Small Venus
Map
Player’s Guide
This map may not deserve it’s own guide, but reading this may improve your chances of success in your first game. There are two points that you must control. There is a canyon that runs west to east across the centre of the map. It is only possible to leave this canyon, or cross the map at all, at the far left and right. Therefore, if you control the intersections of the central canyon and the north – south passes, no enemy unit can enter your base. Due to the narrow canyons, I recommend turrets for this purpose. It might be a good idea to put your unit factory near one of these points. There’s no lack of geysers! A battery of howitzers within your base can be useful, but the turrets are important so you don’t want too many howitzers. A splinter on your tank might shoot far enough for closer enemy units. I want to warn you that the scavengers will go for the scrap closest as the crow flies (not that a crow could survive on Venus), even if it is in the enemy base or where the scavenger needs to go all the way around the map to get to it. I recommend frequently ordering the scavengers to scavenge (ctrl+3, 3) to cause them to recheck for the closest scrap. The more silos you have, the less this should be a problem, but that scrap in the middle west – east pass can be annoying.
Above is a map of the battle zone. The white dots are geysers, the red lines are sloped passes, and the blue lines are level passes. The green X’s are the spots you will want to defend. The background colours are from the overview map in the game, this from the *.mat file. The yellow is level and low, the tan is the cliff faces, slopes, and narrow passes, and the dark brown is the high ground. Now grab the Stoli and have some fun. No, there isn’t a Stoli already placed on the map. I meant the one in netveh.txt.