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Try to avoid committing to heavily into attacking across rivers and into mountains, your forces will take huge penalties to their stats when doing so (Marines are better at attacking across rivers and mountaineers into mountains ofc).Ī lot of new players adjust quickly to defensive warfare is it's relatively simple, hold the damn line and let the enemy grind themselves to dust, then attack when they're weakened. The best places to attack are usually those with easy terrain, such as plains.
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So essentially, you want to spy the weak points in the opponents line, and push through them and wrap around to cut the units off.
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If you simply draw an order to march into the enemy, you won't be doing encirclements, you will take a lot of damage from being the attacker (consider the stats Breakthrough vs Defense most units have a higher defense stat than breakthrough - they function identically but defenders use the defense stat and attackers use the breakthrough stat). This is why encirclement tactics are key, it prevents retreat, deletes units and causes massive damage. It still exists, it probably hasn't even taken too much damage - it just ran out of organisation which quickly rebuilds. In HOI, winning a battle just means a unit is pushed back. In CK3, each battle is highly decisive, one single battle could even singlehandedly win a war. Think about the difference between a CK3 battle and HOI battle. Really the key to warfare on the offensive is encirclements. Some paradox games are about map painting.
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