Hierarchy

The Hierarchy
Governing Body:	The Overseers
Known Leaders:	Orlok the Eternal, Nufai, Kamal Re'x the Abductor
Military Strength:	Unknown, presumed significant
Empire Size:	Significant
Goal:	Unknown (presumed "cull" weak races), to harvest all useful materials on earth (harvesting force).
Tactical Dynamic	Hardpoint system on their walkers/mobile structures

"The Hierarchy is greater than one mere battle! Our empire stretches further than your galaxy has stars!" -Kamal Re'x

The Hierarchy is an intergalactic alien empire whose mining force serves as the initial alien invaders in the first installment of the Universe at War series.

History

The original Hierarchy race was saved by the Masari over ten thousand years ago when they where given the technology needed to survive. However, the Hierarchy ancestors turned against the Masari and wiped out all but one city ship. The Hierarchy then went on to become the dominate force in the galaxy, invading countless other planets in the universe and exterminating the inhabiting races, such as the creators of Novus and the Skinwalkers.

At the beginning of Earth Assault, the Hierarchy invades Earth with the intent to strip-mine the entire planet of valuable resources, including organic life. Initially the Hierarchy crushes the human resistance, but the underseer of the mining fleet (Kamal Re'x) delays standard procedure of "Purifying" the planet in order to set a trap for Novus, who follow the Hierarchy fleets to cause as much mayhem as possible to their harvesting operations.

As predicted, Novus soon arrives and begins causing trouble, but the sight of living natives causes a rift between their leaders: Mirabel, a clone of Novus's race, feels an attachment to the humans while the Founder wishes to continue their mission and ignore them.

Eventually, Novus manages to force their way into a Hierarchy Material Uplink teleportation system and teleport Mirabel to a Hierarchy command ship. However, it is soon revealed that Kamal Re'x had allowed this and sets the ship to self-destruct with the intent of taking Mirabel out with it.

Mirabel escapes however and alerts the rest of Nouvs to the Hierarchy's intent of a massive assault on their base in the Middle East.

Play style

The Hierarchy takes on the role of a powerhouse faction in Earth Assault.

Rather than build structures to build units, the Hierarchy instead drops giant walkers equipped with teleportation systems that allow Hardpoints to be built on the walker's frame (modifying their capabilities) and bring down troops from orbiting ships.

Hierarchy units are designed with the intention of escorting the walkers into battle rather than fighting alone and most of them have some sort of area of effect to their attack (for example, the Hierarchy Grunt is armed with a shotgun-like weapon that can hit multiple foes per attack).

Heroes

• Kamal Re'x the Abductor
• Orlok the Eternal
• Nufai

Units

• Monolith
• Grunt
• Lost One
• Brute
• Saucer
• Defiler
• Phase Tank

Cut

• "Science Team"
• Manipulator
• "Research Drone"

Structures

• Arrival Site
• Matter Conduit
• Spitter Turret
• Gravitic Turret

Structural Walkers

• Reaper Drone
• Detection Drone
• Habitat Walker
• Assembly Walker
• Science Walker

Tech trees

• Mutagen - Enhances radiation effects and provides powerful anti-turtle weapons.
• Quantum - Provides access to advanced technologies (such as mind control) and upgrades.
• Assault - Focuses on infantry/walker upgrades and long range attacks (Orlok, Range Enhancers).

Strengths

• Walkers replace the functions of base structures, creating a near fully mobile army.
• Walkers can simply smash through enemy defenses and crush nearly any structure or unit underfoot.
• Walkers have customizable upgrade hardpoints.
• The only faction that can build a "Scout unit" from their command center
• The Hierarchy can collect almost anything as raw materials, including buildings, cars, humans, cows, infantry corpses, etc.
• The Hierarchy production walkers can produce 3 units of the same kind at once, meaning a walker produce 15 units per que.
• The Hierarchy has the most rapid healing and repair capabilities of all three factions, thanks to the Defiler and Saucer. The healing abilities of both can be upgraded.
• Research suits have multiple damage upgrades for various units.

Weaknesses

• The Hierarchy's units are generally very slow.
• The Hierarchy faction is extremely dependent on the presence of "insta grabs" (light objects that can be harvested instantly, such as organics or Lamp posts). If a map has few or no insta grabs the Hierarchy will be unable to compete with the faster economies of Novus and the Masari.
• While walkers are powerful, they are an extremely expensive and important asset that will not last long in combat without an escort of some kind.
• Hierarchy structures must, in effect, be built twice. First the Glyph Carver must cut the glyph for the structure/walker in the ground (during which a single shot from anything will destroy it) and then one must wait for the glyph to be scanned.
• The Hierarchy only has one Superweapon in effect since the other (Radiation Cascade) is locked by research.
• The Hierarchy has the slight problem of only having 3 possible production structures (45 units per que) compared to the 5 each for the other factions (25 infantry, 25 vehicles, and 25 aircraft, or 75 units per que). Generally a Hierarchy player will only have one of each walker, bringing the amount of units produced down to 30 (and even still, it's only 15 vehicles and 15 infantry).
• Aircraft are a major issue for most Hierarchy players, since Saucers are expensive and Gravitic Turrets are stationary. Patch 2 has somewhat reduced this by increasing the firepower of Lost-ones against aerial units.
• The Hierarchy is pretty vulnerable to early rushes because they cannot build early units and the glyhps are a very vulnerable part of their army

Trivia

• The Hierarchy was created as a faction after the developers noticed how much people liked fighting the capital ships from their previous game Star　Wars: Empire at War and wondered if they could create a faction based around "land capital ships". The Hierarchy's tactical dynamic in turn is based on requests for the ability to customize weapon hardpoints.
• The Hierarchy is the first faction of its kind (nomadic), thus it they can be somewhat difficult to learn to play them.
• The Hierarchy is ruled by a group referred to as the Overseers, though the exact nature of their political system is unknown.
• According to one of the Developers, the Hiearchy find cows to be "beings of pure energy" that happen to taste good, hence their 500 RM value (live or dead).
• Interestingly, none of the Hierarchy's units speak intelligible words. Instead, infantry and walkers produce sounds that is likely their races own language and vehicle units produce various mechanical noises. As notable exceptions, all hero units telepathically speak in whatever language the game is in and Defilers produce slurping, gurgling noises.
• The Hierarchy has been compared to the Covenant from Halo, based on naming similarities for some of their infantry (e.g. Grunts, Brutes), governing system (the Overseers), and personality similarities between Kamal Re'x and the Covenant leader; the Prophet of Truth.
• All the hierarchy vehicles have a radioactive core as stated ingame and maybe the humming sound they emmit is because that device.

Universe at War: Earth Assault
Hierarchy	Units Buildings Heroes Story
Novus	Units Buildings Heroes Story
Masari	Units Buildings Heroes Story
Other Topics:	Storyline Previews Humans External Links