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The whole squad – unlike just a few members in Company of Heroes – take over the weapon. This is also what happens when you chance upon a crewed weapon that has been, uh, de-crewed. It can then be picked up by any infantry squad, which transforms it into the appropriate unit type. However, if you destroy a squad, it will drop its equipment. It’s a huge break from Company of Heroes, which placed great emphasis on upgrading units with single heavy weapons. Infantry in Iron Harvest is built in uniformly armed squads. The phrase “Iron Harvest” references WWI shells that farmers uncover in their fields These buildings also have to be upgraded to unlock a second, more powerful tier of units. Likewise, the workshop is the place where all the mech magic happens. Barracks build all types of infantry, weapon teams and exosuits. HQ produces engineers and the basic infantry of the faction. You’ll be constructing the larger part of your army in the base. Outside of bringing in heroes, providing a boost in population strength, and possibly getting several units on the field simultaneously, the reserve system doesn’t matter too much. Other than that, the reserve wave system is a tax for increasing the population limit, and it’s price is independent of what actually comes in the wave. A cheaper hero can allow you to get more of the other units. Of course, you can also add other units to the reserve waves.
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Infantry heroes tend to be cheaper and come in the first wave, while mech supercombatants tend to be expensive and come in the second. Heroes have a certain cost in reserve points and come in either the first or second reserve wave. You are then given the choice of one of three heroes to take to the field. One interesting twist in Iron Harvest is that you choose your faction after you launch the skirmish/multiplayer game, but before the map loads. “Stražnik” is made for two things: mulching infantry in the open and exploding once it sees an anti-mech unit. Even the original Company of Heroes had sprawling bases! However, unlike in say, the Command and Conquer series, the base building aspect is very rudimentary to the point where you can only put down buildings in a set base area and there’s only three of them in total.
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They also capture resource extraction points (iron and oil) as well as strategic points that accrue victory, er, points (unless you’re playing for HQ destruction). Just like what is traditional in the genre, Iron Harvest lets you build a base and use it to construct units to go out into the field and fight the enemy. Let’s get back to the basics for the benefit of the people who don’t carry the flame for a 14-year-old RTS game. Tesla coils are going out all across Europe It’s a shame that so few other creators ever tried the same. But you can trace the lineage back to the WWII RTS. There’s less of a focus on pinning, and you have mechs instead of tanks (or other vehicles for that matter). Indeed, Iron Harvest is dieselpunk Company of Heroes. Anna Kos, a village girl with a rifle and a bear, is about to get involved in some serious stuff. The truce between the three powers is shaky. In the campaign, half of Polania is occupied by the Rusviets.
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The game allows you to take control of the forces of Polania, Saxony, or Rusviet sometime after World War I - but with mechs - ended. Iron Harvest is set in the 1920+ universe created by Jakub Różalski, and expanded upon in the excellent board game Scythe. If there’s one thing certain though, it’s that when Iron Harvest was announced, the plentiful comparisons to Company of Heroes were true. That is, if not for the fact that almost no games followed their example, and their sequels actively squandered it. You could describe Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes as revolutionary RTS games.
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