I'm glad this worked out exactly as I intended. If you can start the Bagration scenarios on Rommel with minimal reloads and 7000 prestige, then you are a very good player!
Before I started to play your mod, I was playing on Manstein difficulty and most of my victories were MV and few DV. I had dozen 15 strength Kingtigers and game was very repetitive and little boring, steamrolling Soviets tanks. In your mod things are quite different, game is much more fun and challenging. So far I have achieved all DV with exception of Orel mission which was MV.
I must warn you: DVs on the Bagration scenarios are very difficult. The first one, Mogilev, isn't so bad if you start with a mostly overstrength core, but they get progressively more brutal. MV, on the other hand, is reasonable to achieve, and if you are willing to settle for that you can get through the scenarios with your core in good shape.
Now I am at 15 turn on Mogilev scenario. I decided not to defend forward outposts but to retreat to left river bank. 3 Elite infantry, plus one tank and 5 artillery (2 of them auxiliary) successfully repelled all attacks and destroyed majority of Soviet tanks.
On northern flank I decided to allow Soviets to cross river and lure them into trap. All advancing Soviet troops were quickly surrounded and destroyed in few turns.
Northern group (2 PZ IV, 1 Panther, 1 Tiger, 2 Stug IV, 2 Elite infantry, 1 Mobile AA) quickly advanced forward and captured northeast objective. IS-2 and KV-85 attacked in same turn my elite PZ IVH which had support from Stug IV and PZ IVH didn't suffer any losses, while inflicting substantial losses to Soviets.
2 T34 run into ambush and they were instantly destroyed, while elite infantry destroyed 3 T34 in forest without taking any losses.
After that Northern group destoyed all remaining Soviet forces without taking any substantial losses.
Southern mobile group wasn't lucky as northern group and 2 units are badly damaged; one PZ IVH has strength 5 and Nashorn has strength 6. Anyway, I believe they still have enough force to push forward and capture southeast objective. Also I will try to capture far southeast city to get prototype Jagdtiger, which most probably i will sell later on.
I will try to win DV on this map and next turn Norther group will swing south and flank Soviets in center. Ideally I would like to flank Soviets from both sides but unfortunately, I can't expect to get any support from Group South since they barely have enough resource to capture remaining objectives.
I'm glad this worked out exactly as I intended. The idea isn't that you are artificially capped in the number of Tigers you get, rather, that if you choose to get more Tigers, you have to sacrifice something. In your case, you are finding it difficult to feed them elite reinforcements due to their very high base cost and the new reinforcement rules. In fact, the vast majority of your prestige throughout the Grand Campaigns won't be spent on purchasing new equipment, but rather on reinforcements. I'm curious though, how often you use normal reinforcements both at deployment and in scenario. I want to make sure that all reinforcement options are viable, rather than the vanilla technique of only elite reinforcing during deployment.
There is no simply answer to this question. I believe following factors are most important when I decide about reinforcements: tactical situation, unit type, unit strength, unit experience
My overall rules: I never reinforce air units and I never use elite reinforcements in battle.
Regular infantry - all non overstrenght infantry - I reinforce them in game with regular reinforcements. If they lose some experience it is not a problem
Elite infantry - I don't reinforce them during battle. I play very carefully with them so they almost never lose too many points
Elite tanks (5 stars) - My elite tanks are PZ IVH, usually I don't reinforce them during battle
Regular tanks - very often I reinforce them with regular reinforcements, experience loss is acceptable
AT (Nashorns) - very often I reinforce them with regular reinforcements, experience loss is acceptable
Artillery - if artillery is damaged then I reinforce them with regular reinforcements. Experience loss is not too high and artillery can get experience very fast
I think in your mod regular reinforcements during battle are much better option than in vanilla game. However, elite replacements during battle, especially on Rommel difficulty, are not suggested.
Surely you have some more ranged artillery right? I keep about 6-7 in 1944. Don't forget that the StuG IV can be switched to AT mode, in which case it functions like the StuG IIIG.
In 43 I had more ranged artillery, but in 44 I decided to upgrade 2 Wurfrahmens to Stug IV. Wurfrahmens are very vulnerable to air attacks and one of them was almost completely destroyed in 43. Now i have 2x105, 2x150, 1 Nebelwerfer, 4 Stug IV and 2 SU122 which is 11 artillery in total. Since one Stug IV has R1 hero, I have 8 artillery with range 2+. In Mogilev I decided to deploy 8 artillery (Nebelwerfer and 2 Su122 remained in reserve)
I am a little surprised by all those Me 410As.I personally think the Fw 190 ground attack models are much more versatile. I had intended the Me 410A to be somewhat better against air units, especially slow-moving bombers, but to be much worse against ground units. I just don't want the Me 410A to be by default the best fighter-bomber.
I agree Fw 190 is better than Me410 but I still didn't make a decision for upgrade. I have already made a mistake when I have upgraded 3 SE tanks to Tigers and I don't want to repeat same mistake. When I upgrade to Fw 190, this unit will be more expensive for maintenance and I will lose 200 prestige. Most probably I will upgrade one Me410 to Fw190 when it gets decent hero.
One great quality of your mod is that denies to player to upgrade all equipment to newest models. For example, I was using PZ III very successfully during whole 43 campaign. In vanilla game, all PZ III were upgraded in last scenario in 41.
I know, I haven't forgotten about the video series. It's just that so much of my time is occupied. I'm working on a significant revision of the manual atm. I'm trying to find a clear, elegant way to present the data for all of the important units.
Besides I have enjoyed watching your videos, most important thing that I have learned is to keep into considerations what units are visible to AI. Before I always underestimated this aspect of game which is extremely important. Good unit positioning can tempt AI to abandon good defensive positions