The Art of Force Composition

[Kelen]

Unless it is a totally random generated map you should have an idea of what type of terrain you are playing over, e.g. desert, heavily wooded, city, steep hills, and as such that is always your starting point for your selection, (there not much point on buying a load of guns if you're fighting in forest or city as you are unlikely to have much of a LOS, the same with armour, send your tank force through a city or forest and they'll die without you even knowing what hit them).

I tend to go for a combined arms force, that is at least 1/3 infantry and not more than 1/3 armour, (there are some that will say that armour wins the day and always go armour heavy in your force pick, but that's them).

Unless you want to pick specific units for specifc jobs, (e.g. SMG sqauds for assault work) always try and buy units in as large a formation as possible, i.e. if you can afford a battalion buy it rather than 3 seperate companies, as you'll find that they work out much cheaper, (I have 1 particular opponent who continually buys seperate german companies of Motorised Infantry, Paras and Mountain troops, and I'm still baffled as to why as none of them perform specifc roles).

Everyone has their own playing style, but it helps to have a plan as to how you intend to use units before you buy them. Are you going to use your armour agressively to seek out and destroy your opponents in which case you'll want proper tanks, not SP guns, and good armour; are you going use them from ambush, in which case SP guns are fine and much cheaper, or in a support role, in which case you'll want lots of HE, (and a good size gun), and more AT guns to deal with the armour.

As for setting up your forces, well that really depends on want you want to do, but a basic rule is don't leave any unit, be it armour, support unit or infantry on their own, (unless you have a specifc intent for doing so, e.g. decoy, sacrifical pawn, scout, etc. Where possible make use of combined arms, have your infantry covered by support weapons, (thats why they're called 'support' weapons), and have them backed up with AT guns, armour and/or offboard artilley; and reversely don't go sending your armour off across the map unsupported by infantry.

No single unit type is going to the battle for you every time, and eveything is good and bad at doing certain things, so, (aprt from the exceptions already mentioned), a balanced force mix will give you the best chance of handling whatever the map gives you, and combing those units to give a mutually supporting battlegroup will give you the best chance of not making a total hash of things.

That said, everyone has their own way of playing, and certain people appear just natually better at using certain units types than others, so try thing out and see what your playing style is.