Martyr Side: Freedom Guard Type: Infantry Movement Type: Foot Ground Weapon: Suicide Nuke Anti-Air Weapon: None Range: 2 Damage: 180 Hit Points: 100 Sight Range: 8 Movement Speed: Very Fast Cost: 600 Requirements: Training Facility Built At: Training Facility

Suicide Zombie Side: Imperium Type: Infantry Movement Type: Foot Ground Weapon: Suicide Nuke Anti-Air Weapon: None Range: 2 Damage: 180 Hit Points: 100 Sight Range: 8 Movement Speed: Very Slow Cost: N/A Requirements: N/A Built At: Hostage Taker

Ever eager to throw themselves into battle for the cause, these suicide bombers charge into targets and explode, hopefully taking out the enemy along with themselves.

Blowing Things Up

While the Freedom Guard can construct Martyrs, the Imperium gain Suicide Bombers by converting them through use of a Hostage Taker.

The only method of attack that a Martyr or Suicide Zombie has is to blow himself up. Anyone caught in the blast radius will take damage. This includes your units, so be careful about leaving Martyrs and Suicide Zombies in your base or clustered together with your other units. It is a good idea to set their Independence to LOW so that they will not auto-acquire targets. Otherwise, they have a tendency to happily throw themselves at the first foe that wanders by and you may find they do more damage to you than to the enemy.

The primary weakness of the Martyr and the Suicide Zombie is the fact that they must reach their targets alive in order to detonate their payloads. Although the Freedom Guard Martyr is extremely fast on foot, nevertheless any serious amount of opposing forces will shred him before he can do any damage. And the Suicide Zombie is too sluggish to even try to dodge its opposition.

One way to offset this is to first attack your desired target with some other units to draw the attention of the enemy. Then sneak the Martyr or Suicide Zombie in around from the side while they are distracted. As long as the foe is occupied attacking something else instead, this should allow the Martyr to reach his target intact.

You can also transport the Martyr or Suicide Bomber to his destination and then deposit him directly next to his target, which hopefully will allow him to blow up before he can be destroyed by enemy fire. The resulting explosion may take out your transport as well, although Phase Transports are good for this because the Martyr will seem to pop up out of nowhere.

Be sure to send suicide bombers one by one, or at least with some space between them, or the first one that blows up will take out the rest. When using a transport, hold Ctrl and then click the transport (with the transport selected) to eject its occupants one at a time.

Key targets for Martyrs and Suicide Zombies are groups of units, if you can reach them alive. Successfully detonating on a closely-clustered group of foes is quite satisfying. Martyrs and Suicide Zombies do less damage against structures; however, you can use them to help demolish the enemy’s base more quickly by sending them into buildings one by one while you supplement their attack with other units. Finally, you can use suicide bombers to attack undefended outposts and Freighters, anything they can reach without being killed.