Newbie questions

[baronvonmunchausen]

Greetings,
A friend of mine and I are learning the game through a PBM game.
I have 5 questions (apologies if I could not find the answer in the rules):
1.
Does switch to garrison status change Upkeep? By how much? I do not see any change when I put a unit in Garrison mode. I thought this was one of the key benefits of switching to garrison mode.
2.
Is it correct to say that landing on coastline hexes or unoccupied enemy ports hexes is only possible with landing ships which you consume in addition to the naval transport at the moment of demarcation?
3.
Effectiveness: once effectiveness reaches low 80s it seems that the number never goes up: even in home country on rail next to a HQ. I can ony really get it up to 100% with trucks. Is this a design feature or am I getting something wrong?
4.
Does garrison status effect effectiveness in any way?
5.
Why would you choose close air support instead of targeted strikes on units? You cannot chose which attack this generic support will be allocated to and it does not seem to make a big difference?

[Nirosi]

Hi,

1. The logistical upkeep do goes down. When you put a unit in garrison, the available logistic value of the country goes up (so you can build more if you are tight).
2. Yes
3. The higher it is, the lower it goes up, but at 80% it should still go up by a few point; 6-8 depending of you logistic if on a rail and within an HQ range.
4. I do not think so. It does get an extra 2 guns however. So good in defense but potentially easy to bypass.
5. Air strike has diminishing return. If you have only one OP left, air strike is best. If you have two, it seems that air strike and support is better than 2 air strike. Air support fires like artillery, so the ground support value is like extra artilleries firing at start of combat. Even if odds are not changed, it will make a difference.

Hope it helps, and welcome to the game!

[AlvaroSousa]

Ground strike is better at lowering effectiveness and movement.
Ground support is better at inflicting damage and improves retreat chance. It also helps when defending.

[baronvonmunchausen]

Thank you for your wisdom!

[baronvonmunchausen]

Some new questions:

Advancements:

Is it correct to say that the number associated with a given year is NOT cumulative? So if I have Interception 1940, and Interception 1941, where “1” is written in each column , that this means that the defense is NOT increase when advancing from 1940 to 1941 tech and stays at only +1?

In order to understand which advancements can benefit any given unit, I must click on the unit, and on change unit advancement, to see what options are available. This is my understanding. So looking at an air unit for instance, I see in one game that I can increase detection and electronics to 1941 level. Does this mean that if the unit was at 1940 Close support before, the unit will loose the associated bonuses, and only apply the Detection & Electronics?

(If yes, I do not understand really the value of investing in Detection & Electronics for instance for planes at least)

If yes, this means that I cannot have both advanced attacks subs and long range, correct?


Convoy Escort screen

I find this screen too complicated for my little brain. Aside from assigning escorts to convoy routs, and seeing on the main screen how many merchant ships I have and use, I cannot make sense of the rest of the information on the screen. Way too micro management for me. Is there somewhere I can read advice on how to deal with this screen (I saw that topic thumbnail above already)?


Command units

Sorry if there is an easy answer to this that I missed. I am about to attack France and have a by bunch of HQ with units on Belgian border. When I click on different HQs they all seem to be supporting the same units (Where as in Strategic command you assign specific units to HQs). How does this work here? Does the AI use the best rating?

Thank you!

[Nirosi]

Hi,

Answers in same order :

Yes, the bonus of each year represents the bonus over the 1939 tech (not an extra bonus for that year).

Yes, in you example, it will lose the 1940 close support (will change planes) and become a 1940 detection and electronics. And then it can be upgraded, following norm al rules and at normal cost, to 1941 detection and electronics.

Detections and electronics planes are for anti-sub duties essentialy. They can find subs better, fire at them better and also give a bonus to escorts in their range.

You can have both type of subs, just not on the same unit. Each unit follows only one of the advancements (the one it is named after when buying it).

[baronvonmunchausen]

Thank you.

[canuckgamer]

Here is a link to a post in the forum that explains convoys in detail.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=361406

On page 56 in the manual it explains effectiveness recovery.

In case you don't already know but when you covert a unit to garrison status you also gain production points. For example, I think you gain 17 PP's when you convert a Russian infantry corps.

We have been playing WP for over a year and are still learning new things about the game. Currently we are playing WPP as well, a kind of world at war. There is a lot happening "under the hood" which makes it more difficult to understand. However we are enjoying playing both games.

[Nirosi]

Oups, just noticed the other two sections! Canuckgamer gave you a link for the convoy one.

For the HQ question, units are not assigned to a particular HQ. As long as you are in range, you will gain the benefits of recovery from HQs. For combat, the game is supposed to chose the best HQ (leader) for combat if more that one is in range.

Important: it seems that when attacking with multiple nations which all (or more than one) have HQs in range, the nation whose HQ will be used, is the same one as the first unit you select. But not sure if it was confirmed. Meanwhile, better act as if it was...

[baronvonmunchausen]

Thank you for your help.

I hope to gradually enjoy more the naval game, including convoys. I read the dev diary on it, and appreciate the attempt at realism, it just does not feel fun yet.

The ground and air game I definitely love. There is something "gritty" about it that I have not found in another game.

[IMFPanzerIV]

Hi! Really enjoying the game now that I have dedicated some time to it, but there is one annoying thing I have noticed which is the overrun result in land battles against units fully surrounded. The question is: do land overrun units stack to the deploy and if so, with what penalty and how much time? (Reinforce is cheaper than buy new) It does not make much sense to have units magically escaping. Is it because of the retreat range? I've read that it cannot pass through enemy territory when retreating...

Started noticing more against the soviet union as it is a vast territory and saw this multiple times, wondered if it was some special scripting to represent the historical delay tactic on russian side. From the manuals, this result is spoken only for air units and naval units. From the forum I have seen the issue for land units regarding the retreat/overrun adjustment, but still can't figure out why I'm getting overrun against encircled units in Poland.

[AlvaroSousa]

Overrun is overwhelming odds against a unit. Whatever is left goes to the queue.
Surrounding means it is destroyed but some manpower goes back to the pool as it escapes. Common in Barbarossa as part of units make it back to the front lines.

Reinforce is cheaper than new. It is in the rules the cost of it. Forgot what page. You can click the manual under the "?" icon.

You are getting overrun results in the USSR early because they were terrible at the start. You have enormous odds against poor units. It gets/should get tougher later.