Slitherine

Long time player and creeper on the forums. I love the game and have been addicted since I started out on Allied General 20 years ago. I have been trying to play an optimized GC East and have been struggling with one thing, hills. I try to always have infantry in close terrain and almost all other units not in close terrain, when in a position when contact is possible with the enemy. I love infantry and really enjoy chewing through armor in favorable positions. Forest, swamp, bocage, city/port, mountains all are very useful for defending/attacking for infantry. Hills, however, with their higher initiative cap, seem to be a tough position for most unit types. Infantry seldom gets the first shot in with the initiative cap being higher than other close terrain. Armor seems to struggle as well because you are defending with close defense not ground defense. I rarely leave an exposed frontline unit without artillery support, but I just don't know if there is a unit that excels in this terrain type. I play on Manstein + Rommel, not Ultimate like Braccada, Soren Tjerry and the like, the -5 turns from schneller Heinz Guderian is too much for me. It is a pain in the ass to defend hills on GC East from heavy armor hitting your infantry and equally with Guards/SMG hitting your armor. Setting up double artillery support isn't always possible and one can't always avoid this terrain. Any suggestions for dealing with hills?

Welcome to the forum... How do Gebirgsjäger (or other nation mountain troops) hold up in hills from your experience?

They have the advantage of alpine movement that ignores hills/mountain, so they are easier to get in position. I enjoy using a few of them, but any infantry, including grenadiers, seem to take heavier losses in hills versus any other close terrain type. A T-34 or KV-1 will attack a 3* infantry in hills, but will not attack the same unit in a town, forest or swamp. Likewise, infantry will attack a 3* StuG IIIG in hills, but not in any open terrain. I understand artillery support is critical and can prevent attacks when artillery is visible on non-rainy days, but this terrain type seems like a gray area.

That might happen on manstein, but on rommel, i dont remember having a full strength 3* infantery attacked on a hill with a decent artillery back up. What i would do then is put inf with defense heroes if you have any on the hills.

Hills are good for any unit that has 5 Initiative, so it will use all its initiative while the attacker has less than 5 (like most infantry units) or a higher initiative capped down to 5, such as a tank.
So the Hills might me good for a 5cm Pak38 ( INI 5) or Pak40 (INI 6); better than other close terrain, given the same entrenchment.
Or a Fallschirmjager '43, that has INI 5.

Good stuff, gentlemen. I never thought about the towed AT in that position. Seems likely to still be attacked by most Soviet infantry, however. Fallschirmjager with a defense hero seems like the answer I was looking for. I'll have to try it out. Thank you for the help.

Or oleh dir when in doubt.

Ursulet wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2020 7:37 am Or oleh dir when in doubt.

Early towed AT can be surprisingly effective in hills. But often it's better to leave the first line of close terrain empty so that the enemy moves in. This keeps your artillery out of normal spotting range and traps the enemy in close terrain after getting blasted by the defensive fire.

It would be nice to be able to give specialist troops a small combat bonus in their specialist terrain or conditions (eg mountain troops get +1 A or D in mountains, ski troops in snow, and maybe Japanese troops get a combat bonus in jungle). This is way beyond my skills - the peak of my hacking was giving myself extra arrows at the start of Rogue. Since this also crashed the game if I got close to the end, maybe it's just as well I stopped there.

The lower initiative of towed AT, PaK 38 and PaK 40 so far, has been fairly effective at holding hills. Thank you for the advice. Supported by a Nebelwerfer or a 10.5cm, with high ROF and good soft attack has been a good infantry deterrent, unless it rains. Thanks captainjack for the suggestion of leaving some close terrain to attack into. I have been defending differently this playthrough and have had very good results. As for Oleh Dir, he is too damn valuable for offensive surgical work to leave parked on the front waiting.

Assquatch wrote: ↑Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:48 am The lower initiative of towed AT, PaK 38 and PaK 40 so far, has been fairly effective at holding hills.

This is indeed good stuff. You may have to change tactics in the coming years though. Russian SU-122's & SU-152's, with a range of 3, will cheerfully bombard your AT units at range and likely cause significant casualties. Perhaps the best thing to do will be to upgrade your towed AT units to mobile ones.

Assquatch wrote: ↑Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:48 am The lower initiative of towed AT, PaK 38 and PaK 40 so far, has been fairly effective at holding hills. Thank you for the advice. Supported by a Nebelwerfer or a 10.5cm, with high ROF and good soft attack has been a good infantry deterrent, unless it rains. Thanks captainjack for the suggestion of leaving some close terrain to attack into. I have been defending differently this playthrough and have had very good results. As for Oleh Dir, he is too damn valuable for offensive surgical work to leave parked on the front waiting.

This is a valid point as when I was a baby with this game and plowing through the gc for the 1st time I was way too aggressive on Sedan and ended up getting Oleh Dir force surrendered.

I have learned a lot since those newbie times