What's a Greenhorn General to do?

[Compass Rose]

I am in the early stages of trying to learn the PzC game system and I am facing the following reoccurring situation.

In real life, normally before an attack begins, intel would normally have areas mapped out to what type of defensive positions and enemy units, may be present. Granted, this info can never be 100% correct, however, at least the a commanding general would have some type of idea what he is up against.

In the few PzC games I've played so far, if you are positioned to be the attacker at the beginning of the game, you are basically going in blind as a bat, with no idea where any defensives and/or enemy units are!

So my question to all of you veteran PzC players out there is, how do you know how to set up your attack and know where to concentrate your engineer's, artillery, armor, etc, without loosing the first ten turns of your game (hopefully your game has more than 10 total turns!) to scouting around, on your own, trying to figure out the enemy's defensive positions, strong points and/or weaknesses are, so you can come up with an effective attack plan?

What are some of the tips and tricks that you guys use to combat this ever present problem I keep facing?

Thanks