When You Are Blasted by Arty...

[Tzar007]

Here is a situation that makes me mad:

I need to hold on to an objective, so I garrison it with appropriate forces. Then the damned AI blast them continuously with some damn heavy arty hidden somewhere in the bushes God knows where. It's an easy target for him since they are immobile at the objective. This makes me crazy.

I sent 1 or 2 units in recon in the area to try to spot the bastards but to no avail (my recon units get repulsed easily as soon as they meet some opposition).

What do you do guys in such a situation? I am now thinking about gathering a task force to go around and clean up forcefully the whole area, but this is a long process and my forces are stretched thin for now anyway (I am playing the Eindhoven Campaign as Allies, and I need to hold on all the objectives placed along the highway, so I don't have much forces to spare beating the bushes around the highway).

[Mr.Frag]

Wecome to the realities of war. The only defence against the big guns is to not be there. There is really very little you can do except counter-battery their Arty with your Arty to try and break it up.

Best you can try is spreading your troop formation out over a larger area, reducing the effectiveness and pick your terrain well to again reduce the effectiveness. Other tactics involve diversionary attacks to try and draw the Arty fire somewhere else.

[MarkShot]

Ugo,

I added my thoughts on this question to the tips thread above.

[Jane Doe]

yeah, when you need to secure an objective in the open, try to spread your forces over large amount of terrain, or else artillery will chew em up bad and quick. If it's too late and your forces are already dug in and getting shelled, one thing to remember: Do NOT move or change the position of your troops, it'll only worsen the situation, even in urban environment.
and the diversionnary attack is a good idea too

[EricGuitarJames]

It's funny, when I'm playing the Arnhem full campaign scenario (in whatever variations and in HTTR or RDOA) my feelings about the artillery depend upon whatever side I'm playing. As the Germans they're an absolute godsend - especially if I can eliminate most of the paras and get 30 Corps into a 'killzone' around Arnhem road bridge. If I'm playing as the Brits it's a nightmare as the AI uses weak units as 'scouts' and hits my troops at every possibility. There are no easy answers when your troops are under heavy bombardment. Just be thankful it's all binary code and pixels[:)]

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: EricGuitarJames
There are no easy answers when your troops are under heavy bombardment. Just be thankful it's all binary code and pixels[:)]

Yeh...incoming...heavy pixel bombardment.

[Matt Erickson]

I read somewhere that artillery caused something like 80% of all ground casualties during the ww2 it is a grin an bear it type thing I guess

[Tzar007]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Ugo,

I added my thoughts on this question to the tips thread above.

Thanks, I've just read what you wrote. Makes a lot of sense, especially the part about the layered defense. I forgot that strategy which you explained earlier on in the tips thread.

Although in my case at this moment (see picture below), the Best bridge which I am holding at the moment is according to recent intel surrounded by substantial enemy forces all around (except in the woods to the east of the bridge along the Wilhelmina Kanaal). These German forces aren't strong enough to come and attack the bridge since I've got 151st Inf Bde, 44th Royal Tank Rgt, as well as 8th Durham Light Inf Bde guarding the area. However it is difficult for me to get all the potential German spotters out of the way, there are too many around. And as you see, my forces are tightly packed together and consequently this is the perfect killing field for the German howitzers.

I think my best bet for now will be to spread my forces around a larger area, although in this case they will come under fire of the surrounding German units if I extend my coverage! And that is not counting the fact that they have great difficulty in moving while bombarded and suffering great casualties as Jane Doe said (the 44th RTR has suffered up to 50% casualties in less than a few hours, this is a shame to waste such a fine offensive organization this way).

Fortunately, my staff just informed me that the Coldstream Guards Group is now reporting for duty under my command [:D] I think I know what will be their first task [8D]

[Arjuna]

Tsar007,

It's time to attack. Be bold and clear a descent bridghead. I would attack due west with the 44th Royals to secure your left flank. At the same time commit the 2.502nd Bn to attack the enemy Base unit north of Best and the 8th DLI to put in the main hit on Brest. Leave the 151st Bde HQ and Engineers to secure the crossing and put the rest of the support troops there into the attack on Best. Give em hell.

Be bold, be brave but don't forget to save. [;)]

[Tzar007]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Tsar007,

It's time to attack. Be bold and clear a descent bridghead. I would attack due west with the 44th Royals to secure your left flank. At the same time commit the 2.502nd Bn to attack the enemy Base unit north of Best and the 8th DLI to put in the main hit on Brest. Leave the 151st Bde HQ and Engineers to secure the crossing and put the rest of the support troops there into the attack on Best. Give em hell.

Be bold, be brave but don't forget to save. [;)]

Well Dave,

I finally followed your advice and went on the attack with 8th DLI, 44th RTR and 151st Inf Bde. I combined both 8th DLI and 151st Inf Bde under the leadership of the 151st and made them attack towards the Rail Bridge. Meanwhile 44th RTR covered their right flank and 502th Btn assumed guard duty at the Best Heavy Bridge.

It worked (although with the help of my big guns to disperse these concentrations of Germans [:)] I still haven't completely unprimed the rail bridge but my engineers are working round the clock on it.

But now I have an infiltration of some Wehrmacht units on the main bridge (see picture below) [:@] They came from the other side of the river and crossed the bridge, didn't see them coming since we are at night at this moment.

Damn AI! Never stops trying. I will ask the 44th RTR to intervene to support the 502nd Btn and push back these helpless Germans.

[Golf33]

Time of day is also important in artillery battles - especially against the AI - since the enemy cannot spot as well at night, that's a good time to launch your clearing attacks and expand your perimeter. The enemy won't see your lads forming up and will hopefully leave them alone until they make contact.

I say "against the AI" since wily human players like Yakstock will periodically thump your known positions with artillery during the night, even if they can't see you, since they know it will fatigue your troops and make you nervous [;)]

Regards
33

[Mr. Personality]

I have to share an immensely enjoyable experience related to artillery from my current game playing as the Allies against the AI in the historical Arnhem scenario. At least half-way through the ten days or so, I had already secured the highway and rail bridges at Arnhem, as well as the bridge to the southeast of Arnhem (which the Germans will sometimes use to get reinforcements into Arnhem). The time was right to start securing the ferry crossings west of Arnhem to further reduce the Germans freedom of movement. I rolled up a mechanized unit from 30 Corps close enough to do some reconnaissance and see what's going on there. To my delight I find that about dozen or so at various stages of crossing, so I have some on-call big guns from 30 Corps to the south light them up.

By exploiting the situation, I admit I might be doing something ahistorical - in reality I presume one and only one unit would be crossing at any one point in time, with all remaining units waiting safely in the woods or some other same location. Furthermore, for the unit in the midst of crossing, only a portion would be on the river, with the remainder presumably slightly dug-in and providing cover for the men out on the river. All of this aside, I can't tell you how enjoyable it was to turn all of these of these units with good cohesion to rout status. And then not only were they routing, but because they were stuck in the middle of the river, they couldn't get anywhere fast, so more arty rains down. I think I destroyed one or two units, and the remaining units lost so much strength as to be essentially destroyed.

A day or so after securing that ferry crossing, I do some recon at the next ferry crossing to the west. And what do I find? Almost the exact same situation with another dozen good units waiting to be pounded! In this case, I completely destroyed seven of the dozen or so, and again the remaining units were essentially destroyed. It was like hitting the jackpot twice. [:)] Has anyone chanced into the same situation, or perhaps there are other situations where you've taken unfair advantage of the AI?

[MarkShot]

The AI is very, very good at probing and finding holes and paths. It can make playing defense quite a bit of fun. See the post I just made on fun scenarios.

However, at times you can take advantage of that behavior by the AI in various ways:

(1) You can cause it to burn through time by forcing it to probe here and there.

(2) You can contain it despite it having the resources for a breakthrough if it would realize your weakness and mass as oppose to probe.

[dwwindsor]

Just to move this thread back towards the original topic. Artillery usage is one of the game's areas that I find a bit unrealistic. Not the results mind you. Playing the historical Eindhoven scenario as the allies I was a bit surprised to see one of my squadron's from the 44th RTR blinking its dreaded red light at me while enduring a bombardment of some 30 minutes duration. When I got around to seeing what the actual damage was it amounted to one tank and two personnel. Okay, not bad. Well within the realm of the plausible. One tank commander chose not to button up, one loader got caught taking a leak in the bushes and one tank had a track or a sprocket wheel knocked off.

But where I have a problem is the ease with which artillery from multiple formations coordinates its fires on targets of opportunity. This presuposes a level of communications that simply didn't exist.

It may be one think to mass fires in a deliberate attack, since these rarely go off in under two hours. I can see fire support assets being coordinated. But corps, division, regimental and battalion level formations coming together in a coordinated hip shoot in a matter of minutes, not likely.

I have no idea from a programming standpoint what the fix might be. But from a tactical standpoint there should be some penalty (time) when ordering indirect fire units from various formations to bombard unless there has been some level of prior planning. As a for instance, gamers here extol the virtures of fire bases (not a WWII tactic, but what the hell). Grouping units like this also presupposes the establishment of communications, registrations either by firing or from the map, and establishment of an overall fire plan.

This type of coordination would not be present, however, when a company spots the enemy and in moments is calling down indirect fire from every gun, howitzer, rocket, and mortar in range though these represent two different corps, multiple divisions, and a plethora of fire direction centers. Things just didn't happen that way.

Also, as an additional point, arty units did not fire off all of their ammo unless specificaly ordered to. I just hate seeing all that good ammo going to waste battering four or five units whose combined strength is less than that of a company and who pose no threat to anyone but themselves.