First, although it goes without saying, I am going to say it anyway. If, by
some strange whim of yours, you wish to distribute this FAQ, you can do so as
long as you give credit to its author and do not edit it.
Second, like it is with everything in life, there are no guarantees. Some of
the hints I will give may not work for you, or may even turn out harmful in
your case. I accept no responsibility whatsoever for anything that might happen
as a result of your using this document. So, take it 'as is'.
All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their
respective trademark and copyright holders.
THE GOLDEN RULE
ALWAYS try to kill enemy units and not let them retreat. If they retreat, they
will receive reinforcements and come back at you with full strength a few turns
later.
PART I: LAND
Good land forces are key to victory. Your ships may be out of range of some
targets inland, your air force may be kept at bay by powerful enemy AA guns,
but your ground troops will always be there for you, crawling through the mud
and ripping those objectives out of enemy hands with their teeth.
ORGANIZATION
The simplest effective ground taskforce consists of a simple artillery piece
and two or three infantry units. Position them in such a way that the artillery
is next to all three infantry and you have a very powerful formation. The
infantry is blocking the enemy path to your artillery, while the artillery
provides support for the infantry, making it almost invincible. The weak points
of this formation are its rear and its top. If the enemy attacks your artillery
either by making his way into the formation's rear or by remote bombardment, it
will be a sitting duck and without its support so will be your infantry.
A good way to beef up this taskforce is to add a tank unit. This will allow you
to mop up retreating enemy units and to have a powerful unit in reserve, should
one of your infantry get severely weakened or should an enemy unit appear near
your rear.
Another wise addition would be a heavy artillery piece with a range of 3.
Position it directly behind your regular artillery and you will be able to
bombard an enemy unit twice before attacking it. This will make life for your
attacking infantry a heck of a lot easier.
MOTORIZATION
Three words: always, always, and always. Except in the very first scenario when
you don't really have a choice, you shouldn't leave any units without trucks or
other means of transportation. Since the trucks are so cheap, it's really a
no-brainer. With the exception of very few maps, your objectives will be quite
far from each other and connected by roads. Without proper transport, your
troops may not even make it to the objective.
DON'T BOTHER WITH
- AA units. These are only effective when you're defending and you will be
attacking in most of the scenarios. Stick with the fighter planes instead.
- Self-propelled artillery. It sounds and looks great, but is too slow moving
to keep up with your motorized troops. By the time it gets to the objective you
will have either taken it already or be out of time in the scenario.
- Anti-tank guns. Due to its extremely slow speed, this is mostly a defensive
weapon. It is very ineffective against infantry, which is what you will mostly
face. Enemy tanks are prime targets for your bombers and even if they make it
to your ground troops, they will attack your infantry, not your ATGs.
- Submarines. They are easily beaten by any ship when on surface and are too
slow when submerged. The only way to effectively attack enemy ships is to
slowly creep up to it submerged, but by the time you do that the battle will
long be decided by surface ships and naval aircraft. Making subs more useless
yet is their amazing vulnerability to destroyers, which the enemy always has at
least a couple of.
GOOD UNITS TO CONSIDER
- HW Infantry. These guys are much stronger than regular infantry, which the
enemy uses a lot of. They can also effectively fight armoured enemies. The
downside is their lower speed, however this is quite acceptable. Very rarely
will you need a speed of 3 instead of 2, and if you do, just send tanks to deal
with it. Most of the time when you are near the enemy you will be moving slowly
because your artillery has to stay unpacked to defend against any attacks.
- Mountain Gun 94 This is an awesome piece of Japanese artillery. Yes, it is
weak, but it has the speed of two! This allows it to move as fast as your heavy
infantry without having to pack up, effectively doubling your speed near the
enemy. Unlike self-propelled artillery, this little babe can also be packed up
in trucks and quickly transported along with your infantry. This is a great
unit.
TAKING HEAVILY DEFENDED OBJECTIVES
On many occasions you will encounter major enemy strongholds, especially in
objective cities. These will be quite hard to take because enemy units are well
entrenched, supported by artillery and often covered by AA units.
What you want to do here is take it slow. Park your own taskforce protected by
artillery next to the enemy. This will create a WWI-like situation where two
infantry forces protected by artillery are in a stalemate. Neither you nor the
enemy will be able to attack for fear of devastating protective fire from
opposing artillery. But unlike in WWI, you are not going to sit on your hands
and just trade artillery fire with the enemy for ages. What you want to do is
concentrate as much fire as possible on one of their units. All your artillery
in range, as well as planes and ships should blast the heck out of the
unfortunate infantry next to you. After this, your infantry can move in and
take the hex. The artillery and other infantry will follow, moving the whole
taskforce ahead a bit. More likely than not, after taking the first hex like
this, you will be in a position to hit the enemy artillery hard. For this, it
may be wise to take the hex with a unit that did not yet attack that turn, so
that you can immediately strike those big guns.
BLITZKREIG
We all know what it is. A fast war achieved by using tanks, motorized infantry
and bombers in conjunction and coordination. Well, this is exactly what you
want to do when engaging unfortified enemies in the open.
Begin by attacking the target with artillery and/or bombers to soften it up and
remove entrenchments. After this is done, you want to attack with a slower
unit, if you have a choice. Say, between an infantry and tanks, attack with
infantry first. This should kick the target back a hex. This will allow you to
bring in another plane and bomb the target once again. Now, bring in the faster
unit, like tanks and strike it again, kicking it back another hex. Finally,
bomb it with the third plane. More likely than not, this combined power will be
enough to kill the unit.
PART II: AIR
As was the case in reality of WWII, victory in the air is absolutely crucial to
success. Defending under enemy bombs is very difficult and attacking or moving
is nearly impossible. Therefore, you must try to achieve air supremacy as soon
as possible.
ESTABLISHING AIR SUPERIORITY
This is not as hard you might think, provided you are well prepared. First, you
will need a lot of top-of-the-line fighters. Yes, I know they are expensive,
but not having them will cost you even more.
Second, always keep your fighters close to each other. They don't have to be
side-by-side, but don't send half of them flying to one end of the map and the
other half flying to another end. This is your key advantage because the AI
rarely does that. This way, you will encounter enemy fighters in small groups,
each of which can be easily overwhelmed by your forces with little losses.
Three, never ever let a damaged enemy plane escape. Always shoot to kill. It
goes for all units, really, but with planes it's even more important because of
the huge pains they can cause you.
Fourth, always attack with at least two planes. If you don't the enemy may win,
or at the very least they will escape and repair.
Fifth, use zones of control to block enemy retreat or attack routes. Basically
the idea is that once any unit enters a hex neighbouring an enemy unit, it can
no longer move. So, if you position one fighter directly above the enemy plane
and another fighter directly below, the enemy plane will only be able to move
one hex on its next turn, giving you an opportunity to attack it again and
finish it off.
Sixth, concentrate your attacks on enemy fighters first. If you kill off all
the fighters, you will easily blow all enemy bombers out of the sky in a few
turns, but if you weaken your fighters before you killed the enemy ones, they
may well win the air battle with you. Then you will be in DEEP trouble.
If you follow these rules, you will have the sky all to yourself in no time at
all.
TARGETS FOR AERIAL STRIKES
Generally bombers perform quite poorly against smaller targets like infantry.
If you do bomb infantry positions, it will most likely be in order to destroy
their entrenchments and fortifications. Though, early infantry of not very well
developed nations, like China, or Philippines suffer quite a bit from air
strikes, don't count on your bombers to do a lot of damage to American or
Japanese infantry.
The primary target for bombers is a transported unit. Especially before the
enemy has armoured trucks and uses regular 1.5-ton trucks, a good bomber's
attack can be devastating. Consider this, a Japanese Nell bomber is projected
to do 01 damage against a deployed US Marines unit. However, battle conditions
change and the Marines have to withdraw, using their armoured trucks. Now, that
same bomber is projected to make 05 damage when attacking them on the move. If
the Marines were using non-armoured trucks the numbers would've been even
higher.
Another great target to bomb is tanks. Though, tougher than trucks, they still
take plenty of damage from bombing runs. Considering how hard they can be to
destroy using only land units, it's a real bargain.
Artillery pieces, especially smaller ones, aren't the easiest targets to
destroy, but they are well worth attacking since this is often the only way to
take them out
NEW: Ground units that are crossing a river are very vulnerable to attacks.
Therefore, the enemy usually only crosses rivers when your forces are not
around. But with eyes in the sky you can somtimes catch them doing this. This
is a great opportunity, so send a good bomber there. Quite often, you will be
able to completely annihilate that unit just by bombing it.
ATTACKING AN AA-DEFENDED POSITION
The enemy isn't stupid. They know that bombing is the easiest way to take out
their artillery and that without artillery their infantry is just cannon
fodder. So, they often put AA pieces to cover their artillery. This is a
painful situation, but it can be overcome.
First of all, check if you have any naval vessels in the area. If you do,
suppress that AA. Now, you can attack it with your best bomber. They will
retaliate on the next turn, but by then their strength will be greatly
diminished by your first strike.
If you don't have naval vessels in the area, things will get a lot messier, as
you will have to attack under fire and your bomber will suffer casualties. In
this case, it may be wise to attack with your non-core bomber first if you have
any. Also, try to swarm the area with planes if you can. The enemy will often
chose to target your fighters instead of your bombers in retaliation, which is
fine since you must already have air supremacy.
USING BOMBERS TO PREVENT ENEMY UNITS FROM REINFORCING
This is another little use for your planes. When your plane bombards an enemy
unit and stays over it at the end of the turn, that unit cannot restore its
strength fully in one turn, as it would otherwise. Needless to say, this is
very useful if you can't kill the unit entirely in one turn.
PART III: SEA
There isn't much to say here. Destroyers and Light Cruisers are great for fire
supporting ground troops, as they can enter shallow waters. However, they fall
easy victim to Heavy Cruisers or Battleships. They, in turn, fall victim to
aerial attacks from tactical and torpedo bombers.
So, just like over land, your first priority is to establish air supremacy and
then take care of enemy bombers. Try to fight out the air battle a safe
distance away from your fleet, so that the enemy doesn't have a chance to
torpedo your ships while you are dealing with his fighter planes. When that is
done, unleash your own bombers at enemy battleships. Not always, but usually,
battleships are ill protected against aerial attacks. Bombing at sea is quite
different from bombing over land because you can use torpedo bombers. With
them, you can swarm a single enemy ship with as many as seven bombers at once.
This is also probably the only area where the Golden Rule doesn't always apply.
If the enemy has a lot of battleships and you can't destroy them all quickly,
you may want to wound them instead. This is because capital ships are a lot
harder for the enemy to repair and because there is usually only one or two
naval engagements in any scenario, so getting your naval units beat up a bit
doesn't really matter as they will probably get to do nothing for the rest of
the scenario anyway. By wounding enemy battleships, you increase your own
battleships' chances of survival.
When the enemy battleships are sunk, turn to his smaller ships. This time make
sure you make the kill and not let them escape because Destroyers and Light
Cruisers are just as easy to repair as normal units.
FINAL NOTE
I'm by no means a great expert on PacGen and this collection of hints and
tricks is by no means full. As of now, this document is just a few things that
I wrote down as they came to my head. Still, since there isn't anything better,
I decided to make this. Hopefully this will help those, who are just starting
out with this great game, so they don't have to struggle as much as I did at
first.
Thanks for your attention and good luck on the road to Victory,
