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The game starts paused. Give orders at any time, including while paused.
Terrain comes from real data: OpenStreetMap land cover and AWS Terrain Tiles elevation. Roads are fast. Forests slow vehicles to a crawl and block sight after about 90 m. Rivers are impassable except at bridges, and steep slopes stop wheeled vehicles first.
Units see only what their sensors and line of sight allow. Movement and firing give a unit away. Units that sit still in woods or buildings, and especially units that have dug in, are hard to find. A faded symbol marks an enemy's last known position.
Units fire automatically at spotted enemies in range. Cover, digging in and moving all change the chance of being hit. Incoming fire suppresses a unit. A pinned unit barely moves or shoots, and a unit that loses its morale breaks and falls back. Keep your HQ nearby to help units rally.
Units occupy ground: a column on the road, a wedge on the move, a line when halted. The outline under a symbol shows it, and sight and fire are traced from across that frontage. Units on a normal move halt and deploy when they meet the enemy; press R to push on. Only an assault closes with the enemy, and it ends when one side breaks or the attack stalls. Right-drag to draw a line for units to defend.
Any unit that stays put digs in by itself: hasty cover in about a quarter of an hour, prepared positions over a couple of hours. Positions face the way the unit faced when it started, and they barely help against fire from the flank or rear. Leaving well-prepared positions takes up to five minutes, so choose where to stop.
Select a formation in the order of battle (or double-click one of its units) to give it a mission: move, attack, defend, screen, reserve, support by fire or withdraw. Its staff splits the mission among its subordinates: a main effort, a support-by-fire element and a reserve for an attack, sectors and a counterattack reserve for a defence. Planning takes time: a few minutes for a company, around a quarter of an hour for a battalion, longer for a brigade or division, and more if the headquarters is moving, in contact, far from its troops or destroyed. Direct orders to single units go by radio in under a minute, and take the unit out of its formation's plan until it rejoins.
Mortars and artillery fire missions: select them and press K (or right-click a contact). The first rounds land a few minutes after the call. Fire lands where the target was reported, so poorly identified targets are hard to hit; an observer who can see the target adjusts the fire onto it. Smoke blocks sight, illumination lights up the night. Firing gives batteries away to enemy counter-battery radar, so they move after firing. Units on "fire at will" engage what their side knows about, and an attack's preparation fires come from the formation's fire units.
Ammunition and fuel run down. Supply units resupply units nearby that are halted and out of contact, and go back to their depot to reload. A unit is cut off when enemy-held ground lies between it and every depot: it can't be resupplied and slowly loses heart. Press L to see where supplies can reach.
Press P for the 2.5D view: the imagery drapes over the terrain in relief and tilts; [ ] turn it and PgUp/PgDn tilt it. Battle sounds come from where things happen relative to your view: zoom and pan to listen in. N mutes; the volume is in Settings.
Enemy contacts are first just detected (an unknown symbol with a wide circle of uncertainty), then classified (armour, infantry, artillery…), then identified (type and strength). Recon units identify three times as fast. Unseen contacts drift away from their last reported position. Press I for a summary.
Each objective you hold earns victory points every minute, and destroying enemy units earns more. Each scenario sets its own terms, shown in the briefing: most victory points or most objective value held at the time limit, a break point below which a side gives up, and sometimes an outright win for holding every objective.