Disclaimer always sounds so negative...

All the information I have gathered in this guide I have gotten from my own experience and from watching streams and youtube videos, it's by no means all-encompassing and there are still mechanics that I myself am not too sure about (how HE actually works in the game, for example).

The main feature on all maps (or at least all the beta maps) is the hedgerows. These come in a couple of varieties.



These are lines of trees that firstly, prevent any line of sight through them. Secondly, vehicles CANNOT move through them. So plan accordingly with your deployments because this could mean your tanks are sitting somewhere completely irrelevant and take a while to get into action once you realise.
This means that your tanks are useless in these areas and simply cant see anything to shoot and cant use them to hide.
More importantly, these allow infantry to creep up real close, and then insta-kill tanks with panzerschrecks or PIATs.

With the new LoS tool (more on this later) you can see just how big of an impact this will have. For example, this looks like a nice spot to hide some tanks to ambush units that come into the open:



However, when you use the tool, and taking into account that vehicles can't enter the tree line itself, we can see this is definitely not the case:



This doesn't stop you from setting up here though, as like I mentioned, infantry and deployed guns (also more on them later) can get into that tree line:





There are smaller rows of what look like tiny trees, these can be seen though. They do also provide cover for infantry and allow infantry and deployed guns to conceal within them. Somehow these also provide concealment for vehicles.



Fields of tiny trees, they can only be seen through up to a certain depth and only provide light cover for infantry, take them into account when setting up static gun positions.

Using the LoS Tool, you can see just how far you can view into (and out of) orchards, which seems to be around the 150m mark.



TL:DR - Keep armoured units away from tree lines that you dont have sight around.

In Wargame, infantry serve the purpose of holding towns and surprising armour that decides to wander through.
In Steel Division, Infantry will win you the battle.

The main limitation of infantry is simply their speed across the terrain, they dont have a fast move ability and most of the time you wont be popping them back into transports, so be prepared ahead of time and make small moves.
The main reason they're awesome? They're the only all-terrain units.
Where tanks will have to drive around tree lines and hedgerows, infantry will go right through them. They will also be concealed in them. So many times I have seen armoured divisions melt away when they don't prepare for a small detachment of infantry just the other side of a tree line.

TL:DR don't ever neglect Infantry just because you're using an Armoured Division.

Recon in Wargame is King.
Recon in Steel Division is God.

You'll find that although you know the value of recon units and telling them to hold fire etc, they become so much more important here. Especially the earlier infantry recon units.

Personally I find the recon vehicles to be somewhat sub-par compared to the infantry simply because (and I might have mentioned this before, not sure) the vehicles are a lot harder to hide. Infantry can cover both sides of a tree line whereas the armoured car/light tank recon units will only ever be able to see one side.
Don't get me wrong, they're incredibly useful when used in conjunction with other tanks in a strong push, as boots on the ground simply wont keep up. This is however, the only time I would consider them worthwhile.

Another side note is that it's very easy to go through a large amount of recon units as they get jumped from an angle you couldn't see so make sure to bring plenty. Not to mention you'll probably need more to see around all the tree lines anyway.

This section ties in with what I have said about the hedgerows, infantry and recon with a but more information.

Firstly, what is the LoS tool?
When holding down 'C' (if you've moved your hotkeys around then you might have to dig a bit deeper to find it), you will get an overlay centered on you cursor's position that shows the Line of Sight from that point. Like so:



As you can imagine, this is pretty damn useful for setting up static positions, and also for familiarising yourself with the lay of the land, as line of sight is not always entirely obvious.
A second useful feature of this tool is that it will snap onto whatever unit you are hovering over, even if it moves a little, provided you hold down the key.

There is always a toggle button on units info panel next to their name that will keep the LoS tool on until you turn it off, as of yet this isn't hotkeyed so you'll need to click it each time.

~~Credit to s-a-l-t-y for raising the awareness of how important this tool is in his guide here~~

Something you will notice, that will likely annoy the hell out of you, is that just about every unit is slower. Very dramatically slower off-road.



On the face of it this just makes for a slower paced battle with reinforcements taking longer right?
It's so much more than that, as it makes the arterial roads massively more important. Controlling the roads can win you the game.

Setting up deployed guns with recon along long stretches of road can shut it down and eliminate a surprising amount of enemies.

Another point to mention is that when calling in new troops, pay very close attention to how far away the position you want them in is from the main road they are likely to use, as vehicles (infantry are slow as **** to begin with) will lose ~80% of their speed when they leave the road, as opposed to at most 50% in wargame.

TL:DR - make sure you know the road routes and close lock them down, for your use and noone elses.

A seemingly new unit type/configuration is the deployed guns or towed guns.

These are mortars, AT guns and AA guns that arrive on the battlefield with a transport and are hauled into the position of your choosing. They then require deploying (detaching from the transport) in order to be of any use.



Mortars, do what they say on the tin, indirect fire. Only thing to bare in mind with them is that gone are the days of 4900m ranges. Most mortars are around 900m range so you're gonna have to get in close, and defend them.



AT guns, long range (usually) high AP weapons. Some also have HE capability but nothing to shout about. Set them up in a good vantage point, ie in a hedgerow looking out of wide open fields or at the end of a long stretch of road.



AA guns. These function somewhat differently to most Wargame AA. So far I haven't seen any that can't engage ground targets. AA weapons can be used to devastating effect against infantry thanks to their high "HE" (more accurately suppresion) value. Dont be afraid to get them closer to the front than you're used to. The higher calibre ones (thats 40-88mm) can also be good against tanks.

AA units can engage aircraft pretty easily given the smaller scale of the maps so you wont need them anywhere near as far back or as tightly packed ot make a big impact. Use them to create a dependable fall back line if I were you.

~~~

This is all pretty awesome right? Well there is a very big downside to using these great guns. Speed. If you thought infantry were slow, try asking them to drag a 1ton gun with them. Because of this, try to keep their transport nearby out of danger if you think you might need to move them around.

Units no longer have HP, although you could kinda count the number of men in an infantry squad as HP in a way.

Units now have just their morale bar, which operates similarly to Wargame where the more fire a unit takes, the more worried they get. In previous titles this meant they would become less accurate and deal less damage up to the point that they become panicked, by which time they were effectively useless.

In Steel Division, units take morale damage in the same way. Things like machine gun fire suppressing infantry, big rounds hitting tanks etc. The difference is that there is now a stage of morale after panicked - Pinned Down. When pinned down, units will ignore any order you give them and go to ground, they will also stop firing at all. The upside is that infantry become harder to hit as they go prone to avoid fire.
Pinned down units will surrender if enemies encroach on their position, and you have no way of getting them back - think of it like an finishing move in other games.

There is one command you can give pinned down units however, Fall Back.



Hitting this button will make you're unit retreat a small distance away from whatever is pinning them down, and works for both infantry and vehicles.

TL:DR units take morale damage instead of health, use the Fall Back button when they are pinned down to avoid losing them entirely.

AKA: "Why aren't my units levelling up and where the f*** are the sectors?!"

Firstly, veterancy affects units in much the same way, it boosts their accuracy, rate of fire and resistance to suppression. However they will no longer level up in battle, the level they have in the deck is the level they get for the rest of the game, no matter how many Tiger tanks that 57mm gun kills.

So how does this affect command units? Well, since sectors are gone, their purpose has changed dramatically. No longer are they to be hidden as well as you can, never to shoot again.



Command units are identified by the grey star in the top left of their unit card and they provide an additional level of veterancy to all friendly units within their range, which is limited, however, they will almost always have worse weaponry/armour than other comparable units of the same cost or phase.
This is the only way to increase veterancy for units as they no longer gain xp and rank up.
Use them with groups of units and keep them just behind the frontline to get the most out of them.
It should also be noted that infantry command units seem to have a larger range than vehicle command units.

This in turn should make them priority targets when you spot them. You can even tell which are command units without fully identifying the unit, as the star icon will still appear on their card.
Spotting a command unit is usually a good sign that there are other units nearby as well.

Gone are FoBs and Chinooks. Here comes Opel Blitz's and Bedford trucks.

Supply units act in basically the same way as in Wargame but with a couple of new nuances.

• Supply units can not repair vehicles or replenish fallen infantry
  
• Supply units can be used to transport your infantry or tow your guns if you need another transport
  
• Supply units are a lot less numerous.

In a lot of games you might not even use them to be perfectly honest. They are now purely ammo trucks and with a pretty short range to boot. You'll also not find many divisions able to use them in the first phase of the game (not that you should be needing ammo in the first 10 minutes) so keep this in mind.

There are a surprising number of differences between the two IPs, many of which aren't apparent on the face of it, but hopefully this guide will help you grab the most important aspects.

If you have any comments/corrections/additions please comment below!

~InvictusLampada