Campaign '44

[Mist]

I am currently playing campaign '44 for Germans. Whole campaign is a bloody mess for loosing side. It looks like final agony and almost nothing can be affected by player. Certanly, I tried to reorganize my troops and gather every valuable panzer korps in the armored right-time-counter-blow fist and to make my defence elastic instead of stand-or-die style. But I do not think it can be played against human with any chances of draw ending. Did anyone play it against human? I'd like to hear people experience about this Germany's hard time.
I also have got some fresh-view observations.
Following strange things occured.

• I do not see readiness penalties for my units, but they fight at 1/3 strength even if fully supplied. I mean that only 1/3 of troops seems to appear in combat if oil reserves are low.
• Sometimes Soviet losses look very strange in combat report(especialy for surrendering troops). I've got a screenshot. Men losses can't be divided by 10 without remnant.
• "no sustains damage" message is caught and I finaly have a screenshot as a witness.

Can anyone help me with numeric information about penalties for having low oil reserves?

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Mist:
I am currently playing campaign '44 for Germans. Whole campaign is a bloody mess for loosing side. It looks like final agony and almost nothing can be affected by player.

Guderian thought that Germany is going to lose eventually as early as -43. And he was one of the better generals of the Heer.

IIRC Zitadelle had not happened by then so Germany *might* have been able to negotiate some kind of armistice with Russians or maybe offered Ukrainians independence or whatever.

Only thing I could see that happening would have required a coup'd'etat by the general staff. And Hitler was quite adept with divide + rule approach.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Mist:
I do not see readiness penalties for my units, but they fight at 1/3 strength even if fully supplied. I mean that only 1/3 of troops seems to appear in combat if oil reserves are low.

Well, a penalty is expected if oil reserves drop below 100, but I've never spotted this before, nor have I played the '44 scenario. I'll take a look at the '44 scenario.

[*] Sometimes Soviet losses look very strange in combat report(especialy for surrendering troops). I've got a screenshot. Men losses can't be divided by 10 without remnant.

[*] "no sustains damage" message is caught and I finaly have a screenshot as a witness.
[/b]

Uhhm, screenshots don't help a whole lot. We believe you when you tell us what you've seen, but we need a saved game where the problem can be duplicated, allowing us to play around and maybe discover new information, or at least we can send Arnaud the game with instructions on how to repeat the problem, which makes much better use of his time. A screenshot doesn't help Arnaud any. The saved game doesn't have to show the problem immediately, 100% of the time. For example, in the case of the "no sustains damage" message, if you can reach a point where the problem occcurs 2 or 3 times out of 10 turns of combat, that should be enough for us to maybe get some useful info to help Arnaud figure out the problem.

[Martinov]

I enjoy playing the 1944 scenario vs a soviet computer very much. It makes it almost even.

My usual plan is to run away as quickly as practical, counterattacking south of pripyet as long as profitable, to give time to form strong infantry/assualt gun defenses in rumania/carpathian mountains and to assemble a mighty force capable of counterattacking the red army around Warsaw.

I pull almost all the air groups out of the line to regroup, and concentrate the fighters in germany and around ploesti to cripple the allied bombers before its too late. Freed of their eastern responsibilities they do a fairly good job.(I wish each german infantryman the best of luck, give him 50 deutschmarks and a fresh pair of socks, and tell him to meet me in Poland)

I allow myself free hand with reorganising reich production, scrapping nearly all bomber production, converting to jet fighters, simplifying tank types.

I slowly pull panzer divisions out of france and assemble with air groups around warsaw in readiness. On attack day i pull more units out of france and pray to return them before its too late. Then i unleash the rested, regrouped and reequipped elite of the german army on a massive offensive aimed at destroying soviet offensive power.

And then lose anyway - but its great fun.

Hmmn those german planners were right to select the ardennes as target, the offensive just gets bogged and ground slowly down, not least because by the time the reorganisation is complete, the weather is starting to go bad.

Mind you, this is on the last version, where the soviets had virtually unlimited manpower, under the more balanced 3.0 it might be possible to succeed.

One problem i have encountered is that the computer seems to upgrade automatically even on manual. eg with the shortages of modern tanks i might try to change the equipment of a brigade of 4 panthers to pz-III's or IV's or whatever, which are lying around in depots in droves. The brigade goes up to 30 tanks or whatever, hooray for the volksturm! This frees up the panthers for other units. The next turn i check it and they have discarded their 20 pz-111's and stolen a few panthers from the depot! And lost experience to boot. (I don't think it does this with air groups)

[Mist]

For those who will try to play '44. It is good idea to try "Battle for Germany" ("Battle for Britain" in opposite). Set both human controls and defend your oil/industry from AI directed strategic bombings. Quite exciting is it. It does not take as much time as whole campaign and is still very interesting to look what max can you do in air. Changing production and pool management is certanly important.
P.S. Ed, Ricky! You should look at this because there are strange things happening(59 Killoton bombings, no sustains damage message etc). I have no savefile with 0.3+ probability of these events, but I had at least couple of dozen of them in '44-'45.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Mist:
For those who will try to play '44. It is good idea to try "Battle for Germany" ("Battle for Britain" in opposite). Set both human controls and defend your oil/industry from AI directed strategic bombings. Quite exciting is it. It does not take as much time as whole campaign and is still very interesting to look what max can you do in air. Changing production and pool management is certanly important.
P.S. Ed, Ricky! You should look at this because there are strange things happening(59 Killoton bombings, no sustains damage message etc). I have no savefile with 0.3+ probability of these events, but I had at least couple of dozen of them in '44-'45.

I never thought of it as a bombing game
Regarding the no sustains massive damage, I have seen that and I think it is related to either no active factory in the city (already bombed to rubble) or it misses the target, due to bad weather or inaccurate bombers or something. I think Ed has added it to our list already as a minor bug, or at least it has been discussed. Thanks for the info on it - not having played WIR-Bombing of the Reich I didn't realize you would see it so often in the late game.

[Mist]

Originally posted by RickyB:
I never thought of it as a bombing game

It becomes allimportant to defend your oil industry if you start in '44. I completely ignored this subject initialy, but it turns to nightmare when your troops fight at 1/3 of their strength even if their readiness is 99 just because your oil reserve is kept at ~30 by strategic bombers.

[Vasquez]

Hi together,

at the moment, i play the 43´er campaign.
i hold the fronts in france and italy and captured leningrad, cause i do not attack on the "kursker bogen".
the eastern front is intact, but i suffer heavy losses. only the heeresgruppe mitte must go back and lost orel, bryansk and smolensk.
now it is feb. 45 and i planned a last big offensive at the southern front. i hope to capture rostov and go forward to stalingrad.

with the oil-produktion i have no problems, but my heavy-industry is pulled down to 25!?!?!