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In my current PBEM game I have lost a couple of armored corps, and could not figure out why. They were there one turn, then gone the next. I'm guessing now that they were lost due to inability to retreat.

Understanding this means that my tried and true tactic of building defensive lines two-deep will not suffice. No telling how many units overall I have lost due to this.

I always leave space for retreats in my second line. Not only does this reduce your losses, it can sucker the opponent into advancing in places where he can be counterattacked concentrically.
 
 

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I always leave space for retreats in my second line. Not only does this reduce your losses, it can sucker the opponent into advancing in places where he can be counterattacked concentrically.

It's taken me an entire year of playing the game to figure this out. Some general.

Well, to be fair, there's one exception when I go with a rigid double line: fortress lines. Units in those don't seem to retreat at all. They have to be destroyed in place. What's even worse (from the attacker's standpoint) is that you often run out of APs destroying a fort defender and can't occupy the fort hex, and the defender just slips right back into the line on his turn. Rinse and repeat.
 
Fort lines are tough nuts to crack.
 

Retreats are one of the issues that I would like to see changed later on (patch 1.70). If I undertstand it correctly, the chance of a retreat is based on losses. But it seems to me that the calculation is not only based on the current combat losses, but also takes into account losses suffered previosly; i.e. a unit that has taken losses in earlier turns that haven't been replaced, have a higher basic risk of suffering a retreat than one that starts the combat at 100 % strength.

This may seem fully reasonably, but consider this:

A 5-level armour corps, that was attacked a year earlier and now have only 50 % strength because it was never replenished, is attacked and suffer 10 % losses. The chance of it retreating is now 60 %.

A full strength 1-level infantry division is attacked and suffer 40 % losses and the chance of that retreating is still only 40 %.

I may be wrong about this (developers, have your saying) and the observation stems from RtV, but I haven't seen anything to refute it.

I hope that, in the future, this could be changed so that (A) preferable the retreat chance and the losses were calculated independently of each other, or (B) that the retreat chance was based only on the current loss, not on the present strength of the concerned unit.

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

In my current PBEM game I have lost a couple of armored corps, and could not figure out why. They were there one turn, then gone the next. I'm guessing now that they were lost due to inability to retreat.

Understanding this means that my tried and true tactic of building defensive lines two-deep will not suffice. No telling how many units overall I have lost due to this.

Yes, iirc you lost two tank units at the Romanian border due to my attacks but not later any more. But I believe you lost also many more infantry units due to double lines and inability to retreat. With the 1 hex visibility it is often not clear to me if a unit has really retreated and is not visible any more of if it is eliminated instead. So I rely on second hand info such as loss reports. Unless you check before an after every attack this is not reliable, though.

But I am not sure if the double lines are all that bad. They certainly prevent major opponent breakthroughs for the cost of higher losses. A double line with a hex space in between maybe the best compromise.

Luckily, as the German I will not have to worry about building double defensive lines. Not that I don't expect to defend, more because I don't have the manpower to build them anyways.

All yo uhave to do is withdraw from that Smolensk Salient, and you'll have plenty of units for a double line!

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

In my current PBEM game I have lost a couple of armored corps, and could not figure out why. They were there one turn, then gone the next. I'm guessing now that they were lost due to inability to retreat.

Understanding this means that my tried and true tactic of building defensive lines two-deep will not suffice. No telling how many units overall I have lost due to this.

Are you playing as Germany?

I'm playing the Allies. See our AARs in the forum.