Decisively Beating the AI

[Harrybanana]

Turn 14: Oct 2, 1943

This was probably one of my most successful turns of the game to date as I was able to make a bit of a breakout on the East Coast. Again, I don't have saves of what I did (except the final positions) so for educational purposes what I am going to do is once again recreate, more or less, what I did do. So Newbie's pay attention, the rest of you can skip this and go to the end. Oh yeah, forgot to mention last turn that, having decided my main push was going to be on the East Coast, I changed the HHQ of CA II Corps to 5th Army.

The opening setup was as below. As I perused the map I began considering my options. The Germans had, surprisingly, abandoned pretty good defensive positions on the West Coast. But I only had 1 armour division in the area so there was no way for me to fully exploit this. Positioned where they were it looked like my armour had an open way West towards Rome (the Blue arrow) with the possibility of trapping some German units. But this was an illusion as the mountainous terrain would stop any breakout more effectievly than 10 divisions. The only time armour can move more than one hex a turn through mountains is if they are following a rail line, and there were no rail lines here. So any major advance would have to be made by continuing North along the coast (the Red Line). This suited me fine as there appeared to be relatively weak units here and the closer I was to the coast the easier it would be to keep my units supplied from the ports I would capture. It also had the advantage of forcing the AI to either retreat or else it's line would become stretched.

So I set my Air Directives to support this plan. In particular Tactical AF was given an Interdiction GA Air Directive (railway low priority and interdiction high priority) for an area along the East Coast. I had also detected over 17 enemy air groups on the 2 airbases circled in Green, so Strategic AF was given an AD to bomb them.

[Harrybanana]

Recon (not shown) revealed that there were German units in the mountains to the West anyway, so just as well I planned on going up the coast. But of course I wanted my infantry, not my armour, to blast the way through the enemy units blocking my way up the coast (ie the 6=6 mech div and the 1=7 regiment). But in order to have freedom of movement so my infantry could reach these units I first had to get rid of the enemy infantry regiment pinching me in along the coast (the 1=14). I wanted to be sure of retreating this key unit so I wanted to use a strength of at least 21 CVs (odds of 1.5:1). It so happened I started with 25 CVs adjacent to this unit, but I wanted to save most of these units for later battles. So instead I moved in 2 divisions from further away as shown by the red circles in the battle report below. Note that the 3/HG Panzer division reinforced the hex so the battle was pretty close.





A couple more battle hints for you before I move on to the next battle:

1. If an enemy unit has one of your friendly units adjacent to it it will not be able to take part in a Reserve activation. So it is generally a good idea to try and have one of your units (regiments/brigade work well for this) adjacent to all enemy units (or at least as many as practicable) before you start attacking.

2. It is also generally a good idea to make your most important attacks first as otherwise you might run out of Ground Support air missions. Alternatively you can turn GS off by pressing hotkey "x" for any high odds attacks you don't think will require GS. just don't forget to press "x" again to turn GS back on, as I have forgotten on numerous occasions.

[Harrybanana]

Battle 2 was to destroy the 2 enemy units I had isolated last turn. Again note that I used an infantry division from a few hexes away, thus saving my closer units for future battles. Of course, this division would not have been able to make this attack if I had not won Battle 1.

[Harrybanana]

I now had 3 infantry divisions that had sufficient MPs to attack the 2 units blocking my advance up the coast. However, I would need one of these divisions (broken down into brigades) to cover the flanks of my advance. I moved the other 2 infantry divisions into place and then had to make a decision of whether to use both of these divisions in the attack on the enemy Mech division or take a big chance and just use one of them and save the other to attack the other enemy unit. I am not big on taking chances so used them both. As you can see below this was a bit of overkill. The other thing you will notice is that Bradley committed 3 artillery battalions to the battle, you have to love the guy. Oh yeah, notice as well that both my Corps HQs are close to the Front lines in Termoli. This way I didn't have to move them to maintain the 5 hex command radius. If you have to move an HQ then it lessens the chance that it will lend support to an attack.

[Harrybanana]

Battle 4 was to push back the enemy infantry regiment on the coast. The reason I decided to use both my infantry in the last battle was I realized that they would both still have sufficient MPs to make a hasty attack on this unit. But worried that their halved strength from making a hasty attack would not be enough to win the battle I also used 4CA Arm in the attack. The result is below. You are probably tired by now of me pointing out the TFs offshore supporting the attack, so this is the last time I will do that.

[Harrybanana]

Battle 5 was to attack the unit I just drove back in Battle 4 along with the unit it had retreated on to. Although I am reluctant to attack with armour there are times when you have no choice, and this was one of them. I did not want to use my 4 CA as, despite the hasty attack it just took part in, it still had the most MPs, so I wanted to save it for exploitation. I also didn't want to use the 1st US Arm as I intended to break it down to cover my flanks. So Instead I used used BR 7th Armour. I probably should have used both my British Armour because, as you can see below, this was a near thing.

[Harrybanana]

In my actual game I next attacked the 2 units I had just retreated again and retreated them again. But that was a mistake, so instead I will tell you what I should have done. Which is move my 4CA Arm to isolate these 2 German units so they had no where to retreat and then attack them with my remaining British Armour thus causing them to rout. Unfortunately, I forgot to save a screenshot of this attack so you will have to be satisfied with this screenshot of my final position. Note that I have stationed a TF adjacent to the level 2 port of Pescara. The TF will fully repair this port in one turn.

[Harrybanana]

Remember that all of the above is a recreation of more or less what I did. Below is the screenshot of my actual positions at the end of my turn. Not quite as good as my recreation, but pretty good none the less.

[Harrybanana]

Positions on Corsica

[Harrybanana]

Turn 15: October 9, 1943

Below is the situation before my turn showing that the Germans were pulling back to shorten their lines. The Ai is generally smart about this, but not as smart as a good human opponent. I was once again tempted to drive West from the East coast, but in the end decided to continue the drive North along the coast.

[Harrybanana]

Below is more or less the same map area but with my supply and logistics showing. Again, I am no expert with this part of the game but as my units are still in pretty good supply I am not concerned. Do note however that I am building depots near the Front and I am repairing rail lines as close to the Front as I can. One thing I did not do, but you should, is change the HHQs of the rail repair units to a closer HQ (I just left them with AFHQ) and set that HQs supply priority to 4. The reason for this is otherwise the rail repair units (well actually the sub-units attached to the rail repair units) will lose TOE and eventually lose the ability to repair rails. I found this out the hard way around turn 43 or so. If anything will prevent me from winning a decisive victory it will be this.

[Harrybanana]

The map below shows my landing zones for my next invasion along with the air drop hexes

[Harrybanana]

When planning an invasion it is a good idea to attach rangers and commandos to the Invasion TFs. This is especially important for the TFs targeting a hex on the edge of the invasion because if an adjacent hex is vacant there is a chance that the ranger/commando will come ashore in that hex (see Rule 16.7.2). You can see in the screenshot below that I have attached a ranger to this TF and an invasion will soon be possible. However, the more prep points you have the less disorganization your invading units have, so I prefer to have close to the maximum 90 prep points before invading. Besides, my units in Italy are not where I want them to be when this invasion is sprung.

[Harrybanana]

Finally here is the screenshot from the end of my turn.

[Seminole]

The map below shows my landing zones for my next invasion along with the air drop hexes

Water is like magnets to my paratroopers. I'm afraid to drop anywhere with water adjacent anymore...

[ultradave]

We don't really care for that much either Water landings while laden down with 80 lbs or more of equipment kind of suck.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Seminole

Water is like magnets to my paratroopers. I'm afraid to drop anywhere with water adjacent anymore...

I know what you mean. But I figured it is only one of the paratroopers and it is just one hex of adjacent water, what could go wrong?

[Harrybanana]

Turn 16: October 16, 1943

Below is a screenshot of the big picture in Italy before my turn. As you can see the Front line runs North-South not East-West.

[Harrybanana]

Below is a closeup of the action along the East coast. My infantry are lagging behind and my 4 armour divisions are fatigued with an average CV of only 8 and an average MP of 32. So I decide to rest my armour while my infantry move up to the Front. The only attack I make is to destroy the isolated German unit (circled in red) and the only enemy territory I occupy in the North are the vacant hexes circled in green. As I said before, sometimes it is better to rest for a turn in order to deliver the hammer blow (or at least a better blow) next turn. Meanwhile I continue to bomb the enemy ports and railyards and interdict their railways.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Below is a closeup of the action along the East coast. My infantry are lagging behind and my 4 armour divisions are fatigued with an average CV of only 8 and an average MP of 32.

something to watch out for in this respect (its caught me out) is that while in WiTE, fatigue is the biggest short term killer of cv, here its often fuel and/or ammo.

If you have armour with only 75% of their fuel, they'll have 50% of the cv (if I recall). Think the key ratios are 1% missing ammo, 1% off the cv (for all units) and 1% missing fuel, 2% off the cv for motorised. The combined impact is capped at a max loss of 50%. And then you can lose cv to fatigue etc.

Looking at the map, your nearest depot to the spearheads is Pescara?

Of course stopping the advance has a dual gain, not only do you shed fatigue but you can build up a small store of key resources.