The purpose of this guide is to supplement other specific faction guides, providing general advice to improve your play on the highest difficulty levels. There are several paths to victory; here, I’ll focus on beating the AI in a (mostly) fair fight, without skewing the settings or finishing the story. (If it’s the achievements you’re after, please refer to my comprehensive achievement guide for specific advice.)

This guide is lengthy, but there’s a summary at the end if you just want some quick tips to help your game.


Here is my Ork-specific guide:
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029674153

Or if you'd rather play with tanks:
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067031734

And if you're interested in Chaos Space Marines:
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3051622207

Let's not forget the "Space Elves!"
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3343149132

Impossible opponents get two boosts:
1) All units are granted five experience levels upon creation and
2) All cities start with +100 loyalty.

This doesn't seem like much compared to other games, does it?

In Gladius, the difficulty level of your opponent is determined almost entirely by changes in loyalty. These settings are remarkably simple; the designers essentially picked a single variable to change to create the seven tiers of difficulty—the loyalty boost.

Ultimately the big tilt for Impossible comes from the loyalty bonus; that extra 100 loyalty has a cascade of profound secondary effects. It doubles output from every building in the starting city, and allows the AI to build new cities with impunity, which in turn exponentially multiplies unit production. On the other hand, if *you* try to build a bunch of cities with your zero starting loyalty bonus, you’ll quickly enter a negative spiral where decreasing loyalty gobbles up your production.

Note that the five level bonus seems great, but in practice (in a long game) it doesn’t much matter except at the very beginning. In my opinion, those extra five levels mostly allow the the AI’s initial units to survive against creeps even with typical reckless tactics.

This section gives some advice on the setup screen, before you even start playing.

For the most balanced challenge, set the AI to Impossible and play against a single opponent. If in two-player co-op, play against two Impossible AIs. For this game to have the appropriate difficulty, you should set your own level at normal.


The flow of a game of Gladius will vary widely based on starting settings. For my favorite style, I set the following:

Map Size: Large
Land Mass: Very high
Game Pace: Fast

All Downloadable Content: On
Quests: On
Turns, Costs, Upkeeps: Medium (default)
Wildlife & Special Resources: Very High
Artefacts, Ruins, and Traders: High
Faction features, Imperial Ruins, and Forest: Medium (default)
Rivers: High
Region Size: Small
Arctic: High
Jungle: High
Desert: Medium
Volcanic: Low

These settings produce a game with certain consistent features which you’ll like if you want a deep strategic game.

My suggested basic settings will give you a large map without huge lakes isolating unlucky factions, and with a game pace which allows the player to advance through the early game without a listless period of minimal combat. Increased game pace also reduces the prices at the Jokero Traders, which helps you outfit your heroes. (Note that this gives you an advantage over the AI, as it will not purchase items from the Jokero.)

First, in response to a great comment by Koger, let me discuss water a bit more. I've observed that high water maps greatly increase imbalance. If you're surrounded by water, your growth is crippled. Conversely, if you pick a spot with good starting land, then that water has to be somewhere, right? Usually it'll be near the AI, greatly limiting your opponent.

For single player, you should consider high water if you want to limit the AI's city spam and potentially make an easier game. For co-op, you'll find it very challenging to find a map where one of you isn't drowning :)

The advanced settings spawn a huge number of neutral units guarding an equally large number of outposts. This makes the early and mid-game a continuous series of tactical struggles over valuable map points, and delays the encounter with the AI opponent. I love this! Instead of only the top-tier units being useful, all of them have their place as you fight your way through waves of neutral creeps to get to that Siren Caster or Holoprojector. Your strategy will have to evolve constantly to maximize expansion without overreaching and losing valuable units.

Further settings tweak the basic map to shrink the region size, which makes the map more of patchwork, and helps my cities avoid being stranded in a huge desert or volcanic plain. I increase tundra and tropical because this lets my cities have more access to food and research, which are early staples for most factions.

Obviously, each faction has strengths and weaknesses which affect starting settings and locations, but this is actually much less important than you’d think.
If you’re new to impossible, start with the Space Marines. Many of the game’s nastiest strategic challenges don’t apply to them, allowing you to get your footing with less frustration:

• They don’t have any terrain negatives.
  
• They don’t have to worry about founding a second city.
  
• Loyalty is nearly a non-issue for them.
  
• They don’t have to worry about being near outposts.
  
• Their starting infantry are the best in the game, so they don’t tend to die off with small mistakes.
  
• They don’t really have any functional gaps in their forces.
  
• And so on.

(Note that the Necrons are probably the easiest faction to actually win the game, but they lack the total simplicity of the Space Marines.)

Starting City Locations
This is your first, and possibly most important, decision of the game. Your starting city location is so important that it’s worth rerolling the map as often as needed to get a good beginning (Gladius kindly keeps all your settings upon restart, making this relatively painless).

First, scan your overall position on the global map. Start with the minimap in the corner of the screen. You’ll want to start near a corner, but not completely tucked in so that you have space to expand *away* from the enemy. A mix of terrain types will help your city meets its needs for power, food, etc. Finally, study the general terrain visible to your units. Make sure that your city expansion won’t be hemmed in by water or cliffs (the orange dotted lines).

Now, look closely for a specific hex to build on. A starting location should have 3-5 outposts (e.g. Ruins of Vaul, Jokero Encampments, etc.) within three tiles of the city center. Use CTRL-Z to view all bonuses, and look for a site which will have a good mix of different bonuses around it (i.e. power, influence, food, etc.) This view is too crowded to use by default, but it’s a great guide to help you with your origin story.

Because city centers produce everything, you’re best off maximizing the *total* bonus of the tile…for example, a +20% research, +30% food tile has a total bonus of +50%, which will increase both of those types of products. When you’re acquiring tiles for the same city, however, the *largest* bonus is the important one, as you can maximize a particular production line there (i.e. a negative food production doesn’t matter if you only build energy buildings on the hex). And don’t overlook the little gear symbol! This additional builder production gets your first buildings done about one turn faster, which can make a big difference in the early game.

In my experience, the first city should have access to a substantial research bonus within one tile of the city center (+40% is ideal, +20% is quite acceptable). The city itself should avoid these tiles, however, as the tundra usually limits food production and can make the total bonus less than ideal.
Finally, either found the city on turn 1 or 2. Lost time is impossible to recoup, and you don’t want to wander from the safe starting “bubble” into a land of neutral creeps.
Let’s analyze a starting location to see how it stacks up:


The Adeptus have some great potential here, but some tough choices as well. The green circle is the Datasmith, who will found the city. I’ve circled two promising sites. The blue area has a total of 60% in a wide mix of bonuses, which is a great overall start. It’s limited in research, with only +10% hexes nearby to build that first research facility, but has a little of everything else.
However, I might end up in the white circle, or even in the tundra to the northeast of that. The white hex boosts research and has even better research nearby, with a Ruin of Vaul just visible in the fog of war. Ultimately, that will mean a fat +60% to all research done in that hex (because once the Ruin is within the city radius, it will add another 20%). On the white circle, you’ll have to wait for the big research bonuses until the city can expand, but you’ll also get to start with your building production increased, which can really help a fledgling empire (I usually mentally consider the +10% production as equal in value to the +20% of other resources), and there’s no food penalty.
Overall, I’d probably either reroll this one, or start at the white hex for a good mix of surrounding bonuses and an early bump in research. But the blue area would be a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Just as the founding city site is more critical than any others, the first choices of buildings will have a lasting impact throughout the game. A key concept here is “production in parallel,” which essentially means that you’re more efficient the more things you’re producing at the same time. With that in mind:

• Expand to a new hex with a research bonus.
  
• Begin with a research building. Starting research is so low that you’ll find your city unable to expand due to technology deficits. You need habitation buildings to grow the population, and city founders to make more cities. With rare exception, both require technologies.
  
• Expand to a new hex with a production bonus, if available.
  
• Build a unit production building, generally infantry. When I first tackled the highest difficulties, I skimped on basic units, reasoning that they would be obsolete before long. I later realized that a large group of early units is cheap to maintain, but very effective at conquering local outposts to take the pressure off my production. Early expansion is also key to locating and clearing the site for a second city. Often, these unit buildings give additional bonuses to research, loyalty, etc., and lets me start on parallel production of buildings and units.
  
• Expand to a new hex with a resource bonus that you need.
  
• Create a building to meet your deficits. The third building should anticipate your needs so that you don’t have to “Skip Turn” on your city. Are you running low on food? Power? Loyalty?
  
• Build a “city builder” unit production building (e.g. Techpriests, Canoptek Spiders, Meks), if you’ve gotten the technology. You need to be poised to found that second city, and most factions will need both a technology and a unit to do this. Behind on technology? Consider a second research facility.
  
• Expand to the least valuable hex you can find. This will be where you place your loyalty and population buildings, because they are the only ones which can’t benefit from terrain bonuses.
  
• Build a habitation building (on that useless hex). Your population is probably pretty close to fully employed, and you don’t want to stop building due to a lack of workers. At 5 out of 6 population, you’ll notice that your growth rate is in the tank due to lack of housing. Fix that by increasing the limit.
  
• Expand to a power hex.
  
• Build a power building. Your buildings are limited by population and by power use. By now, you’re either in a deficit, or close to it.

The issue of negative loyalty seems a bit controversial in Gladius. I'm definitely in the "pro loyalty" camp. I generally try hard to keep positive, more to avoid the "double hit" of negative loyalty, which can slow down your building, and require you to build extra power, ore, or other buildings to keep your economy positive.
I'd say it's fine to dip into negative loyalty (single digits) briefly to fulfill other priorities such as building a second city, or the building building building.

At this point, you’re fully on the treadmill of habitation, power, and loyalty buildings; roughly every alternate building will be one of these three. Fortunately, you can now start to finally ramp up ore production. This will feed the vehicle and air unit armies you’ll need in the later game. I recommend that your primary city produce three unit types, and additional cities produce one or two at most.

Build the "building building building" as soon as possible! You might be reluctant because it takes so long to construct, but once built it will greatly speed your production and save you far more time than it cost originally.

Secondary cities should focus on resources…you’ll need ore, energy, and loyalty more in the late game, and less food and research, so it makes sense to target your later cities towards those resources.

Don’t hesitate to build more than one of each unit production building. I usually end up with three vehicle buildings, and at least two aircraft buildings. This prevents the long wait between top-tier units like Baneblades, Scorpions, or Obelisks.

Keep up in research. With these setting, I consider the turn counter to represent “par” for research, i.e. at turn 20, you should have a minimum of 20 total research.

Although all the factions have distinctive traits, they are surprisingly similar in the core technologies needed in the early game.

Infrastructure. The first three or four tiers of technology have the basic elements for constructing a city…habitation, city radius expansion, loyalty, city-building units, and the “building building building” (which usually looks like a crane.) If in doubt, research these by default.

Units. An early decision is whether to expand using infantry, mechanical units, or heroes. Generally, infantry with supporting heroes is the best path, as they are relatively cheap and use food, so they don’t compete with construction of buildings. Two exceptions come to mind…the Astra Militarum and the Adeptus Mechanicus are strongly oriented toward mechanized units, and so it becomes a personal decision. Make sure your starting city location can support the path you choose.

Let your technology follow your choices here. For example, if you’re the Space Marines, then grenades and bolter bonuses are great choices to support your Astartes troops.

Your primary early goal is to build a second city. Don’t lose sight of this in the complexity of city management or you will be set back in development.

My suggested settings mean that Gladius will be rich in neutral units. Your starting units are only fit for clearing the immediate area around your city; they’ll need reinforcement early. Do *not* get greedy and charge your early warriors into the fog of war. That lone stingwing will bring his five friends and wipe you out.

Produce two or three more basic infantry units as soon as the building is ready. As a squad they’ll be able to protect each other and avoid the frustration of *almost* killing units (who then escape to heal). You can produce a city builder while your squad is clearing a good patch of land, and get that city built as quickly as possible. I aim for around turn 20 for the second city, and turn 50 for the third. (Two factions [Chaos and Eldar] can accelerate this so the second city is constructed in around ten to fifteen turns.)

Do not wait for a perfect location for your second city! It's better to get it started than waste valuable time trying to get an extra 20% food.

At this point (turn 20-45) you’ve got a couple of cities and your army is tough enough to take on everything but Kastelan Robots and Umbra.

The next goal is to consolidate your corner of the map, and to make your cities highly productive. By pushing towards the corner, you establish some territory which will be safe from the rampaging AI, and you delay the first encounter with the enemy. I've had many games where the "safe zone" behind my cities housed the only outposts I had left after the initial assault. This income can be critical.

I'll repeat myself...both cities should build the “building building building” (this typically looks like a crane) as either their first or second project (as soon as the technology is ready). It’s expensive in time and resources, and you may be tempted to work on other pressing needs. However…don’t. The dead time waiting for the building to complete will be paid back almost immediately in time saved in subsequent construction. I played a game where I forgot to build this building in my first city, and by turn 50 I was so miserably far behind I had to restart even before I was really fighting the AI.

With this done, you can now begin to address some items you’ve probably let languish. Although the empire is growing, loyal, and not suffering any shortages, you’ll probably notice that research is lagging, and ore production isn’t nearly enough to build those heavy tanks and stompy robots you’ve been craving. Stack bonuses in individual cities to boost production of particular resources. Typically, my starting city is responsible for food and research, and my second city handles ore and power. The third can handle influence and assist with ore production.

Your ore production means that you can finally (by turn 50) have a combined army with some Tier 5 and 6 mechanical units leading your infantry into the tough areas of the map to take those treasured Artifacts and greatly increase your number of outposts to fuel your economy. You’re steamrolling most creeps, and a substantial chunk of the map is under your control.

Your goal at this point is to prepare for contact with the enemy. With these settings, expect to meet them around turn 60-75 on single player, and turn 50-60 on two-player co-op.

Those early infantry armies bolstered by mid-level mechanical and hero units are now capable of continuing to capture outposts on the map’s edges…you might lose 30% of your outposts during the initial wave of enemy units, and you don’t want your economy to collapse.

At home, you should be preparing for an enormous air assault. Once the AI finds you, it will try to concentrate all of its forces…because air units are the most mobile, they will consolidate first and can appear in numbers within two turns of your first encounter. In a recent game against the Space Marines, the AI had an air force of twenty mixed planes attacking my lines within five turns of our first meeting.

To counter this, you need to build any anti-air units you can *in advance* (Ork Mek Gunz, or Hunters, or Onagers, depending on your faction) and have your own air force ready to respond. Superheavy, damage resistant units need to be ready to deploy. Okay, let’s get into the war!

This section is more detailed, because Gladius is a strategy war game at its heart. Most city management has been preparing you for this fight. If you've done well, you'll have the units you need to prosecute the war, but you still need clever strategy to win out against the overwhelming forces.

Once the AI locks onto you, it’s a death struggle until one of you is beaten. On one side is the computer, with seemingly limitless resources, a vast empire, and a single-minded devotion to destroying your units. On the other is you, with your human brain and determination. This is Warhammer 40K at its best.

You’ll have to weather the tremendous air attack before you can even begin the ground battle. In the game below, I'm the Aeldari a few turns after encountering the Impossible Astra for the first time. (I did win this one, although it was *close!*)

They really wanted to kill that Wraithknight in the center!



Note that air units are hard to beat because they can’t be hit in melee, usually strike with a lot of force, and often have ranges which allow them to concentrate the fire of many units on a single defender. They are usually relatively fragile when hit with the right weapons, however.

• Keep your units grouped up. They can’t surround a unit that is part of tight group.
  
• Don’t advance. At this phase, the AI will have dozens of units waiting in the fog of war to overwatch you to death.
  
• Don’t let units be cut off. That superheavy Brass Scorpion or Squiggoth will die the “death of a thousand cuts,” surrounded by weak units which will keep it from retreating while patiently whittling it down. I exquisitely remember losing a Baneblade to an endless sea of Hormagaunts. Ech.
  
• Don’t get flanked. The AI can be very tricky. If you see it suddenly back off, don’t advance into the gap (think Battle of the Bulge). It’s probably repositioning those units to try to flank you and focus fire.
  
• Keep some units on overwatch. The AI has a fear of overwatch which can sometimes prevent it from advancing when it should. If your overwatch is expended, you may trigger a sudden rush.
  
• Use the terrain. Forests and ruins break the line of sight (meaning less concentrated fire) and provide excellent damage reduction. Compounds are even better, as they block some melee damage as well. Wire weed will slow ground units and sometimes force the AI to over-extend air units.
  
• Bait the enemy. The computer will target weaker units like healers or basic infantry, sometimes with risky advances into your back lines. If they do, make them pay for the death of that infantry unit by knocking out an isolated plane or two.
  
• Give ground. This is a war of attrition, so don’t be afraid to fall back slowly to force the enemy to advance into your prepared defenses. You’ll be shortening your supply lines and lengthening theirs.
  
• Use your aircraft as gap fillers. Air units can be more easily targeted than others, so any advanced unit is at high risk for destruction. Instead, use their mobility to close gaps around other units. Jink, use chaff, and any other tricks to help them.
  
• Sometimes, it’s better to shoot to wound. The AI will retreat wounded units, which can give temporary relief. Damaged infantry groups will be weaker but still occupy a hex on the front line.
  
• Cycle your wounded units. Pull them back and let them heal to full before redeploying your assets. When they die, they not only open a hole in your line, they break the morale of your nearby units.
  
• Disband units (occasionally). Rarely, a 95% damaged superheavy should be disbanded. If there’s not a way to save it, fire everything and then delete it. This will prevent the enormous morale bomb that will happen on the enemy’s turn, and deny them all that experience from the kill.

Morale is so important that it gets its own paragraph. A broken unit does a third less damage and takes a third more damage. This is incredibly impactful! Use any devices (e.g. Laurels of Command) or hero powers at the outset to help your morale. When you are organizing your counterfire, try to open by destroying groups of weak units. This will restore lost morale on your side and weaken theirs, which makes every subsequent attack more effective. And, while big heavy units have very high morale, this makes it harder for them to recover from the “broken” state.

Eventually you’ll notice that the number of air units is starting to dwindle just a little, and enemy reinforcements no longer occupy every hex in sight. I think of this like the drain in a sink with the tap slightly on. At first, there’s a huge pool of AI forces on the map, and they rush you. As you kill them, some are replaced, but the overall pool gets smaller and smaller as you destroy more than they can build. I find that when I start to see enemy heroes, that’s usually a sign that I’m making progress.

At first, hold ground rather than retreating. Build a front line which can weather the attacks, cycling damaged units to your repair station in the rear. When you’re ready to advance, start with full-health superheavy units which can withstand the overwatch. Advance one hex at a time to avoid being cut off, and move units in a blob. Don’t get greedy! If you follow that slivered aircraft into enemy territory, expect to lose the unit that gave chase, sometimes before it even gets off a shot.

Heroes are tough, but not that tough. Even the strongest ones like Ork warbosses should be brought in only as support for your heaviest units instead of leading the charge. [Saint Celestine may be the sole exception to this rule.] If they die, you lose all gear and leadership effects they provide (just watch what happens to your population if a high level Necron Lord gets ambushed).

Since this is a “zero-sum” game, the balance will tip rapidly once you have control of the battlefield. Your units will be progressively stronger, more experienced, and more numerous; the AI will be reduced to scattered bands of harassers and up to a dozen cities. On a large map I have some suggestions for avoiding the tedium of late game cleanup (moving forty units per turn for ten turns can take an hour or more).

• Consider picking a personal victory condition, such as the destruction of one AI city. Declare victory!
  
• If you need to see it through, use build queues in your cities (something I otherwise never do). Move units via queued orders.
  
• Don’t move smaller inconsequential units like those early-game Boyz. Just set them to hold position.
  
• Ignore enemy units as much as possible and bulldoze their cities.
  
• Use the relative freedom to work on some achievements (this is a shill for my Achievement Guide, by the way 😊 )

Congratulations on doing the Impossible! Please see my faction-specific guides for tailored advice on the idiosyncrasies of Orks, Sisters, cyborgs, and all the rest!

Here's a simplified breakdown of in-game goals and tips for beating Impossible.

• Choose a near-perfect starting location. Restart the game until you find it.
  
• Get a research building completed.
  
• Build a unit production building, and start your army.
  
• Found a second city.
  
• Build the “building building” in your cities, and complete infrastructure research.
  
• Expand to take outposts and relics to improve your forces.
  
• Outfit your champions...heroes with Jokero items are far more durable than heroes without.
  
• Once your economy is under control, found a third city.
  
• Prepare to meet the enemy’s air units.
  
• Improve your economy using faction-specific boosts, and begin the war of attrition.
  
• Turn the tide, and win the game!

• Necrons are *probably* the easiest faction to start playing against Impossible. Space Marines are the least complicated.
  
• Enemy factions are not equal! I find the T’au to be quite challenging, whereas the Orks tend to be easier. The easiest opponent is probably the Space Marines faction simply because they can’t build more than one city.
  
• Keep early units together to avoid slivering neutral units or getting surrounded.
  
• The second city should be in a good spot, but don’t delay it looking for “perfect.”
  
• Don’t tick off the Kastelan robots or Umbra until you are ready!
  
• Hero items like the Icon and the Scrolls can greatly alleviate resource shortages.
  
• You can move items between adjacent heroes, and even to allies. Drag and drop!
  
• Expand along the corners and sides of the map to avoid an early confrontation with the AI.
  
• Keep your research value above the current turn number.
  
• Maintain loyalty at or above zero to avoid the “double penalty” of negative loyalty numbers.

• Bigger maps make the game easier by giving you more time, but they can really drag.
  
• Faster game speeds generally favor the player.
  
• High water maps can create very bad locations, crippling a player or choking the AI.
  
• Larger numbers of outposts and relics make city management easier.
  
• Adding non-allied AI players can make the game *much* easier (i.e. two enemy AIs not on the same team).
  
• Turning off the story generally favors the AI, who doesn’t pursue it anyway.
  
• You can choke certain opponents by turning down their special tiles (i.e. Webway gates).

If you're dedicated enough to read through that guide, maybe you're trying to knock out some achievements as well. Here's the link to my Achievements guide to help you get unstuck trying to figure out how to kill a fully loaded Immolator or win with only Haruspexes :)

https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2801059818