General Strategies

Using Fog of War

One of the more challenging aspects of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin lies in mastering the Fog of War system that the game incorporates and using it to your advantage. (It should be noted that FOW appears much less frequently than it did in Dual Strike, but it's still a problem on a few maps.) In Fog of War challenges, all units will have greatly restricted vision, meaning that they won't be able to spot enemy units until they're right on top of them. Most units will only be able to see one space on either side of them, with tanks, infantry, and air units being slightly better. Recon units are your friend on Fog of War maps; their ability to see five spaces in all directions will be a big help in scouting for enemy units. After all, you can't attack what you can't see.

This last notion comes about with the "trapping" mechanic. On a Fog of War map, if one of your units passes through a darkened area over a space occupied by an enemy unit, it will be "trapped." This instantly stops your unit's movement and prevents them from attacking on that turn, thus letting the enemy unit get the first shot at the unit on their next turn. Even if you don't run into the unit, you won't be able to see it unless you have a unit within visual range of it; if a tank stops one space away from an enemy mech, then, it'll have to stop in order to extend it's visual range from the stopping point. What all that basically means is that you can't order your units to fire on an enemy unit that you can't see, even if you happen to know precisely where they are. You need to either move an expendable unit up next to it, then move in a heavy hitter, or use a recon unit to expose the front for all of your big guns.

Also note that forest squares prevent anyone from seeing into them, no matter how far they can see. A recon unit sitting a couple of spaces away from a forest won't be able to penetrate the murk. If a unit is sitting directly next to a forest square, however, then it'll be able to see into that one square; air units are also capable of seeing into forests normally. Forests are great places to hide your units in preparation for an ambush.

The flipside to all this is that the same rules apply to the computer; if they can't spot you, then they won't be able to attack you. The conceptual caveat to wrap your head around here is that even if you can see your enemies, they may not be able to see you, and vice versa. Even though you may feel all tricky and evil by making sure that your units are out of visual range of their megatanks, they might still have a recon unit just out of sight that's exposing all of your own units to the harsh light of day. Still, though, in the absence of any better information, you can usually assume that most of your enemy's units have the one space of sight alloted to them, and thus won't be able to spot you unless they wind up right next to you.

You can take advantage of this by simply retreating a bit when you spot enemy units coming your way. If an enemy unit rams up next to your own unit on one of their turns, all you need to do to become invisible to it again is move it out of its visual range, which in the case of most tanks means moving your unit one square up, down, left, or right. If the enemy wants to hit you, they'll have to find you again, which means that they'll have to forfeit an attack, since they won't be able to see you. This is of course assuming a one-on-one battle, which are fairly rare, but trapping units and dancing with them in the dark is a handy way to stall them while you bring reinforcements up to deal with the invaders.