Just sharing: why I haven't played one of my favourite games for months...

[steevodeevo]

Hi folks,

I just want to send out a big thank you to this amazingly helpful community. The tips I've received, some I was aware off, some will be obvious to many, have nevertheless proved to be indispensable. I've played OoB for years but managed to get bogged down and frustrated of late having upped the difficulty a notch. However, the following tips have made a huge difference and I thought I would summarise the key ones that have helped me enormously.

As these suggestions have helped me a great deal, and given many of these tips are of a general abstract/strategic nature, they are not necessarily documented or immediately obvious. They have been learned from experience and so I expect they would probably be invaluable to any new player and indeed any experienced player who decides to 'up' their difficulty level but has problems and can't identify why they're struggling. As I said, I was aware of many of these concepts in theory, but what I've found is old habits (especially bad ones) die hard and a change of difficulty, or even following a period of absence away from the game requires you to remind yourself or learn some new best practice. I have realised that being aware of good play practices in OoB, isn't the same as applying them! :-


- Unit efficiency. This has been huge. Despite being fully aware of attrition and unit efficiency, I wan't paying anywhere near enough attention to it in my rush against the clock. Resting and rotating units takes a bit of patience and nerve but works wonders.
- Resources works on a positive feedback loop. Try to get off to as good a start as possible. Look at early resource and reward locations and plot a route to them and made sure to grab the reachable ones early with as few losses as possible this gives a good early boost and often puts the AI on the back foot. 'In OoB success breeds success'.
- Making good use of support units and recognising their huge importance: AT and anti-air defence and the importance of artillery. Often I neglected or wasted these units, despite being aware of their complimentary support roles, they take some defending and looking after, however, when you make a conscious effort to back-up your tanks or infantry with AT for support fire, protect your critical units with well maintained AA and ensure you soften up enemy dug-in units with Arty, the difference is significant.
- Critical! it's so easy to overextend and leave own units in vulnerable positions. When advancing/attacking consider fully where it leaves you afterwards and how exposed you are to the enemy when it's the AI's turn. The AI is keen to gang up on weaker units.
- Knowing this leaves you with a number of opportunities to either:
- expose a aux unit instead of a core unit,
- set up ambushes/AT/AA cover,
- move/attack so the AI does not get so many favourable attack options (from multiple sides vs. one target) against your forward units,
- Do not use elite resource points like confetti :) It is highly recommend to go with a mix of elite and standard reinforcements to save some in reserve for repairs & replacements. Elite units are not mandatory and an extra new unit could be preferable.
- Play carefully and conserve your experienced units: probe with your Aux units and if you have to undertake a damaging encounter to dig out a stubborn defender, again, use the Aux units wherever possible (after Arty ideally).
- Encirclement & Supply; OoB is ruthless with this, it works beautifully in your favour if you cut off enemies from supply sources, but if you tend to over extend, as I was doing, an out of supply & cut off unit is a dead unit.

Pretty much down to your feedback and especially the crucial advice above, I am starting to have a little success again; I re-started Blitzkrieg and i'm up to the invasion of Greece. I'm using difficulty level 3 and having fun.

As a general observation, I had to realise that I needed to change the way I played when increasing to level 3. It became obvious that whilst the basic concepts are the same, they have to be applied more diligently and rigorously to have success.
I think if i'm honest with myself I was playing sloppy, or perhaps rather, playing as I knew would win me a game at difficulty 2. I basically had to raise my game and the level of detail and thought provided in the suggestions gave me the wake up call and re-focus that I needed to snap out of habitual play and raise the bar. This is also a testament to how good a game this is.

The players in this thread who took time out to patiently contribute tips and suggestions to help me out know who they are - a huge thank you.

[steevodeevo]

Does anyone else think these tips are useful? It certainly turned my game around when I upgraded a level from regular and depressing defeat to a decent amount of success. As a veteran player I've been frankly gobsmacked how by applying these (broadly) 6 principles my game has turned around. Maybe my prose is to vague?

Anyways.. if anyone or more thinks this (list) is useful I could top and tail my 'thank you' comments and post the meat of it as a personality suggested guide for the intermediate player.

[13obo]

Your tips are great and critical for success in the game indeed. Hopefully new players will adhere to them in the future, though experience tells me more topics like yours will pop up.

A tip that was briefly mentioned, but got lost in the posts and is critical in getting you to beat difficulty 4 or 5, is to focus on reducing enemy efficiency before launching direct engagements. I.e. the use of bombardment from artillery, strategic bombers, tactical bombers, ships (if available), etc. to soften up the enemy. It is easy to ignore bombardment when enemy is at 10 strength because an infantry/tank attack already gets the enemy sufficiently weakened, but when the enemy is at strength 12 or 13, reducing efficiency to 6 or 7 is a lot more useful than going for a direct attack immediately.

Bombardment is critical at 4th and 5th difficulties and is what many players fail to understand determines the player's success- it saves you large amounts of RP since your units don't get hurt. Yes, artillery and strategic bombers are expensive (the long range and high assault attack ones), but if you protect them well, i.e. hide from line of sight of enemy for artillery and have a fighter escort for strategic bombers, you will save even more RP in the future.

Want confirmation? Check my replays on 5th difficulty in Mojko's let's play topic: viewtopic.php?f=264&t=85494 .

Once I built up my core after 3-4 missions, it was easy to complete all objectives in a mission at half the given time, and the extra secret on top of your tips is only the efficient use of bombardment.