless to say, the cyth didn't stand a chance.

Thank you for reading my walkthrough for Deadlock: Planetary Conquest. I personally love this game and was disappointed to see the apparent lack of walkthroughs or other resources regarding the game, so I made one myself. I hope this helped you realize ways in which you can improve your game and have more fun playing.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by Tggtt »

Thank you wobombat, your walk-through is the simplest I have seen about dealing with this level of difficulty.

Besides this website, I would also point that there are other resorces, like Faqs: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/197068-deadlock/faqs
And the official strategy guide: http://books.google.com/books/about/Dea ... edir_esc=y

I just got my official strategy guide from Amazon (used) and I couldn't read it completely yet, but I don't think that it supersedes your walk-through, which is much more straightforward than the book.

I also have a few comments:
  • I think that there's more to ponder about the metals. Technically speaking, units may require specific metals for being built. (I have proven it's technically possible after decoding this data structure but I don't know if there's a specific unit right now); Also, converting into steel and converting into triidium seems to have the same cost. If your factories are at max output and you have to choose between converting 10 iron into steel or 10 endurium into triidium, what would you choose?
  • Perhaps the major drawback of your walk-through is that it's human-centered. I agree that they have advantages, but you just need to change the strategy when using other races. Depending on a specific setting, you can even have more advantages.
    For example: if your race is tarth or uva-mosk, you need to build less farms; if you use maug, you need to build less universities/tech labs. If you need to build less, you use less workforce, less resources and less credits for that as well. Credits and resources are renewable in DL, whoever you cannot avoid the pop limit and that can make the difference. if you use cyth, you can set every taxes as oppressive at once, and credits probably won't cause bottlenecks; etc.
    Perhaps you can find how to balance these races and keep the rest of the walk-through unchanged and yet useful for all of them.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by MaugTheInfirm »

"units may require specific metals for being built"

You can use iron, steel, enduriam or tritium to build units. There's no restriction on building specific units with specific metals. But I'd like to speculate on the data structure which tracks metals. When you delete a unit from your build queue, you get back the same metals you put into the unit. The game may track which metals are used to build a unit, but I believe that's only needed in case you delete it from the build queue.

"choose between converting 10 iron into steel or 10 endurium into triidium"

Factories in Deadlock always convert more endurium than steel. Metal replicators, the end stage factory, can convert 25 iron to steel, or 40 endurium into triidium. Running the two conversions:
25 iron -> 25 steel (like 125 iron) = +100 iron
40 endurium (like 200 iron) -> 40 triidium (like 400 iron) = +200 iron

So back to the question - you have two stockpiles and want to pick one to convert. Always convert the endurium stockpile first. When you play without the human transportation bonus, triidium is also better owing to reduced transport cost for the same iron value.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by MaugTheInfirm »

"And lastly the Maug. ... On 100% difficulty, this is almost impossible to reach."

I just played a 100% difficulty game as Maug using the settings wobombat mentions. Actually I'm still playing, but on turn 114 I have every square of the map except for a Tarth square without an army in it. I disagree the Maug are impossible to play, naturally.

My opponents hit my front defenses pretty hard early on, and I expended most of my initial iron on laser defenses. In quantity, they can repel lots of invasions. But further back in my colony, missile strikes by a second opponent were another story. A thin line of laser defenses couldn't stop the bombing. I lacked any mountain territories, so metal became a real problem. The break through was probably getting SAM troopers and energy defenses, which combined can hold off missile strikes. I was quite happy when I finally hit that opponent with a missile strike of my own!

The strategy guide above says Maug is nearly impossible, and I disagree. I'm surprised you mention holocaust canons as important (2000 research) but say energy defenses (250 research) are too costly to research. I've won the game without researching holocaust canon, but I've always build energy defenses. I keep my front territories well defended, but consider military units in other territories as fodder for making attacks. I wouldn't classify my approach as attack or defense strictly, but as "defend, build, and then attack". I want a well developed colony first, and aggression against my opponents later.

I think the Uva Mosk are easier to play than Maug, but I love the quotes and quicks of the Maug.
"May your coughing subside", as the Maug say.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by sdu754 »

A few points/corrections here

1) You can still have a scandal even if you buy/sell items in an unpopulated territory. The scandal will randomly happen in another populated territory.

2) Avoiding building planes is a mistake, they are the most powerful units in the game

3) Transportation costs can be greatly reduced by building at least one Farm & Power plant in each territory. Planning your territories properly negates the human transportation advantage

The best race is hands down the ChCht. Their population growth rates gives them the ability to out produce any other race in any category in the game. They also aren't affected as much by overpopulation and only need half the houses.

The Cyth are definitely the worst, as they lose 20% of you workforces effectiveness with no way to remedy the situation.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

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MaugTheInfirm wrote:"And lastly the Maug. ... On 100% difficulty, this is almost impossible to reach."

I just played a 100% difficulty game as Maug using the settings wobombat mentions. Actually I'm still playing, but on turn 114 I have every square of the map except for a Tarth square without an army in it. I disagree the Maug are impossible to play, naturally.

My opponents hit my front defenses pretty hard early on, and I expended most of my initial iron on laser defenses. In quantity, they can repel lots of invasions. But further back in my colony, missile strikes by a second opponent were another story. A thin line of laser defenses couldn't stop the bombing. I lacked any mountain territories, so metal became a real problem. The break through was probably getting SAM troopers and energy defenses, which combined can hold off missile strikes. I was quite happy when I finally hit that opponent with a missile strike of my own!

The strategy guide above says Maug is nearly impossible, and I disagree. I'm surprised you mention holocaust canons as important (2000 research) but say energy defenses (250 research) are too costly to research. I've won the game without researching holocaust canon, but I've always build energy defenses. I keep my front territories well defended, but consider military units in other territories as fodder for making attacks. I wouldn't classify my approach as attack or defense strictly, but as "defend, build, and then attack". I want a well developed colony first, and aggression against my opponents later.

I think the Uva Mosk are easier to play than Maug, but I love the quotes and quicks of the Maug.
"May your coughing subside", as the Maug say.
You're dead on. I've beat the game at 100% with every race. I actually consider the Maug to be one of the better races (high Tech rate & best spies) You just need to keep an eye on morale.
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

Post by Ubergeneral Grunt »

sdu754 wrote:I actually consider the Maug to be one of the better races (high Tech rate & best spies) You just need to keep an eye on morale.
Not coincidentally, the Maug were actually the first race I won with at 100% difficulty.
sdu754 wrote:The Cyth are definitely the worst, as they lose 20% of you workforces effectiveness with no way to remedy the situation.
I remember a few years back (I don't play Deadlock today as much as I did, that's not to say I love it any less), I played as the Cyth on 100% difficulty and built and defended 5 city centres with less difficulty than I did with the Maug. I remember using oppressive taxation, not having to worry about food or culture and being able to use all the excess money to make deals with the Skirineen, made the game quite a bit easier. There was a morale effect after a Skirineen scandal, but only for one turn, which I felt was a worthwhile trade for saving time and resources that would have been spent on researching technology the above board way. I'll have another go when I next have a break, just in case I am misremembering.
Tarth cooks make best strudel, barbecue, bean dip, fish, cat food, smelt, piston rings, tofu and cam shafts...
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Re: Deadlock Walthrough: How to beat on 100% difficulty

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Ubergeneral Grunt wrote:
sdu754 wrote:The Cyth are definitely the worst, as they lose 20% of you workforces effectiveness with no way to remedy the situation.
I remember a few years back (I don't play Deadlock today as much as I did, that's not to say I love it any less), I played as the Cyth on 100% difficulty and built and defended 5 city centres with less difficulty than I did with the Maug. I remember using oppressive taxation, not having to worry about food or culture and being able to use all the excess money to make deals with the Skirineen, made the game quite a bit easier. There was a morale effect after a Skirineen scandal, but only for one turn, which I felt was a worthwhile trade for saving time and resources that would have been spent on researching technology the above board way. I'll have another go when I next have a break, just in case I am misremembering.
I'll agree the Cyth are the easiest race to play, but they are also the least powerful. I've never played them without any food production. It seems to me that if you starve your colonist you would end up with negative population growth, so I've never tried it. The Cyth also only pay 75% of the taxes as other races, so oppressive taxes is half way between moderate and heavy for them.
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