Home Wars

Home Wars

Not enough ratings
The Ultimate Guide for v1.028
By Gainfull_Gremlin
This guide is created to clarify:
-The most efficient tactics achievable in HomeWars version 1.028
-The common bugs... ahem... technical issues that can occur when you play the game
4
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Introduction
I hope that this guide will be useful for both beginners and those who play this game long enough.

So, let us begin!

Tactics for the1st level of The Nest
Because it is very difficult to define, what is early-, mid- and lategame in Home Wars, due to assimetrical evolution of the bugs and players' military research, we will wire our tactics to the Bug's Nest level.

At the first lvl of the Nest you will encounter only Ants and Mosquitos.

The build order for the HQ will be simple:
1st Turn:
2 Plastic factories and 1 Metal factory
(optional) Unlock the Supply Truck, the Sapper and the Rifleman. Buy 1-3 Riflemen - use them as scouts to go through the rooms and capture points and get free resource supplies to dell on the market in exchange for something usefull. (you may need to sell some rough resources you own from the start and buy some refined plastic to deploy the scouts)
2nd Turn
1 Power Station (Batteries factory)

This is a rather cautious approach, if you do not wanna monitor your resources that much, and want to just play the battles.
______________________________________________________

The more aggressive buildorder is as follows:
1st Turn:
2 Plastic factories 1 Metal Factory
sell some resources to buy a Sapper for 200 plastics and some scouts
2nd Turn
30 Rifleman (full "army", costs 1200 plastics)

The combat capability of the early ants and mosquitos (Formica Fusca and Culex Pipiens respectively) is minisqule. One sapper is capable of killing the entire antswarm with "Very high" number of bug groups per swarm in mission with bases. And the 30 rifleman (if you bought additional small arms ammunition before the fight) are capable of clearing random roaming ants in the "Conquer the Flags" mission, while supported by the sapper's defensive structures in the beginning of the fight, of course.

This particular campaign was done with 1.5 abundance of all food types an 120% health and attack for all bugs on Veranda's Breach, with only 2 sappers and 60 riflemen. The Kitchen here is basically the bug's territory, and on 1.5 abundance they can get to the 2nd level of the Nest in 10-12 turns, while you will not even be able to build assault troops.


In this campaign the Kitchen was seized by the Allied troops with only 5 men lost due to lack of small arms munitions in "conquer the flag" battle.
______________________________________________________

You can optionaly build the Barrel Factories (Toxic or Flammable) to sell the ammo for some metal\plastic or to actually produce bombs or ammo for firewarriors flamethrowers.
The main building now is the EXP factory (aka Military Academy), we need at least 5 of them to research new pieces of military equipment for our army. They use metal, so we also might need an additional Metal factory.

If you play a campaign for your first time, then you won't have large amounts of EXP at the start (compared when you restart your campaign after winning previous one, where you are granted a small extra EXP), so you must decide which units you should unlock.
______________________________________________________

Firstly, we DO NOT NEED artillery, because it will be effective only against heavy, slow and armored bugs, a barrage of arty-shots is completely useless against ants (there's just too many of them, and they move relatively fast, so shots land behind the actual target), and especially mosquitos since artillery pieces cannot target them. (But, they can ACCIDENTALY hit them, when the shell collides with a flying beetle\mosquito in the air)

Artillery does, however, deliver a punch in a sence, that the swarm hust moves towards your units in a staight line, and even if he originally targeted ant will not be damaged, it still will land on other marching ants, as long as the maximum number of bugs per battle is not reached.

Artillery also does not damage the enemy outpost in the battles that quickly. In a firing test of 10 pieces of each and all types, only Rocket Artillery and the "reloading" 150mm Howitzer (that fires bursts of 3 shots) were the only artillery pieces that were capable to do damage above 5% using their full load - 17% and 15% damage respectively. "The Big Gun" (which i used only 3, because they take too much space) did not do even 3, others (each type was represented by 10 pieces of it) did like 4%-5% damage to the bug outpost.
______________________________________________________

THE SAPPER (and a supply truck to unlock the sapper) should be unlocked ASAP, because it IS THE CORE DEFENSIVE UNIT of your army, so unlock him the first along with the Supply Truck (we do not need to build the trucks actually, since we always have a forward operating base (FOB) with supplies on the battlefield, which the bugs can't damage)

Sappers can
- deploy defensive structures IMMEDIATELY for battlepoints
- (are your ONLY way to) destroy enemy outposts (in battle) in 1-2 minutes
- and the bugs will try to play a zombie-horde and die in barb wires, dragons' teeth and mines every single battle when you use only the sapper, because there is no other target to be aggro'ed by! They are just regular bugs and not Clendathu aliens, so, they're dumb.

Like, actually dumb.

Sapper's fortification deal damage in "bursts" each second. A common situation in case of a continous bug line moving through the barbed wires is that each structure deals the amount of damage written in its info to all the bugs within it at the same time, and the bugs that enter the barbed wire structure immediately have a 1-2 seconds before the next "burst" of damage will be dealt to them. Thus you should position the fortifications so that the bugs will travel through them the maximum time possible (and thus can not get through them before breaking them), and also stack them so that all the structures combined will deal the damage equivalent to the health of the chonkiest bug that you can encounter at the current level of the Nest.

The choice between other units is quite complicated, but there is a cheap "gentlemans' set" of 2 units: Assault Troop and Heavy Rifleman, that you can achieve even if you play the first round of your campaign (the year you start your campaign, no bonus EXP)

After unlocking these units, you need the light AA-vehicle to deal with more durable mosquitoes and headbumping insects like flies completely (but try to not waste their missile-ammo by clicking on missile-tab when you choose the AAV in-battle, thus deactivating the weapon) and an Assault Vehicle to deal with the cockroaches at medium distances with 40mm grenade launchers. To protect them from the jumping threats, like Grasshoppers, you can just sprinkle your lines with Assault Troops with shotguns, they are the best when it comes to take down a bug that gets very close very fast.


Infantry Tech Tree

You can notice that the Assault troop, Riflemen (all the types) and Marksman/Sniper fire at different ranges. Combinig them allows you to spread the firepower of your battle group evenly across the bug swarm.

Assault troops in particular are one of the best options to protect you from incoming grasshoppers, since they do not get distracted by bugs that approach you from afar by foot. So, if any grasshopper jumps right inbetween your soldiers, assault troops will deal with that problem pretty quickly.

Be aware, however, that your troop can not shoot directly above their heads, so a fly or a mosquito that stings any soldier and then flies above him has a very high chance to not be shot by the soldier it stung. To prevent that, divide your battlegroups in 2 parts, so that one can shoot the bugs which hover over another and vice versa.

The last unit - the Mech is almost like a vehicle that uses a laser, is very versatile, expensive, and has a lot of firepower, BUT you must unlock ALL the units in Infantry Tech Tree to unlock this beast, so, it can be conventionally used only when you will have LOTS of EXP (8th campaign in a row) or at VERY late lvls of the Nest.
Vehicles Tech Tree

The Assault and Recon Vehicles are versatile because of thei weapons (40mm Grenade Launcher with an LMG and 2 MGs respectively). They can hit both aerial and terrestrial targets.

The Light and Heavy Fighting Vehicles and Heavy AA Vehicle are, however, a smidge finicky. Their fire rate is low, and they are heavily specialised (the Fighting vehicles DO NOT HAVE MACHINEGUNS which is a very big downside) and the Heavy AA, even though uses proximity ammo, are easily overwhelmed by land swarms, and shall be used only against low count heavy armored flying bugs. Light AA deals with smaller flying insects better than the heavy.

However, you can man the AA-vehicle yourself and aim as low as you can, an then you will be able to hit ground targets. This is practically the last resort tactic fot maximising the damage to the swarm, since you need an unhuman amount of microing your vehicles and other units to keep them both firing and alive that way.

Therefore, all the vehicles should be supported by the 20-30 Assault troops or at least by 30-40 riflemen to spare them from Grashoppers, which can bypass a lot of vehicle's fire by jumping directly on them into the close quarters combat, where the vehicles are marginally (if at all) effective.

And the last one - the War Machine - is just a very heavy, expensive and slow version of a Heavy\Battle Tank, which means that WM can do nothing against the flying beetles!!! It is also requires alot of heavy munitions, which is expensive, and you need a pretty good plastics economy to keep this lad running. Because of that this beast is not the best choice of a high-tier unit for your army, especially at lower Nest levels, and is only usefull when the enemy uses a large amount of heavily armored bugs like Titan-beetle.
Aircraft Tech Tree

The light helicopter, of course, belongs in fact to the helicopter branch, being the smallest, fastest and cheapest of them, but still, aircraft pieces are expensive, so do not loose them in a fight.

Aircraft pieces are very potent. In "Defend the Squad Until Extraction" missions a combination of 3 Strike Aircraft, 3 Fighter Jets, a Gunship and a Spitlead does so much damage, that you can just run an indefinite amount of time from the bugs that chase the squad you need to extract, so that half of the squad will definetely survive the extra mission.

Bombers are interesting because of their napalm and toxic bombs (the Geneva Convention is about humans not bugs, right?) which can be dumped on the moving trajectory of the ground bugs and create a cloud of toxins/fire that functions similar to Sapper's damage dealing fortification. Should be used in cases where the fortifications are not enough (too many bugs or too little Battle Points). Also they do not do friendly fire and do not obstruct vision, so your soldiers can stand like the Rambo in the toxic cloud shooting at bugs, much like the same way that they sit at Dragons Teeth or in thick Barbed Wire fields.

In regular battles aircraft must be supported by Light AA to deny any small agile mosquito or headbumping insect to get to the stinging range, and heavy AA to deal with wasps and other meaty flyers, otherwise your pretty expensive birdies will have a very high chance to fall from the sky due to venom (yes, aircraft can be poisoned!) or one damn bug that keeps evading shots (or rather is not targeted because of the range, or the sheer number of bugs on the battlefield that your units target first)
Tactics for the 2nd level of The Nest
At the level 2 of the Nest, you will encounter armored beetles - that's the time when you should unlock your more advanced units, which use 20-30 mm autocannons and grenade launchers!

The more universal vehicles are more usefull in the early stages. Fighting Vehicles for example are cool, but they are too heavily specialised against bulkier bugs, and can be easily overrun by numerous cockroaches and grasshoppers.

And of course, now we need Artillery and Tanks to pierce the armored bugs: Tanks for the fast ones (because they can actually hit moving targets), Artillery for slow ones (because it's cheaper than tanks both in EXP to unlock and in plastic). We also need to unlock our second AA-vehicle to deal with wasps and more armored flying bugs.

Also, we can use piercing ammo now, which penetrates the armor of the bugs and deals less damage than the normal ammo, but its damage not blocked by the bug's armor.
The thing is, that some units like late artillery have a very powerfull normal rounds, and not-so-powerfull piercing rounds, and the normal round can actually cause MORE damage than a piercing round (For example normal round deals 300 DMG and a piercing one deals 210 DMG, the bugs we are shooting at are f.e. 20% resistance due to their armor, and 300-((300/100)*20)=240, 240>210.
(Idk if it is a feature or an error)

Now the Sapper is not as effective, and you must rely more on your firepower instead of the defensive structures. But a Sapper is still usefull, his slowing traps such as glue and anti-tank hedgehogs become pretty usefull because they allow your main firepower to fire at bugs for a little bit longer and not be engaged in close quarters combat. So, supply each of your army groups with at least 2 of these guys. You still need them for blowing the "base" when attacking the ant lairs in battles on bug territory.

Jumping and Venomous enemies also can have armor, so we must decide which weapon to use against each particular enemy, depending of their HP and armor. The venomousness or ability to jumps forces us to prioritize such targets, because of their increased battle abilities or agility, but does not specify the weapon that shall be used (Assault troops, Light or Heavy AA which are effective against different bugs, aircraft).

The 3rd and other subsequent levels of the nest will not change the situation on the battlefield drastically, because the new bugs will be just improved versions of those from the second and first levels.
Bugs...Errors...Mistakes...
The common in-game b~... errors... are as follows:

1. when you speed up your time at x4 in battle, the physics do not work sometimes
2. when you order your infantry to climb the tables, chairs etc., they can die when they reach the top surface of a piece of furniture they are climbing in the moment. (also when they climb down the furniture)
3. the loadscreens with advices contain grammatical mistakes and sometimes provide wrong information (for example, one of the loadscreens says that "armor can block a precise amount of piercing damage", when actually it blocks only normal damage)
4. Mosquitos and other flying bugs sometimes stop moving and their models start to rotate very fast when there are too many insects on the battlefield (more than ~400)
5. When you order your helicopters to fly near the walls, they start eventually to ascend uncontrollably, and when they reach the ceiling, they die.
6. Soldiers can fall into the furniture, and since there is no climbing waypoints inside the furniture, they get trapped there
7. At high speeds (4x) in "Defend the Allied Outpost" missions bugs can lag through the floor under the allied outpost and get trapped under it in large amounts (50-60 bugs on the counter)

Please, write the errors that you encountered ingame, it will be nice to have a kit of them to fixes after the dev team will release their new game in July the hiatus is over.
15 Comments
radar_zone 16 Sep, 2022 @ 5:13am 
also I've encountered a "feature" with the house flies in that they like to knock a vehicle you're crewing into the air and disrupt your aim at the same time, very annoying, never again will i not put at least 3 wire roofs up
radar_zone 16 Sep, 2022 @ 2:12am 
The part about just bunkering up 1 sapper is extremely helpful, since you can always place more landmines in the battle with BP trickle
HistoricalCredit13 31 Jul, 2022 @ 5:40pm 
How do you kill enemy convoys, with art. or what?
Sgtsoldier123 3 Mar, 2022 @ 6:10pm 
Interesting.
It's kind of weird but one of my first unlocks is (besides riflemen and sappers) the 150mm Artillery piece. They tend to do just as if not a little bit more damage to the ants as my sappers and riflemen tend to do.

Still it may not be as good as just nabbing one of the assault vics. But it's become a bit of a personal preference so to speak.
Gainfull_Gremlin  [author] 20 Jan, 2022 @ 4:13am 
To commemorate my trip to Australia (which revitalised my arachnofobia, yay!) i updated the guide and also did test of the arty barrages on bug's outpost on the battlefield, which shows that, yes, you can deal damage with artyllery to the nest itself, but it costs a lot of plastic and time compared to 10 sappers that can just swoop in where the allied deployment area is close to a nest and immediately blow it up, denying the attack before the bugs even start to spawn.

Such denying tactics is not benefitial however, as the bug swarm will continue to roam around the house if not completely killed. So, yeah, artillery looks fun but gimmicky to me when used to destroy enemy outposts.

Thanks to all of you who still plays this game after 4 years of hiatus and more!
joe02184X2 26 Nov, 2021 @ 9:59am 
Are you directly targeting nests with artillery? i sit their with about 50 artillery guns and barrage the nest for about 30 mins to kill it it usually works even without heavy artillery.
bubs 25 Jun, 2021 @ 7:35am 
here is an award
bubs 25 Jun, 2021 @ 7:35am 
Thanks i've been looking for a good guide and this is it
DrinkThatMakesYouRemember 28 Oct, 2020 @ 2:01pm 
my tactic is just spamming a army and making sure they don.t take over any thing i have and to make a even amount of stuff and after you got the units you want get rid of academys
swiftynoodles 1 Jul, 2020 @ 3:49am 
I don't know if it is a bug but whenever I tell my troops to line up they do it very spread out and almost in the opposite direction i told them to.