How in Hades do you win the frickin' Tutorial Skirmish?

[darkheath2001]

The Germans are getting 1-2 victory points per second! Once I figured out what was going on I felt like I was doing fairly well, but lost 2014 to ZERO at the 15 minute mark! How does my side score points? I had the front stablized and was starting to push back when "GAME OVER". The post-game TEAM tab looks like this:

Task Force Warren DEFEAT Pts: 0 Kills: 390 Losses:135

Wehrmacht VICTORY Pts: 2014 Kills: 135 Losses:390

They had 3x the casualties! In what world is that a loss for my side? Yeah, okay... maybe if I was defending the Alamo or something. But in all seriousness... how do I GAIN VPs? And how do I prevent the other side from GETTING VPs? I really don't understand this.

Actually, at the rate they are gaining them... for frickin' FREE, BTW, this supposed 30 minute game will never get past the 15 minute mark.

[QuiGonTom]

Push the front line to cover more than 50% of the map, it says this in the tutorial. You can't sit ww1 style and kill them to win. Push the frontline.

[darkheath2001]

I was just starting to push them back when it ended. But how do the VPs work?

And honestly, you SHOULD be able to win if you choose a defensive style of play (Not that I was playing that way this time). But why take away an entirely viable strategy out of a STRATEGY game? That's actually one of the reasons I can't stand the Call of Duty series. They make you have to get past some invisible magic marker on the map or otherwise they will not stop spawning enemies. You can't play it in a defensive manner if you decide. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[QuiGonTom]

Seems like destruction will be more your thing. You win by destroying them and staying alive. VPs are gone, you literally just use your units to push the frontline to cover more than 50%, as soon as you ave more than 50% it starts to tick for you. Once you have 51% or higher, turtle up to your hearts content. FFS do a little research, there is a whole game mode designed around turtling.

[realninja]

I dont remember any other game where the tutorial is too hard. Also have problem with that ..

[darkheath2001]

OK... so I appreciate you for answering, thanks. But it also sounds like you're being a tad douchey at the same time.

"Destruction"... that's a game mode... or a whole other game?

"Turtling"... um, I've never heard of that before, but I guess I get the visual. I'm just talking about approaching battles a little more conservatively and attacking precisely when a weakness is seen. Not just rushing as many units as possible to the front in the alloted time to keep some arbitrary counter from clicking.

Look, I'm just trying to get through the frickin' tutorial. This skirmish mode seems more like some kind of multiplayer game where each side has the exact same starting point. I'm not interested in that at all. I'm hoping that the actual campaign is historically-based with the actual units present during the actual battles. If it turns out that the campaigns are like this "skirmish", and the only thing historical about this game is the locations and maps, I'm going to be pretty disappointed.

[Marcomies]

In destruction gamemode of multi/skirmish you get point for destroying enemy units and naturally can deny the enemy points by not losing your units. In Wargames it usually degraded to boring campfest where people were afraid to even buy expensive units and attacking usually resulted in defeat. Campaigns do work and play differently from skirmish mode.

[darkheath2001]

Thanks for the answer. And no, that doesn't sound too interesting to me either.

[Magni]

The normal game mode is conquest. A team controlling 51% or more of the map starts ticking up VPs, with the rate speeding up the more of the map the team controls. Territorial gains count, not kills. Yes, you can hunker down and play defensively for a while, but you can't afford to just idle around forever if the other side has higher map control. Aggression is important.

The tutorial skirmish (and yes, skirmish mode is multiplayer against AI) is a good example of it, and the pre-set unit deck it provides gives you plenty tools for both early aggressive moves and keeping up a constant pressure. The german deck you're up against does not have anything except a few light PaKs that can contest the Stuarts you have access to in Phase A, as long as you keep them on the more open left side of the map. Screen them with recon and infantry and throw in a mortar or two and you can push it up there pretty well, while a smaller force of mostly infantry can hold on the right. And then in later phases, you call in more infantry reinforcements and gradually replace the Stuarts with Shermans.

I went over the insta-win VP amount after close to 30 minutes, with somewhere around 1500:800 kill/deaths, with most of my losses being odd Stuarts and Shermans getting picked off by PaKs that then got promptly shredded by return fire from mortars and other tanks; by that time I held roughly on the halfway mark up the map on the right, but had pushed the Germans all the way back to the farmhosue in fornt of their spawn on the left. Your very low casualty rates on both sides are stemming from you yielding much of the map and the AI recognising that it didn't need to push any farther and could just win by sitting tight and going defensive.

[fakemon64]

in what world could you win a war by never going on the offensive? Thats like the opposite of a war. Germany would stay in germany and hunker down, russia would stay in russia, etc. battles are won by capturing enemy territory

[CrashToDesktop]

@OP
Be more on the offensive, find a good spot beyond the 50% mark and dig in there if you want. But you have to attack to get there.

The actual campaign is more historical, per say, than a random tutorial skirmish.

[darkheath2001]

@fakemon64

Who the hell said anything about "NEVER" going on the offensive? A hell of a lot of commanders have won battles, and minimized casualties, by holding back and figuring out what the other guy is doing first. And a lot of times that involved letting the other side waste resources going up against a good defense before striking back at an opportune time. I know how war works, and this "skirmish" mode doesn't really work like real war. Not when both sides have unlimited resources popping up every 60 seconds. I realize now it's meant more as an even-sided, yet critically-timed, chess match of sorts.

@Magni

Thanks for the response. Even in the one time I tried I noticed that the Stuarts were doing well on the left side of the map. I haven't gone back to retry it yet, but now I'll have a better idea of how this works.

[CrashToDesktop]

We can tell you never went on the offensive because your units never got past the 50% mark due to you having 0 points and the fact that you lost in 15 minutes. Hence the correct assumption didn't attack or didn't attack well and often enough.

[darkheath2001]

"didn't attack or didn't attack well and often enough..."

... according to the specific rules of this game, which again, is more "game-like" than "war-like". Yes, I understand what you say, and will approach the whole thing differently next time within the confines of these particular GAME rules.

That said, were I in an actual battle, I think I did just fine as we had stablised the line and was even starting to push it back, while taking far fewer casualties, when the arbitrary timer shut us down.

I think that's what's going to frustrate me most about this purchase. The fact that there is a decent war simulation here... something that I'd seriously like to spend some time with, but they've buried the whole wonderful simulation part down underneath these silly game rules.

[Magni]

Originally posted by darkheath2001:

"didn't attack or didn't attack well and often enough..."

... according to the specific rules of this game, which again, is more "game-like" than "war-like". Yes, I understand what you say, and will approach the whole thing differently next time within the confines of these particular GAME rules.

That said, were I in an actual battle, I think I did just fine as we had stablised the line and was even starting to push it back, while taking far fewer casualties, when the arbitrary timer shut us down.

I think that's what's going to frustrate me most about this purchase. The fact that there is a decent war simulation here... something that I'd seriously like to spend some time with, but they've buried the whole wonderful simulation part down underneath these silly game rules.

If you ceeded ground without a fight and refused to engage the enemy under anything but ideal conditions, after being told to advance and take that ground, in a real war, you know what would happen more likely than not? You'd get sacked by your superiors, at a minimum. Procrastinators and perfectionists with a lack of aggression have been viewed in a very dim light by most militaries throughout history. War is not about McNamara-esque "kill rates", it's about achieving set objectives.

And this goes even more when talking about modern wars like WWII, where relinquishing the initiative was a very bad decision under almsot any circumstances, and would frequently result in your army taking more casualties in the long run. To give a rather famous example, Guderians assault on Sedan and crossing of the Meuse virtually WRECKED the infantry regiment leading the attack, and inflicted quite less casualties on the french defenders. It also resulted in a decisive victory that ended up winning the Germans the entire campaign and lead to the Fall of France. For the same reason, there is also hardly anything "arbitrary" about time being limited, what with time often being the single most precious and irreplaceable resource of all for a military operation, especially in terms of maneuver warfare.

[Mirage]

I think the tutorial explained to you that you need to control land in order to win, and the AI in the skirmish is easy or very easy from what I can tell.