how much artillery

[evan]

Well I started a 2nd long campaign; again German vs the rest of the world and set off to invade Poland. The second battle into this I had a defend mission and got to play with mines; love those Polish Armoured Car that charge straight down the road without a care in the world untill BANG.

By the end of the battle I had been decimated through heavy artillery fire; why? Heres the count that was fielded against me.
75mm howitzers 28
100mm FG bty 8
75mm FG BTY 4
155 How Bty 2

A bit painfull to be on the recieving end of that lot and all that Polish infantry as well; Any suggestions for me people?

[dlazov]

Arty is a *****. Depending on your Core Forces the AI will adjust up/down and buy accordingly. Sounds like your deployment may have cost some as well. I am in a long 43-45 Campaign on my 7th battle. My core is about 4005 and I have been on the Eastern front for all 7. Right now my center Rifle Company is getting slammed by at least 3 batteries of 122mm. Nothing to do but try to get out of it or wait it out. I used in one of my advances I think 1 module of 170, 2 of 150 and 4 of 105's it crushed the Soviets and my core just mopped up.

Polish forces are dirt cheap and sounds like the AI decided to use lots of Arty for his assault. Also if you setup right in or near the VH the AI will pound those hexes so you need to defend accordingly.

Best of luck

[desh44]

Its always a good idea to have at least 3 batteries of off board arty in your core force. Am doing 4 long campaigns at the moment and at the first opportunity added this. It pays off later. As they gain experience they are great at counter battery work. I am a firm believer in as much arty as possible. Am in the early stages of the German campaign. Finished 4 battles in Poland and got a river crossing as the first battle in France. Talk about tough ones. Have lost of points to spend but am facing some real tough defenses along the entire river. The enemy has 4 batteries off board 2 75's and 2 105's For my part I have a core of 3 150 batteries and have 3 of 210's and 3 of 150's as support. Good luck on your campaigns. Look forward to hearing some AAR's I will post a AAR on this one when I finish the battle.

Tom

[evan]

Desh; many thanks after some ill fated battles it's back to square one for my long campaign and your suggestion of core OB artillery is having instant success.

thanks

[desh44]

One other thing which you might find helps in the long campaign. Try using either cavalry or motorcycle troops(at least 2 platoons worth. I use them in the opening stages to scout and grab objectives or set up ambushes in towns and woods. once contact is made I either pull them back to form a reserve to use on breakthroughs or if I find a hole in the line send them as deep strike troops to ferret out the enemy artillery. When using them as a reserve hold them until the enemy is breaking and then use them as pursuit troops against routing troops. A friend of mine an I are doing a joint long campaign where we each picked a core force and set up a battle plan and each is tasked with accomplishing their objectives. I have a slightly larger scout force which includes 2 motorcycle platoons and more scouts and snipers. He opted for a slightly larger number of tanks. Our armor units are performing about the same with his a slight bit ahead of mine on number of kills but my motorcycles units are way ahead in experience and kills. We just finished our 4th battle in Poland and are moving on into France and my cycle units which have survived have accumulated a total of 73 kills. Of this 1 squad has 28 and another 22 kills. I takes a lots of finesse to keep them alive but they can be really deadly if used correctly.

Good luck
Tom

[dlazov]

Good tips Desh44!

I have found lately, (after turning up the AI to be stronger) that if you keep your infantry together, supported with tanks in overwatch with scouts out in front and moving at a slow pace you can easily defeat the AI or "trick" the AI into traps.

This is much harder against an "unwilling" non-AI opponent that is attempting same on you.

If however, you "charge" full speed ahead one unit at a time, your "core" forces will surely disappear over time and be completely useless replacements.

So what I tend to do is the following, using an A0, 1 Inf Platoon (4 squads) with one ATR section, 2 Tanks, and 2 scouts as a basic example:

A0 HQ
B0 Inf (HQ|LT)
B1 Squad 1
B2 Squad 2
B3 Squad 3
B4 ATR
C0 Tank 1 (HQ)
C1 Tank 2
D0 Scout 1 (HQ)
D1 Scout 2

Basic advancing formation:

C1 B1 D0
A0 B4 B2
C0 B3 D1

Make sense?