Unity of Command 2 Game Flow

[pdavis7]

I have been playing UoC2 for a bit over a year now and have some observations I want to share and see if they provoke a reaction. First off, I really like the game. I have played Avalon Hill board and electronic games when I was younger. I really enjoy games that involve planning and strategy. However, there are some things that strike me as odd.
One is movement. The computer seems to have much more freedom of movement. I have noticed that several times the computer can attack an enemy unit facing it and then move away allowing another unit to move up attack, move away and then sometimes having a third unit attack. Almost every time I perform an attack, that unit is done moving unless it is an overrun. I often cannot bring up another unit in it's place to attack.
Two is the way the computer will perform what I like to call a death ride into the sunset. An enemy unit that is surrounded or out of supply itself, will often move forward to interdict a supply line even though it means its own destruction. In reality, units would retreat towards their own lines. I realize that this is not reality and a game where sacrificing a unit means little. However, what this means is that, I need to leave blocking units to prevent this which slows down my drive towards objectives. It comes down to the side with the most units has an advantage since the side with fewer units cannot cover all of the enemy units.
The last thing I wanted to point out is that you cannot transfer units from one commander to another. This happened quite a bit during the war especially on the German and Russian side. Perhaps I am missing something in the rules that permits this.
Sorry for going on a bit.

[carrotboy]

The AI plays by the same rules. You need to look at the controlled territory to understand whether ZOC is in effect.

As for protecting your supply lines, understanding ZOC rules will help limit the units needed to do this effectively.

[La_Bataille]

To detail a response to your first point, every unit with at least 3 active steps exerts a zone of control in every adjacent hex of friendly territory. Units without 3 active steps have a small "-" sign on them to note the lack of a zone of control, and importantly ZoC does not extend across the territorial control border. You can see enemy ZoC when you have a unit selected for movement because those hexes will be marked with a small dot, and any unit entering such a hex forfeits their ability to move any further that turn. As long as you are not entering a ZoC, you too are able to rotate units in any out of a hex to make repeated attacks on a single target; this is why securing a hex adjacent to a target city the turn before you need to take it can be very powerful, and navigating around ZoC generally is a key use of the Recon in Force HQ command.

To the second, yeah, the AI is kindof hard coded to love putting you out of supply and it does need to be managed, but clever use of your own zones of control can make this a lot easier, since you only need one blocking unit every two or three hexes.

To the third, yeah, this is just the kind of abstraction that happens in the game. Unit command assignments are hard coded by scenario and there is no way to alter this manually, though some units will drift from one command to another over the course of a campaign, though there is also no way to really know this in advance.

[qwerlancer]

You can bait AI's most valuable unit(s) to death by just placing supply hub(s) aka trap. A few truck cards for a guaranteed quick victory is definitely worth it.

[Red Dragon]

Originally posted by pdavis7:

I have noticed that several times the computer can attack an enemy unit facing it and then move away allowing another unit to move up attack, move away and then sometimes having a third unit attack. Almost every time I perform an attack, that unit is done moving unless it is an overrun. I often cannot bring up another unit in it's place to attack.

I'll just comment on this little bit here and say if you don't follow what's happening in that scenario then you didn't understand how "Zone of Control" rules work in UoC2 or indeed most hex based wargames. Maybe you did the old tutorial from years ago where it wasn't explained that well yet, but seriously the UoC2 tutorials are extremely good and the ZoC one is great.

The ZoC rules are simple and I can pretty much cover it in two sentences: Every non-weak unit projects a ZoC into its six surrouding hexes except across across rivers and except into enemy territory. If an enemy unit moves into an enemy ZoC it's immediately pinned and loses all its movement for the rest of the turn, even if the pinning unit is destroyed.

What you are doing is you drive into enemy territory and are pinned in a ZoC and then stuck. Whet they are doing is they start the turn next to you already and thus aren't stuck in a ZoC and can freely rotate their units in and out of that hex which is neighboring yours to deliver blows with multiple units. The AI obeys the exact same rules as you, there are no differences*

[arabbigwet69]

Originally posted by qwerlancer:

You can bait AI's most valuable unit(s) to death by just placing supply hub(s) aka trap. A few truck cards for a guaranteed quick victory is definitely worth it.

hey, smart. i never though of that

[pdavis7]

I will do the tutorial again on ZOC. However, the AI seems to have more freedom of movement when attacking. Unfortunately, what Red Dragon says is not always correct. I have matched what the AI does and I have units that cannot move after an attack most of the time. The AI however often will rotate units. I counted it able to rotate 4 units a number of times then it can send units through that gap and one of the units it sent through had attacked, pulled back and then was able to move 5 spaces. Also, there is no indication that I could see of a "*" for a weak unit.
Another thing I saw was that the AI reconstituted units and sent them back into play after I had destroyed them. I was the Russians and I destroyed the GD panzer unit. It was not on the list of reinforcements, but after I destroyed it, there it was. I destroyed it a second time and two turns later, there it was again.
This game still seems to give an advantage to the side with the most units in my opinion.

[qwerlancer]

Originally posted by pdavis7:

I will do the tutorial again on ZOC. However, the AI seems to have more freedom of movement when attacking. Unfortunately, what Red Dragon says is not always correct. I have matched what the AI does and I have units that cannot move after an attack most of the time. The AI however often will rotate units. I counted it able to rotate 4 units a number of times then it can send units through that gap and one of the units it sent through had attacked, pulled back and then was able to move 5 spaces. Also, there is no indication that I could see of a "*" for a weak unit.
Another thing I saw was that the AI reconstituted units and sent them back into play after I had destroyed them. I was the Russians and I destroyed the GD panzer unit. It was not on the list of reinforcements, but after I destroyed it, there it was. I destroyed it a second time and two turns later, there it was again.
This game still seems to give an advantage to the side with the most units in my opinion.

It seems AI took your ZoC tile by some ways so It can rotate forces for attacking in a same tile.

As for unit, yes it's a flaw especially in Berlin DLC. You will discover full strength Panzer divisions themselves with their "Masse" and their overjuiced "kampfgruppe" under a same name in a same battle with more than 7 steps. It was an attempt to increase difficulty artificially by devs.