Detailed Combat Example

[Barthheart]

Some people have asked questions about how the game plays. So this is how I go about planning and executing an attack.

This example is from Case White and I’m going to try a “Blitzkrieg’ style attack - combined arms assault and armoured breakthrough.

Shown here is the area near the northern Polish border and the city of Bromberg. It’s worth 1 VP and I want to have II and XIX Corps of 4th Army try to capture it with minimal losses to my troops.

I could do an all out assault and attack every Polish unit I see but instead I’m going to save my men for later battles by trying to punch a hole through the Polish lines.

[Barthheart]

First I want to see what I’m up against.

This Polish unit is in a hex with a high recon value (>400) so I can see all the info about it.

[Barthheart]

For the next one the recon value is only 199 so I don’t have complete info on it.

[Barthheart]

This last hex has a very low recon value, 14, so I can only see that something is here but not what it is.

[Barthheart]

So I’ll use my recon air unit to raise the recon value of the area around Bromberg.

[Barthheart]

After selecting the unit and clicking the recon button, small plane symbol, I get this view. All the greyed hexes are hexes this unit can reach. Since I’m zoomed all the way in you can’t see it’s full range. The small plane symbol you see are hexes that this unit can reach to try to intercept enemy air units in your opponents turn.

[Barthheart]

Select a hex you want to know more about ....

[Barthheart]

Then click the check mark button to execute. Since there were no enemy air units that intercepted or flak nearby the flight went without incident.

[Barthheart]

Now I have full info on this unit and more info on nearby hexes. Also some more units have appeared. This is because the recon flight affects the recon value of more hexes than just the target hex.

[Barthheart]

Since the air unit still has some AP, action points, left I’ll fly some more recon missions to different hexes around Bromberg to see what else is around.

[Barthheart]

So this is the result after I exhaust the AP’s of that recon unit. It’s a thin line of Polish troops between me and Bromberg where the local Polish group HQ happens to be located.

[Barthheart]

So I think I’ll try to blast a hole in their line at this point.

First I want to soften up this unit before I attack it with my infantry.

So I locate some nearby artillery. Artillery has a range of 2 hexes. I think I’ll use the 32nd Inf. Div.’s artillery regiment and a unit of 4th Army’s artillery for this bombardment.

[Barthheart]

To make the bombardment, select the target unit, click the bombard icon, small canon icon, then assign artillery units to the attack.

Notice in the yellow circle is “Stack Points”. This is a measure of the amount of ordinance targeting the hex. If you assign more than 100 points worth of artillery to any one attack you will get diminishing returns and means that you’ve wasted some artillery better used elsewhere. This helps avoid huge stacks of artillery destroying whole divisions by themselves.

[Barthheart]

Click the attack button to execute. You’ll see this display as the attack takes place. Each attack has 10 rounds and the number at the top is the current round. Rounds proceed automatically until round 10 is complete or one side retreats.

The symbols in the center are still fighting, while those near the outside edge have withdrawn from this battle. The white dots are counts of each troops type. Red dots mean kills.

[Barthheart]

You’ll see this at the end of an attack.

[Barthheart]

If you select “Detail” you’ll get very detailed stats on how each troop performed in each round of this battle.

[Barthheart]

Now looking at the Polish unit you can see it’s effectiveness has dropped substantially. It’s readiness has dropped from 100 to 19 and it’s entrenchment has dropped from 23 to 0.

[Barthheart]

Now I’ll attack the unit with some air power. It’s very similar to an artillery attack. Select the target unit, then click the air strike icon, small diving plane. To make it easy to select air units that might be quite some distance form your target, click the list button to select from a list of units in range of the target.
I’ll select this unit as it’s good at destroying armour and I’d rather my infantry fought as few of those as possible.

[Barthheart]

This is the result of the attack. Not as good as I’d hoped but it did kill some more troops. This attack was less than it could have been because it’s raining during this turn (you get a message about the weather at the start of every turn) and that reduces the effectiveness of all air attacks.

[Barthheart]

Ok now for the infantry assault. I’ll use this unit, it’s the 1st Regiment of 32nd Inf. Div. Since it doesn’t have to move it will get all it’s AP’s to use during the attack.