Tips to Elite Difficulty
All credit goes to victusB!
Just a heads up for anyone who thought soldier was entirely too easy and won in 1915. Going to Elite difficulty your next campaign is an extremely different experience. I will try to highlight some of them so they don’t catch anyone off guard like I was as there does not seem to be anything on the forums or guides yet.
First off, nearly all of the advice out there for this game is for easy or soldier difficulty and does not translate well to Elite simply because of the buffs the AI receives. Gone are the days of just racing the clock for a sweep, as sweeps are largely not a thing on Elite.
Units
The average AI unit, before tech, is about as strong as your base elite infantry. Gone are the days of just laying down some arty and jumping in the trench to take it. As mentioned below artillery just does not soften them up enough and 1 regular infantry is an equal match to your elite infantry in melee. For regular infantry melee you need 2 to 1, which creates a situation where you do NOT want to dump both units into the trench at the same time. This will result in both surrendering at the same time and the enemy getting the trench victory points. Instead, stagger one then the other so you can reinforce without ending the melee. The AI knows it is stronger and is far more aggressive, even on defense. The sillyness of running infantry into your lines from other difficulties is still there, only now they can soak most of the damage. For reference, if you have six infantry firing from trenches at six oncoming enemy infantry, you will probably only rout two of them, the other four will make it into your trench. Remember that it is no longer a 1:1 match on melee, their infantry will always beat your infantry if strength is even close.
Weapons
Artillery is significantly different as the AI is not damaged in any meaningful way by it, even in the open. Light artillery remains useful for destroying balloons and for laying down suppressing footprints, but heavy is simply a waste of supply until later techs. Your first damage dealing artillery will be siege, but that requires significant planning and investment in supply ahead of time. Enemy artillery on the otherhand is significantly buffed, and even a light barrage on your infantry in a trench will take most of their health. Combine this with the AI having both more artillery and very fast cooldown, and no apparent supply usage and you will regularly find three or more blobs coming down on you during attacks or on your advancing units. If it is too late to change direction just withdraw your unit immedately to recoup some supply, because the artillery is going to take it down under half health at least, even on a glancing blow.
Trench Lines
While you could get away with really nice trenches in soldier and veteran, the level of disparity between melee power at Elite means defenses should avoid linking trenches. Your only chance to take out enemy company without at least a 1:1 trade is to keep them moving out of trenches and under fire by you. Additionally, the level of arty and speed of the cooldowns of the AI means trenches need the space to avoid losing more than one company per barrage. Keep them seperated more like foxholes than trenchlines. Keep emplacements far back. Like near your command trench far back. The enemy will arty them on sight and unlike soldier or veteran, the cooldown is seconds so it is not taking pressure off your men in the trenches. However, the AI does seem to continue to ignore balloons with arty, so there is that.
Strategic Map
The enemy is still bound by economic limitations, but unless you are constantly bleeding them of gold there will be regular attacks. I have not counted the tiles exactly, but they also bring more corps to bear on average, far more spread out than I remember from veteran or soldier. Autoresolve is simply broken at Elite difficulty and is not an option. Even when attacking with 12 v 3 in your favor the auto will project defeat, so all battles must be manually fought. Because of the above changes, sweeps are extremely uncommon after the first couple of turns and to pull a major usually requires waiting to ensure they are not going to counterattack, which is common vs more than 4 corps. I have had most luck with 3 light arty and 20 on attack. Yep, that means only 7 infantry holding the line, so extra supply is needed for MG or mortars FAR BACK from the front line to prevent them from ninja-ing a point. IF the ai does sent a strong force while you are attacking on the other side of the map, just stop the attack and withdraw 10 or so units and respawn new ones near your backlines to form a defense. Annoying, but necessary to have appropriate forces to attack.
This is not a comprehensive tip list, as I have not ran the full course yet, just a heads up as there is very little information on the differences at higher difficulty and it did require a significant change in playstyle my first two attempts.
Be the first to comment