Haegemonia Legions of Iron: Important Walkthrough Tips

The game is old, has a resolution of 800×600, it cannot be increased in the settings. However, it can be registered in the registry., It is not hard. In some manuals it is naively advised to prescribe it equal to 1920×1080, but the point is, that the game does not understand wide format and just pulls the picture. So you need to prescribe 1440×1080 and play on an incomplete square screen. This is the only normal option.. I have described in more detail in another manual. (technical).

You must immediately prepare for, that this is a game with very slow meditative gameplay. Most missions take at least an hour here, and sometimes more than two. The game was created in those harsh times, when there were no fan standards yet and only the author's idea determined, how everything will be played.
Therefore, stock up on music or audiobooks in advance..
Yes, in the beginning you will like to stick to the majestic glow of space and listen to the default music, but through 2-3 hours you will get bored. Then turn off game music in the settings and turn down sounds to a quarter, include something of your own suitable. I played with audiobooks without any problems, but for this you need to have hotkeys – when will the game speech start, we suspend the book, then we resume. In Winamp, for example, hotkeys were always available from the settings, but for some reason the people do not know this and for years have been banished with plugins.

The game offers a choice – play as Earth or rebellious Mars. In fact, not much depends on it., only the first ones will differ 5 missions. They end up anyway, that the population of the solar system unites and goes to conquer new worlds. The rest of the campaign (and the campaign is written with A, remember this, because this is a campaign, a ne company) will be the same.
The only thing that influences the choice – who will be your main character. When playing for Earth, the hero will be prim fighter Jack Garner, for Mars – sarcastic governess Naelia Cartiliari. An unselected hero will appear in the passage of the selected, but will play a secondary subordinate role. Some may think, that it will be more pleasant to look at the lady, but actually Nelka is not that interesting, she's just doing her job and making remarks, and here is Jack – this is a walking meme, he looks like Major Pronin from the cartoon, he burns off with almost every phrase. Something like that, what they say to him: “This alien cannot be trusted., he can harm us”, and Garner in such a strict peasant tone: “YES? And I'll call him back and tell him nasty things.” – “What are you, in no case!”

Heroes matter, but their mechanics are not obvious. They do not have their own separate menu., but you can scroll through them, when viewing your planet or ship. If you just have a hero, it is usually not involved anywhere, is he “is at the headquarters”, ie. doing nothing. When scrolling through the heroes, you need to press the assignment button (between scrolling left and right), that's when he will be on a ship or a planet, and not right away, but there will be some time on the way. The hero significantly affects the balance. Look at the characteristics of the heroes: politicians and economists should be sent to the planets, heroes with fighting qualities – on warships, scouts and saboteurs – into spies.
“Ice cream for children, flowers to his babe, don't mix it up”.

At the beginning of the game, the economy is disgusting, and you will have to beggar, literally squeezing out a penny, you will often have to sit close to zero and watch the excruciatingly slow progress of rig construction, which is being built by the whole world with constant suspensions at the zero balance.
There is no perfect solution, but in different situations this can help:
– Build a drilling platform at the very beginning and send it to a rich asteroid
(not always there, where to build and where to send)
– Wreckage processing base
(there is not always debris)
– Interplanetary Trade Ship
(suddenly, gives a tangible effect, and trades even with enemies, but they don't always touch him)
– Raise taxes on planets
(effective only in large populations, per billion, otherwise it's a drop in the ocean)
– Disassemble unnecessary
(military bases consume a lot of resources to maintain, a couple of times there was a situation, when it was easier to just make out)
– Spies can steal resources from the enemy
(but they don't give spies until the middle of the game)
Any economy can ultimately rock, but the problem is, that the enemy does not always give time for this.

The game has 4 weapons development branches, but it's not worth downloading several at once – so you will burn yourself all research points, but each ship is still armed with one thing. The choice must be made once..
In general, each race has a certain type of weapon.:
– People – proton (often misses, but hits hard)
– Kariaki – ionic (it is generally quite weak)
– Darzoki – quantum (hits the area)
– Rocket at the base is not characteristic of any of the races, but is the strongest.
The problem is, that the choice is not free, because. in one of the tasks you will still be forced to pour points into the initial proton technologies, and it will be a waste, if you want to choose another. Thus, the proton game will become the cheapest., she is balanced, but you will have to watch a lot, how your ships miss their target.
The rocket game will be the most powerful, and the planets in the late game will be taken lightly, but this is the most expensive way, for which you will have to cut spending on humanitarian research.
There is another way – do darzoks play proton, without going into advanced, and then steal quantum technology from them, stolen will be cheap, so there is a sense, but not that very big.
But you don't need to play ionic for sure. It is weak, but you will have nothing to steal in this area.

This is one of those good old games, in which the authors did not consider it necessary to explain, what exactly to do and how to complete tasks. But this is not a sandbox, missions must be performed strictly according to triggers, although no one explains this idea to you. Here are some awful crooked situations., which i will help you avoid:

– It is considered completely normal in this game., if you are told about the appearance of an enemy for 5-10 minutes before it appears. So if you don't see that, who is it talking about, – this is the norm, just wait.

– Ep. 1, mission 2
We need to escort the drilling platform to the asteroid near Rhea. Don't send the platform to some other, closer asteroid – it's a temptation, as the platform drags on for ages, but you just lose for a reason… destroying it. Which was not. The platform must be sent across the entire map.
When will they say, to shoot down smugglers, do not rush to attack everyone in a row – they will not appear immediately, will fly from above and be marked with a red ping.

– Ep. 2, mission 3
There is a station in another system “South Cross”, you will be asked to evacuate its population. But they won't ask at the beginning of the mission, and when it's too late, you will not have time. So get ready from the start of the mission. You won't be told, exactly how to evacuate, summing up a warship will do nothing. And what is needed here is the transport. Therefore, immediately study the colonization ship., then transport, then build it and send it to the station.
For this you will receive a hero – granny with a long unpronounceable name. She has very good stats as a hero for the planet.. You will then carry it with you on many missions, she will pull you out of money crises.

– Ep. 3, mission 5
Towards the end of the mission, the general will call you and he will curse you as a damn mother, so that you immediately send all troops to the neighboring system to help him. When you do, will turn out, that the signal was fake, Aliens took advantage of this, to take you out of your system and take back your planets.
Knowing this, you probably only want to send one ship to signal, without stopping the siege of the Yarbo system, but by the trigger after the cutscene, all your troops, that have not been logged out, just disappear. So you have to take them all away. However, this does not apply to military bases and spies. – they can stay without problems, so in advance slam a couple of bases back to back to the planets. As a result, only 1-2 planets, you will return them immediately.

– Ep. 4, mission 1
We just made up with the Cariacs, must finish off the pirates and hack the Solon station. This is one of those beautiful missions, in which everything must be done in order, otherwise the mission will break, but about this order you, of course, won't tell. Therefore attention: first we break down the station, and then we destroy the pirates. Otherwise, the mission will become endless.
How exactly to work with the station: send her one extra ship, she kills him, Alien Mor-Tep contacts and gives technology. We study it for 0 points in category “equipment”. The second upgrade appears, also for 0, also studying. The station now recognizes us as its own. But not at once. We send there a link with the main character (and not with someone else), the station will shoot down one ship from the flight and calm down. We receive a message from Solonov. You can try to put the hero in a spy ship, which is invisible to the station and she will not touch him in any case, but I have not tested this option myself.
Only after that we take up the pirates. In the end, you need to quickly destroy the fugitive ship., so as not to meet him in the next mission.

Spy mechanics look obscure, but actually 3-4 a spy on a mission almost does the gameplay.

First of all, the spy is invisible, he can fly, where he wants, and do, what he wants, until they spot him, but this happens very rarely. However, he himself does not see the enemy ships either.. To see them, the spy must apply “military espionage” to any enemy planet – it will enlighten the whole enemy system and show everything ships.

The spy can do “sabotage on the ship”, in battle, this is of little use, because it takes a long time, but quietly cry out to drilling platforms and military bases – the very thing. They are destroyed with two such moves., but not every attempt is successful, the station may have time to be repaired, so it's better to send two spies to the task at once.

Spy ship (pumped, but not everyone) can steal technology from the enemy. Not on the first try, but if you send 2-3 a spy to graze technology from an enemy planet, they will steadily suck out of there 5-6 upgrades. Sometimes it's those upgrades, which are available to you anyway, sometimes they are unique, because. inherent in a different race. In both cases, you get them in your research menu., their price will be reduced in 2-3 times, readiness will be immediately 90%, there will be a mark Xeno. It remains only to investigate. Since stolen development costs less, and the number of research points is limited for the whole game, it makes sense to steal the technology, not study from scratch, for example, this can be done with the hull of a cruiser.
But they won't give you spies until the middle of the game., but the enemies also do not have everything, therefore, it is also impossible to go into austerity until the middle of the game. Here, the study of buildings such as domes and sports complexes can be postponed until espionage, also with some optional equipment, missiles.

Spies can brazenly steal resources from the enemy. In many missions, this will become almost the main source of income., without which you would have to count pennies and stand idle for an hour.

Can spies take over the planet at all without striking warships?? Can! But they must be pumped, there must be a high development of spy technology, and should work right away 3-4 one planet. A task: break morale and inflict hidden damage on the planet. To do this, you need to work for propaganda and raise uprisings. – it lowers morale, the other is carrying out sabotage on the planet, destruction of buildings one by one (many of them are also important for moral), still spies can spread disease, reverse terraforming. In time, the planet will be broken and become yours. The plus is, that you will get it with a bunch of buildings and a large population.

It could seem, that such a crooked game is not worth attention at all and you have to shy away from it like from fire – she is slow, buggy, she needs to establish permission through dancing with tambourines, it has a lot of unobvious mechanics. But the game is actually not that bad at all, and she's definitely worth all the effort. This is the first ever held game cosmoopera, her graphics are not so super, but she is definitely ahead of her time and looks at the level of space TV series. We still don't have a game in this genre, which would be worthy to replace the Hegemony, and no, Stellaris, I do not even admit that close to such a comparison. Hegemony has excellent Russian voice acting – not nasal programmer pirates worked, but perfectly normal actors, who completely fell into their roles. The game is very atmospheric and addictive. Yes, you need to endure the first few missions, but then the player has a good old addiction, from which he will want to return to a shiver and continue this cosmic madness. The story in the game is somewhere in the middle between simple and complex: on the one hand, there is a linear narration around a bunch of charismatic cartoon characters, the unknown, with another – destinies of people and civilizations, motivation, secrets, intrigue, interesting humor (not stupid and childish, you know this, more seasoned). Yes, in this game you will have to wade through a lot, but I assure you – everything goes through, and it's definitely worth it. Especially when compared to modern games, more licked, graphical and completely empty for an hour, short and unprincipled.