By that time you should be using v2 rockets to take out universities. Furthermore, any expert would simply use militia or partisan with the ejected scholars. That is why you should attack with your main force first to distract your opponent.
Also ambush sucks, the speeds of units aren't equal so the general will out run the flame thrower. Hence youll need a helluva lot of micro.
And, about separating commandos, if you do that your main force has less commandos and is suscepitiable to an attack, and probably a huge amount of conversion by spies. Plus, a true expert would simply use militia or partisans and kill those troops (commandos dont attack, remember). That is why you can't always do it and should adapt on the fly (do it only when you feel it can be pulled off).
I posted it before but there are two better things to do with flame thowers in my opinion, than tann's position (it can be done sometimes, but not all the time) and raven's position (rather use V2 rockets).
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I used to make them back in the day when I played a lot. It is micro intensive but they are very useful to stop healing after a mini battle that results in one running away. If the opponent runs away, and garrisons in his rax, or whatever, surround it and ungarrison using the flame thrower, the units will get massacred and are trapped.
Also, in late game raiding, add a flame thrower to scout cars/wagon. So when you attack, send those babies raiding. Hell be very busy defending the attack. He'll ring the bell, you'll attack or pull back depending on the battle field and your thoughts on victory on the main front, but he'll lose all his peons since they cannot garrison. Tee hee.
But i haven't done it in a while ^^. You need to have awesome micro skills. It takes a lot of practice.
TWC_Arch_Apollyon
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Later,
AA.
PS, experts do have time do a lot of things. Shadowz has time against me to bring spies back to his homebase and convert the units that are raiding. Nothing is cut and dry and everything is counterable.
PPS, raven needs to stop taking base strats and pretending like they are his own.
[This message has been edited by Arch_Apollyon (edited 11-12-2003 @ 01:39 PM).]