Low Countries

[davedwmullins]

I'm stuck on this one all advice on it would be appreciated.

[AgentX]

A good place to start would be to check out Horseman's AAR. The link is below and the Low Countries scenario starts at about halfway down on the second page. It's well written and should help. If the armed forts are giving you trouble, hit them first with artillery and a strategic bomber then follow up with either pioneers or fallschirmjagers (both get a "fort killing" bonus). Other infantry/tanks will work, but not as well. Also, hopefully, you'll have 4 fighters for this one (I usually have 2 from Norway plus buy another 2 at the start of this one). It's the first battle of the campaign where you need to deal with a decent air force.

http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... c&start=20

[Kerensky]

Artillery, infantry, and a good air force are important for this one. I highly recommend going to Norway first to bulk up your core as much as you can.

Video walkthrough Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cde0xufd ... h_response

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ0R07Ov ... re=related

[MartyWard]

Artillery, infantry, and a good air force are important for this one. I highly recommend going to Norway first to bulk up your core as much as you can.

Video walkthrough Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cde0xufd ... h_response

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ0R07Ov ... re=related

Yes Norway really helps. Even if you don't get any sort of victory you gain prestiege and experiance.

[lostnight]

I'm about ready to try this one also. I'll first try it without looking at the AARs. I like to try formulating my own strategy, and if it fails, see what other people did. Actually, I like reading AARs after a mission no matter how I did.

[deadtorius]

I split my forces in two, the larger force goes into the south and after capturing the southern objectives can move up to join with the northern forces and attack from behind, usually you get a good shot at the arty that way. My fighters stay north, and the aux flak 88 also goes north. Level bombers stay north. My tac bombers head south but stay out of it till after the first flack guns are done, then its generally safe to start bombing other targets. I usually send the falschirm jagers off past the northern objective to the other side of the river, then capture that city, then move against the other city and the airfield. They usually catch the French arty beside the city and destroy it allowing for my ground troops to move in without dealing with arty fire. Just watch your back for the French Panhard that starts way off along the coast left hand corner.
Good luck on it.

[davedwmullins]

I've been playing it stand alone, not in a campaign. Good advice from all. I've won it once by sending all but 3 units to the the north.

[AgentX]

I've been playing it stand alone, not in a campaign. Good advice from all. I've won it once by sending all but 3 units to the the north.

Oops, sorry. Just assumed you were doing it as part of a campaign. When playing an individual scenario, you'll be at a disadvantage because you can't decide what units your core units should be and where they should be deployed. In addition, you won't have the experience gain that you get when playing through a campaign. That said, they still play out basically the same so the same strategies should still apply. Once you have the dynamics of the game down, you should give a campaign a try. The building up of your forces over time is great part of the fun and strategy of the game. You can always start on an easier difficulty setting to get a feel for the campaign progression then step it up on the next play through.

[Fimconte]

Razz1 gave hope that in the future it might be possible to enlarge deployment zones without resulting to placing Flags everywhere in my modified Poland thread.

If this is implemented, then in the future, we can modify existing maps or create new ones for multiplayer where you can choose your entire army and deploy them on turn one.
While not as ideal as Deployment mode would be for Multiplayer, it would allow for a greater variety of strategies. Or well, that or Tiger II spam.

[Molve]

Razz1 gave hope that in the future it might be possible to enlarge deployment zones without resulting to placing Flags everywhere in my modified Poland thread.

You mean in a way similar to how campaign scenarios start with deployment phases (using the little tank/plane symbols of the editor to mark hexes as the "deployment zone")?

[Molve]

Personally, my beef with the current Low Countries scenario is that it isn't set up in a way that rewards the German player of playing in a historical manner.

My suspicion is that this is because the quick and simple supply rules of the game means that even if the Wehrmacht does reach the Atlantic Coast, that is of no consequence to the British and French fighting on in the northern half of the map: there are no supply lines to be cut.

I fully understand it when a player concentrates his forces on the northern group, and uses a minimal southern group mostly to take Luxembourg and Sedan. Historically, of course, the northern group was deliberatedly kept weak and without assault components, since its mission was merely to engage the Allies and hold the front, allowing the southern group to spread out all over the western half of the map.

When this move became known to the Allies, they panicked and/or gave up. The hurried retreat towards the coast almost turned into a slaughter (as we all know).

I would very much like to see a scenario that specifically and actively encourages the Germans to focus their efforts on the southern army group - a scenario where it makes in-game sense not to deploy a strong northern front, and where southern success disables an otherwise capable and worthy opponent.

I don't know, if the game supported scenario triggers to remove already-deployed units; when Sedan falls, half the French army evaporates. When Abbeville falls (representing "reaching the coast"), perhaps if the game allowed it, all existing Victory Hexes (at least for the Allied side) are replaced with Calais, Dunkirk and Ostende only; presumably leading the AI to direct his remaining forces to a vaguely-historic retreat...

But even without recoding the game, you can do a lot with this scenario: place well dug-in allied units on the northern plains (setting their AI strategy to "Hold (Passive)"). This to make it much less appealing to simply meet the Allies head on.

[impar]

Personally, my beef with the current Low Countries scenario is that it isn't set up in a way that rewards the German player of playing in a historical manner.

It does reward the player who places a stronger southern group. Progression is made so much easier.

[Molve]

It does reward the player who places a stronger southern group. Progression is made so much easier.

How do you mean?

Supply isn't modeled, and you get little in return from committing a large force in the south. The resistance is rather light, and using more units than roughly what the stand-alone scenario gives you mostly means units sit idle.

They are much more useful, IMHO, in the north, since having a strong north means you don't have to play a defensive game - by assaulting the allies, they're crushed that much more quickly, which in turn means it's a breeze to cruise to the coast afterwards.

If the scenario designer is trying to give the message that Halders original plan would have worked out just fine (seeing in retrospect that the axis artillery and luftwaffe, and generally stronger army, would have carried the day) and that the Manstein/Guderian drive through the Ardennes could be reduced to a light secondary force (since no reinforcements from France to the south were forthcoming anyway) that I could respect. But I don't believe it to be the case.

I just played the Low Countries stand-alone scenario on General difficulty, winning at Turn 15 by simultaneously wiping the map clean of allied units and at the same taking the last allied flags.

To take Luxembourg and Sedan, I only used 22nd Panzer IIIF, 21st and 23rd Inf, and the StuG. To take Dinant and join up at Charleroi I only used 18th Panzer, 19th Pioniere and the Sturmpanzer. (Obviously with some Luftwaffe support)

The Panzerjäger and FlaK deployed in the south I drove up north, through Aachen. Also, all reinforcement units I bought, I deployed at Aachen (One more sFH 18 artillery piece, two Stukas, and a fighter)

Then you assault the Allied positions on the plains of Belgium head-on; and using the full might of your artillery combined with a focused effort by the Luftwaffe they die as quickly as they manage to drive up (or fly to) to the front lines.

When you can do it without taking too many losses, as you can do here, this is faster and better than making encirclement maneouvers: when I first started playing the scenario, I tried for a historic approach. Sure enough, you take Sedan and reach the coast perhaps a turn earlier, but you suffer real losses up in the north. I had considerable difficulties maintaining my northern front, since taking out the two forts was slow-going when there weren't strong reserves. And hiding behind the Meuse isn't an option, since this frees too many Allied units to slow you down in the south.

To do well in this game, you need to concentrate your forces, and deal maximum damage. In order to do both, you do need a sufficiently committed opponent, and in this scenario the place where this happens is in the north. Creating a bloodbath there is way more efficient than following in Guderian's footsteps, I'm afraid.

If the scenario would feature a more rugged and more static Allied defense in the north, then that could encourage the Axis player to deploy a stronger south, since there would be no golden opportunity to simply wipe out his main force. These static units would then be of little use when and if the Germans complete their encirclement strategy and attack from the rear, so they wouldn't add too much overall combat power to the Allies.

Another idea is if the patch allows designers to add in specific reinforcements (units rather than prestige), you could also design the scenario so that additional (emboldened?) French units enter the map from the south, if the Germans haven't cut off the supply routes by then. If you place fairly strict requirements in timing on these triggers you encourage the German player to commit to the south (in order to avoid a single unlucky combat to delay the advance). This in itself would mean a weaker Army Group B (the force around Aachen), which in itself would mean a un-historical head-on assault is less palatable.


PS. Historically, 70% of available armor and roughly half the infantry divisions was deployed in the south*. Think about it...

*) source: Wikipedia

[monkspider]

Personally, I have always found the scenario easier if I implement Manstein's plan. I tend to focus my armored, mobile divisions in the south and make that the schwerpunkt of my assault.. My units in the south cut through the Ardennes, reach Abbeville and then turn around and with the troops in the north, converge on Lille for the final objective (I usually take Calais with paratroops). This really allows you to bypass the tough defenses and the rivers in the north and use the bulk of your armor to hit their soft underbelly. The north is really more suited to a slower, more ponderous assault in my experience. You don't have to cover a lot of ground, you just have to crack through some tough defenses. This is better suited to a smaller, less mobile force IMO.

I can usually get a decisive victory with this strategy pretty easily. Although Molve shows that you can implement something like Halder's strategy and still do quite well. I think that is one of the beautiful things about this scenario.

[impar]

It does reward the player who places a stronger southern group. Progression is made so much easier.

How do you mean?

Monkspider explained it quite well. Some highlights:

Personally, I have always found the scenario easier if I implement Manstein's plan. I tend to focus my armored, mobile divisions in the south and make that the schwerpunkt of my assault.. My units in the south cut through the Ardennes, reach Abbeville and then turn around and with the troops in the north, converge on Lille for the final objective (I usually take Calais with paratroops). This really allows you to bypass the tough defenses and the rivers in the north and use the bulk of your armor to hit their soft underbelly. The north is really more suited to a slower, more ponderous assault in my experience. You don't have to cover a lot of ground, you just have to crack through some tough defenses. This is better suited to a smaller, less mobile force IMO.

[Kerensky]

I am in complete agreement with monkspider and impar. In part 2 of that video AAR I even mention how the South moves like lightning and the North is bogged down, heh.
I have to admit, this design wasn't my map, but in my opinion it works out really well, game play speaking and historically speaking.