Early East Coast US invasion, 17k prestige, no mid-battle purchases achievement...getting absolutely mauled. Any ideas?

[ClumsyCommander]

First of all hello everyone, my first post here! I hope it's not too much of a repetitive topic, I found a few threads on the East Coast US scenario but they seem quite old. Perhaps the veterans here will find it an interesting dilemma/discussion.

I went the uninformed and rather newbish route of all Decisive Victories. Colonel Difficulty.
Poland --> Norway --> Low Countries --> France --> Sealion 40 --> Barbarossa --> Rush to Moscow --> East Coast USA

I've seen a lot of old threads saying this is silly because it's actually detrimental to your unit experience to rush so much. My original thinking was wanting to avoid the Russian Winter but perhaps that was a mistake. Is it still possible to achieve overall victory with this early route?

To rub salt in, I am also playing this time with the additional challenge of no mid-battle replenishments/purchases to try and get the Achievement. Surprisingly I've found it seems to have made me a better player as I have less casualties, quite a bit more experience and extra prestige to spend this time around. Going into East Coast US I have 17,500 in the bank and it feels like a lot to spend?

My main strategy has been heavy on the artillery and air force to minimise casualties and I usually try to only use the ground forces when the enemy has been suppressed by the artillery and air equivalent of about ten nuclear detonations

For this scenario the main crushing issue for me is the US Air Force. The Mustangs absolutely obliterate my fighters, only my 13 Overstrength Go 229A fighters are effective against them. Newbie Go 229As get absolutely destroyed almost instantly in the first couple of turns and I have no counter to this, especially as the US has a lot of fighters (I counted at least six I think).

Am I missing a trick with the air war? One thing I noticed is that it really helps to surround the enemy fighters for the Initiative bonus when on the attack, but I'm still very vulnerable defending in the air. I'm not sure how to avoid casualties in my rookie fighters against these seasoned air aces.

My total core force composition once the 17k is spent is this:

1x Bruckenpionere (I basically never use these guys except for the start of Low Countries, I find it's better just to take towns with bridges ASAP, I don't like having a weak and slow unit on the field).
2x Grenadier (3 stars) + halftracks
3x Fallschirmjager (3 stars, 1 star x2)
2x Gerbigsjager (3.5 stars each, these guys were upgraded from my original Wehrmacht Inf, since I like their 3 hills movement more than the Grenadiers most of the time)
1x Kradschutzen (2 stars)
4 x Panther G (3 stars x3, 1 star)
1 x SE Panther G (0 stars, just given to me before this battle)
1 x SdKfz 232 8Rad recon (0 stars newbie)
1 x Jagdpanther (2 stars)
4 x 15 cm sFH 18 towed artillery (all 4 stars)
1 x Wurfrahmen artillery (never used)
3 x Hummel (3 stars)
2 x Brummbar (2 stars)
8 x Go 229A fighter (4x 3 stars, 4x 0 stars newbies)
4 x E555I Amerikabomber strat bombers (2x 3 stars, 2x newbie)
2x old Ju 87R tac bombers (3 stars) - these were amazing previously, but I have left them behind for this scenario so far.

All of the veteran units are overstrengthed to the max (12-13 strength).

My initial assessment looking at all the shiny new units was that I was going to have a really powerful force on the attack for this one after all the kind of cruddy 1939 units, but the Americans seem scaled up in veterancy and unit stats so hard that it actually feels like my army has somehow got weaker since Moscow

The tanks especially, my God! I have a total of 6 heavy armoured units and I'm not sure it will be enough even with a lot of air support.

Strategy so far is to land near New York, anywhere else I find tanks roll up and start killing my landing craft before they can even make it to the beach.

I'm not sure where the US soldiers got all this Sam Fisher level veterancy from if they never had the same level of European combat in this alternative scenario as they did in real life. It seems Drill Sergeant Hartman himself has been indoctrinating the entirety of the nation into Navy SEALs while I was fooling around in the Soviet Union. The Japanese also seem to be smugly relaxing on a beach somewhere instead of offering any help to me but I digress hahaha.

Any idea for how to make this work or should I ragequit and try again? It's giving me Sealion 40 vibes (which was already quite vicious to do in 14 turns), but on steroids because the opposing forces are just absolutely hard as nails.

I'm almost wondering if I should restart, disband a bunch of infantry and just go mad with tanks and arty since the East Coast is so flat and has a massive armoured enemy presence.

[ClumsyCommander]

Just an update, I managed East Coast and Midwest (curse those Pershings!)

Tactics that were new to me that I found helpful:

- I bought a Flak 88 and stuck my fighters over it while waiting around for the enemy. I don't think it actually protects them but it gives a big retaliatory ability equivalent to an extra veteran jet fighter.

- I pair the Flak 88 with an Ostwind, which covers the 88 from air attack while it is embarked as a vehicle. It can also shoot at the enemy air in the next turn too.

- Bought a ton of Jagdpanthers to deal with the Midwest. Still lost a couple. Strat bombers seem to basically become superior to tac bombers around this time in the late campaign? Even so, the Stuka bombers still do well for crippling tanks.

- I thought the Wespe just seemed like a worse Hummel, but surprisingly they have been good as a cheap mobile defensive artillery that I can quickly set up behind my tanks before they get attacked.

- Scouting with fighters made a massive difference in surviving the Allied armour.

Now onto the brutality of the last scenario... :s

[Locarnus]

Experience is crucial.
Especially for the airforce, since each level gives a +2 attack bonus.

Going from Rush to Moscow directly to US East Coast means that you have only 7 instead of 11 scenarios to train up your units. And later scenarios are usually better for training than early ones, so you missed out on the more effective training as well.

Looking at your core and your second post:
King Tigers are missing.
If you have a movement hero on tanks, a Maus could work as well.

In the unmodded game, the 17cm arty is just better than the 15cm ones and even in the same ugprade family.
There is a hidden stats called rate of fire, see the in-game library.
15cm sFH and 17cm arty have rof 8. Hummel has rof 9, Wespe has rof 10 and so on.
But generally many unit stats in the unmodded game are pretty much all over the place, with sometimes no grounding in historic reality. Especially regarding artillery ranges: 17cm K 18 had real world range of about 30km, while Sturmpanzer I had real world fire range of <5km. In the unmodded game, they both have a range of 3...

You are already doing great by bringing some decent arty and strat bomber numbers. This suppression makes a major difference for the Panzer Corps engine.

Good luck with the final US scenarios!

[ClumsyCommander]

Hi Locarnus, thank you for the insights.

Wow, I had no idea this RoF stat existed at all, that's wild! What a shame it's not actually visible openly in-game, it seems like a pretty big deal to have an artillery piece that is rolling for less damage or attacks or whatever with every shot.

Duly noted, I will upgrade the artillery pieces to the 17cm at the least, I didn't realise it was just a straight upgrade. I tend to sometimes use the "worse" units for the increased ammo capacity, I've found it useful to not have to stop to resupply as much.

Yeah, the Sturmpanzer I was a vehicle I hadn't actually heard of before this game. It seems in real life it was very early, niche and kind of "improvised"? Whereas in PC it's the mainstay of my SPG forces for the whole early game hahaha

It's kind of strange actually that the StuGs and similar also seem to become available fairly late in the campaign for vehicles that were pretty much ubiquitous in the German army at the time.

I will look into King Tigers for the West Coast as Los Angeles is seriously stalling me with the hard-as-nails Jacksons and Pershings with all that infantry sitting in the forests next to it. I must say I was very impressed with the auxiliary Maus you get in the Midwest, I was put off by speed but using a +Movement hero unit is genius, great idea.

Thank you, yes I have been relying heavily on artillery. A no artillery run sounds sooooo hard, I'm guessing you'd have to rely on the "Mass Attack" initiative bonus and the air force a lot more. Appreciate all the help

[LevV]

it is final battle, once you beat it nothing else matters. that being said just upgrade to biggest and best guns everything you can, invest in faster transports as well. learn AI scripts and after couple of tries it will be a done deal.

afterwards go play other people online only to find out beating AI gave you nearly no real skills in battle.