Matrix Games Forums

Attached is the result of my first campaign. Overall, given my limited knowledge at the start and how many things I realise now I needed to do, but didn’t do, I am happy:
Air War:
Aside from manually adjusting tactical air directives slightly, I left the AI to do absolutely everything (directives and relocation), especially for the strategic bombing campaign.
I realise I need to control this aspect, particularly with the V Weapon point situation being almost -400!
Towards the end of the game, I taught myself how to set directives manually and actually moved aircraft myself. This helped a lot after taking all of Italy in around May 1944... The AI did not relocate a large amount of the Med Tac airforce, meaning I was not using ½ of my airforce in the North in an effective way! I resolved this quite late.
Q) I did set the AI to bomb V Weapon Launch and Production areas, does anyone have any tips on more effectively dealing with this to lower my penalty on this?
Allied Losses:
With hindsight, I can absolutely see where I could reduce losses now I have become more familiar with when a division or brigade will retreat, how terrain affects battles etc.
For a large stretch of the first part of the game in Italy, I did not realise I could assign engineers to cities etc. and did not send railway repair units fast enough.
Strategic Bombing Campaign:
Q) In general, if anyone has any good, concise videos or tips on manually doing the strat bombing campaign, please do comment.

I go through a pretty tedious turn 1 repositioning my Air Force. Both to avoid over-allocation and to maximize escort/bomber overlap.

From the Commanders Screen you can access a production table and sort by U-Boats, etc. to see what cities you need to target, and their current estimated damage.

Turn 1 I’m creating a lot of missions with just a pair or little more of US heavy bombers to touch each of those penalty points sites (usually twice in the week, e.g. days 3 and 7). Any damage is good, so you don’t have to get too worried about sending an armada, but higher damage means longer between trips. So if you get some lucky strikes with high damage consider consolidating missions to hit heavier on the lighter damage sites and usually by week 3 you can devote a few squadrons to rotating among the sites to keep them damaged.

B-17s in Africa can hit the U-boat sites for you in the Alps. Getting heavy bombers repositioned ASAP to The Heel, or around Foggia is a nice avenue into bombing southern Germany.

Keep the V-weapon transition in mind so you can alter your targets ahead of time and not get caught out for a turn.

P-38s are absolute beasts in escort. I like to concentrate them in eastern England, and have them escort U-boat raids in the north where they can maul interceptors.

I try to avoid doing any bombing that doesn’t have recon operating that turn against the hex. Strategic or interdiction, etc. I believe that good recon is a force multiplier in bombing efficacy.

I rest air groups that get <70 morale. This is pretty easy with the Allies because they have so much air power. Also keep strategic bombing runs to no more than twice a week to avoid cratering morale. Interdiction and similar missions I’ll run much harder, but those tend to be focused and occasional, not every week of decent weather like the strategic bombing campaign.

Another thing is, I always configure the route to and from the target to weave between flak centers to the extent possible.

Flak is hard on morale, and the Brits end up flying over more of it due to their altitude restrictions and range to the Ruhr.

Thanks for your comments!