Gameplay & Controls
- You can activate grid keys in the options menu, by doing this you don't have to memorize every command for every unit, you just have to check where the wanted command is situated and press the corresponding key. This way you don't need to think as much and you won't have to move your hand. This might save you some time and improve micro.
- Cover is directional, except craters which is not.
- A vehicles side armor is split into one "front" part and one "rear" part. By using the attack ground command when attacking enemy tanks and aiming at the rear part of the side armor, you will score a rear armor hit with a higher chance of penetrating.
- Many units can shoot farther than they can see. Using attack ground will let you shoot into the fog of war. However, it will decrease your accuracy.
- With the default hotkeys, pressing T retreats selected squad(s). With grid keys, R retreats selected squad(s).
- You can see if a house is manned by right clicking it with a unit, if it flashes red it is occupied.
- You can move the camera with the middle mouse button.
- You can estimate where the enemy armor is in the fog of war by listening for engine sounds and looking at where bushes and fences are being torn down.
- Use shift clicks after giving an order. Always shift click away from mines so units wont stay on mines after construction (engies will have a very specific pose after constructing making it easy to spot for enemies). Shift click with US tank crews is also good making them recrew tanks as soon as the vehicle is repaired. Mobile artillery should be shift clicked to your base too, so immeditaly after barrage it will move back to base. Be sure to shift reverse so unit wont turn around.
- You can shift-click on Retreat to have units automatically retreat home after performing an action. This can be useful when capturing team weapons, or for having low-health squads retreat automatically after capturing a point.
- It is always cheaper to reinforce squads than to buy new squads.
- If you want you to destroy an abandoned team weapon or vehicle, order your units to attack it with an Attack-Move order (default hotkey: A, grid key: Q). This is more accurate than using Attack-Ground.
- Attack move is better than normal move on almost every occasion, units will engage at the longest range so if you dont pay attention to that squad you will not lose a lot of hp. Once your squad starts to shout or the combat icon is flashing go there and move to cover if needed. Very good for OKW since pretty much any squad is best on long range. also good for snipers, raketen.
- Check the opponents base at the start of the game. By memorising the shape of the base buildings you can see the trace or "splat" of a building trough the fog of war. Smart players will attemtp to fake tech by building and then cancelling it so you only see the splat. To go around this just keep watching, there is not much stuff you need to do anyway if you cap via the minimap. If you hear an explosion it means he cancels the building and if you see the 410 (?) xp marker popup it means he finished the building.
- The above tip can be used to confuse your opponent. By placing down a building and canceling it before it is built you will produce the "splat" without actually building the building.
- Put -nomovies in the launch properties for the game in steam to skip the launch videos.
- Listen to what your units are saying. They will often tell you when they engage an enemy, what kind of enemy it is, when grenades are being thrown and so on.
- If you want to know what path an enemy will take when retreating from a certain point of the map you can put one of your units on or near that point and right click (move order) the enemy base. On the minimap you should see a white line for a brief moment, this is the closest path to the enemy base and this is the path enemy units will use while retreating. You can use this information to set up mines or ambushes along the retreat path to secure those critical squad wipes.
- Putting wire on the side of cover that you expect the enemy to come from is a great way of denying the enemy that cover.
- "Neutral" panther wrecks can be salvaged (for example on the map Rails and Metal)
- Be very aware of where windows are situated on buildings and how many are on each side. Some buildings don't have any windows at all in certain directions and you will not be able to fire at an enemy approaching from this side. Rotate your camera to see where the windows are. Also, if there is only one window you might not want to put, for example a conscript squad there since you will get much lower DPS. Buildings with less windows are more suited for MGs and raketen werfers.
- Destroying fire pits gives XP.
- Throwing a grenade can be cancelled by issuing another command to your unit.
- When throwing a molotov or grenade into a building, it can be a good idea to throw it outside the house just by the exit door instead, if you catch a squad on the exit its an alsmot guaranteed squad wipe since the soldiers are clumped up when exiting a building.
- Clicking alt+. cycles trough your idle units (units not with a current command).
- Assigning units to control groups will make it much easier to select and control them in the heat of battle. You do this by selecting a unit, holding down ctrl and the number you want to assign, for example ctrl+1. To select assigned units, just press the "1" key.
- Units can reinforce through a hedgerow, as long as they are within reinforce range.
- Stand still to fight. Precious dps is lost by moving due to reduced accuracy. Take cover instantly and dont move.
- Heavy cover like sand bags and walls even provide cover against many medium tanks cannon fire. They will break soon though so don't stand around too long.
- When firing/throwing grenades on units in heavy cover, maximum damage is achieved by placing the grenade a bit behind the unit you want to eliminate.
- The area of effect of a grenade thrown inside a house determines the damage the grenade will do. In a large house the units will be more spread out and thus take less damage from a grenade. Molotovs will however deal damage to the whole house and assault and infiltration grenades will deal damage to a much bigger portion of a house due to the amount of grenades thrown.
- Tanks with HE grenades do huge damage to units in cover if they manage to flank the unit. If the HE shell hits the cover on the same side that the unit is covering there will be much carnage.
- Incomplete sandbags can also block shots but get destroyed easily.
- Terrain have a big impact on tank combat. Tanks will often miss uphill shots against infantry. It is, if possible, better to have the high ground and shoot down on the infantry. There is also more chance of hitting the ground if shooting uphill.
- Tank shells rendered in game actually do have trajectory. So its always a good idea to issue your tanks/AT guns to overshoot in fog of war when catching a fleeing tank. Its possible for tanks with shells that have high scatter to travel further and possibly knocking off something that its not intended and that is way out of the tanks supposed max range.
- You can use secure mode as hold fire mode. This can especially be useful when running away from enemy tanks. Use secure mode so your tank don't reveal itself in the fog of war.
- You can instantly stop your vehicle by making it face different direction via right-click drag.
- Shift clicking to reverse your vehicle is better than reverse sometimes.
Universal
- Some (all?) of the "ability shots" like target weak point or the pumas aimed shot have longer range than the "regular" shot from the same gun.
- A re-crewed team weapon like a pak or an mg will have the reinforcement cost of the unit that crewed it.
- Using attack ground with flamers allows you to attack things that are out of your line of sight (behind a wall for example).
- Be aware of what the base bunkers cover. In some maps you can sneak around the bunkers and into the base and in some you can move trough the cone of fire before the bunker has time to suppress you. Some maps even have neutral buildings inside the base sectors (Ettelbruck north and Rails and Metal south for example).
- PaK43 can fire trough buildings and terrain.
- Panzergrenadiers and assault engineers have no movement penalties in deep snow and shallow water unlike every other infantry unit.
- Repairing units (such as pioneers and engineers) will take more damage while repairing. Don't repair under fire!
- Putting demos behind sight blockers is great because even if they have a sweeper the player might not see the demo. Most players rarely rotate their camera.
- Mines will detonate if hit by anything but small arms. It is therefore usually a bad idea to stand on top of your own mine. You can also use this to defuse enemy mines from distanse.
- Be carefull when defusing demo charges. They can still be detonated after being detected.
- Trip wire flares can provide LOS for demo charges (but can also alert the enemy). You can also build them close to mines to provide sight when someone hits your mine. You can also use them to provide sight for your mortar(s).
- If you crew a team weapon with Pathfinders (or other scout infantry) it will have very good sight range, but will be more expensive to reinforce. If you crew it with shocks or sturmpios for example, it will have very potent close range protection.
- If you infiltrate far enough behind your enemies lines you can hide snipers (or other cloaking infantry) in cover and use them to sight for globals on unattended artillery and other goodies. Try not to panic retreat unless you know you have a clear path out. The ostheer sniper in particular is often better off hiding and jumping from cover to cover.
- Tank destroyers are NOT tanks. You need to keep them at long range and out of trouble.
OKW
- OKW minesweepers can be "put away" so you don't lose DPS in firefights.
- You can crush fences close to your base with the starting OKW truck to ease movement (moscow, faymonville,kholodny winter, rails etc).
- Volks are expendable, shrecks are not, 2 schreks on volks is amazing.
- The Flak HT has 3 minimum range, players might attempt to drive m20 and m3s close to you to shoot at you, simply attack ground behind the enemy vehicle since the splash will take care of the vehicle.
- OKW flak emplacements take popcap to recrew, even for an OKW player.
- If you don't need to build another base structure, SwS-trucks can be used as one-time mine defusers.
- OKW medics can heal infantry in buildings (might be a bug).
- Sturmpioneer minesweeper upgrade provides increased repair speed also.
- Volksgrenadier panzerschreck upgrade makes you immune to cold, great on winter maps with blizzards.
- Artillery Flares from the SpecOps commander is good for scouting unnoticed. It is pretty hard to spot for your enemy.
- Assault grenades deal huge damage to buildings.
- Popping out fallshirmjägers behind an enemy Katyusha is a great way of taking it out, if it's not guarded.
- The sturmtiger destroys huge areas of ice. Your enemies will not even try to get on the ice with one of these near by (or they will die trying).
- The IR STG 44 upgrade ignores cover and is excellent against units in buildings for example.
- If your Obersoldaten drops their LMG34, PICK IT UP! This weapons turns any squad that picks it up into a killing machine. Even engineers become a huge threat.
USF
- A major can "lock down" a sector when vet 3.
- American rifle smoke grenades fired at a vehicle makes the vehicle move slower (and disables its main gun?).
- You can transfer veterancy between your tanks and light vehicles by switching crews. If you for example have an M20 with vet 2 you can take that crew and put it in you brand new sherman to get some veterancy on it instead.
- You don't need to have your priest crewed while on cooldown. You save up mp and popcap by just crewing when you need to barrage.
- If you are using AT mines from Infantry/Assault Engineers put them down in groups of 3 or 4. Debuffs don't apply with 5+ mines.
- Airborne MG and AT gun breifly gives vision. This could potentially be used to call down a P47 strike for example. (Might be a bug)
- Assault engineers can (and should) lay demo-charges.
- M20 mines immobilize tanks.
- Screening your Jacksons with a Sherman or Bulldozer is very advantageous due to the Shermans superior armor, health and AI capabilities. A jackson+sherman can often be more effective than jackson+jackson against enemy armor.
- BAR upgrade on pathfinders are very strong.
- Captain has an ability to speed up production. This is very useful to get your first sherman out a bit faster.
OST
- Ostheer soldiers upgraded with the G43 can reveal enemy units on the minimap by right clicking on crawling (dying) enemy units.
- You can deploy smaller patches of minefields by simple moving away after each batch of mines is built. This let's you customize how big you want it to be. By placing down small patches of mines over a large area of ice you have a good chance of sinking enemy tanks for a relatively low cost.
- You can also destroy ice under enemy tanks with a rifle grenade.
- Spotting scopes upgrade, from the commanders that have it, on a scout car is a great way of scouting what your enemy are doing or providing vision for indirect fire. With vet 3 you can see huge parts of the map (on 1 vs 1 at least). Just remember that you need to be standing still for the spotting scopes to work.
- Elite troops Mod.24 Stun grenade is excellent against enemies in buildings.
- The Stuka AT strafe of the Close Air Support commander can one-shot B4s and many tanks but needs to be aimed manually.
- The Hull Down ability of the festung armor support increases your tanks range and rate of fire which makes them great at holding positions. The ostwind shoots down planes really fast this way and the panther will have the same range as an SU85.
- The incendiary round of the sniper is not on the same timer as the regular shot so one regular shot and one incendiary round can be fired in very short succession.
- When using the artillery officer you can fire panzerwerfers normally and then use the officer barrage ability to get 2 sets of barrages instantly.
- Artillery officers also double the range of regular mortars.
- The 222 Scout Car (with upgraded gun) is excellent at hunting undefended Katyushas.
- If you are being harassed by partisans, the flame upgrade on your halftrack is excellent at destroying buildings.
- The sniper becomes visible when jumping fences.
- The Panther actually has more penetration and longer range than the Tiger and is therefore better against heavy tanks. The tiger has superior anti-infantry capabilities on the other hand.
SOV
- If you merge a conscript into a shock squad, the conscript entity will not have the same armor value as the shock troopers.
- T-34 ram cancels if the target unit dies. This can be very useful when chasing an almost dead tiger, hit ram to catch up to him. The t-34 will fire a shot, and if the tank dies it will stop ramming. If it doesn't, the t-34 will ram. If both the shot and the ram penetrate, it will do a whopping 320 damage (half of PIV health)!
- The first volley of a Katyusha lands a bit further than the center of the circle.
- Dropping a PTRS with guards can be a good thing. You will lower the chance of dropping your main DPS dealer, the DP machine gun, and you actually get more anti-infantry DPS without it. However, if you need to fight light vehicles you will be at a loss. Think twice before picking one up.
- Vet 3 T70 with the scout ability activated will give you a huge sight range, almost equal to a map hack. Truesight is still in effect though, you will not see what's hiding behind buildings and trees.
- Demos is an often overlooked but totally deadly weapon. Especially if your enemy blobs up his infantry.
- Soviet mines are cheap and should be placed often. A mine on negative cover (a road) will have a higher chance of dealing a heavy engine damage crit.
- A vet 3 B4 with "Mother Russia"-ability activated will kill any unit in the game with 1 shot, even heavy tanks.
- You can make a "super heavy mine" by placing a demo-charge on top of a regular mine.
- Partisan's spy net works on your entire team.
- Partisans can lay TM35 mines making it easy to litter a map with them.
- "For Mother Russia" while near a forward HQs bonus is insanely strong.
- Penal battalions flame thrower cannot blow up from a critical hit.
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
