Hey guys, I've been playing Syndicate Wars and have been having a lot of fun with it. I've gotten a bit further in the game and strange spider robots are starting to appear, along with hovercars and enemy agents with laser rifles.

I've read the manual and some hints and tips from the unofficial fan page but I am still getting wrecked. All of my agents have the first level augmentations, and are equipped with miniguns. I have a couple of long range rifles but I still haven't finished researching them. None of my research has gone through yet, so I'm still researching LV2 body and the LR rifle. I didn't have much money at the beginning so that might have been why my research has suffered.

Anyway, I tend to get overwhelmed and die a lot. I try to run away some times but my agents get stunlocked and can't go anywhere sometimes. I've been using some of the red mist drug so they automatically shoot hostiles which has helped a bit but not enough.

A part of the difficulty is sometimes I find it hard to tell who's shooting at me and I have to scramble to try and find the threat.

All of that said, it's a really fun game, and I'm wondering if I should just restart and try again.

Any helpful tips for combat and the management side of the game would be welcome.

Thanks!

Probably the best tip is to hold b to hide buildings, a life saver ;-)

Activate the shield on the left to avoid being stunlocked.

I find setting up razor wire is really effective, make use of knockout gas for crowd control but make sure to gun 'em once they're down. Vehicles offer good protection, bail out if they're almost destroyed. You can persuade civilians and equip them if you need to take down an enemy quick and they're also handy for keeping your guys safe.

The difficult ramps up at one point with flying cars, so it's worth investing in the launcher.

Be sure to search bodies for useful stuff and get the money cases from banks so you have plenty of money to fund research and what not.

Well, making money is certainly important. There's multiple ways to do it. For one picking up bombs from enemies is a great idea. IIRC they sell at 24k a piece which is a decent amount of money - getting them may sometimes be hard and risky but especially early on it's even worth replaying a mission if you missed a bomb. But remember to keep some for yourself so you can bomb banks which you can find on several maps (buildings with a few cops standing in front of them). Once they've been destroyed you will find boxes with money there.

Also get the additional info on the briefing screen. This will sometimes provide information on optional objectives which may provide you with a lot of money (I'm not sure if these special events will only be triggered by buying the information or whether you can actually get the info and then load a save state in order to save the money).

Also: whenever you see a scientist/engineer (man in white coat, IIRC yellow spot on the minimap) persuade him, even if he's not an objective - he will be added to your R&D department and will increase the speed at which items are researched (without increasing the funding).

Two other details concerning research: keep in mind that you can research mods and weapons at once AND make sure that auto research is on. This one is important in order to save time - this way they will automatically start researching the next item while you're still on a mission, else they will wait till you give them new instructions after the next mission.

As for combat hints I really can't give any - I once got very far in the game but that was AGES ago and I will have to play it a little more to remember all the tactics I had discovered back then.

There's a punk on the second mission who drops like 3-4 bombs, the church followers drop a couple more. I blew them all on the next mission, though :D

I know, in fact that particular punk lady is one of the few things I still remembered after not having played the game in more than ten years. :D

Magic button for small close/distance when zoom is not an option: F ;-)

One of these enemy agents in Hongkong (third mission) has money briefcase when dead so it's worth killing them than persuading.

Shit, I probably missed that one. Oh well, I'm already close to having a million on my bank account, something's telling me that I'm not gonna get into financial trouble on this playthrough.

That's a good way to go, though!

Hoping you make it to the New York mission...you'll know why when you get there. ;-)

Ahh New York, high explosives accelerando and shooting flying stuff that zaps your precious agents with pulse lasers...

Huge hint:

Save tank near employee to break into Jennifer and icrease your survival rate when Hover Tank comes to stop your plans. Or even escape immediately after persuading her. Don't even try jump off tank and run to objective for persuade because these close to doors laser cannons, just move to house, take off, persuade inside and run from there. Why? Because hover tank will most likely eat your normal tank armor pretty fast before you can finish them, and if you or him explode before you can escape blast area will kill everyone.

How to save tank:

Approach to the employee from left side but don't persuade him now, just run near the place where enemies will start appear then start running back to the beginning of these series of building near the street. Now you can finish enemies quickly, mostly because of detonating explosives enemy agents drop. When everyone dead persuade employee and start moving close to tank. Crazy man will appear and will set up excplosive - grab it before too late. Don't get inside yet. There's a operative with suicidal tendencies. It's recommended you kill him because he has clone shield in inventory and before he blows him up into pieces like kamikaze/suicide bomber.

Strategy for bank is simple: annihilate all flying ships/cars on map (they have security base near the vault) resistance then persuade all personnel/police.

It was super tense playing that mission cautiously when it takes 25-30 minutes to complete, I replayed it so many times. I sabotaged the tanks first, and instead of launchers, I used a crowd of citizens wielding pulse lasers so I could take out the police cars fast (from inside a car so they didn't get wiped out afterwards.)

Santiago
...
After zealing and propagandizing in Buenos Aires I thought Santiago will be easy due to it's circle design... I couldn't be more wrong oh my.

General strategy is to eliminate first two flying zealot transport vehicles in northern area as they can be painful when engaged by accident on island (surprise, police on the rescue lol). Next, murder all Zealots, but beware, these near parked flying vehicle have LRL so best setup for them are 2 miniguns, 1 laser and 1 LRL. When you done that destroy all police vehicles (they can be probably engaged and destroyed by last remnants of Zealots).

Now persuade all possible police and civilians but don't go near northern buildings. Instead go through behind them and enemy agents will leave the building to devastate you with LRLs but you have advantage from there. General mayhem can cause confusion in drivers. Finally get into flying vehicle so you can make faster transport on island and persuade other civilians/police.

Now fly slowly between buildings, back off if necessary just to make sure you don't harm scientist when fighting zealots. Make sure you persuade scientist fast and get out of here because soon there will be two flying zealot vehicles to murder him and you, if you have all these persuaded agents and armed police/civilians it shouldn't be hard but watch out for blast radius when they fall and explode.

In my playthrough I was caught in the middle of blast, escaped most of it, and scientist survived because of all that crowd of agents, police and civilians shields surrounding him.

Razor wire is super useful for slowing down enemies.

LR rifles are your friend (my preferred weapon). Get just in range (dot goes red), shoot, then run out of range. Every time enemy comes into range, shoot->run away. If you are methodical, this works well. If you can get to all four of your agents packing an LRR, they will be able to insta-kill most enemies. You just have to be wary of the reload time.

With short range weapons, engage just near the edge of a building, then duck around the corner. That way the enemy will be unable to shoot your guys until they step out in front of four spinning miniguns.

If you persuade a heap of people as you go, they will pick up weapons and fire when you fire. You can end up with quite a nice little army of disposable civilians packing heat.

In terms of agents, I take every opportunity to persuade enemy agents and recruit them. Run around to get as many civilians, cops, and military guys persuaded as possible. Then approach enemy agents so that your persuadatron agent can get up close to them. Presto, new agents, sometimes with sweet upgrades. You need something like 30-40 civilians persuaded to have enough persuadatron power to overwhelm a low level enemy agent, from memory. Cops, military guys and other agents count for more.

Blow up banks! They have sort of lion statues next to the steps out the front and cops guarding them.

Pick up every item you can. E.g. at the start you can sell all but one of your agents' items, then just kill cops/military guys and take their guns instead. Repeat for every level (even uzis are worth a bit).

Upgrading brain and torso are priorities, too. Upgrading legs is handy for faster running (and thus escaping danger).

Don't forget that in a tight spot you can cause one of your agents to suicide, creating a massive explosion. It is a viable strategy to take one disposable agent with nothing but a L1 torso upgrade for this purpose...

Always done zig-zag with it, even slows down agents/zealots to gain more time. According to a walkthrough, this is the chart:

----------------------------------------------------
|Type | Points given | Points needed to persuade|
----------------------------------------------------
Civilians 1 0
Scientist 1 0
Police 2 6
Unguided 2 10
Govs 3 15
Agent 3 15
Zealots 5 20*

*Zealots can only be persuaded with the persuadertron 2

NOTE: Brain mods increase the range of the Persuadertron, but don't
decrease the points needed to persuade someone.

So essentially, if you want to persuade a police officer, you will
require to persuade at least 6 civilians and/or scientists prior.
Then when you get your policeman, it will give you 2 extra points
(for a total of 8). When you reach 15 you can get an agent. There are 4 parts of your agents that you can upgrade and to start you
have no choice but to start with "body". Every parts have a rating in
terms of "Power Output" (the more the better) and in "Resilience" which
essentially is your defense rating. And then obviously the cost.

Body: Increases health and defense against weapons. This is primordial
since without this you cannot access the other body parts, so
you won't have much choice but to get this and beef up your
agents either you like it or not. :)

Power Output Resilience Cost
BODY 1 3 3 5000
BODY 2 5 6 20000
BODY 3 8 8 50000


Legs: Probably the second most important upgrade. This will increase a
fair bit of health, but mostly will boost your maximum speed and
make you able to run for longer periods.

Power Output Resilience Cost
LEGS 1 3 2 3000
LEGS 2 5 5 12000
LEGS 3 8 8 30000

Arms: Third interesting upgrade. It again increases health for (a bit
less than legs) and will improve accuracy and damage when using
weapons.

Power Output Resilience Cost
ARMS 1 2 2 2500
ARMS 2 4 3 10000
ARMS 3 7 6 25000

Brain: This is useful especially if you leave some of your agents alone
and unattended. They will react better (A.I.) against enemies.
If you always control all 4 of your agents at once, this is not
really necessary. Although it will give them a bit of health
plus the added bonus to have protection against critical hits.
Furthermore, it enhance the range (not strenght) of persuadetron.

Power Output Resilience Cost
BRAIN 1 1 1 4500
BRAIN 2 2 3 18000
BRAIN 3 4 6 45000 Naughty, never knew that lol.

On top of those upgrades, there seems to be four more but never found them myself in my own playthroughs: Source, by Nicholas Clement, bless his Syndicate heart :)

These ones work for me

1) Scout ahead first, or move around the map to have a general view of the level. Notice where the groups are: the cops, the military, the unguided, and the church members. Each has its own business, whether guarding some building or moving around a set path. These groups are often hostile to each other, so if possible take benefit from the situation! Say in early Hongkong mission you will notice a group of unguided patrolling around and cops guarding Yamaguchi executives on the next block. What I do is choose one of my strongest agent (usually no 1), intercept the unguided and run to the cops as the unguided start chasing and shooting. The cops will gun down anyone with his or her weapon drawn, so the group will fight - with the cops as winner and you second place because there are less enemies to deal with. SW has loads and loads of these: the movement of the groups, the cars in empty parking lot, even the civilians, so it pays to pay attention to the level before you move.

(be careful with the punk girl though :D )

2) I find mastering the camera movement using left hand to be indispensable skill, and it is not hard (at least after a dozen tries). While others will usually come upfront so I think it will just be down to who has bigger firepower, the unguided will try to encircle you, so be prepared to rotate and anticipate their attack from behind. Pay attention to the minimap to track their movement. The agent number will flash when he/she is under attack, so if your camera is far away just double press the number to make the camera swing back to their position.

3) For me I never split my agents unless I really have to. My agents go in four most of the time. The reason is I guess pretty obvious, which is combined firepower. Because you already have the LR rifle, equip all four with it. Just right click the weapon and shoot when enemies come. A combined shot of 4 LR will instantly pulverize any enemy agent. Be sure to target far though as the LR has long loading time.