Manual and quick tips

[evilcommiedictator]

#3635

Given the difficulty of finding anything to do with this game because of the name, I had a bit of trouble finding a manual but have found a scanned copy here and I’ve put my pdf copy from the DOS CD up on my dropbox here.

Z is a Real-Time Strategy game with a difference. People had been loving Command and Conquer and its focus on base building, protecting your units, gathering Tiberium and assaulting the enemy base.

What if you changed this up however, and focused only on the Rock-Paper-Scissors combat?

Welcome to Z.

Each of the missions is simple. Kill the enemy HQ, or kill all of their units. There are no resources to gather, your units are built automatically from production facilities, and the build speed of those units is based on the quality of the unit, and the number of territories you control.

Yes, you will need to control territories on the map. By sending your infantry or some vehicles to capture flags on the map, you will then control that region, and any radar or production facilities in that area.

Once you capture a area, any production facilities will start building the default unit of that structure.

In this game, everything is robots. Vehicles are crewed by robots and your robots can pilot any vacant vehicles or turrets lying around. Later in the same some units are better at taking out enemy pilots of vehicles so you can capture them yourself!

Controls are a little of what you would expect, with a few changes. Did you drag and drop a group to move them? Any individual selection of a unit in that group will select that group. In my version of the game, in order to deselect units you need to press SPACE, not RMB (although RMB is in the manual). You can also move units more easily by selecting places on the minimap with units selected.

Buttons along the bottom of the menu will allow you to cycle through unit types, infantry, vehicles, buildings and turrets (also F1-F4). Along the bottom of the bar is information on how many units total each side has.

The M key brings up the menu, not ESCAPE.

So with all that information, how do you win? In general, you’ll get used to the very brutal Rock-Paper-Scissors combat, as your basic grunts are good for capturing flags, crewing vehicles and little else. Be prepared to reload missions many times as the RNG as to when vehicle pilots get killed can be brutal.
There is no fog of war either, so there is no excuse for getting your strategy wrong! Make sure in slow times you’re checking out what the AI is doing. (Radar only makes enemy units show up on the minimap).

No go forth Steel Soldiers, put on that mixtape and kick that red team!

[Tijn]

#3642

This is very much appreciated! I installed the game this evening, thinking I could at least play the first level no problem… turns out the game doesn’t explain *anything*. No tutorial, no mission objective, they don’t explain the interface or the keyboard commands, haha. This is the DOS experience 😀

So yeah, I guess I better read the manual first.

[f2bnp]

#3646

Yeah, many thanks for this! It’s been a while since I played Z and I distinctly remember having a rough time at first thanks to the lack of tutorial and overall high level of difficulty. This will surely help 🙂

[f2bnp]

#3666

Been playing these last few days, I’m halfway through and I’ve a couple of tips to give to anyone reading this:

– You can press and hold the RMB to drag the camera around much quicker than moving the cursor to the edge of the screen. I found this to be VERY handy!

– Something I didn’t know, you can click on the production facilities that you own, press “CANCEL” and select a different unit/vehicle/stationary gun to be manufactured instead. For the first few levels I did not notice this.

– Save often to different slots and experiment!

[Aianhanma]

#3669

Browsing through the manual is very much recommended, even if you know how to rts. Z has some quirks in both gameplay and controls.

For example: units are grouped when “drawing a square” around them, and later clicking on any single unit of the group *selects the whole group*.

[Tijn]

#3681

I’ve played the first 5 or so levels now. The objectives seem pretty much the same for each one. Z does play a little different than what I’m used to from playing Warcraft and C&C, it seems more like a game of Risk with capturing those sectors. It’s also kind of bizarre there’s no base building at all.

So far the winning strategy to me seems to get rush at the start to get a good number of factories. As long as you’ve got more than the opponent and can hold on to them long enough, it’s pretty much a guaranteed win.

[f2bnp]

#3684

Yes, that does seem to be the winning strategy against the AI. I’m 15 levels (out of 20) in and it has gotten a bit repetitive, to the point where I’m thinking of giving up at this point. I think it’d be a lot more interesting with human opponents, should we perhaps look into setting up online matches before the end of the month?

[Tijn]

#3685

I’m definitely interested in that! I’ll start a separate thread, let’s hope some people are interested.