Welcome to our Micro Wars Controls, Mechanics & Buildings guide. A short but reasonably comprehensive guide to Micro Wars mechanics, gameplay and more.
Micro Wars Controls, Mechanics & Buildings
A short but reasonably comprehensive guide to Micro Wars mechanics, gameplay and more.
Micro Wars Controls
- Left mouse button selects.
- Right mouse button issues attack/move commands for the selected unit. A right click on the build icons will cancel one queued/training/building unit of the given type.
- Middle mouse button will pan the camera, use the scroll wheel to zoom in/out
- Arrow keys will also pan the camera, use z/c keys to zoom in/out
- See the options for hotkey and button remapping!
Micro Wars General Mechanics
- Only one unit may occupy a tile at any single time.
- Friendly units may pass through each other, but must stop on their own tile.
- Enemy units and buildings will block your path and can’t be passed through
- Air units may move above both friendly and enemy ground units and buildings, but will be blocked by enemy air units and must stop on their own tile.
- Ground units can move below both friendly and enemy air units.
- Buildings (both friend and foe) block ground unit movement.
- Most units can only fire when stationary and in a tile adjacent to an enemy unit.
- Defensive bonuses are shown via the stars next to the HP bar for each unit. Each star represents a 10% damage reduction modifier.
- Units get one star if in an adjacent tile to a friendly building.
- Units get two stars if in an adjacent tile to your headquarters.
- Ground units get additional stars based on terrain.
- Ground units move at different rates on different terrains.
- You may only select one unit/building at a time.
- When selected, the command window shows move/attack icons for units. These help against mis-clicks to ensure the unit will do the action you want. By default, the ‘a’ button indicates the next left click is an attack move command, and the ‘d’ button indicates the next left click is a move command.
Micro Wars Terrain
- Plains are the standard terrain, not modifying movement speed and providing one star of defensive bonus to ground units.
- Roads increase movement speed, but do not provide any defensive bonus.
- Forests decrease the movement speed of vehicles drastically, infantry slightly, and provide two stars of defensive bonus to ground units. Forests also block line of sight; you can only see into the forest if adjacent to the forest, and cannot see through a forest unless directly on the forest tile. Air units can only see into the forest if adjacent, but can see past forests.
- Mountains are impassible terrain for ground units, but air units can fly over them.
- Sea is impassible terrain for ground units, but air units can fly over them. Note: on most maps only “internal” sea tiles may be flown over. The map border is effectively at the beach of the island.
- Pads represent capturable control points on the battlefield. They do not modify movement speed and do not provide any defensive starts.
- Rivers may appear in between two tiles. Any unit may still move to the tiles on either side of the river and shoot over it, but only infantry can cross the river (at a movement speed penalty)
- There are multiple tilesets for various maps, but the terrain behaves the same across all of them with only visual differences.
Micro Wars Buildings
- You may construct one building at a time.
- Each building type (barracks, factory, airport) has its own global build queue. You can construct one building, build one infantry, one vehicle, and one air unit at any given time.
- You do not need to select a building in order to build from its global build queue; the UI to build any unit is always available in the upper right hand corner of your screen.
- Buildings have a rally point; select the building and issue a move command to set the rally point. This also controls which side of the building new units are created from.
- Multiple buildings of the same type increase production speed, but do not have their own build queues. The second building of any given type provides a 50% bonus, with decreasing bonuses after that.
- All buildings of the same type share a rally point. The ‘active’ building of a given type is shown through the active icon on the action window when a building is selected, and is determined by the closest building of the given type to the rally point.
- You can toggle the cancel queue mode with the top button (the eraser icon). When that icon is red, left clicking on units/structures will cancel them rather than build.
- You can repair buildings with the repair button (wrench icon) by selecting the building and toggling the repair.
- Refineries will also repair damaged harvesters moving over them when set to repair.
- You can sell buildings and get back some money with the sell button (bag of money icon).
- Some units need to be researched before they can be built. White buttons in the UI signify research, which on completion will unlock being able to build the desired unit.
Harvesters
- You should try to build refineries adjacent to resource tiles to minimize mining distance. If you do so, an indestructable resource pad will be automatically placed on the resource tile that blocks enemy units from occupying the tile.
- A resource tile is saturated with 2 harvesters and one refinery. Multiple refineries or additional harvesters per resource tile do not increase resource collection rate – expand to other resource tiles to increase your income!
- Resource tiles will never run dry.
- Harvesters, when built, will automatically start mining at the nearest resource tile to the factory rally point.
- Refineries, when built, come with a harvester. Selling a refinery leaves the harvester, and refunds money such that the remaining harvester is the same cost as if built from the factory. You can use this ‘refinery trick’ to saturate a resource tile without using precious vehicle build queue time at the cost of a slightly higher up-front cost.
Pads and Capturable Buildings
- Pad tiles join together with nearby pad tiles to create a single capturable pad. Each pad may be held by one player at a time — the player with the most units on the pad.
- Pads will show the color of the owning player globally even through fog of war.
- Capturable buildings may be situated on a pad. They are indestructible, but otherwise act similarly to other buildings for unit pathing.
- Capturable buildings can be captured over time by the player holding the pad. The more pad tiles associated with the pad, the slower the building will capture. The more units the pad owner has compared to enemy units on the pad, the faster the pad will capture.
- Capture progress is globally visible through the fog of war.
- Once captured, you no longer need to maintain ownership of the pad — if no player owns the pad the capture will be maintained.
- Each building provides unique benefits to the player that captures it.
- Bank: Continually generates almost a full harvester worth of resources to the player that captures this building.
- Radar Tower: Provides vision in a wide range to the player that captures this building.
- Communication Tower: Provides additional attack damage to all members of the team of the player that captures this building.
- Nuclear Silo: While captured, slowly charges a nuclear strike. Charge progress is not reset when another player captures this building, and continually builds up. Once fully charged, the current player that has captured the building may launch a nuclear missile that does damage, leaves fire, and radiation over a wide area. Launching the missile causes the building to no longer be captured, and after a short time period charging may begin again. Nuclear silo charge progress is shown globally on the left hand side of the screen as well as on the building.
Commanders and Loadouts
- Before each match, you may select your commander and unit loadout.
- Each commander has unique benefits and drawbacks as described on the commander select window.
- Each commander has a unique activated ability.
- All abilities and their charge status are shown globally on the left hand side of the screen. Abilities charge over time, and once fully charged you can activate them by pressing the crown button in the upper right UI, clicking on your commander’s window on the left, or pressing the ‘g’ key.
- Activating abilities costs resources and resets the charge timer. Some abilities require selecting a target friendly unit, enemy unit, or tile location.
- You have 5 saved loadouts you can select among in the army select window.
- Each loadout can be customized with 9 units (and no more than 4 units of a given infatnry/vehicle/air type).
- Some units are good in the early game, some in the mid game, and some in the late game. Some units require a tech lab in order to build, and some units require research to unlock them before they can be built. Make sure to balance your army for your particular playstyle!
