New Player - Game Manual Questions

[Limelight]

okay - I must be an idiot. I've looked and used the search, but can't find the page where the Game Manual explains exactly what the 'overstack' limit is or what an HQ's 'range' for bonuses is.

From reading posts here I've inferred the stack limit is 100, but I'm unsure exactly how it works with multi-hex attacks and would like to read the manuals explanation.

just looking for a page number for these items please

[Limelight]

Hmmm....30+ views and no answer. This does not bode well for my next set of questions...

When I capture a Neutral City, the Hex turns Red once I assign it to an HQ. Does this signify something? Also, there are two vertical bars in the City Hex...what do they represent?

Does Supply automatically move down my HQ chain as needed or is there a way to move it form my 'Supreme HQ' to a lesser HQ manually?


Oh, and is there a 'next unmoved Unit' or cycle thru units option?

[Limelight]

Really hoping someone still plays this game and wants to help a newbie

When I open the Production Window of a City there is a top part (that the manual does not show) that has the city name and the prod value ( I assume) and a % number in parenthesis. Does that % number = Ownership or 'Control' or ?  And where do I find out how to raise it or what effects it in the manual please.

[82ndtrooper]

Hi mate  and welcome to the Game !!
I am sorry I didn't answer you before I saw you where just looking for a page number from the manual and passed it by.  Being a old player I haven't read the manual in a long time.

I will attempt to answer your questions though.

first of all the stack limit =100 and what that means is that any unit or hex if defending that has over 100 stack points in it will take more casualties than normal. Think of it as overcrowding.  So for me I always try and keep my unit size under 100 stack points and that's about all I really pay a lot of attention too. When it comes to attacking if I have three units of 75 stack points and I need to do a 3 sided attack which would be a battle-stack of 225 I do it anyway rather than do two or three attacks with three units of 30 stack points each. My point being that I don't spend too much time worrying about it but if a do an attack and take high losses I know why. The same goes for a hex that you are defending the more points over the 100 you have in the hex the more losses you will take but at the same time if you didn't have more than 100 points in the hex you would lose the hex. So its a guide more than a rule in my opinion. There are others here that can explain it all in more detail better than me.

The city hex turning red means that the city is damaged when at full repair it will be green, also be sure and always check to make sure you set its production. the bar on the left is the color of the HQ that you assigned it too and the bar on the right is the city health.

supply will move automatically, but you can transfer supply from HQ to HQ via rail cap(trains which uses no fuel) or land cap (trucks which do use fuel but can transfer off road) you can also transfer supply and units to ships at sea if your HQ has cargo ships in it (naval cap)

there is no next unit or next unmoved unit button.

the % number for a city is the percentage of production it is currently working at. In some scenarios you can raise production up to 150% or if you capture a city it is occupied and wont produce at more than 50%. in most cases as long as the city is green and there is no research option to raise a cities production then the city is fine and producing all it can.

I hope this helps you mate and I apologize it took so long for someone to get back to you with some answers.

/salute

edit: feel free to PM me in the future if you cant get a response to a question on the boards bro, I will gladly try and answer it for you.

[Strategiusz]

HQ range for full bonus - typical is 3 and -20% for each hex above.
Strict overstack penalty isn't explained in the manual. I think it has an effect of attack/defence and HP. In my test when I had stack 230/100 the penalty was -43%. IMHO this is more important for bombing than normal combat. Numerical superiority is often needed and stacking panalties are getting smaller and smaller during the battle, if you know what I mean

[Strategiusz]

OMG I'm blind and I always click bad buttons. Delete this post.

[Josh]

Like 82ndtrooper says: "Hi mate and welcome to the Game !!
I am sorry I didn't answer you before I saw you where just looking for a page number from the manual and passed it by. Being a old player I haven't read the manual in a long time." 
 
Same here, same here, read your question about a pagenumber... heck I don't even know where my manual is. But please do ask anything you want and we'll do our best to get you going. I think both posters above me already answered most of your questions, maybe not about the two bars next to a city. The one bar to the right means "health" of a city, and therefore it's producing capacity. (note, if you really want to hurt producing capacity of a town/factory then use strategic bombers. A flight of 10 strategic bombers, especially when lvl II or higher, completely wipe out the production capacity. It slowly rebuilds, although the AI has an advantage there as their cities recover faster).
The one bar to the left of a city signifies the HQ you've set that town to. Everything that town produces goes to that HQ. So if that HQ has a blue bar than that bar to the left of a town will also be blue. Note that you can change the colour, or name, of any HQ by clicking on it ( the bar or the name) in the unit-picture in your lowerhalf of your screen.  That can be quite handy if say two HQ's are close to each other and both have blue bars. Change one to red, or whatever colour you want, and all the units subordinate to that HQ will also get a red bar.

[Josh]

Oh about that stack limit, like 82nd already stated, see it as a max crowd a hex can have without getting in each others way. Too many troops in one hex is considered inefficient. So anything above 100 gives you a penalty. This is displayed in the horizontal bar located in your lower half of your screen. That bar gives you exact numbers and percentages.
The gamerule is max for defender; 100. But attacking from multiple hexes can give you a huge advantage, there the rule is max 100 from one or two hexes, and each hex you attack additionally from, gives an extra 50 points. So attacking from 3 hexes = 150 max. Four hexes = 200.  Up to a six hexes attack with 300 stack points (which would be for instance 300 Inf. !, or 30 tanks)  Not only that, the six sided attack gives you an extra bonus of ... forgot how much exactly, 100%? Well it's a lot that's for sure. So you tend to attack from multiple hexes with units that aren't too large stackpoints-wise.
Personally I try to create units with 50 stack points, say 4 tanks and 10 Inf (so it's still tracked, fast, and Inf takes casualties for the tanks... as they are supposed to do.), or say 30 Inf men with some additional guns/mortars/etc up to 50 points. That way you can put two units in one hex without a penalty, *and* attack with the same two without penalty, maybe even use one of those two to move to a adjacent hex and then use it in the same attack giving you already a bonus.
 
Also note that mixing up units from multiple HQ's in an attack lowers the possible bonus you get, symbolizing the difficulties in communcation units have when they are subordinate to different HQ's.

[Limelight]

Whew - I knew there had to be a few grognards still out there somewhere
Thank you very much gentlemen! In hindsight I can see the 'need a page number' begging for a pass by if you hadn't actually needed the manual yourself in a few months.

Totally apprec all the detailed answers.

City = Red.....oooooh  hadn't thought about it taking damage when no battle occurred. Does the damage auto repair at one static rate simply by being behind my lines and attached to an HQ? Or are there means of accelerating it (the repair of damage)?

I'll look harder for the manual way of moving supply now that I know it exists - musta just missed it.

imho - game could really use a 'next unmoved unit' (unit w/move points left) cycle thingie. Seems a pretty simple item to have left out of a 'counters heavy' game.

HQ range = 3+. V good info - TY!!!!

The other color bar = HQ.....doh       I'm just started a few random games  and played a few turns before realizing I screwed something up....haven't made it to multiple HQ's with cities on each yet.....so that's why the bar never changed color lol.

Also - many thanks for the stack limit explanations! Oh and the warning about multiple HQ's units on a single attack....I'd a never thought of that.

I've been starting random games (x-Large, 6-8 players, Stone Age, no roads, shroud) and am finding supply to be a major limiting factor. I assume that is a factor of the 'no roads' setting? I tend to see Raw sites as Gold Mines so my Engineers can build roads/bridges and making a lot of ore in my Capitol too. Is that normal for the settings I am playing on, or am I missing something? I've yet to try using multiple HQ's to stretch the supply line due to PP being hard to come by early and needed to raise Raw's to lvl 2 - would that work? (i.e. be worth it?)

Again, thanks guys! Loving the game.

[82ndtrooper]

in a random game it may be that the red color you are seeing is that the city has no production set yet.you have to assign a newly captured city to a hq and set its production.

[british exil]

Hi Limelight, just got home from work. I read your 1st post but tried to find my manual and got my attention diverted by other persons in my household. Yep the GF, future wife.

I see most questions have been answered, but as 82ndtrooper pointed out, the red city means: it was neutral has now gone over to your regime and will take a while to turn to green. Once this happens it will produce 100%.

Try playing the game vs 1 AI then you'll get the hang of the rules.
Yes raw is very important to build roads, but also in producing tanks, motars and bigger guns. Ships and aircraft. So it is also important to try to save a bit of raw to improve your fighting power.

Of course you can upgrade your oil fields and mines, by sending engineers to the hex and click on repair. But you'll see it comes at a price.

In this game nothing is free, but then again who said war was fair?

If any questions pop up, PM me, living on CET time (Central European Time) always glad to help if I can.

Mat

[Josh]

/quote
 
Also - many thanks for the stack limit explanations! Oh and the warning about multiple HQ's units on a single attack....I'd a never thought of that.

I've been starting random games (x-Large, 6-8 players, Stone Age, no roads, shroud) and am finding supply to be a major limiting factor. I assume that is a factor of the 'no roads' setting? I tend to see Raw sites as Gold Mines so my Engineers can build roads/bridges and making a lot of ore in my Capitol too. Is that normal for the settings I am playing on, or am I missing something? I've yet to try using multiple HQ's to stretch the supply line due to PP being hard to come by early and needed to raise Raw's to lvl 2 - would that work? (i.e. be worth it?)

/end quote
 
Yes multiple units from different HQ's give you a penalty, the exact percentage is displayed somewhere in a horizontal bar in your lower half screen. You can try this out by adding two units from a HQ to an attack, notice the bonus you might get, then add another unit from another HQ and notice the bonus will not get maximized.
Supply is the lifeblood of all units, and the way supply gets through to your units is dependent on several things; First of all where is it's HQ, what's the terrain like, what is the movement type of the unit (horse/foot/tracked/wheel), and most important; are there roads leading to your troops?
Personally I have one Supreme HQ where all the supplies go to, most of the other HQ's are subordinate to the SHQ so their supplies come straight from the SHQ, meaning; they *must* have a road, or harbour, leading from an to that SHQ. If that line gets severed, or you didn't build enough roads, your troops will get a yellow dot in the counter, after that it gets red=bad. So you may have tracked units happily hunting on green meadows, the moment it starts to get muddy (rasputitsa [:D] ) you'll find that without roads they are stuck.
So in the early stages of reconnoitering your troops need engineers right behind them. Build roads to every wind direction, N,E,S and West... generally speaking ofcourse. That'll eat up your Ore supply very fast though, sometimes you don't even have enough to build some additional Light Tanks for instance (light tanks eat up grunts). So you might think about upgrading some Ore mines, lvlII is not too expensive.
Oh by the way, Railroad= Road in this game, there's no difference. Build trains for your SHQ, or maybe other HQ's as well (which I don't, but that just me) so you can Strategically Transport units/troops/counter by rail without using up your precious Oil supply.
Sorry have to go, have to play a few more turns of ATG before hitting the napsack. [:)]

[Josh]

Oh, to bump my postcount [:D] hehe, here's another tip; don't set your cities to producing Oil or Ore, *only* do that as a last resort. It's very inefficient, extremely inefficient really. Sometimes you find yourself on a map with no immediate access to Oil or Ore, then you have to count on Inf and horses. Warfare the old style. Granted you do need some Ore to build AT guns and the like so you may need to set your city to produce a little ore, but keep it at the most minimum.

[Falkon1313]

There's a nice diagram of HQ bonus range and frontage at:
fb.asp?m=2889219
if a visual helps. (helped me)

[Limelight]

oh yeah - that will def help it stick in my head - thanks Falkon!

Next up - "Reserve"

I don't get it. I'm talking about setting a Reserve of Supply on an HQ. I set one at 500 expecting the upper HQ to shuffle supply down (it had scads of supply and spare trains - yeah both HQ were on connecting rails) - but nothing happened. What does it do?

[82ndtrooper]

setting the reserve will cause the higher HQ to send additional supplies to the HQ asking. It will not send them all at once though, it will just increase what it would normal send by a % amount so that in a number of turns it will have sent the additional supply.

I dont know what the exact formula is for this though.

[Limelight]

ah okay - The sub-HQ prob just used up the small bit the Main HQ sent for the reserve, gotcha.

Next item confounding me atm ...... In random games,  I've occasionally run across cities that (once captured) only allow supply or PP to be built. Is that normal?

[Josh]

Yes that's normal. And a good thing too. Because what happened in AT was that once you got your offensive rolling you got so many cities producing stuff... that, well, your snowball became a massive avalanche if you know what I mean. Your army became unstoppable, not much fun in that. So what ATG does is limit your producing capacity... somewhat. Ofcourse you can build extra factories, but there's one thing you can't build and that's; supply. Only your hometown and maybe some additional cities may produce that, so that does limit your forces.

[Falkon1313]

Yes, cities populated by another people can only produce PP, Recycled Ore, or Synthetic Fuel.

[Limelight]

okay- I rem reading about that, but I had misunderstood it to mean only cities captured from other players (or AI) were like that. Didn't realize the neutral cities could also have that limiter.

Thanks guys - really apprec all the info!!