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vimhawk

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Apr 18, 2002
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Any ideas please....

Faro.jpg

A little matter of 161 divisions to clear off Portugal. Of course one school of thought would be to leave them there because while they're there they're using supplies (well allegedly, see below) and can't be anywhere else. Of course as a meglomaniac bent on world domination I would rather not have any US divisions in my lovely unspoiled Europe. But how to clear them... I get the idea that the game doesn't really handle giant stack combat right, or perhaps I'm just not doing it right, hence my question.

FYI... nukes not available (it's mid 1943 by the way). I have a lot of low tech bombers, but bombing the stack with interdiction results in mass casualties to my aircraft with probably little result. I have kept the infrastructure down though. I have lots of paras if jumping on them makes a difference. I don't have much of a navy so can't really intercept the supply transports... incidentally I had 6 x 4 bomber groups scouring the seas on bomb convoy for two months and managed to sink ONE merchant ship. Come on ... not that such a stack could ever be possible, can you imagine the amount of supply ships that would be required? As an aircraft it would probably be impossible to miss!

EDIT: a couple of months later and its now up to 177 divisions. I'm "bombing convoys" continuously and haven't hit a thing (with tactical bombers not naval bombers if that makes a difference).
 
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Definately do log strikes to have their infra down to 1% all the time.

Also do a port blockade with a fleet lerge enough.

Then keep attacking with 2*24 from all your provinces and while you're about to lose,
change the exhausted attacking divisions with fresh ones.

Don't forget to interdict while attacking - 24/7, which means separate bomber squadrons during day and night.

Good luck!
 
Thank you for your advice.

I suspect the interdiction will cost a very heavy price in air units, but will try that.

The bit I can't get my head round in these calculations, is that you don't attack with a bigger stack than theirs. But I understand where that comes from in terms of stacking penalty etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NB loaded the game as the US to see about the transport situation and noted:

> The US has a TOTAL of 191 divisions, 171 of which are in Faro (!)
> Faro receives daily supplies of 66 oil and 2,805 supplies.
> These supplies are carried by 1,431 transports accompanied by 187 escorts.

... which does make me wonder where the hell they are!
 
You know what, give them ground and encircle them.

I think I'll have to try that. I tried a limited assault on them, changing over the attacking forces but I ran up 100 manpower losses extremely quickly, and manpower is something I don't have much to spare of.

Guess its time to transfer the panzers to Spain....
 
You know what, give them ground and encircle them.
This kind of method is useful only when you have full confidence in your abilities and in your force's, because if the enemy make breakthrough and you fail to close the gap behind them... You are screwed! (save reload is still possible tho if you are ok with "gamey' tactics)
 
This kind of method is useful only when you have full confidence in your abilities and in your force's, because if the enemy make breakthrough and you fail to close the gap behind them... You are screwed! (save reload is still possible tho if you are ok with "gamey' tactics)

Indeed, it is a risk... particularly now I find they can be supplied over any coastline, not just one with a port (see my grumpy old man reply in a previous thread). Nevertheless I am much more confident with the 'trying to surround them' idea than the one of co-ordinating attacks against the stack in place, which I tried and was hopeless at. I do have a strong panzer force to hopefully cut them off from the coast when they move, and rather a lot of paras to cut off supply options should they become available. There's also a natural 'channel' out of Faro between two rivers that will help my forces defend either side as I try to encourage them inland. I will also have a counterattack force to hopefully defeat their fastest units in detail as they turn up at an unoccupied province. Well its sort of a plan.

But since I've no real navy I don't have many other things to do in 1943. (USSR is defeated and currently losing a war against one of its successor states, Siberia... interesting, not seen that one before.)
 
A bit of a damp squib... I reduced the strength on the province I wanted them to attack through (Huelva) and nothing happened. I even went to the extent of abandoning that province completely and still nothing happened. I then abandoned the province directly north of Faro that I wasn't intending to give up to see if it would make a difference but no. They just sat there. All 216 divisions.... yes 216 (what is the largest stack anyone has seen?)

I thought something was broken so loaded as the US to check. Firstly the AI has put 216 of the US total of 250 divisions in one province, which is a bit mad. Secondly it seems there is not enough transport capacity to supply so many divisions overseas. Despite a vast shipping capability (none of which I can find with my round the clock convoy bombing attempts), the supplies arrive at the start of the day but by 06:00 or 07:00 all the units go out of supply. This is with every US transport going to Faro. As a result all other overseas US units are out of supply too!

So my giant war in Spain/Portugal isn't going to happen because of the stupid AI. I imagine that the stack strength will degrade over time but its still not very satisfactory.

NB not finding any transports to bomb is still very irritating, particularly if a transport is in a role shipping units rather than supplies it is occasionally visible to aircraft... and yet the supply transports should be seen in *vast* numbers.

EDIT: I didn't mean this thread to become an AAR, but as a matter of interest I beat the stack. I feel a little disappointed because I feel more that the AI defeated itself than me doing something brilliant. Many of the divs in the stack were too disorganised to do much or anything given their supply situation. My attacks weren't very well co-ordinated, and I didn't even need to commit all my forces. It cost me 106 German manpower (plus quite a lot of allied puppets, some of their divisions blew up). I could pretty much walk into the US now... except of course the minor problem of getting across the Atlantic! The next target is the UK and again the AI has done a bad job with deployments and pretty much the entire British Army is in Africa. I suspect I can do a lot if not all the job with paratroops... which is lucky as I have a total of three transports! (There are plenty of allied/puppet transports in the Med, but I don't reckon my chances much of getting them round to somewhere useful without a navy.)
 
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