Strategies/The Finnish War

This is the list of gameplay strategies for use in **The Finnish War.**

For faction-specific strategies, see Factions in the page for *The Finnish War.*

##### Rushing

Rushing is a strategy where the sole focus is on attacking the enemy as quickly as possible. In *The Finnish War,* this means survival elements are disregarded. Rushing in *The Finnish War* is not a generally recommended strategy since not only are the maps often large and come with obstacles (such as lakes and rivers), but also because the player will not then have time to focus in minimizing attrition. This leads to the rushing player's armies reaching the enemy in poor condition, caused by untended Hunger and/or Temperature attrition.

Rushing is best pulled off on smaller maps, and with fast units like cavalry or speedy infantry.

Good rushing factions include the Swedish and the Finns. The Swedish have overall faster troops, especially their cavalry. The Finns have the Finnhorse Cavalry, which is very fast but also cheap and can be used to overwhelm mediocre enemy defenses.

##### Turtling

Turtling is a strategy where the player focuses on defense, building up solid defenses and waiting for the enemy to come to them. Turtling is best started by building 2-3 Camps, then gathering part of the player's army around them, and then surrounding it all with a bunch of Outposts. After this is accomplished, the player should move to the nearest pack of Huntables and hunt food as much as possible. Focusing on this for the rest of the match until the enemy attacks, the player can ensure upkeep of Food and keep attrition reduced for the turtling units.

Good turtling factions include the Finns and the French. The Finns have the *Partisans* Superability which allows destroyed Finn buildings to spawn extra infantry. They also have sturdier infantry with the *Sisu* Ability. The French have the Gribeauval Mortier superunit, which is the game's ultimate defensive unit. They also have their Ability *Jean Larry Medical Reforms,* which makes Camps heal units faster.

##### Raiding

Raiding means destroying outlying enemy buildings, like Hunting traps and Camps, especially to prevent them from hindering attrition damage. Raiding is best done with melee cavalry, since these units do bonus damage vs. buildings. They are also fast enough to go around the map from one enemy building cluster to another. Often, the Computer takes a portion of its army to explore the map with the Leader, and leaves a portion to defend their base. If the base defenders are clearly a smaller part of the Computer's army, then a large raid on the enemy base can be pulled off too. Succeeding in this will likely greatly help the endgame, when the player still needs to destroy the enemy base even after the Computer's armies are dead. (Unless the AI resigns)

The Computer will often raid the player prior to its all-out attack, but only if it has enough raiding-specialized units in its army.

Good raiding factions include the Russians (with Bashkirs) and the Finns (with Finnhorse Cavalry).

##### Distraction

This strategy is based around one's superunit, but more specifically only the Russian or French ones. These two units, namely Tsar Cannon and Gribeauval Mortier respectively, are two of the most powerful and feared units in the game. With their massive hitpoints, range, and damage output, the enemy player is expected to focus most if not all their attention into removing these superunits first from the battlefield. This way, the distracting player can use them to lure the enemy's attention into the superunit while simultaneously pulling off a tactic such as flanking with cavalry into the enemy's base, as the enemy's troops are focused on the superunit.

##### Deathball

*Deathball* strategy means using a large number of ranged units, preferably infantry, and packing them together with a Drummer or Pori Drummer Regiment (Finnish support unit) to make them unroutable. Some artillery pieces should accompany. Then they are all pulled together via the 'Follow Me'-command to create an unbreakable deathball which if composed of enough infantry should be able to devastate anything thrown at it.

This strategy works poorly against massed artillery, so some counters to enemy artillery should exist alongside the deathball, like cavalry or an artillery superunit.

The Finns are especially adept at this strategy, with their 'Sisu' Ability, and their faster Drummers.