Deadlock and Deadlock II are games that rely a great deal on conquest. If you are playing Deadlock then you will be using your military to steal City Centers and to protect your own. If you play Deadlock II online you will most likely be playing 99% of your games as Conquest. Deadlock II allows full reliance on the Conquest condition to achieve victory. It also removes the artificial stacking limits imposed in Deadlock I so you can attack colonies without automatically losing most of your force when the turn ends. These changes make it much more fun to crush your enemies in Deadlock II as opposed to winning by a set of conditions.

This article applies to Deadlock II unless noted otherwise. You can probably use a good deal of the information in this article for Deadlock I even though it is written about Deadlock II.

I will start out by saying that I have never played Deadlock I online. I have only read about the problems that plagued the first Deadlock. It was apparently very buggy when played over the Internet. Deadlock II is better and has an Autosave feature that will save your game at the last turn so you can restart if the connection is broken.

Your first major concern when playing is going to be what race you choose. You should be at least familiar with all of them because there is no guarantee that you will get your first or even second choice. The races are taken on a first come first serve basis with each race only being chosen by one player. If you are the host you will get first crack at selection.
(See the Race for War section for more information.)

Your next choice is in landing sites. You will want to make your selection of landing site by deciding what type of war you want to wage. If you want to go to war quickly you should try land near some enemy you think you can take. If you'd like to quietly build up a force and then roll over all opposition after you've got some high-tech gadgets you'd be better off away from the others. Your choice of landings will also depend on what type of territory you want to exploit immediately.

Once you start playing you are going to see the major differences between playing the computer and playing human opponents. In Deadlock II you can use the Autosave feature to back up a turn if you really screw up. That's not going to be possible against a human. You're also going to find that the computer is only a fair to poor player when compared to what you'll fight online. After fighting online for a while you'll be kicking the computer up one side and down the other in the Campaigns.

Don't worry if it takes a while to get the hang of it right off. If you somebody kicks your butt ask them how they did it. You could even ask if they'd take the time to show you how by beating you with Allied Vision turned on so you can see what they're doing. Most Deadlock II players are more than happy to help out new players. The better you get the better the challenge you pose and the better the game will be.

The art of diplomacy is an important aspect of Deadlock and Deadlock II. Treaties are new to Deadlock II. You can make Peace Treaties, Military Treaties, Research Treaties, and Shared Vision Treaties. Deadlock II even has a special feature that will let you link your colony with another's. You can link colonies with either human or computer players. I will go into this feature a little later.

Peace Treaties: Peace treaties are assertions between colonies that they will not invade enter the other colony's territories.

Military Treaties: These treaties take peace treaties to the next level. They allow a colony to send it's troops into their partner's colony without either side attacking the other. This pact can be used to send a combined force into a third colony's territory. The allied races will fight as a team to take down their shared enemy. While these treaties can be useful they also imply a great level of trust. It would be very easy for your partner to move an attack force well behind your lines and then turn on you.

Research Treaties: This is another risky pact. If you sign this treaty with another colony you will share in any technological advances they make and they will share in yours (Skirineen technology purchases are not shared.). This setup can drastically cut down on your research time, but don't be surprised to see that new Fusion Cannon technology you researched used to make the army that will eventually crush you.

Shared Vision Treaties: This treaty is only slightly more dangerous than the peace treaty. The only thing it does is let your partner see what you can see. If you're not planning to immediately attack somebody (and you're not so weak that they'll see you're rip for the plucking) you might consider this. It can greatly extend your field of vision.

Victory Conditions: This pact is the farthest you can go with another colony. It automatically joins you and another colony with the military, research, and vision pacts. It also sets up an agreement that you will share the planet with your partner when all the other races are dead. You both win. Since you can only share victory conditions with one other colony, it is only possible for a maximum of two people to win any given game.

Note: When playing people you should be considerate of their feelings. You may have the ability to betray them or use some pact to your advantage to humiliate them, but it is usually a better idea to take a loss than betray somebody to win. People remember back-stabbers and will avoid playing with in the future.

In the preceding section, I talked about the different types of treaty you could have. Now I will talk about breaking them. There are two ways to break a pact.

The first is to announce that you are breaking with your partner. This is the nice way and is acceptable to do to people. It also makes sure that you don't get any element of surprise on your ex-partner.

The second way is to secretly break your pact. You could use this to move troops behind your "friend's" lines to help him "protect" his borders and then strike at his underbelly. This way should be avoided when it comes to people. People take very poorly to back-stabbing.

I won't bore you with much information in this section. You know or can find out about the major strengths and weaknesses of the races elsewhere.

To win any battle you need to have troops. You have a small variety of troops to choose from when you first land. The initial weapons are pretty poor. If you're going to attack early in the game you had better either find an undefended territory or have a lot of troops. You can buy some troops (often a unit or two that are above your capabilities to produce) from the Skirineen to augment your force. If you are playing Tarth you will need fewer troops than anybody else making them a good choice for early strikers. There is a major exception to the initial units being poor is the Turbo Wing Fighter. This plane is extremely deadly until the advent of Flak technology (See Blitzkrieg.).

If you are serious about attack you should make sure to quickly upgrade your factories with Automation. You will also want to concentrate on making Fusion Cannons. I've seen two Fusion Cannons defeat an entire colony defended by Laser Cannons. The main thing to remember is that a battle is decided mostly by who's got the biggest or most guns even though chance plays a big role.

When choosing to attack with a force try to calculate how many troops you will need to take that territory. If you attack a colony with three units and win you might be left with only one surviving unit, but if you attack with five or six (even if you only use Laser Squads as cannon fodder) you may end up with a larger percentage of your force alive when the dust settles. The other side of the coin is how much time it takes to make your force. You may only have a window of a turn or two before that undefended territory becomes a fortress.

There is something to be said for attacking with a force that is too weak to take a territory. If you set your retreat orders correctly you can use a small force to repeatedly attack a territory. You won't be able to take it necessarily, but you will weaken it's militia defense and possibly make it impossible for the defense forts to be rebuilt in time. As you get more troops you can attack with more force until you finally grind your enemy into the ground. It is not the most glamorous or profitable way to win a war, but it will often work.

There is a fairly well known "trick" you can use to decimate an enemy very early in the game. It doesn't have an official name so I'm just calling it what it is. If you try this be forewarned you will definitely anger any human players you use this on.

Your landing must be within air craft range of your enemy. When you first land you should use all your force to make an airport as soon as possible. You have just enough iron left over that you can build a Turbo Wing Fighter plane without any extra iron. This means that with the exception of the Cyth you can have an airborne unit attacking in 3-4 turns. Airborn attacks are the hardest to defend against early in the game. If your opponent is not defended with at least a Laser Tower (and often if it is) you can destroy the entire population of the territory. Even if you fail to take over the territory you have substantially weakened your opponent and likely put them out of the running.

There are some drawbacks to using a blitzkrieg. You are putting the precious early turns completely into the task of building up a plane. If you fail you are defenseless and way behind the others. Even if you succeed you will have no iron and no defense turrets in your territory. You may just be a prime target for your enemies.