Advanced Tips and Tricks: A Collection

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    • Advanced Tips and Tricks: A Collection

      It would be beneficial for new forum members (and even intermediate and advanced level players) if a collection of all the top level strategies was made, so this is what this thread will be about. I very much encourage the elites of the forum community to post about all the strategies they use to shred their enemies to pieces ^^

      Even I have many things I'd like to share but I'll let the rest of the community share and discuss ideas since I'm not exactly the most advanced player here (only 14 total wins for level 85, I need to get gud ;( + only 1.10 KDR). I'll post my strats if they are not mentioned in the thread.
      Have an amazing rest of your day ^^

      "Everything is impermanent. The only thing that is permanent it impermanence itself."

      Need support? ---> Send a ticket here!

      dxter's CoW Battle Calculator ---> Use it here!

      :tumbleweed:

      o7

    • There’s skip upgrading. You build a large amount of low level units, like level 1 infantry. Research level 2. Then research level 3. Time it so by the time level 3 is reached the upgrade will not be complete, Instead of the being level 3 they’ll be level 3 for the cost and time needed for level 2. You can do this with any level skip or unit with levels. Except transport ships lol.

      Plane hordes. Make a large amount of tac’s, ints and attacks. Maybe strategic bombers if you have the resources somehow. Get them to at least level 3 or higher. With usually 10 of each you have a stack of planes that can fight anything. Land stacks? Blow them up, even ones with good AA get overwhelmed. Ints? Use tac’s or strats to blow their airstrip and wipe them out. Ships?
      Use your own ships and attack bombers and those fleets go bye-bye. Against good AA it can be depleted in health but not before doing huge subts of damage. Just don’t lose your airstrips.

      Shoot n’ scoot. Great against invading stacks. Use your atry’s range to shoot a stack and then back off. Using your fast speed in your homeland they can’t catch up. They come over, you shoot. Back up, and repeat. Eventually they’ll be depleted and easy to kill. Enemy arty can be a counter but if the player is not active or doesn’t fire in time you can hit them and move of range fast enough.

      Coastal bombardment. If you have naval superiority, simply move your fleets on the coast near their cities. Blow everything important up. Your ships can out range and/or overpower their artillery. They’ll need a lot of naval and/or attack bombers to force you back (carriers with ints are a good tactic against this. Basic and good use for carriers in general, happy @K.Rokossovski?) Either way if they don’t have enough ships and planes to throw you back a coastal nation fighting you is doomed.

      CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

    • When you're up against an AI, it can be a nag when he's standing still, and you don't have enough strength to attack him when he is on the defense (perhaps because it is the early game, and your own units are defensive too). A single piece of artillery can work miracles though: just fire a single shot into his stack, and 90% of the time he'll come running for you like a berserker (leaving a single unit behind - which is even better because his main stack will be weaker and the single remaining unit will be easy to kill later). Make sure your own melee stack is on his route towards your artillery, stand still and wait for him to run into you; he will be using his attack stats and you will be the defender.

      Another similar one: have your own stack coming from a different direction than the arty firing. He'll rush away from you, chasing the arty; now you can enter the city from the other side and take it easily. If this is his last province, the main stack evaporates when you take it.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      When you're up against an AI, it can be a nag when he's standing still, and you don't have enough strength to attack him when he is on the defense (perhaps because it is the early game, and your own units are defensive too). A single piece of artillery can work miracles though: just fire a single shot into his stack, and 90% of the time he'll come running for you like a berserker (leaving a single unit behind - which is even better because his main stack will be weaker and the single remaining unit will be easy to kill later). Make sure your own melee stack is on his route towards your artillery, stand still and wait for him to run into you; he will be using his attack stats and you will be the defender.
      The amount of times this has saved my butt makes me want to like this 5 times. Super good in the Antarctica map as well.

      CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

    • I’ll add two tips.

      On day one, if you have the luxury of being able to attack AI, don’t just mindlessly bombard them with arty. Send units to confirm if they have any industry under construction. If they do and the defenders are not too significant, just send in your starting infantry. They will do less damage to the industry and give it a better chance to survive the change of ownership. If it does, cancel construction immediately and use those resources to build industry in your own core. AI like to build industry on day one, similar to players who know what they’re doing.

      Don’t skimp on interceptors. Lead any advance into enemy territory with an armored car screen while holding your interceptors just out of your enemy’s visibility. When they send bombers after your AC for a direct attack, get your interceptors in place at the last second. Put the AC in the very edge of your patrol circle so the enemy won’t see them until it’s too late, then follow that up with a direct attack of your own. It allows you to have your interceptors deal defensive damage to the enemy bombers before the damage is done to your AC, then you deal attack damage. It’s a very powerful one-two punch.

    • One tip I have:

      After capturing a city with a high level of development (either late-game AI or core/nearby cities of players), which should include either a high level barrack or ordnance foundry. It can easily be used to produce stealth defensive units quickly, like AT or militia. Very useful if you only have vulnerable single-unit ACs or mot inf riding around behind enemy lines. When the opponent comes to recapture the city (preferably with units that aren't scouts, like ACs or mot inf, they're in for a surprise, especially if they just throw a MT into a city guarded by a lvl 2 or 3 AT. This is the best case, usually the opponent can kill the lone defender and move on, but it does mean they suffer damage they weren't expecting, and very useful if the enemy unit is badly damaged or something. Worst comes to worse, you can retake the city by looping around with the fast unit you originally took it with to damage the buildings more and create chaos ^^
      Have an amazing rest of your day ^^

      "Everything is impermanent. The only thing that is permanent it impermanence itself."

      Need support? ---> Send a ticket here!

      dxter's CoW Battle Calculator ---> Use it here!

      :tumbleweed:

      o7

    • When you're just taking (a lot of) empty land, keep a close eye on the geography. Preferrably, you should take the route to take it where the "dot" is closest to the province border, because that is the part of your travel where you pay the "non-owned" penalty: only half speed. Figure out a route where your province entries are short roads; this is also important for exit routes of course, but much less so.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      When you're just taking (a lot of) empty land, keep a close eye on the geography. Preferrably, you should take the route to take it where the "dot" is closest to the province border, because that is the part of your travel where you pay the "non-owned" penalty: only half speed. Figure out a route where your province entries are short roads; this is also important for exit routes of course, but much less so.
      Also don’t use large stacks to take that land! The right units would be mot infantry or armored cars. While your big stacks do the fighting and take the cities, use these single units to quickly and efficiently take all the left over rural land.

      CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      When you're just taking (a lot of) empty land, keep a close eye on the geography. Preferrably, you should take the route to take it where the "dot" is closest to the province border, because that is the part of your travel where you pay the "non-owned" penalty: only half speed. Figure out a route where your province entries are short roads; this is also important for exit routes of course, but much less so.
      Also, when looking at ETAs given by the game, most do not realise that it's usually less time that it actually is, since it does not calculate the full speed gained when the province is captured. So in that case, an AC supposed to be arriving in the coast in 10 hours might get there in 7.

      Another unrelated tip: melee units can fight within a range of 5 km; very useful to speedily capture provinces early (in many cases this is vital to get there before the enemy or whatnot) and melee artillery stacks if the meat shield is less than 5km in front of them, etc etc :thumbsup:
      Have an amazing rest of your day ^^

      "Everything is impermanent. The only thing that is permanent it impermanence itself."

      Need support? ---> Send a ticket here!

      dxter's CoW Battle Calculator ---> Use it here!

      :tumbleweed:

      o7

    • DxC wrote:

      6thDragon wrote:

      They will do less damage to the industry and give it a better chance to survive the change of ownership.
      So if the battle or the capture brings the building to zero HP, construction is canceled? I figured it would continue with construction (repairing damage) until the normal end time of the construction.
      I’m not sure about this, but I just remembered an important thing about buildings: they still work if they are not finished being built. Let me explain.

      Basically the building doesn’t spawn and start working the second you finish building it, it also works at half health, technically. For example industry, if you start building it and cancel at the halfway point, you’ll still get an increase in resources. Like if building increased your resources by 100%, stopping halfway would still give 50%. So in this case if the building is like 25% built, you would still have 75% of resources to claim. This also means that you don’t waste time if you cancel a building (unless it’s a unit factory under lv1) and you still benefit from it being partially complete!

      CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

    • Artillery does more damage to buildings than many realize, certainly more than it does to unarmored units. When you cancel construction (or units in production) you get a portion of the resources that were spent initiating the construction. I assume you get back a percentage equal to the uncompleted portion. So if it cost 1,100 rare material to start building rural industry and it’s at 50% when you cancel construction, you get 550 rares back (and the metal, oil, and cash too, of course).

      The damage to the building is even less if you can one-shot the defenders in melee as each round of combat results in more damage to the buildings.

      I make it a point to always check captured provinces for units and buildings under construction to cancel for the resources. I’m just saying day one is extra juicy for AI, especially cities and resources generating rural provinces as they tend to get industry.

      I don’t fully understand the rules for if construction is interrupted, but I assume it has something to do with the damage to the building. I’ve had a lot of luck sending in enough melee units to one-shot the defenders. Especially compared to bombarding them.

    • 6thDragon wrote:

      When you cancel construction (or units in production) you get a portion of the resources that were spent initiating the construction.
      I think it's just proportional to how much time is left on production/construction and independent of unit/building condition.


      6thDragon wrote:

      I assume you get back a percentage equal to the uncompleted portion.
      Yeah, the uncompleted portion of the production/construction, not the unit/building. Thus, it doesn't seem like it matters how much you damage the building in terms of how much resources you get back from canceling. The faster you take the buildings and cancel should give you the most back, regardless of how much damage you inflict.

    • +1 to looking at what the province is producing after capture, and canceling that project immediately.

      Sometimes it's tempting to keep the unit, but it's usually not a good idea. The factory lost 1+ levels and the morale dropped from 100 to 25. That "almost done" unit will take many hours (or even days) to complete. Better to cancel it and use those resources on something you actually want and need.

      This is also the only way to "capture" enemy manpower. When you cancel a unit build, it also returns a % of manpower along with other resources.

    • Some old hints, written before the downgrades to CoW-1.5

      1. Should you lose your Capitol early on, don’t bother replacing it. As your morale decreases, your provinces will most likely revolt to your coalition partners, your team mates will then have to feed the hungry provincials.
      2. Should you decide to replace your lost Capitol, make sure not to leave any defenders in the new Capitol. That’s the first place your enemy will look to attack your troops.
      3. If your enemy has a strong Navy, make sure to place plenty of ground troops on your coasts, need to keep an eye on those enemy warships.
      4. Blitzkreig is for the birds – always include militia and other slow moving units with your advancing armor. No need to engage the enemy in a timely manner, or take too many provinces all at once.
      5. If at first you do not succeed, try, try again. Just because you have lost a dozen ground units trying to convoy across waters protected by enemy submarines, does not mean that the 13th unit might somehow slip through.
      6. Never coordinate any battle operations with your coalition mates. Disjoint operations in many directions is the best way to confuse your enemies.
      7. Always use tanks to attack enemy infantry defending cities. The rumor that tanks lose 50% combat strength in cities is just another documentation error.

    • cycle9 wrote:

      Some old hints, written before the downgrades to CoW-1.5

      1. Should you lose your Capitol early on, don’t bother replacing it. As your morale decreases, your provinces will most likely revolt to your coalition partners, your team mates will then have to feed the hungry provincials.
      2. Should you decide to replace your lost Capitol, make sure not to leave any defenders in the new Capitol. That’s the first place your enemy will look to attack your troops.
      3. If your enemy has a strong Navy, make sure to place plenty of ground troops on your coasts, need to keep an eye on those enemy warships.
      4. Blitzkreig is for the birds – always include militia and other slow moving units with your advancing armor. No need to engage the enemy in a timely manner, or take too many provinces all at once.
      5. If at first you do not succeed, try, try again. Just because you have lost a dozen ground units trying to convoy across waters protected by enemy submarines, does not mean that the 13th unit might somehow slip through.
      6. Never coordinate any battle operations with your coalition mates. Disjoint operations in many directions is the best way to confuse your enemies.
      7. Always use tanks to attack enemy infantry defending cities. The rumor that tanks lose 50% combat strength in cities is just another documentation error.

      read 1 & 2, thought hmm… then realised this was a joke :D
      Have a blessed day <3

    • SamPGS_17 wrote:

      cycle9 wrote:

      Some old hints, written before the downgrades to CoW-1.5

      1. Should you lose your Capitol early on, don’t bother replacing it. As your morale decreases, your provinces will most likely revolt to your coalition partners, your team mates will then have to feed the hungry provincials.
      2. Should you decide to replace your lost Capitol, make sure not to leave any defenders in the new Capitol. That’s the first place your enemy will look to attack your troops.
      3. If your enemy has a strong Navy, make sure to place plenty of ground troops on your coasts, need to keep an eye on those enemy warships.
      4. Blitzkreig is for the birds – always include militia and other slow moving units with your advancing armor. No need to engage the enemy in a timely manner, or take too many provinces all at once.
      5. If at first you do not succeed, try, try again. Just because you have lost a dozen ground units trying to convoy across waters protected by enemy submarines, does not mean that the 13th unit might somehow slip through.
      6. Never coordinate any battle operations with your coalition mates. Disjoint operations in many directions is the best way to confuse your enemies.
      7. Always use tanks to attack enemy infantry defending cities. The rumor that tanks lose 50% combat strength in cities is just another documentation error.

      read 1 & 2, thought hmm… then realised this was a joke :D
      Took me a while to realize it was a joke as well ^^
      Have an amazing rest of your day ^^

      "Everything is impermanent. The only thing that is permanent it impermanence itself."

      Need support? ---> Send a ticket here!

      dxter's CoW Battle Calculator ---> Use it here!

      :tumbleweed:

      o7

    • In the interested of not allowing jokes to derail a serious thread, I'll add two more.

      On most maps around days 4 - 5 when inactive players are taken over by the AI, you can often find some good deals on the market for various resources. AI are the main source of trade offers, so it makes sense that a new wave of AI taking over for players that built up a lot of resources without spending them would be great for that.

      This one is less relevant now, but it used to be fairly effective before they changed the revolt likelihood. If you get badly damaged units instead of paying upkeep on them while they take a week to heal, place them in provinces that are likely to revolt. With having almost no health, they'll do virtually nothing to stop the revolt and are likely to even join it, which is what you want. Since it doesn't have any health left, it's very easy to deal with and you won't have to pay upkeep or worry about it weighing down your KD rate. It doesn't count as you losing the unit if it joins a revolt. You even get a little experience when you kill it.

    • That is an awful way to treat units who fought hard for you and can prove it in their casualty rates!

      Seriously though, your upkeep is like 5-10% of your income for your ENTIRE army. Scuttling a few obsolete/mauled units isn't really very important.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by K.Rokossovski ().