Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramm
What forces did you buy exactly and how big the map? Your description of a massive Polish/Nazi tank battle sounds like the start of a fun campaign  After I get done my homework tonight I was thinking about starting a SPWW2 campaign 
Cheers,
Andrew |
I play on a 200X130. This makes something of a more mobile defense very necessary. When visibility is worse it's more crucial. I may had destroyed all of his tanks and despite him losing some 1247 men he still had a minimum of 15 of those large infantry squads that hadn't even been touched. I give the AI always the tank heavy option.
Basically I start out the long campaign as germany with 60 battles, with the most disadvantageous repair option (-20%) using like 3300pts starting out. Roughly speaking, this is the force composition:
1 infantry company, including changing 1 into engineers and 1 into SS inf.
2 tank companies, composing of 30-33 AFV's total
1 engineer and 1 Brandenburger platoons
1 HMG section
8 SPAA's
1 AA section
3 37mm ATG's
1 scout section
1 HT platoon
1 88ATG section
4 100mm offboard guns
2 onboard 150IG's
2 onboard 75IG's
1 highest rated sniper
I have on any given campaign a variance between 110-130 units (USSR usually having more units). It's meant to simulate the mobile defense tactics employed on the late eastern front by germany. With that much height and not a lot of depth, it is a very fascinating game of trying to predict when you vacate, or near vacate areas in order to help where the enemy may be concentrating an attack. Unlike in the battles measuering only 100 hexes high, you have to be a much more proficient predictor of just what is needed where, as help takes often much longer to come. I have tanks which in some cases are going a full 6 or 7 turns before they can help in the area needed. This also helps teach the value of any amount of delaying that one can employ that often wouldn't matter on smaller maps.
On the flip side, it makes defense that much harder, in theory, for the AI, but if you attack pretty much across a broad front, this will weaken your attack a bit. I tend to have hard thrusts with my two tank companies, aided with some infantry, and then cover all the other territory to fight in either adequate to what I can expect, or inadequate. The idea is to have every attack where there is a bit of danger, but also parts where there's lots of success, so that you can see, if the weak areas face a lot of opposition, or even a determined counter-attack, then you have to start bleeding off the main thrusts. I also always play with clustered objectives, which is what the AI is geared for defending, which in theory should also help make the AI's defense easier, because the flanks won't need to be defended as much as with grapeshot objectives, and be less piecemeal. The AI may place the defense the exact same way for grapeshot, which of course means there's some objectives which would be easy takes. For the human, I guess it can make defense more difficult playing grapeshot, but since the Ai isn't geared for grapeshot defense, it probably isn't geared for grapeshot attack, though if you're like me you're determined not to lose a single one of them, even temporarily (unfortunately I lost about 60% of them in this clustered objectives battle, and the battle went the full 49 turns).
I played one battle of SPWAW, and this game doesn't show it would have a problem duplicating that stunt, but I had faced like 150 of the French S-35's. Talk about trembling! I destroyed maybe 30 of them, and damaged quite a few more, before the French surrendered (I was being assaulted). If I wanted to fight it out, he could had possibly had destroyed every one of my units with such a force, but I plugged away enough that he gave up. France may be the only nation that will be that well off and still surrender. SPWAW wouldn't let me have the sort of maps I use in this game though. Oh man, facing 150 S-35's would be much worse with this map.