Ever used a historical tactic in a PC game?

I was watching the History channel once ages ago and they were talking about how Vietcong/NVA (can’t remember which) would set up ‘flak traps’ to ambush US helicopters. They would have english-speaking radio operators call in a medivac, and when the helos would arrive, they would open up at them from concealed positions.

Some time later, I was playing Planetside (a Massively multiplayer online FPS) and a light bulb went off in my head. Enemy dropships fly into continent through a warpgate sending reinforcements. They drop their troops into bases, functioning kind of like paratroopers. They also send supplies to bases with the dropships. Now, I’ve defended bases, and the dropships are a HUGE target, but they are so strong it is impossible to shoot them down before they unload 12 guys right smack in the base courtyard. So I decided to find a way to stop them before they got anywhere NEAR our base.

I was really fond of the anti-aircract MAX (armored exo suit) and used to hang around warpgates shooting down aircraft that passed by. But I couldn’t shoot down a dropship all by myself, so I formed a special squad of anti aircraft guys. We’d go out in the mountains which were directly in the path the dropships flew (the pilots were really lazy and often just flew in a straight line to their destination, so it was easy to predict where they’d be). When a dropship approached, we’d attack it, and more often than not we would shoot it down. We started getting TONS of kills this way- it was a very productive strategy on continents that had a lot of fighting going on. Enemy reinforcements would pour in from their warpgate, and anything that flew never got past us.

The opponents were slow to adapt. Eventually they started escorting the dropships with ground-attack aircraft, but they had terrible organization- When missiles started flying, the escorts would turn yeller and bug out rather than help their stricken dropship :wally: When it was slow, we would have a player send an enemy player a /tell, requesting reinforcements. Now, a little bit of checking will reveal the faction of a player, but a lot of people didn’t even bother and they would just assume the message they got was from a friendly. So we would say, “Need 3 squads in dropships to rendezvous at (coordinates)” and ten minutes later, they would show up! :eek: it was absolutely hilarious how easy it was to sucker them.

The best part about the whole thing was the exo armor we used (Sparrow MAX). This was a pretty benign Anti-aircraft weapon- nobody really thought anything of it because at the time the way to get kills was to get a ground attack aircraft and spam rockets at infantry. But once we started disrupting supply drops and insertion runs, there was a HUGE uproar about how ‘overpowered’ it was :rolleyes:

I think my biggest gripe about that community was how much they wanted the devs to change a weapon rather than actually developing tactics to COUNTER it (like we did)

Not really historical, but in the old F-15 flight simulator, I’d often use the “hit the brakes and they’ll fly right past us” move from Top Gun. Always worked like a charm. :cool:

Well nowhere as interesting as your tactic but…

In Civ III I was playing as the Germans the English had just built a Wonder I wanted. One problem France was between me and the English city I was going to attack. I was a little ahead in the tech race and started building up Panzers along my border which the AI didn’t really have anything to counter with. I rolled over France with everything I had and they could do little but fight holding actions that only slowed my march to Paris.

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms III whenever I’d be facing a huge army I’d attack them with a small holding force and starve them out of the castle. Or find their supply unit and destroy that.

When Rome:Total War comes out I’m going to try to have a weak middle force with strong flanks. Have the center retreat and swing the sides in and see if it’s as effective against the Romans in a game as it was in real life.

Building overwhelming numerical superiority isn’t a tactic.

It won’t be. Traditional tactics really don’t work too well in the Total War games IME.

  1. It’s a valid historical tactic – it worked for the Germans in real life, after all.

  2. Rome:Total War is a completely revamped game and it is far too early to pass judgement on what tactics will and wont work in it.

A tactic is merely a method by which you win a battle. Overwhelming numerical superiority may not be the most interesting tactic, but it is a tactic.

One tactic I used in Civ II involved sending some token military vessels against an enemy to see where their cruise missiles were launched from, then sneaking a bunch of transports in on an undefended approach and rapidly taking over a couple cities. From there I had a beachhead and swept through the continent. Before that, the coastal defenses cost me a lot of units, so I figured out a way around. Sort of like the Maginot Line, except there wasn’t exactly a Belgium-type country involved.

Once I was playing Mediaval: Total war as the Danes. I was doing OK - not much territory, but tech was pretty good. Europe was, at the time, under the cruel heel of the Almohads, whose vast empire spread from Granada to Austria and across North Africa to Egypt. The Germans and Spanish had beed destroyed, the French and Italians were reduced to rump states, and all that was left between the Moor and the Turk were the English - who were having a hard time holding on to Wessex - and myself, controlling Scandinavia and some of the Northern states. The enemy had armies of a size you wouldn’t believe. I’m pretty sure they could field 5 troops for every one of mine. The situation was desperate.

That’s when I remembered Verdun.

In 1916, the German high command decided to attack the strategically insignificant but emotionally important fortress of Verdun on the French right flank, with the belief that their enemy would do anything to defend this pretty much worthless ground. The idea was to “bleed the French army white” The plan worked. Over the following 10 months, the French sent every available soldier to save the fortress, wasting nearly 600,000 troops before it war recaptured. The Germans eneded up leaving 400,000 casualties behind themselves.

I decided to do the Germans one better. I took my best general, gave him my best troops - each one of them as good or better than anything the enemy had - and sent them south to take Tyrolia, which was defended by a small garrison. After sletting them retreat to their castle I waited, surrounded on three sides, for the enemy to attack. And attack they did. For three rounds in a row I fought three battles lasting no less than 100 minutes each. Because the game tends to favor defenders, I would park my elite men-at-arms, spearmen and arbalesters (with a small cavalry force to harry retreating troops) on the slope of an Alp, and wait for them to come. Wave after wave after wave, all of them breaking against my defenses, untill the ground was barely visable under their corpses.

After three rounds I had lost 500 troops, out of 1400 I had commited to the battle. The enemy had lost something like 10,000, or over half his army. His thrust eastward had been broken, and the war had pased its turning point.

And that’s why I study history.

Well, in games of Battlefield 1942, I will occasionally Kamikaze my enemies - I try to find a tank or other vehicle with 2 or more people in it, and then I will fly my plane into them. A 2:1 kill ratio means my team will eventually push them back.

In one of my Civ III games, I was playing France on a map of Europe. I was busy fighting back the Spanish, so I used my excess workers to built my own Maginot line, only this time it stretched from the Alps all the way to English Channel, in case the Germans attacked while my forces were busy. Shortly before we both got Motorized Transportation(which lets you build tanks) the Germans did sneak attack me with hordes of Calvery and Infantry, but I due to my fortifactions, I was able to fight them to a standstill with trench-like warfare on my eastern front, using only a handful of units, while the bulk of my forces finished conquering Spain and Portugal.

After the Iberian countries fell under my control, I signed an alliance with Russia and the Byzantines, and we crushed Germany from all sides.

I always found that in RTS, the best thing to do was to take a page from the Russians and flood the enemy with low-cost units. Kind of takes all the fun out of the games though.

the second of the 36 stratagems of war - wei wei jiu zhao.

on battle.net warcraft iii 3v3 - a popular move was to team up with your allies and strike as one against one of the enemy base early on before substancial defenses are made.

one of the things i would do to counter this is to scout out an enemy base and creep nearby in enemy territory, if the enemy did rush in on one of my ally’s base (3v2) i would proceed to the nearest enemy base and wreck havoc (0v1). invariably, the besieged base commander would teleport back to defend his town (1v1/2v2). if i felt i could take his hastily recalled force in disarray, i would stay on, otherwise i would teleport to my ally’s base to finish off the remaining two (2v3). either way, we gain the early advantage.

Back in the day, I used to play VGA Planets, a game popular for BBSes. You had to have your turned played and e-mailed to the Sysop before the turns got compiled at midnight.

I signed up on one BBS that was dedicated solely to VGAP. We’d get a full game going, with max of 11 players. Every couple of weeks, all the players would get together at Fuddrucker’s to talk shit to each other, scheme, plan alliances, and talk about what the next game should be like. I never won a game, but I liked playing it.

One player griped at me because whenever he invaded my planets, there’d be nothing left for his ships to refuel. It was because when I saw his fleet was heading for my space, I’d tax the citizens on my planet to 100%, causing them to riot and tear down all the manufacturing plants, including the fuel processors. I replied “Yep, that’s what the Russians did in WWII when the Germans invaded. They razed their own villages so the German front wouldn’t be able to resupply and move on.”

In Total Annhilation both sides have a super-unit, the Commander, and losing it means an automatic loss (depending on the setting). But they’re tough, cloakable, and easily hidden in the fog of war.

However, if you spot one briefly, with a spy plane say, and then order a couple of missile turrets to attack it they will continue to point themselves at it even if it’s far out of range and lost to your sight. Use two or more far enough apart and you can triangulate its position.

Not actually that useful, but I really like the idea of mimicking (kinda) how they used to locate radio signals and radar returns.

I’ve found “Send out an army and fight the other guys for a little bit. Retreat in what looks like disarry…into your well planned, nasty defenses, and resume the fight, smashing them on your defenses” works very well against computers and pretty well against humans.

Starcraft Terrans were pretty well suited to blitzkrieging enemy fortifications. First you go in with two or three battlecruisers and yamato turrets or bunkers.

Then, to further sow panic, you trigger a nuke strike (where on the map doesn’t matter, all your enemies will be busy combing their base looking for the dot).

Follow that up with a line of siege tanks and goliaths and you’re set!

[quote=Evil Death]
Building overwhelming numerical superiority isn’t a tactic.

[quote]
Yes it is. Ask Attila the Hun, Bedford Forest, Adolph Hitler, and Montgomery how it worked for them.

Plus I had Germany, Panzers, a build up along a border, France, and a march for Paris. All I needed was the Arden forest and I would have been in heaven.

I haven’t played StarCraft in like 4 years and now I really really want to go out and buy it again! Grr…

“I am about to drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminant justice!”
–Tank guys on SC

I use that all the time in GTA3. The FBI drive so insane that they usually roll three or four cars with that move.

[QUOTE=KGS]
When Rome:Total War comes out I’m going to try to have a weak middle force with strong flanks. Have the center retreat and swing the sides in and see if it’s as effective against the Romans in a game as it was in real life.QUOTE]

Is that the Cannae tactic?
In Centurion: Defender of Rome for Sega Genesis you can use that move. But since the game is so rudimentary there really are only two tactics. Flank. Stand still and start swinging your swords as the enemy marches toward you. Okay three tactics… kill the enemy general and a large portion of the enemy will retreat.

NOBODY expects the Cannae tactic! Our main tactic is flanking. Flanking and standing still, standing still and flanking … TWO main tactics, flanking, standing still and killing the enemy general … THREE main tactics …

I’ll come in again.

When in doubt, flank!!!

That what I do against cows in Diablo 2. That’s really the only thing one can do.

“We’re not retreating. We’re flanking in a backwards direction.”–An old saying I heard somewhere.