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

[Ricky B]

I understand your pain! What you bring up, in a more general way, is one thing that is missing and hard to replicate in the PzC series - beginning of the battle intel. Just realize, what is a problem for you is even worse for the AI as it retains absolutely nothing from turn to turn, while you at least do learn after the first few turns what is what, up to a point.

I do believe you are analyzing it a bit too much on a tactical basis - at your level, there would be reports of approximate enemy forces/formations around the area, but you wouldn't be looking so much at the actual defensive positions, that would be much lower level.

As to your question, I know some players will open the scenario and look around at the enemy forces, which can then overstate the knowledge historically present, although a more brief overview can give you a feel for things without knowing the position of every gun that study would give you. Personally, I might open the scenario and just look at the jump map to get a feel for things, and frequenly open the strength dialogue to see what totals the 2 sides have, but overall I like playing the scenarios blind. Then if I play again, I might have a historical feel for the dispositions of the other side, and even my side, if I don't play it again for a couple of years.

In my case, as I was trained to do in the Marines, I analyze the map at the start with FOW on, trying to determine what I can currently see, how the terrain is laid out, where the objectives are, probably enemy reserve areas, etc. Then I use this to plan my attack, or defense, and then adjust from there. There usually isn't too much unplanned bumping about, I don't believe in ever attacking all along the front, I like to do more probing and finding where to concentrate forces, and doing lots of probes until I find the areas to hit hard.

Rick

[Volcano Man]

Yes, I agree with Rick. Open up the scenario before you start and look at the general situation on the other side. Don't go so far as to look at the strength of the units opposing you (don't click on the stacks), and instead look at the jump map and 2D zoom in map to get an idea. If you do that without looking at stack composition, unit strengths and writing down obstacles and minefield locations and such, then you probably would have a reasonably historical amount of starting intel to go on.

Once you play past the first day, it will all be irrelevant. :)

[Compass Rose]

Rick,

I too, am not one for peeking at the enemy setups. When it is my turn to pick a battle to play, against my PBEM friends, I go 100% off of the description, and hope for the best. I don't agree with peeking ahead of time, since I would view this as "cheating" since I would now know where my enemy is at and what type of units he has. If I wanted to know this ahead of time, I'd just play my games with no FOW. Doing this would take alot of the fun out of playing a game.


Rick & Ed,

Are you guys suggesting to open a new game and in the setup, set both players as manual control, to be able to look?


Thanks

[Ricky B]

Personally, I open up a standard game, rather than PBEM, both sides under human control. Click on the jump map and see where the various colored spots are and shut it down - and I don't do this in a small scenario, as that would give fairly specific information on enemy deployments or at least reserves - usually on big campaigns or quite large battles, which are most of what I play, so I know there is a big blob of red units on my left front type of thing.

Rick

[JDR Dragoon]

In many cases you will also have air and ground reconnaisance units available, which can give you some pointers towards enemy strenght and dispositions. If you use these to check out likely terrain by overfligt or by using the special scouting feature of reconnaisance units, you can in most cases get a general idea of where the enemy is. Even a simple "?" helps.

[Mr Grumpy]

You have raised an issue i have thought was a problem since i first bought my first PzC title, the scenario description is too vauge and opening a scenario and looking at your opponents units in detail gives too much info.

So the only halfway house is to do what Rick & Ed suggest and look at the zoomed out overview without looking at the scenario in detail, i believe that gives you the same amount of historical info that the commander would have had on average.

[Philippe]

This makes me think that scenarios should come with a pair of maps -- one zoomed out with the counters turned off, and one a thumbnail with everything turned on (and everything but the thumbnail trimmed out).

Perhaps this is an addition for a future round of Volcano Man mods: a map section folder, with folders for each scenario with two maps in each that would be available to both sides. Not as horrendous to make as it sounds since default and _alt scenarios wouldn't need their own maps.

I've noticed that the thumbail view seems to to be a condensed version of the zoomed-out view (in the Total War in Europe series at least), so as long as you don't use the HPS zoomed-out graphics these maps should be quite instructive (perhaps too instructive).

I'm not volunteering. My hands are pretty full at the moment and there are people around who like taking screenshots of large maps.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Total blind is the only way to go. Of course, I don't win much, but, IMO, it is more fun and challenging that way.

[The SNAFU]

I dont know that there is a right or wrong answer. I tend to agree that a brief peek at the situation in zoomed out 2D and/or the jump map gives one a general sense of the enemy positions without giving away too much information. I feel this reasonably (and fairly) represents what one side would normally know about the other. After the first turn is complete most everything in the intial setup is old news at which point you must rely on your air and ground recon for intel.