First win!

[Hofstadter]

Finally managed to get a minor victory in the 43 campaign as the allies. Got about 550 poimts with my line stretched from just behind dusseldorf.

It was so hard to scrape that win. In all the aars ive read, especially harry bananas, the ai pulled back their lines really quickly, but the ai in my game was tenacious as hell and just refused to back off. Even when i invaded at piombino it took them about 7 turns for them to form the ravenna line, and even then that was disjointed because they still hung back a few units to block me.

i think the main contributor to this was my constant pushing of units. I have no sense of when to pull them back and refit, because that leaves gaps in my lines. Plus i wasnt very good at blasting the railways, i kept trying to get those godforsaken v weapon vps off my back.

But, considering i am terrible at these games with my lack of foresight and attention span of an ant, i am quite happy with this. And with this knowledge, time to get completely annihilated in challenging!

[carlkay58]

Congratulations on your first win. Now you have a benchmark to attempt to improve on. The AI is very variable and will be different in some ways in each game you play.

[cmunson]

Congrats on the win. It too took me some time to beat the AI. Gary has done a good job with the German AI and despite over a dozen campaigns as Allies I still get surprised.

I think the game is decided in the Fall of 1944 after the invasion breakout. My tendency as Allied player is to stretch out the front too much and not concentrate forces. Better to lightly screen lower half (Ardennes to Switzerland) and push all you can to the north and Antwerp and the Ruhr. As 9th Army and 7th Army and French 1st Army arrive from South arrive you can push in the other sectors. It is a real grind in the central part of the front with all the forest, rough and the Moselle to contend with.

Interested if anyone disagrees and favors the broad front approach used by Allies.

[KWG]

SALUTE!!!

The AI canbe a tenacious opponent, especially when on defense.

[Hofstadter]

Yeah, by the time the lines have formed out in europe, a few turns out of the break out when the allies start to take the v weapon sites it is in most cases decided, one of two things happen, german manpower is so weak you can push through to berlin and end it. Or you managed to scrape enough bombing and city VP's to get to a minor/moderate victory and then its just balancing out the losses with the minor VP's.

Theres really not much chance of getting over 2000 VP's with just bombing and city VP's by that time. Bombing forces will be stretched out too much on getting interdiction values

[Hofstadter]

When you guys got your wins did you play with the EF box on or off. Its obvious that I played with it off since it ended that turn. I think I am just going to go normal again with the box on.

It seems so...brutal to play with the box on though. The rate of advance has to be massive in order to get to berlin

[cmunson]

I'm playing my first game now with EF off, all the games before had it on. Germans seem to have fewer men in France than before.