The Tone Rebellion/Combat

Basics
Combat in The Tone Rebellion is similar to that of most RTS games. You have combat units (or "Warriors"), and these units will defend themselves if attacked and can be directed to attack enemies. Your worker units can also fight using the panic button, and they are very weak compared to warriors, though you will likely have a lot more of them and there is strength in numbers.

On higher levels of difficulty, you will definitely need to use the panic button to defend your home base as monsters will definitely attack before you have sufficient defenses. The Panic Button is not very elegant; when you click it all workers drop whatever they were holding and rush towards the nearest enemy. They cannot be controlled individually. On the one hand, a worker is much easier to replace than a warrior, meaning that it is worth using them to cover your warriors when you don't have enough. On the other hand, they die quite easily and losing floaters counts against your score, and losing workers means you have less of them to deliver Crystal Tone to your Dojos, which slows the progress of your warriors (see below).

Warriors are created in Dojos, which you do not begin the game with and must build. They can only be built on medium or large tone pools. A stocked Dojo will convert existing workers into warriors, so your population remains the same. You can have up to four different kinds of Dojos that produce different types of warriors, and each Dojo starts off with the ability to house three warriors (except for spell towers, see below).

A Dojo requires Crystal Tone to function. It uses crystals to convert workers to warriors and to "power" them; it is worth thinking of Crystal Tone as "ammunition." All warriors have a charge rating which represents the number of attacks they can make before having to recharge; recharging consumes crystal tone in the dojo's stockpile and must be done at the dojo. Typically a warrior will break off combat and return to the dojo automatically when it is down to only a few charges.

The Warriors of a Dojo cannot be controlled individually; instead orders are given to the entire dojo and all members of the dojo try to follow them. You can click on the Dojo itself, the warriors themselves, or the image of the Dojo in the building clipboard to select that Dojo. Right-clicking on an enemy unit or enemy building will order the warriors of that Dojo to attack that enemy, while right-clicking on an empty space will order the warriors of the Dojo to move to that area and defend it.

Alternatively you can use the combat control icons in the lower right corner of the screen to give orders to the warriors. These orders include the ones described above but include two others. From left to right they are:
 * Move to and defend an area
 * Defend a specific friendly unit
 * Return to the Dojo (this allows the warriors to heal and to recharge using the Dojo's crystal stockpile)
 * Attack a creature
 * Attack a growth or building (Note: you can attack your own buildings with this command if you wish, which is useful for getting rid of Tone Spreaders that you no longer need. You need to use the order icon for this; just right-clicking on one of your buildings sends the warriors to guard that location.)

Combat Attributes
Each warrior has a variety of statistics that describe how well it can fight. There are two categories of such statistics, the visible ones (in the tooltips) and the unlisted ones.

Visible Attributes
When you click on a specific unit in the lower left you should see the statistics for that unit. These are:
 * The unit's level, which is arguably an indicator of how tough it is. Player units need to level up, but monsters are just born with a specific level.
 * The unit's current amount of experience points, and then the number of experience points the unit needs to reach the next level (if there is one). Each successful hit by a unit gives it one experience point.  Note that the total amount of experience needed to level up is based on the difficulty level, with more difficult games requiring more experience.  On the other hand, there will be more enemies to attack in such games.
 * The unit's current charge level, compared to its maximum. Each point of charge allows the unit to make one attack.
 * The unit's current number of hits, compared to its maximum. When a creature reaches 0 hits, it dies.
 * The unit's strength. This represents the unit's chance of scoring a hit when making an attack.  Individual attacks seem to only be able to remove one hit each.

Monster tooltips list some of these attributes, but monsters do not have a charge rating (they can attack indefinitely), nor do they have experience (they do not level up).

Growths have tooltips but only the name is listed. The strength, range, and hits stats are listed in the manual.

Invisible Attributes
There are some statistics that units have which are not displayed in in-game text. Particularly:
 * Range. Some units have a range of close, meaning they must be adjacent to their target.  Other units have a range at a distance, though different units have different ranges (values for these ranges can be found in the manual).
 * Speed. How fast the unit moves around (values for speed can be found in the manual on a scale of 1-4).  Faster units tend to have less hits and charges.  The fastest monsters (Ronths and Varnths) have a speed of 4 which matches the speed of faster player units (Each faction has at least one unit that has a speed of 4).
 * Rate of Fire. This is not listed in the manual, but is clearly a factor.  It seems at least partly based on the speed of attack animation, though the animations may sometimes be cosmetic.  Ranged units fire a visible missile of some kind and generally do not fire again until that missile has reached its target, though this limitation does not apply to growths with a ranged attack.  Melee units seem to have higher rates of fire than ranged units.

Differences in rate of fire become apparent in matchups between monsters and warriors. I have noticed that in a fight between a group of three Tark warriors (Order of the Tentacle) and a single Rakalingus, the Rakalingus has a decent chance of killing one of the Tarks despite the Tarks having 17 hits to the Rakalingus' 16 and 5 strength compared to the Rakalingus' 4. This indicates that the Rakalingus must be making at least three times as many attacks in the same time span to keep up with the attacks of three Tarks.

Basic Tactics
As with most RTS games, the general tactic that works the best is overwhelming force. Attack enemy units with as many units as possible to destroy that unit as quickly as possible to prevent counterattacks. A unit at 2 hits deals just as much damage as when its hits are full so concentrating all fire against one enemy until that enemy is destroyed is the best way to diminish enemy offensive power.

Your ranged units are the best ones to use to go after most enemy growths as many growths have a range of close and of those that don't your ranged units are likely to have a longer range than many of them, meaning you can fire on them without being counterattacked. When facing enemy growths that have a longer range than your ranged units, the overwhelming force principle applies.

Monsters will periodically come towards your units, but sometimes instead of attacking them they attempt to fly past to get at your buildings and workers. Your ranged units will automatically fire at these monsters as they go by, but getting hit by ranged attacks does not force a monster to stop. If a creature is engaged in melee by a unit with a range of close though then they must stop to fight that unit, so keeping melee units in reserve a little behind your ranged units is useful. Keep your melee units away from growths though when possible, unless the growths have a longer range than your ranged units.

Concentrate on one island at a time. Once you clear an island the Leviathan never spawns there again so you can safely leave areas you have cleared.

Teleport your dojos to safe areas closer to your units, along with Crystal Tone Growers. When your units run out of charge they will head back to their dojo and recharge so reducing this distance allows your units to return to the fight faster.

Realm Influence
Each creature in the game, both floaters and monsters, has a realm it belongs to. Combat with creatures from a different realm can give an advantage to one side or the other. Some realms are dominant over others and if one creature's realm is dominant over that of its enemy it will have an advantage while fighting that creature. It is not entirely clear how much of an advantage it is or how this is calculated, but the advantage is significant.

The realms are organized in a circle with one realm standing at each of the compass points. This is shown in the Realm Display in the lower left corner of the screen. Each realm dominates the realm that is clockwise and is dominated by the one to counter-clockwise. Thus,
 * Physical dominates Supernatural
 * Supernatural dominates Ethereal
 * Ethereal dominates Natural
 * Natural dominates Physical

This also means some realms are opposite one another.
 * Physical is opposite Ethereal
 * Natural is opposite Supernatural

Realms that are opposite one another have "Tides" that go back and forth, meaning that sometimes one opposite will dominate the other, and vice versa. The level of tide is shown by a small circular icon which gradually moves back and forth between realm icons. In the image on the right, the tide strongly favors the Natural realm over the Supernatural, and slightly favors the Physical realm over the Ethereal.

Since each faction has units of two different realms, it is always possible to have at least some units that will be dominant over any given enemy if you wait for the tide to be in your favor, except for enemies of your primary realm; these you will always be able to get a "fair fight" against. Each faction also has access to at least one magic spell that changes the realm of a given dojo to either the next (clockwise) or previous (counter-clockwise) realm of existence temporarily.

Leviathan spawners can create a variety of monsters but each is limited to creating monsters from one specific realm, so you can always predict what realm will be the most useful against the monsters it creates. It is worth mentioning that the spawners in the faction starting islands will always have the same realm as the primary realm of that faction.

On easier levels of difficulty a player can safely ignore the realm effects, since it is easy to achieve numerical superiority, which is generally more important. However, on higher levels of difficulty you may face larger groups of powerful monsters, and a realm advantage can be decisive.

Unlocks & Upgrades
Over the course of the game you will want to be able to access more powerful units and units with different abilities. There are two ways to do this.

Bridge Unlocks
Opening bridges between islands not only gives you access to new areas of the map; it also unlocks additional building types that you can build, which then allows different units to be built. This can also allow you to upgrade existing buildings to a higher level, which then allows that building to support additional units of a higher level. Since the number of bridges available is dependent on universe size, playing on a smaller map will mean that less unlocks are available in such a game. However, the higher level unlocks may not be necessary.

Upgrading a dojo is very important. A floater cannot gain a level unless if has the required amount of experience AND has a dojo that has space for units of that level.
 * A level 1 dojo can support 3 warriors at level 1
 * A level 2 dojo can support 3 warriors at level 1 and two warriors at level 2
 * A level 3 dojo can support 3 warriors at level 1, two warriors at level 2, and one warrior at level 3.

The exception are spell towers - spell towers support wizard units instead of warriors. Spell towers support a number of wizards equal to their level, and the highest level wizard it can support is equal to its level. A spell tower will never hold more than one wizard of any given level.

It is worth mentioning that level 1 and 2 dojos can teleport to a medium or large tone node, but a level 3 dojo can only teleport to a large node. Since large nodes are fairly rare it can be worthwhile to hold back and not upgrade all your dojos to level 3 until late in the game (though having one or two at level 3 is not too difficult). You can still upgrade a dojo to level 3 even if it is on a medium node.

Here is a list of upgrades based on number of bridges opened: (8 is the maximum number of bridges for a small universe)
 * 0 Bridges opened: Only first dojo type available
 * 1 Bridge opened: Unlocks second dojo type
 * 2 Bridges opened: Unlocks spell towers
 * 3 Bridges opened: May upgrade 1st dojo type to level 2
 * 4 Bridges opened: May upgrade 2nd dojo type to level 2
 * 5 Bridges opened: May upgrade spell towers to level 2
 * 6 Bridges opened: May upgrade 1st dojo type to level 3
 * 7 Bridges opened: none
 * 8 Bridges opened: Unlocks final dojo type
 * 9 Bridges opened: May upgrade 2nd dojo type to level 3
 * 10 Bridges opened: May upgrade spell towers to level 3
 * 11 Bridges opened: none
 * 12 Bridges opened: May upgrade final dojo type to level 2

Artifact Upgrades
Throughout the game you will find artifacts, and when these artifacts are delivered to the correct Mystic Locations, a glyph becomes unlocked. You need to unlock all the glyphs to finish the game.

You could wait until the end of the game to unlock these glyphs, since the glyphs allow you to destroy the spires surrounding the Leviathan on the final island of Friid; once all the spires have been destroyed the Leviathan is defeated. If you haven't accessed the island of Friid yet, this ability isn't useful, and most players will destroy all the enemies on Friid first before doing this, which means you can destroy the spires at your leisure.

However, unlocking glyphs also grants additional bonuses. These bonuses can affect the stats of units, features of dojos, or general gameplay. If you open your tribal display there are small square icons that indicate which upgrades have been unlocked (see images on the right). Looking at the dojo display will also show icons that affect the specific units of that dojo.

As with bridges, size of the universe determines how many glyphs are available. The upgrades are not necessarily tied to specific islands and instead are organized in a specific order. As with bridge unlocks the later ones are only available in larger universes.