Matrix Games Forums

I'm fairly experienced now with WiTW thanks to all of those excellent tutorials and experience gained from playing the game. But as I've taken the plunge as the Germans several times now (currently replaying the D-Day campaign) I confess to still being mystified on how to manage the EFB. Pelton's German player advice seemed to indicate that it was best to manually manage the EFB - but he never elaborated on how. I would love a tutorial on this subject as I'm sure I'm just not managing this rather important aspect of the game to maximize German effectiveness in the west.

You send all the useless stuff to the east and bring important stuff to the west like mountain divisions. If the troops in EFB go red, you refit them until yellow

ORIGINAL: BK6583

I'm fairly experienced now with WiTW thanks to all of those excellent tutorials and experience gained from playing the game. But as I've taken the plunge as the Germans several times now (currently replaying the D-Day campaign) I confess to still being mystified on how to manage the EFB. Pelton's German player advice seemed to indicate that it was best to manually manage the EFB - but he never elaborated on how. I would love a tutorial on this subject as I'm sure I'm just not managing this rather important aspect of the game to maximize German effectiveness in the west.

to be honest, when the game was releaesed, manual control of the EF box was a bit of a 'I win' option for the German player. Searry's strategy was valid (above) and not really carried much consequence.

Its now a lot trickier to handle and if you get it wrong the game can go out of control - I lost an otherwise fun PBEM due to this. In effect, you now need a good grasp of what the Germans sent back and forth and when and its very dangerous to risk sending less. Ok you can do some useful substitutes like the Mtn Divisions to Italy but you must replace them. A 1-1 swap of simple infantry divisions is not enough - so yes you get some tough mtn divisions in Italy but you have to lose more than their equivalent in infantry divisions ... with consequences for garrison values etc.

What happens, if you get behind, is the Soviet offensives early on may not take that much ground but wreck more and more units. So more and more of your replacements and reinforcements have to go east ... you can guess where this ends.

A good simulation of RL in fact, but hard if you don’t know how to read what is happening and what to do about it😳

So I'm back to where I started - I'm begging for more detail on how to recognize when the EFB is going south too fast and what to do about it. Otherwise I'm seem to have no choice but to restart as the Germans and putting the EFB under AI control.

Sending level bombers east once allied air superiority becomes overwhelming is a good way of increasing EFB value, as they'll raise the morale of ground units. Pulling out depleted panzer and panzer grenadier divisions, refitting them in the west and then sending them back will also boost EFB morale.

ORIGINAL: BK6583

So I'm back to where I started - I'm begging for more detail on how to recognize when the EFB is going south too fast and what to do about it. Otherwise I'm seem to have no choice but to restart as the Germans and putting the EFB under AI control.

to be honest, as it plays now, I'd only play (as the axis) with it under AI control. The problem is from the game start to about March 44 it can look fine. You can't rely just on the Soviet progress metric as a clue here.

The front line may be */-1 from historical but if you have too few you are still taking heavier losses. At some stage that will spin out of control. As above, my view is you first need to carefully study historic transfers (use the reinforcement screen for this) and then think about your desired strategy. How much more/when or what different? You can't just do 1-1, ie pull an extra mtn division and replace with a regular infantry division. It may be you need to swap a PGdivision for that mtn division.

Kronolog's suggestion is sound, you might as well tip all your LB into the EF from the start of 1944. But from experience of how the EFB works in the most recent patches, I'd simply leave it alone.