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[Yoink]

Okay, I have no idea what I am doing. Aaaaaahh.   

[EuchreJack]

Are these "heavy tanks" truly the highest class of tank? I recall reading in the manual about so-called "monitor tanks". One can only imagine.

Well, they are on the unit tree, but I've never seen one, so I can't say for sure they exist.

[Majestic7]

Now that I've been playing with monsters, I must say they'd need a different AI from other enemies. It feels weird when dinosaurs go directly to cut your supply lines like they had a general directing them instead of, you know, wandering randomly or targeting food and water sources.

[Il Palazzo]

Are these "heavy tanks" truly the highest class of tank? I recall reading in the manual about so-called "monitor tanks". One can only imagine.

Well, they are on the unit tree, but I've never seen one, so I can't say for sure they exist.

The GR Cataphracts you can sometimes find in settlements are monitor tanks, iirc.

[Yoink]

I am literally following the manual word-for-word and shit still ain't working, with no explanation offered as to why.   
Trying to attack these unaligned enemies (who attack me every turn and whom I was able to attack once in the past) yet there is so sign of the red arrow or any option to attack. Do I have to wait until they all kill themselves attacking us, or what?

Who am I kidding, combat's the least of my worries. I don't know how to do anything. I can't even figure out how to appoint the officers I've supposedly be hiring - there doesn't seem to be a screen for that, or one for my economic council which I think I was supposed to be doing stuff with.   

[Il Palazzo]

The manual does need a serious rewrite. Ask here - people with too much time on their hands will have probably figured it out.

To attack you just need enough action points to enter the hex. You might not be able to, if the terrain is rough and you didn't start next to the target. Sometimes your AP might be low for other reasons, like poor readiness (the colour of the unit bar, or the number by the lightning icon) due to having lost a fight recently or having no supply (the colour of the little square box next to the unit bar).
This game does combat like a typical WWII-style wargame, so don't expect frontal attacks to do much damage apart from pushing enemy out of the hex. You kill troops by cutting off their retreat route (i.e. surrounding them with your controlled hexes), and individual fights are won the easiest against units with low readiness (so, again, after they've failed an attack, after you've bombarded them with artillery, or after you've cut off their supply - the last one doesn't work with independent units).

The decision to appoint anyone ever appears the next turn after you've created the position. So creating e.g. the economy council on turn one means you'll be prompted to pick a director on turn two. You need some unemployed appointees to do that, which you can hire by playing stratagems occasionally appearing in the 'nation' category. Sometimes your political parties will ask you to hire one of their members too.

The various councils do the stuff they're supposed to be doing automatically, by spending a proportion of bureaucratic points you generate mostly in your HQ building (initially) or bureaucratic offices. You can change the proportion used for various tasks the turn after you've created a council, or by talking to the director.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

combat with independents can be a bit funky sometimes, also movement drains your units action points (AP), so if you be stepping to an enemy you might find your units exhausted before they can attack.

also all officer appointments are done via decision, usually the turn after you CREATE a new council or OHQ unit, or a turn after whenever you delay appointment. It's a bit unwieldy, but you can also fire officers from the management > leaders tab

EDIT: also Il Palazzo explained it all better lol.

EDIT: Also what council discovers OOBs? I'd like some artillery units finally!

[Dostoevsky]

Staff Council handles OOBs, if I recall. Thus far the only artillery formations I've found are actually mostly infantry, meaning that if you want saturated artillery you're probably better off using independent groups and attaching them to OHQ formations.

I've encountered at least one Monitor GR unit, so can confirm they exist. I think you only really get access to constructing them once you've got access to better engines and lighter armor, though, which would make sense.

And regarding basics: I think Il Palazzo covered it pretty well but a few extra bits: AP is always out of 100, and shown by the rotating arrow symbol under unit stats. See screenshot below, the pink/purple marking. Also make sure you're in one of the move modes (as opposed to just inspecting, etc.) - M for single unit movement, G to move a full stack at once. See red circle indicating I'm in move mode.

Spoiler: Hopefully this works? (click to show/hide)

(Link at https://imgur.com/a/BUxoG4R in case I got that in wrong; I've lately had trouble loading images here for some reason.)

I think the manual already mentions this, but be wary of attacking when at less than 100 AP (in other words, both moving and attacking within a single turn). A battle lasts 1 round for every 10 AP, meaning that a given unit needs to call off its attack early if it lacks the AP. Furthermore, most (all?) troop types have a penalty to their attack value for the first 2 rounds of combat to simulate approaching the defenders. Furthermore, moving decreases readiness which you'll want as high as possible before fighting (it regains naturally every turn).

Thus, the safe/methodical thing to do is approach the enemy in one turn, then attack in the next. Or at least have a decent fraction of your troops attacking fresh. If, e.g., you have a 50 AP unit and a 100 AP unit attacking, the 50 AP unit will pull out after round 5 but the other unit will keep attacking until round 10. So for flanking elements and the like it's less important (and less feasible) to attack with 100 AP.

[Il Palazzo]

Spoiler: imgur embedding (click to show/hide)

 
you want the share link with the .png extension (from '...' next to the 'copy link' icon):

[Dostoevsky]

Thanks. I swear I have to re-learn how to do it every time I want to link an image. Still, your method is better than whatever I was doing previously.

[E. Albright]

Whoever it was above who said that Slavers are the worst neighbors wasn't wrong. Those prats are more aggressive than monsters and better organized too.

I also second the "monsters need their own AI" statement. They have a better understanding of the importance of logistics than most military officers I've known.

If you're having a hard time getting a handle on the basics, the DasTactics tutorial series - it's like 12-15 videos with overviews followed by deep dives of how to do your first 10 turns or so - really does a good job explaining the basic mechanics. I've barely touched the manual so far and I'm at least merely incompetent! *smugly buffs knuckles on shirt*

[Majestic7]

Fallout: Jurassic Park just happened, since I had to nuke some dinosaurs. Literally.

I had received two nukes from ruins and a horde of monsters threatened to overrun my supply lines while I'm fighting two friggin' slavers at the same time. I had a paltry garrison in reserve, but stack of three different dinos is just impossible to deal with infantry. So yeah. I suppose pieces of irradiated dinos will be raining down in the local area for the next week.

It is kind of funny my only way to deal with beasties is using artillery. I imagine a pack of hyenas chilling on a savannah and suddenly it starts raining 150mm artillery shells. Since that is the best way to keep the population under check.

[Dostoevsky]

Wait until you get rockets / missiles / katyusha. They have 3+ range for nice distance suppression.

But yes, less savanna and more endless WW1 hellscape. Filled with giant beasties, like the giant trench rat stories all being true and back for vengeance.

[Il Palazzo]

27m tall trench rats, though.

[Shooer]

Finally got what can be called a easy start.  Start is right on the south edge, so have access to infinite water from the never melting snow.  Warm world so farming is viable not far from the snow line.  Perfect native life, no dangerous animals. 

Right next to you is a peninsula with 2 farmers on it, you trap them in making them easy targets.  North is a bunch of friendly farmers.  West is Arachnids, but 40 turns in and I haven't seen one try and cross the 8 tile wide mountain.

Finlay made contact with a major around turn 34.  Only border is a 1 tile wide land bridge.  Also they were immediately friendly and started trade right away.

On the way to the major was a small series of ruins.  3 sitting on top of fuel deposits, and at least one has artifacts.