German power

[AncientForest]

Which game/time period is the best for playing as Germany.

Was Germany under-powered in any game?

I am thinking Final Blitzkrieg would be the best?

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

Well Shock Force 2 - NATO features Germans. And BLU vs. RED is pretty much seal clubbing.

[Anonymous_Jonze]

I think you'd be correct in your assumption. I find FB to be extremely difficult as the allies when facing the Volksgrenadier's with all their MP44's. They also get a nice selection of heavy armor in late 44. I would also include playing as the fallshchirmjager in Battle for Normandy in the hedgerows is a nice advantage unless it's against other airborne soldiers. But the main question is why do you want to play as overpowered? Where's the fun in that? Play as the Italians in Sicily! Play against the odds and come out in victory!

Edited April 23, 2020 by Anonymous_Jonze

[AncientForest]

Well I prefer the WW2 games. I have had Final Blitzkrieg for a while. I now have Normandy and Fortress Italy.

I just want to play with the best German units is all, I dont mind a challenge.

Edited April 23, 2020 by AncientForest

[Bil Hardenberger]

6 hours ago, AncientForest said:

Well I prefer the WW2 games. I have had Final Blitzkrieg for a while. I now have Normandy and Fortress Italy.

I just want to play with the best German units is all, I dont mind a challenge.

If you have CMFB then you already have the Germans at their best equipped... their issues were beyond the tactical battlefield (as mentioned below) but the tactical battlefield was severely impacted by those factors.

It isn't what force you command though that makes this game amazing... and everybody likes commanding the Germans, even though by the end of the war the US probably had the most efficient Army (my opinion), the Russians the most feared, and the Germans had been outclassed in doctrine, training, logistics, replacement process, intelligence, and small unit capability.  A few scattered shiny Tigers could never make up for those shortcomings... occasionally they made a difference at the lowest level of course.. but there were too many other issues compounding the German's tactical finesse and capability in the negative.

CMFI is more of a challenge as there is more parity in armor and infantry.   

So.. if you are looking for parity between the forces go for any of the West front games especially CMFI, but CMFB, or CMBN as well.  You can set any small battle up to be as balanced or as realistically unbalanced as you like regardless of the actual game family.  If you are looking for historical accuracy though, by the end of the war the German Army was "challenged" to be kind. 

Bil

Edited April 23, 2020 by Bil Hardenberger

[DerKommissar]

I concur that CM:SF 2 Germans are probably the most powerful, relative to OPFOR. However, in the context of WW2: I've found CM:FI to be the easiest ride:

In CM:FB, you will face some of the best equipped Allied forces in CM WW2. King Tigers and Panthers are countered by ubiquitous 76mm guns and bazookas. Most situations pit you against well entrenched, and determined, foes -- with virtually no infantry reserves. It's an uphill battle.

CM:BN is the most balanced, I'd say. Although, the STuGs and MG-42s are incredible in defensive bocage fighting. One of them can hold off a company, in the right situation. You have lots of infantry of varying quality at your disposal, and you'll be mostly fighting Shermans with Panzer 4s.

CM:RT is very asymmetrical, and I find it more difficult because of that. The name of the game is keeping the Soviets at arm's length. Your weapons are more accurate, but theirs have unprecedented firepower. Open terrain is easy, forests and urban terrains are extremely difficult.

For CM:FI, you'll be facing a menagerie of Allied forces. The Allies here are generally less equipped, and trained, than in France. The rocky terrain provides great defensive opportunities for your infantry. The wide open maps allow you to capitalize on accurate, long-range, weaponry. Especially in early war, you hold the advantage.

Note that these evaluation are based on typical scenarios. Difficulty varies widely, depending on the situation, objectives, and specific forces involved.

[SimpleSimon]

The Germans were credibly capable of launching Division-level offensives through the entire timeframe of all the currently offered games. Corp-level offensives were conducted to the very last days of 1945 even. There should be no problem in any of the released games depicting the full capabilities of German forces within the scale of fighting depicted by Combat Mission. The Germans had full combined-arms kits to the very last days of the war. The issue was that they were increasingly unable to apply these kits as the war dragged on. Army and Army Group level offensives were mostly off the table after Kursk and capabilities only decreased from there. 

Fortress Italy has the unique distinction of being the only game released thus far depicting one of Germany's partners, the Italians. An examination of the Italian kits in 1943 will show why they are an example of a nation clearly unable to bear the burden of the war by this stage, making them mostly dependent on German inputs of arms (especially tanks and aircraft). One advantage this gives the Germans in FI is access to a somewhat wider tool kit than usual by allowing them to make use of Italian Forces, who can be very good auxiliary troops in the right circumstances. The Italians were still able to provide wide assortments of infantry and artillery for instance. 

tl:dr All of the released games have the assets necessary to depict the single most important formation available to German forces during the war...the Panzer Division. 

Edited April 23, 2020 by SimpleSimon

[Erwin]

6 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

...unable to bear the burden of the war by this stage, making them mostly dependent on German inputs of arms (especially tanks and aircraft).

I thought that the Italians actually had very good aircraft.  Eg  205 Veltro was highly respected by Allied and Axis pilots alike. Widely regarded as one of the best Italian aircraft of World War II, it proved to be extremely effective, destroying a large number of Allied bombers.

(Or was that only at the beginning and were later outclassed?)

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, Anonymous_Jonze said:

I would also include playing as the fallshchirmjager in Battle for Normandy in the hedgerows is a nice advantage unless it's against other airborne soldiers.

That all depends on what quality you set them to. Paratroopers and Fallschirmjäger are not intrinsically any better than any other unit. They get some different equipment of course.

[SimpleSimon]

1 hour ago, Erwin said:

I thought that the Italians actually had very good aircraft.  Eg  205 Veltro was highly respected by Allied and Axis pilots alike. Widely regarded as one of the best Italian aircraft of World War II, it proved to be extremely effective, destroying a large number of Allied bombers.

(Or was that only at the beginning and were later outclassed?)

The Italians had lots of excellent designs for many weapon systems. The issue was they proved utterly unable to produce enough of them to matter frequently. The Italians may have had the best AAA gun of the war for instance, the Cannone da 90/53...but built less than 600 of them. Just about all of the fighters built by Macchi were not only competitive with Allied designs, but lethal to them in the hands of a good pilot. How many were built though? Between all the types of fighter Macchi built they just couldn't build enough of anything. 

One of the issues facing Italian war production was that the more the Italians tried to ramp up production, the more they came into competition over resources with Germany. At first the Germans tried to just pass engines and resources to the Italians but as the war's prospects turned against the Axis Germany began to turn partnership into exploitation. 

The lack of output meant that Italian forces were frequently unable to execute the mostly sound combined-arms theories their forces were constructed around. This imbalance led to lack of flexibility, the lack of flexibility led to lack of realistic force projection, lack of realistic force projection led to defeat on the battlefield which further constrained Italy's options to better balance its forces. Strategic failures caused tactical failures, then tactical failures backfired into the strategy causing its failure. 

Edited April 23, 2020 by SimpleSimon

[Anonymous_Jonze]

3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

That all depends on what quality you set them to. Paratroopers and Fallschirmjäger are not intrinsically any better than any other unit. They get some different equipment of course.

All true. But usually they're labeled as veteran or crack experience and in fit condition. At least that's the standard configuration in the game. But what do I know. I mostly play as the allies.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Anonymous_Jonze

[SimpleSimon]

To comment a bit more on all this, the chief tactical limitation Italian forces had by 1943...reflected accurately by the game, is a lack of access to tanks and aircraft. This means that Italian forces in game are by themselves, capable only of infantry and artillery slugging matches with opposing forces. That still leaves a wide variety of potential scenarios and campaigns available to them, but it rules out an independent Blitz-style campaign of which the games are so frequently built around.

There is such a campaign in the game mind you...but you get lots of loans from the German tool kit to make it work so that sort of rules out the notion of independent force projection by Italian forces in the game. Really because they weren't capable of totally independent operations by this stage of the war. Their best Divisions, and all of their Armored Divisions, were expended in North Africa. What was left in Italy was a hodgepodge of some semi-motorized Divisions probably not at all full strength and the useless Metropolitan Forces. Regia Aeronautica and the Regia Marina were both defeated by the depletion of Italian oil reserves. Whatever was being produced in Europe was being completely siphoned off by the Germans. 

Famine had broken out in Italy over the last year due to the failure of the transport infrastructure and mass requisitions by German troops. This badly undermined morale in what was left of the Italian Army, in some places creating at atmosphere of outright mutiny. The Invasion of Sicily was just the last straw in the long process by Mussolini's own government to remove him. His own Fascist Council, a rather unique organization of Democratic-Fascism, voted him out and he was placed under arrest by the King. Because of the presence of so many large foreign Armies in Italy the subsequent Italian Civil War that broke out after Mussolini's ouster tends to be obscured a bit by history.

Really the country had been on the verge of total breakdown for at least a year before the invasion of Sicily though. Hitler and the Wehrmacht had discussed potential options for a breakdown of the Fascist State and Mussolini's ouster the previous year and the original plan for this had been to simply withdraw German forces to a line around Rome (with much arguing back and forth about whether or not to hang onto Rome). In the end German Officers in Italy were able to convince Hitler and OKW that they'd be able to throw Allied invasions back into the sea and full withdrawal wouldn't be necessary. They proved more than a little over-optimistic about that assessment. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by SimpleSimon

[Freyberg]

On 4/24/2020 at 1:51 AM, Bil Hardenberger said:

 

... and everybody likes commanding the Germans, even though by the end of the war the US probably had the most efficient Army (my opinion), the Russians the most feared, and the Germans had been outclassed in doctrine, training, logistics, replacement process, intelligence, and small unit capability.  ...

In fairness, there are those of us who find playing the Germans a bit boring.

I much prefer playing Soviets, Commonwealth, even Americans...

[General Jack Ripper]

On 4/23/2020 at 1:13 PM, Bulletpoint said:

That all depends on what quality you set them to. Paratroopers and Fallschirmjäger are not intrinsically any better than any other unit. They get some different equipment of course.

I once tried to conduct a whole series of tests to figure out which particular unit is the "best" in terms of fighting capability. It even led to a short lived youtube series of weapons tests.

After running through the whole gamut of testing however, I figured out the practical differences weren't worth two buckets of snot.

It all depends on what equipment is in which hands at any time, and not much else. Soft factors seem to account for much of the differences in performance we see.