Gameplay:
Army Men: RTS's gameplay requires the acquisition and control of two resources; plastic and electricity, which are necessary to construct combat units and buildings. Plastic, which is required for all normal units, is taken from everyday objects, including Frisbees, dog bowls, and toys. Additionally, whenever a unit or structure is destroyed, a chunk of plastic worth a fraction of its initial cost appears where it was destroyed. Plastic is 'harvested' by Dump Trucks. Electricity, which is required for vehicles and Radio operator stuff, is drawn from electrical objects, such as batteries, toasters, and walkie-talkies. A particular structure, the Resource Depot, must be built to collect the resources gathered by the Dump Trucks.
Players use their resources to construct buildings and units. Since both factions have access to the same buildings and units neither side has an innate advantage over the other. Some buildings construct new units while others provide defense for a base. The production buildings can be upgraded to produce better units. Units are either infantry or vehicles. Infantry troops are cheap to produce but are not as tough, while vehicles tend to be costly. Vehicles range from passive (dump trucks and base-building bulldozers) to aggressive (tanks and half-tracks) to defensive (mine layers) to suicidal (Dum-dums, robots armed with firecrackers). Aside from grunts and grenadiers, infantry units have a special task; minesweepers clear out traps, snipers are potent anti-infantry units, and mortar men can annihilate buildings from afar.
Due to the nature of each unit, players must be able to counter whatever they are facing. A group of snipers could wipe out a force of grunts with ease, but the same group of snipers would be helpless against a half-track. Countering the half-track with a tank would leave a weakness to choppers. Players must balance both the relative strengths and weaknesses of their forces and their opponent's forces with the cost of producing the units.
Level balance can be changed by other factors. Power-ups, which can improve the speed, health, or damage of whichever side finds them first, cause a disparity between the sides. Heroes, powerful versions of the regular infantry, can cause great damage before being destroyed. Insects, chiefly ants, act as free units for whichever side is allied with them. The secondary objectives of single player missions often deal with one of these things.