Anyone get a decisive in Spartan's at the Pass yet?

[HansBolter]

Back before the Christmas holidays I remember a thread asking if anyone had managed a decisive victory with the Germans in the Spartans at the Pass scenario.

I hadn't yet given that one a go at that time and decided that when I got back to COTA after the holiday hiatus I would make that goal my primary focus. I have to admit that after several playings and attempts at different tactics I have consistently come up short. Has anyone managed it yet?

Meeting the exit requirement for the eastern route doesn't even seem to be a challenge. It is getting those infantry regiments to the south exit that seems to be the biggest challenge.

Once I tried sending the tank Bn that arrives on day three to the south to assist with breaking open a route for the infantry. All was going well, and it looked like I might get an infantry Bn to the southern exit in time, when I noticed the the tank BN that starts the game on the board had become too heavily attrited to satify the eastern exit requirement. As there is no armor exit requirement in the south, the BN I sent there was for creating a breakthrough only.

On the next attempt, I sent the reinforcement tank BN to the east, it bypassed the lead tank BN and exited to provide me with the full armor exit requirement. I found this odd as it has 41 tanks, which provided the full 200 points of required exit firepower and the lead BN starts with 50, but was attrited to 37 in the prior game where it only provided 133 points of the necessary 200. I also noticed the the day three schutze Bn falls short of meeting the eastern exit requirement for infantry and either the recon Bn or the pioneer Bn have to be sent off as additional exit units to meet the requirement. The numerical exit requirements do not seem to jive with the scenario breifing which states that the German commander needs to exit a tank Bn and a motorised infantry Bn.

I guess if I can get the lead tank Bn to the eastern exit point without becoiming so heavily attrited that they satisfy the exit requirement then I can use the reinforcement BN to assist with a breakthrough in the south. One key to getting the infantry passed the choke point of the town objective in the middle of the pass is to send one regiment at the objective and slip the other around it to the south, keeping to the south of the woods/forest, which provide a nice fire block to allow them to skirt by with the recon BN. It just seems that the recon Bn doesn't have the oomph to force a breakthrough the way the follow up tank BN does.

The bottom line seems to me to be that the distance the two infantry regiments have to cover to reach the southern exit is an excessive distance to expect foot sloggers to cover against a determined foe with good artillery support in the time given. With another 24 or even 12 hours I do believe it would become achievable.

I haven't completely thrown in the towel and will continue beating my head against the mountain wall in dogged determination to get that elusive decisive victory, but I am curious if anyone else has managed it yet.

[Arjuna]

HansBolter,
 
Would you like me to add another day to the scenario length?

[06 Maestro]

I tried to beat the AI in this scenario at least ten times. I got close 2 times-it's just too tough for the Axis side. After reading about the real battle, the Germans did in fact fail in their main mission of cutting off the Allied units to the west. Although Malos was captured, and the Allied side forced to withdraw, it was not accomplished in a timely enough fashion for it to be a great German victory.
Sad to say, but the scenario is actually ballanced fairly well. A decent German player will capture important objectives and force the Brits to retire (mostly), but will not exit to the south early enough (if at all) within the allotted time. This is the historical outcome IIRC.

Someone did report a marginal victory as the German side a couple of months ago.

This is a very interesting scenario, but a little frustrating until you realize that the German side is not meant to win-if you can win, then you are very, very, good.

[MarkShot]

I'll check my records tomorrow. It sounds like one I had played.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

HansBolter,

Would you like me to add another day to the scenario length?

Absolutely not!

[Arjuna]

[:D]

[RedDevil]

I did, but unfortunately I had a (self inflicted) problem with my computer and lost the save games.

I think I remember the strategy I followed though, so I will try to re-apply it and post a quick AAR.

Cheers,

Michele

[MarkShot]

I played it about 16 months ago with Build 3115 as the Allies.

My scenario review notes for the beta testing reported a decisive victory in what appeared to me to be a very lopsided scenario. I have not tried this as the Axis.

Sorry.

[RedDevil]

Hello Hans,

Following up my previous post...

I think we should seriously ask the boss to tweak a bit this scenario, because I truly believe it is impossible to win a decisive victory as German.

I played twice the scenario in the past week and the closest I got was 100 - 77 (actually more like 105-77 if it wasn't for the 100VP cap). Still 27 victory points away from a decisive but believe me, I kicked the allied a** hard.

Since I was frustrated I started a game as the Allied to discover that:
- the total bombard power amounts to more than 1000 [:-] no wonder they could stop simultaneously all my three axes of attack and still find some time to do some healthy counter-battery
- the total victory points the allied could get is about 180 vs about 150 for the axis. I am not surprised the allied always got about 80 VP
- some of the objectives for the allied are very deep behind the front line and there is no way for the axis to get to contest them
- some of the objectives are way off the axis of advance (there are at least 18 VP that can be denied to the allied by sending troops down the west road although these troops won't be able to exit the map), other off the beaten track objectives in the East side could deny another 12 - 15 points. Unfortunately you have to be extremely lucky to be able to get troops around these objectives meeting the punishing time scales of the scenario designer.
- just by withdrawing 7-9 arty units to the Eest it is possible to make 20 easy VP.

As for the axis side I do not have much to complain, actually achieving 100 VP is quite challenging, but if I have to be picky then...
- 38 VP are allocated to the "destroy the enemy objective" where the briefing as well as the other VPs suggest not to waste time in attrition but go instead for the exit areas ASAP.
- the flak reinforcement comes without any transportation and it basically cannot reach the battlefront

In summary I think that the design of the scenario should make the allied life a bit harder. At present just by sitting on your hands and using the arty wisely it is not difficult to score 51 points. A good start could be to reduce the overall potential score, force the allied to hold less objectives for more time in more strategically important locations. Also reconsidering the distribution of the VP for the axis could help implementing different strategies.

I can post some pics of my +23 marginal victory if interested.

Cheers

RedDevil

[Arjuna]

Red Devil,
 
Better yet, why don't you mod the scenario in the ScenMaker, save it under a different name, try it out and whe your happy with it, post it up here for all to have a go. I'm sure then that everyone can contribute to its refinement.
 
But a tough challenge can be fun! [:)]

[RedDevil]

I have actually started to do just that this afternoon on a train from Brussels to London.

Re a tough challenge can be fun I fully agree, as long as it is a fair challenge though.

Will keep you posted.

Cheers,

RedDevil

[Arjuna]

Hey...good luck. [:)]

[HansBolter]

I ended up with another marginal victory lasy night. I don't remember the fianl point total, but it was the first time I succeeded in getting a substantial force off the south exit point. I got full credit for the eastern exit and about 30% of the southern exit requirement while holding all the required objectives.

However, I agree that the destroy enemy objective suffers heavily when you bypass with sufficient speed to get to the exits. In most prior games I managed about 15-17 points on the destroy enemy objective while last night I had a measely 9. I am encouraged by the fact that I have finally found a set of tactics that facilitates a breakthrough to the south, so with a little luck with a few more attempts I may finally be able to pull off that decisivce.

[RedDevil]

This being the case Hans, I will hold before embarking in the mission of redesigning the allied objectives to balance the game.

Normally I can get all the troops I want out of the South exit points while I have some difficulties in meeting the East exit point requirements... maybe we should agree on an exchange of prisoners (i.e. plans) [:)].

My average destroy the enemy objective is 7, although as I wrote the issue for me is not achieving 100 VP but rather preventing the allies to score less than 51 VP.

[HansBolter]

I got sick near the end of last week and it lingered into the weekend so I didn't get another chance to beat my head on that brick wall again. So far, the best I can do is a 100 point marginal.

Twice I have been close to achieving both exit requirements and fell short on one of each on each try. I'm still not too sure that even making both exit requirements will get the decisive with the Destroy Enemy task so incomplete.

If I can figure out how to apply some rudimentary graphics to a screen shot with Paint. I'll try and put together a post in the next few days that outlines the plan I have used to get to the 100 point plateau. Maybe if we compare plans we can come up with a winner together.

[RedDevil]

Hello Hans,
 
I also have sort of given up. Scoring more than 100 points does not help because 100 is the maximum you are awarded, in other words any point above 100 is "wasted". My best so far is +23 (+50 is needed for a decisive victory)
 
As I wrote in the post above, I "cheated" and took a look at the Allied side objectives. The problem therefore is not really achieving 100 points but rather how to stop the allied player to achieve more than 50. Personally I think it is nearly impossible and this is why I was toying with the idea of modifying the scenario to make it more challenging for the Allied.
 
As for my strategy I will post a pic or two this evening (don't expect many surprises though...)