You tell me about it...verstaubtgesicht wrote: an investment of hundreds of hours...
probably I have put thousands of hours into this mod by now... but I do not really mind a minute of it! 
Yeah, you can experiment with a different one (and different players will have different opinions on the ideal core here), but since it is quite small compared to the rest of the Axis army in the big scenario I think it does not make a huge difference. I set it up in a way that it should be ideal for most players and winning or losing the war should not depend on changing it or not. It is much, much more important what you do with the whole army, both tactically and strategically.First and foremost, the starting core.
I personally think it is a waste of prestige to upgrade all AA to 88mm. Also it is unhistorical. Germany produced more than 144,000 2cm FlaKs and "only" 20,000 88s. Additionally, the 88 is only very effective against tanks early in the war, later, as the new generation of Allied tanks with 75-76 mm main guns are to become the standard with a high soft attack value (thanks to their effective HE rounds), the soft target AAs are pretty much doomed.Second, last time I upgraded most of my AA to 88cm (36 type) with the notion that I'd need it for more robust air war in France, and then anti-tank killing during the winter of '41 in the East. Good or bad idea?
So you can upgrade a few if you want to, but not all. But it is true for just about every other unit class, as for those pioneers, where you probably made the same mistake. A main feature of this mod and its equipment file is that there is no super unit in it. You should go for a well balanced army composition with both weak (but cheap to maintain) and good (but expensive to upgrade and maintain) units in it who can supplement each other. And the same goes to experience - ideally should have a few units getting elite replacements to maintain their high exp. and the rest should slowly degrade by mainly getting green replacements. Then strong and/or experienced units should make the first attack and then the weakened enemy units can be finished off by the average or below average Axis units. It is also accurate historically - Wehrmacht attacks were usually spearheaded by elite SS and heavy Panzer units who were followed by the not so good units.
It is absolutely accurate historically. The Wehrmacht was in fact much less motorized than the (Western) Allied armies or as many people would think. The main reason was the lack of oil but also there were much less cars produced in Germany before the war than in the US or UK, so there was much less industrial capacity to produce trucks and stuff. Historically around 80% of the German field artillery was horse-drawn and similarily the majority of the infantry was marching on foot for most of the time. Only towed AT guns and AA guns had motorized tractors. As a player you can change it in the mod, but of course it will cost you prestige which could be better spent elsewhere. So again, I can suggest you to balance your army: have some fully motorized spearheads to take the lead, which can be followed by the non-motorzed bulk of the army who will capture any cities left and occupy the area. Use the Luftwaffe as your mobile aerial artillery, as historically. As you noted correctly, after the early Blitzkrieg phase the prestige spent on motorization is largely wasted, anyway. And obviously for long sieges like the siege of Leningrad or Sevastopol you do not need motorized units at all.Last time I had a lot of idle non-motorized inf moving on foot trying to catch up (trains have a limited throughput, especially in terms of receiving stations close enough to the front), and the same with horse-drawn arty.
The Home Fleet only responds to a serious ongoing invasion attempt. Otherwise it would be too easy to lure it out from Scapa and destroy it under favourable conditions. Unfortunately I do not have more AI zones to make the AI "smarter" in this regard. However, destroying radars and forts unmolested is obviously an exploitation of the restricted AI and I am aware of it. Thus in v1.8 Allied radars will be changed back to Anti-Air class, so that the AI can repair them back to full strength unless they are destroyed in one turn, which is hard. Also forts will get 3 entrenchment points at the beginning of each turn to give them more protection.I also noticed that once HMS is gone, bombarding UK fortifications with the Atlantic fleet achieves two goals: 1) reduces the radars and forts to rubble - hence reduces vision and enables easier invasion later on, if one decides to go that way; 2) shipa are gaining prestige quikcly without any potential harm! However, it's almost an exploit... Why isn't the UK fleet alerted by this? Thoughts?
No. There is no AI cheating in the game. Not at all. The AI can only "see" what its units can. Actually it sees less than the player as for example if the player attacks an enemy unit in bad weather which has an unseen supporting artillery behind it gets displayed for a moment when it fires, and from that point the player knows that there is an arty, even though it remains hidden. On the other hand if the AI attacks under the same circumstances it will instantly "forget" about that arty unit and will insist on attacking against the seemingly unprotected unit leading to further losses.Final question on Atlantic shipping lanes. Does the AI "see" all units on the "$" hexes regardless of the noraml vision by their units?
Is there any hint about an optimal placement/movement of subs? For example, one of my subs in the upper lane was left undisturbed for 20 turns or more, while the others got attacked seemingly out of nowhere.
There are many AI units in the mod who set are to patrol a certain area. Some of them are patrolling their given area randomly, others by following a route going from one hex to the next nearest. Thus it is impossible to predict their movement and while some areas on the map can be perfectly safe for a while in one play through in another the same area can be packed with enemy units who seemingly find any well placed player unit instantly. It is all pure luck, but the player can adopt to it in some cases. Sometimes by using historical tactics. For example the Kriegsmarine used the so-called Wolfpacks by gathering large numbers of U-boats to counter the similarily large numbers of Allied shipping. It also works in the mod (for a while at least): if you have several U-boats they can destroy any single Allied unit which happens to find them in one turn. Then the AI will again "forget" about them as none of its units can see them during its turn. Even better if they have air support. Things only get worse from early 1943 when the number of Allied destroyers and air cover significantly increase. Just as historically.
Uhu please start the new thread by honorary writing the first post