The key things I found out after reaching Rank 4 in my Command level, I still didn't have access to superweapons like Nukes, the Iron Curtain, Spy Satellite or the Chronosphere.
But thanks to 'breaking through' I had instead gained access to something else, I figured it'd happen sooner or later judging by what I had access to through the Gacha, but when I reached Level 4, I opened options to begin constructing the basic buildings from the 2nd game.
While also unlocking most of the units from the 1st game even from the expansion packs, all aside from super units like Tanya.
Which meant we had access to Shock Troopers, early Tesla trooper style units, along with Cyborg Soldiers and Dogs.
Radar Jammers, and Mine layers, along with the Mammoth, and Tesla tanks early predecessors to their later Apocalypse and Tesla tank versions.
The M.A.D and Demolition tanks weren't buildable but I figure we'll unlock those along with Nukes.
Probably the most important right now was that we had finally unlock the ability to build an airforce.
Chinook transports, Hind, and Longbow attack choppers, Yak fighter planes, Mig fighter jets, and Badger bombers.
Pretty sure we'd have a formidable navy if only we had access to the sea or a large enough river.
Thanks to the unlock of the next iteration of the game while the units and structures were as limited as they were back when I was only rank one they did have an advantage of being much nicer but at a much higher cost.
Since we were already here, I added a new Construction yard in the Soviet style to this base,
This was due to the way the buildings looked in the game, while the allied structure was just a massive garage looking thing with a loading dock crane, the Soviet one had a garage but also an auxilery build which I figured was the office or in other words my vacation pad.
And I wasn't wrong after building the new Construction yard and investigating I found I was right, the auxiliary building was 3 stories tall with the first floor being and office space, the 2nd being more of a logistics center with dozens of computers and a command room/war room.
While the third floor was the commanders penthouse.
It was quite lavious compared the the home I had in the 1st gen command center.
The best part was there was an accoutrement of bonus items included such as shampoo, conditioner, body wash and soap.
Up till now we got basic soap, but you can only go so long before you really want to clean up real nice.
That and getting to have soapy time with… Sorry my thoughts slipped a little bit there.
The other advantage was that since I had access to the beginning buildings of the second game, I could now produce GI, Conscripts, Flak troopers, and Initiates.
The other upgrade was that I could now spend a meager amount of credits to upgrade any existing units to their new form if one was available.
All of my infantry save for a few received the upgrade and with it my wallet became a hell of a lot lighter.
Same to the infantry I could also perform upgrades to some of my defensive structures, raising the pillbox's from their basic construction to full blown metal military bunks the awesome thing was that the camo ones remained camo even though there was not such thing in the games.
The Attack and Guard Dogs, likewise could upgrade but there didn't look any bit different to me, the system support commented however that due to the upgrade their power had been increase, and along with it all upgraded units in the 2nd game state were capable of awakening all the way to the 7th tier, not straight away, I could pay to up them into the 5th rank, but after that they'd need to meet the requirements to break through and advance on their own after that.
In most cases this required the experience gained from slaying a great opponent, which was shared with all who aided in the fight so for guaranteed breakthrough they'd need to have a 1-1.
At the same time this experience was always being compiled by the units which almost all of my units had reached the experienced veteran ranks save for the newly produced units, and aside from Alpha no other had attained Elite rank.
With the last of my reserves I added the new structures to Prospect to increase the harvesting rate of the resources to increase our credit growth, along with some new buildings mainly one of each of the barracks, (Allied, Soviet, and Yuri) beyond that the power plants were replaced with Allied Powerplants as they produced the most power and took up the least amount of space, and without pollution or additional light well aside from the Bio reactor, but that requires you to sacrifice lifeforms to get power kind of like the premise behind the matrix but many time crueler.
The Base walls were upgraded to the newly available Steel plated fortress walls of the alliance, after that was placing down some new flak cannons, patriot missile launchers, Sentry Guns, and Gattling Cannons to further increase the defenses.
With this Prospect was the most defensive base until the upgrades could also be done to Axiom but perhaps by the time that came to pass we'd be abandoning that base due to the threat from Trent.
With our increase offensive might our plans also accelerated.
From Prospect we would begin to branch out and start claiming territory.
The oil and Coal in the area wont last forever so best to start placing outposts to also harvest outside the base, and in doing so if necessary we will take over the human outposts and correct their insane way of thinking.
With this you could say the birth of a new nation would arise on this planet.
One acting against the three current ruling factions.
While some temporary alliance with Humanity could be made trust would never be something that could exist between our two sides.
But through these truces, we can gather information which we are lacking in, information mainly on the current state of the world.
Humanity was pushed into Fortress cities, but had they retaliated or were they still on the backfoot, still reeling constantly taking blows from numerous enemies driving them to extinction.
As for the mutant beasts just how power were they really to force humanity back abandoning much of the surface of the planet yielding control back to the beasts.
And then there's the zombies we'd yet to encounter, how much of the planet turned, and with that how deadly were they. Were they weak but just like Virus in that once you'd come into contact you would spread the infection until everyone was turned as well?
With the march of our units the surroundings quickly fell to our superiority.
The outposts were modified to have appropriate walls, and a dedicated defense force was established to watch over the outpost.
Due to our take over, many quickly fell into line since those designated as outpost managers were 4th rank within the army.
Rule of law was brought back to the outposts, and almost all crimes were dealt with harshly.
But the overall security as a result increase considerably.
While the local guild issued missions to scout out reasources, beast nests, and pretty much anything else.
Rewards were anything from salvation coins, to armor or arms.
With the Axion Weapons Facotry working 24/7 we could sell these to the locals, all of our weapons and vehicles were many time stronger than what they presently were using and even after experimenting this could never become an issue, since even if a weapon or vehicle was not sentient they still technically followed orders in that they cannot enact friendly fire without an order from the commander, aka me.
None of my units could ever be harmed by an RA weapon except through the transit of radiation or AOE's.
Which meant even if I became an arms dealer it could never come back to bite me in the ass, even if I was to sell power through my power plants the same thing if the city were to betray me I could just sell the structure then and there resulting in total loss of the provided power.
Thanks to that, our effective region of control was now fairly quite large overall.
I mean okay grand scale compared to the world itself we still owned less than even .01% of the total area of the earth and that's assuming the landmass is the same as my Earth.
But that being said our effective control encompasses enough land to be about the size of Kuwait before it was annexed.
And that's just with two main bases however from what we learned this was all still just the territory of Trent or it's sphere of influence rather.
To the city their outposts would simply just stop checking in, nothing new really outposts regularly got destroyed in the past so the city wouldn't take any notice here aside from possibly the number of outposts going dark all at once.
Perhaps they'll think a stampede is happening or a wave of zombies.
Oh I guess I should also mention there was yet another perk thanks to my rank up to 4, like in the past where I could watch through the eyes of a soldier or unit, have the same power as a unit, and the gacha system the 4th rank gave me another unlock.
This time I received the power to teleport myself anywhere I had a RA unit, this would act like an emergency teleport, since I could only use it once per day but even still no matter where I was I could blink and be in relative safety, however through testing I could not take someone else with me so if worse comes to worse I'd need to abandon everyone else just to save my own skin, which of course every one of my soliders was willing to accept for the life of their commander meant everything to them.
It wasn't a sacrifice I was willing to give but if it came down to it where everyone else had already fallen to protect me then blinking away would allow us to come back for revenge.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
** Fortress Trent POV**
"Are you saying that the entire punitive force has been wiped out?"
"It's been days and we've heard nothing it's a safe assumption to make."
"But something capable of wiping out a force of that scale and yet for not even a scrap of news to make it's way back to us."
"We need to let the other Kings know!"
"NO! Absolutely not, if we let them know that we've been weakened to this extent, they'll come trying to lay claim to our city, this is not something the families should even consider."
"That is true, while the ruling council still remains intact we did just lose a go amount of our power if it's true that the entire force was eliminated, as it stands now we'll have to focus more on the cities defenses rather than sending out forces to assist the outposts."
"We'll be accept quite the heavy losses if we do that though?"
"Who cares they are not even awakened."
"Be that as it may, the outposts still provide food to the city, without food we cannot continue to survive."
"Well at the very least we can pull back the patrols to only keep up the inner region, while the outer outposts will be left to their own devices, and if this new adversary comes we will have consolidated out forces around the city to give us the greatest power to defend against them."
"That should work for us, however getting information on this new enemy is still vital, we know nothing about them right now, and all they know about us is that our army and scout could be defeated, perhaps they think we're weak and might try for a counter-attack."
"We'll inform the inner patrols to be on the lookout for a possible counter attack."
"We should also equip all scouts with flares, that way if one encounters the enemy they can send off a flare all who see if will then send up their own, until word gets back to the city, our radio's can only reach so far but if the flare signals can alert us of the general direction the enemy is attacking from we can order all forces to pull back to the city and coordinate our defenses towards where their coming from."
"That's about all we can do for now, but we should also look to increase recruitment for the training centers to raise up more awakened to regain our fallen members."
""Agreed""
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
**Spy POV**
This city, otherwise known as Fortress City Trent. It's complete chaos, people are left to their own devices here, the city has no cohesion no singular focus.
We spy's could only imagine how efficient and powerful a city of this size could become if under the right Commander.
We five had arrived under the guise of being the only scout team to survive checking into the Axiom base, while we only gave up a report of the surrounding ruined city, and forests it's clear the captain on duty didn't believe there was nothing I the area and sent us on our way with a few Salvation coins for our trouble.
Our ability as spies is to be able to impersonate someone's appearance and voice perfectly, however we can still be discovered, first by Guard or Attack dogs since we'll still smell like ourselves, beyond that would be by close relations of the person being impersonated, since they'd have a certain manner of speaking or ticks and mannerisms.
If we could watch a target long enough we could still perfect impersonate them but if not then we'd be a crude impersonation, and the last one was if a person of higher rank was to check us out, they'd know we were in disguise or not who we were pretending to be.
For us being in a city we five were at high risk, we'd been ranked up to 4th tier but in this city they had humans who had attained all the way up to the 7th tier.
While the total number of those who were 5th tier and higher only counted for less than 1% of the total population that still meant there were thousands of people who could discover our espionage.
Our misson in this city was to gather information for the commander, main goal was to find out the strength of the factions vying for control of the Earth, next up was regional or possibly even world maps even if they were just from before the apocalypse itself.
That way we could learn which direction to expand our territory further and learn area's to steer clear of at least for now.
Since we numbered five we could split up and check all over, and if a chance came to aquire a better identity we'd take it.
A spy could always tell who was another spy so we'd never need to worry of losing track of one another.
For myself the Spy leader, codenamed White my job was to gather information on this cities power, and what better place to get information than in a bar, I don't like drinking myself but alcohol helps loosen lips as they say.
And thanks to the magical properties brought on by alcohol I got a general sense of the balance of power.
Trent was what they called a Stage 4 city.
After the apocalupse decended the various walled cities fell into one of 5 stages, the higher the number the weaker the power of the city, most of the time this was due to those who broke through to higher tiers of transcendats travel to higher staged cities, resulting in the lower cities losing power.
But the basic requirement to be a Stage 4 city is to have at least one 7th Tier awakened who'd serve as the leader of the city in a sense even though they all barely did any management and cultivated to reach ever higher with access to all the resources of the city.
Without a 7th rank, the city would only be 5th rank, which was the lowest these typically were outposts that had managed to survive and accepted new outcasts from the other cities, which helped them to grow until they had the ability to start producing awakened left and right.
Each staged city could fall under the protection of a higher ranked city and through that offer up tribute in exchange for technology.
The City cannons are an example, if a newly established 5th rank were to fall under the 4th ranked Trent, in exchange for their tribute of gems and materials Trent could help the 5th rank to defend themselves by offering up and installing outdated or excess cannons.
Only the higher staged cities would bother keeping multiple lower stages under their umbrella however, since the relationship would mean that the higher city was expected to come to the lower cities aid should a crisis occur.
"All for humanity" was the phrase most uttered but in the end if aid was given a price had to be paid in exchange for this aid, and if it could not then that city would be pillaged until the cost was recouped or possibly even destroyed casting the inhabitants not worthy enough out to form new outposts or try their luck getting to another staged city.
Nations as the world knew them no longer really existed since within the established territories of humanity they did not have total control, numerous beast zones were also present which mean essentially outside the cities and outposts themselves was really the beasts territory while the cities of the old world, or civilization ruins were the territory of the zombie forces and they did not migrate except if lured by humans.
As it stood Trent was nothing more than a City-State not even close to being what could be called a nation, that being said they did seem to have a method of communicating with other nearby cities in the event that either side had an emergency the top ranks would be bound by the articles of humanity to come and assist, failing to do so would result in humanity viewing the absentee city as a traitor to humanity and would be destroyed before they could betray humanity further by selling off it's secrets to the beasts.
** Agent Black **
White might be in charge but I agent black am the second in command of the first spy squad, while white's off getting a handle on the extents of humanities power, it's my job to locate some maps.
And well, getting anything beyond a basic map is pretty much impossible well at least as far as updated maps are concerned getting the commanders desired world map wasn't difficult at all, they still had a map of the world back when humans ruled it at a library, from the memories of the Commander this world is certainly not his world, but the nations that existed at the time of the apocalypse were the same, however the face of the world was vastly different.
The planet had a single supercontinent which was interesting to see since the development of western nations was due to the colonization of the European powers however even without the barrier of the ocean it was still the European nations who staked claims to these massive swathes of land however the history behind these emerging nations was much more blood soaked compared to Earths.
Since there wasn't a need to wait months just to get word of how the colonies were doing, the responses could be faster, but in doing so the tyranny against them got worse, until every colony in North and South America had enough banding together into the American Union, which later on spawned this words version of NORAD with the north and south signing military agreements to stand by each others sides as they had back during the Independence wars.
Russia meanwhile while still the largest land expanse in the world was not primarily like antartica had been a snowy tundra with very little habitable areas, but with the greatest access through numerous oceanic ports which fully encircled the globe.
Since continents had never shifted, the common language also was unified rather than separated, with countless barbarian tribes dieing out during the rise and fall of the Roman Empire resulting in the various dialects and tongues from never coming to be, the same could be said for Africa due to Alexanders crusade through the nations on his way towards india.
This world was so similar and yet so different from Earth.
As the spy transmitted the results back to the Commander who in turn took over vision of the spy to capture images of the maps and pre-apocalypse state.
Once completed I continued to search for a more up to date version of the map, but sadly aside from knowing roughly where in the world we were, I could locate nothing further these maps are probably a closely guarded secret of the city management, and humanity as a whole.
Should the intelligent mutant beasts gain access to the maps they'd know which cities to hit as they could target all the stage 5 cities first before working their way up to the final bastions of humanity.
Given the naming of the fortress city, and the local maps I can presume that the RA base or Axiom and it's sister city are located in what remains of Great Britain, the Fortress city being the remodelled version of the English Village of Trent in southern England.
With the RA base itself being closer to Scotland and the ruin city nearby most likely being the fallen city of York.
Well it's sort of fitting this world fell before the rise of communism which plague the English countryside for years.
Seems this time around under the Commanders hand Britain will be red this time around.
The spy continued to chuckle to himself as he kept reading on, eventually joining up with Grey, Silver, Gold, and lastly White as the five poured themselves over as many books as they could putting even the scholars of the city to shame.
Sending back all relevant information back via wireless communication to the Commander or his Lt. while sharing their vision when required for things that need to have a copy of without being able to just simply transmit the information.