[Charles22]

Originally Posted by Imp

Okay appologies I miss read you taking not a defeated nation but the underdog in equipment is always a good idea vs the AI. This time I wanted to play the Germans though as have a nice variety of weapons & my core is purposely big enough to allow for the variety when they come along. It will never be a Tiger company but will probably get the odd nice vehicle like a Jagdpanther for long range overwatch as decent FC for the day. As back from main force hes also in a position to react to finding heavy armour but thats a long way off.

Just increase the size of your core slightly & suddenly you can afford those taxis.

Yes I sometimes play full height because it means you do not have enough units to cover front. Not so much vs AI as it slows down the game as 1/3rd of my force is reconing slowly knowing it may find a force that totaly ouclasses it.
Versus AI not that big a disadvantage though as it may spread its forces to.
Versus a human had a very amusing game once loads of hills & we near enough swapped ends as both forces missed each other.
A wide map gives you more tactical oportunities & if attacking AI is probably spread a bit thin.
Your refit comment on other game do not understand the logic. Yes if refited should delay next attack if set up with a few days between battles but if a month no. should not change the number of battles just would mean remaining ones are closer together.

Sorry but think about this if you are capable of attacking the entire front at once with acceptable losses just how good is your force. Especialy if like me you do not generaly have enough arty to go round. I never take what I can the river crossing I am doing being an exeption as they are very hard & I desperatly need the smoke, plus the tank problem.

I would say playing how you are is more difficult on the whole than a denser map for meetings as you will have to react to AI but I have a horrible feeling your tactics would lead to an early demise vs a human as he picked you off.

The Poles were no pushover as I found in my 3rd battle against them.

In WW2 bunkers are great as they draw fire & tend to last a while slowing the attack. In MBT as penetration improves they become virtually useless as one hit will kill it.

I would suggest if you do not already try a PBEM game & then review your tactics & if you are giving yourself a hard time.
You need to give yourself a hard time otherwise you will never improve, sticking to basic possibly flawed tactics as there is no need to learn more.
Things like being able to kill tanks regulary with unsupported infantry should be second nature, pretty damn hard in the dessert if they do not have some sort of ranged weapon & he has been sensible enough to have an infantry escort.

Out of my 30-35 AFV's (not including the four HT's) I will likely field 8 heavies, maybe 2-3 lights, and the rest mediums (the Panther is a medium BTW).

Oh I know my leftover points can purchase taxis as you call them, but those points could had been on more combatant units in core. Having a larger core doesn't change the fact that the trucks are a waste compared to a combatant unit in core, it's just a little less of a waste because your force is larger overall.

I have spoke a lot about map height, but none about width, and temptation for a lot of people, is to do the obvious and go with the largest map period. I tried that myslef for a while, and that's why I'm not using that sort of map anymore. With the 140 width, and I'm still trying to figure if it wasn't 130 which was better, noentheless, there is a width which is ideal. I found that anythign over 140 gave so much time that the AI attacks thinned out too much. It also gives the AI less ground to cover on the defensive. Perhaps more important still, to perfect the fire brigade effect, you have to have a map narrow enough to where when a frontal flank is attacked, there's less time to react on your part. If the map were placed at a narrowest possible, it might just be that there would ne no more neutral territory to begin with, so it's easy to see what I'm saying is true. Less width means less AI "width spreading" and less notice on attacks. Naturally the AI can still "height spread" and will likely do so for higher maps, but this is somewhat compensated for when one picks only cluster objectives, as the AI is not programmed to hold the shotgun spread of objectives, though it might appear that way at times just through random placement.

Yes, I see what you mean about loss refits, but the game I was talking about had a minimum of a month between battles, so this was a way of keeping peopel from going hogwild refitting every time they had enough points to do it. Besides, while a refit in many cases might take mere days, often formations would go through a period of R&R and re-training to get up to battlefield conditions again, which of course would add to the delay. It certainly made you more careful with your losses, and also more careful in how quickly you replaced or refitted units.

I'm not sure of what point you're making about me attacking across a whole front. I was trying to make the point that I even cripple myself to a degree in attacks. I'm trying to add a little suspense. It's tryin gto bring the defensive fire brigade tactic to the offensive. Naturally it doesn't work as well on the offensive, but it still makes things more intersting, as you're not always in the advanatge that way. If you are saying that my force must be prety darn good if I'm doing that, I would agree, but it's not to say I'm attacking as favorably everywhere as where the two thrusts are. I guess you could say the much more minor attacks are more sort of a wearing down job. they're trying to wear the lesser attacked areas down through attrition. Just a lot of constant fire from a small amount of units. If they do poorly the attempt is abandoned or more than likely someting will be sent out of one of the armored thrusts to reinforce it. You see, sort of the same concept? Some weak areas has to have decisions made as to whether the stronger areas reinforce them or not, and to what degree. Huh, in SPWAW, I could figure pretty quickly with such a narrow map, just what the size of the enemy force was. So if they were attacking the northern flank, I would "abandon" the southern flank. you can't do that in a 200X140 map and get away with it. You usually have to send reniforcements from the center, and then decide if the other flank should reinforce the center. While there is a height stretching that can occur with AI forces, thereby making them with more holes too, they generally have more units than me, so it's less of a problem, but even so, with a more spread out height attack, I cannot abandon a once guarded flank and not expect enemy units there. That's part of my game BTW, to maintain frontal integrity and never lose a single hex that I orginally possessed. Not too easy all the time, but it does tend to make thinks a bit more difficult than otherwise would be. I played SPWAW the same way in regards to frontal integrity and often had no problem at all abandoning it. It's very simple when the AI piles up pretty much into one corner.

yes, this fire brigade stuff, particularly on the offensive would probaly lead to problems agaunst a human, but since I will never play humans, for my own point of view it's a moot point. you were wondering what I did to make battles not too terribly easy or boring, and that's the main thrust of my more recent comments. I am also commenting on what other aI-only players should be doing to be more effective or exciting. I havemn't offered one comment as to how any of this woud help against human opponents, as, after all, we were talking about long campaigns weren't we? Incidentally I'm sure some of the ideas work against humans too, but since you don't long campaign against humans, therefore have a core that gains experience along the way, then sure trucks in core don't make a difference, as no unit gains experience outside a campaign.

The Poles not pushovers? Ah, sometimes, but I still get decisive victories against them every time. I think the armor on the 9tpw's and 7tpw's, or whatever they're called, was downgraded a point from 3 to 2, so that helps enormously. I give the AI the heavy tank option BTW. To me the Poles are tough when I have lost more than 5 tanks, and that usually only happens if I'm chasing after detroying every unit, and if I act in more haste. I recently started a serious campaign to get one of my tanks into the hex with enemy infantry, hoping the already damaged infantry will surrender and quicken and ease the process of eliminating them. I didn't lose a single tank to that sort of action but I was pretty cautious. It will make good training for later, though generally enemy infantry is the least of my problems. It can get pretty tiring and boring to always fire with AFV's at some 19 man unit routing across the whole field. If my attack hadn't broke down before that, then it certianly doe sat that point, though cohesion isn't needed too much there, because the enemy infantry in the routed state retreats so far that they're quickly out of the reach of my infantry. Any interest in picking up infantry to chase them delays things more. Delay and they may rally back again.

Pillboxes? MBT? Nah, I don't play MBT. Pills are about the only chance Japan and Italy seem to have against the larger allies.

No, I'm not interested in PBEM. even at the expense of lousier tactics. Lousier tactics doesn't matter to one who never has to face those who allegedly could fight better. Often the tactics are the same, it's just any predictability of the human versus the AI that is in question. As the narrow height SPWAW map example I gave, I wouldn't dare abandon the opposite flank to a human, but that just goes to show one of the strengths of the winSPWW2 AI, in that I have to, in some degree, treat that opposite flank as though a human were against me. Even if you gave SPWAW a higher map, I bet the AI wouldn't defend or attack possibly both flanks with at least something, because years ago it was so extremely rare I developed the tactic of abandoning a flank to compensate a flank attack elsewhere. Anyway, the middle can probably still help a priorly abandoned flank if need be, and if there's no objecitves there, there's not a whole lot of gamewise point to doing that, but frontal purists like me would consider myself somewhat defeated for allowing that sort of thing nonetheless. Play humans, and I guess the frontal integrity, and a few other things to make things tougher, go out the window.

Of course, if human inpredictability is a strength, it is also a weakness. For example, I tailor my force selection to succeed within reason to the AI, but if a human opponent had 10 88's or 30 tigers, what do you think I will do? If the AI routinely comes to me with such forces, as they often used to, I will make adjustments. Same with my AA defense, if I'm regularly losing heavy and medium tanks to air units, guess what I'm going to do? There is no one force that can do it all.