So far playing Subterfuge I've found an immense amount of depth in the strategies that come from combining the abilities of specialists.
For new players, while it's great to find out these strategies in games (usually when Ron schools you with them), it would be nice to see ahead of time how much your specialist choices will impact the later game. If other experienced players are willing to share their secrets, I think it'd be really cool to make a list of some strategies/tricks, and talk about how to defeat them.
Here are some strategies/tricks I've come across:
Avoid the thief/double agent by using a pirate to launch the attack
Requires: Pirate, a (un)willing 3rd party sub
Purpose: Removes the thief's/double agent's ability when defending.
The thief is an extremely powerful specialist. He removes 20% of the enemy drillers, and adds them to your count, in the same combat. In mid/late game, these numbers can get really large. His only downside is that he must be on a sub for this to work. He can't be sitting on a defending outpost.
The double agent is similar, his ability swaps the contents of subs (splitting the drillers 50/50), except also requires both parties to be on subs.
Any incoming attacks from an outpost can be defended by a sub carrying a thief/double agent if the defender launches a sub going the opposite direction on the same path. However, if you have a pirate, and attack a sub near your target (and win), then waypoint the pirate to your target, the defender can not launch the thief/agent in defense. You can't intercept a sub on that path, since it does not come from another outpost.
(A navigator can do a similar attack, although moves far slower)
Countered by: Pirate
Free defense
Requires: At least 1 general and a few temporarily expendable specialists.
Purpose: Increases defense ability of outposts with multiple specialists not otherwise useful for defense (e.g. intelligence agent, princess)
Say an enemy is attacking your generator outpost with 35 drillers. You have 20 shields, a Princess and a Smuggler, but no drillers. No one can come in time to help defend. You have a general elsewhere, so you will get an additional 10 drillers to help defend, but it won't be enough. (35 attacking vs. 20 shields + 10 general bonus due to the specialists).
All you need to do is send the Smuggler on a suicide mission to the attacking sub. It will lose, but will take out 10 drillers (due to the General bonus) and get captured. Your attacker will only have 25 left. Your 20 shields + 10 General bonus (due to the Princess) will win the fight and you will get your Smuggler back.
This may seem like a minor advantage, imagine if you have more than 1 General, and more than a couple temporarily expendable specialists. You can essentially defend outposts with nothing but specialists like Intelligence Agents, Smugglers, Tycoons etc who you can usually afford to lose for an hour or two.
Countered by: Assassin (will kill your specialists), enemy Generals (could cancel out your general bonus), Dictator (30% bonus smugglers, absorbs the damage), Chief Mechanic (repairs the damage)
Other minor strategy combos
- Pair a speed-increasing specialist (e.g. general) with a Pirate, to make the "return home" time faster.
- A pirate can steal gifts. Pair with a hypnotist and you can steal gift specialists.
- Some specialists have significant negative offsets (e.g. Dictator, who disables all shields apart from his location), you can gift them to your enemies in certain situations. Not really a combo.