Some tactical principles [from old GCM forum]

[mike1984]

Some tactical principles
by Garnier » February 12th, 2012, 5:12 pm

This thread is part of an effort to restart posting by the GCM player community. You can read more about this here: TOPIC: Boosting this forum

Here are some tactical tips derived from how the game works. Nothing profound, but they are important and not necessarily obvious.

--- Some Principles of Targetting ---

Each regiment in game has a primary target, at which most of their fire is directed. Usually this is the closest enemy unit they have line of fire against. With thorough understanding of how targeting works, you can gain a significant advantage.

If you have two regiments at the front, put the worse quality regiment in front so the enemy targets it. If you're going to lose 100 men from enemy fire, it's better to lose 100 low quality troops than high quality troops. In a given time frame, if your casualties are lower quality, you will get more shots off from your higher quality troops, and thus more kills.

Keep your front regiment in cover. It doesn't matter as much if the regiments farther back are in cover. If the enemy is going to fire 1000 shots at you, they'll almost all be aimed at their primary target, so if their primary target is on a wall they will do a lot less damage.

Likewise, if you have a wall, but the enemy is targeting a regiment that is not on the wall, your wall is useless, since all their fire is hitting the unit in the open.

If you have a regiment at the front that is being targeted and has taken nearly 50% casualties, move it back a little so another of your regiments becomes the target. The 50% regiment can fight for the rest of the battle as long as it stays untargeted. If you leave the weak regiment in front, it will rout very soon and be completely worthless. By rotating your regiments as targets, you can preserve all of your regiments for the entire battle, while other players’ regiments rout completely one by one.

--- Some Principles of Fatigue ---

Fatigue is far more important in this game than most players give it credit for, in my personal opinion.

It is better to rest your men before they become "tired". They rest slower the more fatigue they have. i.e., you can rest a regiment from winded to rested (500 fatigue pts) three times in the time it would take to rest from exhausted to rested (1000 fatigue pts). (These numbers are not exact, but the principle holds)

If you have two tired regiments firing at two enemy tired regiments, it is better to let one of your regiments fight while the other lays down and rests, then swap places when the resting one is fully rested. This is because fatigue affects how much damage a unit will do.

Be extremely sparing with double quick. All else being equal, if two armies are moving to the same good ground from any given distance, and one army uses double quick to get there first, the army that marched the whole way will win the fight because they will not be fatigued.

Almost the only time double quick is useful is in cases where a unit is taking extreme enemy fire, but this enemy fire will stop after your unit reaches its destination. In all such cases, the units automatically double-quick. Therefore you should almost never click the double quick button.

If you are trying to escape the enemy, only double quick while you are under fire, and as soon as you are no longer being fired on, switch to walking speed. If you run away until your men are exhausted and the enemy pursues at a walk, they will reach you again before you are rested and have a bigger advantage.

(These are by no means all there is to know about targeting and fatigue, just some that are really good to know if you didn't already.)

[johnd5555]

Again, this brings up the age old question, of "do troops rest/recover faster when laying down... I seem to remember conflicting views on this.