Utilising units effectively

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I have to confess that when it comes to ICW, I'm a lazy gamer. I tend to go for the 'strategy' that Yahtzee said he resorted to in the Zero Punctuation review of Halo Wars - tank spam. Or in the case of ICW, building as many of the biggest or most powerful units as I can, ctrl-A, then ctrl-right mouse in the direction of the enemy.

This is a habit that I'd like to kick as I feel I'm missing out on a lot of the content the game has to offer otherwise. However, I always struggle to gauge just which units are effective against which, due to ICW's balancing and no clear rock/paper/scissors system as in other RTSes, and indeed the original EaW which showed exactly which enemy units your unit is strong and weak against. So when I send a unit into battle and see it get destroyed much quicker than I expect it to, that just registers with me as 'crap unit, do not use', usually because in all the crossfire of different enemy units, it's hard to tell just what it was that destroyed it, therefore it looks like it's just crap against everything.

I'd like to know how I can deduce which units will be effective against which enemy units, and how to group units together to compensate each others' weaknesses. I'm playing PA at the moment, but my other favourite faction is EotH.

[Senza]

Generally, ANYTHING will die under concentrated fire from multiple things of just about any type, except for hard counters, like for instance it's pretty hard to kill a capital ship  or a heavy frigate (or really anything besides fighters, honestly) with anti fighter ships unless its shields are already down. In general, proton torpedoes are good against everything, except fighters obviously.

The biggest advantage you have over an AI is understanding of organization, AI rely solely on overwhelming you with numbers, and the only time they will launch a well organized attack against you will be by accident.  Formation is key, especially in space battles. When you are horrendously outnumbered/outgunned, which you often will be against the AI, good organization can allow you to destroy a force several times the size of your own. Frigates are almost universally less durable than capital ships, and tend to have equivalent or greater range, so they go behind capital ships and usually focus fire on larger stuff while the capital ships pick off damaged ships or chase away smaller ships. Anti fighter ships stay behind the line and break up concentrations of fighters and bombers in order to prevent them from overwhelming larger ships. Keep your capital ships more or less stationary on the defensive, and shift any frigates/anti-fighter units/ bombers (or torpedo equipped fighters) around a lot to help bring down important targets. If you feel the time is right to break formation, try to attack from multiple directions at once to surround and overwhelm the enemy.

 Usually, you want to have your most durable units in front, as they will be able to absorb fire for longer than squishier ones, allowing your fleet/ army to maintain maximum effectiveness for the longest. There's only a handful of exceptions to this, the Praetor comes to mind, as that thing's range and firepower are extreme compared to most ships, so, while very durable, you want to keep it off the frontline if you can, since it's most valuable (and infuriating) behind a wall of stuff, firing devastating salvos at enemies.

Mobility is a VERY important factor in both space and on land, and it's the number one reason why building nothing but a huge force of the largest units tends to be a bad idea. You've probably noticed that Petroglyph did a really, really bad job of coding pathfinding in this game. Basically, having a force of nothing but capital ships is equivalent to trying to fit more than one car in a lane, directly next to each other. And don't even get me STARTED on AT-ATs, those things could be on completely flat terrain with nothing around them and STILL have pathfinding issues.  On the ground you'll generally want to use air units or light vehicles to scout ahead of your main force and screen any small, agile units that could annoy or flank any large vehicles.

[Lord Xizer]

Vic dueces and lancers in space. Mobility and firepower as well as economic.

IDTs andraptor troops backed by spmt tanks. Speed, versatility and eeconomy

[Pali]

Another thing to keep in mind, moreso for space than ground, is local firepower superiority.  What I mean by this is that when you engage the enemy, you want to engage as many of your guns as possible and as few of the enemy's as possible.  Ships in EaW exist on different planes along the Z-axis - as far as I can tell, there is one for frigates, one for cap ships, and one for super caps.  Each ship has what I refer to as its mass shadow, an area around it where other ships on that plane can't be - to get an idea of a ship's shadow, pull up the reinforcement window and see how close you can get one frigate to another; for the most part, ships on each plane won't get any closer than this to other ships on their plane (also, cap and super cap shadows will often block each other, though not always - a recent battle wouldn't let me drop an MC80b right on top of an SSD's center, but would allow over the engines).  Frigate shadows, however, never interfere with those of caps or super caps, so you can have frigates sitting right on top of your biggest ships.

This all comes together to make a mixed fleet a very important thing.  If all you have is caps, they will be spread out, limiting how much firepower you can bring to bear at any specific point.  But if you mix in frigates, you can have them on top of your capital ships, benefitting from the cap's protection while adding their firepower to that point of conflict.  Since shields regen, focused fire on one target at a time is far more effective than spreading your fire among the enemy.  3 MC80bs vs 3 ISDs should be a loss for the NR, but if the NR focuses all fire on one ISD at a time while the return fire is spread among the Mon Cals, they will win.  2 Mon Cals plus two Dreadnaughts is an equivalent force in population and credit costs, but with smart maneuvering should do even better.

Edit: Something else to pay attention to is each ship's weapon complement, detailed in the manual.  Ships with a lot of lasers are good anti-fighter ships, ships with a lot of turbo lasers are good at killing frigates and doing hull damage, and ships with a lot of ions are good at stripping a capital ship's shields (less so frigates, as ions get bonuses against cap shields).  This should help you figure out effective ship combinations - the above Mon Cal and dread combo works well since Mon Cals are durable with a solid ion cannon array, while dreads have a ton of turbo lasers to boost hull damage.  Add in a pair of corvettes for anti-fighter weaponry, and you've got a nice little 8 pop fleet that has all its bases covered and can move as a tight little unit.