How about some strategy & tactics?

[Kool Kat]

Gents:

Ok. I've bought into the PzC series... made my initial game title purchase (Sicily 43)... and started my first PBeM matches... so next on my agenda is learning more about the various strategies and tactics to utilize in game!

What other tips and hints can PzC vets point out for me?


Here's what the PzC User Manual has on "tactics."

Panzer Campaigns - Tactics

Here are some hints about game play that may help you enjoy your games more and perhaps enable you to do better against your opponents as well.

Don’t Attack In Travel-Mode
There are several penalties associated with units in Travel Mode, both having to do with their ability to defend as well as attack. In general, you should only use Travel-Mode to advance on the enemy position while using Road Movement, but then change to Deployed mode as soon as you encounter the enemy.

Disrupt Your Attackers
Disrupted units not only fire at a disadvantage, but they are also prohibited from assault attacking. The biggest effect you can have on an attacker is to disrupt his units. That will prevent him from assaulting your defensive positions and allow you to withstand the attack much better. You should consider the greatest value your artillery has against attacking armor is to disrupt the armor, not necessarily eliminate it. In this way, you can compel the attackers to break off the attack even though they still have strength.

Watch Out For the Combined Arms Penalty
Normally, any Combined Arms Penalty is reported to you when you add units to an assault attack. However, if Fog-of-War is in effect, then you will not be told when this penalty is in effect. So be careful. If you have vehicles assault attacking into non-Clear terrain against enemy infantry, make sure you have committed sufficient supporting infantry to protect your attacking vehicles.

Make Sure You Use Your Artillery
It may seem like an obvious fact, but firing your artillery into enemy positions is something you should consider as the first step in an attack. Often, when you are advancing on an enemy position, it is easy to forget that you have artillery available to support the attack and you try to just "blitz" the defending position. Think of your artillery first, not last, in your turn.

Attack Systematically
This has to do with the tempo of your attack. It’s easy to get excited about taking an enemy position and lose track of the fact that you are taking excessive casualties in the attack. Take your time. Plan your attack. Use your artillery and air support. Coordinate your efforts and you will end up losing much less that if you just attack piecemeal.

Watch Your Unit’s Battle Fatigue Levels
The fastest way to make a fighting unit ineffective is to push its Fatigue level to the point that it will take a long time to recover. When a unit takes losses from combat it also accumulates Fatigue Points. You'll see this as the fatigue level values change in color from green in the Low range, to yellow for Medium and to orange for High Fatigue. Units that move or fire have no chance of recovering from the effects of Fatigue.

Managing Your Units
Rotate your units to rest the heaviest engaged before they become too Fatigued. As a unit’s fatigue level approaches the top of the Medium Fatigue range, consider pulling it out of the fight for a rest. Units in the High Fatigue range will not stand up in battle and could quickly Disrupt and then become Broken causing an crisis in your lines.

Aiding your Unit’s Recovery from Disruption (and Broken)Status
As carefully as you may watch Fatigue or manage your units, some will still Disrupt as a result of combat and if they continue to be fired upon they may become Broken. When this occurs, there are a number of things you can do that will assist in the successful recovery of these units. Keep HQ's within range of their parent HQ's thereby increasing their chance to remain "in Command". The closer a unit is to its HQ the better the chance of recovery. As recovery is based on current unit Morale and factors such as amount of Fatigue, place units that are out of action in locations where they will not be fired upon, so as to lower their Fatigue.

[Mr Grumpy]

Looks like you have a good handle on this already..........

Knowing when to assault is a bit of a black art as you can never see the "dice roll", so it is only over time that you will gain a feel for what works and what doesn't, the experience is in spotting the bad "dice rolls" and realising there was nothing wrong with your decision to assault, you just got some bad luck!

[Kool Kat]

Gents:

Here's a few more tactics I've picked up in the short time I've played Sicily 43!

Select Save Movement Points
Allows units to move / fire. Units in travel mode can exit travel mode. Artillery can unlimber. You can move units to the full extend of their movement allowance knowing you have enough Movement Points to perform needed operations at the end of units' movement.

Fixed units can dig in
Improves defensive positions prior to a unit's release.

View Victory Dialog for enemy Intel
Victory conditions are always calculated relative to that side resulting in a victory level for that side. If the enemy starts first and is the First Side, you are able to view his losses.

Combine/Breakdown
Holding down the alt key when selecting this option will cause all possible units in the current hex to be Combined regardless of which units you have selected.

[Kool Kat]

Gents:

More PzC tips... this time from Glenn Saunders!

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Players

Non-Tactical Play Tip by Panzer Gruppe Saunders of the John Tiller\Panzer Campaign Test Team

There – now that I have your attention, below you will find a number of Game Play “Tips and Techniques” to extend your pleasure in the Panzer Campaign Series. These are not intended to be tactical suggestions. Rather they are ways to use the tools provided by the game interface to play more effectively!

Divisional Markings
Keeping units of the same Division roughly in the same area of the map is an effective way to aid engaged units to recover from Disruption. To assist you in determining “which unit belongs where”, turn ON the “Divisional Markings” setting using the button on the Toolbar. This puts a colored Unit symbol in the 2D Icon and thus makes it easy to see which units should remain grouped.

Furthermore, you can use the “Highlight Org” and select one unit to find all units of that organization. This can be different than Divisional Units, in that selecting a Battalion and pressing the Highlight Org button, will show units of that Battalion’s regiment, usually another 3 or 4 units, while the Divisional Markings will indicate the units of the entire Division, often more than a dozen units.

3D Map Mode
Some veteran Panzer Campaign players find that viewing the Map in 3D Normal Mode is a very effective means of evaluating the “lay of the Land”. The “4” hot key jumps you instantly to 3D Normal view and the “2” Key returns the map the 2D Normal where most players spend the bulk of their play time.

Ctrl Key to Fire
Even though the interface provides a button to switch to FIRE Mode, veteran players often find it more effective to keep the game in normal MOVE Mode. Then, when they wish to fire, they hold the <CTRL> Key to put the game in temporary FIRE Mode.

Faster Play with less Mouse Clicks
In most cases, a unit can fire three times per turn and often you may find you want to target all available shots at the same defending unit. To speed play and fire all remaining shots at the same target, hold the <ALT> Key. You can also fire more than one unit at a time by selecting several units when you fire.

However, you still have to deal with the “Fire Report Dialog” which by default has an OK button. However, if you select “Continuous Action” using the menu item Settings | Continuous Actions, the Fire Report Dialog is displayed for a few seconds and will disappear on its own while the next shot is resolved.

Used with the temporary FIRE Mode as described in the Tip above, a player could use Continuous Action, select several units, hold the <CTRL> and the <ALT> take all available shots from several units with a single Right Mouse Click.

Finding unFixed available Units
Using “Fixed units” is the Scenario Designers way to some command paralysis or condition beyond the control of the players who have a “Birds Eye View” of all the action. When playing a Scenario where many units on the phasing players side are fixed, a good way to start your turn is to press the Highlight Fixed button. This will show you the units that you are able to move in that turn. But keep in mind that units that are “Fixed”, can still fire if an opposing unit is within range.

Reachable Hexes and Saved Movement Cost
The game interface features a Reachable Hexes button on the toolbar. With a Unit selected and the button depressed, any hexes that a unit could not move to in this turn become are shaded. Be careful if more than one unit type with different movement costs is selected when using Reachable Hexes. In this case, the lit hexes will show where the farthest units can reach and not where ALL selected units can reach

This button can also be used in conjunction with the Save Movement Cost button to show how far a unit could move while reserving enough Movement Points to either change out of Transport Mode or Fire from the new location.

Don’t Forget your Artillery and your available Air Missions
As simple as it may sound, often newer players to the game overlook the fact that they have available a very powerful weapon in their Indirect Fire Artillery and plunge forward and assault a position before applying any suppression fire. Press the “Artillery Dialog” button to see a list of all units you can fire, and do it early in your turn. Check again at the end of the turn to make use you have used up all these assets.

A similar story goes for the Air Support. An Air Mission is a way to call fire on any visible position. However, once used, an Air Mission will not return for several turns. So unlike Artillery, do not try to use all these up, but don’t hesitate to use them when required either. Air Missions are a very powerful weapon that is very effective, especially when used against artillery, HQs or enemy units in Transport Mode. Don’t over look that you have them to use – but use them wisely.

Finding unUsed Units
In some games, there are many units and a it could be necessary to finish a turn over more than one sitting. How can you remember which units have moved\fired and which units have not?

The answer lies in the Toolbar button “Used Movement Points”!

With this button pressed all units that have performed any action, either movement or firing will be highlighted and thus units that are not highlighted have not been used in this turn and may be worthy of further consideration.

[Mr Grumpy]

Fixed units can dig in
Improves defensive positions prior to a unit's release.

Also there are some units that when changing into travel mode lose movement points, so if you do this while they are still fixed (assuming they are out of the LOS of your opponent) will mean they will have full movement allowance on the move they are released.

How many times do you end up one hex short of where you needed to be on a particular turn...........

[jonnymacbrown]

Fixed units can dig in
Improves defensive positions prior to a unit's release.

Also there are some units that when changing into travel mode lose movement points, so if you do this while they are still fixed (assuming they are out of the LOS of your opponent) will mean they will have full movement allowance on the move they are released.

How many times do you end up one hex short of where you needed to be on a particular turn...........

"I may have lost a battle but I never lost a minute." Napoleon

(Until the Wateroo Campaign that is!).

jonny

[ComradeP]

Learn when to use which units, and for what. Firing at enemy units with low SA and/or low quality units (most Soviet units and, I expect, Italian units in Sicily 43 as well) tends to get your boys disrupted for minimal gains. If you have plenty of men, that's less of a problem.

Piling poor units into a hex with a single good unit is not as good an idea as it tends to be in other wargames, but it can still work. The defenders will use their best quality value, but the attacker can target the likely good unit with direct - and artillery fire.

The combined arms penalty doesn't necessarily hurt too much as the defender. Due to using the best quality value, you might on average actually create a more effective stack. All defending units need to be disrupted or killed for an assault to capture the hex, and the system often doesn't distribute casualties evenly but lets one unit take a beating. That can be a bit odd, that even when things go poorly one unit can lose most of its strength and gain a large amount of fatigue whilst the other unit(s) in the hex are mostly or even entirely unharmed.

Don't expect artillery to be the historical killer, use it to soften enemy positions but don't expect it to win the battle for you. As poor quality units disrupt faster, it makes sense to use your artillery primarily on those and enemy artillery unless you have a lot of artillery. A poor quality unit might disrupt or gain a fatigue penalty level (and thus a firepower and quality penalty) after a good barrage, whilst an A quality units tends to shrug it off unless the barrage was truly massive, the unit has been at the frontline for a while or the unit is so small that even handful of losses result in a significant reduction of its strength.

Tanks are not superweapons, more the opposite. They're good for isolating units through movement, but they're not good at taking a position. Many gun units are also good for holding a position by having an extra unit in the hex that needs to be disrupted, but not much else.

[Fog of War]

An very old but good help file.


http://www.hpssims.com/Pages/Hints_Tips/...Habits.htm