I have won finally my first campaign on Colonel and made my own unit choices. I plan to start some time a new campaign on General or Field Marshal level and thinking now what I can do better in comparison to my Colonel campaign (which was quite close in many scenarios to achieve my aims and which really left me starved on prestige in the last missions in America). Especially evaluating what kind of units I used were doing well and which not so well, and I would like to hear your opinions.
When I played my campaign my aim was obviously to win, and so I would be always in the offense. Therefore I put much focus on having very mobile units.
So for infantry I used exclusively the standard Wehrmacht infantry, since they have 3 movement instead of 2 and they are rather cheap, plus one Gebirgsjäger squad which you get at start and which I thought would help me in the mountains, but I found I barely could use that advantage in my campaign anyway. However, I felt that the mobility advantage was pretty much eaten up in those scenarios where the enemies were heavily fortificated, and Rugged Defence messages ruined the day for me more than once. I read here most people tend to use mainly pioneers since they ignore fortifications, some people also use Grenadiers which have more damage and higher initiative than infantry. Also the cheapness factor seemed more like a liability, since weak units also tend to need more reinforcements than strong ones.
For artillery I exclusively used self-propelled ones. Early in the campaign that felt like the right choice, since while they are more expensive than the towed ones, their attack stats are on par, and you have to also calculate in the costs of transports (esp. Sdkfz 250 is quite expensive) for towed artillery. The ability to move and shoot seemed invaluable in comparison to towed ones which first have to be brought in position first and can then fire only on the next move again. However, as the campaign progressed, even the latest SiG 38(t) or Hummel artillery have still the same attack stats as the Sturmpanzer in Poland, while the towed ones get considerably stronger! Wurfrahmen are a bit of an exception, however their range is smaller, so I gave those only to my artillery units with +1 Range heroes (which were only 2 in the end). I am thinking now to use next time either only towed artillery or a mix of towed and self-propelled artillery. Probably also biting the bullet and dealing rather with the lower range of rocket artillery in comparison to standard one, at least for the self-propelled ones.
For tanks I did the same thinking and upgraded in America all my Tanks to Panther tanks besides those with +1 Movement heroes, which I upgraded to Tiger II tanks (also only 2). However I found several of my Panthers in America being obliterated by the enemy tanks, while my Tiger II could take much more damage. Since I was lacking prestige (in the last turns I could only afford green reinforcements even for my elite troops) I replaced some losses with Jagdpanthers, but I totally forgot that anti-tank units suffer a malus when used in attack so they didn't do as well as expected, although I could still finish my campaign in the last turn!
Another observation I made is that people here seem to rely much more on Tanks than I did. My army was much more infantry, artillery and air heavy, and I used Tanks primarily as Tank destroyer units (with little help of my few Tactical Bombers) and only in second role to support my infantry in dealing with artillery etc., so until America I only used Panzer III instead of Panzer IV tanks. Those Panzer III tanks didn't do terribly against infantry, artillery and Flak either, but when looking back and comparing to my later Panther and Tiger tanks I believe life would have been much easier if instead of getting so much infantry I would have got some more Panzer IV tanks additionally. In America my balance shifted more towards tanks though since I lost a lot of infantry squads to American tanks and I noticed that replacing them with new infantry squads doesn't make any sense anymore.
For air units, I noticed that figher bombers are quite decent at start but become totally useless as the game progresses, while the cheap Stukas were able to destroy some of the smaller American tanks from full strength in a single attack! I had two Dornier Pfeil fighter bombers in America, but they were neither able to deal with enemy air units or ground targets. Even the strongest fighters "Schwalbe", while being quite strong, do take also just as heavy losses from the enemy fighters, so anything less than that seems quite uninteresting when gaining air superiority. Strategic Bombers were always useful, I bought two Heinkel bombers already in Poland and upgraded later to the new Heinkel model; in the end I had 4 of them.
I didn't use Anti-Air units because they seemed pretty useless to me and fighters did the job just fine.
So in short summary, my army in my Colonel campaign looked like this:
Infantry: mostly Wehrmacht + starting Gebirgsjäger, at end one Brückenpionier
Artillery: mostly Sturmpanzer later upgraded to SiG 38(t), few Wurfrahmen (+range heroes) and StuH 42
Tanks: only few at start and all Panzer III, later more and upgraded to Panther and few Tiger II (+movement heroes)
Anti-Tank: bought only at end a few Jagdpanther because of lack of Prestige
Fighter: always newest models, at end I had 8 Schwalbe fighters
Tac Bombers: 1-2 Stukas and starting BF110, at end also two Dornier Pfeil fighter bombers which I was very unhappy with
Strategic Bombers: bought already 2 Heinkel bombers in Poland, at end I had 4 of the newest Heinkel bombers
. Plus, they have decent hard attack as well, an defend well.
