Which Sun Do Tzu Orbit?

[seabolt]

Yes, it's a terrible pun.

Given that everyone who ever owned a monocle or riding crop penned one, military maxims are cheaper than cannon fodder in the Iranian OOB. As detailed as this game already is, it's hard to spare the intellect to keep more than a handful in mind as guiding principles. I've chosen three as an arbitrary number.

The question is, which three maxims are most important to you? Mine are:

1. Pair strategic/operational offense and tactical defense: I read a history arguing that Julius Caesar first understood this concept, though I don't recall whether he articulated it as such. The point is that you need to *move* your troops to a spot that requires your opponent to attack them. In Gaul, Caesar would try to cross a supply line or move to threaten a town, such that his legions enjoyed the tactical defensive because the Gauls were compelled to bring the fight to them. Strat/op defense (sitting in a trench and thinking positive thoughts) suffers the disadvantage of allowing your opponent to mass his forces for a localized breakthrough (and of course to burn up several thousand artillery shells prepping for the assault). Tactical offense, of course, allows the bad guys to take the first shot ...

2. Know when to fold them: Well, OK, it's a poker maxim that applies equally to this game. At some point in learning poker, the difference between winning and losing isn't in knowing how to play winning hands, but in knowing when to discard losing hands. (The answer being: immediately, before they seduce you into investing further.) In this game, no matter how well things are going overall, there's usually one or two localized spots where you're getting your butt kicked, even against the AI. I try to recognize those places early and get out quickly. The counterargument is that, even if getting mauled, your units are pinning down units that could be diverted to tip the scales elsewhere. My countercounter is that, yes, but I'd rather those units become more meat fed into fights where I'm the one cranking the grinder.

3. All else being equal, the guy who displays *this much* more aggression will win. I don't know that I've ever seen this theory in print, but it's implicit in scores of Westerns and mob movies. The trick in just about any fight is to measure how far your opponent is willing to go and go a little further. It's suicidal to go way further---he'll decimate you with ATGMs/AT guns/SAMs in this game or check-raise you to the felt in poker---but you've got to take just enough more risk to seize the initiative. Exactly how much is just enough is kind of a subtle thing to assess, however ...

Anyway, those are mine. Please contribute yours.

-- 30 --

[Weasel]

Interesting points.

[Steel God]

Mine were always:

1) There's no such thing as too much recon.

2) Vehicles without escort are victims looking for a place to die.

3) It's called Fire and Movement for a reason. Fail to do one or the other, or fail to do them in the right order, and you might as well ask for terms.

[Vesku]

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

That's my one and only rule and by which I always try to play.

[wigam]

I'm meant to play this game with tactics and strategy ???.... All this time i knew there was something else to this game.

[Vesku]

There's only tactics in the game ... duh! :)

[seabolt]

Mine were always:

1) There's no such thing as too much recon.

2) Vehicles without escort are victims looking for a place to die.

3) It's called Fire and Movement for a reason. Fail to do one or the other, or fail to do them in the right order, and you might as well ask for terms.

1. I'm a mild contrarian on recon, only because I think many players will overdo it given the chance. They'll spend too much on scouts, then everything else sits while they sneak a net of them forward. It's often easy to defeat that style by gobbling up prime real estate and getting settled in. By the time that they've pieced together the big picture, it's not a pretty one.

2. Certainly, that would be my Commandment 1 of the SP Combined Arms Bible.

3. This one often bedevils me. My opponents rarely are generous enough to leave me LOS as my turn begins. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to elaborate on the topic?

-- 30 --

[seabolt]

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

That's my one and only rule and by which I always try to play.

A lean and terse philosophy to befit the Zen master. It does beg the question as to what constitutes a successful strategy in your experience? Do you concentrate on collecting victory hexes? Do you place greater emphasis on having a fantastic kill ratio in light skirmishing? On having a good kill ratio pressing the fight across the board to maximize enemy casualties? There's a lot of ways to go about trying to win this game. (Granted, few of which will produce more than a draw against a human opponent using the integral scoring. :rolleyes:)

-- 30 --

[Vesku]

What? You plan your actions before game? Man, you're good!

[seabolt]

What? You plan your actions before game? Man, you're good!

Well, I certainly know what has and has not worked in the past before the game. We each have an existing "style" that we modify to pregame variables (roughly in order of importance: knowledge of opponent's style, map, OOBs in play, special home rules, turn length, visibility). I enter the fight with a "game plan" based on those things, as I'm sure do most players. Usually, one contestant will have to change his plans on the fly during the game, based on his opponent's success at implementing his plan. My first and third rules largely are designed to maximize the odds that my opponent is the one changing his plans to adjust to my success, and they largely define the strategy that hopefully will keep my tactics from being just noise.

-- 30 --