Slitherine

The briefing to this scenario tells about the dam on the river and further instruction on its destruction. Nothing happened when I played. Does anyone know what triggers the dam event?

Did you play as the Russians or Americans? If you play as Americans and destroy the engineer unit, the damn will not break and the map will not flood and become impassible.

I think it was designed to help the Russian commander defeat the western Allies as the Allies send a massive amount of armor against the Russian player and the Russian line inevitably begins to collapse toward the end. I played as the Russians and managed to stop the northern and central attacks on the battlefield. The southern arm was beginning to break through and turn my left flank and I had to pull the units into the forest. It came as a pleasant surprise when my engineer unit showed up and destroyed the dam by attacking it. The way my line was set up was perfect to have the water destroy almost every Allied unit except for the southern attack force. Now with the entire Allied army underwater in the north and center, I then turned my entire army against the Americans on my side of the dam break and easily annihilated them. The IS-3's are God units and the 14 strength one can one shot about anything.

I played the stand-alone scenario... I have yet to get there in campaign mode. I'd love to have some IS-3's available by the last scenario.

Rayrard wrote:Did you play as the Russians or Americans? If you play as Americans and destroy the engineer unit, the damn will not break and the map will not flood and become impassible.

I think it was designed to help the Russian commander defeat the western Allies as the Allies send a massive amount of armor against the Russian player and the Russian line inevitably begins to collapse toward the end. I played as the Russians and managed to stop the northern and central attacks on the battlefield. The southern arm was beginning to break through and turn my left flank and I had to pull the units into the forest. It came as a pleasant surprise when my engineer unit showed up and destroyed the dam by attacking it. The way my line was set up was perfect to have the water destroy almost every Allied unit except for the southern attack force. Now with the entire Allied army underwater in the north and center, I then turned my entire army against the Americans on my side of the dam break and easily annihilated them. The IS-3's are God units and the 14 strength one can one shot about anything.

I played the stand-alone scenario... I have yet to get there in campaign mode. I'd love to have some IS-3's available by the last scenario.

It works for stand-alone scenario on medium difficulty when you have 16 turns with engineer appearing on turn 12. It did not work in my campaign. I played on Konev difficulty and this scenario had 11 turns only. My core force was strong enough to keep the opponent by the river crossings in the center and south. So I tried to give up on purpose one southern victory point then another - nothing happened. I guess it is the turn number that triggers the event not the loss of the victory point. If it is true then it is not possible to achieve triumph victory on hardest levels. Since the flood does not destroy some opponent units you have to destroy them yourself. It is possible but it is simply not enough turns to do that. Need few more turns to finish the campaign with Triumph.

Playing on difficulty level where turn count is lowered by -5 has many drawbacks. First it is the fixed number of turns being subtracted. -5 in 15 turns scenario is not the same as -5 in 30 turns scenario. Second it actually favors defender in scenarios where objective is to hold hexes because it ends game prematurely but if objective is to destroy enemy units it makes scenario increasingly difficult. And at last all events that are about to happen in last 5 turns are simply not going to trigger. I do not think this difficulty level provides an elegant solution for all situations to be in during play.

Maybe the engineers don't appear in case you haven't managed to keep control of the victory hexes? In that case you're probably doomed, because you can't actually buy IS3 units to turn the tide. Managed to win the campaign on Field Marshall but can't imagine a win on any higher setting; this last one's brutal.