New player, some questions

[JohnHunt]

Greetings,

really happy to found this quality wargame on Steam. Great to see that buying from your HP also gives you a steam key. Also great work with the explanation video on Youtube, hepled me a lot.

After playing the tut, I started with the Highway to the Reich scenario pack and playing scenario 1 Nijmegen as the Germans got some questions:

1) I prefer to keep fire support like artillery organic and noticed in the dev´s tutorial video that the AI does a pretty good job with providing fire support to it´s unit or others in need. However in my case most artillery assets kept silent the most time of the scenario. Enemy was of course in range. Very occasional fire support missions could be observed but nevertheless it forced me to detach them and micromanage them with bombard orders which is extremely tedious. Is there a setting or specific order needed I overlooked?

2) Mission briefing stated to deny the southern non-critical bridges which I assumend I wouldn´t be able to do in force, so my plan was to leave the nearby units close by the pink/primed bridges but no unit was able to blow it when the enemy forced them out. Quesiton: Priming needs engineers, does the blowing attempt also need engineers or can any other unit try to trigger the ordnance? Does the "blowing" unit need any specific order (defend, deny crossing) to try the detonation when time has come?

3) On day 4 of the scenario I assumed that the allied AI had failed me as no real opposition was endangering the main objectives and I relaxed (too early), thinking the scenario is about to be done when suddenly an huge armored opposition arrived and I had to fight for every inch of the southern town on the last day 5 while my southern mopping up task forces got encircled. I don´t know much detail about the single battles of WW2 so this caught me by complete suprise, although it is logical that airborne troops would prepare for a major land based offensive. However question: Is there any way to asses what enemy opposition I can expect beside the intel contact reports? Some intel on the OOB of the enemy or what reinforcements could strengthen him?

Thanks!

 

[john connor]

Hey.

I should really let someone else answer 1, about the arty. I feel there's much amiss with the arty. I don't think you're missing anything, but you might want to specify what orders the units were carrying out when the arty was silent. Personally, I believe the arty needs some work and that you're better off micromanaging it if you want it to be used properly. Certainly if it's a question of prep fires prior to an attack the AI will not do that for you, presently. But, if you do control your arty manually you will likely end up being at an enormous advantage vis a vis the enemy AI, which is following the same (possibly deficient) rules. You can win relatively easily by controlling arty carefully, because then you will be using loads of arty - which is very effective at stopping attacks dead, for example - and the AI virtually none. There has been much discussion, specifically, about the enemy AI not using arty much (the most recent diagnosis being that it moves its arty around too much and hence never has guns set up to use with sufficient frequency) and, indeed, there was possibly going to be a patch looking at it, but everything has gone so quiet in here for so long, with so little heard from Dave (the dev) that I'm not even sure if he's still working on that. He can say if he is! To hear anything from him would be very welcome! Meanwhile, I try not to manually plan any arty if I play these days, as that's the only way not to overwhelm the AI opponent. But it means you will see a lot of the behaviour you're complaining about, sadly.

2. Bridge blowing: I believe any unit can press the button, but you've always a greater chance of success if engineers are present (as many as possible). 'Deny crossing' is the order you must use.

3. Great that the AI surprised you. Without cheating (you can see the entire enemy OOB in the editor, or play from the enemy side) the only way to get more info is to send out units as recon. This is realistic, of course, but the recon you can do might not be, as you will always have to do 'recon in force' more or less, and use quite powerful units to scout, unless the scenario OB happens to already have a few platoons in there. There is, I believe, an abstracted handling of general recon built in - so that as units approach you will get hints, but that's only when they get very close to your forces.

Hope this helps.

 

[JohnHunt]

Got some issues with logging into my forum account on firefox but pressing again on the forum account approval link logs me in with no problems.

Hello John, thank you for your answer, provided def a lot of help.

to 1) Most of my German units were on in situ defend order without the direct FS option ticked. I have the impression that AI artillery works better when commencing attacks, especially with organic assets attached but often even those won´t fire and just "watch" the battle unfold from behind or doing other stuff . I already noticed too that heavy micromanaging of artillery, especially focusing multiple assets simultaneosly on the enemy main emphasis of attack has a devastating effect on them and their battle plan and that the enemy has a hard time utilizing its own FS options due to probably the same issues. However I only played two scenarios so my impression is limited but for now I will follow your tip and leave it be but I hope to see clarification and/or improvement of AI´s efficient arty use in the future as it was an extremely important aspect of WW2 warfare.

 

[simovitch]

Regarding artillery, you do have to manage the bombardments yourself to get effective results, but it can be as easy as ordering an HQ to bombard a location - that way all subordinates with a bombard capability and in range will contribute to the bombardment. If you really want to plaster the objective, give the bombard order from the division or corps HQ.

 

[JohnHunt]

alright, thanks

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Welcome John. Glad you are enjoyng the game. Re Arty. I acknowledge that the arty units at higher levels are not being committed as often as they should. We've worked up a fix and I'm in the process of testing it now. You won't see it till we release the new build. But rest assured we're on it.

 

[Kensal]

Pending a fix re arty, and in order to balance play with the AI, you could limit yourself to managing corps level arty and allowing the AI to manage division and sub division arty.