Stalingrad

[Imperial Dane]

Well using the south as a distraction and cutting the supplies worked well enough for me. Ah well I think the beauty of this game is that we can have different approaches and still do well.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Personally I enjoy this one a lot. I think it's a nice change of pace from the headlong rush in "Case Blue" and "Edelweiss". You do need to methodically destroy enemy positions at first and then start being really agressive 3 or 4 turns into the game. If you wait too long, the Soviet reinforcements become a really big problem... if you go too fast on the other hand you risk getting your spearheds chopped off by the still strong Russians.

Playing this as a single scenario and going for the maximum score is a really nice way to test your skills. It's never easy, even for us who played it many times over.

[logan5]

So far this seems to best the best multiplayer map, although I have not even touched the russian campaign or some of the later german missions..

[2xPelin]

I have moved discussion about Stalingrad from beta part of forum here.

[madwill]

CommanderP's southern attack (which i've dubbed 'the uppercut') seems to work well. stalingrad in 8 turns, my first brilliant victory.

[Spooner]

That is the way I do it too, in order to be able to get their quickly. I used to be able to make an effective horizontal attack, but quite sensible changes since the beta make that pretty much impossible to do quickly (specifically Soviet tanks are more powerful and 88s are less powerful - I used to be able to create a virtually unassailable bridgehead using motorised infantry bolstered with that particular AA gun).

[easyBreeze]

I almost got BV on my 5th turn but had to settle for getting it on my 6th. Moving up from the south is my preferred way of beating it. I leave a line of experienced infantry with AT weapons in the center and northern sectors to deal with the tank pushes. I then bring down all of my armour and motorized units south and push north-east towards Stalingrad.

[3Form]

Weurgh, I just managed a BV last night. It was quite a phyrric victory - I lost many units and ended up with a single mechanised infantry unit in Stalingrad, cut off and surrounded by a sea of red. If the AI had been a bit more proactive in shifting stronger units to defend the objectives I wouldn't have made it. But, I made a net profit in terms of prestige which is the important thing at the moment! I'll come back to it later and try and win a clean victory once I've completed the campaign

A few things I found while playing!
The two bridges in the centre - one of these crosses into a swamp, which is bad. Several times I was seduced by this bridge, as it seemed the quickest way to unite the centre with the south and encircle a ton of infantry, but the swamp just stalls all your progress. I found it much better to use the other bridge.
I think the Soviets start with a huge veteran T-34 division, this thing is beastly so you need to smash it. If you get the opportunity, dump both your airstrikes on it and chase it with some panzers.
I increased supplies on the most northerly supply point, and used the allied mobile/infantry units and some Germans to defend the supply route. Keeping this supply route open also keeps a large portion of soviets encircled, negating them. This scenario also taught me to cycle my units in and out of supply. Also the importance of still being able to fight one turn out of supply - your one supply drop can keep two units fighting (just about).
Finally, don't be afraid to disband a unit if it's out of movement points and impeding progress. Sometimes I would use a Mountain to try and finish an enemy off so my tanks could push right through, only to have my Mountain fail. Disband him, and get those tanks rolling!

One final note, on my first attempt at Stalingrad a couple of days ago, I spent the 270 prestige needed for the Grenadiers. They're amazing, you can pretty much derp your way from the south into the City. If you're having trouble and simply want to just get past the mission with a DV then I reccomend them

[RambOrc]

Not sure whether this is the right place to report this (didn't see a bug report forum), but the AI lets you cut the supply and doesn't try to recapture it, it's especially bad in the north where tanks coming in towards turn 6 or so just race past the one weak unit occupying a supply center. Even in the south, the only occasion where the AI tried to stop me from capturing the supply center was when I moved all the German units straight northwest and moved the 4 Romanian infantry slowly towards the supply center (in latter case, the AI chased me down with the tank and some infantry). But if captured by the mechanized infantry and keeping the bridge area busy with an infantry sitting at it and the tank making an attack now and then, I can just keep the mechanized on the supply base until the Romanian infantry units slowly wander over, at which point I can free up the mobile unit as well. After that, an out of supply Romanian infantry sitting on the supply base is unmolested by Soviet forces throughout the scenario.

p.s. The reason why I consider this a bug is because otherwise the AI is really amazing.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

We've been alerted to this issue already, and Ante has a fix.

However, we're worried that if we put the fix in, it might create problems with other scenarios - we're just not sure. So we decided to add the fix in the expansion where we will run a proper test group like we did last year in September. This way we'll be able to detect if the fix introduces regressions elsewhere.