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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the West >> After Action Reports >> RE: Decisively Beating the AI

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 5:07:58 AM

Harrybanana

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Having retreated the enemy armour the next step was to continue attacking it to push it out of the way. It is usually best to first use the armour furthest away and/or with the least MPs. In this case that was 11th BR which I had broken down the previous turn. I moved them into the hex I had just captured, recombined them and performed a hasty attack. As can be seen below I got lucky and routed the defender.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 5:10:33 AM

Harrybanana

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The final step was easy, moving my remaining 2 armour divisions to capture Bari and seal the pocket and then moving my inf divisions to occupy the hexes my armour vacated. If I was playing a human opponent he probably would have attacked my weakened 2 CA or 11th BR Arm to break the pocket; but I was reasonably confident that the AI would not do this. Or even if it did I as not too concerned.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 5:17:12 AM

Harrybanana

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Meanwhile I pushed the "Invade" Button for the 5th Army invasion and moved the follow up units into position behind the beaches. I only had enough transport to drop 3 paratroop brigades/regiments. On Tunisia (below) I realized I didn't have enough Port capacity to unload my 2 infantry divisions and accordingly rushed a regiment here.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 2:53:05 PM

carlkay58

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All air results (bombing and air to air) are LIES! With Fog Of War (FOW) on do not rely on any battle report in any form. The only thing you can rely on (I think) are the graph reports.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 8:39:13 PM

Harrybanana

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quote:

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

All air results (bombing and air to air) are LIES! With Fog Of War (FOW) on do not rely on any battle report in any form. The only thing you can rely on (I think) are the graph reports.

Thanks Carlkay, I suspected this but was unsure. This AAR can be educational for me too.

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Post #: 65

RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 8:40:09 PM

Harrybanana

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Turn 9: Aug 28, 1943

Not much to report this turn. 5th Army landed in the Foggia area and this time both invasions were successful. Otherwise the Germans withdrew and started forming a new line from Caserta to Termoli. A few units were left screening my advance from the beaches, but since I could not surround them (my armour was still coming ashore) I left them alone. You know how sometimes a fly will land on your computer screen (or whatever) and you start saying to to it under your breath "Don't move, don't move" while your hand slowly reaches for the rolled up paper with which to squash it. Well sometimes this game is like that. If you can't surround units it is perhaps better to just leave them alone and not scare them off while you maneuver for the big blow next turn. In any event here is the screenshot of Italy before moves.

I am not sure why all those hexes in Western Italy flipped to my control when I didn't have any units there. Something to do with supply I guess. But the result was that I isolated some more units in the Boot. My plan at this stage was for 5th Army to advance up the East Coast while 8th Army crossed over the Apennines and advanced up the West Coast. I wasn't sure yet on which coast my main assault would be. This would depend on the enemy dispositions. Meanwhile 7th Army would be prepping for the invasion up the coast.

Oh yeah, the other thing I recall doing this turn was once again attacking that big stack of isolated units with several of my inf divisions. But once again they repulsed me. So even after several turns of isolation without a depot they are still pretty potent.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/11/2015 8:46:38 PM

Harrybanana

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Here is the shot of Corsica. I would finally be able to land one regiment this turn.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 5:05:06 AM

Harrybanana

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Turn 10 : Sep 4, 1943

Again not too much to report. The Germans ran away so no more units were isolated. I just continued to advance over empty ground. In Corsica I was able to land a full division, soon I would be able to begin my conquest of the Island. Meanwhile I continue to prep and rest 7th Army for the next invasion. Below is the screenshot of Italy prior to movement.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 5:06:15 AM

Harrybanana

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For those who are interested here are some of the Information Screens.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 5:25:00 AM

Harrybanana

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Another thing, which I perhaps should have mentioned before, is that if you have your aircraft set on manual upgrade don't forget to check every few turns to see if you need or can upgrade certain air groups to newer aircraft. The most obvious one is if you have air groups using a certain model of aircraft but you have run out of aircraft of that model in your pool and you are not producing anymore. Sometimes though you will want to upgrade air groups to a newer/better model of aircraft even if you do have lots in the pool.For example, you will probably always have a lot of P40s but they should be replaced by the superior P50s and P47s as soon as you have the latter in sufficient quantities. In deciding which aircraft to replace and what to replace them with you should use the "Compare" feature. Since changing an air groups aircraft type will use up all of it's movement for a turn a good time to do this is when an air group is "Resting" anyway.

Below is an example. You can see that I have only 31 Spit IXs in my pool, I have 341 in air groups and I am not producing anymore. The Spit IX is a good plane, but unless I change some of my air groups to a different model I will soon not have enough Spit IXs to replenish my losses. You can also see that I have several options to choose from. I have lots of Hurricanes, but they are best used as a FB and all my Spit IX air groups are being used as fighters. I could change some of my Spit IX air groups to Hurricanes and then change their training to bomber; but instead I decide to switch a couple to the Spit XII. The Spit XII is not much, if any, of an upgrade over the Spit IX. I have circled the most important attributes required of a good fighter. Of these I understand that Speed is the most important and the Spit XII is actually slower than the Spit IX.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 3:18:31 PM

Harrybanana

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T11: Sep 11, 1943

In Italy I finally managed to attack and destroy that big stack in the Heel that had been isolated for several turns. Every man of them deserves the Iron Cross. On the Front lines I spotted a unit that was obviously weaker than it's displayed CV as shown below circled in red. Even better Recon indicated that the fort behind it was unoccupied. If you get a chance to destroy an unoccupied fort do so. The displayed CV of unoccupied forts is almost always much greater than it's actual CV. I will even have armour units (which as you know I am reluctant to use in attacks) perform hasty attacks at unfavorable odds against unoccupied forts. In this case of course it was likely that the motorized brigade would retreat onto the fort, but it would be much weakened by my first attack and the interdiction (not shown) it would have to retreat through. The end result was that my armour was able to capture the fort hex thus unhinging the Axis line.

On the West Coast the Br 11th Arm (circled in purple) moved around behind Naples, broke down to brigades and surrounded the City. Finally, with the liberation of Foggia and it's airbases I was finally able to rebase a significant portion of Tactical AF onto mainland Italy.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 4:29:29 PM

loki100

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

T11: Sep 11, 1943

In Italy I finally managed to attack and destroy that big stack in the Heel that had been isolated for several turns. Every man of them deserves the Iron Cross. ...

I must confess I almost dread pocketing a FJ unit as they are so tough to actually eliminate. If you can, set up an air directive with 'unit' just for that hex. At the worst that will generate disruptions and they may struggle to recover if cut off. From something Morvael said in WiTE, a lot of 'disruptions' are the very lightly wounded who can often be patched up and returned to the front with speed (which is why disruption feeds into fatigue), but this may be less feasible if you have no safe place to set up field hospitals etc.

WiTE is going to be very different with this slower approach to pocket reduction in place. Reducing a large 1941 style encirclement is going to be quite a commitment of units and time

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 5:23:16 PM

Harrybanana

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I was "unit" bombing them periodically. In fact on the turn I finally destroyed them almost all of Strategic AF was carpet bombing them. Tough Buggers.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 7:35:32 PM

carlkay58

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Harry - after the Italian surrender there is a chance that southern Italian partisans will flip control of a hex over to the Allies. If the hexes are isolated, they flip right back to Axis control (except now the railroads and industries are trashed). Taranto is a favorite area for the partisans to flip if it is left unoccupied by the Axis.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 7:47:23 PM

Harrybanana

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quote:

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

Harry - after the Italian surrender there is a chance that southern Italian partisans will flip control of a hex over to the Allies. If the hexes are isolated, they flip right back to Axis control (except now the railroads and industries are trashed). Taranto is a favorite area for the partisans to flip if it is left unoccupied by the Axis.

Is this just for the turn of surrender, or for the rest of the game? Guess I will have to read this section of the Rules before I play the German side.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 7:48:04 PM

Harrybanana

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Turn 12: Sep 18, 1943

After performing recon and reviewing the map I decided that my main effort in Italy would be on the East Coast. Accordingly, 4th CA Arm was transferred to US VI Corps now commanded by Omar Bradley. Recon had revealed that there were 2 unoccupied fort hexes on or near the East Coast and I was hoping to destroy both of them. In the end I only managed to destroy the one on the coast (Vasto).

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/12/2015 7:49:16 PM

Harrybanana

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On Corsica I was finally making some headway, isolating a German regiment and landing another division.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 2:26:33 AM

Harrybanana

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Turn 13: Sep 25, 1943

The German Ai continues to offer me opportunities on the East Coast. This turn in the form of another weak unit for me to blow through. It did mean moving through enemy zones of control directly into other enemy zones of control,but my armour was still receiving pretty good MPs each turn. I now had 4 armour divisions on the East Coast which advanced pretty much as shown below. I can not recall now why I did not also attack the 2 units displaying the 4=4 defence on the coast. It would have been better if I had (even though then I would not have isolated them) as then I would not have used up as many MPs and gas advancing with my armour. Maybe I did attack them and was thrown back, I can't remember.

For Newbies, please take note of how I have broken down a couple of my divisions in the centre into brigades. This way I can cover a large portion of the Front with fewer units. Depending on the situation this may not always be advisable against a human opponent.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 2:36:53 AM

Harrybanana

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It is only over the past couple of turns that I finally started bombing the railyards and ports north of the Front lines. I don't do anything fancy, just pick a hex about 7 to 9 hexes north of the Front line in Central Italy and have my Strategic AF bomb ports and railyards in a 9 hex radius. I perform this as a Ground Attack AD rather than a City Bombing AD. But be sure to have your Recon Air groups performing Strategic Recon of Ports and Railyards rather than non-strategic. The reason for this is if they perform non-strategic Recon I don't think the results they send back are as accurate. But I am not sure of this, so if anyone knows please post here. In any event, below is the setup of my AD.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 2:38:44 AM

Harrybanana

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On Corsica I caused the isolated regiment to surrender and began making my way to the next target/port.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:10:30 PM

Harrybanana

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Turn 14: Oct 2, 1943

This was probably one of my most successful turns of the game to date as I was able to make a bit of a breakout on the East Coast. Again, I don't have saves of what I did (except the final positions) so for educational purposes what I am going to do is once again recreate, more or less, what I did do. So Newbie's pay attention, the rest of you can skip this and go to the end. Oh yeah, forgot to mention last turn that, having decided my main push was going to be on the East Coast, I changed the HHQ of CA II Corps to 5th Army.

The opening setup was as below. As I perused the map I began considering my options. The Germans had, surprisingly, abandoned pretty good defensive positions on the West Coast. But I only had 1 armour division in the area so there was no way for me to fully exploit this. Positioned where they were it looked like my armour had an open way West towards Rome (the Blue arrow) with the possibility of trapping some German units. But this was an illusion as the mountainous terrain would stop any breakout more effectievly than 10 divisions. The only time armour can move more than one hex a turn through mountains is if they are following a rail line, and there were no rail lines here. So any major advance would have to be made by continuing North along the coast (the Red Line). This suited me fine as there appeared to be relatively weak units here and the closer I was to the coast the easier it would be to keep my units supplied from the ports I would capture. It also had the advantage of forcing the AI to either retreat or else it's line would become stretched.

So I set my Air Directives to support this plan. In particular Tactical AF was given an Interdiction GA Air Directive (railway low priority and interdiction high priority) for an area along the East Coast. I had also detected over 17 enemy air groups on the 2 airbases circled in Green, so Strategic AF was given an AD to bomb them.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:14:15 PM

Harrybanana

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Recon (not shown) revealed that there were German units in the mountains to the West anyway, so just as well I planned on going up the coast. But of course I wanted my infantry, not my armour, to blast the way through the enemy units blocking my way up the coast (ie the 6=6 mech div and the 1=7 regiment). But in order to have freedom of movement so my infantry could reach these units I first had to get rid of the enemy infantry regiment pinching me in along the coast (the 1=14). I wanted to be sure of retreating this key unit so I wanted to use a strength of at least 21 CVs (odds of 1.5:1). It so happened I started with 25 CVs adjacent to this unit, but I wanted to save most of these units for later battles. So instead I moved in 2 divisions from further away as shown by the red circles in the battle report below. Note that the 3/HG Panzer division reinforced the hex so the battle was pretty close.

A couple more battle hints for you before I move on to the next battle:

1. If an enemy unit has one of your friendly units adjacent to it it will not be able to take part in a Reserve activation. So it is generally a good idea to try and have one of your units (regiments/brigade work well for this) adjacent to all enemy units (or at least as many as practicable) before you start attacking.

2. It is also generally a good idea to make your most important attacks first as otherwise you might run out of Ground Support air missions. Alternatively you can turn GS off by pressing hotkey "x" for any high odds attacks you don't think will require GS. just don't forget to press "x" again to turn GS back on, as I have forgotten on numerous occasions.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:16:50 PM

Harrybanana

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Battle 2 was to destroy the 2 enemy units I had isolated last turn. Again note that I used an infantry division from a few hexes away, thus saving my closer units for future battles. Of course, this division would not have been able to make this attack if I had not won Battle 1.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:18:10 PM

Harrybanana

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I now had 3 infantry divisions that had sufficient MPs to attack the 2 units blocking my advance up the coast. However, I would need one of these divisions (broken down into brigades) to cover the flanks of my advance. I moved the other 2 infantry divisions into place and then had to make a decision of whether to use both of these divisions in the attack on the enemy Mech division or take a big chance and just use one of them and save the other to attack the other enemy unit. I am not big on taking chances so used them both. As you can see below this was a bit of overkill. The other thing you will notice is that Bradley committed 3 artillery battalions to the battle, you have to love the guy. Oh yeah, notice as well that both my Corps HQs are close to the Front lines in Termoli. This way I didn't have to move them to maintain the 5 hex command radius. If you have to move an HQ then it lessens the chance that it will lend support to an attack.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:20:11 PM

Harrybanana

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Battle 4 was to push back the enemy infantry regiment on the coast. The reason I decided to use both my infantry in the last battle was I realized that they would both still have sufficient MPs to make a hasty attack on this unit. But worried that their halved strength from making a hasty attack would not be enough to win the battle I also used 4CA Arm in the attack. The result is below. You are probably tired by now of me pointing out the TFs offshore supporting the attack, so this is the last time I will do that.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:21:58 PM

Harrybanana

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Battle 5 was to attack the unit I just drove back in Battle 4 along with the unit it had retreated on to. Although I am reluctant to attack with armour there are times when you have no choice, and this was one of them. I did not want to use my 4 CA as, despite the hasty attack it just took part in, it still had the most MPs, so I wanted to save it for exploitation. I also didn't want to use the 1st US Arm as I intended to break it down to cover my flanks. So Instead I used used BR 7th Armour. I probably should have used both my British Armour because, as you can see below, this was a near thing.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:23:25 PM

Harrybanana

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In my actual game I next attacked the 2 units I had just retreated again and retreated them again. But that was a mistake, so instead I will tell you what I should have done. Which is move my 4CA Arm to isolate these 2 German units so they had no where to retreat and then attack them with my remaining British Armour thus causing them to rout. Unfortunately, I forgot to save a screenshot of this attack so you will have to be satisfied with this screenshot of my final position. Note that I have stationed a TF adjacent to the level 2 port of Pescara. The TF will fully repair this port in one turn.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:24:56 PM

Harrybanana

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Remember that all of the above is a recreation of more or less what I did. Below is the screenshot of my actual positions at the end of my turn. Not quite as good as my recreation, but pretty good none the less.

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/13/2015 6:29:06 PM

Harrybanana

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Positions on Corsica

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RE: Decisively Beating the AI - 6/17/2015 3:40:14 PM

Harrybanana

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Turn 15: October 9, 1943

Below is the situation before my turn showing that the Germans were pulling back to shorten their lines. The Ai is generally smart about this, but not as smart as a good human opponent. I was once again tempted to drive West from the East coast, but in the end decided to continue the drive North along the coast.