I also find that having 3 or more specialist hires is seriously a really great deterrent.
Mainly because nobody even knows what the 3rd is going to be.
In my round 1 Topkilla Tournament game I was turtling at this one outpost, which was about to get taken from a 200+ driller sub, but I had a double agent in the 3rd hire which saved my life! Without it I wouldn't have progressed to the 2nd round lol

Panda, your strategy works very well -- holding back allows me to potentially react to a fluid situation. In early games i would hire the "coolest specialist" only to realise a few hours I'd chosen poorly. Can also be helpful if you wish to promote but not waste a good hire.

If I have a nosy neighbour I suspect is feeding Intel about my queen to others, I will hire when they are offline "sleeping". So at least the Intel is always 4-8hrs old.

Perfect example of holding hires just happened in my game. Green was squeezed to one outpost, with two enemies having a combined 600+ drills and a pirate-Nav-assassin (hiding behind the 374D incoming) see screenshot 1.

They thought the game was theirs so orange even dropped a mine. Then at the last minute green shot saboteurs and a double agent (both waiting for hire) neutralising the 374D. He then took the mine. (See screenshot 2)


The hunted became the hunter.

Holding back on hires can turn a game around. And NEVER resign... It's not over till it's over.

carter j burke wrote:Perfect example of holding hires just happened in my game. Green was squeezed to one outpost, with two enemies having a combined 600+ drills and a pirate-Nav-assassin (hiding behind the 374D incoming) see screenshot 1.

They thought the game was theirs so orange even dropped a mine. Then at the last minute green shot saboteurs and a double agent (both waiting for hire) neutralising the 374D. He then took the mine. (See screenshot 2)


The hunted became the hunter.

Holding back on hires can turn a game around. And NEVER resign... It's not over till it's over.

This isn't a very good example though, because obviously the attackers could see what specialists could be hired, which means that they probably didn't see the specialist hires that could change the game. But if you happen to have more than 2 hires, then its purely a random chance. Nobody knows what you can hire and thus if they send an attack they won't know if you had a double agent, etc in the 3rd hire, etc...