I tried the search feature and couldn't find anything on this tactic. So sorry if this is a repeat thread.
Has any one tried throwing the entire British force into France to try to stop the Germans? I understand that the Italians would have a field day in the Med if the Brits did so, but if it prevents the French capitulation till say the Soviets came in would the trade be worth it?
Allied Dog Pile
Moderators: firepowerjohan, Happycat, rkr1958, Slitherine Core
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Peter Stauffenberg
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Re: Allied Dog Pile
This only works against the AI. A clever human player will attack Holland first and then move into position to blitz Belgium and force Belgian surrender after 1 turn. Then you capture most of the difficult terrain in the west and the French and British will be forced to defend in clear terrain. You will delay the fall of France with a few turns, but Paris will fall regardless of the extra British units. The problem is that if the British player loses his land units in France then it's much easier to succeed with Sealion. So you may lose Britain this way.Kuz wrote:I tried the search feature and couldn't find anything on this tactic. So sorry if this is a repeat thread.
Has any one tried throwing the entire British force into France to try to stop the Germans? I understand that the Italians would have a field day in the Med if the Brits did so, but if it prevents the French capitulation till say the Soviets came in would the trade be worth it?
The AI often attacks Holland and Belgium simultaneously and fails to get far into Belgium the first turn. That means the Allies can move into Belgium and defend well with even Belgian units to hold the line. I've managed to keep France in the war indefinitely because the German AI was too ineffective. He attacked the same hexes every turn and failed to force a retreat since I had a double defense line. So I could rotate Allied units and get the weakened units in the rear and repair them later. With such a strategy I kept the French in the war till October 1941 when Russia joined the Allies. Then the Russians moved quickly towards Berlin and the German AI built new units to defend against Russia. That gave the Allies a chance to get on the offensive in the west. So I captured Berlin in the Summer of 1942 this way.
The AI is not so good at calculated how he can ensure to kill units so he can capture the hex. The AI needs a different strategy against double defense lines than normal defense lines. The AI should try to attack units who can retreat. That means you gain territory even if you fail to eliminate the unit. If the AI detects that no defender can retreat then it means he's faced with a contiguous double defense line. Then the AI should analyze if one or more of the defenders can be attacked by 3 or more units. Then that unit should be targeted with air units and later attacked with land units. That means you will probably eliminate the unit and can capture the hex, hopefully with a full strength rear unit. Killing a unit means you can sometimes get a chance to attack another hex with 3 units and then widen the hole.
If the AI only detects a double defense line where no defenders can be attacked by 3 attackers then the attacker should try to select a garrison in a clear terrain and not across a river. If the AI sends some air units to attack it then it means it can still eliminate the hex, especially if armor units are used in the attack. When you eliminate such a hex you break the contiguous straight defense line and can attack a hex with 3 attackers. Next turn you will have new opportunities to break the defense line.
A human player does this all the time when he tries to break the French defense line. It's never a problem to succeed. The biggest threat is the French armor who can bite back against German spearheads. But the AI tends to attack the same hexes turn after turn and always fail to eliminate the defender. He often uses air units against other defenders and just manage to deplete some defenders and not kill them.
I don't usually play against the AI for the very reasons you describe. I normally play mult-player game with FOW, OIL and research all on. the reason I asked the question is that in the game that I was playing back when I posted this the German player didn't start his attack until February. France didn't fall till October 40. I had only made a modest commitment to France so I surmised that if I had brought in everything to France they could hold indefinatly.
How soon should the German be attacking west?
How soon should the German be attacking west?
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Peter Stauffenberg
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The way I play the Germans is to attack Denmark on turn 2. It's possible to take Denmark after just 1 turn, but you may need 2 turns if you're unlucky.
The trick is to rail a unit near the port of Kiel and another just north of Kiel during the first turn. In the second turn you use the BB to bombard Copenhagen and maybe let an air units bombard Copenhagen too. Then you embark the infantry unit next to Kiel on a fleet and notice you have a fleet just south of Copenhagen. Then you immediately disembark this unit just south of Copenhagen and attack the city. So you can embark, disembark and attack at the same turn because you don't move the transport at all. Then you move the other infantry just west of Copenhagen and attack. So you get 2 land units against Copenhagen and it should make the Danish capital easy to capture on turn 2 if you fail on turn 1.
Poland usually falls after 3 or 4 turns. Then I move the units to the Dutch border and attack with full force maybe in November or December 1939. It's important to NOT attack Belgium too at this moment. With luck it's possible to take the capital during the initial invasion turn. If not you can take Holland during the second invasion turn. The Allies can't help much because Belgium is neutral. So they can only repair depleted units and maybe have some air units intercept German fighters.
After Holland falls I move all my good units to the Belgian border. When I have all units in place then I launch a blitz attack through Belgium towards France. This happens in late January or maybe early February. You should then be able to wipe out Belgium during the first invasion turn and capture most of the Belgian territory including Luxembourg. So when the Allies can respond you are in a good position against France. From this turn it's only a matter of time before Paris falls. You need to be quite aggressive, but not too aggressive until the French armor is destroyed. France can't repair all the losses and will crumble quickly and will have to abandon the Maginot line to use these garrisons to delay the Germans.
One very effective French defense is to put the French armor quite early in Paris. Let it remain there and become fully entrenched (8 levels). That makes it almost impervious to air attacks and you need several German armor units to kill it. The German armor suffers heavy losses while attacking the French armor in Paris. You lose some counter attack capability, but you can delay the fall of France by maybe 2 turns.
Usually France falls in May or June 1940 if you attack Belgium in February.
I play a mod I've developed with Happycat and France is a bit stronger than in the vanilla game. France starts with some extra garrison units in cities and we've added a city in Lille and Nancy. This means the French can place reinforcements closer to the front and not only in Paris. But since the extra units are garrisons it doesn't give the French better counter attack possibilities. We've also changed the German setup so they start with an extra tac bomber.
The end result is that the French fall in May or June against a human player, but the German AI can't deal with the extra French units and will be stopped. I have a feeling that Slitherine have made the French too weak so the German AI can beat an Allied human player. But if you play the vanilla game with the current French setup then you can actually take Paris as early as February. This is not historical at all and gives Germany a much better chance to start Sealion and finish the game early.
The mod we're made is intended to be played PBEM between human player so we constantly refine the game to make the game balance good for human opponents. It won't be as balanced if one side is the AI. The human player is so much better than the AI that you have to make very weird setups to give the AI player a chance to achieve the historical offensive goals.
So the key to the German play in 1939 / 1940 is to attack Holland as soon as possible and wait with attacking Belgium until you have placed your units on the Belgian / French border so you can blitz into France. The AI never does this and attacks Belgium and Holland simultaneously. That makes it impossible to get far into Belgium and then the Allies can march into Belgium and defend there. Sometimes the AI attacks Belgium before Holland. It's weird to see the German armor move from Belgium to Holland to capture Holland instead of continuing into France. That wastes a lot of valuable time.
The trick is to rail a unit near the port of Kiel and another just north of Kiel during the first turn. In the second turn you use the BB to bombard Copenhagen and maybe let an air units bombard Copenhagen too. Then you embark the infantry unit next to Kiel on a fleet and notice you have a fleet just south of Copenhagen. Then you immediately disembark this unit just south of Copenhagen and attack the city. So you can embark, disembark and attack at the same turn because you don't move the transport at all. Then you move the other infantry just west of Copenhagen and attack. So you get 2 land units against Copenhagen and it should make the Danish capital easy to capture on turn 2 if you fail on turn 1.
Poland usually falls after 3 or 4 turns. Then I move the units to the Dutch border and attack with full force maybe in November or December 1939. It's important to NOT attack Belgium too at this moment. With luck it's possible to take the capital during the initial invasion turn. If not you can take Holland during the second invasion turn. The Allies can't help much because Belgium is neutral. So they can only repair depleted units and maybe have some air units intercept German fighters.
After Holland falls I move all my good units to the Belgian border. When I have all units in place then I launch a blitz attack through Belgium towards France. This happens in late January or maybe early February. You should then be able to wipe out Belgium during the first invasion turn and capture most of the Belgian territory including Luxembourg. So when the Allies can respond you are in a good position against France. From this turn it's only a matter of time before Paris falls. You need to be quite aggressive, but not too aggressive until the French armor is destroyed. France can't repair all the losses and will crumble quickly and will have to abandon the Maginot line to use these garrisons to delay the Germans.
One very effective French defense is to put the French armor quite early in Paris. Let it remain there and become fully entrenched (8 levels). That makes it almost impervious to air attacks and you need several German armor units to kill it. The German armor suffers heavy losses while attacking the French armor in Paris. You lose some counter attack capability, but you can delay the fall of France by maybe 2 turns.
Usually France falls in May or June 1940 if you attack Belgium in February.
I play a mod I've developed with Happycat and France is a bit stronger than in the vanilla game. France starts with some extra garrison units in cities and we've added a city in Lille and Nancy. This means the French can place reinforcements closer to the front and not only in Paris. But since the extra units are garrisons it doesn't give the French better counter attack possibilities. We've also changed the German setup so they start with an extra tac bomber.
The end result is that the French fall in May or June against a human player, but the German AI can't deal with the extra French units and will be stopped. I have a feeling that Slitherine have made the French too weak so the German AI can beat an Allied human player. But if you play the vanilla game with the current French setup then you can actually take Paris as early as February. This is not historical at all and gives Germany a much better chance to start Sealion and finish the game early.
The mod we're made is intended to be played PBEM between human player so we constantly refine the game to make the game balance good for human opponents. It won't be as balanced if one side is the AI. The human player is so much better than the AI that you have to make very weird setups to give the AI player a chance to achieve the historical offensive goals.
So the key to the German play in 1939 / 1940 is to attack Holland as soon as possible and wait with attacking Belgium until you have placed your units on the Belgian / French border so you can blitz into France. The AI never does this and attacks Belgium and Holland simultaneously. That makes it impossible to get far into Belgium and then the Allies can march into Belgium and defend there. Sometimes the AI attacks Belgium before Holland. It's weird to see the German armor move from Belgium to Holland to capture Holland instead of continuing into France. That wastes a lot of valuable time.
Deciding where to invest your resources is what makes every game different. Personally, I like to spend my PPs on labs for the first 3 turns, and then bring in some infantry. I almost always play as the Germans, so after the fall of France (or once the fall of France is a certainty), I start building tanks en masse.
The biggest German advantage in the game, if played correctly IMO, is in regards to tank divisions. Considering the Germans are at a huge disadvantage in manpower, using tanks instead of infantry is a must when playing with Allied advantage.
My personal favorite strategy is a two-pronged north/south attack on Russia that is tank-heavy in the north and infantry-heavy in the south. The entire goal of this strategy is to take Maikop, Grozny, and Baku by the middle of '42 to supply the tanks with enough oil to sack Moscow and Perm. To hedge against possible time constraints, I'll send my Italian Strat bomber and initial Italian tank division to North Africa and push them east into Mosul and Tehran for even more oil. Playing as the Germans, the game becomes so much easier once you've secured enough oil to maintain a tank and aircraft force.
The biggest German advantage in the game, if played correctly IMO, is in regards to tank divisions. Considering the Germans are at a huge disadvantage in manpower, using tanks instead of infantry is a must when playing with Allied advantage.
My personal favorite strategy is a two-pronged north/south attack on Russia that is tank-heavy in the north and infantry-heavy in the south. The entire goal of this strategy is to take Maikop, Grozny, and Baku by the middle of '42 to supply the tanks with enough oil to sack Moscow and Perm. To hedge against possible time constraints, I'll send my Italian Strat bomber and initial Italian tank division to North Africa and push them east into Mosul and Tehran for even more oil. Playing as the Germans, the game becomes so much easier once you've secured enough oil to maintain a tank and aircraft force.
Buying tanks for the Germans is very much a double edge sword, you need them to attack and it does ease the manpower somewhat, but chewes the heck out of your oil. 
But I agree I normally buy tanks and planes first, I've normally ignored labs until after France opting for leaders and units first. Again this is multi-player, against the AI no tactic is wrong.
But I agree I normally buy tanks and planes first, I've normally ignored labs until after France opting for leaders and units first. Again this is multi-player, against the AI no tactic is wrong.It's interesting that you also use aircraft early in the campaign. I don't ude any aircraft other than my original complement until after my tanks or infantry have maxed out development. Once that happens, I'll switch those labs over to air and build planes. I find beating France, Russia, and the peripheral continental Europe countries without planes is easy, while invading the UK without aircover is a disaster waiting to happen. So until I'm ready to start planning a UK invasion, I pretty much ignore everything having to do with the luftwaffe.Kuz wrote:Buying tanks for the Germans is very much a double edge sword, you need them to attack and it does ease the manpower somewhat, but chewes the heck out of your oil.
Yup. I haven't found much advantage to having large quantities of aircraft in the French and Russian campaigns. I'm big on investing in labs, so I usually will carry 6 labs of infantry, 5 of tanks, and 1 general until the infantry maxes and then I'll re-allocate those labs to air. I'll spend on those labs from the outset, so I can get them churning quickly.Kuz wrote:You don't build planes until your tanks and infantry are "maxed out development"? So your waiting till end game to buy air? That's amazing.
If you make quick progress through Russia, they won't have the time or capacity to build aircraft, so using defensive aircraft isn't really warranted. I pretty much just play defense on the Atlantic Wall until Russia is about to be defeated. Once I start making offensive moves against the UK, I'll build huge quantities of fighters.
Odd is right. I play against another person almost exclusively, and it seems that no game is the same as the one before it. Replayability with this game is awesome. We always play with all options on. I'm in the middle of a game now that seemed to be an eventual Axis win. Normally when I play the allies I try my best to fight the German player as hard as I can in France. But in this game I decided to sit back and just defend England. So he romped through France and had it down by I think March. After some side show manuevering he did Sea Lion in September of 40. He didn't take England out until September of 41 and that was only because he was able to shut down the Lend Lease route. The American's and the Russians declared war in Jan 42. To make a long story short his drive into Russia was very short lived not even reaching Minsk. After a year of builds the Allies are hammering the French coast and the the Russians have just taken Warsaw. The Battle of Britain in this game was the victory that cost the Germans the war.