US Corps and Wargames Montgomery

[liningning23]

Finally finished my effort to complete every campaign in Panzer Corps on Rommel level (aka Montgomery/Zhukov). US Corps was the last one, and took two tries.

On my first go I got all the way to Wargames (final scenario) with about 5K prestige and a good selection of heroes and units. Watch Goose's efforts on utube if you want an idea what happened next (thanks G-man for posting those vids, also to Cerberus for all the scenario AARs). It became apparent that massive amounts of prestige are needed for the last scenario. Accordingly I decided to replay the campaign from scratch with an eye to acquiring prestige (my goal was 30K).

A general overview of US Corps:
Weak fighter planes, flimsy tanks, decent artillery, good anti-tanks and bombers, excellent infantry (Rangers), minimal unit upgrade paths. Bocage, mines, snow, more bocage and mines, and oh yeah, bocage. Many scenarios are difficult to complete in time due to excessive bad weather and/or rough terrain. Did I tell you about the bocage?

I finally made it back to Wargames with about 35K in prestige. This is how:
No over-strength, except bombers at 12.
No replacements during a scenario. Seriously-damaged units are retreated to sit out the rest of the battle.
Keep the soft-cap at 100%.
Partial or staggered deployments.
Evacuate and disband auxiliary units whenever possible (this yielded 10,440 prestige).
Disband all capturables without heroes or experience (Panthers, Me262, etc).
Don't spend prestige on auxiliary units, with the exception of Bastogne.
Defence before offence.
Rangers and Wolverines, not Engineers and Hellcats (take too much damage, so limited to specialized use).
Single and double layer fighter traps, avoid attacking enemy fighters.
A gun behind every unit, a unit in front of every gun (should have called it Artillery Corps), a fighter or AA behind every gun.
To each his own: infantry in cities and on rough terrain, armor in the open.
Forced surrenders wherever possible, especially of high-value targets.

It's not that I managed all of these perfectly, but they were the ideals I tried for. Also, if you watch Braccada, Robbie, Lt Joker, Goose and others, you’ll discover where I picked up these ideas.

Other general considerations:
Find and take out enemy AA first, then guns, then armor, then infantry, in roughly that order (not always possible, obviously). Use scouts (8Rads) and units with spotting heroes at or near the most forward positions, and if the weather bids to be fair, deploy a scout plane. And of course guns, guns, guns. Artillery is the real star of Panzer Corps. Also, don't under-rate spotting - being able to see what's out there goes a long way towards minimizing costs and maximizing benefits.

Re playing blind:
Many of the scenarios in this campaign are a tad unreasonable and if played blind often result in unsustainable losses of units and prestige, a pointless endeavor in my view. Thus I researched every scenario, tested every deployment, re-started whenever necessary, and in general did everything
possible to optimize the outcome. No competent military commander would deploy blind without intelligence and prior recon, or launch a bomber-dependent attack when it's going to snow for 12 of the next 15 days (as it did in one attempt at Sankt Vith). All is fair in love and war, don't you know?

Wargames, the final frontier:
My brilliant (ahem) effort at Wargames used a tactic I call Hellcat Swarm (just because I had enough prestige to try it). I bought 10 new kamikaze Hellcats and deployed them on the front line, then sent them deep into unknown territory seeking out VHs to occupy, units in trucks to destroy, and most importantly, enemy mobile AA and artillery to kill. As the Hellcats got whacked one by one, I deployed more of my core units and used them to tackle the big Soviet tanks and AT.

The key to dealing with the IS2s and 3s and other heavy Soviet armor was creating bottlenecks in the thick forest and mountains south of the first capturable airport in the west and center of the map. Only a couple of enemy units could attack at one time, and many chose to move into forest or onto mountains to do so, which of course meant signing their own death warrant. This strategy required having extra units on hand, so that when one unit took too much damage or ran out of ammo, it could rotate out of the line for elite replacements/ammo and a fresh unit rotate in (even the aux units got elite replacements).

While the bulk of my heavy armour and air force was occupied with this task, I also sent a small flanking group down the west side and captured the next airport, and another group down the east side to deal with the IS3 stationed there - that took a while, waiting for bombers to help.

I also bought a couple of new fighters to deal with the Soviet air and paratrooper blitz, with the expectation that they would eventually be shot down (they were).

I upgraded my five tanks to M26, upgraded my four bombers to the best model available, over-strengthed all of my units to 12 except for bombers - those got 15.

The strategy was good enough to get the Triumph and it was kind of fun too (possibly the only time I had fun this entire campaign)! I had 10,445 prestige left at the end, almost exactly the amount I gained from evacuating and disbanding auxiliary units.

[eskuche]

Funny, I JUST ran this on Montgomery over the last two weeks. Big strategy for me during the latter half of the campaign was baiting tanks out with LAC recon and fresh '43 infantry. 15x5 star level bombers drop IS/tigers/scaries to 1 ammo, which can usually be de-ammo'd with an infantry taking 1-4 losses. For the IS spam in wargames, I abused the bocage in the center by baiting with an AA half track and an infantry out of sight.

The major money-saver this campaign was holding off on committing air as late as possible so you can isolate enemy air waves with anti-air. Also baiting air attacks with your aux navy, as they cost a lot and are a big target.