Need help in British India!

[Longasc]

I am about to finish the Afrika Korps campaign! Yeah, finally. Don't laugh, I was busy.

British India is the name of the final scenario. I read some threads from the by now open beta forum about it, but the focus was more on historic accuracy of city names, something which I totally support. Be assured I will check for typos.

... but... I would need some strategic advice. I have attached my core units, Scenario.pzsav has been uploaded to Filedropper and you can pick it up any time you want. You only have to get past the Captcha to get the file.

http://www.filedropper.com/scenario

I have ~4900-5000 Prestige, but it's a huge map and I expect, as usual, the worst. I also have only a fairly low number of core units, due to losses in previous scenarios.

[robman]

This one was easier than I thought it would be. I don't want to give away any surprises, but I will say that I was surprised by how few surprises there were. It is a safe bet that you will face the Royal Navy at some point, so you might want to take along a couple of level bombers, especially if you have empty core slots to fill--they perform well against naval units, right out of the box.

[Kamerer]

Hi - I took a look at your save and I do think you will have a tough fight, but it is not impossible by any stretch. You have a very decent tank corps, and fighters are up to the task. But there is no strong infantry and only one piece of field artillery, and no tactical air. Not ideal, but not hopeless!

The two Ju188s will be adequate for anti-shipping work. Your fighters should be OK. I would upgrade the Centauro to a 109k. Expensive at this point, and you will give up some attack points, but you will gain 4 initiative and several defensive points. I'd always rather have a unit that inflicted 4 damage per combat and took none, rather than a unit that inflicted six damage and took two. It has a +2 ini hero, so it can be a very effective "lead shooter" it will have a 13 native ini and a +2 on top of that. Excellent. Unfortunately you got poor heroes on most of your other fighters except the first one listed, which is still not "excellent." The air game here is not easy - not at all overwhelming, but not a push-over. Use ambush tactics and mass attack and you can grind up their tough air units w/o expensive damage to your own.

As a side note, the Spitfire in your corps - what I do with that capture in the game is that a few turns later the FW190 comes available, so I disband it for prestige right away and buy a green FW190. I build that up and it's a massively more effective fighter (for range alone) vs. the Spitfire. Just a future suggestion. If you are careful and set fighter traps instead of aggressively challenging the enemy, you will eliminate him fine with that force. I might add two Ju87G's. This is an unfortunate time to add green units, but they are cheap and their hard attack rating should still prove helpful on land and you will need some tactical air to confront submarines and other naval forces.

I would upgrade the StuG III's to IV - it will give you some added flexibility with additional fire support (the unit is switchable and the III is not). As you noticed, this map has abundant close terrain and your bias towards mobile, short range artillery and tanks is going to work against you. In general I always like to have at least a 50/50 mix of towed artillery to mobile, and usually biased more towards fixed like 60:40 or 65:35. You have to plan it's use a bit more and manuever more carefully, but the firepower advantage is overwhelmingly worth it to me. Also, I would note how many hexes are required for DV (it only like 2/3rds or something), and I would then select a region of the map to just ignore to concentrate forces for mutual support. Once you send one force down the Carnatic Coast on the "wet" side of the Western Ghats, and another down the Ganges river valley, they are never going to link up again or be able to support each other if you get into trouble. Bear in mind you do have to take GHQ no matter how many other victory hexes you take. But its location is pretty well hinted at in the briefing so you can make that the focus of your drive(s) whatever part of the map you want to take to get there.

I don't think three weak-ish infantry units will be sufficient on this map so you might add a Gj unit or two, w/o transport to economize. The provided Fj units are good, so maybe a few turns in once a secure LZ is at hand, land them just behind your lines and use them as line infantry instead of trying to make a deep strike anywhere with them. Be sure to note there is no per-turn prestige, so you need to have a fair amount in the bank to start to reinforce, and go slow with lots of artillery prep so you take few casualties. The time allotment is generous, I have won it in as few as I think 21 of the 32 allowed turns. I also played through on Rommel once and somewhere really got behind the prestige curve with some bad choices mid-game. I ended up getting to India and deployed down like nine units and still got a DV fairly easily. Do not be discouraged by being short units at the start line, but don't try to take the whole map, of course. Do not spend all your prestige to fill slots, use it to reinforce and elite your existing units and keep a reserve for in-game reinforcement.

Good luck!

Oh, PS - Very important - make sure you have upgraded your version since the original AK release. There were some terrain-type errors in the initial game that are corrected now.

[Longasc]

Thanks for mentioning the StuG III - IV upgrade, I didn't think it would be possible for 0/free.

I wonder if I should switch my Hummels to sIG 38t, but it's not worth it at this point probably. I prefer them because they have at least some ground and air defense, that's why I also have Panzerwerfer 42 instead of the Wurfrahmen 40 (it has no armor at all).
I usually use self-propelled artillery. For towed artillery I rarely go beyond 15 sFH because their ammo capacity advantage gets lost with higher caliber. I mostly use them for suppression and have no idea how much better a 21 cm artillery would do.

I might upgrade the F190A to D9, though I wonder if giving up their fuel/range advantage is worth it.

Where is the "GHQ" or Main Headquarters? It was mentioned in the briefing, is it an unit or marked somewhere in the map?
I already decided for 10 objectives. Must I only take 10 or hold 10 objectives till time runs out?

[ThvN]

Hi! Kamerer already gave sound advice, but since you have additional questions, some extra answers:

About the victory conditions: I believe the DV is instantaneous, so just take 10 VHexes, but you need to have destroyed the HQ as well.

On turn 2, you should get a message, and the screen will center on the location of the HQ (it is a strongpoint on an airfield). So no worries about that.


About the units: I think the F-W 190 D9 is a big dissapointment, you lose 1 HA, and a lot of range. It only offers 2 extra AA, although the upgrade is very cheap, so it might be worth it when defending against waves of bombers. But for this type of scenario I prefer range, and the F-W 190 A8 is a better bomber escort.

Artillery: difficult decision, I love towed artillery, but the SP arty is more flexible on the attack. The SiG's, Wespe and Hummel are all part of the same upgrade family, making them even more attractive. I usually don't upgrade towed arty beyond the 17cm, because the 21cm has a lower rate of fire (RoF) and is quite a bit more expensive. The 15cm and the 17cm have the same RoF, so you won't lose as much efficiency when upgrading. If the aim is to supress rather than kill, I'd rather have more shots, so the 17cm is good enough. This also explains why the StuG IV is so efficient for its stats, it has RoF 11...

If supression is not good enough, and you want kills, not some number changing color, take a Nebelwerfer. I had one during GC '45 West, a towed 30cm with +1 move. It usually followed a Grenadier around, and had a mobile AAA glued to it. This formation was my 'Two Step Snake' (I'm not sure if you're familiar with that urban legend), but with a twist. The twist being that it took two steps and then something else died. I watched it ambush an Allied unit once during a snowy turn and the Grenadier didn't even have to shoot . You have to feed it regularly, however. Which reminds me, I had a Wurfrahmen with a range hero as well... using it felt like cheating. Anyway, I digress. What was I typing about? Oh yes, your artillery choices.


The SiG 38(t) is slow and has only 4 ammo, but is better protected than the more mobile Hummel. I my experience, late in the war any serious attack against either will usually do enough damage to take them out of the fight. I found them both useful, both have RoF 9 and do good damage, but the SiG is less suitable for following a mobile attack force. Although in my experience it seems a lot more survivable than the Hummel, this is partly due to the fact that the more mobile Hummel usually is closest to the frontline, and a therefore a more frequent target, while the SiG is spending another turn reloading and trying to catch up. In my opinion, the best SP arty to follow tanks around with is not the SiG or even the Brummbär, but the StuG IV in arty mode.

I'm usually able to use quite fragile support units, because I always invest heavily in air defense, and besides a sizeable fighter force I always make sure I have some decent mobile AAA, to free up the fighters. Since you need something survivable, let me take you through the options:

Hummel: GD-3 AD-5 Dead meat if attacked, but it can stick close to other units for protection.
SiG 38(t): GD-10 AD-10 About as tough as a mid-production Panzer III or IV. I don't think you really want to test how tough it is, which says it all, really.
Brummbär: GD-16 AD-12 Now we're talking. About it's range, which guarantees it will need that toughness. Great on defense, not so good on the offensive.
StuGIV arty: GD-15 AD-12 It rules. The end. To glorify this engine of destruction, let me posit the following :

For a mere 347 prestige, you will get two units. One unit, the one you sign up for and gets delivered to your frontlines, is a mediocre self-propelled anti-tank unit (SPAT). And I only call it mediocre because I'd get sued if I told the truth. It has two positive qualities: first, it's better than the JagdPzIV/48. Second, it carries more fuel than the StuGIII. This is especially useful after it fails (again!) to overcome even the most basic Allied tank, because it burns so much longer than the rest, making it a better torch to shine a light on the dismal failure you've just bought. Based on these two qualities, I conclude that this is a SPAT for people who hate SPAT's, and want to watch them burn on the battlefield. Even the enemy recon units breathe a sigh of relief when these babies come rumbling out of the fog.

But what is that? This little button, that looks like a tank in a crosshair, why is it all shiny? Is it trying to tell me something? Is it a self-destruct button, to save me time? Why, let me press it... It's a transformer! And this 'mediocre' SPAT turns into this marvellous machine, an artillery unit. But what sort of artillery unit?

5 move, 53 fuel, 6 ammo. Almost like the Hummel.
Ground defense 16, air defense 12, close defense 1, and it's a hard target. No, this is more like the Brummbär.
Range 2. Mmmh, not good for getting at those far-away targets or supressing opposing arty, but it can reach anything that is next to the unit it is supporting. And because it is tough it can be risked and moved next to enemy units to try and reach out at their supporting units. Good enough for supporting offensive operations with units that can stand up to enemy artillery strikes.
Soft attack 7. Ouch, not good. But it will supress very nicely, and these go to eleven... (shots, that is, it's rate of fire is 11).
Hard attack 10... Sold. I'll take four.

It's only missing one thing, it should come with a warning label on the barrel: This side up!

[Kamerer]

I wonder if I should switch my Hummels to sIG 38t, but it's not worth it at this point probably...
For towed artillery I rarely go beyond 15 sFH because their ammo capacity advantage gets lost with higher caliber. I mostly use them for suppression and have no idea how much better a 21 cm artillery would do.

I might upgrade the F190A to D9, though I wonder if giving up their fuel/range advantage is worth it.

1) I usually use an equal number sIG 38(t) and Hummels, all the way to end-45 (e.g., in GCE 44 or 45, two of each alongside the captured SU-122s). One type where I anticipate less movement/more change of air attack, the other where movement is more valuable.
2) 21cm artillery is devestating on anything short of an IS-type tank. It will put enough suppresson on any tank even (and often those, too), than an air attack will never take damage. They will do in one shot, once experienced and overstrength, what any other two non-rcoket pieces of artillery will do. It is rarely vital to move/fire them every single turn, so the ammo is not an issue with thoughtful management. I like to play on "Rommel" with reduced prestige, and I do not reinforce units during the game turns. They are vital to success, especially in AK where prestige is a little tighter than in the eastern GC's.
3) As he said, the dora is not at all worth it. The base 190 has plenty of juice and fantastic range - even in '45 I keep them alongside Me262's for that reason. In those environments, three 190As and two Me262s provide complete dominance at all times. The Me109K is good, but in the east you can't wait for it, too long a gap. In the time-compressed AK chronology, upgrade and optimal weapon choices are slightly different.