StarCraft/Evolves

Outline
Evolves is a game set on a 64x64 tile set, on the Space Platform terrain pallet. The whole map is visible to all players, free of fog-of-war, usually played in a 2v2 or 1v1 setup. In the center is an inlaid area upon which ground units cannot step into, with 8 beacons: Evolve is a type of game called "mass attack" meaning a "Masser" is used to make alot of units attack at once. A player can move their SCV to these beacons, all of which represent strategically important points on the map. When the SCV is moved onto a beacon, all of the units he controls attack-move to the point. This is called "massing" A player accumulates units which are "spawned" under his two science vessels or "spawners" roughly every second. These science vessels are also invincible meaning they cannot be attacked. If the unit that is spawned under the science vessel comes out onto the invalid area, it is destroyed. Each player has bunker at each corner of the map. The bunker has five thousand hit points (some map have 7000 or 9999) and strong defenders inside of it. The point of the game is to kill all the enemy bunkers (or gaining 5 million points). If the bunker is ever destroyed, that player loses. Here is the twist: the units spawned under one’s science vessels are dictated by your kills and razings score: the higher the score is, the better the units (On averadge).

Scores
Not all evolutions are equal some are better or worse then the ones after them. The order of what beats what is as follows. (only shows for units next in line to them such as a hero hydralisk can beat a goon but thats not directly shown) Also the format is WorseZealotsdragoons hunter killers fenixAlan<Mojo=?Kokulzas.
 * 0 - Zerglings
 * 2300 - Zealots (2250 both Zerglins and Zealots)
 * 4000 - Firebats
 * 7000 - Hydralisks
 * 16,000 - Goliaths
 * 28,000 - Dragoons
 * 40,000 - Wraiths
 * 70,000 - Hunter Killers
 * 110,000 - Mutalisks
 * 200,000 - Fenix Dragoons
 * 340,000 - Scouts
 * 600,000 - Archons
 * 900,000 - Tom Kazansky
 * 1,100,000 - Battlecruisers
 * 1,600,000 - Marines/Ghosts
 * 2,000,000 - Alan Schezars
 * 3,000,000 - Mojos 	 (In some maps Mojos + Archon)
 * 4,000,000 - Kukulzas 	 (In some maps keep getting scout, or Kukulzas or Guardian + Scourage)

Stages
Evolves can be divided into stages where gambits take place, the stages are: Beggining game

1. Zerglings, Zealots, Firebats 2. Hydralisks, Goliaths, Dragoons Middle game 1. Wraiths, Hunter Killers 2. Mutalisks, Fenix Dragoons 3. Scouts, Archons, Tom Kazankis End game 1. Battlecruisers, Marines/Ghosts, Alan Schezars 2. Mojos, Kokulzas The inequality of units makes for some of the most varied and intriguing game play available for a custom map: the evolution tree is almost exponential. If a player gets an advantage in kills, he can then used that advantage to accumulate even more kill points, because of his superior units. But if you know what you are doing it is not hard to recover from most situations.

Evolves among experts is played out in a siries of turns. When one person puts a stratagen into action it forces the enemy to counter it. The best moves are the ones which force the enemy to counter with a move that requires lots of skill and very fast thinking and desiscion making to pull, thus making the enemy have a high change of messing up and putting himself in a loosing position. Battle stratagy is not as important in evolves as in other games like "Simpsons mega carnage" but it can still be very usefull especially while your tank is alive and during air attacks.

Evolves stratagy instead of battle tactics centers around feeding, timing and planning ahead. Players can form their stratagy over what "end point" they want to achieve. In evolves an endpoint is where the opponent has gotten so far behind that he has no possible chance of recovering. Usually in evolves these endpoints are at bridges between levels (where one player is making a different kind of units for good or bad) by the time that the enemy has recovered you already have a large enough army of stronger units to destroy them. Someone may want to plan their stratagy around scouts vs goons (scouts always win) or BCs vs rines/ghost (BCs always win) Usually in loosing positions that are not "end ponts" players can make a comeback. But if you are playing against someone a lot better than you they will try every way to keep their advantage and make it larger. Sometimes new players or "noobs" will think they are ahead in a situation when they are really not because the enemy will have planned 15 or 20 minutes in advance and put themselves in a "Behind" situation on purpose.

A typical Evolves game plays out as a series of battles in which players accumulate a large enough advantage to defeat each other. There are a number of balance flaws inherent in Evolves which, if known, can be exploited to great effect.

Beginning Game
Players try exploit the fact that the first level is better then the second level in the game to their advantage. Which usually required feeding or counter feeding both of which can win the first level for you depending on how well you do it. A stratgy commonly used to get ahead in the beggining is called "micro" short for "micro manage". "Microing" is sending individual groups of units to pick off individual units of the enemies as a way of gaining points. Micro is formed of stratagies such as luring, ambushing, and distracting. When two good players play eachother a micro will just lead to either a lockdown where both players kill the same ammount of units, or since micro is easier to counter then do the defending player will win.

The main point of micro in the beggining is to try and gain 4000 points and get firebats which are vastly stronger then zergling of zelots. If one player recieves firebats first they will have a strong advantage which can be conserved throughout the game. When two good players play they will usually recieve firebats at the same point of time and end up with a rough tie at the beggining (someone is ahead but not by enough that it cant be reversed). It is not untill the later game when risks are taken that one person can get ahead.

Some tips for the beggining are: 1. Hotkey both your science vessels on 1 2. Get 3 marines and 1 ghost 3. At the start Feed 46 zerglings to have your opponent get zealots (3 groups of 12 and one of 10) you want to make sure to get yourself as many kills as you can without evoing to zealots yourself. Several ways to do this are; hotkeying the four groups, waiting till your vessel has 21 energy to mass (its a build in counter) or running your zerglings behind their base and attacking from under them.

4. If you are fed counter feed and use only Zelots if you feed them back with zerglings you dont acomplish anything. Make sure you send the right ammount of zelots so you dont over feed. Since zelots are worth 200 points a pop and 12 zelots feeds them fully if they have 0 points, every 200 points they gained by feeding you, you subtract one zelot from your counterfeed. So if they have 700 points you subtract 3 from 12, if they have 1000, 5, and so on... 5. Pick off with your zerglings outlieing and unprotected zealots (You should use 12-24 zerglings and set them on hotkey, and if your opponent use his/her zerglings to block don't feed).

6. If you are fed to zealots instead of counterfeeding you can try and micro to firebats if they are behind in points even if they kill more then you do you may still win. This trick requires high proficiancy in micro and should only be used by pros

7. Move your tank back in forth in between the battle to deflect hits (Place and move your tank infront of your army (in the battle zone) If you have lost your tank before wraiths which has 20 armor and can take 1000 dammage you have a good chance of loosing the beggining game.

8. Use a ghost in your bunker to "lockdown" the tank forcing it to become immobile. Also if you think your enemy wont notice you can use your bunker rines to attack the tank killing it quickly. All bunkermen die in one hit so becarefull.

9. If you notice your enemy trying to lockdown your tank, place your tank in siege mode and kill the ghost before it is close enough to lockdown you. 10 . Hydras are better than goliaths and goliaths are a lot better than dragoons (hydras are a lot better than dragoons as well, so you can feed your opponent to goons and then hide behind your base). If you are in a loosing situation after a mid battle you may want to run knowing you are on a lower level than them (thus in this case building stronger units) 11. Attack your enemies tank with ground attack only units (zerglings, zelots, firebats) to keep it in one place. 12. Take the flank closest to the edge of the map, if you can force the enemy back at that point you will have a slight advantage.

13. Get ready and prepared to retreat if you think the battle may turn against you towards the middle game. rr Be sure to follow your enemy’s science vessels mercilessly around to ensure that the units they produce are quickly killed, and surround their other stock of units with your units. Using the follow function of your science vessels to theirs can accomplish this quite nicely. There is a popular exploit in the beginning game of “feeding” - giving a player units to advance their kill score - an enemy to advance them to zealots. While the premise of Evolves is to provide a successively better progression of units as players accumulate kills, there are balance flaws. In a battle between a player with zerglings and a player with zealots, the zerg player will win. Because of this, you can use this technique to trick a player into thinking they have the advantage, making them over confident in massing you. Most of the beggining game tricks only work with "noobs" and it is only later in the game that skill begins to show. rr

Middle game
The middle game deals mainly in air masses. Air masses are harder to pull off and require more skill than ground masses so even if a player is behind in unit numbers they can still make a comeback without feeding. In air masses always follow the army with your vessel because your old units will freeze up and "lag" newly spawned units however are not frozen and do alot more dammage than members of your own army. Also in air masses you can lure a portion of your enemies army. Since all air drifts, your enemies army in his base (if he forgets to keep it condensed) will drift too. When his air drifts you can mass his base and pit your whole army against just a portion of his. The mid game is interesting because in every part of it their are opportunities for a suprise depending on how good or risky you are. There are times in the mid game, where wraiths are better than hydras, hydras better than mutalisks, goons better than mutalisks, scouts better than archons, and wraiths better than archons. So while rules of thumb are usually right and good to follow, especially if your a begginer, they are not set in stone.

Several tips for the mid game are: Always if its an option feed your enemy to goons. Mutas and hydras are a lot better than hero goons if your enemy has hero goons and they do not counterfeed they will loose.

Here are several situation where you want to feed and situations to use them in. Rough point values will be provided which can be used for begginers but dont get attached to them:

Note: When feeding do not follow your army with your spawners like you usually should. You want them to stay at all times near your bunker for protection.

Wraiths vs Hydras: Wraiths are worth more points than hydras and an individual wraith is weaker than a hydra. Wraiths however in groups are stronger than groups of hydras, wraiths give the enemy more points though so in a straight out mass hydras should win. The > and < chart at the beggining shows hydras as better because they have value later on in the game while wraiths do not, but an experianced player would rather have wraiths than hydras. If one finds themselves with wraiths and the enemy with hydras they should gather the right ammount of wraiths and FEED which results in the enemy being "gooned". If you have too many wraiths youll end up feeding your enemy to scouts which would cause you to loose, and if you have too little wraiths your enemy will not have been feed enough and can then avoid future feedings. Once your enemy gets 200,000 points and goons you may find that you have too many wraiths still attacking getting your enemy closer and closer to scouts. IF you find that this has happened you ant to pull back your remaining wraiths in groups of 12 to your base where they will be temporarilly safe.

Misc units vs Misc units: This sometimes happens when you and your enemy have built up a large army at the beggining of the game. You may still have surviving units from every level but depending how the game went your army might have less or more point value than your enemies. If you find yourself behind in points with the same size army you want to make your army attack his base. You will suffer more causalties (feeding your enemy more, and you less) therefor your enemy gets hero goons first while you are still building mutalisks. The main risk for this is you often overestimate your armies feeding potential and by the time it is over you have lost your army with nothing to gain.

Hydras vs Hydras: You want to feed in the same way as wraiths, but since hydras are worth less then wraiths and easier to pull back you do not need to be as carefull with numbers (as long as you dont overfeed a ton). You want to mass a fairly large army before you feed because the bigger the army the more dammage it can do. It is hard to do but good if you are behind 20 or so thousand points.

Hydras vs Mutalisks: You want to keep a large chunk of hydras in your base even while your feeding (do not send your whole army out)

Mutalisks vs Mutalisks: If your enemy has over 170,000 points you should do it. If your enemy has a lower ammount of points you will sacrifice too many mutalisks in your feed.

Once you feed your enemy will have no choice but to attack your bunker, they might take massive casualties but they still have a much larger army then yourself. The best counter and only counter for them massing your base is to hide. You bring your vessels to your corner which is an inch or so (on screen) away from your base. That is the farthest away point you can be from your base and defend it. Since your base is blocking attacks from two sides and the boundries of the game are blocking attacks from the other two sides your units will be safest there. Hydras are better base defenders than mutas, so you want to make sure all of your are attacking. If you get mutalisks when the enemy attacks your base manually shove all your mutalisks in the corner so that they are unreachable, after you have around 40-60 mutalisks you mass and use them to defend your base.

If you are on the offensive and are being fed you:

1. Always want to make sure you attack the "feed" with your whole army as to suffer minimum causulties.

2. Always know what your enemy is planning.

3. If you have over 190,000 points and your enemy is sending small feeds towards you you want to allie them and "dance around" your units will take hits but if you keep moving your enemy will not be able to kill too much of you while you continue making two mutalisks a second. If your enemy however is killing atleast two of your units a second you want to unallie them.

4. If you get fed to goons be quick always attack the base

5. If you have lots of air units allie your enemy before you hit his base so your air units keep drifting and flow into your enemies corner where you unallie him.

6. When in your enemies base manually attack the corner so that his base deflects the smallest possible number of shots.

7. Place your spawners in the enemies corner near his vessels if you can take the corner your job gets a lot easier.

8. If you can stay in his base untill you get scouts, if you have scouts and your enemy has goons you have won.

9. If the going gets rough run it is better to finish the battle with a disadvantage then to risk a loss.

Goons-hero wraiths also have their own set of stratagy. In full frontal battles normally Goons<Wraiths<Scouts<Archons but at this point in the game theres a lot of oppurtinity for combos especially since your own points will spike after scouts.

Some pros and cons for the units:

Dragoons:

Pros: Ranged so they destroy archons and ground so archons auto attack them. They are also great meat shields against archons and wraiths. Also good for feeds.

Cons: Very bad vs scouts and wraiths, weak, and dont attack much. If you get scouts a while after your opponent it is very hard to come back. Scouts:

Pros: Very good against air, freeze up air units, shoot fast, easy to micro with and bomb, beat goons and wraiths and give an extra boost against BCs, can stay behind lines and snipe archons.

Cons: Freeze up themselves making them easy archon fodder, you can get lucky/unlucky in air battles. (Either you or your enemy makes a mistake)

Archons:

Pros: Splash they utterly destroy air units, high health, great with lag, a small ammount can still be a big help.

Cons: Not ranged, auto attack ground.

Wraiths:

Pros: Good back up at archons vs archons, long ground range.

Cons: If you get stuck on them while your enemy has BCs your dead, Archon fodder (not as bad as scouts but still dead)

Before the possible scenarios and basic stratagies are listed here is some advice on archons:

They are splash so even a small ammount can do a ton of dammage to condensed air. Since they come up usually during a scouts vs scouts battle they are especially effective since scouts lag giving the (fresh) archons lots of time to attack. When you get archons in an air battle make lots of archons over a large distance both horizontally and vertically. The spread out archons will act as if they are doing damage to the scout army as a whole (since they splash) make sure to place archons either under the thickest part of your enemies units and around your own units for defence.

Here are some possible scenarios/stratagies that you might run into:

Goons vs Goons (Even)

Take the flank closest to the wall. When you get scouts (340,000) pull back everything since they die easilly in the fray and are more important later. If the enemys goons thin out try and do a sweep of the area and if you time it right youll conserve some of your own goons.

Goons vs Goons with an advantage

Immediatly when you get scouts pull back, make sure you do a sweep to save your larger army. if you get archons while your enemy has goons left move your spawners behind your army so the archons dont die in the fray.

Goons vs Goons with a disadvantage

You want to make sure your enemy gets archons first (so you have extra scouts) you might even want to consider feeding. Pull your scouts back to save all of them. You can either make it lots of scouts+archons vs little scouts+more archons (a winning situation for you)Or if you are confident in your abilities you can try and pull off something fancy with either a wraith feed or a scouts vs archons battle.

Goons vs Scouts

Get scouts as fast as you can, every second you wait you dig yourself a deeper grave. Just make sure not to micro since its too slow, dont be afraid to sacrifice your goons if you have to.

Scouts vs Goons

Never devide your army, mass to intercept the feed, and dance around. Every second you keep your enemy from getting scouts you get more and more ahead. By the time your enemy has scouts you might already be ahead enough point wise to win after archons. Or maybe even enough units to take the base.

Scouts vs Scouts

Scouts freeze up. Make sure to bring your vessel with you the second you mass mid. Circle the parimeter of the battle spawning new scouts. There is lots of stratagy in air masses including flanking and pulling but its usually complex and dangerouse for a begginer to try so just stick to making new scouts around your enemies scouts and remember to constantly mass mid. (every second at the start and then every 10 or so once the armies have met) Try to have your scouts drift towards the middle of the map so that archons cant hit them. Also if you notice your enemy vessels near your units you can always pull those units away to a safer location.

Scouts vs scouts with a disadvantage

Your ahead in points and closer to archons than your enemy. If your ahead by atleast 8-15K points you can win at archons. When you mid youll have enough time alone with archons to decimate his scouts if your ahead by enough you might even consider a suprise attack on his bunker. Your enemy will be thinking of ways to get ahead so try to always know what hes doing.

Scouts vs Scouts with an advantage

Your behind in points but your enemy is constantly looking for a situation to attack you. Try your enemies patiance, tempt him by offering up a confrontational situation but make sure that its favorable to you.

Scouts vs Scouts+archons

This is when you want to micro; your building up scouts so you have the potential to have a lot more then your enemy, if you can micro to archons (to use as a meat shield) you have the advantage, but if you cant or if your enemy finds a good spot to mass your base you could loose. You can also try a wraith feed but that is dangerouse.

Scouts vs Archons

A rarer situation but same as above with the exception that if you mass with small ammounts of unnits the scouts will win.

Scouts+archons vs scouts

You want to make sure your opponent has lots of scouts when you mass him, if he micros counter micro, and the second he gets archons mass his bunker.

Scouts+archons vs Scouts+archons

You want to make sure your scouts are behind your archons. You want to build units directly infront of your enemies scouts so the splash dammage hits them even if your archons auto attack his archons. Also make archons infront of your scouts so that his archons attack your new archons instead of your old archons under your scouts.

Archons+wraiths vs archons

Use the wraiths in the same way as the scouts but since you are producing them you can also make wraiths over the gap in the mid

Archons+wraiths vs wraiths

Hotkey your archons so that when the enemy wraiths freeze up your archons can choose which clump to go under.

Archons vs wraiths

Archons beat wraiths so wait till your enemy has a large number of units then either go mid or mass his base.

Wraiths vs Archons

You might want to consider feeding your enemy to rines/ghosts. Hero wraiths loose to archons and are worth more points. When massing make sure that you get as much air in the center as you can. Also if your enemy has a small ammount of archons mass his base and pull back at bcs

Wraiths vs Wraiths

Treat like a normal air battle, sometimes if possible pull and see if you can leave your enemy stuck on wraiths while you have BCs

End game
The end game exploits the BC>Rine>Gol unit strengths. This is the second time in evovles where theres a pattern where it gets worse for two levels before getting better. Since the levels are spaced so far apart if your behind in points, have the same number of units, and not dead yet, you will most likley win. Or if you have more points and can brave it out you win once 5 million is hit. Some tips for end game are: 1. Save your bcs 2. If you have hero ghosts lock down Bcs if they have enough mana 3. Send units to feed your enemy and then hide behind your base 4. if they are force to attack your base with Bcs after they have evolves go to the middle and build BCs, bcs attack the bunker first over newly spawned units (Tail your opponent's unit and make sure they don't generate). 5. Pack your ghosts/rines tight together. 6. If you get goliaths use them as a meat shield infront of your ghosts/rines. 7. Ghosts/rines die fast to the bunker. 8. Dont be fooled by goliath's air dammage. When lots of them are massing their turrets "lock up" and arn't able to fire. 9. Scouts can be used to sweep the remaining goliaths because of their boosted health. 10. In some evolves map you will evolve to hero mutalisk at 4 million points, some of them you will just keep getting scout, and still there are maps where you get guardian and scourage.

The Bomb (older versions of map)
In older versions of Evolves, there was no SCV that could order all of a player's units to Attack-Move a location (in other words, no massing). In those days, groups of units had to be ordered to attack individually.

One trick that was used in those versions - and is still used in current versions, albeit less frequently - is the Bomb. A "bomb" is a large mass of flying units, all ordered to Follow one specific flying unit (the "fuse" unit). Usually the "fuse" unit is hotkeyed and ordered to Patrol so it doesn't get lost in the crowd.

Once a desired quantity of flyers has been accumulated, the fuse unit is ordered to Move into a critical enemy location. The fuse will be quickly killed, instantly relieving the entire mass of their Follow duty and freeing them to attack nearby enemies (the bomb explodes).

The main advantage of this technique, as is with traditional bombs, is the ability to place the explosion. If an entire mass of flyers was sent to Attack-Move a location, they would begin attacking as soon as they reached the enemy's frontline. A bomb, in contrast, allows you to get somewhat past the enemy's frontline before the bomb explodes. In fact, a well-navigated fuse unit can weave its way deep into enemy territory before being killed, effecting a more penetrating explosion.

Temporary Allying
In 2-on-2 games, one downside to mass-attacking an opponent's base is that once his units are destroyed, your units will fixate on attacking his base. Even if you try to mass elsewhere, say to the other opponent's base, your units will not budge until the first base is destroyed. This leaves them more subceptible to attack, because their attention becomes divided between the base and attacking units. Moreover, they tend to form a "ring" around the base instead of a tight mass of units, which is tactically stronger.

One way around this is to temporarily ally the first opponent, then mass the second. Your units will ignore the first base, gather back into a mass and head where the action is. Once your units are out of range from the first base, you can unally the first opponent.

Temporary allying is also useful in the midfield. In large-volume air scrimmages, units tend to become scattered in the flurry, making them less effective because their attack is less concentrated. Temporarily allying, remassing and unallying allows you to restage the attack with a more concentrated force. Use wisely however, because while allied the enemy will continue to attack and destroy a portion of your army.

Clans
The two most popular clan in Evolves are Clan [EXO] (Channel: Clan xEXO, website: www.klanexo.tk) and Clan [EVO](Channel: Clan xEvo, website: www.ownage-clan-evo.tk)