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By late February, I have 10 spies in both SU and Yugoslavia. I wll now be able to spread my Leadership around some more, putting 4.2 points into research and 0.22 into Diplomacy. There is no point in training officers when we have a Volunteer Army. I am going to research Agriculture and the two Industry techs plus the infantry techs, since those are the most obvious shortcomings.

by the end of August there are less than four projects in my queue... What did you research afterwards?

BTW I've re-read "take two" but this approach, selecting a minor and choosing a limited goal before starting another game in order to showcase some particular aspects of the game looks very promising.
 
Agriculture, Education, Industrial Production, Industrial Efficiency, both AC techs and all 4 infantry techs, but hardly any of them have gotten finished because we've had other proiorities.
 
OK, I think I've missed these two: "both AC techs". Will check later...

Thanks!

I'll make sure to be more detailed in future.
 
Agriculture, Education, Industrial Production, Industrial Efficiency, both AC techs and all 4 infantry techs, but hardly any of them have gotten finished because we've had other proiorities.

The pain of playing a small nation I experience most of the time. @mikerohan Though if you have the time and possibility add the appropriate infantry (and artillery) doctrines as they add to organization and morale (how fast you regain organization). No organization means, no possibility to attack whatsoever, so next to having enough officers and the essential techs, the 3rd ingredient of winning battles ;).
 
Good advice there. If you're not certain whether you're going to win the engagements, you have to prioritize the 4 infantry techs, which add to respectively soft attack, hard attack, defensiveness and toughness of your footsoldiers and motorised infantry. If you can, next in line would be anti-tank techs and artillery techs in the "armour' tab of the research page.
If you don't have enough LS for both, prioritize the artillery over anti-tank gun techs! The reason for this is very simple: most enemy units you meet will be soft (infantry, marines, para, mountaineers, militia,...). Artillery is always useful. Anti-tank guns are only useful if you're going up against tanks.

there are other ways of dealing with tanks. bombers always pierce armour (CAS are best against tanks but vulnerable to interceptors and the like). other ways are bypassing them, or luring them into a terrain where tanks are all but useless (swamps, mountains, etc). Cutting off their supply lines works as well. A tank without fuel is just a very big tin can.

I will have an explanation of the armour/piercing mechanic in combat in next chapter.
 
Thanks to both of you!
I had figured out that artillery was going to be better than anti-tank in this particular game, so it's first in my list.
Doctrines too... Good advice...

Keep the good work.
 
I have never tried it with the US, because I am convinced it can't be done while the New Deal is still in effect. The US' Consumer Goods Needs are too high. You can't recover from that with just 30 IC. Sorry.

edited to add: Maybe after the war has started and you can shed the New Deal, but by then it's '39.

I was intrigued to see if you could pull it off with the US. So last night I did a little experiment. I didn't spend anything on consumer goods and by may 26th 1936, I could enact the decision. Than I had 30 IC left over, but the key point here is that my consumer goods went down to 15 IC. So I had more than enough to pull me out of the death spiral. By august 10th 1936 I had no dissent. No the neutrality went down quickly!

These are the law changes I made:

26-10-1936 - Basic Mobilisation
22-11-1936 - One Year Draft
20-12-1936 - Two Year Draft and Full Mobilisation
10-01-1937 - Three Year Draft and War Economy

So in less than a year I had the 'best' peace laws for the US, skyrocketing my IC.

So I played a bit with this setup and there are some side effect. First the Republicans win the elections in 1936 because of the dissent. Second your consumer goods demand skyrockets after all the law changes, I'm trying to get it down but I'm not having any succes.
 
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Chapter 3: Combat Update.


Germany: Take Two: Chapter 9 explains how divisions are constructed and 18 explains all the details of how combat works. Both of these are vital in understanding the following chapter.


What has changed in Their Finest Hour?

There have been a couple of changes, two of which are game-changers. I will deal with these first.


DfBbUeK.png


In TFH, tanks, all land units have gained 2 new stats. One is “Armour”. For most units, this value is 0, except for tanks, tank destroyers and armoured cars. For them, the value depends on the type of brigade and your research. The screenshot shows the Brigade production screen for Germany in the 1944 campaign start, sorted by their Armour value.


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The other one is “Piercing”. Again, the value of this stat depends on the type of unit and your research. Shown are the German values in the 1944 campaign, sorted by Piercing.


How does this work?


Whenever 2 divisions meet in combat, Armour and Piercing are compared. If Piercing is EQUAL TO OR HIGHER THAN the opposing unit’s Armour, combat happens normally.

If Armour is higher than the enemy’s Piercing, then damage is halved.


If you compare the 2 screenshots, the effects will become obvious. Germans would need anti-tank guns or tank destroyers to Pierce their own Heavy Armour (those are Tiger tanks, boys and girls).


Researching Combined Arms Warfare will add 10% Armoured.


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Another thing that is radically different from prvious expansions, is how Combined Arms is calculated. Previously, you had to have a Softness between 33% and 66% to have a CA bonus.

In TFH, CA completely revolves around the makeup of your divisions.

The base brigade that makes up a division, is the infantry. These are all the light brown brigade types in the army production tab.

Adding any type of tank (Light Armour, Armour, Heavy Armour) adds 5% CA.

Adding any type of artillery (Artillery, Self-Propelled Artillery, Rocket Artillery, Self-Propelled Rocket Artillery) adds another 5%.

Direct Fire brigades are the light blue ones. Any of these also adds 5%.

Finally, we have Support brigades. These are the green ones (Armoured Car and Engineers). Adding these to a division also adds 5% CA.


What does this mean?

Well, for starters, you don’t need tanks to get Combined Arms. A typical German division on the Eastfront would be 2 inf+1art+1AT. This division has 10% CA: 5 for the artillery, 5 for the anti-tank guns.


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Secondly, researching Superior Firepower tech, which allows you to add a 5th brigade to the makeup of your divisions, also allows you to have 1 brigade of each type in your divisions, as shown in the following screenshot.


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This would be a good design using 5 brigades for the US. Regardless of any other modifiers in the game, this division has 20% CA, it has Piercing of 10, thanks to the Tank Destroyers, and it has a softness of below 50%, which means that Soft Attacks will be all but useless against it. The downside is that is extremely expensive to maintain, meaning that only 1 or 2 nations on the planet besides the US would be able to field a large amount of these without undue problems.


Let’s deal with some common misconceptions before we continue.


You don’t have to include tanks in every single division in the entire army. Yes, doing so would add Armour to every division, but it would also become expensive to supply. It would add fuel needs to every division in your entire army. For most nations that are not the US, this could cripple their economy and their ability to wage war. Imagine, if you will, the entire German offensive into the Soviet Union coming to a dead stop, because every single infantry division needed fuel. If a unit cannot attack, it becomes a sitting duck.

Including Heavy Armour to every division when playing as France during the Sitzkrieg would make it all but impossible for Germany to succesfully invade France, especially if the French army could take advantage of terrain and rivers to provide extra cover. It has been proven as a recipe for success, and I would never impose my values to anyone out there. We all play the game the way we want to play it. However, I consider it gamey to do so. To each his own.


You don’t need anti-tank guns or tank destroyers in every single division in your army. There are other ways of dealing with tanks.

Bombers always Pierce. Close Air Support planes (aka Stukas) have the best Hard Attack of the entire airforce. If you can control the skies through Multi-Support planes and Interceptors, you can lure the enemy tanks within striking distance of your bombers.

All armour provide a high Piercing. Usually, up-to-date Armour will Pierce anything except Heavy Armour (in RL: T-34 against Tigers would usually go to the Tigers, while T-34 against Panzer III would usually go to the T-34).

All divisions need fuel and supplies. No fuel or supplies means certain defeat. This means that if you’re dealing with a division you cannot Pierce, you can try to bypass it and cut off its supply lines. If it can’t attack, it’s just a very big tin can.

Terrain modifiers still count. A tank trying to attack a well-fortified position in the swamps or mountains or across a river will still have just as big of a disadvantage as it did before.

About 75% of the enemy divisions you will encounter, are still mostly “soft” (footsoldiers, motorised divisions, etc…). That means that those anti-tank guns would be useless against 75% of the fights you’re involved in, with the Eastfront being a possible exception for both the Soviets and the Germans. If the Soviets were to invade Manchuria, however, they would probably never see a single tank in the entire campaign. Here, anti-tank guns would be an unnecessary burden on the Soviet supply lines.

Minor, on the other hand, have only an exceedingly small amount of Leadership. Romania cannot research everything. Choices have to be made. Hard choices. In my view, all things considered equal, artillery is still a higher priority to research than AT.


An often-aksed question on the forum from new players is: “What would be a good division?”

Because of all the above, the only correct response is: “It depends on where you want them and what you need them for.”

If you ask this question (and you should if you’re stumped on how to proceed), make sure everyone knows where and why and what nation you are playing, because those facts will completely change things. Even then, there are many ways of dealing with the same problem.

If you take the Pacific War, for instance, some people add Armour to their Marine Divisions to take advantage of the fact that, in all likelyhood, the island garrisons there will have no AT, and because the Marine Brigades’ Amphibious bonus would largely negate the Armour’s Amphibious penalty. The logic is perfect and the game mechanics support this, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m more inclined to use an extra Marine Division to achieve victory and go a little slower.


If any of the above is unclear, please, talk to me. That’s what a tutorial is for.


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This is a neat little feature that was added to TFH. You can now see the various terrain modifiers when designing a division, where before you needed to either guess or know. It makes it so much easier to build the right kind of division for the right kind of terrain.



Another change is the use of Combat Tactics. The general in charge of a fight will choose a certain tactic. Which tactic he chooses depends on your doctrine research. Various techs in the “army” tab of the research page add a bonus to the chance of choosing a certain tactic.

In a rock-paper-scissors kind-of-way, every offensive tactic can be negated by a proper defensive tactic. The general with the highest skill level in combat is more likely to choose the proper tactic to win the fight.


I will illustrate this with an example.


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It is 1944. The Allies are stuck in Normandy and the Germans have launched a counteroffensive to push them back into the sea.

The German general Meyer, in charge of the attack, has a skill level 2. He has chosen to use “Blitz” as a tactic, which increases the damage done and the speed with which Caen will be retaken from the Allies, at the expense of suffering additional casualties of his own. He has chosen this tactic because German doctrine tells him it is a viable option. This tactic can be countered by the defensive tactic of Elastic Defense.


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The British general Dempsey, with a skill level 4, however, has chosen to use Defend as a tactic. This will deal an additional 5% casualties to the enemy. He has chosen this tactic, because the UK has not researched the Elastic Defense tech in this scenario. If they had, his skill level would have given him a slightly higher chance of choosing that instead.


There are a lot of possible tactics, spread out among the various land doctrines in the research page. Only a handful of nations can afford to research them all, and the AI is probably urged into a certain direction.


I am going to be honest with you. I don’t know how big of a difference this makes in single-player. I never play multi-player, but I can theoretically see a game of tic-tac-toe happening between 2 players on opposing sides of the board.

I have never given it a second thought, really. If that is a mistake, I’m sure someone more knowledgable will tell us shortly. But I wanted to include it anyway, for your benefit.


I think that concludes all the changes in terms of combat between FTM and TFH, and I will see you next time.
 
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Excellent, concise and informative. I would have expected nothing less. Pay attention guys Mr.B is one of the real pros around here! Joining the Axis would have given you free DOW's but you would have lost much of your homeland. Good choice. ;)
 
Excellent, concise and informative. I would have expected nothing less. Pay attention guys Mr.B is one of the real pros around here! Joining the Axis would have given you free DOW's but you would have lost much of your homeland. Good choice. ;)

Thank you for the compliment.
 
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Great to see this, and looking forward to following it. Think of it as researching the most current doctrine techs for my gameplay.


In that case, let's hope I can provide plenty of Leadership for you :)
 
Can't I be Sitting Bull instead? Sounds like he, at least, had a cushy job :)