noob help with squad controls

[Gregorovitch]

This game is hard to play but it looks like its pretty good if you learn how to play it properly, so I want to spend some time figuring out how to play this second mission (Evacuation) and hopefully the lessons will make the rest of the game more enjoyable.

Right now I am having severe difficulty working out how squads work and how to use them. At the beginning of the mission obviously the important thing is to mine the area, so:

1. At the beginning you have two squads on parade next to the mine boxes. How do you select a squad rather than individual soldiers?

2. Who leads each of these squads?

3. If you select a squad and then open the mine box are the mines distributed across squad members or does each soldier have to pick up a load of mines individually?

4. When you order a soldier to lay mines how do you control how many he lays over what area?

5. On first attempt I left the factory buildings to the NW alone leaving the defenders to the east of them as they were. When they were infiltrated by germans I got a "mission failed" message. It looks difficult to protect these buildings - is this a very difficult secondary mission that only exprets should attempt or something?

[KnightFandragon]

To select a squad you hold down you mouse button and then drag it across any number of soldiers. You can have up to 8 in any one squad.

The "Squad Leader" is the soldier who has the yellow triangle under him. One thing to know is if you have men in a squad and you move the squad leader, all the troops will converge back on him, even if you have moved them away. Its best to break squads up with the K key before trying to mvoe them around.

Yes, ammo, grenades, med kits, pretty much everything is distributed among the squads...to include the ammo, regardless of the gun the soldier is carrying. You have a squad with a DP LMG using machine gun ammo, a PPSH guy and 2 Riflemen and you click some Machinegun ammo, it will most likely give the ammo to your Riflemen and PPSh guys as well as the MG guy, so you can end up with soldiers wth ammo they cant even use. its best to get the men with like weapons and give them ammo, it gets rid of that problem.

4....im not sure exactly, I dont lay them much and I dont do sandbags so I am not sure right off the top of my head.....

5: You must protect the train...you see at the start of the mission there is a train with civilians all around it loading it...your sole mission is to keep the Germans away from it, if they kill the civvies you will fail. its best to ensure your forward line is not breached. Keep both the Factory offices and the boiler house defended, you must protect both sides. Its not an expert only mission but it can be a bit of a rough one. One big factor in this mission is tanks...you need to keep your tank alive and capture german tanks that you knock out the turret on...In this game if you knock out a turret on an AI vehicle they will abandon it, its not dead but its disabled and you can then run up and capture it. If you nail a turret and do not destroy the tracks, its best to try, after you have fended off the attack from a given side, to run up wiht like 2 or 3 men and capture the German tanks. Then run them back and repair them and then use them sparingly to hold off German tanks and other infantry....my favoite place to put my tanks is in the center of the map behind the garage and pop them out as I see tanks and back them up after the tanks are dead. Those BT7 lights you start with, they will die, but keep your T34 Medium alive if you can...its crucial to winning that mission otherwise the Panzers will have fun with you. I had to do this mission 3 times before I finally did win it.

If you want to practice with the UI and moving men and stuff without the confines of the mission objective you can load up into the GEM Editor and play around in there. You set up a few men or tanks and the like and just play around, get a feel for how things work. I have spent hundreds of hoursin there and I quite like the Men of War UI alot..its quite awesome once you get a good hang of it. Men of War is a very micromanagy game due to the AI being a bit on the stupid and clueless side but if you get a proper good hang on direct control you will do fine in this game...the SP missions are rather rough for the most part on base MoW...ive modded my game to make it easier hahah.