The Basics

If you've played a previous Battlefield game before picking up Battlefield 2, then you should be right at home. The rarely-played game types, like CTF and Deathmatch, have been removed from the package, leaving only the Conquest gametype and its variations. If you haven't played previous Battlefield games, though, then this section is for you; we'll go over the rules of the game and tell you what you need to know to become an effective soldier.

Video Walk-through

If you know where an enemy is headed, respawn at that flag and ambush them.

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First off, Battlefield 2 is a team-based game, pitting the United States Marine Corps against either the fictional Middle East Coalition army or the Chinese People's Liberation Army. When you first join a server, you'll automatically be assigned to one of the two forces; you can switch sides by clicking on the tabs in the upper left corner of the kit selection screen. (Switching sides too often is somewhat rude, though, especially when you're attempting to switch from the losing to the winning team.) Each of the sides is comparable in technology and equipment, so you're never going to be disadvantaged if you choose one side over another, although they do have different weapons and vehicles, so you may notice some differences in your equipment when you switch from side to side.

After you join a game and get assigned to a team, you'll need to select a kit, which is essentially the same as a "class." Each kit has different weapons and abilities, and your team is going to need a good variety of kits in order to succeed on the battlefield. See the Kits chapter for more information on each of the seven kits in the game.

When you have a team and a kit loaded out, then you'll need to select a spawn point. All available options will appear as a small white dot on your map. If you left click on one of them, then you'll be able to spawn there as soon as you leave the map screen (by pressing Enter). And then you're on the ground and running!

The key thing here is that spawn points can be captured and taken over by the other team, and indeed this will be happening with some frequency throughout the game, as the entire point of the game is to run towards enemy flags and take them over. While you're on the ground, you'll be asked to move towards enemy flags and enter the small control zone that exists around them. When you're in this control zone, you'll see a small flag meter appear just underneath your minimap, which will indicate just how long it'll take you to capture the flag for your team. If you're attempting to capture it by yourself, then it'll take a while to do so; if you have a few teammates along for the ride, though, you'll be able to capture it much more quickly. You don't need to do anything special while capturing a flag; just staying inside the small zone that exists around it is all you need. Of course, while the flag remains in the hands of your enemy, they can still spawn there, so you may find yourself fighting off enemies that pop in out of thin air.

When you're near a flag, you'll note a control indicator under your minimap. Move it all the way to your team's side to capture the flag.

The point of capturing flags and killing enemies lies in the game's ticket structure. In the upper right corner of your screen, on either side of the minimap, you'll notice two numbers. The number in blue is the number of tickets remaining for your team, while the number in red is the number of tickets remaining for your opponents. (Unlike in previous games, these colors aren't assigned to a specific side; you can be MEC or USMC, and your tickets will always be blue.) The ultimate goal of the game is to reduce your opponent's tickets to zero, with the most efficient method of doing so to just kill them a lot while not dying. Each time you kill an opponent, you'll reduce a ticket from his or her team's total. The key to capturing flags, though, is that in most game types, you can cause the opposing team's tickets to automatically drain or "bleed" by controlling more than half of the flags on the map. Doing so will not only cause a steady loss of tickets, but will force your opponents to spawn in a fewer number of locations and will reduce the number of vehicles available to them, making it harder for them to take over other flags. By the same token, though, the more flags under your control, the more spread out you'll be, so you'll need to watch the flags behind the front lines to ensure that no enemies parachute into an undefended base and start capturing it.

In addition to capturable flags, there are also some flags that are noncapturable; these appear on the minimap with a red line through them. Even if you get up close to a noncapturable flag of your enemy's, you won't be able to take it over, although you may be able to get some cheap kills when people spawn there. (This is considered to be in bad form, though, so don't be surprised if you get kicked or banned from a server if you do it too often.)

There are three main types of games in Battlefield 2, each a subset of the main Conquest game. In Conquest: Head-On mode, the most popular one, your primary goal is to reduce the enemy's tickets to zero. Controlling over half of the flags on the map will cause your opponent to bleed.

Conquest: Assault is a bit different; in most of these maps, one team will begin with almost all of the flags under their control, while the opposing team will have a single flag and will be bleeding tickets at the beginning of the map. The assaulting team will have to head off into enemy territory and begin taking over enemy flags in order to stop the bleeding. What's interesting here is that bleeding isn't a result of controlling over half of the flags; in order to make the opposing team bleed, you'll need to hold all of the contestable flags. This generally results in longer games, since it's more difficult to force your opponents into bleeding mode.

Conquest: Double Assault is the last mode of gameplay, and the name is somewhat misleading: this is actually just Head-On with a twist. If you control more than half of the flags on a map, your opponent will bleed tickets, but if you control all of them, you win the game outright. All of the flags on these maps are capturable, but each team will usually have one starting base with a flag that requires a longer amount of time to capture than the other flags will.