Battlefield: Europe MOD v2.4

[Intenso82]

As an idea, could you target Stalin's Bunker right from the start (and ignore everything else) or what are the conditions for surrender / capitulation?

I don't know exactly, I need to look at the scripts.
But after that I had this idea to conduct a landing operation on Stalin's Bunker)

[Intenso82]

Or some more key strategy screenshots from during the game, please

Well, ok
without fogofwar

Begining 1942
The idea was to kill as many units as possible and retreat before the frost, avoiding a few thousand in prestige penalties (maybe 1500 by my calculations, I don't remember anymore).

There was also an idea to land across the English Channel.
But it was unsuccessful.
I had to replay many times)
And the side landing was successful in the end.



Begining 1943
I also bypassed fuel restrictions from time to time, it turned out that it was too difficult for me.
I should have chosen a lower difficulty level.
Which of course cannot be called a clean play at this difficulty level.
But I was interested in trying 3 things.
Landing in England, Avoiding penalties for the winter of 1941 and seeing all the late Soviet units.

The troops did not advance further than Smolensk!
Mainly occupy defensive positions.
Orel - Kursk, western bank of the Dnieper.

It became clear that the original idea of ​​a raid across the Black Sea on Baku oil would be unsuccessful.
And all the troops concentrated in the Crimea were transferred to the Orel-Kursk area.
Later, this place will become the most brutal battlefield I have seen in BE for all time)

Meanwhile, near Moscow, the Soviets have concentrated 60-70 units.
And the troops are preparing to repel the Winter Offensive.



Begining 1944
In the West, England is captured, but only key points (not all) so as not to waste time.
Tunis is protected, Cairo is captured and the troops are advancing to Syria and further to Iraq for oil.
The threat of bombing and landings by Western Allies has been eliminated, which saves prestige well.
Which I won't need until the very end of the game.

In the end, I upgraded one of the tanks to King Tiger, but it did not have time to enter the battle until the 97th turn, although if the battles had lasted until the 99th, it would have had time)

In the East, Leningrad is finally captured.
But troops are also on the line to Smolensk, Orel-Kursk.
Where the Soviets continue to advance strongly.

And yes, of course the Balkans were left uncontrolled so as not to waste resources on fighting the partisans.



Begining 1945
Moscow is captured. The number of reinforcements is decreasing.
Troops in the Grozny area.
But doubts arise whether it will be possible to capture all the key points.

Arkhangelsk and Novorossiysk are especially worrisome.
But in the end, everything is captured in the last turns.

But to repeat this, many replays were needed, wild randomness ((

[PeteMitchell]

Wow, there is a lot of red on some of these maps! Thank you

[eskuche]

Still looking for another MP opponent, pref playing Allies for multiple reasons

[Enry1977]

Still looking for another MP opponent, pref playing Allies for multiple reasons

Hi Eskuche

I'm ready to play!

[George_Parr]

Just went through my latest playthrough, and it went a whole lot better than the last. It really makes quite the difference if by D-Day you are done with the Soviets / only need to mop up the rest, or if they still have quite a bit of fight in them. Keeping a solid defensive line in France isn't that hard, but if you can pull back most of the artillery and anti air from the east, it really hurts the Allies. Their main advantage is air power, and that changes quite a bit if you have lots and lots of anti-air back in the west, mauling their planes and thus allowing to keep lots of artillery and tanks nearby. A relatively early success in the east tends to mean an early capture of the necessary oilfields as well, which helps in the air-war as well.

Does anyone have any different strategies / approaches I could try?
No "quit Africa" or "pull units back to evade the winter penalty" though

Went with the airborne assault against Archangelsk this time, and it worked well. The game before that I tried the whole "make a landing in the middle east" approach, and it failed completely. While I managed to take Cyprus, my landing forces for Syria were stuck for 20+ rounds and then had to be pulled back to help elsewhere. By that time their equipment was too outdated anyway. For some reason I was really slow in every area, and it really drags down the overall effort. It kind of snowballs.

No idea what else I could try. I guess I could try an all out assault on Leningrad first, but that seems like a stupid idea, because troops around Leningrad are passive anyway, while those around Moscow are not. It would just make it harder to take Moscow in the long-run.

Never tried invading Britain yet, at least not early on. Would have no idea how to play that though either.


edit, minor note:
not sure how it is in 2.4 as I still had an older version installed, but would it be possible to allow for a switch between regular Wehrmacht infantry and the tropical version of it? Sure, there is no change in the stats, but it would be nice if you could switch any infantry reinforcements you sent to Africa to the Afrika Korps look. Just for the immersion
On a similar note, could you also add a tropical version of the 1944 infantry? Right now you can either upgrade the infantry to get the better stats, or you can keep the tropical look. There are also tropical versions of units that never made it to Africa, like the Panther, so having that for infantry would be nice as well.

[Duedman]

There are AARs with succesful early Sealions I think.
I can not imagine how that would work tho.

Other than that you have to go full on East if you want to win I think.
Middle East will always be a side show. If you go there with a big force early on your troops would then be stuck there with obsolete tanks.

[PeteMitchell]

It used to be possible

[Duedman]

I'd like to see some way out of the strategic dead end that is the conquest of Iraq.
Maybe allow tanks to enter a special hex near Basra which teleports tanks back to Germany for a fee to simulate air transport of experienced crews.
Because once in that corner, they are out of the fight. I do not think they can approach Baku vs. a human player (there are no airfields in between for example)

[slowgtp]

I have a few suggestions for the next or future update:

Add a few German ships: (Lutzow, Hipper, another Light Cruiser any/all)
Add a few Italian ships: (Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Guilio Cesare *perhaps at least 1*), perhaps with increased fuel/movement penalties
Piaggio P.108 bomber (could use B-17 sprite)
Petlakoyov Pe-8 bomber
New sprite/unit (perhaps similar to Panzergrenadier) for Soviet Guards infantry '43. Keeping just the original Guards for the entirety of the scenario seems underwhelming to me
Perhaps a bonus for Fall Blau capturing objectives like Sevastopol and/or Novosrryisk earlier
Italian 'Folgore' paratroopers in Afrika
Since there's a Ta-152 late game as a development of the Fw-190, perhaps a Ta-154 Moskito one special/bonus only unit late game as development from Me-410
Late game Ju-288
Late game British Challenger
Late game IS-3

[McGuba]

I have a few suggestions for the next or future update:

Add a few German ships: (Lutzow, Hipper, another Light Cruiser any/all)

In this mod a light cruiser unit represents a flotilla of 4 actual light cruisers and thus these are already included, represented by the existing light cruiser unit "Nürnberg". The main reason for that is if all individual German (and Italian) light cruisers were there, then I would also need to add the numerous British light cruisers as well to retain the historical force ratio and then there would be way too many naval units in the map.

Add a few Italian ships: (Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Guilio Cesare *perhaps at least 1*), perhaps with increased fuel/movement penalties

Yes, I would love to add at least one of these, but unfortunately there is no good unit icon for them (I mean in the same style as the existing ones) I am not very good in making ship icons from scratch. But the other reason is in reality these spent most of the war in their ports from early 1942 due to the lack of fuel. So even if I added them, they would be little more than stationary units guarding the Italian ports and unable to go anywhere.

New sprite/unit (perhaps similar to Panzergrenadier) for Soviet Guards infantry '43. Keeping just the original Guards for the entirety of the scenario seems underwhelming to me

I do not really understand this, the Soviet Guards '43 infantry has its own distinctive unit icon for quite some time, it is not the same as the original Soviet Guards (pre-'43) unit icon. It appears that I last saved the unique "Soviet Guards '43" unit icon in 04.10.2020. In fact think I have this icon since at least BE v2.0.

As for the suggested missing aircraft types, I think most, if not all of these were produced in very small numbers, I mean less than 100 and an air unit in the mod normally represents 100-150 planes and that's why they are not there.

One could say that then the Ta-152 should not be in there either, which is probably true, however, this unit is already in vanilla Panzer Corps so removing it would be a bit of a step-back.

The IS-3 is in fact already in the mod, but it only spawns in turn 94 and of course only if the SU is still active at that time.

I might add a single Challenger unit though, but it was also produced and used in small numbers.

[McGuba]

I'd like to see some way out of the strategic dead end that is the conquest of Iraq.

I think the new railway lines that I added to Iraq and Iran may help in this regard a bit. If the Axis conquers these then he can board his units in Abadan in Iran, transfer them quickly to Zanjan in North Iran and then move them to the nearby Tabriz which is linked to the main continental railway lines.

It is interesting thought, that Zanjan and Tabriz was not connected in WW2 by rail, in fact the railway connection of these two towns was only completed after the war for some reason.

[slowgtp]

I have a few suggestions for the next or future update:

Add a few German ships: (Lutzow, Hipper, another Light Cruiser any/all)

In this mod a light cruiser unit represents a flotilla of 4 actual light cruisers and thus these are already included, represented by the existing light cruiser unit "Nürnberg". The main reason for that is if all individual German (and Italian) light cruisers were there, then I would also need to add the numerous British light cruisers as well to retain the historical force ratio and then there would be way too many naval units in the map.

Add a few Italian ships: (Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Guilio Cesare *perhaps at least 1*), perhaps with increased fuel/movement penalties

Yes, I would love to add at least one of these, but unfortunately there is no good unit icon for them (I mean in the same style as the existing ones) I am not very good in making ship icons from scratch. But the other reason is in reality these spent most of the war in their ports from early 1942 due to the lack of fuel. So even if I added them, they would be little more than stationary units guarding the Italian ports and unable to go anywhere.

New sprite/unit (perhaps similar to Panzergrenadier) for Soviet Guards infantry '43. Keeping just the original Guards for the entirety of the scenario seems underwhelming to me

I do not really understand this, the Soviet Guards '43 infantry has its own distinctive unit icon for quite some time, it is not the same as the original Soviet Guards (pre-'43) unit icon. It appears that I last saved the unique "Soviet Guards '43" unit icon in 04.10.2020. In fact think I have this icon since at least BE v2.0.

As for the suggested missing aircraft types, I think most, if not all of these were produced in very small numbers, I mean less than 100 and an air unit in the mod normally represents 100-150 planes and that's why they are not there.

One could say that then the Ta-152 should not be in there either, which is probably true, however, this unit is already in vanilla Panzer Corps so removing it would be a bit of a step-back.

The IS-3 is in fact already in the mod, but it only spawns in turn 94 and of course only if the SU is still active at that time.

I might add a single Challenger unit though, but it was also produced and used in small numbers.

Ah, ok. I'm just now coming back to this after many years and haven't had very many successful playthroughs yet. I don't ever recall seeing the Guards '43 so that's my bad. I would imagine if one of those old Italian ships were used, it could be a sprite similar to Provence or Warspite or something.

Thank you for clarifying, always keen to offer suggestions

[PeteMitchell]

As an idea, could you target Stalin's Bunker right from the start (and ignore everything else) or what are the conditions for surrender / capitulation?

I don't know exactly, I need to look at the scripts.
But after that I had this idea to conduct a landing operation on Stalin's Bunker)

Does anyone know?

[McGuba]

I would imagine if one of those old Italian ships were used, it could be a sprite similar to Provence or Warspite or something.

In the end I have managed to make new icons for the two Andrea Doria (or Dulio) class battleships. In fact, these looked quite similar to the existing Littorio class, just somewhat shorter and had an additional gun turret. But I think these will confined to the Gulf of Taranto with very little fuel to move around. Historically they did take part in some convoy escort in mid-late 1941, but from early 1942 they were placed in reserve and drained of fuel because of the severe shortage of fuel oil. And then perhaps they can be released if the fuel situation is sorted out by the capture and repair of some oil fields.

And I think the other two old Italian battleships should be out of the game since:

- Conte di Cavour was damaged in the Taranto raid in November 1940 (before the start of the scenario) and she was still under repair when Italy surrendered in 1943.

- Giulio Cesare saw some action in the First Battle of Sirte in December 1941, but it never fired her main armament and in early 1942 was reduced to a training ship at Taranto and later Pola.

As an idea, could you target Stalin's Bunker right from the start (and ignore everything else) or what are the conditions for surrender / capitulation?

I don't know exactly, I need to look at the scripts.
But after that I had this idea to conduct a landing operation on Stalin's Bunker)

Does anyone know?

I don't know where it comes from. I think the victory conditions are explained in detail at the beginning of the scenario: the Axis player has to capture all Soviet victory objectives in order to defeat the USSR. Stalin's Bunker is just one of these. I guess just because of the geography this is the final objective to capture in most games. But capturing it first would not end the war in the east.

[PeteMitchell]

Do you have some more maps?

Sure.
I forgot that after capturing Stalin's Bunker the Soviets capitulate. And I captured all the key points with my own forces. Apparently it would have taken another turn.

It is linked to this. Soviet forces surrender after Stalin's bunker has been captured.

[eskuche]

Comment on multiplayer balance. I have been successful in Africa as the Allies in multiple games, taking Tripoli by spring 1942. However, nothing happens, and my units are sitting there doing nothing.