My first go! Blitzkrieging innen der kiddie pool.

[GaryChildress]

Just bought this game and am still learning as I go. The graphics remind me a little of Civilization I but it's definitely a lot more complex than Civ I. A lot of fun actually.

I'm doing an AAR in hopes that others may drop by and give me a little advice since I'm really not sure what I'm doing at this point.

I've started my first all out war against the AI. I did a basic start with a small map and a single opponent set to "regular" AI (I believe). I'm playing as the Germans. I sort of twaddled around with the "stone age" starts, trying to play as though I were playing Civilization but I've come to realize that the real beauty of this game is in the warmongering. I think I've finally found my true calling in life! [:D]

So anyway, here's a screenie of where everything stands in the middle of turn #2. Here's the executive summary of what follows: I'M CLUELESS!

Well not completely but I really don't have much idea what I'm doing here. On turn 1 I created 4 fighter planes and 4 armored cars (not sure if that was a wise expenditure of scarce ore or not). I've also started to create horses (those farmers are really growing those colts quickly!) Since I have very little idea what I'm doing I've decided to get as much of my infantry on horseback as I can (within reasonable limits of course).

War has been declared by the AI against me. I started out with a single "Supreme" HQ and just established two additional HQs near where I expect at least some of the fighting to occur. Fortunately I seem to be set up pretty well on the map. My AI opponent must travel a considerable distance from the majority of his cities to get to the front line. I on the other hand have a reasonably short march to try to cut off two of his cities from the rest of his empire. On turn 2, I secured one of my most vulnerable ore deposits and stole one of his which was near my western border. I'm hoping that will slow Mr. Artificial down a little. I'm not sure though.

On the map below you can see how I have my command currently divided in a vain attempt to give my pixel truppen some semblance of assurance that I know what I'm doing. right now the new HQs are empty until I generate some staff and resources for them next turn. then I plan to assign units to them once they are staffed up.

[GaryChildress]

Here's my production summary getting ready for turn #3. I've already produced 4 armored cars and 4 fighter aircraft. Those were my high end (ore intensive) productions. I also produced some bazookas and mortars at the end of turn #1. The bazookas I'm mounting on horses to see if I can use them as a mobile anti-tank force in case Mr. Artificial decides to throw some armored cars at me early on. It appears that one horse can carry about 10 rifles/bazooks/mortars so I'm hoping to have a good portion of my forces on horseback soon. I guess that's a good idea, not sure...

I've divided up my production pretty equally with each HQ receiving production from 2 cities. I have 3 HQs and 6 cities to supply them with.

[GaryChildress]

EDIT: Woops, looks like I'll be having some major difficulties with screen shots at only 500kb/file. Yikes! [X(][:o]

[GaryChildress]

Turn #3: Mr. Artificial decided to send a small stack (pretty strong actually) toward one of my cities which I managed to surround. It will be interesting to see what the AI does now. Will it try to fight its way out or what will it do? The stack appears to be composed solely of riflemen, about 151 of them. If I can keep them cut off and let them dwindle on the vine that might be about a turn worth of production lost to him or her (or whatever gender the AI may be).

[ironduke1955]

I guess you know how the command system works, STF 100% is the optimum staffing level and gains the highest command bonus. Von Rundstedt has 35 staff giving him the 100% you have to keep adding and subtracting officers to achieve the 100% optimum. Don't forget the cards they can be a life saver Von Rundstedt has both a attack and defense card can boost a units performance by 40% depending on the commanders skill level. The commanders you start with will be green only through combat will they improve, and gain cards. You can see the bonus that Von Rundstedt gives to Combat 47% Morale 29% command is a big part of the game and if you manage it well you gain a big advantage over the AI, who does not.

And of course command penalties will accrue if the unit is more than 3 hexes away from its commander.

[GaryChildress]

I'm slowly getting accustomed to the command system. There are still a lot of things I don't understand yet. One thing I'm having trouble with in another game is getting supplies to flow across the water to a command I have set up on another shore. The command on the other shore has a port city in its control and there are no enemy warships blockading or anything but for some reason when I send supply via another city to that HQ most of it doesn't seem to get there. I can see where I have a couple hundred in surplus or whatever that wasn't produced or sent or whatever. I guess it takes some getting used to.

[ironduke1955]

Supplies across water are also subject to air interdiction any enemy air units within range and with capability will cause attrition losses. Plus you will need sea transport capability with the sending HQ, transports. The transports will suffer attrition losses if you manually transfer supply. To avoid supply attrition losses you could always load the supply into a HQ then load the HQ onto transports and move to the receiving port unload the HQ transfer the supply, reload the HQ return to original port rinse and repeat. Works well for short naval distances and is not subject to attrition losses.

[GaryChildress]

Basically my other game looks like this:

I've assigned a city on another shore to supply an HQ across the sea from it. The supplies aren't getting through to the HQ from the sending city. Both cities are "connected" by a sea which is beyond any enemy influence, air land or sea. Do I need to build cargo ships in one of the cities to get the supplies flowing? And if so should I build it in the sending city, the receiving city or the city with the HQ? [&:]

Thanks.

[ironduke1955]

From memory its a long time since I played the Vanilla. The sending HQ needs the Cargo Ships.
A HQ in a coastal town will automatically supply sub units if they are across water, and in a port, and unable to trace a land supply route, remember its port to port if the unit moves inland its out of supply.
there is no automatic transfer of supply from one HQ to another, to form a supply line.
you have to manually use the naval transport capacity of the sending HQ, this is based on the number of cargo vessels with that HQ.
Its the same for transferring units the HQ is limited by the number of cargo vessels with the HQ, so you have to make the choice of what to transport supplies or materials.

This represents the difficulty of maintaining units across oceans or seas. Think the US in Europe everything had to be shipped with finite capacity.

You can also transfer supply to ships at sea, I guess this represents naval resupply.

[GaryChildress]

Thanks for the tips. I'm still learning as I go. I discovered that if I right click on a destination while the supply button is active it will trace the route for me. I'll try to utilize that a little more. I'm trying to figure out weights for cargo ships and how many supply points a cargo ship can carry as I'm trying to load an HQ with supply onto the ship and if I put too much supply in the HQ then it will no longer load into the cargo ship. I checked the manual but didn't see a conversion table for supply to weight points. Does anyone know of any tables in existence which will tell me that?
 
Thanks.

[Twotribes]

A Hqs does in fact auto transfer supply across water. Just like it does on land. Assuming the port is in range.

[ironduke1955]

The carry capacity is on the unit description for this troop transport its 150.

Each point of transport can carry 10 supply, so 1500 supply on this one transport. Minus the 1 point of infantry or staff that you will have to add to the HQ to make the HQ transportable.

If you go to analysis in the unit description it will show you how many transport points have been used already.
in this case I have loaded 1000 points of supply into the HQ add to that the ships supply plus the 1 point of infantry the HQ itself has no weight but you can't just carry a HQ with supply you need one point of something else staff or any other unit type to transport.

Navy Carried is 109/150 you could load a extra 410 supply.

Regards Tables all the information about the unit is on the unit description pages, its carry capacity and weight= how many points of carry capacity it takes to carry one point of that type of unit, take infantry for example, 1 Infantry has a weight of 10, so this transport can carry 15 infantry.