ORIGINAL: rstyle
Always enjoy reading your posts, Daz. One question please:
My units hold the line reasonably well during the day, good position well dug in, but when it's gone dark, they all go to bed and apparently enemy take the advantage and break my line. How do you defend at night? No rest? Put in reserve?
Thanks.
Thanks mate [:)]
What do you mean by break the line?
Do you mean infiltrate the line unnoticed, then start to harass your rear areas, or do you mean they over run your front line positions, and break through?
If its strays in your rear area you are talking about then I use A Tp 32 Cav Recon Squadron, to find, and take them out. It consists of M8 Greyhounds primarily and has a good antipersonnel medium range firepower.
Just keep the enemy unit in range of the M8's but out of range of the enemy infantry.
Keep a mortar or smaller artillery unit on it as well until it disbands.
If it routs, and goes to ground in the forest or a village, then you will need to flush it out with an infantry Coy pulled from your reserves. Don't send your Greyhounds into close terrain or they will come of worse. Keep them at long range.
Because they are fast though they are ideal for making sure your lines of communications are clear, and for finding enemy in your rear areas.
If you are being over-run and they are breaking through, then you are probably not defending in depth.
This means that you place other units behind the front line in areas that are vital i.e. the roads through the forest, far enough back that they have time to dig in before the current front line unit gets pushed back.
The unit that gets pushed back then goes to the rear, where he then has time to dig in, and recover morale, before that one gets pushed back etc.
If you run out of road then you need to use a Bn in reserve, or make one up from alternate Coy's on less busy sections of the front to counter attack into the flank of the next attack, or preferably 2 Bn's from opposing flanks.
Wake your artillery up as well as soon as you see an attack coming in, at the vital road sectors of the front, and get them suppressed.
Edit:
Don't counter attack into the flanks late in the game when they are massed on the road, as they will have such a mass of fire there, that you will just get killed.
This only works early in the game when you only have an enemy Bn or Regiment on the road, but later in the game there will be an entire armoured Division there.
If this is the case then you will probably be better off pulling back, and defending the objectives, with delaying tactics.
