Zed's KAGG TAR #2

[Zed-F]

Vladivostok, Russia -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

My next construction project is going to be my Tier 3 trainer. That's going to take a pretty fair outlay of green to make happen; I figure I need about an additional $600K in order to both build the trainer and be able to afford to train a minimal number of powers. However, I think my ideal window in which to start construction is around mid-March, and it's still early Febuary, so I have some time to work with.

There are a couple ways I could try to get that $600k. I do have three Tier 1 cities left I could target, Vladivostok, Lisbon, and Dakar, which should be relatively straightforward to loot and burn, but would cost me the advantage of surprise, which I might like to save for higher tier cities. Alternatively, I could try to raid larger cities in areas I have already hit. I could even try to flip some of the softest T2 cities like Vientiane or Quebec City, although those cities don't have a lot of cash loot drops so I would mostly be trying to flip them for monthly income. It would probably take at least a couple visits, though, since I'm not yet at T3; the performance gap between a stage 2 kaiju with force shield and a stage 1 kaiju without is pretty huge.

Ultimately, I decide that my best course of action is probably to raid Vladivostok twice, and then flip it with the third attack. This will preserve the advantage of surprise in Europe and Africa, so I can use it to help flip larger cities more quickly, and should still get me at least some additional monthly income in addition to the $600k cash that I think I need. Vladivostok is a relatively rich city for a T1 in terms of cash-drop buildings -- there are lots of 3rd national banks and KTOF centers in addition to a central bank and unique buildings like a stadium and car plants, so I'm not too worried that I won't be able to grab the cash I need, providing I am careful about how I flip the city. I would have liked to flip a T2 city for monthly income instead but I think it will just go too slowly without T3 powers to justify the attempt.





On round one, I enter the map at the top left corner and start making my way into the city. Vladivostok has some pretty key terrain features, notably including a large series of inlets which split the city apart; you can use these as highways or jump from one bank to another to evade pursuit, but there are a couple naval bases on the main inlet so you need to make sure to take care of them first. In order to take advantage of these inlets from my corner start, I need to make a Kaiju-sized road through the office buildings in the area to ease travel for future trips through the city. After taking out a nearby bank and college, I burn my way down toward a central bank and then turn toward the center of the map. I deliberately leave the central bank alone on this trip, though; that building is earmarked for a future visit. I also leave alone a 3rd national bank near the river, although I do burn down a new nearby warehouses and office buildings near the Golden Bridge so I can get access to the river later.



Instead of hitting those banks, I keep building my road up to a college and smash that to gather its knowledge. That puts me near my real first target, the two naval bases on the inlet; if I am going to use the inlet as a highway, these need to be taken out. Plus, naval bases have good loot, often including significant quantities of purpletonium.





I hit the first naval base from the land side; it spawns an attack chopper to harass me but so long as it's not a destroyer I'm ok with that. After smashing my way through the first naval base, I hop quickly into the water and zip over to the second, which spawns an infantry to defend itself. That isn't much of a threat, though, and I take out the second naval base as well. There's a couple nearby cargo ships that I also ransack, looking for more purple rocks.



I considered moving upriver toward the car plant at this juncture, but then I saw a line of tanks on the roads, just waiting for the chance to get close enough to shoot, and I quickly reconsidered. The car plant area is the single most dangerous part of Vladivostok, because vehicles from both banks of the river can get close enough to shoot you. If there was a lot of vehicles on one bank, I could expect to get pelted by double that many if I went up there. So, I decided discretion was the better part of valor for this trip. After all, that's why I was being careful to build a Kaiju road through the city in the first place -- to be able to get over to the car plant area quickly on a future visit, before the defenders could really start to pile up!



By this time Vladivostok was recovering from the surprise attack and raising the Defcon level, so I was on alert for attack choppers and other higher-tech defenders. I was almost full of cash, but not quite full of lore, so instead of visiting the car plant I turned and crossed the river and made my way toward a final college on the opposite bank. After breaking through the warehouses and tearing apart the college for more books, I went back out to the inlet and moved back the way I had come, toward the Golden Bridge; it was time to get out of town. After making my way around the end of the bridge, I followed the inlet out to the ocean, smashing a couple warehouses and apartment blocks along the way to make future visits easier.



I could have stuck around longer and tried to flip the city, but that wasn't the plan. Instead I made sure to leave before I took too much damage; I do want to make sure Vladivostok is well and truly stomped before the end of the month, not after!



My second trip started my near the center of town, rather than at the top end... and started a whole bunch of defenders right next to me. It's a trap! But I just hit boosters and high-tailed it out of there; I am here to wreck buildings, not fight tanks and ships I can otherwise just ignore. I head up toward the closest access point to my road through the city that I created on the last visit; this takes me through the Dynamo stadium, which is fine because stadiums often have a significant amount of cash.



After taking those out, and ignoring the central bank one more time, I follow my road into the city. There's a third national bank near the naval bases that I missed last time around so I extend my road a short ways in that direction to nab it, then exit via the wreckage of the second naval base onto the river. I have time for a quick smash and grab at the car plant, so long as I do so before too many enemies spawn and gather. Fortunately my prep work pays off and I am able to grab the loot from the car plant. After that it's just a matter of hitting up a few cargo ships on my way out of town, as I head back down the inlet again to make my escape, and I'm topped up on cash reserves for this trip while still keeping repair time down to a minimum.



I needed to minimize repair time so I would have time to visit Vladivostok a third time in Feubary before the month ended; after all, Vladivostok might not be the furthest city from Island X in the world, but it's not exactly all that close either. This time my targets are all the banks I had left alone on previous visits: the central bank and a 3rd national bank that's right on my road through town, as well as three more of the latter on the banks of the inlet I've been using as a highway and escape route the last two trips. I smash through those but it doesn't quite top me up, so my next target is the KTOF buildings. I ignored these on previous runs; they have a fair amount of cash, but are pretty tough and also have some special behaviour that affects morale. Hitting KTOF buildings is helpful if you are ready to flip the city, but not so much if you just want to raid it for resources. The first one I hit was near the end of the Golden Bridge.



There was another near the Iguana Complex, so that was my next target. I took out the complex as well, for good measure, before continuing to the third KTOF building on my trip across the peninsula.



Finally, after smashing three KTOF buildings and filling up on cash, I crossed another smaller inlet to ditch my pursuers and continued causing destruction on the opposite bank. By this time, Vladivostok had had enough.





So, good news! I was successfully able to gather my bankroll and flip the city right before the month ended, with only one day to spare. I plan to start construction of my Tier 3 trainer on March 12, so construction will complete at the beginning of April. In the meantime, if I want to be able to actually acquire any T3 abilities when construction completes, it's time to begin T2 training!

[Zed-F]

Planning for T3 -- KAGG versions 1.05.4036 & 1.06.4107

Well, it had to happen sometime, but spending a month and a half on training still feels painful when my goal is to achieve world domination as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, it can't be avoided; I need to grow my kaiju if I want to tackle bigger cities. In Tier 2 cities I face stronger tank defenses, bombers, rockets, MRLS vehicles, and the likelihood of reaching Defcon 3 at some point for even more nastiness. I need defenses capable of standing up to these threats, hence force shield. And at some point I will need guns capable of eliminating such threats if they are in my path, hence picking up eye beams and death stare.



There are several other useful skills I could pick up at this point. I will eventually need to get blasters, and auxiliary reactor, I'm sure. I might possibly also want to get EM jammers, though not right away I think. In addition, this update saw a change to the way force shield works, in that it is now bypassed by beam weapons. This means I'll need some other way of handling those, as beam weapons can be pretty nasty; I'll likely start with deflectors and see if that's sufficient or if I need to get something else. There is a small silver lining, however, in that I expect my force shield to get depleted less quickly by those kinds of weapons, so it may stay up longer overall. Having force shield on cooldown is less immediately dangerous if other defenses are still available for use.

For now my aim is to tackle a few of the softer Tier 2 cities, so I am hoping I don't need to grab additional T3 powers beyond force shield quite yet. My monthly income needs a strong boost if I am to get to T4 and eventually T5 in good time; I have a lot of fairly costly resource buildings to build before I can think of more trainers, and T5 especially takes tons of cash. So building my income before I spend too much time training is something of a priority, and it's a goal I plan to start tackling this month.

Still, one thing I have noticed is that damage done to flipped cities seems to have a lot more impact on the income you get from them now than it did during my run in the 1.02-1.03 timeframe, which suggests two things to me. The first is that this is kind of a back-handed buff to raiding. Especially for nearby high-income cities with a lot of valuable buildings to destroy, unless you can simply force a surrender without a fight, more of the value of a city is in the loot you pick up during attack runs, and less is derived from flipping it. But you still probably want to flip cities that are far away or that don't have a lot of good loot buildings as quickly as possible.

If the above supposition is correct, then looking at the map of T2 cities around the world, I should be trying to raid places like Calgary and Panama City for cash over multiple visits in a single month before finally flipping them by month-end. Conversely, if I visit far away cities like Dubai, I should try to flip them immediately, whereas nearer cities like Quebec City might still be scheduled for being 1-shotted because they don't have enough valuables to be worth raiding. Of course, some cities are both relatively far away and don't have a lot of loot drops, like Vientiane; these should of course also be flipped quickly if visited.

The second thing I gather from this change is that, especially when I am not raiding but trying to 1-shot cities, maybe I don't want to be using plasmoid as much to start fires, except where necessary to help clear a path so I can stay ahead of the pack chasing me. Instead, perhaps, I want to be concentrating a bit more on explicitly hunting down those civilians, rather than just taking potshots at targets of opportunity. Plasmoid is perfectly capable of double duty on both civilian killing and fire starting, but it can't really do both at the same time effectively even with its short 5s cooldown. Still, it's the best tool I have in my arsenal right now at either job, so it will likely remain on my bar for quite some time.

Another thing I've discovered after running some tests is that the types of buildings damaged in the city generally doesn't seem to affect how much income you get after the city is flipped; only the total amount of destruction is relevant. So it generally seems ok to destroy cash-oriented buildings even if you are full up, as it won't affect the value of the flipped city -- although if you are expecting to visit the same city multiple times then you do still want to be careful about which buildings to destroy when. Destroying houses is thus mainly beneficial for the number of easily-killed civilians it spawns, rather than for the destruction of the houses themselves.

So, it is with these thoughts in mind that I decide upon my next target...

[Zed-F]

Panama City, Panama -- KAGG version 1.06.4107

Panama City should be a good target for raiding; it has a lot of high value buildings that are worth substantial sums of cash, and it's close to home base. I have a plan for this month and it involves getting a bunch of cash and food up-front. I need to build a couple soylent centers, since the organics processors I had built previously have been nerfed, and instead of having a food surplus I instead have a small deficit. Unfortunately, soylent centers are really slow to build, but if I can get a couple of them done by the end of this month then at least they will contribute next month.

Of course, I can't grab all the high-value buildings in one go if I am raiding. In fact, my plan for Panama City is to bypass all the landmark buildings and banks, and primarily hit office towers for the first visit. I am hoping to be able to fill up on cash that way, and then hit the landmarks and banks on the second trip.



Gino starts out near to the Point, so I pilot it over there and start taking out offices. I take out one or two high-rise apartments too -- I can't really avoid it as they are interspersed with the office towers and get in the way -- but the apartments are definitely not my primary target, as they don't contain any power or books. The office towers have a lot more goodies in them so I try to minimize time spent on non-priority targets. I do take out a large collection of warehouses, though, with the help of a not-so-friendly bomber. These have some cash but also a fair amount of power and, apart from office towers, are in fact my main source of it on this map.



I make a sort of a loop through the one side of the city, mainly hitting anywhere I can spot an office tower or two for demolition, then head back to the coast for a couple more there. I come out near the Rivage, but I don't hit that yet, as I'm about full up on cash anyway. I'm also full on power and food, and have a decent haul of books, so this seems like a good time to split for round one.





I managed to squeak out of town with less than 10 points of damage incurred past the shield, nice! I don't really have a lot of wiggle room in my schedule for repairs this month, so I am planning to defer those as much as possible until after month-end. I expect I will probably take significantly more punishment next time around when I try to flip the city; I didn't really do a ton of morale damage on this first attack and I expect I'll probably see Defcon 3 next time around.



I head back and stash my loot back at home base, then immediately turn around and make the trek to Panama City again. This time I'll definitely be focusing on those cash landmarks and banks I skipped last time, and probably some warehouses for power, as well as hunting down civilians of course.







Gino starts in the same place as last time, so first up on the hit list is the Point and a Central Bank building that I skipped earlier. Then this time rather than turning left and proceeding through the track I tore last time I head around the bend to the 'Trump I Mean Prump' tower. After that I backtrack, step on a couple random houses in my way, and head up to the Revolution, also taking a moment to snag a nearby gas station.

That's it for the landmarks on this side of the city, apart from the Megopolis, which has a lot of food but also a lot of hit points and not much else to recommend it. Rather than sticking around, I tear down the coast road up toward the Rivage, quickly knock that over, then head straight for another Central Bank building on the other side of the map. This is a lot of ground to cover and I'm not doing much damage to the city while running, so I try to make it quick.



I was hoping I'd score some purple rocks out of at least one of these two central bank buildings, but it wasn't to be. Oh well, there'll be other cities! There aren't any educational institutions in Panama City, so I think that's it for my chances of getting any this run. I console myself by heading up the hill to step on a bunch of houses and civilians; the cash grabbing phase of this run is about over and it's time to start working on morale. Well, that and power.





Up the hill is not only a bunch of houses but also several areas containing many warehouses. The roads up in this part of town are a bit strange as well, and the vehicles seem to have a little trouble following me up here into the corner of the map. They do eventually make it, mind you, but can't come at me from all directions like they might in a more centralized part of town, so are easier to deal with. Still, tearing down all these warehouses for power takes a while, especially as I don't want to spend that same power on abilities to speed things up. Eventually, Defcon3 hits.



Fortunately, however, I don't see too much trouble arising out of this. I get a jet that I manage to knock down, and a few melters that I manage to evade... but having run out of warehouses to loot, mostly I just make sure to keep moving and househunting. I need to kill a lot of civilians to bring the morale down; Panama City isn't as quite as resilient as Calgary, but it's tougher to flip than most T2 cities. I even have to go back and take out the Megopolis for the extra morale hit! But eventually, the city succumbs.





Again, I'm lucky not to have taken very much damage past the shield, it could certainly have been worse! That will allow me to keep going without stopping for repairs. A shame about the low food value on flipping the city as I could really use more food in the short term. However, the cash reward is probably more useful in the long term so I guess I will take the good with the bad and run with it!

[Zed-F]

As far as higher difficulty goes, I'm not sure that is quite a thing for Gino. Higher difficulty makes buildings cost more and adds more enemies to maps, but doesn't really change how Gino plays and wins if you are doing things optimally. You are still mainly kiting stuff around the map.

Coming back to this point, KP made some changes in the latest 1.08 update which should tone down the ease with which kiting around the map can be made to work to the player's benefit, so increased difficulty levels should have more impact now than they did previously. At least one person who was playing on the hardest difficulty level abandoned that game after the 1.08 update and started a new game on normal difficulty instead, due to these changes and to changes with respect to base building and invasion mechanics. I haven't tried it yet, but my next game will begin on the 1.08 version.

[Gustaran]

As far as higher difficulty goes, I'm not sure that is quite a thing for Gino. Higher difficulty makes buildings cost more and adds more enemies to maps, but doesn't really change how Gino plays and wins if you are doing things optimally. You are still mainly kiting stuff around the map.

Coming back to this point, KP made some changes in the latest 1.08 update which should tone down the ease with which kiting around the map can be made to work to the player's benefit, so increased difficulty levels should have more impact now than they did previously. At least one person who was playing on the hardest difficulty level abandoned that game after the 1.08 update and started a new game on normal difficulty instead, due to these changes and to changes with respect to base building and invasion mechanics. I haven't tried it yet, but my next game will begin on the 1.08 version.

Yes, I just checked and 1.07 introduced the "Very Hard" difficulty setting, so from normal difficulty that would be two steps up. And who knows, we might see the new Kaiju by the start of your next game, so you could try the new monster on the hardest difficulty.

[Zed-F]

Well I probably wouldn't try the newest monster on the hardest difficulty before it has had any balance patches and before I have familiarized myself with it.

But no, my next game will start in 1.08 and Shrubby isn't available yet. Not to worry though; between the 1.08 changes and taking a different approach to building Gino, I don't expect my next game to be much like this one.

[Zed-F]

Quebec City, Canada -- KAGG version 1.06.4107

The next city on my target list for this month is Quebec City, as it is not too far away and should flip quickly, as it's one of the softer T2 cities. By hitting here next (and again avoiding repairs) I think I'll have enough time left this month to visit one more T2 city, and hopefully flip it as well before month-end.





The first couple landmarks I hit in Quebec City were the Chateau Frontenac and Notre Dame cathedral. I mainly went after the latter because a civilian had fled in that direction, but once I was there I decided the books would be welcome enough.





After that, and after destroying a bunch of office buildings in the area for cash, I ventured more toward the middle of the map. There was a couple universities, a college, and a high school I wanted to pay visits to.



Next up after scoring a bunch of purple rocks and books, I decided to pay a visit to the Quebec provincial legislature, since I skipped it last time. Nothing much in Quebec City is worth much cash, as far as I've been able to see -- there are no banks or tall office towers -- so the small wad I got here was welcome enough.



There was another college and a medical center I smashed over in this direction. There are a lot of houses in this part of town that I was knocking over to squish the civilians living inside; that was a big part of the reason for being in this part of town. I wanted to make this a very quick flip, since I still had one more town to visit this month and Defcon 3 was due to come along shortly.



Speak of the devil! Fortunately, it's far too little, too late. Morale was already almost at the tipping point and in another couple moments, the city tumbled.





Not a ton of loot overall, but the food, books, rocks, and monthly paycheque are welcome none-the-less.

[Zed-F]

Dubai, UAE -- KAGG version 1.07.4139

My last target this month is Dubai, a relatively rich T2 but one that's far away from Island X. In fact I have enough time to get there and hit it before the end of the month, but I won't be able to make the return trip and drop off my loot before month-end. Still, that will come soon enough, and the monthly paycheque from flipping it will still be welcome. Dubai has more than enough high-value targets that I would be happy to raid it, were it a lot closer to home base. But at over 4 days travel time to get there, it's just not a very efficient approach to take.



For instance, I start at the bottom of the map, which is the furthest start point away from any banks, educational institutions, or landmark buildings to hit for cash and books, but not to worry. There's a row of office towers along the map edge leading away from the shore and another one perpendicular to it on the other side of the map when I get there. These will provide, if not all the resources I will ever need, at least enough to nearly fill Gino up for this trip. I could easily make another trip or two here if the city were closer to home.



In fact, there is no need at all for me to destroy any of Dubai's landmark buildings such as the Burj Khalifa on this trip. I could for the morale hits, I suppose, but killing civilians gets the job done and Dubai doesn't have nearly as much resilience as Calgary or Panama City. Rather than taking out landmarks, I just go househunting in order to find a bunch of screaming people to step on and emergency services buildings to destroy.

Well, that and I go looking for purple rocks.





Keeping the shield mostly up in Dubai isn't too tough as long as I am careful to move to another part of the city when the shield drops. There are enough houses and open spaces scattered here and there that finding a temporary escape route isn't too difficult. I did come up upon a tank and an MRLS truck as I was approaching the last two central banks in Dubai, but a death stare made short work of them.





Courtesy of all those office towers at the start of the map, Gino's power levels had remained relatively high since then, but occasionally I did need to top up. This refinery provided more than enough fuel to keep Gino going, and there was also an electical substation I would visit later.



Defcon 3 came too late to really matter. I did pick up a jet which chased me around for a few passes before I managed to down it, and a melter took a potshot at Gino once, but otherwise it was too little, too late.





Almost 250 bonus food, nice! That will really come in handy toward next month's construction targets. The cash certainly doesn't hurt either.

[Zed-F]

Calgary, Canada -- KAGG version 1.07.4139

Is Calgary a city so nice, you have to visit it twice? Maybe thrice? Well thrice was the plan, but the Stampede breakfast was so good I kept coming back for more. Time consuming? Yes. I wound up dedicating over a half a month to raiding and ultimately flipping Cow-town.But I sure got a lot of value out of that city!

Step one: Clear out most of the luxury towers near the Bow river, and start working on the downtown core of office towers on the left side of downtown.





Step two: Finish off the luxury buildings near the river on the right side that I missed last time, and start clearing out the right side of the downtown core office buildings.





Step three: Back to working on the office towers at the rear part of downtown and the left side, including the Bow building.





Step four: Now we are digging deeper into Calgary past the ruined downtown core, starting with the luxury towers on the right side of the map and working my way to the top of the map.





Step five: Fill up on loot by knocking over the Calgary Tower, the Saddledome, and any remaining office and luxury towers on the map, mostly on the left side. Then finish off the city by taking out normal office buildings and killing civilians in the residential district near downtown, across the Bow.









One thing I didn't really appreciate before doing this series of runs is just how much repair time you can avoid taking by raiding a city in bite-sized chunks, once you have your force shield at least. While I think it would be possible to take out Calgary in one shot just as I did in my last game, I could have taken a lot more damage past the shield if I had done it that way. A lot more of my time in-city would have been spent at higher Defcon levels, fending off or avoiding nastier threats like laser tanks, stasis tanks, melters, and so on. The repair time saved probably doesn't entirely offset the extra travel time incurred, but it does take some of the sting out of it! And so do the resources.

I did get some help with power resources, at least, from the army patrolling out in front of Calgary, which was constantly intercepting me as I went to and fro. Every time I would just grab power from a bunch of warehouses and/or high voltage towers and then move on. But to be honest I think I would have been able to fill up on power just from Calgary's loot drops anyway. It might have made more of a difference if I were raiding somewhere that wasn't especially power-rich... but then I probably would be flipping a city like that rather than raiding it.

[Zed-F]

Halifax, Canada -- KAGG version 1.07.4139

I was planning a big knowledge expenditure for next month, so I decided to bulk up on books. I figured Halifax should be a good target for that; it worked well enough last game. Uh, whoops! I arrived in Halifax to discover the landscape isn't quite as suffused with knowledge as it was last time I was here; almost all of the universities and colleges have been downgraded to colleges and high schools respectively, or removed entirely. Bummer! I'm probably going to need to come up with another source of books.

Of course, that didn't mean I wouldn't take what I could get from Halifax while I was there...





Starting with this pair of naval base buildings. I managed to snag some shiny purple rocks, as well as the usual power, cash, and books. Good stuff. I also hit the Metro building downtown; I didn't see any banks about, so office buildings and landmarks would have to do. The Maritime Center and the Halifax Clock were next on the list, then I headed on up the hill to the Citadel, chasing a civilian. I caught him, but then got stuck on the Citadel and figured I'd just plow on through.





Might or might not have been worth the time, but I wanted to get to the college and high schools on the other side. There was also another college east of the grassy hill in the center of town, which I took out as well, after first looking around for a bunch more office towers to knock over.





At this point I realized I just needed a little more cash to be full up, so I headed over to the Fenwick building. While I was enroute, the Defcon 3 warning came up, but the city morale was already about to drop south of 50%, so those laser tanks and so forth would not be getting a lot of time to find me. Certainly they were not going to prevent me from looting the Fenwick building!



Nevertheless, I was starting to attract a little too much attention and my shield got knocked down, so I high-tailed it over to another part of the city where a few more colleges were up for grabs. Of course by this point my book storage space was getting full, but there's no point in coming back to Halifax just for 2 college buildings.







Pretty sad totals as far as the monthly income goes, but Halifax isn't exactly a rich city and I did just get several loads of cash from Calgary. At least I got a nice haul of books along with the key, and those will come in handy for next month's projects.