VR Designs

Welcome back to Advanced Tactics college! It has been some time since the last lesson, but I have been away to code on the next DC title in a log cabin in the north of Sweden this summer. So far we have discussed combat troops and equipment, today we will tackle a slightly different subject: troop transportation and motorization by land transport vehicles.

By putting transport vehicles in your HQ you will provide your HQ with transfer capacity points. Trucks and halftracks provide 1000 regular land transfer points per vehicle and trains will provide 2000 rail transfer points. Horses do not provide any transfer points. These transfer points allow you to strategically transfer whole units from one place on the map to the other side or to transfer individual troops from your HQ to frontline units many dozens of hexes away. It is important to realize that trucks, halftracks and trains only provide transfer capacity points when they are stationed in HQ units, when they are stationed in normal units they just mobilize the troops in that specific unit.

If you are in a scarcity of production situation this means you’ll have to chose between mobile frontline formations or high HQs that enable you to reinforce and (strategically) transfer.

A prudent player always makes sure he has at least some HQs with some transfer capacity. Because this will allow this player to make some emergency moves to react to enemy threats. Agreed… only a limited number, but most of the time that is all you need to contain or slow down a surprise enemy offensive, unexpected paradrop or amphibious landing. Time bought by containment will allow you to move in larger forces by foot, horse or own motor transport.

Trains are by far the best to use to provide these transfer capacity points. First of all because trains do not use oil when you use their rail transfer capacity points, secondly because they provide double the amount of points that trucks and halftracks provide. However the downside of using trains is that any transfers you do are limited to what can be reached by rail-lines. Trucks and halftracks don’t suffer this limitation.

Though trucks spend oil while they (strategically) transfer troops, they are cheaper to build then trains in terms of raw resources and production time. Trucks are also the more flexible buy, since they can be switched from HQs to units to provide motorization. Granted you can send trains to frontline units as well. But “motorization” by train will limit them to railroad tracks and in most cases it is only practical to do so for artillery and flak units.

A transfer point basically represents the ability to transport 1 weight unit (for example 1 infantry) over 1 action point. For example: transferring 10 infantry over 10 hexes connected by rail movement (10 ap per hex) will cost a 1000 transfer capacity points. Keep in mind that the action point cost of a certain strategic transfer from hex A to hex B is not the “straight line” cost between those hexes but a “triangulated” cost from hex A to the hex of the HQ providing the transfer points and from there to hex B.

Now using your transport vehicles for transfers is one option. The other option is to use them to motorize units. In theory you could use trains to do this (as discussed above), but in practice trucks and halftracks will be more practical since they will allow your unit to move outside rail hexes. Trains, trucks and halftracks can all carry 20 weight points, for example 20 infantry or 2 artillery guns.

Especially when you are the player that is on the offensive it is very useful to have at least some motorized artillery, engineer and flak units to support the advance of any “panzer” units you might have. For if your panzer spearheads drive forward so fast they outrun their artillery complement and infantry they will have a much harder time defeating enemy units and holding the territory they take.

If your motorized troops are going to participate in direct land combat you might want to issue them with halftracks instead of trucks. Yes halftracks are more expensive, and need to be researched first, but they provide a unique feature: they take hits for the infantry in combat. Every time an infantry guy is targeted by the enemy there is a 50-50 chance the enemy will fight a halftrack instead of the targeted infantry.

For example 5 light tanks attacking 100 lightly entrenched infantry will have a 55% chance of success and on average will kill 29 rifle while losing 1 tank. Using the same example but with the change that the defending 100 infantry are now supported by 5 halftracks the chance of success will drop to 32% and the average number of rifle killed to 21 and average halftracks lost is 0.2, while average tank losses go up to 1.5.

The low number of halftrack kills in the example above is partly due to the sturdiness of these vehicles and partly due to their mobility to escape dangerous situations more easily then trucks: they have a 30% chance to translate a kill hit on them to a retreat hit.

Furthermore halftracks will do better than trucks if under air attack since they have eight times more hit points. Halftracks are also slightly quicker off-road since they are tracked instead of wheeled. If you have the production power and the resources then halftracks can make a subtle but decisive difference.

That concludes this lesson. Thank you for your time and good luck with motorizing your army! Next lesson will probably focus on naval warfare, ships and submarines.

Welcome back to Advanced Tactics Gold college! Its going to be an important lesson today. So far we have only been looking into ground troop types. Today we will discuss the air theater. There are three good reasons to create an airforce. First of all: Creating an airforce will give you the same sort of power as artillery, but with extreme range and mobility. Secondly: possession of an airforce will allow you to use a number of special orders like para dropping and air recon. And thirdly: an airforce is the best form of air defense if your fighting an enemy with its own airforce.

The most important aircraft types are the fighter, the dive bomber and the level bomber. Our main focus in this lesson will be on them. At the end of the lesson I will also briefly discuss the more specialized types: the transporter, the strategic bomber, the carrier fighter,the torpedo bomber and the kamikaze fighter.

In a non-stone age game the fighter, dive bomber, level bomber and transporter will be available for production immediately, the other aircraft types require research before being available for production.

Lets start with looking at level bombers. Level bombers cost only 1250 production points to produce, compared to 2000 production points or more for most other aircraft types. The level bombers is the aircraft type that is most efficient against infantry. Using 5 level bombers versus 100 infantry with entrenchment level 125 will still cause 6 deads and 10% readiness drop. For comparison: 5 divebombers would kill only 4 infantry and 5 fighters only 2 infantry. Level bombers also have some capability to do structural dammage and can be used to bomb towns or bridges. However i advise using strategic bombers for that purpose instead.

Those level bomber combat results might not be a very convincing argument for building an airforce. But keep in mind that infantry the troop type that is most resilient when faced with air attack. If we look at the dive bomber we will start to see some real power. for example: 5 dive bombers attacking 5 light tanks or 5 anti-tank guns will kill half of them and cause over 50% readiness to the remainder.

Keep in mind it is the big equipment like artillery and tanks that are really vulnerable to your airforce. The weapon of choice to take out these prime targets is the dive bomber. You can use other aircraft types, but they wont perform as well: when attacking the same target as the dive bombers in the previous example 5 level bombers would maybe just kill 1 light tank on average and 5 fighters would have to be really lucky to kill even that one tank.

Heavier tanks become harder and harder to kill for lighter tanks, but the effect is not linear for aircraft. The heavier the tank becomes the relatively (production point wise) better the odds become for dive bombers to take them out.

The dive bomber can have tremendous impact in stopping an enemy blitzkrieg style offensive. Because at some moment the enemy panzers will have advanced beyond their air umbrella, at that point you should strike the enemy spearheads with your dive bomber squadrons and blunt his offensive power.

When attacking ground targets aircraft suffer penalties from -50% to -75% when attacking the enemy in rugged terrain like forests, mountains and urban. The worst ground target an airforce can thus face is infantry in jungle or mountains. (sounds familiar?) Also enemy flak might become a real issue in rugged terrain.

Unless the enemy has no airforce, the fighter should be used to take out enemy aircraft, escort your bombers and not to attack enemy ground units all by it self. If enemy fighters are on intercept you can lure them into combat by attacking a ground unit close to their airfields. Defending fighters always have a small advantage when dog fighting. Best way to take them out is to attack the enemy on its own airfields. If you do so you will get a surprise bonus that will at least negate the natural defensive fighter advantage. Furthermore when attacking the enemy on its own airfields you can bring your level and dive bombers, they will then take out any enemy bombers present on the enemy airfields. The rather cheap level bomber is perfect for this job.

To defend your own troops from enemy air strikes you must make sure fighter units are close enough to the front and instructed to intercept. Your intercept setting can best be put at 75% readiness. This will avoid your fighters going into combat on low readiness and taking big hits. In case you have completely no air superiority you might even choose to set intercept setting to „don’t“ and first build up an airforce of some size before confronting your opponent. Intercept range of your aircraft is half their normal attack range modified with their readiness percentage. Keep in mind that intercept is never assured, at the edge of the intercept range of your aircraft it is only 50% chance for intercept.

If fighting for air superiority try to maximize the attack with up to two times as much fighters as the defender can bring up. Numbers count!

If your enemies are capable of doing a lot of air strikes it is important to build airfields close to the front line to ensure intercept cover, as well as keeping some flak with spearhead formations, that might outrun your air umbrella.

With the release of ATG v2.06 a new airfield stacking rule is also in effect. What this rule basically does is limit the amount of aircraft that can operate from the same air base or city without penalties. Once you overstack an airfield a green colored negative percentage will become visible on top of your aircraft illustrations. This percentage is the penalty these aircraft will suffer when doing battle, either in defending their own air base, intercepting or attacking an enemy hex. Keep in mind fighters are only 5 stack points, while level and dive bombers are 10. Airfields and regular cities can hold 100 air stack points, capitols 200. Since this is a relatively new rule it might very well still be fine tuned in upcoming patches.

Not only is there a penalty if you have to many aircraft on the same runway, also there is a penalty if you attack with to many aircraft on the same hex. This is called air battlestack and works the same as artillery and land battlestack. Basically there are only so many aircraft that can effectively attack the same hex in one round.

In previous lessons it was often emphasized that blitzkrieg style offensives are the way to go. Last lesson advised combining artillery and tanks. This lesson recommends you to also use aircraft. First strike the hex with artillery and air and only then commence your land attack. This combined arms approach will give you great results and will allow you to maximize firepower on a hex like never before.

Another advantage with having an airforce is the option to do air recon and finally check out the situation behind the front line. This way you can see enemy offensives coming! Use fighters in this role since they have the best recon scores.

Transporter aircraft can be used for a number of purposes. First of all to paradrop paratroopers. If an enemy has not defended in depth this can be a great strategy to use, and when used in conjunction with a blitzkrieg offensive will make it much easier to ensure the encirclement. Use the paratroopers to capture bridge hexes and vital road junctions or drop them exactly at the point where you expect your panzer pincer movements to meet up. But transporter aircraft can also airlift non-paratrooper units. This is an excellent alternative to strategic transfer. Furthermore transporters can also be used to do air supply drops. This can be the only way for you to keep encircled troops alive!

Then there are torpedo bombers and carrier fighters, both take only half the room on board of an aircraft carrier then regular aircraft. This is a big plus in itself when fighting on the high seas since it allows you to bring double the amount of aircraft with your carriers. Furthermore torpedo bombers will perform much better against naval targets then other aircraft. If however you do not have torpedo bombers use dive bombers against enemy naval units. When attacking enemy naval units keep in mind cruisers have excellent flak and should optimally only be attacked by torpedo bombers. Also keep in mind that submarines are especially vulnerable to airstrike.

The Kamikaze is only available to the Japanese. Since the Kamikaze blows itself up in the first combat round it has a good chance to hit a target before being killed by enemy aircraft or flak. Basically the kamikaze is only interesting if you want to do some damage to enemy surface vessels but no longer have the power to build an airforce that is on par with that of the enemy. Admittedly it is a weapon thats mainly useful in desperate defense or in some sort of shock-doctrine were you really need to take out that enemy naval unit.

Last but not least there is the strategic bomber. Its slightly expensive, but it does 4 times as much structural damage as the the level bomber and has much better range. If you can bomb and reduce your enemy his towns, mines and oil wells to 0 structural points, he will have no production capacity and you will be able to bring him on his knees without doing any major fighting.

The trick in using air power wisely is to have a balanced air force. Have enough fighters to protect your airspace and if possible attain air superiority… Have some dive bombers to strike at enemy armored spearheads were necessary… Keep some transporter units and paratroopers ready for when an opportunity opens up to take a key bridge behind enemy lines… Keep some strategic bombers ready, just in case you can strike an unprotected enemy oil well. Having a diverse airforce at the ready gives you striking power, operational flexibility and forces the enemy to build its own airforce, keep more garrisons and build flak on key production sites.

And once again: Welcome back to Advanced Tactics Gold college! I am happy to see that you are still with me. Today we are going to take a closer look at artillery. Artillery deserves your full attention since it allows you to damage your opponent without endangering your own troops. Artillery is crucial to attaining victory!

Artillery functions differently from the troop types thus far discussed. It does relatively little direct damage in the form of killing enemy troops. What it does do is decrease the enemy troops their readiness substantially as well as lowering their morale and entrenchment somewhat. For example: 2 artillery attacking 40 unentrenched infantry will only do 3 kills, but they will reduce readiness with a whopping 40 percent.

Keep in mind that readiness is one of the most vital statistics used in combat. For example: 60 of your infantry and 2 armoured cars assaulting 40 enemy infantry with 125 entrenchment will on average lose 14 infantry versus also 14 enemy infantry losses and will have a 60% chance to take the hex. Not bad you might think…

However if we had first used 5 artillery guns on those enemy troops we would have gotten their readiness down to 55 and their entrenchment down to about 60. If we would have attacked after the artillery barrage (with the same troops as in previous example) then on average only 2 infantry would be lost versus 20 enemy infantry lost and a 98% chance on successfully taking the hex would be realized.

I hope this example has shown you why building artillery is a good idea. Artillery comes in two sizes: artillery and heavy artillery. Regular artillery can attack from 2 hexes away and heavy artillery from 3 hexes away. Heavy artillery however is double the price to construct while it does almost the same amount of damage. The reason to get Heavy artillery is not to increase casualties and readiness reduction, but to increase structural dammage. The heavy artillery does 4 times the amount of structural damage that regular artillery does. Which brings us to sieges.

In previous lessons it was already shown that substantial enemy garrisons will be able to “hedgehog” in or around a town and be able to hold off your attacks. To repeat: Towns allow up to 200 entrenchment score for troops garrisoned in it. This, plus the advantageous landscape modifiers and the fact that most towns will be a source of supply makes it possible for the defenders to hold on indefinitely…

Indefenitely? Well…. Not if the attacker brings some artillery units with him. With artillery you can bombard the town without having to engage in costly battles. Yes artillery barrages will soften up the defender for assault, but the key here is the fact that artillery does structural damage to locations as well. By reducing the defending town to eventually 0 structural points you will destroy the supply source of the defenders. Without supply the defenders will become sitting ducks within just a few rounds and defeating them will be easy.

Artillery is not just a good weapon for the offensive player, the defensive player should use it as well! In defense you can use artillery to cause readiness damage to enemy spearhead units and that way slow them down. Also the defender can add artillery to town garrisons that are under siege. They can use this artillery to try to take out any enemy artillery that is laying siege to it. Usually the artillery in the town has an advantage in entrenchment and landscape modifiers to any artillery on the outskirts of the town.
Furthermore artillery can be used well in the role of coastal defense: it will defend together with any navy in port against enemy ships assaulting your harbor and can also be used to bombard any ships blocking your ports.

It should also be mentioned that from level II research onwards Infantry Guns have an artillery range of 1. This allows these infantry attack support guns to double as light artillery. An infantry gun has artillery attack power equal to about a third of the power of regular artillery.

Then there is a special troop type only available to the Russians: the Katushya. The Katushya is a specialst weapon since when you use it in attack it will fire all its rockets and will then dissolve. It is thus a once-use-only weapon. (like all rockets) However when used properly it can help you assure victory versus a strong defense. Do not use the Katushya in artillery barrages but let it join in a land attack. That way it will force to retreat a lot of the defenders in the first combat round and make it much easier for the remaining attackers in the remaining combat rounds to force enough extra retreats (and kills) to make the enemy unit retreat or panic.

Keep in mind there is an artillery attack stack maximum. You can only fire for 100 artillery stack points into a hex, once you exceed that number you run into the law of diminishing returns. Using artillery in regular land attacks does not increase artillery stack points, but does increase regular battle stack points.

Artillery might seem all powerful… However it is very vulnerable in land attack. When you ever see unprotected enemy artillery: attack it!

Artillery is also very vulnerable to airstrikes. You will want to have air superiority or huge amounts of flak guns present when you mass a lot of artillery in the same hex.

The punch of artillery slacks off significantly when attacking hexes that give the defenders a lot of cover… attack effect is reduced with -50% to -75% when attacking forests, mountains and urban hexes.

You will notice that artillery moves at a speed at best 2 hexes a round. Add 1 horse per artillery gun or 1 truck per 2 guns to mobilize your artillery and get it more quickly were you want it. Heavy artillery is to heavy to be carried by horses, it needs trucks. Instead of trucks you can also use halftracks or trains to mobilize your artillery.

In a previous lesson we discussed using tanks “en masse” to breakthrough on a small stretch of enemy frontage. Doing an artillery barrage on that small stretch of enemy front before your blitzkrieg-style tank attack will greatly improve your chances of quick breakthrough. If you combine artillery and tanks properly you will basically follow a ww2 soviet offensive doctrine. If you have the production power and the raw materials to build both artillery and tanks I advise you to do so!

This “Red Army” advice concludes this lesson. I hope you learned something and I will hopefully see you next lesson again. Next topic will be fighters, dive bombers and level bombers.

Best regards,
Vic

Welcome back to Advanced Tactics Gold college! In the last lesson we discussed the use of tanks. We have seen that enemy tanks are usually able to defeat, outmanouver and encirlce any infantry based army you might have. The obvious counter strategy when faced with enemy tanks is to build your own tank army. However you might be pressed for raw materials, have oil shortages, or more likely: you might have another front to worry about that requires all or most of your tanks.

The cheap stop-gap solution versus enemy tanks is to add anti-tank weapons to your infantry armies. Anti-tank weapons come in 2 varieties: anti-tank guns and bazooka’s. Both are cheap in production cost and in raw material use. Bazooka’s are the cheapest and cost only 250 production points and 1 raw material. Anti-tank guns cost 1000 production points and 5 raw materials. Both provide decent anti-tank capability, especially when they are well entrenched. However the core operational downside of both troop types is their lack of mobility.

The lack of mobility means you’ll have to equip your whole front with anti-tank weaponry, while the enemy tank strike is usualy only going to be focussed on a smaller part of your front.

It might thus be a good idea to mobilize anti-tank guns and quickly move them up to the part of the front where they are needed, but the added costs of trucks or halftracks will make this expensive. You might be better advised to construct some assault guns or tankkillers and put those in your mobile anti-tank reserve. Once the enemy has shown the direction of his attack you should drive your mobile anti-tank forces to a hex with high entrench value in the path of the enemy: a town, a forest or a mountain would be ideal.

Now what exactly is the difference between the anti-tank gun and the bazooka? First of all the anti-tank gun is a “rear area” troop type. This means that the gun will live to see another battle when an enemy attack is stopped. So theoretically the anti-tank gun will be able to build up a lot of experience and gain an edge. However in practice you’ll find out that your frontline units will have a hard time surviving blitzkrieg style offensives. Secondly the anti-tank guns are bigger and are quite an easy prey for enemy divebomber attacks. If you do not have air superiority you’d better go for bazooka’s instead of anti-tank guns.

Don’t rely on the anti-tank gun in offensive use. It performs 3x better in defense then in offense. And it truly needs the added modifier of entrenchment to be truly cost-effective. In defense when 5 anti-tank guns with 100 entrenchment are attacked by 5 light tanks the light tanks have only a 10% chance of succesfully taking the hex, on average 2 light tanks (production point cost: 4000) will be lost versus only 1 anti-tank (production point cost: 1000). However the heavier the tanks get the less impressive the anti-tank guns performance will be. When 2 heavy tanks attack 5 anti-tank guns with 100 entrenchment they have 40% chance of succes, on average 0.8 heavy tank will be lost in such an attack for about 1,5 anti-tank gun.

Bazooka’s perform about the same in defense as anti-tank guns, though admittedly they perform slightly less well, and they cannot be protected from casualties for they are “frontline” troops. Compared to anti-tank guns they will have a harder time building up experience.

However bazooka’s can also be used to some extend in attacking tanks, especially when mixed into a larger infantry unit. For example 20 bazooka’s have a chance of 20% of succesfully taking a hex from 5 defending light tanks. Another example: An infantry group that costs the same ammount of production points as those 5 defending light tanks, like 32 bazooka’s and 20 infantry has a 65% chance of succes in the same attack, losing on average 12 troops (production value 2000), while killing 2 tanks (production value 4000). Bazookas will not perform much worse against heavier tanks, unlike anti-tank guns that really lose punch versus heavy tanks. Bazookas use hollow charge projectiles that are deadly to almost all tanks from close up.

My advice is whenever possible to use anti-tank weapons in combination with a small force of tanks in reserve. When the enemy armour attacks and breaks through your lines you should use your (mobile) anti-tank weapons to create a blockage and stop or delay them, while using your own armour to flank the enemy advance and if possible cut-off their spearhead.

Furthermore when on the defense it is always wise to put just one or two anti-tank guns in towns and mountain roads behind your current front, they will entrench up to 200 points when given a few rounds to do so and will then be a very hard nut to crack for any tanks trying to take such a hex by force. Call it insurance for disaster.

As a last note it should also be pointed out that flak guns have some limited value as anti-tank weapons. 3 or 4 flak guns should perform the same as 1 anti-tank gun. When fighting a defensive war without air superiority it is a good investment to buy a little bit more flak then you would normally do since they will help you defend against armoured and air attack at the same time.

Not sure what the next lesson topic will be. I think it is about time to discuss artillery.

Best regards,
Vic

Welcome back to Advanced Tactics Gold College! Today we will be looking a bit closer at tanks. The first thing to notice about ATG is that there are quite a lot of different types of tanks. The core types of tanks are: the armoured car, the light tank, the medium tank, the heavy tank and the tank destroyer. In this lesson you’ll learn when best to build what type of tank. In this lesson I will be referring to armoured cars as tanks, I hope the reader will bear with me and accept that the armoured car could be seen as a very little tank on wheels.

If you are not playing a stone-age game you will start with the research to produce the armoured car and the light tank from the start of the game. The other types of tanks require research investment before you’ll be able to produce them.

In previous lessons it has become painfully obvious that infantry is very good in defence and “excessive” amounts of rifle or smg are necessary when you try to take ground using infantry only. The core point of this lesson is that you should use tanks to attack infantry. Tanks perform really well in attack against infantry because the armour on the tanks protects them from the small arms fire that the rifle, smg and machinegun defenders put up. For example doing an attack with 10 armoured cars on 100 entrenched infantry has a chance of 80% to succeed and is likely to cause 45 infantry kills for only 2 destroyed armoured cars.

The types of tanks you can build vary from light, like the armoured car to heavy, like the heavy tank. Production cost of an armoured car is just a 1000 production points where as production cost of a heavy tank is 5000. Production of an armoured car costs 10 raw materials per car, while production of an heavy tank costs a whopping 160 raw materials per tank. And although the heavier tanks are much more expansive to build then the lighter tanks they do not perform that much better on the battlefield versus infantry. For example: 10 armoured cars attacking 100 infantry have an 80% chance of success, 5 light tanks versus 100 infantry only have a 55% chance of success and 2 heavy tanks versus 100 infantry only a 30% chance of success. So if your just fighting against infantry make sure to build the lightest tanks possible: armoured cars.

However when your facing enemy tanks the advice is reversed. Heavier tanks perform better in tank-to-tank combat then lighter tanks. This is because heavier tanks have better armour and higher calibre guns. So when facing enemy tanks ideally you will want to field tanks one class higher the enemy is fielding. So if the enemy is fielding armoured cars, you will try to field light tanks. If the enemy is fielding light tanks, you will try to field medium tanks. For example: If you attack 5 enemy light tanks with 5 of your own light tanks the chance of success is 62%. If you attack 3 enemy medium tanks with 5 of your own light tanks the chance of success drops to 35%. If you attack 2 enemy heavy tanks with those 5 light tanks the chance of success even drops to 13%.

So the balancing act a good player has to perform is to find the sweet spot in production choices that makes his tank force as cost-effective as possible versus infantry, but also against enemy tanks, while at the same time not using up to much raw materials. Good luck with this balancing act!

Other advice that is important is the fact that tanks perform a bit better in offensive use then in defensive use. All things else being equal: try to use tanks in offensive use. The heavier tanks are relatively more vulnerable to infantry attacking them then the lighter tanks, so be sure to protect them by adding some sort of support with them like light tanks, machineguns and infantry.

Furthermore tanks are vulnerable to air attack. We’ll discuss that in a later lesson in more detail, but for now its important tot realise that tanks cannot fight back against their nemesis: the divebomber. The heavier tanks are relatively more vulnerable to air attack then the lighter models. Be sure to have air cover for your armoured units or when that is not possible to have flak guns with your armoured formations. Hiding your tanks in towns and forests can also help a lot, when faced with a loss of air superiority.

Talking about landscape types… Its important to realise tanks perform best on flat plains. The more cover the landscape allows the less well the tanks perform when attacking. Forests, swamps, towns and mountains give penalties on tank attack varying between -50% and -75%.

Swamps and Paddies are the only landscape types that give tanks a defensive penalty as well. Swamps and Paddies are normally not accessible by wheeled and tracked subformation types, but when roads are present they can enter.

The Tank Destroyer deserves some special attention. This tank is specialized in attacking enemy tanks. It performs well in offensive and defensive use, but versus enemy tanks only. It is superior to even the Heavy Tank. For example: 2 Tank Destroyers attacking 2 Heavy Tanks have a chance of 65% of success. However tank destroyers are especially vulnerable against infantry counter attack.

Assault Guns also deserve mention. They are basically medium tanks that are equipped with a fixed gun, instead of with a moving turret. This gives them a disadvantage in offensive operations, but makes them about as good as a medium tank in defensive use. Its cheaper to produce then the medium tank due to its simplified design. Assault Guns are best used as mobile anti-tank forces or in offensively engaging light tanks and armoured cars. (at the moment the assault gun is slightly to strong, this will be fixed in upcoming patch v2.06)

Super Heavy Tanks are not available to all players. Only players playing a regime ruled by the German people can build these behemoths. They require 9000 production points to build as well as 240 raw materials. You should only build them if you have way to much raw materials and complete air superiority and are facing an enemy with strong medium or heavy tank forces. And to be honest: even in those circumstances I question the wisdom of building these gigantic monsters. The super heavy tanks beats all other tanks including tank destroyers in tank-to-tank combat, however it is vulnerable to infantry counter-attack.

All tanks use oil and you should always keep an eye on oil supply and oil use. Do not build more tanks then your oil stocks can handle. When you are out of oil the tanks lose a lot of mobility and fight with big penalties!

Concluding I want to advice you to exploit the mobility of tanks! Yes armour is good in attacking infantry, but instead of trying to attack the enemy all over the line you should aim to attack at a couple of chosen “schwerpunkten”, annihilate the enemy front on those few hexes and then drive your armoured units deep into the rear of the enemy. Once you have two or more breakthroughs you will be able to connect the pincers of those “panzer drives” and form pockets. Enemy troops captured in pockets will quickly run out of supplies and then will be easy prey even to your infantry formations. Forming pockets is the ultimate way to win!

I hope you learned something today. The next lesson will be on anti-tank weapons.

Kind regards,
Vic