Understanding Sudden Strike - Mechanics, Tactics, and Strategy

Read this guide for an overview of game mechanics, tactics, and strategy that will help you win scenarios with confidence in Sudden Strike.

Overview

As a longtime player and fan of Sudden Strike, no game gives me more nostalgia than this one. In this guide I will share some tips about game mechanics, units, and tactics & strategies that I have found to be successful over the years. My hope is that this guide will help you enjoy the game and approach scenarios with more confidence.

Sudden Strike is notorious for being a challenging game - sometimes brutally so - with a big learning curve. It also is a bit of a niche game because unlike other popular RTS games from its era, like Age of Empires or StarCraft, it does not involve any resource gathering, base building, technology researching, or unit spawning. Instead, you are required to complete scenarios with only the units you are provided, with very little agency over the arrival of reinforcements or air support. Furthermore, there's more individual unit micromanagement as each unit has its own limited ammunition and experience, and the traits from unit-to-unit like weapon type, attack range, rate of fire, and vision range vary widely. Managing units carefully and understanding their strengths and weaknesses is key to success. On the contrary, blindly rushing large groups of units towards enemy positions more often than not will end in disaster.

This guide will take you through three sections - game mechanics, units, and tactics & strategies. By the end of it you will have a good understanding of how to approach scenarios in a general way.

Game Mechanics

First, let's discuss game mechanics. We'll start with common properties that all units have.

There are four different status bars that each unit has:

• Hit Points (green)
  
• Experience (purple)
  
• Primary ammo (yellow)
  
• Secondary ammo (yellow)

Hit Points

Pretty much the same as in all other RTS, strategy, and RPG games, but with some nuances. All units have three "statuses" based on their current hit point percentage - green, yellow, and red. When green, the unit's hit points will remain the same unless healed/repaired by a friendly unit or damaged by an enemy unit or explosion. When yellow, the unit's hit points will gradually increase (at a rate of 1 point every few seconds) until it reaches green status again at which point it will stop. It is also important to note that whenever vehicles or tanks are in "yellow" status, they will be disabled and unable to move again until they are restored to "green" status. Then there's "red" status - for all units, when in "red" status the unit will slowly lose hit points until it is dead/destroyed. The only way to save a unit in the "red" is to heal/repair it, or in the case of infantry have the unit enter a building or vehicle and stay there (I will cover this in more detail in a later part of this guide). The range of hit points for units is anywhere from 75 to over 1000, depending on the specific unit type.

Experience

This ranges from 0 to 1000 for all units. Essentially, the more experience a unit has, the more damage it deals and the more it resists incoming damage. Experience also affects attack range, accuracy, and line of sight (?) for some units. The fastest way for units to gain experience is actually by taking damage from enemy fire. So if a unit survives a fight, it will be even stronger. Always strive to save units with high amounts experience. Units also gain experience from simply firing their weapons, and also by dealing damage to the enemy. But this is at a significantly lower rate than by taking damage. Experience for almost all units can also be temporarily raised by having a friendly officer nearby, which should always be taken advantage of whenever possible (I will cover this more in the tactics section of this guide).

Primary Ammo

This is the ammunition count for the primary weapon of a unit. It can range from 0 to over 1000, depending on the specific unit type. Some units only have primary ammo, and some even do not have ammo at all. Each unit has its own ammo count, so it is important to keep track of the ammo levels of your units. There are a few ways to resupply ammo. The most common method is being resupplied by a supply truck. Infantry, artillery, and supply trucks can also resupply via an ammo box (a special type of unit). Infantry will also slowly regain ammo simply by moving. Weird? Yes. But nonetheless in some rare cases this can actually play a role (see the tactics section of this guide for more details). Supply trucks will also regenerate primary ammo automatically when sitting idle and not resupplying other units. It should also be noted that supply trucks supply all other units' primary and secondary ammo using their own primary ammo.

Secondary Ammo

Some units have a secondary weapon which also has its own ammo count. This also can range from 0 to over 1000, depending on the specific unit type. Secondary weapons can vary widely, and I will cover them in the units section of this guide. Resupplying secondary ammo is done in exactly the same way as primary ammo (including the weird way infantry can resupply) with one exception: for supply trucks, secondary ammo can only be resupplied by means of a parts box (another special unit type) or by passive regeneration.

Now that we've covered unit properties, let's cover terrain properties.

Buildings

All buildings have hit points and are destructible. Most buildings also are capable of sheltering infantry units. Some, such as guard towers and lodges, even grant line of sight bonuses to infantry inside. Infantry inside of buildings take damage from enemy fire more slowly. Buildings have two hit point "statuses" - green and red. When in the "green", the building is able to shelter infantry units. When in the "red", the building cannot shelter infantry units any longer and any infantry units that were inside will automatically evacuate (if they aren't killed by the damage from the building collapsing).

A less obvious, but actually very significant, game mechanic for buildings is that infantry inside of buildings will also shift around constantly to different "positions" within a building. This has two consequences: (1) the line of sight and line of fire of that infantry unit is restricted by its current position within the building; (2) enemy infantry firing at a building can only hit an infantry unit inside if its position inside the building is facing them. You cannot directly control which position an infantry unit takes inside of a building; it rotates automatically, even in the middle of a firefight.

Hillsides

Most maps will have some hillsides on them. They play a vary important role in map/scenario design. Units on the lower side of a hill cannot see units on the other side unless they go around to a point where they are on the upper side, or if another friendly unit provides line of sight on the upper side. There is no firing range restriction for units on the lower side, however, so gaining line of sight on the upper side is sufficient to fire on enemy units there.

Obstacles

Various types of obstacles - fences, barbed wire, tank obstacles - block movement but do not block line of sight or line of fire. Tanks are capable of crushing fences. Most obstacles are also able to be destroyed by explosions.

Trees

Similar to obstacles, but they block line of sight and can only be destroyed by explosions.

Water

Water is impassible for all unit types (except aircraft). The only way to cross water is via a bridge.

Bridges

There are different types of bridges that mostly only vary in aesthetics, though generally there are three classes: footbridges, regular bridges, and pontoon bridges. Footbridges of course can only be crossed by infantry. Regular and pontoon bridges can be crossed by all units. All bridges can be destroyed; they have an invisible amount of hit points that are reduced by explosions of any kind. Footbridges (?) and regular bridges can be repaired by supply trucks, though never restored to full strength. They cannot be constructed in-game. Pontoon bridges can be constructed by supply trucks only in certain areas where the banks of the water are perfectly smooth on both sides. Pontoon bridges are built and destroyed in segments. It is also important to note that any units positioned on a bridge at the moment it is destroyed immediately disappear, so be careful when crossing bridges while under fire from explosions!

Mines

Mines are only visible to the side that "owns" them. Mines are only detonated when a vehicle or tank enters their segment. Friendly tanks and vehicles always avoid "friendly" mines, but enemy units will not see them and will detonate them, incurring massive damage which at minimum usually disables that unit.

Mines can be placed before the scenario even starts via the scenario editor, or they can be placed in-game by riflemen units. To my knowledge, the AI will never place mines in-game; enemy mines are always placed ahead of time.

Mines can be swept all infantry unit types. When sweeping, the infantry unit will stop for a few seconds, and if there are any mines in the immediate vicinity they will be revealed. The infantry unit will then run to the nearest mine, stop for a second, and then the mine will disappear. The unit will then usually run to the next nearest mine and remove it as well, though sometimes you have to explicitly order them again to do so.

Game Mechanics (continued)

I would be remiss if I didn't take a little bit of time to discuss line of sight.

Line of Sight

All units have a line of sight, which ranges to barely in front of them to very far, depending on the specific unit type. Generally speaking, infantry have a long line of sight while vehicles and artillery have a short line of sight. Direct fire units will not engage an enemy unit unless they are in their line of sight. Most tanks, vehicles, and artillery can be explicitly ordered to fire beyond their line of sight but will only fire once per order, unless targeting a building. Line of sight can be modified by buildings, which I explained earlier.

Another extremely important game mechanic for line of sight (which is very aptly discussed in another guide for this game) is the refresh/update of line of sight. When a unit moves into a new segment on the map, its line of sight will "lag" for a few seconds before being refreshed/updated. It is not instantaneous! This is by design. So when on the move with your units, always keep this in mind because it may very well be the difference between life and death for your units.

There is one "glitch" with line of sight that is also very important to understand. It technically affects both the player and AI, but the AI is WAY better at taking advantage of it. When an infantry unit manning an artillery unit is killed, or when a tank crew unit is spawned after its tank is destroyed, that infantry unit will immediately generate a line of sight for one second. This even happens when the spawned tank crew unit instantly dies. This split second line of sight that dead units have is sufficient for enemy units, including indirect fire artillery, to attack your units!!! Always be wary of this! I wish this wasn't the case, but sadly it is.

Attack Range

Another important game mechanic to cover is attack/firing range. For most units in the game, the attack range of their primary weapon exceeds their vision range. Therefore, most units are capable of firing at enemy units further than they can see on their own. You can take advantage of this by having other units spot enemy units for these units with long attack ranges. This is especially true for snipers. See the tactics section of this guide for ways to take advantage of attack ranges.

Miscellaneous

Let's just quickly cover a few other game mechanics:

Move vs. Assault: Infantry, vehicles with weapons, and tanks can both "move" and "assault". They are very similar, but with one difference: with the "move" order, the unit will continue to advance toward its goal while under fire from enemy units; but with the "assault" order, the unit will stop to engage and eliminate all enemy units in firing range before continuing toward its goal.

Facing: Tanks and some vehicles have the ability to rotate. For these units, this is significant because the amount of damage they take from enemy units is affected by their facing relative to an enemy unit firing at them. They will take less damage from the front, but more damage from the sides and especially the rear.

Driving in reverse: Vehicles and tanks are capable of driving in reverse, though this game mechanic is pretty clunky. For tanks this can be advantageous because they can retreat without exposing their weaker flanks to enemy fire. But for vehicles there's really no point except for getting unstuck on something. You can't explicitly order a unit to drive in reverse, however by making the move target directly behind the unit it should automatically drive in reverse toward that target.

Units

Next let's discuss units. The manual that comes with the game (available on the home library page of the game in Steam) already covers units in some detail, so in this section I will focus more on nuances of units rather than general characteristics.

In general there are four classes of units:

- Infantry
- Artillery
- Tanks
- Vehicles

Infantry

There's a saying in chess that "pawns are the soul of chess". The same can be said for infantry in Sudden Strike. As you will see in the Tactics & Strategy section of this guide, virtually all of them will involve infantry in some way. Therefore it is important to manage your infantry carefully, rather than carelessly throw them at the enemy.

Here's a quick rundown of the types of infantry and the special properties that they possess:

- Riflemen: The German, Russian, and British riflemen are virtually identical except that the German riflemen have 100 hit points instead of 125 (not sure why, but ok). The American and French riflemen are unique. The American riflemen fire constantly (due to their M1 Garand) rather than waiting a few seconds between shots, but they have reduced damage. Nonetheless, American riflemen will usually win 1-on-1 versus enemy riflemen because of this rate of fire advantage. And then there's French riflemen (called "commando") which have the same fire rate as the German/Russian/British riflemen but they have less HP (70). However, the movement speed of French commandos is the same as officers, making them among the fastest infantry in the game.

All riflemen are capable of laying mines, which is very important in a lot of scenarios, especially ones in which you get attacked by huge waves of enemy units. Also, at 1000 experience points riflemen usually can get a "one shot kill" on enemy infantry that are standing/running.

- Submachinegunners: These units are deadly in assaults due to their high rate of fire. They also can be useful to fire out of moving jeeps, in the absence of heavy machine gun soldiers. All standard submachinegunners have grenades as well, which give them the capability to destroy tanks and buildings. Russia also has NKVD units, which only appear in add-on scenarios/campaigns and are basically an inferior version of submachinegunners: they only have 2 grenades instead of 4 and can't receive bonus experience from officers!

- Tank crew: These units have a chance to spawn whenever a vehicle or tank is destroyed. They have low hit points and are armed with a submachinegun and no grenades. They often spawn with high starting experience, however, which makes them useful as artillery crew.

- Heavy machinegunners. These units deal high damage at a high rate of fire, but have one serious drawback: they can't go prone, which means that they take heavy damage really quickly. Therefore they are generally more useful in a defensive role (like on the edge of a cliff or in a bunker). They are extremely useful for placing in jeeps, which they can use as a high-speed firing platform. Germany does not have heavy machinegunners; instead, they have commando units which are essentially a stronger version of a submachinegunner without grenades. These units move slowly.

- Anti-tank: Germany, America, and Britain all have rocket launcher anti-tank infantry, while Russia has anti-tank rifle units. These units move slowly.

- Snipers: Among the most overpowered units in the game. They are a generic unit, meaning that they don't have a nationality or voice acting associated with them. Their attack range is extremely long, far exceeding their line of sight and even that of an officer. Thus, they can be kept far behind the front line and pick off enemy units with impunity. They also can be used to target buildings that you suspect are occupied by enemy soldiers, which makes attacking a town or fortified position a lot easier. Always protect snipers at all costs! They are among your most valuable units.

- Officers: Extremely important infantry units who are far more valuable in a utility role than in a combat role. They have the longest line of sight, as well as the ability to give nearby friendly units bonus experience (they cannot give this to other officers though), even when loaded in a vehicle or used as artillery crew. They also are the fastest infantry units, but be careful because of this! If you move a large group of infantry that includes officers, they will usually make their way to the front of the formation and will be the first units killed. They also cannot go prone. So be sure to protect your officers! Also, Britain is the only nation in the game that does not have officer units, which is one of the strangest design decisions in the game if you ask me.

- Flamethrowers: Germany and America have flamethrowers, but they are in my opinion the least valuable units in the game. Their attack range is so short that they will virtually always be killed before getting close enough to fire on enemy units. Also, they explode upon death (including when they are used as artillery crew). So their only useful purpose is to burn down buildings and obstacles while not under fire.

- Medics: Add-on scenarios/campaigns only. They heal one point of HP at the expense of one point of secondary ammo. They are armed with rifles and have a faster firing animation than riflemen, though I think the rate of fire is about the same. Only available to America, Germany, and Russia.

- Mortarmen: Add-on scenarios/campaigns only. Also, only Germany and Russia have them for some reason. They are extremely slow but have a long firing range and deal a lot of damage. They can also fire from inside a building, which is one of the most awkward and annoying parts of the game design that you will encounter a lot in the add on scenarios/campaigns.

Tanks

Now let's talk about tanks. We all like tanks, right? Let's be honest, no one plays a WWII themed game for the infantry. It's all about the tanks, and thankfully that's a subject that Sudden Strike excels in, with a fairly realistic depiction of them to boot.

So why does Sudden Strike do so well with tanks? One of the biggest reasons is because they are quite non-standard in this game. Sure, you can broadly classify all of the tanks in the game according to the traditional light, medium, and heavy tank classes. But the truth is each tank in Sudden Strike has its own set of characteristics that makes it unique. No two tanks are exactly the same, which is very realistic. Some only have one armament, while others have a primary and secondary armament. They all move at different speeds. Some have heavy armor such that a frontal attack against it barely does any damage, while others have armor so weak that even riflemen can damage it. One has a flamethrower as its secondary weapon, and another can even be airdropped onto the battlefield! As you can see, there are so many varieties of tank, and it really wouldn't be helpful for me to go into detail about every single one since there are so many of them in the game. As you play different campaigns and single missions you will encounter many of these and grow familiar with their subtle characteristics.

Instead, I will describe some general characteristics of tanks. All tanks in the game have the ability to rotate in place, which is a very important function. Tanks take less damage when attacked from the front than from the sides and especially the rear. So make sure you are keeping your tanks facing the enemy whenever in the middle of a battle.

The Sudden Strike Forever expansion introduced the ability of vehicles, including tanks, to move in reverse. The way the game handles this is a little bit wonky and requires some getting used to, but it's important that you do. Unfortunately there isn't a "move in reverse" mode and so the only way to do so is to make a movement click directly behind the tank. This way, you can have the tank retreat out of range of enemy fire while keeping their front facing toward the enemy, and then when they have safely backed away they can turn and move. When moving in reverse, tanks and vehicles more slower than they do going forward and so keep that in mind.

I mentioned this earlier in the guide, but it's important to bring up again. Whenever a tank's hit points reaches "yellow" status, the tank becomes disabled. It can still rotate its turret and fire its main gun, as well as fire its secondary weapon as long as the target is in front of it. However, movement is not possible until the tank's hit points return to "green" status, leaving it very vulnerable. There is no universal threshold for "yellow" status; rather, some tanks very quickly reach "yellow" while for others "yellow" is very close to "red". Generally speaking, the heavier the tank is, the sooner it hits "yellow" status. I assume this is the developers' way of representing the mechanical reliability and vulnerability of tanks.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that all tanks in the game have very poor visibility on their own, another realistic feature. The range of their weapons far exceed their individual field of view. Therefore it is very important to have other units, especially infantry, support tanks whenever possible to extend the visible area around your tanks. A good tactic is to pair a soldier with a large field of view with a tank so that the tank can attack enemy positions from a safe distance.

Threats to tanks which in Sudden Strike can come from basically anywhere. Obviously enemy tanks and anti-tank guns are huge threats, but also a direct hit from indirect fire artillery as well as rocket artillery can also do massive damage to a tank. Submachinegun soldiers with their grenades are also a threat, especially when a tank is up against a large number of them closing in. But tanks, especially ones with secondary weapons, also excel at eliminating infantry in the open so as long as you have other units extending the field of view around your tanks you should be able to repel an infantry attack.

Lastly, I'll highlight some of the tanks in the game. As I said earlier, there are a lot. Most of the common and famous tanks from WWII can be found in the game. For the USSR, you'll find T-34 and KV tanks. For Germany, the entire series of Panzers from the lowly Panzer I to the the mighty Tiger II and everything in between. For the Allies, both US and UK tanks abound including the famous M4 Sherman, M5 Stuart, and British tanks like the Cruiser, Cromwell, and Churchill tanks. Even the French have one tank in the game, which you will encounter in early German campaign scenarios.

Other AFVs

Besides tanks, there are plenty of other armored fighting vehicles found in the game. For game purposes, all of these are also considered "tanks" even though they actually aren't. They have the same game mechanics such as taking less damage from the front, becoming disabled while hit points are in the "yellow", ability to rotate in place, lower visibility than infantry, etc. Let's take a closer look:

Assault Guns and Self-Propelled Guns

Germany and the USSR have assault guns, such as the StuG and the SU series, respectively. They are very similar to tanks and indeed they were built on the chassis of many different series of tanks. But the main difference is that they don't have a turret and so have to rotate themselves to target enemies that aren't directly in front of them. They are usually armed with an infantry support gun designed to do heavy damage to structures but also work well in the anti-tank role. Germany even has one that fires a single rocket that does massive area damage. Also in this category are vehicles that in real life had indirect fire ability, but apparently the developers must have thought that non-towed indirect fire artillery would be too overpowered and so these units instead just have a long range direct fire weapon. All of the Western Allies' vehicles described by this section fall in that latter category.

Tank Destroyers

These units specialize in attacking other tanks. Germany and the Western Allies have them in this game. Some have only their main armament while others have a secondary one as well. For Germany these units are heavily armored with a lot of hit points and firepower, but very slow and vulnerable to infantry attacks. For the Allies, their tank destroyers are more lightly armored but still pack a punch with their main armament and are a lot faster than their German counterparts.

Armored Cars and Half-Tracks

These are wheeled armored fighting vehicles, but in the game they have the ability to rotate in place as if they had treads. These units are generally faster than tanks and assault guns but have both weaker defense and weaponry. They also lack a secondary weapon. What's unique about these units though is that they have the ability to carry infantry as passengers. Armored cars usually have low passenger capacity while half-tracks have a larger passenger capacity. Armored cars can also tow field guns and anti-tank guns, although this reduces their speed greatly.

Tactics

Let's talk tactics. What makes Sudden Strike so fun to play is that it requires you to actually use tactics, and not just blindly throw wave after wave of units at the enemy to win. Unlike other RTS games where you have resources and buildings that can produce the units you want and as many as you want, in Sudden Strike you are forced to work only with what you are given. In some scenarios you may receive reinforcements, but even then you might not know exactly when they come or what will show up to reinforce you. So managing your units wisely and using them optimally is key to winning any scenario in this game. This section of this guide will help you do just that.

Sniper Tactics

Snipers are among the most powerful units in the game. Their relatively long range of vision, very long attack range, and devastating level of damage to enemy infantry makes them extremely valuable. If you are given snipers to use, then you should always protect them at all costs, and rarely should you mingle them with other types of infantry. My recommendation is to form your snipers into small teams of about 2 or 3 plus an officer. It can also be helpful to have fast transportation for them close by like a jeep or armored car. Optionally you can also pair them with a light or medium tank and a few submachinegunners as well for extra protection. This group should be highly mobile and able to reposition or escape an enemy attack quickly.

To use snipers optimally, you should understand a few things about the game mechanics. Snipers' attack range far exceeds their own range of vision, which means that you can keep them quite far behind your most forward units and still use them effectively. Therefore with your sniper team you should advance your vision range as far forward as possible using units other than the snipers so that they can pick off any enemy infantry or artillery crew as soon as they come into view. Officers have the longest vision range of any unit, hence why I think it's imperative to have one in your sniper team.

When using the officer (or other unit) to advance your field of vision, do so slowly and deliberately. The scenario map in Sudden Strike works on top of an invisible grid which defines movement and vision range. So, for each cell that you advance in the grid, your vision range will also increase. However, the vision range does not update immediately; there is a small delay of a few seconds. So if you advance your officer too quickly there is a chance that he can be killed before the vision range update registers. So just take it slow and advance one step at a time. If anything starts moving toward your officer and threatening to kill him, immediately move him back toward your snipers. Every second counts!

Another useful tactic is to attack buildings outside of your field of vision. You can actually attack buildings without seeing them, so take advantage of that! One building at a time, have your snipers fire at them and watch your snipers closely while they take their shots. If the snipers fire about five rounds or so and show no signs of stopping, then it likely means that the building is clear of enemies (or it could be that there are just a lot of enemies there and your snipers haven't hit them all yet). If at any point your snipers stop shooting even though you haven't given them the order to stop, that actually means that there were enemy soldiers in that building but now your snipers eliminated all of them. Also, occasionally your snipers will start to slowly crawl forward closer to the target building on their own. If they do this, then it means there are enemy soldiers present in that building and your snipers are actually trying to get a better line of fire so that they can hit them. [See the "buildings" section of the game mechanics for more details.] Just be careful not to let them get too close! In some cases, it may just be better to flatten those buildings with artillery. Speaking of which, that leads right in to my next tactic............

[harriskazakis]

Great guide, lots of little details I forgot to mention and much better structure.

Also, I can't believe I never noticed how officers boost the experience of surrounding units.

[Tarquinius+]

More tactics please.

[Wasp1e]

waiting for tactics

[Exterminator]

Awesome guide, thanks a lot! Hope you have time to complete it :)

[ChaMil]

nice thread, hope you can get around to finishing it as well ;-)