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Aditia -> Advise for aspiring Axis players (8/21/2016 11:31:05 PM)
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As I am through my first campaign season as Axis and about to wrap up first winter, I figured to write up some advice that may be of use to people.
I'll update this thread as I go and if there is any interest for it.
I write this based on my own experience and reading several AAR.
For the first post, some crucial strategic considerations and game mechanic considerations, that I feel are of great importance (edit: I ended up typing more than I wanted, but hopefully still useful). In no specific order:
- I highly advice reading all of the following and skim through the manual before playing against a human.
best of WITE forum 1
Best of WITE forum 2
- Practice turn 1 against yourself or a human 1 or 2 times.
- Overall strategic concepts in 1941:
1. While the Axis player determines the pace of the game, it is the Soviet disposition of forces that should decide for you where you strike. DO NOT focus too much about where you want to be, focus on where you can do the most damage for the least cost. Pelton calls this taking what you are given.
2. Your edge comes from HQBU. You need to become good at using HQBU. After using an HQBU, the Soviet player should be confronted with either a bunch of isolated divisions or a break so crucial that he has to abandon strong defensive positions. It doesn't matter too much if 1 or 2 forward units get cut off as long as you do the structural damage; that being said you should of course try to avoid having them cut off, but don't be afraid to extend far forward to do the damage needed. High MP HQBU and fuel drops will help to reduce the effect of mobile units potentially being cut off.
3. The best way to defeat strong defensive positions is to threaten them by going around. Find ways around them or find weak spot to go through. Only directly assault strong positions if it is absolutely crucial to do so and it will result in easier victories later on. Using the Wehrmacht to brute force your way through defensive lines is exactly what your opponent wants you to do.
4. Industry targets should be part of your considerations, but if you adhere to the above, you will weaken the Soviet Union economically anyway. Don't prioritise industrial targets over unhinging defensive lines: when defensive lines get unhinged, withdrawals happen, and economic targets fall into your lap.
- Get comfortable using the Commander's Report. Explore all it's functions. You cannot mess anything up with it that cannot be undone as far as I know, so just play around with it.
- When doing bombing missions ALWAYS select the airgroups manually (except for maybe airfield bombing in the first turn, as that is so tedious). You do this by Shift+Right clicking on strike targets. This is the only way to make sure your strike missions have escorts. If you don't do this, prepare to have your level bomber losses spiral out of control. Manual control can result in over committing fighters to missions so, don't go overboard with selecting everything, as you might then find you can use the Luftwaffe for way fewer missions. Check miles flown and fuel levels of your air bases to get an idea of the logistical effect of your missions.
- Assign pioneer units directly to your mobile forces. This really increases their combat effectiveness. Motorised Divisions benefit from adding AFV (StuGs/SP Flak Bn's/SP Inf. Gun/Panzer Jaeger) to them.
- In the early turns, beware of attacking swamp/rough hexes with mobile units. If you have to do it, then use more force than usual.
- In general, it is a good idea to use overwhelming force in the first combats of a push. After your initial break through the sailing will be much smoother. Don't hesitate to use a a full Pz Corps force for one hasty attack if less force looks iffy. A hold delays you much more than using multiple units for one attack. That being said, if there is a hold, your artillery/engineers will have usually degraded the fort level and the next hasty attack will often carry you through. If Fort levels were unaffected, then a different approach (more force) might be needed.
- Do NOT move your air bases and Army HQ's all the time. I did this and it caused me a lot of truck attrition.
- Keep your airbases close to the rail heads. I neglected this and my fighter bases where chronically out of fuel from turn 9 onward. You can move a fighter base in each Corps forward a bit to have more fighter cover, but don't overdo it.
Make sure to keep your transport groups within 5MP of the rail heads, or you wont be able to fly resupply missions.
- OKH and Army Group HQ's are sh!t at auto repair. Army HQs and the RHG Army HQ's are much much better at it, as their range is so limited. Use this to your advantage to create some redundancy in your rail line quickly. Also, these HQ's can be really effective at repairing partisan damage (for me this often already happened during the logistics phase, unless partisan attacks can happen with zero damage...), doubling the benefit of loading Army HQ's with construction Bn's from Corps HQ's (you don't need to dig in the summer of 1941 anyway... if the AP cost wasn't so high, I would reduce the supply usage for fort building on Turn 1).
- How you sequence your turn has great impact on the air war. Basically the red air force is much better at defending cities and airfields than at intervening during the chaos of ground combat. If you intend to do any City or Airfield bombing during your turn, try to engage the red air force where they are weak first. So do some ground attacks, or attack some air fields that are at least a few hexes away from fighter concentrations. This will draw in the red air force in an uncoordinated manner where it is easily defeated. Any follow up missions with higher danger for the Luftwaffe will incur way less losses as you have already made his fighters fewer in numbers and lower in morale.
- Manage your air doctrine, with escort/intercept levels low enough that you don't over commit during single battles. While still having enough presence.
- If you have burned all your fighter fuel during your turn, consider turning ground support/interdiction off at the end of your turn, or you may find that you lost a bunch of Stukas or Level bombers during his turn. Stuka production is very low, so be careful how you use them.
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