09. Strategic Stockpiles Win Wars

When you first begin playing the one thing you will notice - and what hurts the most - is the shortages of required war materials for building. Specifically that means wood - and until you build the Sawmill you have no good flow of supply.

You can get some Wood as reward for successful battles, and you can trade Gold Coins for Wood by chopping down and removing trees, but in the end there is no better source than the Sawmill, and no better tactic than to start stockpiles of resources for when you actually and really NEED them.

The same is true for Stone and Iron, though you will not experience that need until well after the game has really advanced to the next levels.

To put this in perspective for you, each and every structure has a basic upgrade path for which all you need is Wood. But once you reach the top of that basic upgrade path, to go any farther you are going to need first Stone, then Iron.

For that reason you should adopt a very aggressive resource policy in playing Boom Beach.

And when we say aggressive we mean AGGRESSIVE. As soon as you can build a Sawmill DO IT. Soon as you can build a Quarry or Iron Mine? Build it! Be proactive about adding resource storage for each of those and then even more proactive about upgrading it.

In terms of Wood, since there are alternate supply paths, you do not really have to be very careful with what you do with the stocks you have, since you can always get more. But for Stone - and then Iron - the same is not always true.

The secret to success - and our hint and tip here - is to be sure that you not only ensure that you HAVE a supply of those resources, but that you build up a stockpile and then maintain it.

If you are not well educated in military tactics and you need to understand WHY this is the way to go, try reading strategy manuals from the military on the importance of maintaining supply lines. A really good resource to absorb - and it is not really all that big a book so it will not take you a lot of time - is The Art of War.

That book was written by a succession of military officers and strategists in the far east over a period some experts guess spans nearly a thousand years, and it is chock full of good military strategy and advice. You can find copies of it online for free.

In fact you can get a FREE copy from Project Gutenberg online - just hit the site's Art of War page...

Read it - you will be glad you did because it will not only help you with this game, but pretty much all open-world war games!