There’s something not quite right about this war. We see the red flag of Germany next to the stars and stripes of America. Panzers roll with Shermans in the field, and across the field, more Panzers and Shermans. You’d think they’d at least greet each other with words. Instead, they greet each other with gunfire! Nobody knows who is friend or foe anymore. All the world is a grey crater, politics has failed everywhere, and there is only war, war, and more war. Welcome to World War Machines!
World War Machines is a base-building PVP conquest game much like King of Avalon: Frost and Flame, War and Peace: Civil War, and many others on the App Store. As with a lot of this kind of game, a heavy emphasis is placed on building a large army, clearing the map of NPC enemies, occasionally fighting or protecting yourself from hostile players, and a general focus on ever bigger power numbers. This is not a game meant for people who want quick fun. We hope this World War Machines beginner’s guide helps with your early game career.
GENERAL TIPS
As with any other PVP base builder, World War Machines has a big emphasis on numbers, and trying to get bigger numbers than your opponent in the form of a bigger, meaner army. As such, managing your resources while trying to use your early-game advantages like speedups is paramount to getting ahead before resources start being harder to come by. Here are some general tips for running your base.
Liberal Speed-Up Use
You will be given a big ol’ ton of speed-ups early in the game. We suggest using these liberally to get yourself a decent army to start with along with rapid upgrades for buildings and research so by the time you upgrade your Command Center, you’ll be ready in case someone picks a fight with you.
There are also occasional events that give out a huge mass of Speed Ups after you use enough of them. That’s one of the best times to use Speed Ups, as those events dampen the cost significantly.
Use All Marches
Early on, if you used those speed-ups or even just play for a day, you will generally have a much bigger army than what your quests require. Not to mention you can’t actually send your whole army in a single march. So send out all your marches to hit multiple targets at once. You’ll be able to knock out two or even three AI enemies in less time and gather more rewards more quickly that way.
Do note that sending 3 marches against a single strong target is typically a bad idea unless it’s against another payer: Normal AI enemies like AFV Platoons are either defeated or rendered undamaged, there is no in-between!
Keep Buildings Next To Roads
Most buildings cannot work unless they’re next to a road connected to your Command Center. As such, set up your roads in such a way as to arrange your buildings next to them. Try to keep a space for buildings that are 2×2 in size another space for buildings 3×3 in size, and perhaps another spot for oddly-sized buildings like the AA Guns building. Note that you cannot move the Command Center.
Save Gold for VIP
One mistake our writer ran into was blowing a ton of Gold to tier up his troops, only to find the VIP option two minutes later! The VIP option lets you spend Gold to level up your VIP status, giving you various permanent buffs and perks such as increased attack power, faster march speed, and increased resource-gathering rewards.
Of particular note is VIP 11, which unlocks an extra march slot. Not wasting your early gold gains on temporary things like army troops or stuff you can grind like construction materials is important since while gold is also technically an inexhaustible grindable resource like the others, your early gains are much, much faster than what you can get later in the game once you’ve dried up all your AFV marching combat star rewards.
About To Log Off? Use Auto-Battle
Sometimes, you can get Auto Battle Orders as rewards from missions or from the Market. These are quite useful for gathering resources offline. You send a march to fight against say, AFV Platoons of a certain level and that march will keep looking for such battles until they’re defeated due to sustained unit losses, they expend all their Auto Battle Orders, or they expend all your stamina. By the time you log back in, you’ll either be greeted by loads of resources or bad news.
Out of Auto-Battle Orders? Gather from Resource Sites
Resource Sites take a half-hour to gather from, which is a pretty long time to have a marching slot inactive. Have something you need to do like wash a ton of dishes? Send your troops out to gather resources, usually Oil because that seems to run out most often, and come back 30 minutes later.
The best part: You can send all your marches out and still stay safe using Peace Shields, as unlike attacking AFVs and other enemies, Gathering does not count as a fight and does not deactivate your Peace Shields.
STUFF TO DO
In World of War Machines, there are several different ways to earn resources via combat, and a few ways without it. While your main bread-and-butter way is by sending your army to fight enemies on the map, there are a couple more modes that get you a bigger reward but are generally tougher and act more as a way to test how far your army’s strength has gone from before.
War Theater
The most fun mode and arguably the best way to gauge your progress in the game, War Theater has you go through a campaign using your Command Tanks and their direct skills. To get 3 stars, you need to win without losing any Command tanks and within the allotted time.
This usually means the game favors offensive tanks, but if you’re really stuck, you might as well just get the tankiest tanks you can use just to try and finish the level at all.
Epic Battle
Epic Battles can be found by tapping your Commander in front of the Command Center. This is, other than the usual map combat, the main mode of the game. You command up to 3 command tanks which roll across the battlefield.
You can time their special abilities to get through the fight more smoothly and deal heavy damage to important targets, though you have to wait for them to aim at the right targets. You normally have a time limit to get to the end of a level.
Hunting On The Map
The most basic thing to do is simply to send your army to do various things on the map. Usually, that’s clearing it of AI enemies. You expend stamina to do this, and certain enemy types will drop certain rewards. Fighting enemies expends stamina, so fight enemies according to whatever you are gunning for.
To know what enemies to fight for certain rewards, you can look at the material requirements of whatever it is you are trying to build. Tap the material, and you will find what kinds of missions drop that material.
Arena
A low-stakes PVP mode that nonetheless requires you to be a rather old player, Arena Mode allows you to pit your forces against another player’s army in a fight very similar to Epic Mode, which comes with an Air phase and a Ground phase.
As is usual, bigger power numbers will win the fight along with an effective army composition countering the enemy’s own defense team if possible (Perhaps it may be impossible to counter their main army because one can just equalize their forces, but you can’t equalize one’s Command Tanks!), and since the game isn’t very new, you’ll have access to Arena Mode way before you’re ready for it since as a newbie the enemy’s likely to be 10 times your army strength unless one fires a credit card at the enemy instead of munitions.
MAIN STRUCTURES
There are many structures in the game, and while all of them are fairly simple to understand, you do need to know all their roles to make sure which buildings to prioritize for upgrades, at least until the Command Center asks for them as a requirement.
Command Center
The main hub of your base. While the Command Center itself does nothing special, upgrading it is a requirement for everything else to be upgraded. All roads must also connect to the Command Center so other buildings next to said road can be used.
War Factories
The 4 War factories, the Barracks, the Main Tank Factory, the Heavy Tank Factory, and the Artillery Factory make up your production facilities for troops. You specifically use these troops in Epic Mode and in map battles, where they form the backbone of your army while the Command Tanks and Aircraft form the spearhead.
You can tier up old troops by paying Gold, but this is generally not recommended: You have the option of dismissing old troops to make way for newer, better troops, or use them in battle so the older troops get spent first. As for the units themselves, they have a rock-paper-scissors mechanic as follows: Heavy Tanks beat Main Tanks, Main Tanks beat Artillery, Artillery beat Infantry, and Infantry beat Heavy Tanks.
Hangar
The Hangar is where you house aircraft. Like Command Tanks, Aircraft form the pointy end of your army, and in Epic Battles specifically to open an attack and prevent the enemy from doing the same with their own planes. Here you can upgrade and star-up aircraft.
Unlike tanks which can be starred up by any tank of the same star level and rarity, aircraft need those same requirements, plus have to be the same type of plane! You can’t use a B-25 Mitchell to upgrade a P-38 Lightning, you need 2 Lightnings or 2 Mitchells to star either plane up.
Unit Depots
Unit Depots determine the maximum size of your army. For each specific army unit (Infantry, main Tanks, Heavy Tanks, and Artillery), you get a single Depot, which must be upgraded separately from each other. Since the depot stores individual units rather than actual unit power, you would do well to make sure the majority of your new units are the best you can train, the ones with the highest tier.
You can go to a Depot, then pick the Ground Force Status option and select lower-tier units to upgrade them to a higher tier. You pay Gold to tier units up. That being said, this is typically a bad idea unless you’re already pretty high in the VIP tiers.
Command Tank CP
All units switch to 450 hertz so the enemy doesn’t hear us.
The Command Tank CP is where you manage your Command Tanks, the strongest ground units you have that lead the assault on the enemy, unlike real command tanks which typically roll somewhere in the middle and pack more radios than they do ammo. They are used for most game modes, and typically present the spearhead of your assault, using their special abilities to buff your main army units.
These tanks plus the commanders in them form your army’s “Hero” units. You can upgrade their star levels and level them up too. Leveling the building itself will give you free Command Tanks every few levels, plus Blueprints to craft more of them, not to mention space to park them so they’re ready for combat.
Research Lab
The Research Lab is a good place to use your speed-ups: Research gives permanent improvements not just to your army, but also to your economy, and the earlier you get the economic upgrades in particular, the more you benefit from them.
You’ll be using a lot of your speedups in the Leadership tab in particular: Those extra March slots are very useful, allowing you to hit multiple NPC enemies at once for more loot, and to gather more from Resource targets in the Map once you’re about to log off.
Embassy
The Embassy is where you handle Alliance-related tasks, specifically Rallies. The Embassy’s level determines the number of commanders who can join a Rally. Whether this is a priority to upgrade or not depends on how helpful your Allies are, and whether or not it’s currently a requirement to upgrade your Command Center or other structures: If your Allies are too quiet, you can put this on the back burner or look for a more active Alliance.
Resource Depot
The Resource Depot is where you collect all the resources your Resource Structures have accumulated along the course of your AFK time. It also stores a certain amount of Resources away from hostile players should they successfully raid your base. Don’t forget to collect your resources here every few hours.
Recruitment Center
The Recruitment Center is where you get new Commanders and upgrade them. While a tank or plane comes with its own skill, a Commander typically has two other skills, usually passive ones. Without them, vehicles cannot be deployed, though each Commander can man both tanks and planes and will board them appropriately.
Radar
Radar is used to look for enemies on the map. The higher the Radar’s level, the higher the level of enemies that it can find, and the higher the level of enemies you can attack… though that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win!
The AFV and Special AFV Platoons in particular are pretty important as they come with victory stars. The more crushing your victory over those enemies, the more stars you get, with a max of 3 for every level. Accumulating a certain number of stars gets you Gold, useful to get higher VIP levels.
Resource Structures
The Oil Derricks, Silver Mines, and Iron Mines are resource structures that give you idle resources for your construction projects, building an army, and military research endeavors. They’re also an Alliance’s way to get some benefit from members, as they take a 30% tax from your mines and derricks. Sounds painful until you remember your main source of income is map marches anyway!
Market
The Market allows you to spend Gold and Alliance Reputation Points to buy resources and to trade resources for other resources. Once you unlock the Arena or start picking fights with other players, you can use the Points Shop too. Upgrading the Market improves the quality of items sold.
MINIGAME STRUCTURES
These 3 structures in particular allow you to play minigames and get some rewards from them. Of particular note is the Museum, which has its own match-3 game and requires more brain cells than the other two games! Makes sense since it also has the biggest, most permanent rewards out of all three Minigame structures, in the form of permanent buffs or large amounts of resources.
Anti-Tank Bunker
The Anti-Tank Bunker doubles as a minigame and eventually an automatic free resource gift mechanic. The minigame involves waiting for a crosshair to pop out on the enemy tanks, then tapping them so the AT guns blow them to bits. For doing so, you’re rewarded with materials to upgrade Command Tanks along with other resources. The higher the level of your Anti-Tank Bunker, the more tanks the enemy sends for greater rewards.
Anti-Air Guns
The Anti-Air Guns are similar to the Anti-Tank Bunker, as they let you play a minigame, this time giving you resources to upgrade Aircraft. The minigame involves manning an AA gun to knock several planes out of the sky. To aim and fire the AA gun, one simply needs to aim it with their thumb. To reload, just let go for a moment and go back to aiming and shooting.
Note that the gun will fire indiscriminately as long as you are aiming, so watch your ammo. The higher the level of the AA Guns, the more and better Infantry you can place inside, and the stronger the planes the enemy will send for the minigame… Which means better rewards for knocking them out of the sky. It also doubles as a defensive structure, dampening aerial attacks from NPC Battle Group Bases and hostile players, and it becomes more effective the more and better soldiers you place inside.
Museum
The biggest minigame in World of War Machines is the Museum’s Match 3 Lockbreaking minigame. These allow you to unlock Artifacts that provide rewards when collected in certain very specific groups.
So specific that the artifacts have to be a certain specific level (Neither too high nor too low!) to be put in certain specific groups. While some rewards are permanent buffs, others are simply large amounts of resources, but both are useful and make the game mode worth playing.
TARGET TYPES
On the map are different kinds of targets to hit, differing in both reward and strength, with stronger enemies typically giving a bigger reward. You can use your Radar to check them out.
AFV Platoon
AFV Platoons are fairly common, for good reason: They drop the most common and somehow most easily burnt down resource, Oil. You’ll do well to grind down AFV Platoons every day, as you will always need large amounts of Oil to do much of anything, except upgrade Oil Fields in your base!
As the first battles with every level of AFV Platoon come with a star rating depending on how badly your army stomps them flat, they’re also one of your biggest sources for earlygame Gold.
Special AFV Platoon
AFV Platoons but tougher on a same-level basis. Instead of Oil being their focus, they can drop Silver instead, which while less commonly used, is also harder to come by. Just like AFV Platoons, they also come with a star rating, making every several first clears profitable for Gold.
Battle Group
Battle Groups typically hang out in NPC territory, around NPC-controlled Alliance Bases. They typically give a large amount of Iron when defeated along with other goodies, and often have better drops at the cost of not having a Star Rating. This means you don’t grind these for Gold. One note about them though: Unlike AFV Platoons, they can attack your base much like a hostile player!
Special Battle Group
Again, Battle Groups but nastier. Just like Special AFV Platoons, they drop Silver, and in greater amounts since you can’t grind these for Gold. And just like their unspecial counterparts, Special Battle Groups can attack your base.
Prisoner Camp
Unlike the previous targets, Prisoner Camps don’t require an army. Instead, you send a group of vehicle Crews to sneak into the camps and break the inmates out. Sometimes they drop Recruitment Cards for more crews, but their common drop is new units for your army.
While they have a Star Level so you can get Gold out of it, their Battle Orders are the hardest to come by, so you’re likely only able to do very few every day, especially if you neglect your Daily Missions. So get to them!
World Boss
World Bosses, either the Ratte mobile fortress or the Aircraft Carrier Zeppelin are highly dangerous foes that drop an eyewatering amount of Maintenance Tools, Relocation Tickets, and most importantly of all, World Boss Coins for use in the Market. You can’t expect to kill them alone, so your rewards are based on how much damage you inflict on the boss as the whole server gangs up on them, chipping away until they explode.
Resource Sites
Resource Sites allow you to gather peacefully using a small contingent of forces. Gathering is very slow, lasting 30 minutes for a single marching slot. This means you do them at the end of the day, especially if you have some Peace Shields in your Inventory so you don’t need your army to guard your base while you’re offline. They come in 3 flavors: Oil Derricks, Silver Mines, and Iron Mines.
Squadrons
While most of the fights make use of both your ground units and aircraft, Squadrons are purely air-to-air battles that test the strength of your air units alone. Once you unlock squadrons, a big smile will pop out on your face: Squadron fights drop whole Aircraft Supply Keys! Since you can also grind them with auto-battle orders, this makes getting and upgrading aircraft a tad easier as long as you have Interception Orders in your inventory. Just keep in mind that they’re rather rare drops.
And that wraps up our beginner’s guide for World War Machines. Do you know additional tips or tricks? Or you just want to share your thoughts about the game? In any case, don’t hesitate to leave us a message in the comment box!