Attacking ground forces

[Dobey455]

I played some of the original BTR and never made any serious attempt to hit ground forces. I am now playing the new version and have been trialling a ground force based startegy (for now). I have been really going to town on the forces in Italy in conjunction with hitting Armaments and steel factories.

I have been tending to apply pressure across all the units, rather than concentrating on just one or two. The result so far has been that disruption is pretty low as it repairs within a day or two, but all the mechanized units on the Gustav line have a combat value of about 950 - 1000 which seems about 33% below their strength at campaign start. This is in addition to the usual bombing of supply lines and urban areas.

My question is, what has the greater affect on causing assaults (successful assaults) on German ground forces - lowering the combat value of the unit or hitting for maximum disruption. The former will mean I am doing the right thing by constantly attriting all units, but if I should go for disruption I will concentrate my attacks against just one or two units.

[Nicholas Bell]

The ground war is primarily driven by specific invasion and breakout dates in the program - not by what you do as a player.  In another thread it was reported that someone (I believe it was Hard Sarge) had managed to advance the Normandy breakout event (usually 22 July 44) by really focusing his efforts.  What this meant of his tactics and how much of effect on the breakout date was not explained.  Perhaps HS can chime in and explain in more detail.

My own testing indicates that as the Allied player, your ground forces will advance on schedule whether you never attack or if you bomb tactical targets every day possible.  Artificially increasing or decreasing the strength of German ground units (and adding disruption) by hexediting game data files had no effect on speeding up or slowing down the ground war.  Increasing the effectiveness of the components of the German divisions (the panzers, artillery, infantry, etc) by hexediting does have the effect of slowing the German retreat following the breakout, but has no effect on the breakout dates.  For example, in testing with these changes the Germans did not totally evacuate Belgium until November 44  - an increase of 2 months.  However, since the next breakout event does not occur until around 22 March 45, the effect on the course of the war is nil.

[Dobey455]

Thanks Nic. That seems to confirm what I have so far seen in game. During the invasion of Italy I normally get a message that "Division X delays advance" or something similar. This time There was no such message and the German units did retreat somewhat faster than normal. So perhaps really focusing on hitting the ground units is something I should focus on a few weeks prior to the break out date to speed the retreat.

There are many aspects of the game where you really need to guess a bit as to what is happening under the hood. For example fighter sweeps strafing rail yards seems on the surface like a great way to throw away fighters, but I just don't believe that it is a feature that GG put in just to mess with the allied player, so I have to believe that it has some benefits under the hood. Perhaps destroying supply or trucks etc??

[kaybayray]

Hey Guys [8D] <S>

My experiences agree with Nicholas'. I dont believe I have tested and worked as hard as he has on exploring this aspect. However I have done some and found that I can effect the "Disruption" values of enemy ground forces but I have not seen any what I would call significant effects to the retreat or breakout dates of Ground Forces due to anything I do with my Air Forces.

But I must point out that I was only focusing on small areas with limited forces. For example most of my testing or exploring has been in Southern Italy. Working through various targeting strategies I have learned how to effect the disruption values of the German ground forces there but I have never seen changes in retreat or advances by months or anything. I have generally focused with tactical air, FB strikes and some strategic strikes on Avalance targets to suppress and cut supplies. So I am kind of thinking that the Ground Forces are more on the perifery of the game and mostly to add flavor to it rather than meant to be an item of central focus.

But as always I could be completely wrong [8D]

Later,
KayBay [8D]

[Oliver Heindorf]

I found with my tests 2 things to notice :
&nbsp;
1.Bombing ground units is just a waste of ordnance.
&nbsp;
2. Bombing german rubber industry on day 1 of the 700 turn campaign is VERY useful. After 12 turns it was below critical level <500 (about 380) &nbsp;and it is now by 265 as output on turn 22 here. (I recon them every 4 days). Italy was invaded 5 days earlier than historical.

[nicwb]

Thanks for the info Nic & Dobey but I have to confess this is all rather disappointing - I'm playing the Avalanche scenario and essentially wasting resources ![X(]

Is there any chance this will be altered in an update of the game? after all a significant feature of the Eurpoean airwar was the tactical campaign against ground forces.