A Badge Seekers guide to Iron Rage

If your goal is just the badges then here a simple how-to guide Remember this takes some time. Patience is the key!
 * 1) Upgrade Oil Rig. Fuel allows you to do things
 * 2) Build hall of heroes and upgrade captain walker
 * 3) Upgrade barracks and upgrade storm troopers.
 * 4) Use gold to speed up activities

FAQs
 * How to add friends for command centre taxes - Go to the window above the Game Room chat (chat to the right of the game window). Hover over the names and click add friend. Add a good number and refesh game.
 * How do I "Decode the intelligence"? - Go on the World map, and you will see a red mask on a square outside of your control. It is a mission were you have to destroy some building, and if you win, you will gain a chest and a binocular. It will be called "sabotage".

A little more detailled guide to get the medium badge on Kongregate

(Important: Following this strategy will greatly hurt your progress in the game if you plan to play for longer. Only follow that if the badge is all you want)

To get the 40 Stars badge as fast as possible, you'll only need a few hours if you know what to concentrate on. So hopefully this will help a bit.

The things you'll really need for the badge mostly come from missions and chests, so spend your free gold to finish these and open the chests quickly. Maybe you'll also have to speed up some research or building to finish missions.

What you really need
 * Fuel. You'll need it to start the storyline missions, so it's mandatory. Concentrate on missions that reward oil.
 * Gold. To speed up various things. You can get more than enough free gold from several sources.
 * Special troops. Those are the only way to win the harder storyline missions later if you don't want to wait for your basic troops to be upgraded. Which would take days just to get the ressources. Get them from chests and missions. Also, don't just spam them, otherwise you might not have enough in the end. Fight clever, but ensure to win.
 * As of writing this guide reload often. You'll be amazed how many completed quests can suddenly pop up and how much less this game lags after that.

What you don't need
 * Upgrade buildings or basic troops like Stormtroopers, Infantry, above level 2 for buildings or above level 1 for basic troops. Just do some basic stuff to get rewards from early missions.Even level 2 buildings already cost more than you'll get for the mission. Unfortunately you'll need to advance in those missions to unlock later ones, so it might still be worth it. Like, you'll have to finish Genetics research before you'll get the mission to build an Artillery Factory.
 * Upgrading your hero (Captain Walker). You'll be done long before you can afford the ressources to do that.
 * Research. It only affects your basic troops in the beginning, so only do the research you'll need to complete some early missions.
 * Territory conquering in World map. Only do that with basic troops if it rewards fuel. You won't really need a lot of it though.
 * Anything related to PvP

Basic fighting strategy

You'll soon see that most early battles are just the same all the way, so strategy is easy to sum up.

Use basic troops (Infantry, Stormtroopers, etc) as long as they carry you. Pretty much until the storyline missions tell you a recommended level of 3 or higher. You'll have to finish missions with recommended level: 5 in the end, you'll need the special troops there. Level 3 will mostly require some special troops, Level 4 at least half of your setup, level 5 will need most of your setup filled with special troops.

Winning conditions are either to conquer the enemies base or destroying all of their units. Losing conditions are the same, but also include the death of Captain Walker. So don't expose him too much in harder missions. He'll feel a little bit squishy at recommended level: 5.

Infantry is pretty slow, so in the beginning send the faster stormtroopers to secure any strategic points you can surely get before your opponent (Machine Guns or Mortar). Then only send waves of troops. Your highest energy is 6, so you can send out 3 Infantry or 2 Stormtroopers at once. This will increase your damage output a lot. Only use support like Mustard Gas, Artillery or Landing Pods if there are at least 2 enemy troops in range. Otherwise it'll be wasted.

There are easier maps and harder maps, some can be conquered just with Captain Walker, some need a bit more strategy. It won't really hurt you much if you lose a few battles, you'll get more than enough resupply from chests and missions to compensate the losses. So you can improve your strategy a bit in the next fight. Sometimes it's also just bad luck, so you might even win with the exact same setup the next time.

Just conquer all the territories in storyline starting with the lowest recommended level up to the highest. Note that you can attack territories multiple times, sometimes unlocking with higher stars requirements.