Advanced Tactic: Fully Surrounding Enemy Defenders

[Chernobyl]

I can't find reference to it anywhere in the manual or on the forums, but when an enemy unit is defending a resource (City etc) and you place land/air units on all the adjacent land hexes (fully surrounding the enemy unit with adjacent units of your own), then they no longer get combat bonuses from that resource on defense. You can use any land or air unit, even a fighter, garrison, or HQ. The effect seems not to work against Fortresses and Fortifications. I'm not sure about Fortress Towns.

I've seen it happen more than once where a player is unaware of this effect, and the siege of a city goes on for quite a while longer than it should, if only they know to completely surround the city with adjacent units, in which case the defender suddenly becomes much weaker on defense.

[Bavre]

It does work on fortified towns.

[EarlyDoors]

I did not know this

[John B.]

Do you need to have all 6 hexes occupied or does surrounding the town with zocs have the same effect?

[Chernobyl]

Do you need to have all 6 hexes occupied or does surrounding the town with zocs have the same effect?

You need to have units physically there. ZOC doesn't matter.

One of the easiest ways to see it is start the 1939 scenario and declare war on Hong Kong. Put your army next to HK. This "surrounds" Hong Kong because there's no other adjacent connected land hex (apparently adjacent land hexes that have ocean in between them don't count) and look at the combat prediction at the bottom. The garrison gets HD=1 and no bonus from being in a capital (normally +2 Hard Defense).

[John B.]

Thanks!

[Elessar2]

That isn't the core reason for doing it. The surrounded unit cannot reinforce past 5, making it an easy kill the next turn even if the defensive bonuses no longer count.

[Chernobyl]

That isn't the core reason for doing it. The surrounded unit cannot reinforce past 5, making it an easy kill the next turn even if the defensive bonuses no longer count.

You can do an immediate assault much easier. It depends what the circumstances are of course.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

That isn't the core reason for doing it. The surrounded unit cannot reinforce past 5, making it an easy kill the next turn even if the defensive bonuses no longer count.

You can do an immediate assault much easier. It depends what the circumstances are of course.

Saw this with Belgrade in SC-WW1 almost two years ago.
Kind of a quiet secret though I seem to remember you Chernobyl mentioning this surround mechanism with 6 units back then also.

[Elessar2]

Dirty little secret: your game partner The Colonel apparently didn't know this, until I kind of told him a couple of months ago. You can get mad at me if you wish OCB...

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Dirty little secret: your game partner The Colonel apparently didn't know this, until I kind of told him a couple of months ago. You can get mad at me if you wish OCB...

LoL. Ah a secret revealed!
Here's another one. I found out (from The Colonel), that he did a parallel match as Axis against somebody else and practiced and honed his strategies against him and then unleashing them on me. Perfect timing right after the new patch with the sub update and the all-weather air which we were both figuring out.
The other guy threw in the towel but the damage was done. I'm still soldiering on though.

Btw not mad at all.