Manual Advanced Concepts
Original 1996 manual, converted verbatim from the game's manual.doc.
The rocket has a couple of extra features. First, it is a warehouse and the trucks, if you have 2 or more, will take excess materials to warehouses when they have nothing else to do. This is very valuable in case your lumber yard is destroyed (and all your lumber with it).
Second, the rocket provides a small amount of apartment and office space to house your initial landing party. This gives you a little breathing room when you first land.
Third, the rocket provides some power for your buildings. Again, this allows you to build your basic economy before having to build a power plant.
Fourth, if your last crane or truck is destroyed, another will be built in the rocket and delivered. (This is our shortcut for the concept that if the last crane in a colony was destroyed the colonists would scavenge everywhere to build a replacement.) The closer the destroyed vehicle was to the rocket, the longer it will take for it to appear. This can take up to 30 seconds.
There is a 1:40 chance you will not get a new vehicle. This was implemented to stop people from destroying their last crane/truck if it was heavily damaged to get a free undamaged one.
Fifth, if you have built any of the 4 basic buildings (lumber mill, coal mine, iron mine, & smelter), and they are destroyed, and you do not have enough lumber and/or steel to build a new one, the rocket will create those new materials.
In this case, it is possible that another truck loading for something else will grab those materials. So you have to be careful that no other truck grabs them.
If your rocket is destroyed you lose all of this. You cannot build another building with these special attributes and the attributes are not transferred to another building.
The first rule of handling the trucks is leave them on automatic. The second rule of handling the trucks is leave them on automatic. The third rule of handling the trucks is leave them on automatic. Are you detecting a trend here?
In all initial play-testing, players would first fully control their trucks. Then as they got better, they would control the most important routes. Finally, as they got a real good feel for the game, they would leave the trucks on automatic except for rare instances when they would move one load of materials.
The automatic router cannot read your mind for your priorities. It will occasionally have priorities significantly different from yours. But overall, because it is constantly watching the needs of your buildings, it will do a better job than you can do unless you do nothing but control your trucks.
Over the course of the game the trucks will do a better job than you can. And this frees you up to pay attention to other facets of the game, like the other players who are trying to kill you.
Occasionally it makes sense to take over a truck for a single run of materials. The most common example of this is loading a camp or factory up with lumber and steel while it is still under construction. This way you can start building tanks as soon as the factory is built.
To do this you select a single truck and send it to a building with excess lumber and/or steel. When you have a truck selected and move the cursor over any of your buildings (or the buildings of anyone who has set themselves as your ally), it will remain a “GoTo” cursor (as opposed to a cursor for selecting that building). Click on the building and your truck will go there.
Load Truck
When the truck arrives you will get this dialog:
The left column is the amount of materials to place on your truck. In the example above the truck arrived empty but if the truck was not empty it’s materials would show in the left column.
The second column is the materials at that building. As you change the quantity in the truck, the remaining materials in the building will also change to reflect the movement of materials.
However, until you click a button on the dialog no materials actually move. So if you have 2 trucks in a factory, you can set both to load everything and the second truck, when it goes to load, will find nothing there.
At the bottom of the second column is the maximum capacity of the truck. You cannot fill the truck beyond this capacity.
The third column are the commands you can give the truck. Unload will unload everything from the truck to the building.
Const Building will load the truck with the best proportion of lumber and steel to build a building. This is a fast way to load a truck you will use to build a new building. But it may not be the exact amounts for the specific building you are planning on building.
Const Vehicle will load the truck with the best mix of materials to build tanks. This is valuable for sending materials to a factory that is still under construction.
Load All will load everything in the truck (the opposite of Unload). Load All will walk down the materials and load everything it can until it reaches the maximum capacity of the truck. There is no balancing or prioritization. This button is designed for loading up at a Mine or Smelter.
Note: The above 4 buttons do not actually cause any movement of materials. They just change the numbers to move when pressing one of the next two buttons.
OK (select) will transfer the materials as you have set and then send the truck out of the building with the truck selected. You should press this button after loading a truck and after pressing it, click on the next building you want the truck to go to.
Auto Router will return the truck to the auto-router. While you should press Unload first you do not need to because the truck will always unload itself before returning to the auto-router.
Cancel removes this window. The truck remains in the building and the materials on the truck remain unavailable to the building. It is generally not a good idea to press this button.
If you do press Cancel you can get this window back by double clicking on the building – only if it is the only vehicle in the building. Or you can select the truck from the list of vehicles window.
You can send a truck to any building, not just yours, not just your allies, but also your enemies. You need to do a force GoTo (CTRL-LMB) on the building but then it will go to the building clicked on.
When it arrives, if it is the building of someone who has set you as their ally (remember, it’s not your setting, it’s theirs), then you can both load and unload.
If it’s not someone who has set you as an ally, you can still unload materials. You just cannot load. So if another player is fighting your enemy, you can give them lumber and steel without getting into alliances.
All vehicles, including trucks, can be given permanent routes. To give any vehicle a route, double click on the vehicle. (Cranes cannot be given routes because a double click on them is to build a building.) You will get a window like the one below:
Above is a truck on a route to load coal at a coal mine and unload it at a smelter. The >> before the coal mine means the truck is presently on it’s way to the coal mine.
To add to the route, press either the Waypoint, Load, or Unload button and then click on the main map window where you want that route stop to be.
When a vehicle arrives at a building it is to load at, it will load any materials needed by the next building in the list that requires any materials. (If the route is coal mine, iron, smelter then the coal mine will load for the smelter because the iron mine does not use materials, it just produces materials. However, if your route is coal mine, iron mine, camp, smelter then it will load steel at the smelter for the camp but it will not load coal or iron.)
A waypoint is merely a place to travel to – nothing is done there. Waypoints are very useful if the fastest path between two buildings goes through an enemy camp. With waypoints you can go around the enemy.
Set Next will set the selected route item as the one the vehicle should be going to now.
Delete will delete the selected route item.
OK will start the truck on it’s route and close the window.
Auto will eliminate the route and return the truck to the auto-router. If a truck has any materials on it, it will first go to your nearest warehouse or spaceship and unload all of it’s materials first.
Remember, routes rarely pay off. A coal mine, iron mine, smelter route sounds like a great idea. But it will burn through gas like crazy.
Roads are the lifeblood of an efficient economy. Not only will your trucks move materials quicker, but your troops can respond to an attack quicker. You should build roads to every building that trucks regularly visit. This includes your spaceship which is your initial warehouse.
Many times it can even pay to build roads from the rocket out to your construction site before building the actual site. This way the trucks delivering construction materials arrive quicker.
Another trick is to start the building so the auto-router gets a truck busy. Then pull the crane out of the building (drag select around the construction site - it will select the crane because that is the only vehicle in the selection rectangle) and have it start building the road from the new site toward your road network.
When the truck gets close, grab the crane again and send it back to the construction site. In this case the truck may ignore the road because it determined it’s path before the road was built. Select the truck and send it to the nearest part of the road. Once it arrives there it will re-determine it’s route to it’s destination and drive in on the road.
Remember, building roads requires gas. If you have no gas you cannot build roads. If you have a good road network you are in ok shape defensively with no gas because on the roads speed is still decent. But with no roads and no gas you are dead.
Traffic generally works better if buildings are set back at least one hex from the road so that the single road that comes with the building is essentially a driveway into that one building. Otherwise vehicles exiting the building can get stuck with all the traffic passing by.
You cannot build bridges until you research them. Once you have researched bridges, you can build bridges that span up to 5 hexes of water. To build a bridge you build a road but include the stretch over the water. When it gets to the water the crane will build a bridge.
If there are islands that are a single hex in size the bridge cannot stop there but it will count that as land allowing bridges longer than 5 hexes total.
Note: if you pull a crane away from building a bridge, you need to send it back to one of the end pieces of the bridge to finish the job. If you send it to any other piece of the bridge it can’t get there and will get stuck.
Occasionally vehicles will keep trying to exit a building and failing. This happens for two reasons. First, a bug in the program. Pathing is easily the most complex part of the code and it cannot handle every possible combination of events (at least not on a Pentium). Second, the traffic is so heavy that there is no chance to exit.
When you press SHIFT-RMB on a factory and see numerous vehicles in the factory, then that factory’s exit got blocked. You need to select all vehicles in and near the factory by dragging with CTRL-LMB to select all of them. Then click somewhere clear outside the factory to send all vehicles there.
You can pretty much place buildings adjacent to each other with no repercussions. However, there are two important criteria to keep in mind. First, do not have a long span on 6 or 7 buildings all adjacent because you will then find you need a road between then instead of around them.
Second, for buildings that are destination buildings, make sure they are either adjacent, or at least 2 hexes away from neighboring buildings. A destination building is a building trucks take materials to. A mine is not a destination building because a truck will never complete a trip there, only start.
When a truck completes a trip, if there is nothing for it to do, it will be parked nearby, off the road. If you have a 1 hex space between buildings, the truck can park in that 1 hex space and block passage between the buildings.
Freighters are sort of like trucks that go on water but there is more to it. First, if using the truck auto-router, the materials need to stay on the truck so a truck will drive to a seaport, truck and materials will load onto a freighter, the freighter will go the destination seaport, and the truck will unload and deliver it’s materials. So on automatic a freighter carries trucks, not materials. (This restriction is due to how the router was architected, not to any grand game design goal.)
Second, when a freighter arrives at a seaport all vehicles other than auto-routed trucks on the freighter will automatically unload and exit the seaport and all materials you control carried directly on the freighter will be unloaded into the seaport.
Then all vehicles waiting in the seaport will automatically be loaded onto the freighter and all materials sitting in the seaport will be loaded onto the freighter.
So you can route trucks to load and unload at seaports and set a freighter to travel between the seaports and in this manner move materials automatically across the water.
You can also send a group of vehicles to a seaport and then easily move them to another seaport.
A freighter can only load and unload at a seaport. This is not a good model for an amphibious invasion. The landing craft can move up on coastline hexes and load and unload both infantry and vehicles.
The landing craft operates much like the infantry carrier except it can carry vehicles as well as troops. Move the landing craft to a coastline then select the units you want to load and then LMB on the landing craft and they will go load.
For amphibious attacks don’t forget that the light tank and medium artillery are hovercraft and therefore can also travel on water. The landing craft is valuable for carrying heavy tanks and artillery to add extra punch to an attack.
This is easily the most complicated operation in the entire game. If you want to build on an island, or across an ocean, you need a seaport there in order to have the auto-router deliver materials.
You need to have available a truck, crane, landing craft, and freighter. The freighter needs to be left to the auto-router (this is automatic when the freighter is first built).
Select a truck and load it up with steel and lumber. Load the truck and a crane on a landing craft.
Send the landing craft to the island and unload the vehicles.
Select the crane and have it start building a shipyard. You will get a message that a truck cannot deliver it’s materials – this is ok.
Select the truck and send it to the shipyard. When it arrives unload the truck and the select the truck and send it outside the shipyard.
When the shipyard completes, double click on the truck and then press the auto-router button giving the truck back to the auto-router.
Select the crane and start a second building. You should see the auto-router send a truck to a shipyard and the freighter then bring it to your new shipyard for off-loading.
Strongly consider building a warehouse at the new location so you can stockpile necessary materials because it can take a long time for materials to arrive from your original location.
The key to winning Enemy Nations is to have a strong well balanced economy. The key to hurting your opponent is to hit them in the weak points of their economy.
The most important attribute of a strong economy is a good road network. Do not put too many buildings off of a single road. And try to have direct routes between source and destination buildings.
The second most important attribute is to have buildings that supply each other close to each other. Placing in order a coal mine, iron mine, smelter, and factory gives you short quick, routes that do not get in each other’s way.
Third is enough trucks. An extra truck can be more valuable than an extra mine or factory (and a lot cheaper). You should have enough trucks that you regularly see 1 truck with nothing to do and occasionally see 2 trucks with nothing to do.
It’s fine if your power supply is a little below 100%. It’s also ok if your population occasionally drops a little below what you need. But try to never run out of gas. If you are out of gas then everything slows down because deliveries take so much longer. And if you need to build more oil wells, it will take longer to get the crane and truck to the site.
That said, don’t let your power and population drop much below 100%. Every little bit helps when competing against another. And try never to let your food supply get too low because that creates a deadly downward spiral.
Watch the balance of your economy. It is common to have lots of coal but not enough iron. However, it does you no good to have lots of iron feeding the smelter which is producing lots of steel and it’s so much the factories can’t use it all.
Finally, don’t forget research. The best economy in the world does you no good if you can only produce infantry and your opponents show up with Boss 8800’s.
So how do you hurt your opponent? The best way is if you are ahead on research when you get a new tank, build some and attack with them. It’s not an overwhelming advantage but it is a strong advantage.
Take out their refinery, oil wells, or power plants. If you can keep pounding on new construction of the same building you took out you can really slow down the production in their economy.
An effective long-term approach is to take out their research facilities. This gives you no short-term advantage and you will lose tanks in the fight. But long term (if you last that long) you may be able to attack with weapons generations ahead of your opponent.
Another effective approach is to take out their cranes and trucks. The trucks are usually the key vehicle because by the time you can do this a player can generally do fine with one crane (unless you destroyed some of their buildings). But the loss of even 2 trucks can significantly slow down an economy.
When you do go for the kill, take out the rocket sooner rather than later. It’s a nasty building to destroy but the rocket provides so many special features, especially for someone getting pounded on, that taking it out is a major hit.
Finally, keep in mind that in Enemy Nations™ you and your opponents control large economies, not small encampments. A small encampment can be securely guarded. A large economy cannot. (This is why, by design, there are no walls in the game.)
The most important thing to keep in mind is that every shot in Enemy Nations™ is modified by several random numbers affecting the accuracy, damage level, etc. Therefore roughly equal forces can have substantially different outcomes. In play-balance testing a force of 10 Destructors against 10 Destructors would at times leave 5 alive on one side in various states of damage and the other side annihilated.
The second most important thing to keep in mind is that combined arms are much more effective than sending a single type of weapon. It generally pays to send at least tanks and artillery and sometimes infantry can be valuable too.
Non-turreted vehicles have to be pointed at their target to shoot at it. This means that, aside from the tanks, vehicles cannot hit targets to their side as they move toward their true target. Some vehicles have a wider field of fire than others but aside from tanks figure your other vehicles don’t get to shoot unless there is an opportunity target directly in front of them or they have arrived at their final target.
Artillery units have a setup time. They need to stop, setup, and then fire. This means they cannot shoot until they have arrived at their final destination. Add to this that the defensive armament of artillery is pretty poor and it almost never pays to send artillery in through defensive fire.
However, artillery are the strongest offensive firepower. So they are the best weapon to have behind a line of tanks, both for offense and defense. And if you are attacking someone with a lineup like this, you need to break it, not just try to run through it.
Units that are not moving receive a defensive bonus. So if you are attacked it is best to sit still and shoot back if possible because in that manner you will inflict more damage than you receive.
Different units have different levels of accuracy. And accuracy decreases for longer distances. However, accuracy means the shot lands somewhere else; not that it doesn’t get fired. So when firing at a large target (larger buildings) or the center of a large group of units, low accuracy is not terribly critical.
Different units also have different blast radiuses. Some have a blast radius of 0 and they will only damage a single unit in each shot. Others have relatively large blast radiuses and while the damage done falls off as you move from the center of the shot, a large number of units can be hurt or even killed in a single shot.
When firing at a single vehicle, low accuracy can be very harmful. A single spotter can take out a rocket launcher occasionally because the rocket launcher keeps missing the spotter. But 6 spotters grouped together will almost always be just 1 - 2 spotters after the rocket launcher fires once.
Infantry get an attack bonus when adjacent to a unit. So have infantry close with the enemy when fighting.
Hovercraft’s accuracy suck when on water. They travel fine on water and can shoot on water. But they can’t hit anything. So don’t try to use them as ships. Cross the water and get on land; then go fight.
Terrain affects defense. Units dug in (not moving) in trees or hills are real hard to take out.
The most important item to remember from all of the above is that defenders have a strong advantage in Enemy Nations™. The rule of thumb in the real world is that attackers need at least a 3:1 advantage and that’s not a bad rule for Enemy Nations™ either.
So, how do you attack successfully? Go around defending units to attack critical buildings. Patton did not win battles by attacking the Germans head on. He won by going around them whenever possible and cutting them off.
And also like Patton, watch your gas. Because your greatest threat is often not the enemy, but lack of gas.
Managing your population is critical to your colony's success. If there is available farm capacity, your population will grow beyond your needs, up to the limit of your current apartment/office capacity.
If there is available food, and you are low on colonists, your population may grow to twice the apartment/office capacity (colonists will be used for driving, research, etc.).
Please note the above two paragraphs discuss two different situations. You will only grow your population beyond your needs if your farms are producing enough food to sustain a population of that size. But your population will grow up to your needs if you have any food, even if you are headed for a food shortage (and starvation) with the growth.
Your population will decrease regardless of need if you are out of food. This is more commonly known as death by starvation.
You need apartment space for every colonist. You need office space for every colonist not driving a vehicle.
But keep in mind that lack of food, farms, apartments, or offices does not stop you from building additional buildings or vehicles. What it does do is lower the productivity of your buildings.
And a low population is actually a double hit because it lowers the productivity of your powerplants and if that drops your power below your needs, then your buildings also lose productivity due to low power.
If your population does not keep up with your needs, or worse is dying off, you are in deep weeds (serious trouble). Make sure you are producing enough food and have enough apartments and offices.
HINT: If you select the Space Ship, then roll the mouse cursor over the Space Ship's status bar, you will see apartment and office totals.
Note: Sorry this has nothing to do with sex. We had to pull that to keep our K/A rating. Enemy Nations™ is however strongly recommended as a great first date.
There are 4 levels of relations you can have with other players. However, to set them specifically you need to build an Embassy. (And to build an Embassy you need to do some research.)
When the game starts your relations with all players are set to Neutral. Also, if your Embassy is destroyed, any relations you have set to Alliance or Peace are downgraded to Neutral.
When you build an Embassy you can then bring up the player relations window. The Player Relations window can be accessed from the Global Tool Bar, or by double-clicking the LMB on an Embassy.
An un-selected player will be shown with their flag color. A selected player will have their name in black with the selection bar in their flag color.
Using this window, you can adjust your diplomatic relationships with the other colonies on the planet. Four relations stages are allowed, and have the following effects:
Alliance
Allied units will not return fire if fired upon by an ally.
Trucks on Auto will pick up from the nearest mines & lumber mills; yours or an ally but not from any other building.
Trucks under manual control can be told to pick up materials from any alliance building.
Colonies in alliance will share visibility for buildings and scout vehicles, but not other types of vehicles.
NOTE: When you set an alliance, or any relationship level, you give the other player these capabilities and get nothing in return. No reciprocity is required when setting an alliance.
NOTE: You cannot set alliance with a computer player, just other human players.
Alliance means you are basically fighting as a single combined entity with each of you handling primary tactical control over your own units.
Peace
Colonies in peace will not return fire if fired upon by a peaceful colony.
You do not share units, visibility, resources.
Peace means that you are not going to fight each other and you will attack the same enemy together. This basically is telling your units not to get mad when the units of the player you are at Peace with occasionally hit your units with friendly fire.
Neutral
This is the initial relations setting for all colonies. Neutral colonies will not initiate combat, but will return fire if fired upon (and automatically switch their relation to War in that case).
If you attack someone you are at neutral relations with, your relations will be changed to war.
While you need to CTRL-SHIFT-LMB to attack a unit you are at peace or alliance with, you can just LMB on a unit you have neutral relations with.
War
Colonies at war will initiate combat against one another. If your units can shoot at units that you are at war with, they will do so.
The difference between neutral and war is crucial. Because units you have a neutral relationship with can drive past your defensive units into the center of your city, and then open fire.
Therefore, before you have an embassy, you may want to shoot once at the other players when you first see them so that your relations are changed to war.
Note: Without an embassy, the only change in relations that ever occurs is Neutral to War when they first shoot at you or you first shoot at them. Once you are set to war you cannot go back to neutral until you build an embassy.
Note: The computer player takes no note of your relations with it. It does take into account how aggressive you are toward it though and in this manner your relations matter. (In other words you can’t sweet talk it into peace – it looks at your actions.)
When the Give button (on the Local Tool Bar) is pressed, all selected units are "given" to the designated player. That player now owns and controls those units.
You can give units, both vehicles and buildings, to any other player, including players you are presently at war with. When you give units it includes any materials they presently hold.
Because the rocket is such a special building, you cannot give your rocket. That is the only building you cannot give.
When you do click on the Give button you will receive a dialog listing the number of buildings and vehicles and asking for confirmation. (Because it would be terrible to have an attack force selected, set you relations with that player to War, and then press Give by mistake…)
Note: Remember, if your last embassy is destroyed, all relations set higher than neutral are reduced back to neutral. So you can destroy other player’s alliances by taking out their embassies. And they can do the same to you.