Question about attacks

[Remmes]

I played the Joe's bridge scenario a couple of times, but my forces always seem to become a tangled mess. Is it because of too much micromanaging? The scenario has only 1 obvious approach to the objective. My plan was to conduct an all-out attack on the objective and peel off some units when reaching the northern bank of the canal to venture through the woods and screen the flanks. The attack appears to stall when i take those units away. Does the AI reorg or recalculate if ido this? Any insight would be welcome.
Thanks,

Ramses

Although I only just scratched the surface of this game, I have the feeling it is a real gem. Played the demo multiple times and from both sides and no 2 games were ever the same. The AI came up with some real surprises. It does take a while to get the mechanics right though (a personal observation - not a complaint).

[henri51]

Yes, peeling off units during an operation (while not resting) forces a reorganization of the whole group. So if you are giving orders at the battalion level, the whole battalion must reorganize, and if you gave the assault order to the Division HQ, the whole division will stop and reorg! Contrary to intuition, taking control of sub-units INCREASES the workload of the Division HQ, and if you micromanage every sub-unit, your Division HQ can become overloaded and everything slows to a crawl because YOU are the overloaded Division commander.There is a button to check on the capacity of HQs.

In the Joe's Bridge scenario, you CAN give the division orders to assault and place the reorg point not too far from the attack point (behind the woods and factory), but you have to be careful not to let them go along the river road, especially if you give them a high aggro, because they will stop to shoot at the Germans on the other side of the river and when I did it that way, it was past midnight by the time the attack at the bridge got under way.

The way to avoid that is to give an intermediate move point before the reorg point along the lower road so that the units will not go along the river road. Perhaps giving them a low aggro might do the trick too, but I have not tried it.

Don"t forget that you have a powerful recon unit directly under the Division HQ that you can use to probe, serve as a reserve, or even assault. And if you are giving orders to the Battalion HQs instead of to the Division HQ, do not forget to move the Division HQ closer to the objective (say behind the factory) when it is safe, but not along the river road. The big artillery guns can stay where they are and I found it better to command them directly myself, but I left the mortars under command of the Battalion HQs.

Henri

[Remmes]

Thanks for the insight Henri. Will 'play' with the aggro settings, to see if it makes a difference. Not sure what to do with the attack order because I do want to peel off a couple of units.

[henri51]

I played it again last night and gave the assault order directly to the Division HQ and gave waypoints through the center to avoid running along the river. It took almost until the next morning before the Assault got under way, and I only managed to get a marginal victory. When I previously got a Decisive victory, I probably gave the brigade HQs the assault orders but with waypoints avoiding running along the river and the FUP behind the woods and factory. I may have given one battalion orders to attack from the South and the other from the East, but I don't remember for sure.

It is almost certain that if you can take the bridge on day 2, there is a pretty good chance that you can hold all 3 objectives by the end for a decisive victory. The thing to avoid (which is what happened last night) if for your units to start taking fire from across the river as they approach the bridge and stop to exchange fire instead of assaulting. This may perhaps be avoided by not putting the aggro setting too high, which results in units stopping to fire at every chicken crossing the road.

My impression was that a higher aggro meant that they would attack more aggressively, but in cases like this it may well be the opposite. Maybe one of the developers can clear up this point.

Henri

[Arjuna]

A high aggro mean a greater probability of engaging the enemy and yes this may indeed mean that they tay put firing rather than moving to their objective.