briklebritt wrote:Hi,
i got some questions during playing game. Please let me ask.. i will add questions here if there are new ones - thx for your help!
- i saw, that there is sometime a litte number beside the numbers of the loss overview at the top of the battle window. what does this mean? hope u know what i mean - f.e. 1:2²
- how to best attack digged units first if i got no engineers or planes?
- i never saw, that AI placed partisans at railroads or supply depots or cities - is AI allowed to do it?
- i own DLC, but newbie, i saw screenshots, that there are new unit typs (I saw panthers) - is there an overview for the new units like it exists for the vanilla units? How many are there and which?
- against what units to use mechanised units best?
- is it possible to change the spawn point hex for new units change during battles or is it fixed?
- how to identify river hexes where i can build brigdes if i didn´t own the area yet?
Danielefc nailed all this earlier, but I'll add my decidely more verbose take on matters as well.
2) As Danielefc said, Engineers and artillery are good choices. If a unit equipped with an active engineer specialist (remember that specialists are not active, i.e. are suppressed, when they are first added to a unit) causes any damage at all in an attack against an entrench unit, then the defender loses their entrenchment. Also, an engineer specialist negates the defensive bonus the defender gets from entrenchment (as well as from being across a river), so engineer-equipped units just plain fight better than engineer-less units when attacking entrenched enemies.
With the DLC, artillery now has a chance of removing entrenchment. The formula is 10% * artillery shifts + 5% * active steps. Regular soviet artillery offers a +3 artillery shift (so +30%), and when that specialist is attached to 7 active steps of soviet infantry (+35%) then you have the absolute best chance in the game of breaking entrenchment via artillery (30% + 35% = 65%). Note that most artillery specialists are considered "towed equipment" and so they are suppressed if their attached unit moves; for the aforementioned soviet infantry to unentrench an enemy position, they'd have to start their turn adjacent to said enemy. Word to the wise: try and keep your artillery squads fully reinforced to enhance their effectiveness at unentrenching. Finally, note that this unentrenchment does NOT work if the enemy is on a mountain or in a ruined city.
NOTE: I HAVE NO IDEA IF THE PRE-DLC MAPS USE THE UNENTRENCHING POWER FOR ARTILLERY. I DON'T KNOW IF THE DEVS ADDED THAT FUNCTIONALITY RETROACTIVELY TO THE STALINGRAD CAMPAIGN.
The last possibility is to scare the unit into retreating, thus ending their entrenchment. Infantry, especially green infantry, can be pretty frightened of tank attacks, even if said attack isn't particularly effective. If an entrenched enemy has a 20% or greater retreat chance against your tanks, you might try the attack to see if you get lucky. Normally I don't recommend sending your tanks into a meat grinder like that, but if the situation is desperate OR if the situation is so relaxed you can suffer the losses without jeopordizing your mission, then go ahead and try it.
There is another, subtle way of dealing with heavily entrenched units: going around them. Sometimes it's wisest to let your line surge around and ahead of the enemy fortification. If this cuts off the enemy from their supplies, then they will be helpless on the offensive in two turns, and helpless on the defensive in three turns; then your rear-guard can mop them up with ease. Also, the AI will often (but not always) retreat units that have their supplies cut off, so that's a way of scaring them off (and thus ending their entrenchment) without suffering inordinate losses yourself.
3) Neither you nor the AI can directly capture railroads and cities with partisans, however if you can capture 4 of the 6 hexes surrounding a railroad hex then it will revert to your control anyway. Note that doing so requires all four converted hexes to be on the same side of a river, otherwise they won't count towards the majority control you're going for. Because of this, not all railroad hexes are susceptible to this indirect form of capture, but it can be pretty devastating to the Germans when it does work (which is good when you're the Russians, but not so much when you're playing as Germany yourself). When playing as Germany, it is sometimes wise to leave an unimportant unit or two behind to keep partisans from disrupting your supply chain. I like to use infantry (particularly non-german infantry since they have such terrible stats) that have suffered too many losses to be effective in combat. 3-step infantry is ideal because they are strong enough to have a Zone of Control (and thus prevent partisans from working adjacent to them) but still weak enough you wouldn't miss them at the front lines.
5) Mechanized units benefit from three advantages over non-mechanized units: high inherent stats, the presence of an armor stat, and a high number of movement points. When an attacking unit has a higher armor bonus (the little number beside the tank icon) than the defender, that counts as a (potentially large) shift in it's favor, affording it a higher margin of success on the offensive then units with otherwise identical stats. And, of course, since tanks (for the most part) have better stats than non-tanks, tanks can pretty effective stomp on non-tanks even without their armor bonus (which is denied to them when attacking into difficult terrain or across a river). Finally, having 5MP (plus a +2 or +3mp when using their attack to move instead) allows mechanized units to surge through holes in the enemy line and encircle, seize crucial bridges and/or supply routes, or sprint towards objectives. Generally speaking, you want to have your units attack in descending order of strength to minimize the losses you suffer, so having your mightiest tank squad attack the enemy's strong point first is often a good idea. Of course there are lots of caveats to that rule, but figuring those out is part of fun. I do expound on these
strategies more here, in case you want to read more on the subject, and have
another guide here that's somewhat related.
7) While holding 't' you will see some river locations with a transparent circle containing a line. Those are locations that can be bridged.
I hope all this helps. Good luck, bricklebritt; this can be a tough game, for sure, but it's very rewarding when you do pull off a victory.
