Fortress Luxembourg: Level 10 Fort and hold off Germany

[Nobody987]

So I tried this 'challenge' few times and failed every. Basically, the idea is to fortify Luxembourg with lvl 10 fort, build as best defensive force as possible and hold of Germany.

I tried with bumping defense and soft attack score as much as possible, like combinations of INF + HT + HSPA or INF + ART, but no luck. Tried different doctrines, mainly supreme firepower and GBP, but also no luck.

First month of war is generally success: Germany attacks with few divisions and suffer heavy losses, they attack and defense scores are 1-2 and mine goes up to 500-1k.

Problem comes with defeat of Poland and Germany transfers all their forces to west, including bombers.
Bombers are key, as they start with strategic bombing of Benelux region, which essentially reduces my fort levels all the way to level 1! My civilian factories are working day and night to repair fortifications but they just cannot keep up. Even I activated continual focus which gives 100% free repair, whatever that means (something good, I guess?). After that sneak attack, AI just throws 10 divisions and finishes me off.

At lease I succeeded at standing as a last free country in the west

So my question is: has anyone tried/succeeded at this kind of play? I am interested at hearing other peoples thoughts about this, is it plausible or not? What composition of armies to use to maximize effectiveness and so on.

P.S Good side is that AI seems pretty good at understanding how to break poor mans Maginot line.

 

[ltccone]

So I tried this 'challenge' few times and failed every. Basically, the idea is to fortify Luxembourg with lvl 10 fort, build as best defensive force as possible and hold of Germany.

I tried with bumping defense and soft attack score as much as possible, like combinations of INF + HT + HSPA or INF + ART, but no luck. Tried different doctrines, mainly supreme firepower and GBP, but also no luck.

First month of war is generally success: Germany attacks with few divisions and suffer heavy losses, they attack and defense scores are 1-2 and mine goes up to 500-1k.

Problem comes with defeat of Poland and Germany transfers all their forces to west, including bombers.
Bombers are key, as they start with strategic bombing of Benelux region, which essentially reduces my fort levels all the way to level 1! My civilian factories are working day and night to repair fortifications but they just cannot keep up. Even I activated continual focus which gives 100% free repair, whatever that means (something good, I guess?). After that sneak attack, AI just throws 10 divisions and finishes me off.

At lease I succeeded at standing as a last free country in the west

So my question is: has anyone tried/succeeded at this kind of play? I am interested at hearing other peoples thoughts about this, is it plausible or not? What composition of armies to use to maximize effectiveness and so on.

P.S Good side is that AI seems pretty good at understanding how to break poor mans Maginot line.

I'm glad you didn't succeed; you shouldn't be able to. Since others were able to do this in the past, this shows AI improvement.

 

[Tacticus101]

You cant win, the AI will easily outproduce the losses you cause them, they will never run out of equipment. Also, with only once province you don't have the chance to recover to repair because you will be under constant attack.

 

[kramsikrams]

I tried it two patches ago, I could survive a few months, maybe more if I managed to take the german VP province next to Luxemburg, which would instantly give lots of factories and steel. In the end even though manpower losses were small, the few divisions I had would just die because even though they could regain some org by retreating the equipment losses were just to large.

I'm also happy to see that it is harder to survive. Surviving as democratic OPM Luxemburg should be impossible. My guess is that only a severe AI bug could make that play possible.

 

[ETAIPOS]

I remember reading it was possible in fresh game, just after release. But at that time german AI wasn't really building good divisions (for some reason Romanians had best templates in Axis...)

 

[The-False-Being26]

Wow I guess that the AI really has improved since release. This is good to hear.

 

[Sanny]

What would be a real test is to see Copenhagen still holds out with a Lvl 10 fort.

 

[Nobody987]

I think that AI bombing the forts is the key for failing. With large formation it can destroy lvl 10 fort in no time, like 1 month perhaps. After that, it is just matter of time when AI will overrun you, because it doesn't suffer huge penalties that fort provides.

 

[ocelot64]

So I tried this 'challenge' few times and failed every. Basically, the idea is to fortify Luxembourg with lvl 10 fort, build as best defensive force as possible and hold of Germany.

I tried with bumping defense and soft attack score as much as possible, like combinations of INF + HT + HSPA or INF + ART, but no luck. Tried different doctrines, mainly supreme firepower and GBP, but also no luck.

First month of war is generally success: Germany attacks with few divisions and suffer heavy losses, they attack and defense scores are 1-2 and mine goes up to 500-1k.

Problem comes with defeat of Poland and Germany transfers all their forces to west, including bombers.
Bombers are key, as they start with strategic bombing of Benelux region, which essentially reduces my fort levels all the way to level 1! My civilian factories are working day and night to repair fortifications but they just cannot keep up. Even I activated continual focus which gives 100% free repair, whatever that means (something good, I guess?). After that sneak attack, AI just throws 10 divisions and finishes me off.

At lease I succeeded at standing as a last free country in the west

So my question is: has anyone tried/succeeded at this kind of play? I am interested at hearing other peoples thoughts about this, is it plausible or not? What composition of armies to use to maximize effectiveness and so on.

P.S Good side is that AI seems pretty good at understanding how to break poor mans Maginot line.

Did you build anti-air emplacements in Luxembourg? Shouldn't Level 5 AA discourage enemy bombing due to high enemy bomber losses?

 

[Nobody987]

Actually, yes. But you don't have time to build much before war starts. You start building forts immediately from day one and last level is finished somewhere in June/July of 39. After that, I switch to AA but as said, you cannot build enough.
Survival is also very dependent on other allies around you, because when France and Belgium fall, you have zero chances of holding. You get nasty encircled penalty with large battle width, plus enemies air superiority plus no forts.

 

[DreamDiver]

I did manage to survive that in the past, good to hear its no longer possible. And yes if the province is attacked repairs are not working, so constant attacking + bombing will reduce the forts nicely.

 

[Nobody987]

It is okay from my side also that this thing is not possible/very hard. I also read in a past that some people did it, so wanted to give it a shot

 

[DreamDiver]

And yeah try getting at least one province from Germany at the start and also build 10 level fort there. Holding 2 provinces is better, since that will not add encircled modifier.
Alternatively can hold France Maginot line one

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I did this in like 1.1 and the Germans never even dared to attack me until I started expanding into their ungarrisoned territory. All I got was occasional banzai charge by a wandering Nat. Spain volunteer division. Eventually I started building rocket sites and nuclear reactors just to take revenge on the boring Germans (only to find out rockets can't carry nukes).

Haven't tried it again, but did notice AI was able to bomb forts down in 1.3 Denmark game.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

Are you allowed to go fascist or do you have to stay democratic? Is taking provinces from Germany allowed or do you have to stay on one province?

 

[Nobody987]

In my opinion, fascist is a must, you just don't have enough manpower to feed division(s). Optionally, you can stay democratic and save PP to go for scraping the barrel as war starts, but even then you don't have enough, I think.
In my all tryouts I stayed in one province, relaying on fort, but bombers quickly dwindle it to a few sandbags . So I guess you can try to take province from Germany if that helps with encirclement, but AI will probably retake it.
Just additionally to say, my idea is not to be hostile to others, just Germany, so no quick takeover of Belgium and Netherlands.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

In my opinion, fascist is a must, you just don't have enough manpower to feed division(s). Optionally, you can stay democratic and save PP to go for scraping the barrel as war starts, but even then you don't have enough, I think.
In my all tryouts I stayed in one province, relaying on fort, but bombers quickly dwindle it to a few sandbags . So I guess you can try to take province from Germany if that helps with encirclement, but AI will probably retake it.
Just additionally to say, my idea is not to be hostile to others, just Germany, so no quick takeover of Belgium and Netherlands.

OK I'll try it with these rules when I have time.