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Hi there,

I restarted my attempts to play TOAW III, and at the moment, I cannot figure out how to plan a good attack as strange as that sounds. I was hoping that someone could verify and clarify some things for me.

In a combat round, the attacker's value is obviously his the combination of his attack values, but what is it for the defender?

So say if the definding unit has values of 2AP+30AT ATTK /4 DEF does that mean during a combat round, the value used to calculate damage to the defender and retreat chance is the 4 while the repulsion of the attacker will come solely from the attack value of the defender? So if a infantry unit attacks our defender, it will most likely overrun it with low losses while an armored unit will most likely fail due to the high amount of damage caused.

Continuing off the first question, when a tile grants a bonus like 200%AP/AT doesn't that apply to the attack value and not the defensive value? Does the FORT value apply to the defense value?

Would that mean a forest tile(200%AP 15%FORT) only slightly improves the defender's chances for survival, but makes it difficult to attack due to the attacker having to deal with double the amount of firepower? Assuming that the attacker's forces are only made of infantry.

On top of that, how does the attacker's starting tile and position effect the battle? I know that attacking from rivers inflict a penalty to attack but what about other tiles? If I were to attack a village from a clear tile, would it be more difficult than attacking a village from a forest tile?

ORIGINAL: PEWPEW

Hi there,

I restarted my attempts to play TOAW III, and at the moment, I cannot figure out how to plan a good attack as strange as that sounds. I was hoping that someone could verify and clarify some things for me.

In a combat round, the attacker's value is obviously his the combination of his attack values, but what is it for the defender?

So say if the definding unit has values of 2AP+30AT ATTK /4 DEF does that mean during a combat round, the value used to calculate damage to the defender and retreat chance is the 4 while the repulsion of the attacker will come solely from the attack value of the defender? So if a infantry unit attacks our defender, it will most likely overrun it with low losses while an armored unit will most likely fail due to the high amount of damage caused.

Continuing off the first question, when a tile grants a bonus like 200%AP/AT doesn't that apply to the attack value and not the defensive value? Does the FORT value apply to the defense value?

Would that mean a forest tile(200%AP 15%FORT) only slightly improves the defender's chances for survival, but makes it difficult to attack due to the attacker having to deal with double the amount of firepower? Assuming that the attacker's forces are only made of infantry.

On top of that, how does the attacker's starting tile and position effect the battle? I know that attacking from rivers inflict a penalty to attack but what about other tiles? If I were to attack a village from a clear tile, would it be more difficult than attacking a village from a forest tile?

PEWPEW,

Just what I like – a simple question.

The TOAW combat system is a black box in which we hold, as an article of faith, the belief that combat takes place.

The numbers on the counters are not used by the engine. They are averaged and scaled information chunks to allow the player to gauge the relative (and very general) capabilities of the unit.

In the black box, individual units will fire at enemy units and may hit or not.

You might be able to think of the numbers as odds. If the enemy is the 12 Panzer Division (11+6/13) and you are attacking it (head on) with the 210 Motor Infantry (7+3/11), then (everything else being irrelevant) you have odds of 3:13 against the tanks and the tanks have odds of 11:11 against your infantry. This is a very simplified example of course. And there are more modifiers than you can reasonably be expected to shake a stick at.

The problem arrives with the bottom two lines of the Attack Planner.

Apart from the Assault Ratio AR= information (which is valuable – see what’s new document), it is my own preference to regard the expected losses and probability of success statements as the best guesstimate of my green slime and keeping in mind that he is an idiot, drunk, and high on magic mushrooms. Other players may well tell you to ignore that information completely. Not the Assault Ratio information though – that bit is ok.

The information in the planner does not take account of, day, night, nbc, terrain, deployment of enemy, weather, artillery support, active v passive equipment, air support or the black mirrored shades of command destiny. All of which make its predictions iffy to say the least.

Hexes grant bonuses to the defender. 200% AP/AT bonus means that our 101 Infantry Division (13+5/13) defends the forest hex if in mobile deployment as a (26+10/26) unit. Note though, that I am not sure there is a 200% AP/AT hex tile. I don’t use the tooltip thingy.

The Fort % value is from the tooltip thingy. I wondered for a moment what the hell it was. It is the same as the entrenchment level. It grants no benefit at all to the defender apart from - the higher the entrenchment level, the easier it is for units to dig in.

If you are interested in seeing how battles are resolved, find the Opart.ini file and turn on the TOAWLOG. Best to build a small test scenario and keep it to one battle a time otherwise you will be swamped by information. Retreat Before Combat and Retreat From Combat are both looked at in the What’s New document.

The battle takes place in the defender’s hex. It does not matter from where the attacker attacks from apart from the following:-

13.9.6 Unit Strengths in Water Assaults
Land units attacking from River, Super River, Canal, Suez Canal, or
Deep Water (Amphibious Assaults) have all Strengths multiplied
by 0.7.

13.9.7 Escarpments
Since only Mountain units can move across Major Escarpments,
they are the only units that can attack across them. Their losses
will be three times the normal for the attack. Combat across
Minor Escarpments results in twice the losses for the Attacker.
Artillery and Headquarters are not as affected; Artillery attacks
at 150% Strength if it is “looking down” on the target across an
Escarpment. This is defined as an artillery unit, in the hex that
contains the escarpment terrain feature, firing across that hexside
feature at an adjacent unit.

I think I have covered just about everything. Bob is on hand to give the definitive answers if I have got anything wrong.

Best wishes,
Steve

To take a step back, I have felt one of TOAW strong points is not to have to do the bookkeeping. Like Steve said, the combat system is a black box. How did Gudarian calculate the odds of two panzer division attacking, say a Soviet rifle division in a cross-road village? More intuition and experience.

Good luck- let us know how things are going. Have you looked at combat rounds per turn?

cheers