How do I attack?

[Kami888]

Sorry for the silly sounding thread title. I've tried a few games as Germany, and I just didn't get it.

It seems utterly impossible to attack with infantry unless I have an overwhelming numerical/technological superiority along the entire front. Otherwise the enemy will just bring in more reinforcements and the attack will die out. I cannot build tanks only, because that would drain my oil pool very quickly.
So I'm stuck with a nearly useless army with which I can make no progress against USSR. There's no way I can ever get even to Stalingrad with it. It seems that the only way to advance is to make giant encirclements and basically eliminate the enemy army completely, which simply isn't always an option.

...and I'm playing on normal/normal.

I've never had such difficulties in vanilla or other mods. Is there any tips on how to play this?
Should I spread out my tank divisions into infantry armies, rather than keeping them separately in big bulks like I'm used to?

Also, air superiority seems nearly impossible as Germany. Modern packs with 5 interceptors in each, with the latest doctrines, cannot stop numerically inferior enemies from constantly penetrating German airspace. The more effort I put into stopping them, the more useless casualties I suffer. Again - no such problems existed in vanilla. Radars and AA guns don't seem to help either.

My latest game as Italy was pretty fun though. I took out Yugoslavia soon after Albania, then declared war on France when Germans took Paris, then took Greece. Right after that, I landed paratroopers at Alexandria and took the British army by surprise. After the entire British army in north-west Egypt was annihilated, I took the rest of Egypt, Middle East, and Turkey, just in time to join the German invasion of USSR. The Soviets left very little forces in the Caucasus, so I took the Baku oilfields and got stuck in mountains basically. Malta was taken at about the same time, Vichy France and USA joined the war. I even took Gibraltar with some paratroopers, and annihilated another British army group in Egypt by letting them advance a little, then suddenly encircling. Then, all of a sudden, the Russians started a massive counter-attack along the entire eastern front, and at just several months later the Americans managed to land in Casablanca (defended by 3 Vichy French divisions) and Normandy practically at the same time. Then they reinforced both areas with so many troops that it would be impossible to dislodge them, and it all went downhill from there.

Also some technical notes. The thing about USA being forbidden from sending expeditionary forces to allies, causes a lot of problems to say the least. First of all, the obvious problem is that historically they did contribute to theaters such as in Burma, and here they're forbidden from doing so. Also in scenarios like the Japanese invasion of Australia, Americans cannot send reinforcements.

But there are far worse problems than that. Whenever the American and British fronts link up (for instance, the British take all of French sub-saharan Africa, while the Americans take Algeria) - the Americans lose their ability to attack, because the AI expects to send the American army under British control but cannot do so. As a result the entire American army becomes a useless sitting duck. I'd really like if this was fixed somehow.

Japanese are utterly incapable of making any progress in China, and by 1944 they are always kicked out of China completely. This is annoying to see. On the other hand, they always manage to take Australia. In every single game Australia falls. That's all I can remember now, thanks for listening.

 

[Lothos]

Read the TRP forums and post there tons of people have answers to your questions.

 

[Kami888]

Thanks, but could you link to the exact thread where it is discussed?

Also, can you comment on the technical problems I mentioned, this part:

Also some technical notes. The thing about USA being forbidden from sending expeditionary forces to allies, causes a lot of problems to say the least. First of all, the obvious problem is that historically they did contribute to theaters such as in Burma, and here they're forbidden from doing so. Also in scenarios like the Japanese invasion of Australia, Americans cannot send reinforcements.

But there are far worse problems than that. Whenever the American and British fronts link up (for instance, the British take all of French sub-saharan Africa, while the Americans take Algeria) - the Americans lose their ability to attack, because the AI expects to send the American army under British control but cannot do so. As a result the entire American army becomes a useless sitting duck. I'd really like if this was fixed somehow.

Japanese are utterly incapable of making any progress in China, and by 1944 they are always kicked out of China completely. This is annoying to see. On the other hand, they always manage to take Australia. In every single game Australia falls. That's all I can remember now, thanks for listening.

Anyway, I manually decreased Soviet GDE from 0.95 to 0.70, and the game started making a little bit more sense. Now I can actually defeat some Soviet forces and reach the historical frontline. Before, I could not beat 3 Soviet divisions when attacking with 40 divisions (including tanks) from three directions in a province with plain terrain and no river crossing.
I think I'll just stick with 0.7, the game makes more sense this way.

 

[unmerged(70654)]

Sorry for the silly sounding thread title. I've tried a few games as Germany, and I just didn't get it.

It seems utterly impossible to attack with infantry unless I have an overwhelming numerical/technological superiority along the entire front. Otherwise the enemy will just bring in more reinforcements and the attack will die out. I cannot build tanks only, because that would drain my oil pool very quickly.
So I'm stuck with a nearly useless army with which I can make no progress against USSR. There's no way I can ever get even to Stalingrad with it. It seems that the only way to advance is to make giant encirclements and basically eliminate the enemy army completely, which simply isn't always an option.

...and I'm playing on normal/normal.

I've never had such difficulties in vanilla or other mods. Is there any tips on how to play this?
Should I spread out my tank divisions into infantry armies, rather than keeping them separately in big bulks like I'm used to?

Also, air superiority seems nearly impossible as Germany. Modern packs with 5 interceptors in each, with the latest doctrines, cannot stop numerically inferior enemies from constantly penetrating German airspace. The more effort I put into stopping them, the more useless casualties I suffer. Again - no such problems existed in vanilla. Radars and AA guns don't seem to help either.

My latest game as Italy was pretty fun though. I took out Yugoslavia soon after Albania, then declared war on France when Germans took Paris, then took Greece. Right after that, I landed paratroopers at Alexandria and took the British army by surprise. After the entire British army in north-west Egypt was annihilated, I took the rest of Egypt, Middle East, and Turkey, just in time to join the German invasion of USSR. The Soviets left very little forces in the Caucasus, so I took the Baku oilfields and got stuck in mountains basically. Malta was taken at about the same time, Vichy France and USA joined the war. I even took Gibraltar with some paratroopers, and annihilated another British army group in Egypt by letting them advance a little, then suddenly encircling. Then, all of a sudden, the Russians started a massive counter-attack along the entire eastern front, and at just several months later the Americans managed to land in Casablanca (defended by 3 Vichy French divisions) and Normandy practically at the same time. Then they reinforced both areas with so many troops that it would be impossible to dislodge them, and it all went downhill from there.

Also some technical notes. The thing about USA being forbidden from sending expeditionary forces to allies, causes a lot of problems to say the least. First of all, the obvious problem is that historically they did contribute to theaters such as in Burma, and here they're forbidden from doing so. Also in scenarios like the Japanese invasion of Australia, Americans cannot send reinforcements.

But there are far worse problems than that. Whenever the American and British fronts link up (for instance, the British take all of French sub-saharan Africa, while the Americans take Algeria) - the Americans lose their ability to attack, because the AI expects to send the American army under British control but cannot do so. As a result the entire American army becomes a useless sitting duck. I'd really like if this was fixed somehow.

Japanese are utterly incapable of making any progress in China, and by 1944 they are always kicked out of China completely. This is annoying to see. On the other hand, they always manage to take Australia. In every single game Australia falls. That's all I can remember now, thanks for listening.

How to get oil:

The key... as I learned the hard way by months of having virtually no oil, is to capture Mosul (Iraq), Kuweit City (Iraq), Damam (Saudi Arabia) and Abadan (Iran), these are probably the most valuable provinces you can possibly capture as Germany because they have oil in them, especially abadan which could supply your entire army by itself. Capturing Baghdad will net you a 7000+ oil stockpile, Riyad about 40,000 - and I have yet to capture Tehran, but i'm sure the stockpile would be something insanely large, considering they get over 90 oil a day and shouldn't be spending any of it. Start your synthetic oil plant research as soon as possible as well - and never trade energy. Before the war with the USSR trade as much oil as possible from them so you have a nice stockpile if/when they declare war, you have significant stockpiles of metal which they will gladly accept for oil. The cool thing about this mod is that you REALLY have to consider if you want to use your tanks or not, offensive operations with armor should be carefully considered to determine if its worth wasting the oil. I.e. don't attack a fully fortified province that would take a month to capture with tanks unless you have a significant oil stockpile.

Defending the middle eastern provinces should be a lot easier than defending strategic oil fields in russia - especially if you devoted yourself early in the game to defeating the allies in north africa, and/if japan is dominating in the pacific and has invaded or is invading India. DO NOT LET JAPAN GET KUWEIT, MOSUL AND ABADAN OR ITS GG.

You are probably getting owned in Russia because of the terrain - it has the most difficult terrain of any country save north west china. Forests, mud (which follows winter into spring), snow, frost and blizzards will make offensives only realistic during the late spring to late summer. Check the combat modifiers. It seems that much more provinces were made forest in TRP and the likelihood of these disabling weather effects has been increased. It will be a GRUELING push to Moscow, especially if you start the war after 1941 but you can succeed if you use a field marshall with an HQ and attack with 24 units from two or more provinces onto your target province. Call off any offensive which is going to cost you excess fuel or manpower - your two most precious commodities. Use lightning fast attacks with overwhelming armor forces to quickly punch through weak points in the soviet line and then move up your infantry armies.

The biggest mistake I made in my first game was not building infantry spam armies and relying too heavily on armor, your armor should be used in critical areas, or for important offensives, but should not be used as the basis of your entire army. For every armor unit you should have at least 6 infantry.

An important concept in this mod, as in realistic warfare, is an elastic line with gap warfare. Strategic redeploy speeds have been greatly increased allowing you to quickly redeploy armies from one side of europe to the other in a matter of days. In this fashion you can keep a relatively thin line with elite armies in reserve to reinforce provinces under attack while pushing with a large thrush along a specific part of the line elsewhere. I used tank and mobilized armies to reinforce provinces which were being attacked by the russians.

An alternate way to free up more units for offensive thrusts is to immediately start building a line of level 10 forts after you conquer poland, all along the border (Although this strategy requires that you have advanced construction by 1940). Now you will only need 6-9 divisions per province you should be able to free up a significant number of units for an offensive spearhead.

As far as airpower is concerned, I have always thought radar stations were worthless, and flak guns ONLY damage bombers doing strategic bombing or logistical strikes, they have no effect on fighters or CAS. I focused my entire Luftwaffe on multi-role fighters for air superiority and completely neglected CAS and STRAT. I also built a significant number of naval bombers to repel landings and aid in an eventual sealion operation. With about 30 up-to-date multirole fighters and competent generals you can keep air superiority over your own territory by 1942.

I can send you some saved games if you want. I have one where i'm pushing toward moscow against soviet AI and another game where I have conquered all of europe, north africa and the middle east against AI soviet and human USA.