- Look for uncontested expansions first.
- Expand early and expand often.
- In late game expansions, go heavy.
Uncontested Expansions
Expansion points are areas of additional resources, typically located away from
the starting location in RTS games. Because RTS games inevitably involve, at least
at some point, a battle over diminishing resources, taking control of these expansion
points is a critical strategy. Is there a general rule for Expanding? Expanding
early and expanding often is the best advice. Following the dictum of ‘measured
aggression’ regarding expansion will be well rewarded in Impossible Creatures. To
expand early in the game, do it at little to no cost whenever possible – take the
resources that no one else has touched yet. Start with the ones closer to your first
base.
Finding uncontested expansion sites is the best way to get new resources. Most maps
in Impossible Creatures have several expansion points in addition to Coal and Electricity
provided at the Lab, so it’s often easy to find an uncontested spot, even several
minutes into a game. Don’t forget that Henchmen can swim, so maps like Starfish
and Mystery Lake, with their small island expansion spots offshore, allow an enterprising
player to grab several new resource areas and work under relative immunity while
everybody else fights it out on shore.
Sending a single Henchman out to build a Workshop for collecting Coal is often all
that’s required because workshops build so quickly. To maximize your resource efficiency,
start construction of a workshop with one Henchman. Then simply issue a rally point
from the lab to the new Coal pile and queue up several Henchmen - no more than 2
per Coal pile - and once they build, they’ll immediately start gathering Coal and
returning it to your brand new Workshop! You can go off and manage another aspect
of the game, while your new expansion point quickly gets busy.
Expand Early, Expand Often
There are some risks to expanding. In the short term, it makes you somewhat vulnerable
because you aren’t spending money on creatures or defenses, but once you have an
additional 8 or 10 Henchmen gathering, you’ll make up the shortfall in short order.
The additional Coal coming in means you can build creatures that much more frequently,
level up sooner or build more defenses. With several expansion points going, it’ll
be hard to spend all the Coal coming in!
Finding the best time to spend resources on an expansion, however, is the trick.
Obviously, if your Lab is under attack, spending money on a new expansion point
is probably not the best use of resources.
Researching some of the Henchmen upgrades at the Research Clinic - particularly
Motivational Speech and Yoke - will really increase the efficiency of your gathering
Henchmen, and therefore, these upgrades are basically a must-have for expansion-minded
players.
Late Expansions
Late game expansions are a slightly different matter. Chances are slim that you’ll
find an uncontested expansion point, so it’s best to take some additional Henchmen
and creatures with you for defense and extra fast construction. Flying creatures
make deadly expansion point raiders so ensure your expansion point is safe by building
a workshop and following that immediately with some Anti-Air Towers. Bringing versatile
direct range units (Chameleons, Porcupines, Electric Eels, Poison Frogs) will provide
good defense. Artillery units do not defend well, particularly if enemy melee units
attack your expansion, because the artillery units can cause splash damage to your
own structures and Henchmen. Even if you leave your expansion undefended, keep in
mind that Henchmen can build defensive structures very rapidly, so a quick ad-hoc
defense is never more than a few seconds away.
Once the expansion point starts to run out of Coal, shift your Henchmen to other
tasks. It’s incredibly inefficient to have multiple Henchmen sitting around one
Coal pile, waiting their turn to take a whack at it. When all the Coal piles are
gone, sell the workshop and all defensive structures nearby to recoup 75% of the
cost. An unused expansion point with several structures is a worth a considerable
amount of resources when it’s recycled.
