Sarantaporon: Brigade Day Attack

[Grotius]

In the meantime, I detach an anti-tank/support unit from the HQ and send it west along the highway, to take another shot at opening the road. It's rebuffed once, but the second time, with fire support from the recce unit, it succeeds in opening the highway west. I debate whether to send my heavy tanks this way; they're doing *some* good where they are, but only when they have a LOS to fire at the enemy. But I'm not sure they'd do any more good on the west side of the hill, so I leave them in place.

[Grotius]

By dusk, I've pushed forward a bit more; I now control much of the highway around the hill, and I've slowly pushed the Germans off the hilltop. Finally I do feel like I've "taken the hill"! Just in time for some much-needed rest.

[Grotius]

By 10:30 at night, all is quiet; I've lost all contact with the enemy, and visibility is again very low, which suits me fine. I order everyone to sleep, and from here I run out the clock til midnight.

[Grotius]

At midnight, I receive a message from General Wavell: marginal victory! Yay me! But I'm a bit puzzled by the victory-point calculation. I got 59.6 points (out of a possible 100?) for occupying the hill, even though I occupied it for only 9.5 out of 24 hours. I suppose this is because I denied ownership to the enemy for another 6 hours or so?

Also, I got 9 (out of a possible 25) points for destroying the enemy. Does this mean the Germans got 16 points for destroying me? That would seem roughly to match the final kill figures: the Axis destroyed roughly twice as many things as I did. Is that how it works?

Also, I thought I read somewhere in the manual that any scenario has a total of 100 possible points, but this one seems to have a possible total of 125: 100 for occupation, 25 for destruction. Or am I missing something?

Anyway, I just loved this little scenario. I had distinct units with distinct roles: recce, armor, rangers, HQ, supply, anti-tank, artillery. I had a simple but compelling objective: take that hill, fast! And the AI surprised me, first with its ambush, and then with the anti-tank unit on the road. All in all, a great time! I'm going to try a couple more of the simpler scenarios before I tackle the 'advanced tutorial' manual.

[JudgeDredd]

Well done. Good read.
 
AARs are great...they help convey the game to people who may not yet have it and are sitting on the fence. By fleshing a scenario out, making it seem more real, it kind of gives it a special feeling. I think it's a great promotional tool and perhpas Matrix Games/Panther Games ought to think about "publishing" them...asking the odd site here and there to host an AAR.

[Grotius]

Thanks for your comments. I agree, AARs can really sell a game. And I wrote mine with fellow newbs in mind. It was quite fun to do!

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

Just to test CoTA's terrain engine a bit, I try ordering my armored recce onto a wooded slope, and my heavy armor up the hill. (See the units circled in the shot below.) Nothing doing!

Well, the tank coys on the right side are on the lowest terrain in this area, while the enemy units might have reorg'ed and moved to the rear panel of the hill/objective, which won't be visible to your tanks. A screenshot with the LOS-area tool would have been useful here, as it would demonstrate that these light woods appear to be reducing the visibility.

Also, your Recce units didn't reach one of these higher layers yet (they are on the 2nd (lowest) layer (of 5 layers) in this area).
The hilltop appears to be the best spot for your Recce units, but you should have used a path through the broken terrain between the woods to reach the hilltop. This might have caused some bad casualties (better visibility for friend + foe), tho, as I suspect the rest of the enemy units ("recent/vague" intel) to reside on the rear side of the hill, just to the north of the objective.

[Grotius]

Thanks for your comments. You're right, I should've thought to take a screenshot with LOS here. I was checking it pretty frequently; sometimes my tanks on the southeast edge of the hill had a LOS to the enemy, sometimes not.

Hmm, I thought I read somewhere motorized units couldn't climb more than a 30 degree slope, and my recce seem to qualify as motorized. But then, I'm pretty confused about what counts as motorized and what doesn't. My rangers apparently don't count as motorized, even though each ranger company includes trucks and Bren carriers and motorcycles. Maybe the game assumes that stuff was left at the bottom of the hill?

In any case, there's no question that my recce units took a beating in this scenario. First I got them ambushed; then I ran them right into a strong anti-tank unit. Perhaps sending them up between the trees would've worked better.

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

Maybe the game assumes that stuff was left at the bottom of the hill?

Yep kinda like that. [:D]

[PnHobbit]

I'm in the same situation and just played this scenario today one more. I got a decisive victory somehow.

I ended up holding my artillery back with protection from an AA unit. Everyone else went up the main road, tanks being used as covering fire and to put pressure on feisty units. I was using a lot of artillery on any enemy unit that looked like it was holding ground to help my forces advance, having them form up in a similar way and head into the forest west of the hilltop instead of trying to get to the actual top of the hill. My tanks flanked around the road through the forest west and cut off an enemy retreating that way while a reinforcement field company defended my base supplies just southeast of the attack.

The suprising part of all of this was that it seemed totally chaotic and somehow ended up in my favor. I don't feel like I deserve to win because I had to constantly shift orders around and artillery and such when there is no way I'd have had that much flexibility with orders delay. So I won but I realize I'm deeply lacking an understanding of operational warfare. I'll just go on and try those other beginner scenarios and see how they go. Then I can get to the advanced tutorial and maybe start using order delays bit by bit.

Amazing AAR and very helpful from my perspective to see how others think. Thanks for posting it.

[Grotius]

Cool, I'm glad to hear someone else is playing the same scenario -- and doing better than me! I also tend to micromanage my artillery, especially with order delay off, but I got a bit lazy about it in this scenario.

Did you push right up to the hill during the night or order your guys to rest like I did? I'm wondering whether I slowed myself down too much by letting everyone sleep til dawn.

[henri511]

I screwed it up by ordering my armor reinforcements to swing to the left in order to assault from the flank, not realizing that the tanks would have to climb slopes of up to 50 degrees![:'(]

So they just sat there until the end of the game doing nothing, and I had to settle for a draw.[:@]

Henri[8|]

[PnHobbit]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

Cool, I'm glad to hear someone else is playing the same scenario -- and doing better than me! I also tend to micromanage my artillery, especially with order delay off, but I got a bit lazy about it in this scenario.

Did you push right up to the hill during the night or order your guys to rest like I did? I'm wondering whether I slowed myself down too much by letting everyone sleep til dawn.

I only did better probably because I read your AAR first, but anyways...yea I used my artillery completely and when it got resupplied I used it all again. I pushed up the beginning of the hill in the night and never let my troops rest. I broke the back of the enemy and had them scattered and fleeing but only just barely. My men were at the point of exhaustion and rout themselves...over 75% fatigue on almost all of them.

[Golf33]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

At midnight, I receive a message from General Wavell: marginal victory! Yay me! But I'm a bit puzzled by the victory-point calculation. I got 59.6 points (out of a possible 100?) for occupying the hill, even though I occupied it for only 9.5 out of 24 hours. I suppose this is because I denied ownership to the enemy for another 6 hours or so?

If you look at your screenshot in post #19, you can see that the Roadblock Hill objective has a "From" time of D1, 08:00 and a "To" time of D2, 00:00. It's worth 100VP total, all Occupation points. What does this mean?

Basically "From" is the time by which you have been ordered to take the objective. Similarly, the "To" time is when the objective is no longer important; the battle may have swept past, or another operation that depended on having it secured may already have been completed/cancelled/tried and failed.

So in this case, your orders are to secure Roadblock Hill by 08:00 and to hold it until midnight. If you manage this, you have fully completed your mission and get the full value of points for that objective (in this case 100VP). If you secure it late (or don't manage to hold it until "To" time), you get less points because you have not fully succeeded in your mission. Basically every hour you hold the hill, you get 6.25VP.

Because it's a Secure objective, you only get points when you control it (10:1 combat power within the perimeter). Denying it to the enemy will not get you any points, but it might stop the enemy getting some - it depends on the enemy's objectives, which you can see by loading the scenario as the Axis. Knowing the enemy's victory conditions can be a bit of a spoiler so I won't post them here. Remember that the enemy's points are subtracted from yours when calculating victory, so even if you get 100VP, if the enemy also gets 100VP, then it's a draw.

Also, I got 9 (out of a possible 25) points for destroying the enemy. Does this mean the Germans got 16 points for destroying me? That would seem roughly to match the final kill figures: the Axis destroyed roughly twice as many things as I did. Is that how it works?

Kill points are completely independent of your losses. You have a set percentage of the enemy force you have to destroy to get the full amount of kill points; once you have killed that percentage, you don't get any more points for killing.

You can see the required kill percentage by clicking on the "Destroy the enemy" objective. Note that if you know what percentage of the enemy you have to kill to get those points, and you know how many points you have earned, you have a pretty good idea of what the enemy has left. For some people this will be a spoiler for the scenario. If that means you, don't click on that objective, and you won't see the required percentage. It's different in every scenario, so you can't tell what the enemy has left just by looking at the progress bar in the objective list.

Also, I thought I read somewhere in the manual that any scenario has a total of 100 possible points, but this one seems to have a possible total of 125: 100 for occupation, 25 for destruction. Or am I missing something?

Yes, at the end of the scenario your points get capped at 100, even if you achieved objectives worth more than that during the scenario.

This has a few advantages from a gameplay perspective. It lets us give the player different options for winning a scenario. In this case, even if you can't take the objective in time, you can make up points by effectively destroying the enemy force. In other scenarios you might be able to balance one objective against another in the same way.

It also lets us punish a Pyrrhic victory. The enemy in this scenario gets a substantial amount of points for destroying your force. Because your points are capped at 100, no matter how well you achieve your objectives, if you throw away your troops' lives, you will not get great results.

Regards
Steve

[Grotius]

Steve (Golf3), thanks for those very helpful comments! Heh, I knew about the "from/to" field in the objective list, but I didn't look at it closely in this case. And now I understand how the 100 point "cap" on victory points works -- and, more importantly, I understand the rationale for it. So, many thanks.

If I had to do it again, I'd have moved further north at night, and given my guys less time for sleep.

Your comments about spoilers made me wonder if I shouldn't be posting too many screenshots of my AARs! I don't want to spoil any surprises for anyone. I've got another game in progress ("Tanks at Platamon"), and I've been taking screenshots, but I can cut down on detail if that's more appropriate. Or maybe just mark the thread *spoilers* if I start it.

[Golf33]

Don't worry about spoilers here - anyone reading this forum has already decided to find out how some scenarios play out. Screenshots just make the AAR much more exciting and easier to follow.

I'm a bit different - because I designed most of these scenarios, I know more about them than a player would be able to tell from playing them. I don't want to ruin the replay value for you, so I try to keep stumm on the details - especially those that would give away the AI's objectives in a scenario.

Incidentally, reading your AAR motivated me to go back and play Brigade Attack Day again [:)] I ended up with a Marginal Victory, actually closer to a draw than your result. This was mostly a result of taking longer to secure the hill. I did inflict more casualties on the enemy and suffered fewer personnel losses (though more AFV losses). The two Brigade Attack scenarios are actually quite challenging despite their small size; you have a strict time limit, terrain that is pretty unfavourable for a motorised/armoured force, and therefore no obvious preferred approach to the objective.

Cheers
Steve

[Grotius]

Oh, I didn't realize you had designed most of these scenarios! Cool!

And I'm glad to get the green light on posting more AARs. I've finished one of "Tanks at Platamon" that I'll post shortly, and I'm starting one on "Stemming the Tide." "Tanks at Platamon" is an absolutely first-rate scenario featuring one of my favorite types of challenges -- a fighting withdrawal.

[Vance]

Hi Grotius, nice AAR. Don't worry about an AAR being a spoiler, it is by definition. There are some AARs on the forum which I would love to read but because I haven't played the scenario yet I wait reading it so I don't spoil the scenario for myself.

I play with realistic orders delay. Here is what I did (on the second attempt though, but I didn't react an prior knowlegde of the ambush spot):

I sent the 4th Hussars Regt with all guns blazing up the road to the bridge behind the hill. Quickest route, highest speed, rapid ROF, high casualties, agro low (to avoid getting commited), just get there! It found the ambush and the last sqn in the column was hit and routed, but recovered quickly and the column continued past the ambush. I ordered the the engineers to push the ambush off the spot overlooking the main road. The engineers closed before day break, they did route a few times but managed to drive off the ambush before my main force passed by to the form up in the woods at the turn to the west in the main road just south of the hill. The Husssars had detected an AT unit setting up there which I suppressed with artillery so it didn't interfere with the form up.

I ordered 1st Arm Bde HQ to deploy east of Sarantaporon on the main road with an AT battery and the AA for protection.

I ordered two thrusts, one armored to the west along the road into the spot were the woods of the hill meet the stream (where the Hussars had found two units), and one infantry thrust straight up the hill. To protect the tanks in the covered terain I attached a company of Rangers to the tank regiment. In return the Rangers got a sqn of tanks in support, and an AT battery. The attacks jumped off before daybreak. The coy of Rangers protected the tanks very well. The tank support for the thrust up the hill was useless because the tanks couldn't scale the rough terain and the steep hill. The AT went up the hill nicely though.

At 8:45 I achieved the main objective, both thrusts kept fighting untill about 11:00. After that I used the engineers to do some mopping up on the west side of the hill. In the mean time the Hussars were occupying the bridge and shot up retreating units.

I got almost 100 VPs for occupying the hill, the points for killing the enemy completed it to 100. The enemy had 1VP.



 

[Grotius]

Good show, Vance! If I had to do it again, I'd have pushed far further forward before daybreak. I had hazy recollections of stern penalties for fatigue from HTTR, so I was obsessed with giving my guys some sleep. Too obsessed. Anyway, good going!

[redsolo]

Well, I lost the first time I tried it. I tried to make a surprise assault with the tanks from the east side of the map, but then I noticed that the tanks wouldnt cross the river. DOH, but as I had a bridging eng unit, they were sent to the location and was ordered to build a bridge. Unfortunately the sun came up, and the germans saw what was happening and started bombarding the engineers. I can say that they never completed the bridge, or was up for any fighting for the rest of the war. The tanks had to reverse their engines and go back.

At the same time, my other smaller assault had commenced from the south of the hill. Without the tanks, they were pulverized. And when the tanks finally made it to the hill, there was not much left to save.

I had tons of fun, and gained loads of experience on what to do and not to do with the tanks. Tanks + water = BAD.


My second try, I left the tanks on the highway and left the rangers to storm the hill. BUT I had the recce units SE and W of the hill, and was able to give very good reports on the enemy movement. And as they were dug in, they wasnt hurt (too much) from the bombardments.

The only question I have now, is what to do with that first recce unit, as they always hassle my full assault force...

This time I got a marginal victory, and that felt good