Slitherine

I had a city with a bunker completely surrounded with artillery, tanks, infantry for a full mass attack and it still took me more than 2 turns to bring it down on the lowest difficulty level.

Is this normal, a glitch, bad luck or am I missing something

Did you attack with Pioniere or Paratroopers/Fallschirmjager? They have a bonus against forts/bunkers.

By definition a bunker is heavily entrenched so they get a big boost to defense. It's really not uncommon that it may take multiple turns to bring down forts.

Usually I start with using artillery to try to supress the fort so there is less chance of them returning fire, then I would attack with engineers and paratroopers, if the fort is low (2-3 strength) I would try to knock it out with a tank.

Yeah depends on the entrenchment. If a bunker or fort unit is entrenched at level 7 or 8 they are incredibly tough. They key is to bring down that entrenchment first, then suppress and attack with paratroppers or pioneers or something. Bunker busting artillery helps also (the stugs are, aren't they?) Sometimes this can take 2 turns, that's not unusual. tanks are usually pretty useless here unless the entrenchment is already low and the bunker is supressed a bit. otherwise the tank might take heavy damage or at least do nearly nothing itself (but waste the supression). Strategic Bombers help here too. Much more useful than tactical bombers against bunkers (since tacticals don't do much against entrenched bunkers and usually take heavy losses themselves)

A side question, my tank was force to retreat and could choice between two open hexes and a forest hexe, went in the forest... got destroyed (no enemy in adjacent open hexes) if it a chosen the open ground it would had survived.

later on, same thing with a Fallschirmjager who should have chosen a montain hexe to survive instead commited suicide in open field...
are those idiot units deserved to be reform or are they victim of a bad dice roll...thanks

retreat is deterministic, not random, but terrain plays not into that at all. The unit just tries to get as far away as possible from the attacker and given two equal choices takes the clockwise route. Besides. how's the unit supposed to know which terrain is better. If the tank had been attacked by air next the forrest would have been the perfect choice. If attacked by infantry... not so much. But the unit can never know who will attack it next. So that just cannot be done.

Retreating untis always move directly backwards when that hex is open, to a side when another unit is there. I use this as an attacking tactic all the time. By attacking from a certain hex, you can force a unit to retreat into a hex thats to your advantage when you attack with the next unit. In AC im have great success using this to force Tigers/Panters back into hexs that my infantry can then take them out. My infantry have killed just about every one of the those big cats my Allied armies have faced!!!

Rood wrote:Did you attack with Pioniere or Paratroopers/Fallschirmjager? They have a bonus against forts/bunkers.

No, but I will do now! Thanks!

KeldorKatarn wrote:Yeah depends on the entrenchment. If a bunker or fort unit is entrenched at level 7 or 8 they are incredibly tough.

Yes, that must have been the case, I should have checked that. Thanks for your other suggestions, they're very helpful.

Anfield wrote:By attacking from a certain hex, you can force a unit to retreat into a hex thats to your advantage when you attack with the next unit.

Great tip.

For retreating, not that a unit will only retreat if it has entrenchment 0 at the END of the attack (meaning 1 or 0 before the attack). So a heavily entrenched unit cannot be forced to retreat.

Pioneers/engineers are great for attacking entrenched units in general, and especially good for attacking forts. I've seen people listing their core units in various forum threads, often with no infantry except grenadiers/heavy weapons. Which leaves me scratching my head. How in the world do these guys do without pioneers?

Question 1: I can't find any engineers. I'm assuming that you guys mean " Brückenpioniere", right?

Question 2: where can I see that pioneers have a bonus against bunkers?

All I see is this when I compare my grenadier with a pioneer:

Sadly the traits and special abilities are not displayed in the UI. Pioneers ignore all entrenchment bonuses of a unit they attack making them especially good on routing heavily entrenched units out. Additionally they got the "fortkiller" trait giving them bonus attack against structures.

Engineers are what pioneer equivalent units are called in the U.S. and British army lists. Similarly, the grenadier equivalent units are referred to as heavy weapons. Do not confuse pioneers with bridge engineers. Bridge engineers do not have the "Meng" (presumably an abbreviation of military engineer) trait, which lets pioneers ignore entrenchments.

Note that ignoring entrenchments not only means doing far more damage against entrenched troops, it also means the entrenched troops get no chance of rugged defense.

I really think for Soviet Corps or some other future upgrade the traits and stuff like ROF should be integrated into the UI. Maybe organizing that unit stat list in two tabs? One tab showing the stats, the other traits and other stuff?
Also it might be cool to have an option to have the game show the stats including hero and XP bonuses, so real unit comparison in the game is easier.

I've seen a lot of people request this so far. maybe it's worth implementing.

AP59 wrote:Question 1: I can't find any engineers. I'm assuming that you guys mean " Brückenpioniere", right?

The engineers are 'Pioniere', they have the attack bonus against forts. The 'Brückenpioniere' are bridge engineers, they are just for crossing rivers, and do not get this attack bonus.

Question 2: where can I see that pioneers have a bonus against bunkers?

You can see it on the combat log. Attack a fort with a Pioniere or Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers), and press 'L'. In the window, under attack values, will be the hard attack value of the unit, followed by a line of text: 'Fort killer +5', meaning in case of the Pioniere it attacks forts with 3 + 5 = 8 hard attack (HA).

Attacking forts in city tiles is tricky because of the entrenchment cap of this terrain type. Pioniere and Fallschirmjäger should work pretty well, but some extra support won't hurt. So try to soften up the target with artillery or strategic bombers first, it will help to reduce losses and deal more damage.

If the fort is out in the open, or if it is suppressed, tanks with high HA and INI work reasonably well, I use the 88mm Flak gun in Anti-tank mode a lot, it deals a lot of damage, and if it is experienced it doesn't need much support. But be careful of the terrain, otherwise you cannot exploit the high initiative of these units due to the initiative cap.

(German) units which have an attack bonus versus forts are:

- Fallschirmjäger (incl. the '43 version)
- Pioniere (incl. the '43 version)

- Panzer II Flamm

- StuG IIIA
- StuG IIIB
- StuH 42 (artillery mode only)
- Brummbär

Thanks ThvN for your extensive post, that's very useful information, I appreciate it!