Whole bunch of new (bad?) player questions

[historysteve]

I'm embarking on my yearly quest to complete a full campaign in WitW (love the game but life always gets in the way or I get frustrated and move onto other things after a few weeks). I've got a few questions I haven't found the answer to in the forums or in the manual, though if I just missed the answers in either spot forgive me.

1. How bad/detrimental is it to have the AI move air units and rebase for me? I don't mind manually doing so occasionally but it becomes a bit of a slog and I always end up missing and forgetting units. Am I shooting myself in the foot for usually letting the AI do this for me? Same goes for selecting air squadrons for directives.

2. I can't for the life of me remember how to get construction units to repair railroads and airbases. I found a couple threads in the forum addressing this, but nothing directly saying just how it's done. Do I need the highest level HQ (air and ground) placed relatively close to the bases or railroad hexes in question?

3. Whenever I transport follow up units from Tunisia to Italy, transports keep getting sunk. Does this have to do with air superiority or naval interdiction? How can I keep my armor divisions from getting torpedoed in transit?

4. Looking far ahead, does Germany ever commit to unexpected counterattacks ala the Bulge in this game? Or is the AI strategy pretty well set ahead of time?

Thanks for any responses! Forum has been an immense help already, particularly HarryBanana's AARs and tips.

[zakblood]

1, for me, none, while you may over time get better results by learning to do it yourself, don't knock yourself out, i don't unless i'm really in stuck

2, move to the beginning of the line, with damage, you need a undamaged next to it, then once on the damaged section, press the button to spend the cost to repair, depending on what side your playing the cost is different etc, so sometimes you get a fair bit of track repaired per turn, sometimes little, so plan ahead and never leave it with any movement points left etc

3, do small moves, around the safer coasts, and yes is does

4, simple answer is yes

[historysteve]

Thanks for all this. To be a bit more specific: I can't even figure how to access the construction units attached to the HQ to exit the HQ unit so I can move them around. I feel like I'm missing something incredibly basic here but all my bases are at 1% construction and I can only repair rail a little at a time with the 2 unattached RR engineer units you get over the course of the first 8 turns.

[Joel Billings]

With rails there are two kinds of repairs.

Auto repair (which is broken in the latest version, but will be fixed in the next update due out later this month). With auto repair, you need do nothing, except have HQs generally in the area. Construction units will move automatically to your HQs, and from there, they will move out to auto repair when it is working. however, this is not the most important kind of repair.

Manual repair. The 3-5 special RR repair units that are on the map and have 16 MPa. They must be moved like ground units to the rail to be repaired. They already have support construction units in them. Leave them there. Just move the unit to the rail to be repaired, and then click on the RRC in the right unit bar (it is the rail repair cost), then move to the next hex up the damaged rail, and repeat. Start from the port hex you want the rails to draw from. These are your most important units, and you should keep them active advancing repaired rail to the front line. The auto system will fill in the back area rail lines.


As for your other questions. If you are going to follow a fairly historical strategy, and you are ok with letting the AI manage the air game, then use the AI to manage the air units, and don't try adjusting them. You will need to press the AI manage button each turn, and if you try to adjust something, it will only be changed by the AI on the next turn so don't bother trying to make adjustments. This is the best way to play the game when first starting unless you really like the air part of the war. Use the automatic AD creation screen to tell the AI what you want it to do after you have it manage the air units and air bases, and be done with it.

Losses at sea are based on hexes moved through and the interdiction values and ownership of those hexes. If you can lay down a path of hexes from Africa to the mainland that are Allied controlled (via naval interdiction missions and auto naval patrol), then you're losses will be very low. Don't expect to do this. Avoid moving through areas with German interdiction, and avoid moving through lots of neutral hexes if you can help it. Some amount of losses at sea are going to happen though.

It will launch local counterattacks. I doubt it will ever try a Bulge operation though, but the higher the difficulty the more counterattacks you should expect.

[historysteve]

Thanks again guys. Last question/clarification - how do I get airbases to build/expand faster? The only construction units I can find are the aforementioned rail construction units.

[Joel Billings]

You have engineer regiment support units, IIRC, that will fix things. Can't remember, but I think you can attach one directly to the location (city) and it will help expand the airfield. Or you can hope it will automatically do it.

[historysteve]

Figured I'd resuscitate this thread (now that I finally understand rail repair thanks to you all) for a few strategy questions...

First, is there any benefit to moving my air HQs and higher level ground HQs? When do you all typically move them out of Africa and into Italy or back to England?

Second, when do you suggest starting to get my troops prepared to invade France? I know there's a handy invasion planning Excel guide but some good rules of thumb would help narrow my timeframe down a bit.

Finally, are there any good, simple, concise, outlines for when it's smart to engage ground combat? I think I understand the basics, but sometimes sure victories result in opposing forces HELD and dicey attacks come up victorious. Someone (HarryBanana maybe?) suggested never attacked with two different armies. What's the idea there? Is it equally unwise to attack with divisions from two separate corps?

Also finally, how does the AI determine strategy? Is is script based or based on player movements or both? My German AI opponent is constantly retreating back in Italy to defensive lines every time I make a breakthru which is both interesting and immensely frustrating. Curious what their "thinking" is here and if it's a strategy they'll repeat in my next playthrough.

[Devonport]

1) Not that I know. They seem to have a high command range. What I do though is make sure all support units and rail repair units are transferred to army hqs or below.

2) I usually go with about historical time (weather often a problem earlier). I use two division amphibious assaults in Europe but with big ports it doesn't take long to get to maximum prep. So end of Jan/early Feb is plenty of time and you get two new naval task forces in ETO towards the end of Feb.

3) Not sure. Out of habit I usually don't mix armies in attacks. The most important issue is to have plenty of support units in divisions and Corps, and make sure units are supplied and rested. If you play a scenario with FOW off, you can get a better feel for why things work - or don't.

4) Think it is a mixture of both. Your experience sounds remarkably like the allies IRL. It is a good Axis tactic well played by Kesserling and you can expect the AI to continue to use it as well.

[HMSWarspite]

The AI plays the only sensible defence of Italy. If you don't believe me, play both sides, and defend forwards. It is very easy to pocket a significant part of the Axis army (only takes one mistake). Also, if they get caught in the open (between mountain ranges) the Allies can make them pay exorbitantly. Finally, the Germans don't really lose from falling back. The only real significant points flip is if Rome falls significantly before end '43, after that the Axis has little to defend in Italy - just need to prevent any Allied invasion of southern France by land from Italy (well, and advancing over the Alps but that needs hardly any effort at all!)

The aim is to occupy Allied troops that could be in Northern France once Rome falls, nothing else. In fact that is another reason not to defend forwards - a smart Allied player could switch to a minimum defence and move maximum strength north to be in the north of France. The Air Forces can prevent any real chance of a sustained German counterattack in Italy. My main air aim in Italy in the first year of the campaign is to have every railyard in Italy red!

[historysteve]

Got a new set of questions for this thread as I think I'm starting to really "get" the game and you've all been so helpful so far...

1. Is there an "optimum" loadout for support units? The living PG says to always try and assign at least an engineer and a tank group to your divisions, and HarryBanana says AA units don't do much as the allies. Any suggestions here? Am I doing a disservice if I assign multiple tank battalions to a single division, or any armored support units to an armored division? What about assigning engineers or other support to HQs? Do support units for HQs do anything if they aren't artillery?

2. On the topic of support units, when is it useful to combine and uncombine them from HQs? Is the only reason to deploy, say, a commando regiment, to help out with an amphibious assault? Are there any times when you send out a tank destroyer support unit or one of those (Sep) US infantry regiments on their own to fill gaps in your line or the like?

3. I eventually made it up to August of '44 in my latest game before starting over. I began hemorrhaging victory points in January of '44, even though I was hitting VW sites fairly regularly (and I stopped hitting UBoat sites at this point which was possibly a mistake?). This got especially bad after I invaded France and I was losing 20-30 VPs per turn, mostly on troop losses, eventually bringing me from around 100 VP to -50, at which point I decided to restart and try again. First off, is this a normal amount to lose per turn when trying to invade Northern Europe? I imagine not, so the second part to my question is: what is a "good" amount of attacks to run per turn? I think my problem here was I was attacking all along the front in France every turn, anywhere I could possibly find a weak point or even just whittle down deeply entrenched German units. Is this strategy just not feasible? If not, what's a better approach? I was torn between wanting to speedily get to Paris (esp. since I had opted for a Brittany invasion in May) and not wanting to decimate my divisions.

4. Related, I'm having a lot less luck than some of the tutorials and AARs I've read in encircling units. Any general pointers here would be appreciated, as again, I lose too many points by just attacking constantly and think I need some good go-to tips in general strategy.

5. I have a major surplus of admin points as the allies, like well over 200, by the time 1944 rolls around. Should I be using these more regularly to build depots or disband units or the like? I replace the occasional general and upgrade airbases with some regularity, but still just have so many AP. Is that normal or am I missing something?

6. One last one that just popped into my head...the refit button. If I set my units to refit, is that how they upgrade their TOE? I noticed lots of equipment listed as upgrading in, say, August of '43 but various units still using the older equipment. When my various corps are fallow, is that when I should be setting them to refit so they get the latest tech?


Thanks again everyone, answering my questions has greatly reduced the scariness and opacity of this truly impressive game

[historysteve]

OK one more:

is there any easy way to tell why a particular air directive didn't run during a turn?

[Helpless]

is there any easy way to tell why a particular air directive didn't run during a turn?

With no sorties on the air directive summary list at the end of air execution.

[historysteve]

Right, I see there are no sorties listed next to one of my Bomb City directives...but I can't figure out why the sorties didn't run. I read through some air tutorials and don't think I ran the directives on overlapping days and made sure there were available air groups prior to running the AD.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: historysteve

Right, I see there are no sorties listed next to one of my Bomb City directives...but I can't figure out why the sorties didn't run. I read through some air tutorials and don't think I ran the directives on overlapping days and made sure there were available air groups prior to running the AD.

If you use the auto allocate routine (ie let the code allocate planes to missions which is often very efficient) there is a problem that they can use up their mileage or take too much damage in other missions- remember it works down the list as presented (unless you have set one to a higher priority).

So it can look ok at the start of the week but as the turn resolves you might have had no planes available. You'll often see that missions at the start of the week have more planes taking part than those at the end.

Ways around this?

Less ADs, especially with bombing a widely drawn target box with the number of missions set to 2 or 3 can be very effective;
Use the priorities, if its a mission you feel is very important then change the priority
Allocate planes to missions manually. This can be inefficient - they will only take part in the designated mission but can also force your airforce to be divided up across your ADs as you wish.

[Helpless]

System is very dynamic and there could plenty reasons for no fly. Some hints could be found in the game event log air execution section.

The best is to to check them prior execution. Those with no planes available will have blinking AD titles on the map.

[historysteve]

Thanks for all the air help guys. It's still all semi-Greek to me, but I'm getting there. I was especially puzzled because I keep thinking I've selected only ADs that have available air groups only to have them not fly. So, I go back, recheck, and run again and have it work. Just trial and error I guess. The blinking boxes tip is real useful too, don't know how I didn't notice that before.

If anyone wants to address any of my more ground-based questions from above, that'd be helpful too!

[HMSWarspite]

ORIGINAL: historysteve

Got a new set of questions for this thread as I think I'm starting to really "get" the game and you've all been so helpful so far...

1. Is there an "optimum" loadout for support units? The living PG says to always try and assign at least an engineer and a tank group to your divisions, and HarryBanana says AA units don't do much as the allies. Any suggestions here? Am I doing a disservice if I assign multiple tank battalions to a single division, or any armored support units to an armored division? What about assigning engineers or other support to HQs? Do support units for HQs do anything if they aren't artillery?

I don't think there is a true single optimum that suits for all purposes. A good general purpose set up is an engineer and a tank (or other AFV) for Infantry units. The 3rd can vary depending on exact mission - mountain infantry for mountain combat, artillery for siege, additional infantry unit or a Funny for invasions maybe. AT if you like. For Mobile divs I often attach recce, SP art or additional infantry as they don't need more tanks. The exception is specialist armour (especially for Germans - add heavy tanks)

2. On the topic of support units, when is it useful to combine and uncombine them from HQs? Is the only reason to deploy, say, a commando regiment, to help out with an amphibious assault? Are there any times when you send out a tank destroyer support unit or one of those (Sep) US infantry regiments on their own to fill gaps in your line or the like?

I don't think it is magic. It is a straight choice between additional combat strength in a division vs more (but weaker) units. So Invasions is a no brainer as you don't want to waste an invasion slot on a brigade/Rgt - put it in a division. (The exception is to occupy an abandoned island/port - a regt builds up PP much faster and don't waste strength on an empty port). Sometimes (like the breakout from the beachhead) you need more units- protect an open flank. In which case break out the regts and away you go (rather than, or in addition to splitting your divisions)...

3. I eventually made it up to August of '44 in my latest game before starting over. I began hemorrhaging victory points in January of '44, even though I was hitting VW sites fairly regularly (and I stopped hitting UBoat sites at this point which was possibly a mistake?). This got especially bad after I invaded France and I was losing 20-30 VPs per turn, mostly on troop losses, eventually bringing me from around 100 VP to -50, at which point I decided to restart and try again. First off, is this a normal amount to lose per turn when trying to invade Northern Europe? I imagine not, so the second part to my question is: what is a "good" amount of attacks to run per turn? I think my problem here was I was attacking all along the front in France every turn, anywhere I could possibly find a weak point or even just whittle down deeply entrenched German units. Is this strategy just not feasible? If not, what's a better approach? I was torn between wanting to speedily get to Paris (esp. since I had opted for a Brittany invasion in May) and not wanting to decimate my divisions.

Uboat sites don't score in 1044 so that isn't a mistake. You will likely loose points after you first invade France, and -50 is not too bad. The key is break out and capture some cities. I would play on - you will learn lots. As for tactics, play the Breakout scenario. You have to isolate the front with air power and then whittle the Axis down to the point you can break out. Make sure the Germans suffer more than you do, whilst having low supply whilst you have plenty and they will eventually give way. Don't repeat the same attack after failing though, that will hurt you more than them as the disruption will hurt.

4. Related, I'm having a lot less luck than some of the tutorials and AARs I've read in encircling units. Any general pointers here would be appreciated, as again, I lose too many points by just attacking constantly and think I need some good go-to tips in general strategy.

I'm not sure what the issue is? You wont encircle much with a solid line, but there is no magic... surround a unit with yours or ZoCs...

5. I have a major surplus of admin points as the allies, like well over 200, by the time 1944 rolls around. Should I be using these more regularly to build depots or disband units or the like? I replace the occasional general and upgrade airbases with some regularity, but still just have so many AP. Is that normal or am I missing something?

Normal. Create depot if you aren't getting supply to the right areas but generally you will have loads in the ports and the trucks are the issue until you fix the rail lines.

6. One last one that just popped into my head...the refit button. If I set my units to refit, is that how they upgrade their TOE? I noticed lots of equipment listed as upgrading in, say, August of '43 but various units still using the older equipment. When my various corps are fallow, is that when I should be setting them to refit so they get the latest tech?

That is in the manual. IIRC you just need to be within 10 hexes of a depot. But I think there may be discussions on TOE change if you search.

[Sardaukar]

By the way, what Priority you set on depots in ports (e.g. UK and France), to ensue smooth supply flow?

[historysteve]

warspite, you're the best - thanks for the help

I definitely don't think there is some magic, singular answer to the question of encirclement. I guess what I meant, was that HarryBanana's tutorials/AARs (and others) rely quite a bit on that tactic as a means of winning and moderating Allied losses. Meanwhile, I rarely find myself able to isolate Axis hexes and wonder if there's an element of strategy I'm missing. But again, trial and error seems to be the best teacher here.

[Joel Billings]

Basic tactic is to focus on punching holes in a few front line hexes using infantry units, then moving through with motorized divisions. You have to use waves of units for this, and it requires massing units in one area. You want maximum odds on the front line hex as this reduces combat delay (MP cost for other units moving through the hex), and increases the chance of routing units so you don't have to fight them again. Once through the front line, next units in can try hasty attacks if there are rear units or weak units that just retreated that need to be brushed aside (only if defenders are weak, but if they are, this saves MPs for the attacking units and reduces combat delay for next wave). Once there is an opening, push the final wave of armor into the gap and spread out in the rear to surround enemy. If you can't break through in two points (for immediate pocket creation), expand sideways in the rear and force enemy to move through multiple ZOCs to escape the almost closed pocket. This way, some units won't get out, and you can close the pocket on your next turn, and then destroy the enemy units on the turn after that.

Again, Breakout & Pursuit scenario is good for trying this. However, you should know the AI plays a very defensive game, so it will try to withdraw when it feels it is threatened with being surrounded. No Mortain counter-offensive for the AI. If you can force the enemy to move through multiple ZOCs to get away, you will be able to trap some of them.