as I promised to Harry, I'll try to describe here how does the AI manage artillery on behalf you the player. The system was reviewed during development of build 258, resulting in a number of changes and fixes that the patch notes only mention in passing (see the reference to static artillery units not firing).
When one of your forces makes a request for artillery support, the request is propagated through the player-defined command structure, and received by all eligible artillery units. When certain conditions are met, there's a chance that the arty unit will accept the request and become part of the available pool of on-call artillery support. There are 3 factors influencing the chances of the request being honored:
1) The ammo level of the artillery unit. The less ammunition is available on hand, the lower the chances for the request to be honored.
2) The distance between the unit making the request and the artillery unit along the player-defined command structure. For instance, the chances of artillery assigned to a different Corps than that of the unit making the request are very low. There's as well an asymmetry between Axis and Allied powers: the decrease in the chances of the request being honored as the command distance increases are steeper for the Axis than for the Allies.
3) The Judgement rating of the artillery unit immediate HQ commander. When the Judgement level is below 50, the chances of the artillery unit committing will become more erratic, sometimes lowering it, sometimes increasing it. This accounts for dubious or unsound commanders, which either conserve their ammunition too much (think of the Isaldwhana quartermaster) or happily commits his unit to too many requests (running out of ammo very quickly).
The question some of you might be wanting to ask is: so, how does this may influence how I approach Command Ops?
Attached to this post I have uploaded a savegame of our beloved Hofen scenario on Day 2 (with my plan which consisted in stockpiling supplies and resting during Day 1, criticism is welcome). As you can see, I have already positioned I/752, I/753 and I/751 to launch an assault over Monschau and Hofen. In the screenshot you'll be able to see that I have attached some (not all) of the artillery assets of 326 VG Division to the Battalion. By doing this, I am quite certain that the infantry conducting the assault will receive as much artillery support as they need and the Axis doctrine and command structure is able to provide.
This does not only help at having the arty directing fires for me, it also helps the AI planning considerably. Note that mission planning assesses the combat strength of the force against the strength of the enemy forces near the mission objective (the latter mediated by the available intel on those enemy forces), and might take some questionable decisions if it's not sure it's stronger than the enemy.
If you let the game run and wait until 8:20-9:20 you'll should see how as the US troops in Monschau and Hofen are uncovered a quite satisfactory rain of steel falls over them.
