View Full Version : Tips and tricks
We will use this thread for tips, tricks and general help. Offer your tips or ask your questions.
To mass move your units, select one of the units then use the ALT key and right click on where you want it to go. This will produce a red arrow. Then in the menu, go to AI then activate AI movement and the units belonging to the same parent unit will all move in the same direction. This helps when playing huge scenarios with hundreds of batallions.
I have another one, probably most appropriate for beginners:
When on the defense, do NOT shoot all the time. If you occupy a good position and are planning to hold it, do not shoot at adjacent enemies in your turn. This only allows the enemy to shoot at you in both your and his turn and you should avoid this. Most of the time your reaction fire is sufficient.
Oliver
One of the things that i have discovered is that making multiple assaults against disrupted/surrounded guys is more effective at wiping them out than one big wave. I dont know why that is but when you got your enemy cut off with no retreat path and he's disrupted, you can send in almost any unit and get a big return on a lot of single assaults.
Scott
Also during assaults you should try to let units with the same morale assault together. This is because the lowest morale is used for the assault resolution. So if you attack with, say, three Cav Squadrons with A morale and add some riff-raff unit with C morale you basically neutralized the superior morale of the Cav Squadrons, because the whole assault will be resolved with the C morale modifiers. Bad idea. :confused:
Cheers
Oliver
When firing on a target, if you plan on using all your availible points towards that (such as a fire mission with artillery on a single hex) press and hold the "Alt" key when you click on the target hex. This will automatically expend all points in as many salvos as the unit can fire.
Another thing is, if you like to keep the map labels "on" while playing the game press the "Shift + Alt" keys and they will stick. Press the "Shift" key again to get rid of them.
Glenn Saunders
07 Feb 05, 16:57
Not sure if it was covered or not but before you do anything to turn on and leave on the LABELS be sure you go the the Settings menu and turn ON the ALT LABEL STYLE to get awar from the old blocky style of Label we had when the game first came out.
Glenn
KG_RangerBooBoo
28 Feb 05, 16:15
Here is a web page to get some articles on game play.
http://www.adisco.com/kgguderian/
Here is a web page to get some articles on game play.
http://www.adisco.com/kgguderian/
Something tells me you used the K44 info in our game! :D
One of the things that i have discovered is that making multiple assaults against disrupted/surrounded guys is more effective at wiping them out than one big wave. I dont know why that is but when you got your enemy cut off with no retreat path and he's disrupted, you can send in almost any unit and get a big return on a lot of single assaults.
Scott
This tip is excellent. Assault multiple times and you should be able to disrupt and/or expel the defenders from the hex.
Dave68124
09 May 05, 00:39
Guys don't forget about the Divisional Movement Order. Someone mentioned AI movement previously, but if you really want to stay in control, I would use the DMO to move those vast units around the battlefield.
The DMO is activited in the same manner as AI, but when you select the unit, do not highlight the unit but only the hex of the unit, hit the ALT key and where you want the unit to move to. Any like divisional units in contigious hexes will follow the same path.
While AI can move large number of units, it can be selected up the corps level and all corps assets will move (not a good thing if that is not your intention) plus the AI can go dumb and have your guys slooging through swamps or stuck at river crossings that may take several turns to unscrew.
Not that AI movement is bad, but might hand you something more than you want or expect and there are now other ways to get to where and how you want to get there.
Having just battled through the NGP '85/Fulda scenario, I can say that if the opposition has massive airpower, you need to move forward in short spurts with your units, especially artillery and motorised infantry.
Moving out to their movement limit in one go will result in heavy casualties. Heavy enough that some battalions were being interdicted 4 or 5 times along their movement path.
The only way I found to reduce the effects of aviation interdiction was to move a little at a time. This worked to a certain extent in the Smolensk scenario as well, though interdiction was nothing but pesky in that case.
Of course one must balance the need of a rapid advance against lower interdiction casualties.
A unit hit by interdiction and disrupted along a choked forest road can be a real pain in the butt.
Thanks for the tip and welcome to the forum mate!! :)
Thanks Danny,
the site is a great read.
As soon as I get my bearings I'll have a go at a
one on one with one of the vets. I'm sure I will get my butt handed to me on a plate. :)
lezgo killemall
06 Oct 05, 20:47
do you have to have the unit hi-lighted that can see the guys you are firing upon, or does the game just know that you have a unit w/ a visual?
ive fired a couple of times forgetting to change the unit who is spotting the target but it seemed to hit ok so im not sure, and i cant find it in the manual (i know im probably missing it)
Ed, the game handles that aspect for you, so all your have to do is fire.
How do you go about cancelling the AI move order (the "big red arrow" one). I accidently set one of my divisions to move this way, meaning to do the NON highliting alt-right click move order, and have had that unit stuck in position through the whole game, even when I try to move them. Just accidently did the same thing right in the middle of an ongoing battle and have no idea how to cancel it or turn it off.
Guys don't forget about the Divisional Movement Order. Someone mentioned AI movement previously, but if you really want to stay in control, I would use the DMO to move those vast units around the battlefield.
The DMO is activited in the same manner as AI, but when you select the unit, do not highlight the unit but only the hex of the unit, hit the ALT key and where you want the unit to move to. Any like divisional units in contigious hexes will follow the same path.
While AI can move large number of units, it can be selected up the corps level and all corps assets will move (not a good thing if that is not your intention) plus the AI can go dumb and have your guys slooging through swamps or stuck at river crossings that may take several turns to unscrew.
Not that AI movement is bad, but might hand you something more than you want or expect and there are now other ways to get to where and how you want to get there.
KG_RangerBooBoo
14 Apr 06, 07:15
I can understand your frustration as I end up doing this once or twice a turn it seems like. Go to the top menu bar and select AI and then scroll down and select "view/delete AI orders". It will pop up a dialogue box where you can select the orders for a formation and then delete them.
lezgo killemall
14 Apr 06, 19:27
yeah, it can be a pain in the arse, especially if its one of the units that results in about 20 you have to delete.
I can understand your frustration as I end up doing this once or twice a turn it seems like. Go to the top menu bar and select AI and then scroll down and select "view/delete AI orders". It will pop up a dialogue box where you can select the orders for a formation and then delete them.
Thanks, got it under control now!
Tips on Glenn's website are highly recommended.
Link is:
http://members.shaw.ca/gcsaunders/7_habits.html
Other tips are on his website as well.
Here is my tip of the day: moving back a hex while on defense will cut down the amount of shots that your opponent gets on your units. If you can fall back a hex to avoid losses do it.
I can understand your frustration as I end up doing this once or twice a turn it seems like. Go to the top menu bar and select AI and then scroll down and select "view/delete AI orders". It will pop up a dialogue box where you can select the orders for a formation and then delete them.
This has happened to me at the end of a game, and now in the middle of a very good one. I attempted to remove the AI thing, but apparently I didn't as my units moved out of postion after I had taken care to not have this happen. Very frustrating. I will try again next turn--provided it hasn't cost me the game---I HATE THIS FUNCTION--and would never use it on purpose. Most annoying--not sure if it is enough for me to advise against the game--as it is pretty fun, but it certainly is a distraction to an otherwise enjoyable experience.
Mike
Hummm...I play pretty regularly and I never have an issue with this. If you want to send me more details to the Support account we can check into how exactly it is happening and see if there's something that can be done about it...
Hummm...I play pretty regularly and I never have an issue with this. If you want to send me more details to the Support account we can check into how exactly it is happening and see if there's something that can be done about it...
Rahamy,
I suspect I fumbled the keyboard and hit the "alt" key combo, and then neglected to effectively delete all the units affected. I suspect next turn I will be able to correct the issue--won't know until after the turn (as it moves after one completes the turn--then one can't turn back and must suffer the results--that to me is frustrating--I suppose one could have a "do you want to move AI units come up?" when it is turned on--alerting the player of this, but given that my issue seems to be unique, I suspect this isn't a good addition). I can't see a big use for the function myself, but obviously some people like it. I just need to be more careful with the keyboard, I suppose. Pretty sure it is unique to my fumbling fingers--and a need to take more care that it is indeed deleted as a function when it mistakenly occurs.
Mike
Dave68124
03 May 07, 20:24
Rahamy,
I suspect I fumbled the keyboard and hit the "alt" key combo, and then neglected to effectively delete all the units affected. I suspect next turn I will be able to correct the issue--won't know until after the turn (as it moves after one completes the turn--then one can't turn back and must suffer the results--that to me is frustrating--I suppose one could have a "do you want to move AI units come up?" when it is turned on--alerting the player of this, but given that my issue seems to be unique, I suspect this isn't a good addition). I can't see a big use for the function myself, but obviously some people like it. I just need to be more careful with the keyboard, I suppose. Pretty sure it is unique to my fumbling fingers--and a need to take more care that it is indeed deleted as a function when it mistakenly occurs.
Mike
When I was doing some testing for Glenn around the Divisional Movement Orders I recall mentioning if there was anyway to redo the key strokes for AI Movement Orders to prevent triggering it. If I recall correctly, he indicated the code was buried pretty deep in the program and not likely an area to be touched.
Glenn - Question for you.
Mike brings up a good point. When you have AI Movement orders on and (assuming you have the Ask before Advancing box checked), the program asks to you continue, you hit yes, it goes through the AI movement then you have to the advance turn once more. While you know all of this, here is the question-
If you have AI orders on, would it be a big change for the program to ask you to move to the AI Movement Phase rather than just advance turn (as if no AI Movement orders were in place)? Not sure if this is also buried in code not to be touched again, but thought this might be a easy change to prevent someone from getting clumsy with the Division Movement Orders and not paying attention.
I have a game going with a new player and he asks a lot of questions-usually good ones. I am including them in this and invite everyone to comment.
Q. Question for you on assaulting. As you can see from the replay, I assaulted with single units rather than massing the attackers all at once. My primary reason for doing it in this situation was to try to win "on the cheap" and to be able to move the uninvolved units further. As a general rule, what do you find better clears a hex, several successive assaults at lower odds or fewer attacks at higher odds?
A. Disrupting the unit first, leaving it a retreat path open for it, and then minimum assault to clear it. I assumed you wanted to force the enemy to retreat, not eliminate it. If eliminate it, then do not leave it a retreat path. As far as the size goes it depends on the size of the defender. I try to avoid assaulting undisrupted units-usually cost prohibitive. Single unit assaults lead to multiple DF against you and more chances of you being disrupted.
Q. Same kind of thing for fire combat. But here I'm more interested in causing fatigue rather than losses. Do I max enemy fatigue by firing individual units or is it better to mass them? From what I can tell of the way automatic defensive fire works, it seems as if every time I do something in a hex under observation (fire, assault, change mode) I make myself liable to defensive fire, so in that sense, the fewer times I "activate" my units the better.
A. I do not fire at units to cause higher fatigue. I fire to disrupt units. Once disrupted I switch to other available targets. When I am on the defensive I tend to minimize my shots especially when faced with multiple units. Many times if forced to fire I fire in stacks to minimize DF back. Fatigue is not the issue, disruption is. I try not to get my units disrupted by defensive fire in my turn-my opponent doesn’t use MPs to do so so basically a free shot. It means he does not have use fire (and MP) to disrupt me in his next turn, will face less DF before he assaults, and can clear the hex with minimum force.
Q. Am I correct in thinking that if I try an air mission (either strike or recon) and I get a message of either "intercepted by enemy aircraft" or "intercepted by SAMs", that while I don't get the air mission that turn, it is available for use again the next turn, i.e. unlike a successful mission which is "used" and has to pass the parameter data check to become available again.
A. As far as I know yes.
Q. Is there a quick way (in the editor possibly) of seeing the combat and movement values of the various unit types, or am I going to have to check them out in the unit view and write the stats down somewhere?
A. I think the OOB Editor is your best
To mass move your units, select one of the units then use the ALT key and right click on where you want it to go. This will produce a red arrow. Then in the menu, go to AI then activate AI movement and the units belonging to the same parent unit will all move in the same direction. This helps when playing huge scenarios with hundreds of batallions.
Oh, wow, that was totally what I was wanting to know after commanding units one-by-one. I can actually probably handle the main scenarios now. Thanks!
Also during assaults you should try to let units with the same morale assault together. This is because the lowest morale is used for the assault resolution. So if you attack with, say, three Cav Squadrons with A morale and add some riff-raff unit with C morale you basically neutralized the superior morale of the Cav Squadrons, because the whole assault will be resolved with the C morale modifiers. Bad idea. :confused:
Glad I heard about this.
Dave68124
09 Mar 08, 21:29
Oh, wow, that was totally what I was wanting to know after commanding units one-by-one. I can actually probably handle the main scenarios now. Thanks!
Lockon-
You can also use the Divisional Movement Orders to move your troops around in a expeditious manner. It is similar to the AI Movement Orders, but gives you a bit more control. You can find it in the manual under Divisional Movement Orders.
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