[thejeff]

Yeah, that's basically it. The first part of the game is very similar, since you're fighting indies. Unless you get rushed or rush someone.

After that, having some basic idea how to build thugs is good, but thugs that would slaughter the AI get killed in their first fight by exploiting weaknesses the AI doesn't even try to find. Pretty much everything after that is counters and counter-counters. You can learn to counter what the AI does, but since the AI doesn't try to counter you, that only takes you so far.