Production question

[PittBull]

OK! I am still cutting my teeth on a small random map. Two, maybe three questions came up during my last endeavor:
1. When go to change the production say from armored cars to tanks, I get a box pop up letting me know that I will lose stored production. How do I avoid losing stored production when I need/want to produce a different unit in that slot?

2.I made more tanks than I had oil to support. How do I make more oil? Build an oil rig?

3. To avoid the AP supply penalty, should I move my SHQ closer to the front or create additional "operational" HQs spaced between the SHQ and frontline HQs?

I must be getting older. I played WITP solo and PBEM fairly well. I don't recall as steep a learning curve.

[Calliope]

1. That means last turn you produce some units for example 3.6 armour cars. And actually you get 3 armour cars this turn but the 0.6 doesn't disappear and left in your producion line. You can make full use of it for example the next turn you get 4.8 armour cars and actually you will get 5, and 0.4 left in the producion line. But if you use this production line for other uses, that means this 0.6 will be losen.

2. Leveling up the oil mines you have occupied.

3. Keeping the distance between your troops and HQs in 100 APs will suffer no penalty.

If you'd like a small random map game, plz call me. [:D]

[Tac2i]

re 2: You need to get some engineers to your oil (and raw) hexes and upgrade them (up to a max of level 3). It doesn't hurt to also capture the enemy's resource hexes.

[PittBull]

Thank you gentlemen.
For some reason, I thought I read that capturing enemy resources did not help my army. Must have misread it.
I typically put my engineers on the raw goods. Since PP are in such scarce supply, I rarely get those resources upgraded in favor of researching units. I start in the "stone age".

Re:"Keeping the distance between your troops and HQs in 100 APs will suffer no penalty" I know I'm gonna hate myself for asking this: How to you calculate distance in APs?

[Calliope]

You can use F5 to see the supply layer.[;)]

[Tac2i]

@Pittbull: once you feel comfortable with the game system move up to a larger map where you have more to work with.

[Josh]

In addition to the answers above;

1)Calliope already answered this one, but let me add that building things in *factories* instead of cities is much adviced. Usually in cities I build things like Supply, PP's, Inf and Staff and the like. Those you can't build anywhere else. Tanks and Armoured cars you can build in factories, and they have four porduction sliders. Whenever you want to change a production in a factory and don't want to loose the remaining production points, just choose a different production slider.

2) Sometimes I think ATG is the time between WWI and WWII because you start largely with Infantry units, Rifles and Cavalry, and end up with largely motorized units. I said "end up" meaning near the end of the game when you control lots of oil wells. Early game is all about Rifles, Cavalry and *horses*. Almost everything is done by horse early on, Artillery is drawn by horse and so is troop movement. Mechanize too soon and your Tanks are useless. So that's when the hunt for oilwells begins. Note that your airforce uses up even more gas, lots and lots more in fact.

3)Build roads/railroads with your engineers. Depending on ground conditions and movement type of an unit, an unit can be out of supply witin a few muddy hilly hexes. So Cavalry can be farther away from the supply grid without supply problems than tracked units. By building roads to them you widen your supply network.

[Strategiusz]

Ad.2. I think after a few turns it is very good to have tanks or armour cars even with stone age (and even with one city start on a small map) and it is impossible to fight without those units.

[Josh]

ORIGINAL: Madlok

Ad.2. I think after a few turns it is very good to have tanks or armour cars even with stone age (and even with one city start on a small map) and it is impossible to fight without those units.

That's true. Even if you have to build them in your cities instead of factories, you must build a few light tanks ASAP, just not too many because of your oil ...that will go down to zero faster than uhm...well very fast. And in order to prevent massive Infantry losses you must also build Artillery ASAP.