Army Make-Up question

Place any military topics in this forum. How long can you run your country peacefully?

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GeneralIce
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Army Make-Up question

Post by GeneralIce »

Hey Guys,

I've brought this game about a week ago and been playing as China as per recommended by one of the forum post here to learn how to play and have a huge margin of error. This game is truly a magnificent strategy game and I really love strategy games.

I've gotten the grasp on economy, research, production, and etc. However, I seem to be failing miserably in warring with other nations. In my first attempt in warring, I decided to go to war with Mongolia and go straight for their capital. What a big mistake that was as I learned quickly about Supply and couldn't even make it to the capital and if I did, it was only a couple of tanks to the cities, which I lose invariably.

So I restore to the last saved checkpoint and tried another strategy, I learned Diplomacy and the importance of it so I made formal alliances with Mongolia, Taiwan (yeah odd, isn't it), South Korea, and other smaller countries in the south border. My intention was to war with Russia and take a huge swath of their lands. I have been building up and been buying advanced designs from USA (namely F-35C) but all of their technology. (I later found out that this is a terrible mistake to buy up their technologies as I can't get completion bonus so lesson learned there).

At any rate, I have over 60,000 Personnel committed to the border of Russia and keep out any incursions while focusing on two fronts. On these two fronts, I have a combined of 80,000 personnel ready to fight. Now, I made sure that most of them are top of the line units and not these outdated units. I am using ZTC 98C tanks with W 200 Arty. I have F-35C and J-10N/J-10 warplanes ready to fight the air against the Russians. They have a huge air fabrications and have tons of planes. I decided to go ahead and declare war (I did this several times as I played it over and over to try to understand the combat). I suffer huge losses against the Russians. In a course of a week, I lose over 100 units against them and I am trying to repair them.

I think I'm doing something wrong because I read the AARs in the other forum and people don't even lose that many, maybe 1 unit or such. However, I read through a lot of them to see what they're doing to protect their units and it's not saying much.

I guess my question is, how is it that you guys are able to war with countries and not lose so many units as I'm losing? I have a hell of a time taking cities because they're full of garrisons and my tanks lose badly to them. Plus I don't think my arties are firing even though I'm ordering them to bombard the cities, it doesn't even work. I would really appreciate any tips, tricks, guides, and etc. I've been reading up Supremewiki.com but nothing on war guides except basic warring.

Hope to hear soon!
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Ruges
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by Ruges »

The secrets of being smarter then the AI.

Pause the game allot and look at the battlefield. Send units that are damaged back for repairs. Micro manage your units. everyone that is on the frontline should be issued an order by you. use stacks of 7 for ground units. Keep units in supply. You need to have supply trucks moving in behind your frontlines, exspecialy if your using tanks. use units with high close combat when attacking hexes with a high defensive value. (IE infantry to attack cities not tanks). Have plenty of recon. Your guys cant shoot what they cant see. Have airsup. If your fighting a larger airforce be sure to keep your units on yourside of the border, and use more ground based AA to support them. Keep a good line of arty behind your frontline, that has supply vehicles supporting it.
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

EDIT: I see Ruges posted as I was formulating this. Good advice also.


Welcome to SR2020. The first question I must ask, what version (exactly) are you using? Which sandbox did you load at start? Global Crisis or World 2020?


Based on what you typed you have already gleaned much information from these forums, great, kudos.

Could you go into a little more detail concerning your strategy? Are you manually controlling your army or letting the ai do it?

I will list some general stuff to keep in mind;

1. Tanks are for open field combat, they perform badly in urban (city) environments try to not use them when attacking a city.

2. Did you move to DEFCON one? This give a 10% boost to your unit efficiency and build speed.

3. Set your Military Salaries and Maintenance/Training sliders to max. Again, units will perform much better.

4. When trying to obtain Air Superiority I like to use Ground based AA units in conjunction with Air units. Set a “flak trap” just at the border, use your air to encroach on the enemy air space, then quickly withdraw to max combat distance of your units. This will trigger a response from Russian air units and you should be able to damage them greatly with the combined ground and air units you have.
NOTE: Russia has a large inventory of “HIGH” flying air units. There are only a few air units in game that can hit them when they are at high altitude. Pay attention to this.
5. As typed in #1 above, use ground forces best suited for the task at hand. Use your map overlay to see which locations are Mountainous, close combat or defensive terrain. Then choose a ground unit with superior close attack values.

6. Artillery, the WS-2 is a phenomenal weapon due mainly to its range, however it has to have a line of sight to something to fore at it. Just because something is in range does not mean you can hit it. Have other units, stealth ground units, spies, ground based rader etc, “paint” the targets, (get a solid visual on them) then the arty will fire. One of my favorite methods of dealing with Taiwan as China is to park about 80 WS-2s on my coast, infiltrate subs along the Taiwanese west coast and let the barrage begin, I then ignore Taiwan while dealing with other things. Eventually I come back and almost their entire force is eliminated. If something is in range and you can see it through any means you can select the arty and bombard. Keep in mind the WS-2 is a SLOW firing unit. You will not see “rapid volleys”.
Ground tactic, there are 2 methods I use depending on which country I am playing and the units I have available.
a. I will move on the road opening a “supply corridor” s hexes wide on each side, ignoring other terrain/area. I move from city/base to city/base always keeping that supply corridor open and supply trucks, or planes flying if I have air superiority. Lends itself well to fast/rapid thrusts deep into enemy territory.
b. Broad, front long advances with every 2nd hex having combat units which move in tandem. This acquires more territory and keeps a solid supply line at the entire front, but is slow and tedious.
These are some general things to keep in mind and you may want to alter them to suit your play style. There are several ways to go about playing the game and getting positive results.

Have fun, first and foremost. There are several very helpful people on these forums which will do their best to answer/guide you as best they can.

Oh, and start and AAR so *I* can follow the glorious restoration of the Eastern Han dynasty!
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GeneralIce
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GeneralIce »

Thank you so much for all the responses. I truly appreciate it.

The version that I have, I'm not certain but I will find it when I get home. I assumed it's the latest one because I recently downloaded it from Stream. As for the sandbox, it's World 2020. I'm not ready for Global Crisis. :)

As for how I'm controlling my army, I'm, in general, using "Attack Unit" command for the stacks to a specific hex. I am not entirely certain that they will fire on their own on hostile forces. It seems they do but I have to do more testing to see if I can trust them to do so. I am pretty well aware of the ROE and have set their initiatives to high and withdraw when moderately damaged. They will also actively engage any enemies. I am trying to use some of the stack formations that I'm seeing here as suggested.

As for DEFCON, I do not think so. That's a great suggestion and I will up it to DEFCON one. As for salaries and maintaence, I wasn't aware of that so I will max that as well. Better efficiency is what I like. :)

I never did mass produce ground AA but have a lot of ground defenses through military installations that I've installed along the border of Russia as a place to engage from but also to set up air defenses/radar to detect into their border. Although, I didn't really pay attention to the type of hexes on the map. I will start looking at that and this is great because that's the kind of detail that should be in any combat!

It seems key to have supply trucks and I did have a bit of them near the arty but never see them firing. It's rather difficult to see if the artys are firing. I'm not using missiles to converse on it and use it for the much more difficult targets in Russia as the targets I'm attacking are soft targets in my opinion. I think that if I can get my artys working then a lot of this will be much easier as I do not care for civilian deaths or damage. (Yes, I'm evil). I think the issue is Line of Sight as suggested so I will plant some spies and work on figuring out the stealth aspect as I did read up on it but didn't realize how powerful it can be for spotting. Would Birds in the sky help? I know that I have AWACs that could look into their territory. I should also ask, would radars provide the line of sight or that's a different thing?

It also helps to know that I should have paid more attention to close combat value. I have a ton of Green Berets II (I brought the designs from USA.. I just love them!) but I believe I was misusing them as they were getting killed quickly in the open when trying to take a city covertly. I had Stallion helicopters transporting them for me to different targets. So I will start working on mass producing more infantries that are designed for close combat.

My strategy in general is to take ownership of most of Russian land and put it to better use, namely my use. :lol: I was using infantries (wheeled ones) along the entire border to keep the Russians from encroaching on my terrorities until my main forces can get up there and start pushing them back behind the Monogolia border (which is a lot of land). However, from the feedback of both of you, I need to revamp my military make-up so I think I will re-start a new game, now that I got a lot of the basics down and understand what kind of units I need to use.

I most certainly will set up a AAR. I loved your AAR, GIJoe597, about fighting the Russians and trying to establish a beachead. Very epic read. You certainly know what you're doing. Too bad that you aren't continuing it. I would have loved to see how it plays out and if you did defeat the monster that you created. :)
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by number47 »

GeneralIce wrote:I loved your AAR, GIJoe597, about fighting the Russians and trying to establish a beachead. Very epic read. You certainly know what you're doing. Too bad that you aren't continuing it. I would have loved to see how it plays out and if you did defeat the monster that you created. :)
Have a heart GIJoe597 and unpause that game :wink:
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

GeneralIce wrote:The version that I have, I'm not certain but I will find it when I get home. I assumed it's the latest one because I recently downloaded it from Stream. As for the sandbox, it's World 2020. I'm not ready for Global Crisis. :)
I have less than zero faith in steam. I am in the minority, I know, and it’s a generational thing. I pay for something I want it in my hands not floating in the neither regions.

GeneralIce wrote:As for how I'm controlling my army, I'm, in general, using "Attack Unit" command for the stacks to a specific hex.
Based on how you typed you have your ROE set, you can just move a stack to a hex or adjacent to your target and they will attack automatically, no need to use the attack command. (Less clicking)

GeneralIce wrote:...never see them firing. It's rather difficult to see if the artys are firing.
When they fire you will see their HUD icons for supply change color, indicating they are low on supply. Icons may be red if supply is very low until it fills again and returns to green. Also, if you click on the unit(s) you can see their name turn "grey" indicating it is in action.
GeneralIce wrote:...as the targets I'm attacking are soft targets in my opinion.
You can know for certain if you click on the hex the enemy unit is in, select the LAND icon from radial menu then click MILITARY PRESENCE on the window to the lower right. This will then allow you to double click on the enemy unit and see the Technical Readout.
GeneralIce wrote:Would Birds in the sky help? I know that I have AWACs that could look into their territory. I should also ask, would radars provide the line of sight or that's a different thing?
Yes airborne radar platforms would work as would land based radars. Anything that allows you to see an enemy unit allows all your units to see the enemy unit.
GeneralIce wrote:I have a ton of Green Berets II
I use them all the time, they are great for infiltrating. Oddly enough, yesterday I was reading where we were having this discussion at an earlier date. GB’s are great when on stealth and dropped behind enemy lines or walked into a city/complex. When on Stealth mode they will not trigger the garrisons. They will engage any unit based in the city/base. Once the ground units are destroyed you can then entrench the GB’s and turn stealth off. This way they do not have to fight the garrisons and the ground units at same time. I would suggest if you do this, to have an air unit move in to resupply them after they have defeated the ground units and before they engage the garrisons. Air units will not trigger garrisons either, just be sure to have local air superiority.
There is a US Helo in game that has a stealth value of 130. MH-47E Chinook SOF, four of them will hold 7 GB/SF and they can move many times where other air units would be seen.
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

NOTE: Something funky with the forums I could not make this one post, had to break it into 2 parts. Might have something to do with this computer still having XP and what many websites consider an outdated browser. :(
GeneralIce wrote:I need to revamp my military make-up so I think I will re-start a new game…
I maintain you will have more fun and derive a greater sense of accomplishment if you press on with the current game and start to tailor it to fit the info you now have. Much better when you rise from adversity.
GeneralIce wrote:I most certainly will set up a AAR. I loved your AAR, GIJoe597, about fighting the Russians and trying to establish a beachead. Very epic read. You certainly know what you're doing. Too bad that you aren't continuing it. I would have loved to see how it plays out and if you did defeat the monster that you created.
number47 wrote:Have a heart GIJoe597 and unpause that game :wink:
Thank you, and there are many here with much more knowledge of this game than I. I simply have more free time it seems. :) Assuming I get my main gaming computer back with all data intact I will do so.
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GeneralIce
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GeneralIce »

Version is 6.8.1 by the way.

Alright, it's been a couple of days and I've been playing the same game. I haven't got around to doing a AAR because I still feel like a complete noob and I'll just get laughed at. Especially at this part.

I made peace with the Russians and decided to focus on smaller, manageable targets that I can handle and learn more from. So I targeted Vietnam, much to the displeasure of the UN and USA (Screw USA :lol: ). However, I had the perfect line up, I got my infantries, tanks, artys, and tons of supply trucks in position. I proceed to declare war on Vietnam. I select all 5 stacks of W-2 400mm Artys to start bombarding targets. One stack that has 7 units, only four of them started to bombard but the rest of the artys refused to fire. I've spent a hour trying to get them to start bombarding. I cannot figure it out.

I have 8 stacks of heavy supply trucks between all of these guys and 4 of them are directly behind the artys. When I say stacks, I have 7 HEAVY SUPPLY TRUCKS in each stack. Only four of them out of 35 artys will fire. I'm noticing that most of the arty do not have a supply of 106 like the artys that are firing. However, their supply level is at 100%. The other artys have supply level of 56/56, 60/60, or 61/61.

Even worse, I have a military base that's in the epicenter of all of this and has two supply depot.

Can anyone tell this noob how to get his artys (all of them) to start firing?
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

I cannot tell from what you describe what the issue might be, assuming you have the GLOBAL ROE and individual ROE set correctly and all are in range. If you can upload or email a save game I would be interested in looking at it.
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GeneralIce
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GeneralIce »

GIJoe597 wrote:I cannot tell from what you describe what the issue might be, assuming you have the GLOBAL ROE and individual ROE set correctly and all are in range. If you can upload or email a save game I would be interested in looking at it.
Sure, what's your email? I'll send it to you but you must promise not to laugh at my noobish way of handling China :D Haha
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by Kellick »

Don't be embarrassed, there's a ridiculous amount of units in this game, I learned a lot about military hardware from playing this game. First by trying to figure out why sometimes what you would think would be an upgrade path doesn't seem like much of an upgrade. Then from trying to fill gaps by modding. And this isn't my first wargame.

Like GIJoe597 said, if they are supplied and their ROE (has to be individual, if it were global none of them would fire) are set correctly then I can't imagine what the issue is.

If most of them have 106 max and the others have less then they are at less than full strength. The way unit stats work is most of them are for 1 squad, an artillery battalion has 18 squads. The WS-2 400mm MLRS each carry 5.9 tons of ammo. 5.9x18=106.2.
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

GeneralIce wrote:Sure, what's your email? I'll send it to you but you must promise not to laugh at my noobish way of handling China :D Haha

PM sent.
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

Kellick wrote:Like GIJoe597 said, if they are supplied and their ROE (has to be individual, if it were global none of them would fire)...
Not necessarily;

There are two options - Global ROE can be applied to either all current and future units or future units only. If the smaller units are from game start and he applied the Global ROE to only future units that would explain why the new "full strength" units fire and the older "understrength" do not. :)

As the saying goes, a save game is worth a thousand posts... :)
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GIJoe597 »

OK, I think I see your issue, it is something I did not even consider since it is, well obvious. :P


The majority of your WS-2 are loadied with missiles.... Anti Ship missiles.. They will fire at land targets once you unload them. This is also why some units showed differerent supply capacities. If they had missiles loaded, the missiles take part of the supply capacity.

Sorry, I did not even think about missiles being the issue. :(
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Re: Army Make-Up question

Post by GeneralIce »

GIJoe597 wrote:OK, I think I see your issue, it is something I did not even consider since it is, well obvious. :P


The majority of your WS-2 are loadied with missiles.... Anti Ship missiles.. They will fire at land targets once you unload them. This is also why some units showed differerent supply capacities. If they had missiles loaded, the missiles take part of the supply capacity.

Sorry, I did not even think about missiles being the issue. :(
So the missiles affects the supply, most interesting.

Does the type of missiles affect it as well? If I load it with ground missiles instead of anti-ship missiles, it would fire on ground?

You are a life-saver! :)
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