Couple of questions regarding AT and DC

[Tac2i]

GrumpyMel offers some good advice. General speaking infantry is stronger on the defense and weaker in the attack. Infantry support weapons can help in both attack and defense: machine guns, motars and infantry guns. Bazookas can give infantry some anti-tank punch. Calvary units are very good in the attack, especially against unprotected infantry. Calvary and Armored Cars also have excellent recon abilities. Enemy units may not always be what they seem because of poor recon. Tanks are the queen of ground attack, especially in favorable terrain but have poor recon ability. Anti-tank guns and other tanks are its nemesis. As GrumpyMel stated, if you can hit your attack point with artillery and/or air attack, then the land attack you'll have better success. On both attack and defense be sure the HQ your units are attached to is nearby so that you get the HQ power bonuses. Review those links that I provided above if you haven't already. As you gain experience this will all come together for you. Also, sometimes the best offense is to let the AI attack you, get weakened and then you counter-attack. ATG has great depth which is why it is such a great game.

Re air power:
1) dive bombers - good against tanks, trucks, ships and artillery type units
2) level bombers - deadly to infantry, especially in open terrain
3) torpedo bombers - good against ships
4) strategic bombers (and heavy artillery) - good against cities, resource hexes and fortifications
5) fighters - very good recon, good against bombers and other fighters. By default when you first create fighter units they are NOT set to intercept. You must turn this on if you wish your fighters to provide intercept of enemy planes. Even then, intercept is never a 100% certainty unless they are in the hex under attack.

Heavy artillery also good against ships and infantry.

Re RAW and OIL resources: your mobile forces depend on these resources. They'll be in short supply initially, especially in one town start games. Over time you will need to acquire more and use engineers to upgrade the ones you do have.

PPs: You need these to build units and purchase research. Again, initially they can be in short supply or you may have to be spending them more on unit creation than research purchases.

Supply: Gain an understanding of how it works. Very important!

ORIGINAL: towerbooks3192

Well I guess the best part is that it is not as daunting as Hearts of Iron 3.

I am getting used to grouping and regrouping units. I prefer to start stone age and I am a bit confused on what my units should be composed of and how I could attack and defend hexes (I know how to but I don't know when it is good to attack and if my units are good enough to attack the particular unit and what units to use in defense.).

I don't know how to mount an offensive though I think making a unit composed of at least 1 machine gun per 10 rifles(e.g 3MGs to 30 Rifles) is a good defense however I can't seem to get the right balance of an offensive unit.

[towerbooks3192]

Thanks GrumpyMel and Webizen. I now learned more about the strengths and weaknesses of units and how they work especially the difference between bombers.

I managed to establish a defense on my front line in my current game (I held the front lines with 50 rifles and 5 MGS) while I have 2 artillery units (6 artilleries, 30 Rifles, 3 MGs) that I use in targeting which way I should advance and softening up some spot where my Rifle/MG defenders could progress and I have some units I used to attack (composed of a decent number of rifles with 2 armored cars and 5 mortars).

should I use my tanks like the way I used my armored cars like how I mixed it with my mortars and rifles or I should have a unit composed mainly of tanks?

Will read the explanation about supplies in the forum tomorrow since I need to get some shut eyes. I must stop myself since this game is pretty addictive and I can't stop playing.

[Tac2i]

Just remember that tanks and armored cars have a limited capacity to carry other units (5 infantry points per vehicle). If you exceed this limit, your unit will have less action points to move and attack. Trucks and half-tracks have a 20 point carrying capacity as do trains (note: trains use coal which is considered in unlimited supply). In the early part of a game horses can be use to mobilize some of your units (10 points per horse).

Your armored forces are at their best potential when they have maximum action actions for movement/attack so don't overload them with other units. Also remember that tanks are good on the attack but weaker on the defense. A tank unit that strays to far from its infantry support can be successfully counter-attacked, even by opposing infantry units.

Glad your having fun! ATG is a great game... now get some sleep soldier!

ORIGINAL: towerbooks3192

should I use my tanks like the way I used my armored cars like how I mixed it with my mortars and rifles or I should have a unit composed mainly of tanks?

[GrumpyMel]

ORIGINAL: towerbooks3192

Thanks GrumpyMel and Webizen. I now learned more about the strengths and weaknesses of units and how they work especially the difference between bombers.

I managed to establish a defense on my front line in my current game (I held the front lines with 50 rifles and 5 MGS) while I have 2 artillery units (6 artilleries, 30 Rifles, 3 MGs) that I use in targeting which way I should advance and softening up some spot where my Rifle/MG defenders could progress and I have some units I used to attack (composed of a decent number of rifles with 2 armored cars and 5 mortars).

should I use my tanks like the way I used my armored cars like how I mixed it with my mortars and rifles or I should have a unit composed mainly of tanks?

Will read the explanation about supplies in the forum tomorrow since I need to get some shut eyes. I must stop myself since this game is pretty addictive and I can't stop playing.

Folks vary, but I generaly like to have some infantry in the same unit as my armor. Tanks have an inherent carry capacity of 5, which means you can put 5 rifle per tank in the same unit and still retain the tracked movement type of the tanks. Movement type is another important facet of the game as it determines how far you can move (and fight) over different types of terrain. SFT's with carry capacity will lend thier movement type to other SFT's in the same unit as long as they can "carry" them.

So if you are like me, you can put a few rifles in each of your armored units and still be able to use those units in breakthrough, exploitation and encirclement modes. Put alot of rifles (more then the tanks carry capacity) and you are essentialy following early war French/British doctrine where the tanks are just acting as local fire-support for the infantry.

The reason why I personaly like to put a few riles in with my armor is that the infantry can be used to soak up attacks that might otherwise be directed toward the (more expensive) tanks. So say a defending mortar or infantry gun or even rifle rolls a lucky hit against me...I'd rather that hit kill a rifleman then a tank. Having a few rifles also makes it easier to attack more difficult terrain (like towns) where tanks operate at a disadvantage.

But again, people have different views, strategies on this. You are starting to get into some game aspects that are governed more by personal style and viewpoint then hard and fast rules. That's a big part of the fun with ATG...as far as I'm concerned....figuring out the best unit composition for your situation and individual style

[Josh]

^.^ what he says. I make the same units GrumpyChris makes, that is always accompany your armour with Inf. 5 per tank. That is not necessarily (damn that's a tough word to write down proper for a foreigner) in the exact same unit, you can also make say an unit of 4-5 tanks and put another Inf. unit in the same hex. The grunts are indeed used for soaking up attacks and recon, tanks are almost blind, so if you race straight into unknown territory you're asking for an ambush.

[towerbooks3192]

Ok so I am back and I just discovered one of my mistakes. I only made one HQ and I usually wonder how I should handle multiple HQs and make sure my unit is well supplied. Correct me if I am wrong or I did not understand it correctly but I should make a subordinate HQ under the supreme HQ and station it within the boarders where the subordinate is in supply range to the supreme HQ and it would extend the range of the supplies by placing men closer to the subordinate HQ under its command rather than the supreme HQ which is farther away?

[ernieschwitz]

That is correct

[Josh]

Yes, but a little addition to the above; roads or railroads as they are the same, are the key to a succesful supply system. Therefore you want to build engineer units, 30-40 engineer in each unit (they get EP's per turn per engineer, so 20 engineers earn 20 times... 3 or 4 Engineer Points per turn) In order to build something you need EP's for the Engineer unit, Raw (that's the ore stuff, see it as building material) and PP's Political Points.
So without railroads your units will be out of supply very soon, you will want to have them linked to your Supreme HQ. So that way your SHQ can provide its subordinate HQ's with fresh troops ... via Strategic Transport that your SHQ can do *if* it has trains available. Makes sense huh? Send troops via a railway system to the front. You can even use Trucks for Strategic Transport... but that uses Oil. And certainly in the early stages of a game you're short on everything. Because you want to build a railroad system, *and* you want to build shiny stuff like tanks/armoured cars/Artiller/Mortars but they all use up Raw and there's only one way to get Raw and that's to expand your Empire. Note the numbers on the top of your gamescreen. Green = good, Yellow = the amount you use up this turn, Red = bad meaning you are "producing" stuff but there's no Raw to produce it which means it's lost. Say you have zero Ore/Raw and you have set a city to procuding four Artillery... then that is lost, wasted, gone, better set that slider for Artillery to zero and max out the slider for say stuff that don't need Ore like PP's, Supply, Infantery.
 
Also note that in the previous patch, not in the latest haven't tried that one out, there are more cities producing things. Now it's handy to set quite a few cities under the command of the SHQ (check the colour of the left bar on a city = same colour bar as the SHQ) , because it needs the most supplies as almost all your army is subordinate to that SHQ they will also draw supply from it. But you can also attach some cities to local HQ's, so they get supplies and troops as well. PP's go always to the pool. So for PP's it doesn't matter to which HQ they go it's all added up. By attaching local cities to local HQ's you also prevent that the SHQ has to provide all of it's subordinate HQ's with fresh troops.
Building railroads costs ore too (select engineers, press R on keyboard, click on the hex you want a RR) ... so it can happen that you have say 600 ore available (most left number in the Ore tab), next to it is a yellow number which is the ore you're using up by the cities building stuff/guns/tanks/mortars, and to the right in the Ore tab is the Ore amount you receive per turn (depending on how many Ore mines you have and what lvl they are). Say that you use up 400 Ore for producing stuff. That leaves 200 Ore for building RR's, Forts, Airfield. Now by building RR's you see the 600 decreasing with every thing you build, do not *ever* get that in red, because that means the things you are producing in the cities are lost, not produced because the don't get enough Ore. The sliders won't change but it never gets produced. So either you have to stop your engineers from building more things *this* turn, *or* you have to reset some of your sliders to a lower number of Guns/Tanks/Mortars, or even things that don't need Ore like PP's Supply or Inf/ horses.
Oh and about horses.. they rule. Cheap, don't cost nothing, don't use up oil, etc. Armoured Halftracks are nice to have but only later on in the game.
 
The end. LOL

[towerbooks3192]

I kind of figured the part about linking local HQs to relieve the SHQ of the duty to supply each and every HQ and I guess its obviously better to attach local cities to local HQ rather than to SHQ since that would save me the trouble of transporting troops from the main HQ to the front and I could use the rail points to transport other stuff. Thanks for the info on the importance of rails Josh since I had a problem where I made a subordinate HQ that is fairly close to my other front and that front is mostly forest so some of my men that I attached to the newly established HQ were stuck since I forgot to check if the supply would reach them or not[:(]

I am now trying to figure out the best units to put in a group and I fear that I overproduce units and the job could be done with lesser and well rounded units. I will try to experiment moving with trucks and horses since I added the trucks in my artillery groups to make it more mobile but I never utilized the transfer option where it would use the land points. In my recent game, I tried to experiment with airstrikes and I think it is working. I grouped my first 6 divebombers and use it in conjunction with my artillery before I send in the troops.

[Meanfcker]

Ok so I am back and I just discovered one of my mistakes. I only made one HQ and I usually wonder how I should handle multiple HQs and make sure my unit is well supplied. Correct me if I am wrong or I did not understand it correctly but I should make a subordinate HQ under the supreme HQ and station it within the boarders where the subordinate is in supply range to the supreme HQ and it would extend the range of the supplies by placing men closer to the subordinate HQ under its command rather than the supreme HQ which is farther away?

Along with the supply chain extension, placing your front line combat HQ's close to the men they support will give them a positive
combat bonus, eg current combat mod %110 current morale mod %120
There are methods that you will learn on the way, to increase the veterancy of HQ's. As their experience goes up, so does the combat and morale mods for the troops. It is frightfully effective when you get good at it.

[towerbooks3192]

I happen to stumble upon classic random game and I have a question:

Is there a way for me to play a game with those classic ww2 unit photos (from classic masterfile something)with very very very expensive research and raw/oil is applied so that it would be harder and my tanks and armored vehicles needs oil to run?

[Meanfcker]

I dont know about that but l should like to offer a bit of advice.
The AI will always out tech and out produce you no matter what settings you start with.
That is no real problem as the AI is not very clever.
You dont really need a lot of tech when you first start playing.
I found that I would start buying techs and experimenting with them after I was beating the AI.
The Ai also has a harder time on larger maps so you may consider this when you get started.
The Ai will generally produce a large army very quickly and push up against you until you break.
It is very easy to let the bulk of the AI army through your lines into a dead end and trap it there.
Then you may go over to the offensive and experiment with the differnt techs.
You wont really need to tech very much until you start playing against smarty alec pants human players.

[towerbooks3192]

Well what I meant to say is that I love the classic unit portraits and the way it is sort of slower compared to at2 but the thing is that is there a mod or something that will enable me to play classic or that pt/advanced pt master file or something with the research that is so expensive and the ore and oil system and the rail system of atg is applied? I mean if I play with the default atg masterfile I could play with the cartoonish unit portraits and the ore/oil mechanic is applied. I was hoping to play with classic/pt masterfile unit portraits and what-not with very expensive research and ore/oil and rail system applied

[Meanfcker]

Sorry can't help, I have never played any of the mods.
I was a pretty big Hearts of Iron 3 fan as well, but I have to say, there is no comparison.
This is the best game ever created.
If this had been around in the 1890's we would probably never heard of Napoleon or Clausewitz.

[towerbooks3192]

Its alright mate. Thanks for the tip and I sent Vic a pm asking him about it.

As for HOI 3 I got all expansion up to FTM and I am waiting for their finest hour. Its one of my unfinished business and I must say no matter how hard I tried to scale the learning curve its still too confusing. I never had trouble with CK2 and EU3 but HOI 3 is a tough nut to crack [:(]

[Josh]

Same here with HOI3... too many sliders and knobs doing whoever knows what [&:] Too confusing, and the real time aspect of it gives me the creeps, never got used to it.

[towerbooks3192]

Yeah I guess HOI 3 is too much but one day. Maybe if I could find a decent LP or tutorial I could scale its learning curve.

Anyway, I played this new game (keep on restarting if I made a mistake so I haven't finish a single game yet) and I guess I had 2 AI plus the hidden one so I am facing 3 enemies. I did not expect a game on a small map could take so long. Its just sending troops forward and backward and most area of the front I am fighting on is jungle and forests so its pretty hard for me to advance my troops. The AI started to place flak on its units so my air strikes are less effective (heck they were already less effective in jungles)

I wish there are flamethrower units and maybe we could cut through or burn jungles and forests. I am having trouble forming an offensive unit that is effective in jungles especially when AI units have armored cars.

Edit: Heck I was planning to get DC WTP and CB this thursday and now I must say that with only a small map there are a lot of units to keep track of but I will carry on and try to get use to this kind of game so that I could tame monsters such as WiTE and WiTP AE in the future

[Josh]

Oh rugged terrain, jungle, forests is even for seasoned players tough. Period. Tough. Hard work.  It's always costly and takes forever. First of all you cover your flanks out in the open fields with Armour, do not send tanks in the jungle. Then you relay heavilly on Arty, the more the better. Lots of it. Sometimes an enemy unit takes two turns of bombardment (plus airsupport in the form of level bombers... if there's no Flak around!!) and a complete encirclement... before you attack from 3-4 preferrably all six hexes. HQ close by for HQ bonus. So you need lots and lots of troops, lots of Arty and a lot of time to beat the jungle. You have to maintain a front *and* encircle an enemy unit and keep it encircled for one-two turns.
Smg, instead of Rifles, are the ones you want to use for close combat. I make units of 30 Smg's, 5 Mortars, 5 Mg's, 2 AT guns or 1 AT gun and 1 Inf gun... plus horses. Take your time to encircle the enemy in the jungle, attack his weak spots, then hit him with all your Arty for 1-2 turns and attack with 6 units from 6 hexes... that is one hex taken... [:D]

[towerbooks3192]

Thanks Josh. Will try to remember that. So SMGs are alright as replacements for Rifles in close quarters (cities and forests/jungles) and I could use them alone even without Rifles in the unit?

As for bombardments and attacks, isn't there a penalty for attacking/bombarding a hex twice? I mean I am limited to that number below the screen of participants (that 100/100 I forgot its name) and its better to be as close to the number as possible so lets say I usually have 5 arty in an arty unit and if I use one its 50/100 and 2 will be 100/100 so I should not add my other artys in that bombardment so it would not exceed that number?

[Josh]

*if* I remember correctly Smg's are twice better when attacking in close combat situations (it's in the combat stats somewhere) , makes sense no? On the defense it doesn't make any difference whether you use Rifles or Smg's. On open ground when you use Inf to accompany Armour I prefer Rifles.
Yes the Battle stack number, same for Air battle stack or Artillery stack, is 100. Try to aim at that number because much higher than that and you get a diminishing effect. The BS, AS and Artstack numbers are noted in the right hand panel. So yeah you can use two times 5 Arty, which is what I do too, to get to 100. Note that if you use Artillery that has already fired at some other target but still has some Action Points left, then you can use that Arty unit for firing at another target. It does add it's total number of Tubes to the Artillery Stack... but it won't be effective as an Artillery unit that hasn't fired because that one has more AP's left. So suppose you have an Artillery unit of 10 Tubes but with only 20 AP's left, it fires/ attacks two times only, but it does get you already the 100 BS.
So it doesn't matter if you attack 1 time with 10 tubes to get to 100, or 5 times with 2 tubes to get to 100. I must say that above 100 you start noticing a diminishing effect, but it really kicks in above say 200.This stack value has been added to prevent Artillery Uberkills, I mean in the old AT you could wipe out anything with Artillery *if* you had enough of them. Artillery is very very good for lowering readiness, see that green bar decrease, the lower the better. A surrounded unit (out of supply) bombed twice ( I mean two turns) is ripe for the plucking. Alass no capturable equipment ... yet. Would be nice tho.
Oh strafing groundforces with Fighter planes is  *great* way to get them to high Exp!!! Same for ships, get them to 80 or higher Exp [:D] 
Another thing is that kills with Arty does raise the HQ Exp, not so for Airplanes kills [:(]