Artillery support units

[smokindave34]

I have a question on artillery support units. When playing as the axis I don't see a lot of artillery support units available to add to my divisions. Most corps/armies only have one or two available arty units to select (some have none). Is this expected? I thought there would be more artillery units to choose from? When playing as the Soviets I can build arty units and have many available - I know I can't build them as axis but it just seems like there are a lot fewer available to the axis.

One thing I do is set my army group/army HQ's to zero support units to try and drive my support units to the corps - could this be limiting my arty units? Thanks.

[JAMiAM]

After one too many times of seeing my artillery units clumping together in some Corps HQs, leaving others completely dry, I made the switch to simply playing with HQs locked in all my games. It costs you a bit more in terms of spending APs to get things where you really want them, but at least then they generally stay put. Except for the construction type SUs, of course. They still move about based on the AI's whims and not your own...

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: smokindave34

I have a question on artillery support units. When playing as the axis I don't see a lot of artillery support units available to add to my divisions. Most corps/armies only have one or two available arty units to select (some have none). Is this expected? I thought there would be more artillery units to choose from? When playing as the Soviets I can build arty units and have many available - I know I can't build them as axis but it just seems like there are a lot fewer available to the axis.

One thing I do is set my army group/army HQ's to zero support units to try and drive my support units to the corps - could this be limiting my arty units? Thanks.

Yep, what you see is what was there historically. I do as James does. Lock my Hq's and slowly balance out the various corps.

[heliodorus04]

I made an Excel spreadsheet with a row for every corps
and a column for all arty type SUs, a column for stugs, a column for pioneers, and a column for panzerjaegers. I try to even out the corps so that they have pretty good mixes available. It does take AP, and time, and concentration over a few turns to get it all right.

Look at the AGC blue and green Armies that start in the north and west from Brest-Litovsk. One of them has something like 14 arty SUs (I include guns and howitzers and nebelwerfers). They are arty whores.

I also don't think the panzer corps need more than 1 or 2 actual gun units (I use nebelwerfers more there), because your panzer HQs move a lot, making SU allocation less likely in a lot of instances where your HQs need to move before panzers fight. And also, panzers don't need to be fighting too much, especially deliberate attacks, so I'd move guns out of there to the infantry. By contrast, panzers need more pioneers, I think.

Anyway, I use a combination of Locking HQs and reducing the whore-corps by setting a low value. Usually 3 will do it, so corps feed to armies. Set armies to 5 or 9 as you need, and set the Army Groups to 9, and OKH to 9. If you get everything passively passed up to an Army Group or OKH, it's very easy (1 AP) to pull it down to the corps that needs it. It just takes 2 turns. And if I recall correctly, at least last time I played Axis, you can assign an SU to a corps and it can still support battles that turn.

[LiquidSky]

I like to concentrate in favoured armies. I put all three flam panzer bns in one of the SS motorized divisions. I fill the 18th and 16th armies with the pioneers (3 per division) so they can take down the forts in front of leningrad. For fun, I put the three MG BNs in the Polezi SS div. Its fun seeing it dish out 1-2k casualties while taking only a little bit (or none) itself.

I also notice that I get extra SU's attached during combat sometimes. I thought that it might be normal behaviour but now I am thinking, no. The most I saw was my three permanently attached with three others the computer attached for that combat. (of a single german div)

For example:





The Jagdpanzer Bn and two Stug Bns were attached by me...I did a hasty attack (within 5 hexes of my HQ) and the computer added the Howitzer and LW Bn's as well, for a total of 5 SU's for my Div on the attack.

[Garth Vader]

Haha I made a spreadsheet too. I had everything locked and didn't think about trying to change the level like that until I had almost got everything done manually. Nice to know there is a better way for next game!

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

I made an Excel spreadsheet with a row for every corps
and a column for all arty type SUs, a column for stugs, a column for pioneers, and a column for panzerjaegers. I try to even out the corps so that they have pretty good mixes available. It does take AP, and time, and concentration over a few turns to get it all right.

Look at the AGC blue and green Armies that start in the north and west from Brest-Litovsk. One of them has something like 14 arty SUs (I include guns and howitzers and nebelwerfers). They are arty whores.

I also don't think the panzer corps need more than 1 or 2 actual gun units (I use nebelwerfers more there), because your panzer HQs move a lot, making SU allocation less likely in a lot of instances where your HQs need to move before panzers fight. And also, panzers don't need to be fighting too much, especially deliberate attacks, so I'd move guns out of there to the infantry. By contrast, panzers need more pioneers, I think.

Anyway, I use a combination of Locking HQs and reducing the whore-corps by setting a low value. Usually 3 will do it, so corps feed to armies. Set armies to 5 or 9 as you need, and set the Army Groups to 9, and OKH to 9. If you get everything passively passed up to an Army Group or OKH, it's very easy (1 AP) to pull it down to the corps that needs it. It just takes 2 turns. And if I recall correctly, at least last time I played Axis, you can assign an SU to a corps and it can still support battles that turn.

[smokindave34]

OK - thanks for the help. It sounds like I need to manage my support units a bit better. I was attempting to get more arty units to AGN to take down the forts around Leningrad but didn't realize that AGC had so many artillery units tied up to it. Thanks again.

[PyleDriver]

Once you get the hang of the game, you have to play with support units locked. Otherwise you never know where the AI sends them...

[lazydawg]

ORIGINAL: PyleDriver

Once you get the hang of the game, you have to play with support units locked. Otherwise you never know where the AI sends them...

PyleDriver,

The photo of Guderian that you use is interesting. In the uncropped version of the photo, the communications guy can be seen pecking away on an Enigma machine. You can see his head and headphones at the bottom of your photo.

[PyleDriver]

Ya, I had to crop it in orded to fit. It is a cool picture of him and his staff getting ready to cross the Meuse...