Question 1: What can I do to stop my railroad construction brigades from rushing in front of my lines? Is it dangerous for them to be there? Can I construct new railways? What can be done with them and how can I tell them to do that?
Question 2: Where the hell did the armor in this sector go? (Note, I'll find out soon enough.)
Question 3: Does the AI not use naval interdiction? Why am I able to just stick a stack of 9 rifle divisions (all guards now
) in Odessa forever and ever?Ok so I upped the difficulty to "challenging" for my 2nd playthrough of the GC... and *phew.* That's Too Much, Man.
So I let the axis enjoy their superpowered turn 1 and took a terrible turn 1 of my own, and played on from the turn 2 autosave at the settings which were suggested to me by... someone. I think it was like the Official Forum Responder Person for the game. Anyways so now it's 1.2/1/1/1 vs 1/1/1/1 as opposed to the Axis getting 1.1s and me getting .9s.
Also Fog of War off so I can get used to being blind.
Also manually controlling air groups.
Basically, I'm doing "these are the ways people play their pvp games" things with AI axis at 1.2 morale. So far, fewer holds, more routes. Also it was turn 12 that I discovered what the Commander's Report could do. I was used to the logistics report and production tab which are very non-interactive. So I'm now wrestling with trying to get my support divisions filled out... it feels like the game isn't letting me have 6 arty / 6 construct in my armies and forcing them to be 4/4? IDK what's going on there. I'm not sure what the CP rules are for support units and I only just figured out how to refit them literally like three turns ago. It's not a super big deal of course lmao I'm just including this here so that the Powers That Be can have feedback.
Indeed it's frightening how little intel I have. Between forums telling me that the Axis "teleports" at this AI level (? I did seem to notice pretty early on that the AI is not like, *actually* moving units around on the map) and experience here, they have a shockingly nimble force and I feel like I really have to be on my toes or suffer a breakthrough. They got through my Neva line with a few divisions but I was able to trap them off and am even gonna be snagging an infantry something (lmao) next turn, unless there's a full strength Panzer division nearby I'm not aware of.
... even then.
I also had some small breakthroughs to the light woods of northwest Bryansk. I just pulled in an extra army, and will be shifting two armies down south. I'm also pulling out the armor after these fights... I've actually started merging them too. The plan with them is to run them into the ground before the muds, then whatever's left send to the reserves with refit off. I'm letting the various brigades show up right now, not sure what I'll sure them for yet. I think I'm likely to just attach them to rifle divisions (hm seem to recall that was a historical plan for someone) for a little extra punch for now: they can gain experience on the lines and then when it's time for breakthrough maneuvers, I should be able to use corps rather than brigades.
Which I can break down if I need to. It might be more admin-point expensive in the long run but *shrugs* if that's the price I pay that's the learning experience I need.
But honestly the name of the game for me has been "kill tanks." I use my armor mostly to slam into their armor... I feel like that's just the most effective use. Trade 75 BT7s for a PzIII and laugh all the way to the bank. I keep seeing these "90%" toe divisions that are using 150 BT7s like a medium tank and I just... *smdh.* The goal is to literally run out of them.
Still, the best I can do is force the Axis to spend time getting through my lines. I think I'm too dug in now. There's a weird QI quirk I noticed, which is that they will fall back considerably from their furthest line. Last time I didn't really have a chance to see if they would turn around and attack... but I followed them once and it resulted in a couple of bad battles for me that lead to some concern about the integrity of the line. It's October 5th and the winter will be cold, we're very happy holding our level 3 forts in heavy woods. Plenty of fuel for fires to keep us warm.
Oh also another... bug? I'm seeing supply soft tools for the axis
Good to know they're hungry.