Controlling your Infantry

[Table]

Introduction

Hi, my aim is to create a guide on infantry tactics, control and micro. Bits and pieces will be added on, and old points will be fleshed out, possibly with pictures as time passes. Please read carefully, even if it is rather disorganised as I write sentences to suit my flights of fancy.

Your infantry is very likely the first unit you will buy, as they are a requirement to capture the control zones. However, reading this forum, it seems not many people know how to use them.

There are two main infantry circumstances. Where one is advancing or defending, and whether one has advantage of number/positioning or not. Whether you are fighting over a zone or not. When advancing, you aim to have the same advantage the defenders have, that of cover and position and recon. If fighting over a zone, you normally aim to kill the opponent as quickly as possible. In this circumstance, you are more likely to spend time throwing grenades. When fighting over an area, you aim to kill as many as possible, with the least casualties. If bulletfire is winning the combat for you, you do not normally attempt to mass throw grenades and pay attention elsewhere.

Movement
Single click to walk. Double click to run. There is a blue bar underneath the portrait showing the stamina to run. When the blue bar runs out, you cannot run anymore.

The button on the screen between rocket launcher shot and attack ground is attack-move. F6 is the attack-move hotkey. Under the attack move command, if the unit moves to that location you have specified as id it is a normal move command, but if they see an opponent, they will stop moving and attack. When the opponent is dead, they will carry on moving to the location. This will aid survivability immensely.

Infantry Management and Control

The Early Game

When a squad is brought are sent to capture a point which is equal distance from you as it is of your opponent, it is likely that they will meet at that point. You must be prepared for this. Infantry to infantry combat will occur and the more aware you are, the faster your reaction and correct responses will be. From small actions, you can capture the zone, and from such small advantages are large gains created. You must aim to kill as many of the opposing infantry as possible, with the fewest casualties as quickly as possible. If you are going to lose the combat, your aim is to either preserve your infantry, cause as many casaulties or prolong the combat as long as possible, depending on the situation. There are several steps you can take to ensure that your infantry have the greatest chance of winning the combat, and hence the zone.

Lie back and spread yourself

You must be ready at all times, to cancel order or to make them lie prone. Lieing prone will improve both their accuracy and survibility immensely. It is no use to stare at your men calming walking into the embrace of death. The keyboard, mouse and minimap all exist for a reason. Do not bunch them together, where a single SMG or MG burst can hit several men. Or HE. Or grenade. Or artillery. Or an AC. Or a tank. Or the building or wall collapsing on all of them.

Select individual men, the ones which are nearest or the right distance to the enemy and command them to throw throw antipersonel grenade. Try to cook the grenade if expediant to do so. You can also use a anti-tank grenade, as they are more powerful and do not have a timer and can collapse the buildings around the opponent. It is not a question of throwing as many grenades as possible. You must select the right targets, use the grenades well, and compare the possible damage that can be done whilst using small arms. Yiu can not only pick up grenades, but machine guns. The common infantry might use an MG with one star, but your assault squad leader uses two stars, so if your machine gunner dies, or you killed the opposing machine gunner, try to pick it up with the squad leader. Elite and sub elite infantry can all use MG with all their stars. In effect, you can keep reusing your MG wiith the same effectiveness.

Using cover and buildings

Here are some more information on how to control your infantry, with an emphasis on fighting at and around cover. Infantry combat is positional. An SMG shooting at frontally at a line will do less damage than shooting along the flank of the line. Closely grouped infantry will be hit more often bullets and are more vulnerable to grenades. Deploying in cover both drastically improve survivalbility and accuracy. If you can deploy sandbags, you can make cover wherever so you have space to do so.

When assaulting sandbags, you too can make use of cover. if there is no readily available cover, you can order them to lie prone. This pretty much have the same effect of being deployed at sandbags. Behind the sandbags are a great place to aim your grenades at. This too can be done when you are not assaulting sandbags, but too often do people complain that sandbags are too effective, when they themselves do not take any action to use their unit effectively.

If you wish to place an entire squad in the windows of a building, you can tell the squad to deploy into a window, and the entire squad will do so. You hovor your mouse pointer over a window and a symbol will appear. You can tell individual men to enter a window, for greater control. Do whichever option is expedient for your time and ability.

Know that when a soldier runs, it will take half a second for him to respond to enemy threats. On the otherhand, the soldier standing still, waiting on that corner you had just passed will instantly shoot. If that soldier is a Soviet SMGman, he can, and will gun down 10 men. You have been warned.

Sneaky around and Bubblewrapping

After the initial stages of the game, infantry serves not just to capture and hold a point from other infantry, they also have the valuable role of spotting. Also called scouting or recon or vision or infomation gathering or simply annoying those who don't understand that you can play with single infantry. Any infantry in the game can be placed under the hold fire or return fire mode. Personally I prefer hold fire, otherwise they may decide to return fire when hit by a stray bullet, or some other random effects. I don't really understand it but sometimes my return fire infantry start shooting when I do not want them to.

There are three main types of spotting. One is when your infantry are near your vehicles, such as tanks, for tank support. They help to prevent errant rifle/SMGman from crawling up and throwing an AT into your Tank engine. Or ATmen for that matter. They stay close to the tank and both detect and kill sneaking infantry. Think of them as your buble wrap for your tank. If your tank is standing still, you would like to place most of the protective infantry on the flanks and rear, as tanks with AA MG can spot well.
If you are assaulting or moving a tank forward, the best way to do this is by using a feature of FoW which was included but not explained nor implemented well. You select a single tank and a group of infantry. Single click them, and the tank and infantry will move together as one unit and the infantry will automatically stay close to the tank, and the tak will endeavour to move at infantry speed. Thus, even when moving, the tank is protected.

Second is spotting for opposing tanks and infantry, away from your main line. These are brave men, who often talk of the loneliness of the battlefield, away from their fellow comrades, hiding in bushes. Saboteurs excel and are intended for this role. They even dress up their dynamite as teddybears, so they don't feel so lonely. They are dotted individually, in bushes, and are absolutely not on "fire at will mode. They face the direction they expect the opponent to come walking from, and so are facing their opponent's deployment zone. If you have ever wondered why a tank can attack your tank, when your own tank can only see it once the opposing tank is firing, it is because he has forward spotters, and you do not.

Thirdly is when you are spotting the areas around zones. This isn't considered the on the same tactical level as the others, but is included for the sake of completeness, and also people often are not aware of this. Snipers seem to excel at this role, as they have a long sight range, has a semi officer ability, and can shoot vital infantry. Though any infantry are good for this role. Even conscripts and tankmen. They scout the dangerous areas around zones and look at the lines of riflemen behind the sandbags, and generally allow you to prepare and make good decisions for assaulting. This also works for scouting around your own zone, so you can prepare for an assault.

If your spotters just so happen to see a blob if infantry or a tank to come trundling past, you can always throw a grenade. It is your decision to weight the risks of this, to see if losing a good spotter and spotting position is worth the risk of killing that tank. My teammates often tell me not to lob grenades at infantry, but I think it is worthwhile sometimes.



Advice given in no particular order, but with numbers, as reading numbers help people engage the logic part of their mind. Grammar, and advice on rephrasing sentence structure to be more clearer and succinct as well as give a more narritive air will be welcome.

1) Do not bunch them together, where a single SMG or MG burst can hit several men. Or HE. Or grenade. Or artillery. Or an AC. Or a tank. Or the building or wall collapsing on all of them. I'm sure you get the hint.

2) You must be ready at all time to cancel order or to make them lie prone. This will improve both their accuracy and survibility immensely. It is no use to stare at your men calming walking into the embrace of death. The keyboard, mouse and minimap all exist for a reason.

3) Select individual men, the ones which are nearest or the right distance to the enemy and command them to throw throw antipersonel grenade. Try to cook the grenade if expediant to do so. You can also use a anti-tank grenade, as they are more powerful and do not have a timer and can collapse the buildings around the opponent.

4) If a soldier dies, and he has not used his grenade, that is a waste of a grenade, if you do not pick it up. So after a battle or during a battle, if safe under cover, pick them up.

5) Improve your reaction skills. If your screen is too shakey, turn down your graphics. You don't need to play with shadows and shaders if your graphics card does not have the engine for it.

6) If you wish to be able to select your squad after a battle, hotkey them. Read manual for detail on hotkey.

[Hartmann]

Mucho importante is to not take it to the other extreme where you are constantly managing individual infantry. You're wasting huge amounts of time if you do this by default, and moving infantry in groups of 3 or 4 is much more efficient.

[Table]

Please note that when I was asking to manage individual men, it was for grenade throwing. You do not want to throw grenades whilst selecting a group of infantry.

No one starts off by managing individual infantry. We all start off by moving a blob of infantry when we first started this game. Unfortunately, people seem to presume this is the only option they have. So I am telling them that the best thing they can do to improve their game, is to control their men indivdually when throwing grenades.

It is much more important to practice your micro by pushing the limits of what you can currently do. Obviously, I am not asking people to move men individually by default. All this micro is combat micro. Micro starts when combat starts.

Yes,I am aware that moving small groups of men as opposed to individual men is more time efficient, though usually when people move small groups of men into cover positions, it would be more beneficial for them to move each man individually, so that they do not get taken out by one grenade or HE shel.

[HANSPETER]

Generally speaking the rule of thumb is...

The game hates you!

-If a tank seem just inside AT range, then it's really not, and trying to throw it will get you killed.

-Infantry sent on flanking missions are always hit by large shells from absolutely inaccurate artillery.

-Tanks never EVER have their "blind side" turned toward you... it only "seems" that way. This is a trick the game plays in order to bait you into wasting infantry by throwing it at tanks.

-If you're thinking "my men can easily take this point", then you're wrong, and you're missing something, like a freshly spawned incoming APC, or another squad hiding in the bushes, or the fabled horribly inaccurate yet this one time lethally accurate mortar/arty fire.

-Everywhere more than two men are at any given time, a rocket barrage will hit any second.

-Every building containing 2 or more men is about to get totally demolished, the more men, the more likely the chances of the building collapsing.

-One conscript is ALWAYS sufficient to destroy your entire elite squad, except if you're using them of course.

- For every unit, there is a counter, and your opponent just spawned it.

[jvano]

1) Do not bunch them together, where a single SMG or MG burst can hit several men.

!!!!!!! VERY IMPORTAN..... ten soldiers together + one shot of arty = 10 soldiers dead!

SMG is better in close combat... example.. urban combat..

And riflemen is beter in cover logn distance...... or i wrong?

Mucho importante is to not take it to the other extreme where you are constantly managing individual infantry. You're wasting huge amounts of time if you do this by default, and moving infantry in groups of 3 or 4 is much more efficient.

I use the infantery one at one... is worng????

Mucho importante

se dice "muy importante"

saludos!

[Evilsausage]

Another advice is to be sneaky with some of your infantry. 1 Infantry dude hiding in a bush up in enemy territory can give you alot of good information of whats going on over there.
And if any tank later on happens to drive past, you can always AT nade it.

[Table]

Haha, very humorous Clamhammer. Imagine a game where you will be more likely to lose to a superior opponent! Or a game where you have only 50% chance of winning against the best people! Utter madness!

Thanks, I will add in some information on spotting and stealth.

[triumph]

Use of rifles depends on faction and type of rifle, bolt or semi auto. Because of that I hold US rifles in higher regard than German rifles.

So unless you're getting those close up 1 shot kills from a lot of luck, a rifleman is pretty much just vision or a grenade. But the Americans and to an extent Soviet rifles due to the molotovs are allowed to be much more dynamic. This means you may be more aggressive without being punished.

[Table]

I believe somebody else had detailled extensively on the difference between the basic infantry types somewhere else on the forum. I'm sure most will know that US riflemen are quite excellent, especially when direct controlled, and that the the Soviet and the Japanese riflemen have AT, though in the case of Japanese riflemen, they have to cook the AT grenade. That is, if anybody cares about or played Japanese.

[HANSPETER]

That is, if anybody cares about or played Japanese.

I love them, they remind me of BF1942 for some reason. It's the voiceacting i guess