How do you lose?

[uneducated]

It is just about possible to keep one's core units alive through a Campaign on Easy. Even then, an occasional Core Unit is destroyed, (almost all Units are Cores) and this is enough to make you want to restart the Turn.
How on Earth do any of you keep playing on harder levels? Surely it is not by never having your Core Units destroyed!

How do you manage to persevere when precious Cores are annihalated? You must be very happy go lucky! Are you by nature Jolly Generals, seeing your troops destroyed something you accept with equinamity?

When you play, do you find it amusing when your Corps is being dismantled and the subsequent scenarios in the Campaign become even more difficult? It is a strange way of thinking.

[Retributarr]

How on Earth do any of you keep playing on harder levels? Surely it is not by never having your Core Units destroyed!

How do you manage to persevere when precious Cores are annihalated? You must be very happy go lucky! Are you by nature Jolly Generals, seeing your troops destroyed something you accept with equinamity?

When you play, do you find it amusing when your Corps is being dismantled and the subsequent scenarios in the Campaign become even more difficult? It is a strange way of thinking.

Your'e not alone!!!: "uneducated"... I'm no "Jacque-Shellaak"-from-"Tread & Trakk" Panzer School myself!. I too had great stressful difficulty with "Italy" and now much more so with "Bagration".

For example!, in Bagration there is a seemingly endless 'Horde' of Nastie-"Ruskies"... they are worse than Japanese 'Banzai' suicide troops. I am desperately trying to manage an "Impossible-Situation". Now!... I know why 'Adolf Hitler' was so determined to aquire... 'Atomic Weapons'.

[SineMora]

Unless you're playing on FM or above the difficulty setting shouldn't affect your chances of losing units, as while you get more prestige -- and free elite replacements during deployment on Major? -- the AI isn't affected in any way, so an exposed unit is no more likely to die on General than it is on Major. On FM and Generalissimus the AI gets an accuracy bonus (10% and 20% respectively) which increases the risks.

In addition to that you have the RNG factor -- the higher it is, the greater risks you run of losing units, because over the course of 1000s of battles during a campaign a few of them are bound to result in extremely lucky rolls for the AI, and if that happens when the wrong unit is invovled you're going to lose units. The closer you play to chess mode the easier it is, with 0% RNG being the easiest as you can completely account for every possible scenario with no risk of surprises. That said, I suspect most unit losses are the result of basic mistakes rather than lucky AI rolls, e.g., not scouting properly, not realising that the road will allow a tank to reach an exposed unit or trying to support infantry with a 17 cm gun in an urban hex against two units of engineers.

[nexusno2000]

Always support your units with defensive fire. Always.
Never overextended. Never.

Use Perimeter Control to maximize your retreat chances and supply situation.

And if you do lose a unit, it's war, people die.

Or reload.

[Kerensky]

I play universally on no randomness, but I lose units all the time. I feel like if I'm not losing units... I'm probably doing something wrong, like I'm not playing on an appropriate difficulty level. But I also have two different kinds of units in my CORE. The less then half units I give the best heroes and most elite replacements to, and the more than half of my units that at the end of my turn, are placed as vanguards and buffers to absorb whatever the AI can throw at my during it's turn. Most of these units are low experience infantry, recon, and AT units.

[Demetrios_of_Messene]

- The select few units that are over-precious to me get overstrengthened to avoid losing them (their increased effectiveness is an excellent side effect). I have to admit that in the very rare occasion that I mess up so bad that I lose such units, I do reload the turn, but not for any other unit. This rarely happens though because of the below.
- what nexusno2000 said about support and overextension. Break these rules only if you find a situation that you are willing to take a risk of losing a unit.

You can relieve the stress by playing with the "Green army" general's trait. This way most your core units will stay with low experience, hence it is not a big deal when you lose them

[BaronVonWalrus]

I learned some painful lessons on what I now call my "practice campaigns"

I'm determined not to lose any core units now. It's probably making me play in a sub-optimal way by some measures, as evidenced by how close to the turn limit I'm going on my scenarios......but those regiments, battalions and air wings have history. One of my panzer divisions has had to make do with quite a few green replacements, but one of the other two panzer divisions has been elite all the way as has my infantry division. They are increasing their "personalities" in the campaign because they can do more and more heroic things - even with "heroes" turned off.

[uneducated]

- The select few units that are over-precious to me get overstrengthened to avoid losing them (their increased effectiveness is an excellent side effect). I have to admit that in the very rare occasion that I mess up so bad that I lose such units, I do reload the turn, but not for any other unit. This rarely happens though because of the below.
- what nexusno2000 said about support and overextension. Break these rules only if you find a situation that you are willing to take a risk of losing a unit.

You can relieve the stress by playing with the "Green army" general's trait. This way most your core units will stay with low experience, hence it is not a big deal when you lose them

a) Could you please refresh our memory as to how we overstrength units?
b) Have you tried a campaign in such a way that, whenever you create a new core unit, it is always overstrengthed?

[Horseman]

- The select few units that are over-precious to me get overstrengthened to avoid losing them (their increased effectiveness is an excellent side effect). I have to admit that in the very rare occasion that I mess up so bad that I lose such units, I do reload the turn, but not for any other unit. This rarely happens though because of the below.
- what nexusno2000 said about support and overextension. Break these rules only if you find a situation that you are willing to take a risk of losing a unit.

You can relieve the stress by playing with the "Green army" general's trait. This way most your core units will stay with low experience, hence it is not a big deal when you lose them

a) Could you please refresh our memory as to how we overstrength units?
b) Have you tried a campaign in such a way that, whenever you create a new core unit, it is always overstrengthed?

a) You over strength units in the upgrade screen - you'll see a section just under where the units stats are that'll allow you to choose the OS for the unit.

[Demetrios_of_Messene]

a) Could you please refresh our memory as to how we overstrength units?
b) Have you tried a campaign in such a way that, whenever you create a new core unit, it is always overstrengthed?

a) From the upgrade screen. You can add up to 5 additional strength per unit.

b) It is possible, but certainly notrecommended for allcore units. The purchase screen is the same as the upgrade screen. So when you purchase a new core unit you can select to OS it. If you can spare the prestige (usually you can), do it for the cheaper units that OS does not occupy additional core slots. For most units that OS occupies additional core slots, you need to be selective. Make sure you do not end up with a small OS / elite force that will be vulnerable to encirclements, cannot cover much space and is highly expensive to replace.

[uneducated]

a) Could you please refresh our memory as to how we overstrength units?
b) Have you tried a campaign in such a way that, whenever you create a new core unit, it is always overstrengthed?

a) From the upgrade screen. You can add up to 5 additional strength per unit.

b) It is possible, but certainly notrecommended for allcore units. The purchase screen is the same as the upgrade screen. So when you purchase a new core unit you can select to OS it. If you can spare the prestige (usually you can), do it for the cheaper units that OS does not occupy additional core slots. For most units that OS occupies additional core slots, you need to be selective. Make sure you do not end up with a small OS / elite force that will be vulnerable to encirclements, cannot cover much space and is highly expensive to replace.

Thanks! How can the re-supply Hexes be recognized? One has to await the end of the battle to upgrade if one is not on one otherwise.

[uneducated]

a) Could you please refresh our memory as to how we overstrength units?
b) Have you tried a campaign in such a way that, whenever you create a new core unit, it is always overstrengthed?

a) From the upgrade screen. You can add up to 5 additional strength per unit.

b) It is possible, but certainly notrecommended for allcore units. The purchase screen is the same as the upgrade screen. So when you purchase a new core unit you can select to OS it. If you can spare the prestige (usually you can), do it for the cheaper units that OS does not occupy additional core slots. For most units that OS occupies additional core slots, you need to be selective. Make sure you do not end up with a small OS / elite force that will be vulnerable to encirclements, cannot cover much space and is highly expensive to replace.

Thanks! How can the re-supply Hexes be recognized? One has to await the end of the battle to upgrade if one is not on one otherwise.

[dalfrede]

Thanks! How can the re-supply Hexes be recognized? One has to await the end of the battle to upgrade if one is not on one otherwise.

Supply hexes have Big circles in them. Not all scenarios have them.
They all have flags but do not have to be VHs or cities.
Once you recognize one, it will be easy to see them all.

SupplyHex.jpg (207.39 KiB) Viewed 1733 times

[uneducated]

I am Iron Man. That is another option. There is a setting at the start of the game "advanced". You can select that there.

Thanks for all the great answers everybody!