Basic Strategy Advice Article

[Vic]

Basic Strategy

In Advanced Tactics troop quantities and equipment technology being equal it will be skill and mastery of the art of war which will bring victory.

The first thing a good general should do is actually conceive a plan. This is especially so in this game. You should buy the weapons you need for your plan to succeed. Players without a plan will buy the wrong equipment and subsequently lose. Do not get tempted to just build a little bit of everything available!

Your plan should preferably be a flexible plan, since as you might have heard in war things tend not to go as planned.

A simple flexible plan should outline at which parts of the front (or expected front) to attack, and at which parts to defend. A smart general will also designate some areas behind the front to gather reserve forces.

More concretely you’ll have to decide what to produce, and if you want to invest production capacity in higher tech levels for those weapons. The earlier in the game you’ll get intelligence about what sort of composition the enemy forces are, the better. For example building a lot of light tanks when the enemy has medium tanks is not the smartest thing to do.

Aircraft are basically an offensive weapon, since they are best used in destroying or weakening enemy units at crucial locations, but they can also be used to good effect to blunt an enemy armoured spearhead. However enemy AA will usually be found in his offensive armies and it must be a very resource rich general to be able to afford AA guns with all troops in his line.

Mastery of the sky also serves other purposes: it will allow you to use paratroopers in offensive operations. Dropping troops far behind the lines can cause an enemy without reserves enormous troubles and facilitate a quick advance for your main force. Also bombing missions on bridges, forts and towns will prove much easier to conduct if not intercepted.

No battle will be decided by air alone though… especially not if the terrain is rugged and provides good cover against aircraft.

For waging a successful land campaign a lot of strategies are possible. However basically you should use tanks for offensive operations and infantry for defensive operations.

For countering enemy armoured thrusts you should use armour to counter attack, preferably stronger armour. Even massed infantry could do reasonably well counter attacking enemy armour formations. Try to keep the line where the landscape is most rugged, since armour will fight less well there. Also equip your infantry formations with some sort of AT weaponry, like bazooka’s or anti-tank guns. Having one or more armoured formations behind the line to counterattack the enemy armour will pay off, but make sure you are the one to attack first.

For breaking through enemy defensive lines you should try to focus all your armour on a small part of the front and then use the speed of armour to breakthrough in the undefended hinterland. Preferably the armour should make some sort of encirclement of part of the enemy front. Strong positions should be softened up with artillery and air strikes, before attacking with your armour. If the landscape is not suitable for armoured attack, make sure to have mortars and artillery with your infantry forces.

Of course even the strategies and counter strategies described above can be countered again. But as a rule of thumb they should work. It depends on the flexibility of your plan and your willingness to change tactics, once they are countered, if you will win or lose.

Already mentioned are reserves. Since fresh green troops will perish very easily it is more than advisable to have battle worthy, at least fully trained, troops behind the line to counter any enemy breakthroughs. These reserves should at least be partially mobile to be at the scene on time.

The weapon to easily underestimate is artillery. It might give you an annoying number of casualties, it does not kill enough to cause you any problems, but that is not the thing to worry about. Artillery reduces readiness dramatically and hurts morale if exposed to its fire multiple turns. Massed artillery fire will reduce your troop’s combat value by 50% or more. This preparation, maybe even combined with an air strike will ensure the actual attack of the enemy will slice through your line like a knife through butter. So if possible use airpower to destroy enemy artillery, otherwise try a small scale offensive if enemy artillery is massed.

The ultimate and game winning tactic on land is encirclement. If you manage to starve the enemy troops from supplies, they will be sitting ducks and yours for the taking when you want. For picking an area to encircle or deciding if to retreat to escape encirclement you should always look at the troops versus production power of the area. If there is no town, or a town to small to supply all troops in the area it will end badly for any encircled troops. However if the area has enough production power to supply all troops in the encirclement the only things that will count in the advantage of the attacker is that the defender will receive less or no reinforcements.

And last but not least… always keep a good eye on supply. Make sure you have adequate roads to provide supply in all eventualities. If there are bridges on the map, make sure you build some more on crucial points. Since one bridge is easily destroyed by an aerial bombing mission. A prudent general will always keep some engineers just behind the front to make sure supplies stay running. If there is no emergency the engineers can be used to repair damaged towns or build/repair airbases and fortifications.

Kind regards,
Victor Reijkersz