Nah, that was too easy for you. I tried to replicate my success in a previous battle long after it was clear that you were fighting a different and much better defence than my previous opponent. Likewise, I kept attacking according to what results I believed I ought to get- a double envelopment plus infantry coming up the middle seemed a fair bet- and failed to adapt to the results the game was giving me. Natural selection, you won big time. Not that I'm sure, even now, how to do better next time.
That said, I was referring above to the other desert scenario, Sidi Rezegh , although it is to a large extent true of both. In the real desert, soldiers feared being caught outside cover, their trenches, foxholes, and more usually, the barely adequate heaps of loose stones they collected where the ground was too hard to dig. Often their best cover was sun blindness- although that could just as easily affect them, heat haze, which made distant objects hard to target, and various forms of dust cloud. Its my understsnding that infantry generally tried to make the war static, as fixed positions offered them a chance of survival that open desert did not. Armour attempted, often successfully, to dig the infantry out, bypass it, over-run it, whatever, to make the war mobile. I feel that mobility is missing here, or at least, is greatly curtailed.
In African CotA, to date, these theatre specific protections are possibly not factored in, I don't know. But infantry and support weapons need not fear the open, they are unnaturally resistant to bombardment in all terrain, and dig in where their real life counterparts usually could not- not without dynamite or more time, peace and quiet than these scenarios give them (same is true of Crete where ground was very hard). Neither, it seems to me, need they fear over-run as I just can't get my units to close under 1k during daytime, whatever aggression level an attack is set to. This means that a company or two in the middle of the desert, even if routing around, can often hold up a regiment or brigade for hours, especially with even a little arty support.
Clearly, with their AP firing 2 pounders, most Commonwealth tanks are less effective infantry killers than their Axis counterparts, but AP should take out guns at close range and there are the CS tanks, too.
As a long time ASL player, it's an old time gripe the way routing CotA units for the most part hook up their guns, load up any ammo and then start flying around like the mob they were supposed to be when they broke. When they recover and appear to be just as resistant to attack as in the weapons pits they'd just left, I get a bit sore.
I'm not sure if it would be possible to replicate here, but the way ASL units rout away from their heavy support weapons but can possibly recover them should they rally, seems more realistic to me.
These advantages to a defence, the Commonwealth command overload (in Sidi Rezegh) together with what seems to me armoured formations more interrested in stopping for a cuppa than fighting (perhaps realistic), detract in my view from what is a tantilising taste of African CotA.
I'm not at all familiar with how the game works so while I'd like to do more than point out imperfections, it's difficult for me to suggest possible solutions. One that occurs to me, and which would, I hope, increase surrendering, is to have some kind of higher formation morale level, so that sub units, even if fresh themselves, could suffer morale drop if their side was doing badly, or some other reason. Thus large scale surrenders could be triggered, something that certainly occured. Maybe also, a better way to remove the "dance of death" and those 12 man units that often survive multiple routs, would be to have a unit surrender outright when it can't realistically rout without suffering great loss. The chances of this might be greater if it is close to an enemy unit.
