No heroes Generalissimus campaign AAR

[SineMora]

Lovely Pokémon collection. I don't think suppression is any more effective against OSed targets, but on the other hand diminishing returns don't kick in as quickly either. Of course, it's still hard to properly suppress units -- normally you can count on 2 split artillery pieces and a strategic bomber to inflict 2-4 suppression on a tank, and with Deadly Grasp that puts them down to 2-4 effective strength, enough to cause chip damage but no more. With the same tanks OSed to 15 that'd be 6-8 strength, more than enough to cause serious damage, especially if two or more units target the same defender.

It sounds like Barbarossa South might be fun to try. I've only done Center before and the first scenario there was a big letdown, mostly consisting of a mad dash towards the end objective swatting aside a few flies after clearing the initial fortified position. You do get the Karl Gerät, which is all sorts of fun, but perhaps not the most practical tool (especially not if you're trying to capture units, seeing as it can easily take out 5-6 points of strength on a KV-2 -- with enough recons you can even obliterate units with it).

[comradep]

Yikes, yeah, 7k prestige sounds good.

Tried David and Golith once as well, but unless knowing the map/AI moves very well it is very easy to lose a split unit to an attack.

I am sure it can be done, but it sounds more like work than fun to me.

That's also what I fear might happen with David vs. Goliath, that it becomes more work than fun. One mistake and BAM! there goes an experienced unit.

Lovely Pokémon collection. I don't think suppression is any more effective against OSed targets, but on the other hand diminishing returns don't kick in as quickly either. Of course, it's still hard to properly suppress units -- normally you can count on 2 split artillery pieces and a strategic bomber to inflict 2-4 suppression on a tank, and with Deadly Grasp that puts them down to 2-4 effective strength, enough to cause chip damage but no more. With the same tanks OSed to 15 that'd be 6-8 strength, more than enough to cause serious damage, especially if two or more units target the same defender.

It sounds like Barbarossa South might be fun to try. I've only done Center before and the first scenario there was a big letdown, mostly consisting of a mad dash towards the end objective swatting aside a few flies after clearing the initial fortified position. You do get the Karl Gerät, which is all sorts of fun, but perhaps not the most practical tool (especially not if you're trying to capture units, seeing as it can easily take out 5-6 points of strength on a KV-2 -- with enough recons you can even obliterate units with it).

As discussed earlier, one of the "challenges" we face is to keep enemy units alive so they can be captured. Normally, heavy hitters would be good to have, but now they just reduce your prestige gain considerably.

After the "look at me blowing everything up with multiple heroes on an overstrength Tiger I/II" initial responses to the game's release, it's good to see that the game can also be played the way we do.

Though I feel the game can use a considerable amount of work in terms of unit balancing and making scenarios more interesting/less generic, I applaud the way the developers made sure different approaches are viable.

[comradep]

Barbarossa South, turn limit: 15 turns.

Prestige:

Start: 7687
End: 14991

Core:

Infantry:

Pioniere (truck)
Pioniere (truck)
Grenadiere (truck)

Tanks:

Panzer IB
Panzer IB
Panzer 38(t)A
Panzer 38(t)A
Panzer IIC

Recon:

Sd.Kfz. 232
Sd.Kfz. 232

Artillery:

10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
15cm Nebelwerfer 41(half-track) NEW
StuG IIIB


Fighters:

Bf 109E
Bf 109E
Bf 109E
Bf 109E

Tactical Bombers:

Fi 156
Ju 87B

Strategic Bombers:

Ju88A
Ju88A NEW

This was a good scenario.

Soviet armour is placed in a chequerboard fashion, and you're managing forces in different areas of the map that all have their own objectives.

This is the first scenario thus far where caution is advised, as Soviet armour is no joke for the units I'm using.

All Soviet units aside from the Rivne strongpoint, surrender/are captured at some point.

The Soviets have 8 T-26 units, 5 BT-7 units, 2 T34/40 units, 1 BT-7A artillery tank, 2 T-38 recon tanks, 1 SU-6 self-propelled AT gun and 3 BA-10 armoured car units.

Turn 1 start:

Heeresgruppe Süd will slowly advance from Nazi-occupied Poland into Soviet-occupied Poland and then the Ukrainian SSR.

The northern part of the Romanian Army will clear the starting area of Soviet forces before meeting up with core forces as they move towards Vinnitsa.

The southern part of the Romanian Army, assisted by several core tank units, will reclaim Bessarabia from the Soviets, invade the Ukrainian SSR and then swing north. Strangely, Chișinău isn't on the map.

The Cernauti airfield is a good initial staging area, but be advised that you can't reach Kowel airfield (where 2 Soviet air units start) from there with fighters.





Turn 2 start:

The new all terrain Sd.Kfz 232's raided the VVS's frontline airfields during the opening rain turns, which knocked out all 6 Soviet air units in one go as they couldn't rebase.

Przemysl is encircled. A Soviet cavalry unit attempts to break the encirclement.





Turn 3 start:

Lwow is encircled.

The southern forces are still cleaning up the starting areas.





Turn 4 start:

Przemysl is captured.

The first group of Soviet armour comes to the aid of the Lwow defenders and is in turn encircled.





Turn 5 start:

Lwow is captured.

Tighina is encircled.





Turn 6 start:

Soviet counter-attack incoming in the north.





Turn 7 start:

Tarnop0l was captured last turn, with the recon unit that did so moving out again.

Tighina is captured.





Turn 8 start:

I'm attempting to draw Soviet armour in, a few units at a time. They're generally encircled and captured on the same turn, with the armoured cars holding 2-4 hexes facing the Soviets and moving out after the unit is captured, to make sure the AI can only reach the units I want it to reach.

One good way of stopping AI units for a turn that are triggered to move somewhere, is by bombing them. They'll replace losses before moving on.

The AI gets 50 prestige per turn, so you can let fighters strafe enemy units for XP, as they'll be full strength again next turn until AI prestige runs out.

Kowel is captured.

Balta is encircled.





Turn 9 start:





Turn 10 start:

Balta is captured.





Turn 11 start:



Turn 12 start:



Turn 13 start:

As you can see, it's not a big map but the opposition is strong, so I haven't made any big leaps with my main force after the opening turns.



Turn 14 start:



Turn 15 start:

Vinnitsa and Zhitomir are encircled.



Entire map aside from Rivne captured.





This was more Europe on a piece of floss than Europe on a shoestring, a very minimalistic approach to in-scenario replacements (none were used) but several units ended up at 1 strength. A number of close shaves for core units, as sometimes a few chances had to be taken to encircle/capture Soviet units.

Aux units took a beating, but nothing was killed.

Most of the Soviet units either have triggers I didn't...trigger, or are otherwise only meant for local defence. Only 3 AI tank units were mobile outside of their starting locations, moving from east of Zhitomir to face me at Lwow.

[SineMora]

That is an incredible amount of prestige, and the scenario looks more interesting than Center. I like how you're keeping faith in your trusty IB even in the face of heavy Soviet armour. Agreed about bombing the AI to disrupt its movements; I like keeping a single Stuka for that as the AI will usually prioritise repairs if armour is damaged by a few points outside of battle. Perhaps I've missed it, but why are you using grenadiers? I find their performance generally lacklustre, although they are slightly cheaper than engineers (saving 1 core slot).

On an unrelated note, the more I read your AAR the more of an idiot I feel for not considering the possibility of a hotkey to hide the GUI, which by contrast make my screenshots look poor. At least I should be able to rectify that for future scenarios.

[comradep]

That is an incredible amount of prestige, and the scenario looks more interesting than Center. I like how you're keeping faith in your trusty IB even in the face of heavy Soviet armour. Agreed about bombing the AI to disrupt its movements; I like keeping a single Stuka for that as the AI will usually prioritise repairs if armour is damaged by a few points outside of battle. Perhaps I've missed it, but why are you using grenadiers? I find their performance generally lacklustre, although they are slightly cheaper than engineers (saving 1 core slot).

On an unrelated note, the more I read your AAR the more of an idiot I feel for not considering the possibility of a hotkey to hide the GUI, which by contrast make my screenshots look poor. At least I should be able to rectify that for future scenarios.

It also took me a few scenarios to figure out hiding the UI would be a good idea

Regarding Grenadiere: I asked myself that question today. I thought they would be more sturdy compared to Pioniere, which they are, but I think I'll switch them to Pioniere in Kiev South.

Pioniere being frail feels good, better than the Aryan Supermen Sturmpioniere or equivalents in previous games, but it can make them difficult to use at the frontline. Before you know it, some tank unit knocks 5 strength points off.

We'll see how long the Panzer IB remains "The Little Tank That Could" but thus far it's still fine for dealing with soft targets.

Combat ratings don't scale particularly well at the moment, having high initial values for light tanks and slowly rising.

[SineMora]

My problem with grenadiers is that while they are sturdier than engineers, they are still infantry and so vulnerable -- you can't really leave them in the open even with artillery support or risk taking heavy losses, and as they need transports (poor movement and no forced march) they aren't much cheaper to replace than engineers, and the latter are not just better at assaulting entrenched positions, but unrealistically strong at defending in close terrain too owing to their great close defence. Infantry in general is one of the weaker parts of the game I feel.

There isn't that much difference in offensive stats for early game tanks (defense is a different beast, with some Allied tanks having ridiculous armour), that's true, and with rapid fire the IB actually performs very well against soft targets. Being cheap both in terms of prestige and core slots makes it a great, possibly overpowered, choice early on, certainly if you're not using Panzer General and thus have to use 3 core slots for the marginally superior IIC; it's hard to argue that 2 IICs are more valuable than 3 IBs.

[comradep]

One issue with any slot system, is that the best equipment of number of slots X isn't likely to be all that inferior to the lowest equipment of number of slots X+1.

The Panzer IB has its weaknesses, particularly being ineffective against armour, but it is a good tank overall whether you are, or are not, using Panzer General. As you say, the Panzer IIC is only marginally better.

There's little reason aside from replacement cost not to buy the best equipment in a certain slot "tier", and I've been frugal in that regard.

With better medium/heavy tanks making an appearance, it helps to keep attack values somewhat "current" to what the enemy has for ground defence. Otherwise weakened or even full strength units might not be able to damage heavier enemy tanks to force them to surrender. Thus far, some additional recon accuracy was enough for split units, but an upgrade is in order for the 3 slots Panzer.

[SineMora]

I've relied mainly on the IIC, but that's entirely owing to Panzer General and w/o it I'd be fielding IBs without a doubt. The lack of hard attack can be a problem though as I found out at Dunkirk; with my split 38(t)s having sustained damage it proved difficult to force the heavier tanks to surrender, and I had to reform a group to bring down a Somua, which is part of the reason I'm contemplating fielding a French tank. If nothing else works then it could get the job done, even against the Soviets. I note that South doesn't have any KVs in the first scenario, whereas I'm pretty sure Center did, but T-34s are plenty tough.

[comradep]

Only Heeresgruppe Nord's opening features KV 1's I believe.

There are at least 3 KV units in Kiev, though.

[comradep]

Kiev South is another scenario full of crazy prestige gains.

I gained 11646 prestige, for only 472 prestige worth of strength points lost.

The prestige gain is rather variable for soft targets, I'd say, as over time the difference between killing soft targets with 14 and, say, about 10 adds up in prestige.

I'm sure charonjr can do better. I have full confidence in his abilities

[charonjr]

Hehe, thx for the vote of confidence, but those are new map to me. But I will do my very best

[comradep]

Forgot to mention that I purchased a Nebelwerfer 41 in Barbarossa South, the previous post has been edited.

Kiev South:

Prestige:

Start: 13681
End: 25327

Prestige and kills at the start of each turn.

There are 88 Soviet units on the map, including 6 air units and 1 strongpoint.

81 units to capture.

T1 -
T2 -
T3 -
T4 13924 3
T5 14380 8
T6 14669 11
T7 14825 13
T8 15100 16
T9 15376 18
T10 15727 21
T11 16008 24
T12 16138 26
T13 16593 29
T14 16908 32
T15 17702 38
T16 18477 43
T17 19567 51
T18 21417 63
T19 22825 72
T20 24620 83

Core:

Infantry:

Pioniere (SPW)
Pioniere (SPW)
Grenadiere (truck) (reserve)

Tanks:

Panzer IB
Panzer IB
Panzer 38(t)A
Panzer IIIH
Panzer IIIH

Recon:

Sd.Kfz. 232
Sd.Kfz. 232
Sd.Kfz. 232 NEW

Artillery:

10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
10.5cm LeFH18 (half-track)
15cm Nebelwerfer 41(half-track)
StuG IIIB
StuG IIIB NEW

Fighters:

Bf 109E
Bf 109E
Bf 109E
Bf 109E

Tactical Bombers:

Fi 156
Ju 87B

Strategic Bombers:

Ju 88A
Ju 88A

Gave the Pioniere SPW's for better mobility and to have a weak unit to take out targets with when they're mounted.

The Grenadiere are in reserve.

The third Sd.Kfz. 232 will be a big help this scenario. All-terrain mobility is great.

Turn 1 start:

The objective is to kill all units. There are no objective hexes, and thus no 100 prestige flags.

The pocket was eventually created on turn 13. It's possible to do so much earlier, but I felt this was a good approach, not knowing whether the AI had triggers for responding to the capture of certain locations.

With Deadly Grasp, it takes 3 Soviet phases for a 10 strength unit to be fully suppressed, and 4 Soviet phases for a 15 strength unit to be fully suppressed.

As I had (and have) no knowledge of AI triggers, I chose a low risk strategy where I slowly create the conditions to form a pocket, capturing all the Soviet supply hexes in the process to see if that might trigger a breakout attempt.

The aux units from Heeresgruppe Mitte will move east, then south to Novgorod Seversky and finally close in on Kiev, to make sure every Soviet unit is either dead or in the pocket.

Two units will remain around Gomel, to form the beginning of the northern encirclement chain of units linked to the Dnepr later on and to keep tabs on the AI should it decide to move.

Heeresgruppe Süd, my core, will move across the Dnepr at Dnepropetrovsk and advance towards Poltava.

The two aux units from the Corpo di Spedizioni Italiano in Russia (CSIR) will isolate Kiev (and thus the rest of the pocket) by blocking supply from the map edge eventually.

The infantry unit heads to Kiev starting on turn 1, the L6/40 unit stays behind to eventually block the retreat of the Kremenchug defenders.

The Soviets in Cherkassy, on "my" side of the Dnepr will be dealt with at the end of the scenario. On the other side of the Dnepr, I'll slowly edge towards the northern end of the Cherkassy bridge to block supply from the map edge.







Turn 2 start:





Turn 3 start:





Turn 4 start:





Turn 5 start:





Turn 6 start:





Turn 7 start:





Turn 8 start:





Turn 9 start:





Turn 10 start:





Turn 11 start:





Turn 12 start:





Turn 13 start:





Turn 14 start:





Turn 15 start:





Turn 16 start:



Turn 17 start:



Turn 18 start:



Turn 19 start:



Turn 20 start:



Turn 20 end:

I merged as many units as I could before finishing to make the outcome screen a bit cleaner.

[SineMora]

Wow, I knew the Kiev encirclement would provide fantastic opportunities, but this is sligthly more than I had in mind. While I appreciate that this mechanic allows you to play the game in a very different way, I'm beginning to wonder if it's becoming a little too easy. We are all pulling in thousands of prestige extra per scenario with no general traits geared towards it in '39, but the numbers you've achieved in only 2 scenarios in '41 are bothering me. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep my motivation for an entire campaign where the sole objective has become to earn as much prestige as possible. von Manstein is calling

[comradep]

Prestige is always likely to increase, but when you capture literally every unit on the map it can indeed take enormous leaps when you reach larger scenarios.

I intend to do a Guderian/Von Manstein/Rommel run after this, though I'm considering whether to restart now.

I'll use a different trait selection when I do, as I'll need a larger core.

[SineMora]

Yes, and reading charonjr's AAR has convinced me that AA Veteran is the way to go to alleviate the problem of 15 strength aircraft -- fighter cover just won't be enough w/o compromising with the ground forces. Pioniere finally getting their precious halftracks in '41 makes me happy, as it was one of the things I missed the most with Retrograde. I assume you know this but halftracks provide a substantial combat bonus to infantry (the better ones provide a massive +4 soft attack, increasing the Pioniere's to 12 from 8 ).

[comradep]

I saw others mention that bonus as well, but the base stats remain the same as far as I can tell.

As with other types of transport, the values mentioned in the second column would normally be for the transport, not the unit being transported. The SPW is capable of attacking when the unit is mounted, unlike other transports.

This is one of the situations where automatically dismounting upon reaching a hex can be a bad thing: the dismounted unit can't attack, but the SPW would've been able to attack.

As to difficulty: encirclement is (with Deadly Grasp) a very efficient way of reducing the enemy's ability to strike back. If we were doing a Guderian/Von Manstein/Rommel run, capturing flags wouldn't be nearly enough to keep our cores alive and upgrade them. We'd end up capturing units again, and the units would have more strength points and thus a higher prestige cost/prestige bonus when captured.

I think we'd always end up encircling units on higher difficulties, due to its effectiveness and the need for some additional prestige. Maybe a G/VM/R run with Liberator could work if we want to avoid gaining prestige through encircling and capturing. I also fear the only reliable way to deal with heavy Allied/Soviet armour is baiting them into attacking units protected by AT units. German medium tanks barely hit for 1 kill against heavy armour early on.

[SineMora]

It's one of the many undocumented bonuses, sadly. You won't see it listed anywhere (caveat lector: it might be in the manual, as I confess I haven't read it), but the bonus is readily apparent once you start using them, and checking the combat logs confirm this -- there is a separate entry for the bonus provided by the halftracks. Try loading up a quick random scenario with some Pioniere w/ and w/o halftracks and compare their respective combat logs.

We'd need to keep encircling, but we'd also need to actually kill units (or at the very least damage them), or we'd find it hard to maintain the encirclements. As you say, early German tanks can't do much against the heavier tanks of the Allies and the Soviet Union, so AT support would likely be needed. Perhaps the mighty 8.8 would enjoy a renaissance.

[comradep]

As to prestige: with my current trait selection, it's largely irrelevant whether I have 2k or 20k prestige as I won't be able to overstrength units, buy a bigger core, upgrade more than 3 units, or buy modern equipment.

The prestige number is more like a score level in an arcade game than something that influences gameplay. That's also what I would expect to happen in a normal run.

Those struggling with a lack of prestige seem to be mostly using overstrength cores with the latest equipment. Upkeep is steep in that case, just like in PC.

I tried the opening turns of a G/VM/R run yesterday and it still feels too much like work.

We might be approaching the issue from the wrong way.

Instead of giving the AI bonuses, whilst still largely attempting to do the same thing, we could also remove our bonuses as in the end those are what makes the way we play possible.

Master of Blitzkrieg means tanks can potentially move as many extra hexes are there are turns (+1 movement per turn) and minor rivers turn into a puddle on the road.

Perimeter Control means we can ruthlessly push through AI lines, encircling what we want, when we want.

Flexible Command for all intents and purposes allows you to duplicate your ground unit count for free.

Operational Initiative isn't that hot considering how easy it is to gain a Mass Attack bonus without locking ZOCs.

Deep Recon is a nice aid, but its effect on gameplay is limited.

Deadly Grasp means that, combined with even a little bit of suppression from strategic bombers and/or artillery anything we encircle will be shooting (armour-piercing) peas at us during the Allied/Soviet phase.

I think a no positive trait G/R Generalissimus run, with house rules of no splitting except for the Fi 156 possibly (splitting costs 1 slot, a new Fi 156 costs 1 slot too, splitting just makes airfields less crowded), only wheeled recon and a maximum of two recon units or something along those lines, would be challenging.

With our positive traits, all-terrain or tracked recon is nearly game-breaking. When you start out of visual range of an enemy unit with a spotting range of two hexes, and with a split 8 movement all-terrain recon unit negating the enemy ZOCs, you can move a tank force to out of sight hexes on the other side of the enemy with 6 movement, moving the armoured cars out of sight again as well. You can use armoured cars to block retreat routes for multiple units in each turn.

With the Sd.Kfz. 232, the possibilities are limited by your imagination and not really by mechanics.

It's worth noting that though the AI is pretty much playing with Poor Ground Control due to how we can move through ZOCs, we still win some scenarios on the final turn.

[SineMora]

I'm tempted to manually edit the equipment file to fix the Retrograde bug as I really don't like being arbitrarily locked out of requisitioning units that should be available. I'd still get upgrades 6 months late but would not have to deal with losing access to all infantry for 6 months and similar issues.

I made the argument last night in the traits discussion thread that Flexible Command and Perimeter Control are the two strongest traits at only 1 point each, with the caveat that Killer Team is unbeatable if you savescum the start and use heroes (e.g., a 0 Slot, Rapid Fire 2x and No Retaliation start). While the value of it would drop as you gain more heroes, being able to guarantee demigods right away is just that strong. Deadly Grasp really needs those 2 to shine, but you could argue for including it as well.

To be honest I don't think captures should generate prestige at all to maintain the prestige pressure on higher difficulty settings while still making it a good way to play (by negating incoming damage) -- you should need to pick Trophies of War to gain any prestige, and even then it probably shouldn't be the full value of the captured strength. If you had to make do with the minor prestige from victory locations the challenge would quickly increase -- for reference Poland North is worth 650 prestige if you capture all victory locations (I made 980 from captures alone).

Deep Recon is about as superfluous as I thought it'd be (I'd never used it before this campaign), and as you say Operational Initiative loses much of its value when Mass Attacks are so easy to stack. I have yet to unlock the halftrack recons but have always been a fan of them and don't expect that to change; if anything the wheeled ones feel sluggish compared to the tanks when you have Master of Blitzkrieg.

We could probably win most of these scenarios at least a few turns quicker by opting to forego a few captures and bonus objectives while accepting larger losses; the prestige pool could easily absorb the damage. It does illustrate what a horrible penalty Poor Ground Control is, as the only time the AI can enjoy some respite is when there's a hard map edge or multiple rivers protecting its flanks. Playing with no traits at all would obviously increase the challenge too but it feels, I don't know, boring? Perhaps I've just grown too comfortable with the traits mechanic.

[comradep]

To be honest I don't think captures should generate prestige at all to maintain the prestige pressure on higher difficulty settings while still making it a good way to play (by negating incoming damage) -- you should need to pick Trophies of War to gain any prestige, and even then it probably shouldn't be the full value of the captured strength. If you had to make do with the minor prestige from victory locations the challenge would quickly increase -- for reference Poland North is worth 650 prestige if you capture all victory locations (I made 980 with captures alone).

That would make things a bit too tight I think. There isn't all that much prestige to be gained from objectives on most maps. Thought it would suit the idea behind Europe on a Shoestring not to receive additional prestige from captures, I think it would make maintaining a viable core very difficult if not impossible.

Even my by comparison (to using the latest equipment) cheap core requires hundreds of prestige for Elite repairs and not that much less for Green ones, and I think all three of us playing at this level minimize losses to a certain extent.