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Original work done by Willis of LoK

Power Management

Power management is simply a term for making the best out of your power. Some of the biggest things that can waste power, are creating useless tanks or structures (including defence and artillery), researching stuff that wont be of any help, how you build your base, and gathering oil cans. When making tanks, don't waste your power on tanks that wont be able to fight the enemy tanks, also don't always worry about maxing out on tanks, since the lack of power to make other stuff can give your enemy an advantage. Same thing the other way around, if your making defense don't over do it so the enemy can make artillery while you just have more defense for him to destroy. Researching useless stuff is the biggest killer, in a simple example, doing a lot of early artillery and vtol research may seem logical, get ready for the big assault, but most likely your enemy is doing just cannon research and making tanks. That vtol and artillery research wont be any good when he comes to attack and he out numbers you by about 20-30 tanks. So instead of researching stuff that cannot help you, put it to better use on items like defense or in this example, tanks. As well with any other research item, if you don't need it, don't get it. On the other hand - you may need it and don't have it. several battles will point that out to you - yes you will loose the odd battle -bank on it, and learn from the experience.

Another thing that kills people the most, is the lack of protection on valuable items, in this example lets say your enemy made about 50 hellstorms, but - oops - he forgot to make defense for it and his tanks are not close enough to stop you from attacking, so should you or not? Well think simply, one hellstorm is 525 in power, which for 50, is 26250 in power, thats A LOT of power in that defenseless stuff, and most likely you wont loose too many tanks if you properly come at it, so of course you would want to mount an assault on it and deny him the artillery. Not only does it save you from being attacked by it, but you dented him in that power a lot. Now of course this is a way over exaggerated example, but I think the concept is given, if you see your enemy spending his power away at something that you can destroy, even if it sacrifices a little of what you have, its well worth it in concept of losses.

A wise tip when playing in low power games, like if structures would not be maxed or it was on the Low Power setting, how many factories you would use to construct tanks is another thing that can be helpful or harmful. Because each factory is trying to take the power you get, so in the time it might take to have each factory with half the power needed, using 4 factories you might have all 4 with 4/5 the power needed, or whatever, maybe one less tank in the construction lineup, but you can get the other tanks to come out faster, maybe you may have to even use 3 factories, or whatever works. Those sorts of things can also be helpful or harmful in the use of power.

Simply to sum it up again, power management is the concept of using your power where it does you the most good, not on stuff that will provide little good against your opponent. Simple things like over doing research or construction can easily cost you the game.