AAR/Progress of german long campaign

[curious123]

I started my 200 battle long campaign with the default options on a 80x80 map. my original core force consisted of 1 rifle company, 5 panzer 3's, 6 panzer 4's, four 2cm AA guns ,75mm battery and 105mm battery (not sure about the artillery since it was more then a a month ago, im just sure it was 2 batteries). well, it was my 2nd start of the same campaign cause:
the 1st time i didnt buy the AA guns, i deployed half of my force on a road to get to the flags faster (meeting engagement) and guess what :P on the 1st turn polish plane dropped on my 2 platoons some kind of napalm bomb (same graphic effects as napalm in steel panthers) and killed almost all the infartry force on the road. so since i'm a sore looser sometimes i restarted my campaign and with the force above and here my summary/AAR (haha, dont know how to define it) starts.

the polish campaign was under 10 battles long, it consisted of a few meeting engagements and advances. overall it was pretty easy since the AI was usually rushing his cavalery/armor ahead of his infantry and since his armor was usually some kind of armored cars and tankettes they where slaughtered easily by my P3's and P4's. later his unsupproted infantry would charge, usually in separate 2 thrusts, i would delay it with my armor and some squads if my infantry which i rush into good cover and when i see that the poles are amassed i would call in artillery strike and then the great escape would begin with my P3'S and P4'S dispersing some and taking some prisoners. sometimes the poles had the vickers tanks (usually most of them where armed with MG's) which almost never changed the overall picture, maybe just increasing a bit my armor casualties.
oh and after i got my 2cm AA guns on my 2nd campaign start the poles stopped using aviation :< bah i really wanted to use those toys.
i finished my polish campaign with only decisive victories.
well i think it summarizes my polish campaign experience, next i'll review my french campaign.

[curious123]

Before advancing to the french campaign i brought another company of infantry since i felt the 80*80 map is a bit too big for only one company, i updated my artillery to 15cm batteries, added 10.5cm+ battery since it has alot of ammo and 10cm k18 for counterbattery fire. also i added 3JPz's 1, 2 sdkfz-8flak-18 trucks and 2 88 guns with trucks to my armor/tank hunting force.

in this campaign i played all the possible kind of missions. the air superiority helped me few times, especially against the AI's artillery.
the french tanks were just too good for my armor, even the medium H-35 were a challenge for my P3's with their poor 37mm main gun :< the heavy char's were a real nightmare and for the most part i used my infantry to assault them or my 88's equipped trucks and at worst case i used my tanks at point blank range. in some meeting engagements i tried to rush my 88's to strategic locations and to unload them there but it didn't always work since my infantry wasn't motorized and wasn't in time to support my guns at some cases. overall the meeters weren't that hard as well as the assaults/advance missions since AI's tank force wasn't that big in this missions. i played only 1 delay mission in this campaign and it was the hardest mission i ever played, since the chars and h-35 kept coming, the AI decimated half of my infantry(veteran/elite on this stage :< ) and 3/4 of my armor and in the end of this one i got a draw although the AI got all the flags. probably since the AI lost tons of tanks this draw was the only draw i had untill now (my worst result in any campaign mission i played until now).
i really enjoyed the french campaign
edit: since the french campaign i always buy 2 engineer companys with my support points on assault missions and use them as a decoy for enemy fire to preserve my core force.

[PanzerBob]

Great AAR so far, looking forward to hearing more. I have found in the past some of those battles in France can be costly and trying to bring your much-valued 88's to bear can be an exercise especially in a relatively flat battlespace or worse yet low visibility.

Bob out

[curious123]

before the campaign on balkans i expanded my core a bit (adding 2 artillery batteries nad 3 JPz's 1), so it consisted of:
2 infantry companys
6 panzers4, 5 panzers3, 6 JPz's 1, 2 sdkfz-8flack-18 trucks, 2 88 guns,4 15cm batteries, 105mm+ batterie, 10cm k18 battery and 4 2cm AA guns.
now before i continue i just wanna ask what do you think about the amount of the artillery, are the 6 batteries too much for 2 companys of infantry or its a reasonable amount?

back to the campaign, i cant say much about the yugoslavian part of the campaign since i had only 2 missions(1 advance and 1 assault) and they were a real walk in the park since the best ATG that faced me was the 25mm gun that couldn't do much damage on range above 500 meters . the yugoslavian armor was some kind of funny MG equiped armored cars. so it was the easiest part of the campaign.

in greece it was a bit more challenging :
i mostly had metting engagements against greeks and the british forces.
the greeks lacked any real armor (again, armored cars) but the masses of infantry they had made it a bit tougher, plus this was the 1st time snipers really frustrated me since they were employed on a large scale by the AI and my tanks and infantry were helpless , even the P4's with their 75mm gun could hit the snipers from really short distances and after spending serious amount of ammo.
i just wanna mention that in the russian campaign the snipers die faster and from bigger ranges and the weapons that kill them are the same, so i must assume the greek sniper immortality have something to do with their higher experience.
facing the british forces were the toughest part of the balkans campaign. while facing them in meeting engagements i experienced the first massive tank assaults, luckily for me those were the A9,A10 and the A13 tanks and my JPz's 1 / P3's had a real party
i encountered matilda 2 tanks only once, a platoon of them appeared as reinforcements just before i captured the last flag in a meeting engagement, so i was pretty lucky.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by curious123

before the campaign on balkans i now before i continue i just wanna ask what do you think about the amount of the artillery, are the 6 batteries too much for 2 companys of infantry or its a reasonable amount?

Completely and utterly ridiculous. Unless you mean to have a core based on an artillery regiment!.

A battalion (3-4 coys) would expect to have one (1) battery allocated to it in general operations (SP meeter, delay, defend). In a hasty attack (SP advance), perhaps one per company, and in an assault only, then the sky is the limit.

Your core should only have the one core battery (if British, 2 troops(platoons) = 1 battery) per 3 or so companies and the on-map infantry mortars/guns - a section of 2-3 tubes per rifle coy or so and a section of heavier mortars or infantry guns at battalion HQ. (USA 60mm company HQ mortars or GE/USSR 50mm ones do not count.)

Any additional batteries should be bought from the support pool if you are advancing (about 1 per co) or assaulting - whatever you can afford. Defending - if you have some spare points after support mines and grunts and ATG buy then maybe a few guns or mortars extra.

Cheers
Andy

[curious123]

heh, looks like i unintentionally abused the artillery, is there a way to remove units from the core force since looks like i cant do it in the purchase menu?
if not, i think i'll just change 3 of my batteries to mortars and leave one 15cm and the 105mm+ battery

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by curious123

heh, looks like i unintentionally abused the artillery, is there a way to remove units from the core force since looks like i cant do it in the purchase menu?
if not, i think i'll just change 3 of my batteries to mortars and leave one 15cm and the 105mm+ battery

as far as I recall - click on the formation in the RHS listing in the upgrade buy new forces screen and you will get a delete core formation Y/N query.

However - probably best to change a few to mortar sections and preserve any experience they have gained so far.

Cheers
Andy

[curious123]

i started operation barbarossa with the same core force, i just updated my 5 P3's to the 5cm version and the P4's to the latest model and added 2 P1 flame tanks. i'll review in this post the 06/41-02/41 period of time.

the assault/advance missions were pretty easy since the tank force of the AI was only twice bigger. i found the assault missions pretty frustrating cause the AI brought tons of infantry (probably my artillery overbuy is one of the reasons :P ). the 45mm and especially the 76mm guns scared me more than the russian BT/T-26 tanks since the 1st sign of 76mm gun presence were my burning panzers. i avoided very heavy tank casualties by advancing short distances from cover to cover and if in open area i had to sacrifice some of my infantry when scouting without armor support.
my JPz's 1 and P3's slaughtered the poor BT/T-26 tanks aswell as some heavier T-35/T-1938 tanks. the AI used the KV's rarely on the assault/advance missions and if i encountered any, the only solution was smoke screen and then infantry close assault or my 88 guns mounted on trucks. i got some immobility kills on the KV's with my aviation and i even KOd 1 KV tank after attacking it around 5 times with my planes.
as for delay/defence missions: i think i had some luck in them since the AI almost overran me few times. in the 1st 5-6 months of the war the only guns that could handle KV were my 88's and my P3's with sabot ammo from close ranges so i preferred to employ my infantry and P3's inside forests if i had the chance and they made the KV's burn pretty fast.
after 3-4 months of play i came to the conclusion that my P4's are useless
so i sacrificed some historical accuracy and changed 3 of them to the captured pzkw B-2 740(f) (the french heavy tanks) and later i change the remaining P4's to captured T-34 tanks. ill use them until ill get the long barreled P4 in 1942 also in the process of this period i updated all of my 6 JPz's 1 to the better armored version of the same tank destroyer based on the panzer 38t.

[curious123]

just wanted to mention some ideas about AT/AA guns use and deployment of the AI:
during my assault/advance mission i noticed the AI tend to deploy its AT guns in depth of the defense, sometimes without infantry support, it would be very nice if the AI could deploy the guns a bit closer. also i saw some really unreasonable deploy of 76mm guns inside of forests with line of sight of just 1-2 hexes.
in all the books i read until now usually written that success of the wermaht against the russians was also due to lack of proper air defense in the beginning of the war, but during my battles the AI has minimum of 6 37mm AA guns and 2-4 AA trucks plus sometimes MG AA units in all the missions (advance/delay/meeders/advance/defence). i think it would be nice if the AI would be a bit limited with the number of its AA guns to preserve some historical accuracy.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by curious123

also i saw some really unreasonable deploy of 76mm guns inside of forests with line of sight of just 1-2 hexes..

I'm not going to get into a big discussion about the way the AI is deployed but do compare our AI deployments with every other version of Steel Panthers ----official versions or mods ---- and you'll find ours head and shoulders above the rest. However, deploying AT guns in forests does look a bit odd and only looks a dumb until you blunder into one with your last remaining tank while moving through an area that "nobody" would put an AT gun

Don