advice requested on a "gentle nudge"

[codman]

Looking for some advice on pushing a unit out of a city or fortification, without killing it. I've been fooling around with setting up traps for aircraft and looking at ways to use enemy units as spotters. Currently in a 45 East campaign and some of the victory hexes are defended by AT guns. I can suppress them with artillery and strategic bombing, but it appears that I need a tank, recon, or tracked AT unit to move them. Using infantry, almost always kills them.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[rubyjuno]

Interesting question. As far as I know, the only way to force a retreat (or surrender if "hemmed in") is to suppress a unit until it has no entrenchment (by artillery and aerial bombardment as you have) and then attack from close range causing further suppression and therefore an attempted retreat. As you have discovered, by this time the unit can be so depleted that an attack with any kind of strength will often destroy it. I suppose the only way would be attack with a weak unit, though of course this would risk losing that unit.

Apologies if I haven't been much help. Hope you're enjoying 45E, I found it a big improvement on the slog of 44E.

[Delta66]

To be more precise a unit reduced to entrenchment level '1' before attack will retreat if all its remaining steps are suppressed after the attack. That's is previous artillery suppression plus suppression from the ground attack proper.

You can try infantry in transport mode as they have very low attack values.

[codman]

Thanks for the replies. I agree about CG45 being more interesting the GC44. I'm "trying" a Manstein campaign and IS2's at that level are rather painful.

Good idea about infantry in transport mode, as I never would have thought of that. Although half-tracks are expensive, that just might do the trick.

[Delta66]

The best way to suppress IS-2 is with experienced strategic bombers.

[rubyjuno]

One good thing about the hordes that you're faced with in the latter part of GC East is that the units you're in direct contact with are often hemmed in by their own units behind. This means that if you suppress an IS-2 in such a position (as Delta66 says, with powerful strategic bombers; although some of the stronger towed artillery is capable of helping out) then you can often force a surrender whilst the IS-2 (or whatever) still has quite a bit of strength left. This usually takes carefully planning before attacks.

I do realise that if you're playing on Manstein you probably know all this already