The Active Unit:
When you first start a game or otherwise don't have an active unit selected, the Unit Orders Toolbar will appear as in the following image:
The only thing that exists on this image is the map navigation arrow pad. If the hex map is rather small then clicking on this arrow pad won't result in anything obvious happening. On the other hand, for hex maps that are too big to be displayed at once, then clicking in any of the buttons with arrows in them will result in your view of the hex map moving in the direction that the arrow points. A single click will cause the map to move in the chosen direction by one hex. Clicking and holding the mouse button down will result in the map scrolling by a respective screen-dimension at a time.
The center button of the arrow pad is only useful for when you have already selected an active unit. When you have selected an active unit, clicking on the center pad will cause the map to center as best as it can around the hex which contains the active unit.
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So what is an active unit? An active unit is the unit that you can read data about (depending on how much you are allowed to read) and (if the unit is on your side) you can give orders to that unit. To make a unit the active unit, you move the cursor into the hex map and over the hex containing the unit that you want made active and click the mouse. Such an action will result in the map appearing something similar as in the image to the left - notice the green highlight. If there is a stack of units and the one that you want made active is somewhere in the middle of that stack, then you only need to click repeated on that stack until the unit that you want rises to the top. |
Once you have selected a unit to be the active unit, the toolbar will display the data that you are allowed to view. For an unit that is not on your side, you will find that you often don't get much information about the unit, and you certainly won't be able to give that unit any orders. An example of what you might see if you make an enemy unit the active unit is shown in the following picture:
Thanks to the fog of war, it would seem that I know next to nothing about the above unit. During the play of a scenario, one hopes that things go well enough that certain details might be discovered about the enemy's units.
Instead of looking at the enemy's units, look at one of the units on your own side. When you make one of the units on your own side active, the toolbar will fill up with lot's of information, an example of which is shown in the following image:
Other than the arrow pad that we discussed earlier, there are now three new regions that have appeared. The first is the unit image at the upper left corner. The second, appearing below the unit image, is a whole collection of buttons through which we give orders to our unit. Thirdly, between the order buttons and the arrow pad appears a whole bunch of text that describes the active unit.
The First Region - Unit Image Row:
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First we shall discuss the unit image row, in which appear images representing all the units that are present in the hex that you select from the hex map. In the above discussion there was only one unit, but lets look at a stack of three units sharing a hex, who's hex map image is shown in the picture to the left. The toolbar for this option appears as in the following image: |
Notice how the units spread out in a row along the top of the toolbar, and how the top-most unit of the stack on the hex map is isolated by a space from the other units in the toolbar. Out of a stack of units, in a selected hex on the map it is always the topmost unit that is active, while in the toolbar it is always the leftmost unit that is active.
The Second Region - Command Buttons:
The second region on the toolbar that I'll discuss are the command buttons. The most important thing to notice about these buttons is that they have three states: up, down, dimmed. A button that is dimmed can't be selected, or in other words that unit is not allowed to recieve that command. If a button is up then you are allowed to give the active unit that command. If the button is down then it is a toggle button which has been selected earlier and it has already been given an order which you can toggle off if you choose. Some buttons will have a yellow edge to them, this is to show that a particular order has been given of a certain type.
This page discusses how one gives orders to one's units so that they can move about the hex map during the execution phase.
This page discusses how one gives orders to one's units so that they can make attacks during the execution phase.
This page discusses how one gives orders to one's artillery units so that they can fire during the execution phase.
This page discusses how one gives defensive orders to one's units so that they can defend during the execution phase.
This page discusses how one gives engineering orders to one's units so that they can either dig in or repair bridges during the execution phase.
This page discusses how one gives demolition orders to one's units so that they can either blow up bridges or hexes during the execution phase.
This page discusses the buttons that weren't covered in the previous sections. These are: the replacements button, and the cancel button.
If while you're playing a game and you forget what button is what, then just leave the cursor over the command button in question and after a little while a small text box will pop up telling you what button the cursor is over.
Sometimes moving the cursor repeated up into the toolbar can be rather time consuming. There are QuickKey options for selecting various orders during the planning phase. If you repeated press the 'a' key on your keyboard you will go through the various attack orders that are available to you. If you repeated press the 'm' key on your keyboard you will go through the various movement orders that are available to you. If you repeated press the 'd' key on your keyboard you will go through the various defend options that are available to you. If you repeated press the 'b' key on your keyboard you will go through the various artillery orders that are available to you. Notice that in most cases all that you are doing is causing a particular command button to be selected and that you're not really giving any orders - the exceptions are the artillery orders for "fire to defend" and "counter artillery", which will give orders that you will see through the appearance of the yellow border about the respective command button.
Something that might seem very confusing at first is that you can do combinations of the above orders, like: launch an attack at a neighbouring enemy unit, blow hex, and move a few hexes away. Of course if the string of commands that you give make no sense then they won't be all completed, an example being: trying to dig in and move. Play around with various combinations of orders to get a feel for the complex order structures that you can build up. But be warned, for each order that is executed a certain amount of fatigue is collected, and making a unit do several different orders each execution phase is a quick way to reduce that unit into worthlessness.
The Third Region - Unit Descriptions:
This page discusses the third region of the unit orders toolbar - this is the region concerned with decribing the active unit.