[Charles22]

snake said:
OK fans,
Now it's 5 missions in a row. My next meeting engagement with GB back in the Balkans in April 1941 sees me facing all Matilda II tanks again with some Valentine's thrown in.

It is April 1941 in the Balkans against GB in a meeting engagement. Long campaign on an 80X80 map with my German force at 3968 points.

Andy,

No, these are all MATILDA II tanks - have never seen the Matilda I yet with the TMG. These all have 2 pdr AT weapons and MG's. A few are the CS version with 3" howitzers. This buy is a little better (more realistic) than the previous ones but it's now 41 and not 40.

It is 1941 in this mission but as I've said, all the previous were in 1940. In fact, I'm a little surprised the long campaign skipped almost 10 months with a 200 mission limit entered at the start.

Yay, for the future EXE fixes - thanks!

Charles,
I got my figure of purchase points for the AI by starting a campaign as GB and buying all the equipment, as near as I could, that I've seen in my missions.
That is my issue, I could have bought all Matilda II tanks in Sept 39 as the GB player right from a long campaign start and just kept buying them - they never greyed out or were not available.
That means the rarity issue is not being factored in if I can do that. And I assume the AI can as well.

Here is the save game of the mission currently in play (Meeting engagement against GB in Balkans - my 5th against mostly heavy armor only in a row). I was smart enough to buy 4 extra 88's in anticipation so I'm doing well in this one picking the slow monsters off and close assault has been VERY LUCKY! I also set the Art to 10% and in this mission, at least, it seems to have lessened the top hit kill effect on armor to a more reasonable level - I've only lost a few instead of everybody in the blast radius all the time.

EDIT: OK, finished the mission - final count - 31 Matilda II's, 8 Valentines, 15 Diamler A/C, 2 RR A/C, 5 dingo, 4 2pdr portee, 3 A9, 5 3", 9 40mm bofors, 2 25pdr troops and the balance of 170 units was rifle sections. A reasonable force value for the points but it should have been many more cruisers and a few Matildas.

Thanks for listening,
Snake

Almost 4000pts on a 80X80 map? You're forcing him to buy expensive stuff because he almost can't use all those points otherwise. Play as GB yourself and see how many units you can buy "without" Matilda II's. Hitting the 200 unit limit mark won't be too difficult, but even if you see a lot of leeway, imagine that nation purchasing two to three times that amount when it has to assault you (and this isn't even considering buying support points). It simply won't be enough and matters will be even worse when you face the super-cheap USSR. Seeing 28-33 Matildas doesn't worry me too much, but facing gobs of KV's does, and even just using 3,350 core points as I currently do, does scare me a bit that the AI will run into the unit number limit and thereby get cheated, or will start putting out the most expensive stuff to compensate.