Micro for Noobies, Principles of using Infantry

[Walderschmidt]

I'm by no means an expert, but micro is one of my stronger suit. That combined with several principles allows me to keep my infantry alive substantially longer than when I first started (instant vaporizations almost everywhere, it was painful).

1. Infantry Movement: Generally moving your infantry around

a) Never move in red cover unless there's no enemy nearby or you've got smoke on it. Your infantry gets vaporized on red cover. Red cover is lava! Usually red cover is roads or open water/swamps (except swamps are worse because they slow your infantry down).
b) Move from cover to cover when the enemy is nearby. Always finish your movement in cover if you can. That way if your squad gets unexpectedly attacked, you have time to react and they have a chance of not just holding off the enemy, but forcing them back too (sometimes 2 v 1 odds).
c) If you have more than one squad, try to have to one unit moving at a time, so you have one unit shooting at the enemy.

2. First Contact: The first time you see an enemy unit/first shots

a) If your infantry are moving to their infantry, stop them immediately! Your units shoot way more accurately standing still, while your enemy gets heavy accuracy penalties while moving (unless SMGs, and then they get smaller penalties). Done early on, this can allow pios to take out enemy engies, volks to rock rifles, rifles to rock grenadiers, so forth and so on (okay, Falls/Gebirgs will still rock your shit, but still).

or

b) If you're in red cover, get to green cover or yellow cover nearby. Red cover's too dangerous to stay in for more than a second, especially since all it takes is one guy in red cover to get your squad suppressed or to have a litany of negative effects applied to that unit.
c) If the enemy is moving into green cover, toss a grenade into it. At worst, you'll destroy the cover and he has no green cover or has to spend more time on the move. At best, you immediately gain the advantage and can wipe his squad if he doesn't immediately retreat.

3. Hold Position: the button that makes your infantry stop moving and keep shooting. HANS stop doing the polka!

a) Use this so that your units don't accidentally run out of green cover you've so nicely placed them in!
b) Use so your cloaked sniper (who's in cover) shoots the target you click on rather than rolling around making mud angels.
c) Use this so that your AT soldiers will stop dancing and constantly resetting the aim time for the bazooka or Panzershreck. As soon as I learned how to get zooks near a tank and immediately press hold position, that was when I finally started getting kills with them. I came the first time.
d) Use it when capping a point so your units automatically fire back on enemy and so they stop taking extra damage from capturing points
e) ^Same for building things (don't forget to delete the building if it has low health, so you get resources back)

4. When to Retreat: How soon to retreat? Learn these situations and making pressing 'T' (the retreat hotkey) an automatic action to save time and heartache.

a) If the odds are against you, retreat your squad to save time and health and to avoid giving enemy unnecessary vet/xp
b) If your squad is caught out in red cover and one or more enemy squads show up
c) In the face of MG42 fire if in anything other than green cover (Germans can hold on a second or two with regular troops and falls/gebirgs just piss on MGs).
e) If RAF/Falls/Gebirgs/CQB/Storm squad drops/runs out of a building next to rifle/mg facing away/mortar/LT/sniper

5. General things to keep in mind:

1) Pios beat engies slightly at range in equal cover. Engies beat pios close up because of Garands (semi-automatic with 8 shots rather than bolt & 5).
2) Same thing with un-upgrade volks.
3) Un-upgraded grens beat rifles at range and mostly lose up close
4) Units take more damage when building (anything from base buildings to sandbags) which sometimes leads to bikes/schwimms/jeeps wiping out whole engy squads in a pass or two
5) Soldiers with lmgs and bazookas don't fire while on the move. Rifles don't fire on the move (or are so inaccurate that they might as well not be firing). Moving unit almost always loses.
6) Building cover > green cover > yellow cover > no cover > red cover > red cover in swamp [b]THIS IS DOUBLE LAVA[/b]

Lastly, the thing that always gets me - split attention. Attention, in my opinion, next to general strategy, is the most important resource you can manage in BK. If you split your attention, you'll always lose units. Wholesale. So don't do it. Try to keep your attention focused in one area. If you must build a presence in more than one area, place down mines and wire with an engineer so it takes an opponent more concentration to attack that area than you defending it.

To the other experienced players, please add to this if you can.

Wald

P.S. Some pro-micro tips

1) When your enemy moves into cover, throw a grenade and then when he moves out, immediately cancel it so you save munitions and immediately fire more at him when he's not in cover
2) Put wire in front of cover you know he's going to use or better yet, put mines in front of it
3) When taking out an MG in a house, use smoke from a mortar in front of it to reduce its accuracy significantly, giving you time to throw in a grenade or two.

[Mr. FeministDonut]

use tactical map on numpad 0 for EXTRA JUICY all-around map gameplay, this will help your micro a lot to see situation overall.
after every order you open tactical map, give other order and close it. your eye will always catch on something interesting or dangerous beyond usual POV range

[Walderschmidt]

use tactical map on numpad 0 for EXTRA JUICY all-around map gameplay, this will help your micro a lot to see situation overall.
after every order you open tactical map, give other order and close it. your eye will always catch on something interesting or dangerous beyond usual POV range

Also a good point. However, if you send units through tactical map, they'll stop and shoot whatever they see. Whereas if you have them move without tactical map or use minimap, they'll keep moving regardless.

Wald

[Mr. FeministDonut]

The point is you open tac map every few seconds to jump in the needed part of the map and give detailed order. Anyway, it is better then loosing a unit, that goes straight into the death claws