Niscemi highway- can't win! (demo)

[rooibos]

loving this game. also enjoy the difficulty.

having a real tough time with the niscemi highway map

seemed like i was gonna win it tonight, most of my forces holding the hill destroyed, but my 3x tank reinforcements assaulting the orchard, most italian tanks destroyed, and then they get a reinforcement of like 6 pzivs?

counter attack deflated.

suggestions?

my howitzers get leveled pretty quick, and i feel like i'm too spread out with just 4 lousy shermans to defend the joint and very little other AT ability.

[Gamer58]

You can't win on defense?

A few hints.

Study the map terrain.

Re-position your units to cover kill zones in the approaches to the villa, and that are not in cover (eg crops, trees, woods etc).

Ensure that you use the top floors villa itself to station machine guns for lookout and cover advantage.

Cover all approaches.

Keep at least 1 or 2 platoons in reserve to counterattack where the enemy decides to use it's strength.

Ensure that your infantry rockets and at guns are kept silent until necessary. Use mortars, if available, to take out those Italian toy tanks. Don't waste your rockets against them, as grenades and even heavy MG fire can make crews bail.

If you are sure of enemy probes and positions, use two squads to counterattack their flanks by using scouts and carefully advancing to their flank.

Blast them in the flanks.

Good luck. I will play the scenario again and give more pointers after doing so.

[MikeyD]

Players on defense often feel the urge to 'attack' but when you're making offensive movements the chance of getting caught with your proverbial pants down goes up exponentially. In that particular scenario the best defensive strategy might be to 'keep the other guy from winning'. If he wins by scoring infantry kills deny him infantry kills. If he wins by occupying terrain make sure he doesn't get to occupy the terrain. If you go after him all you may wind up doing is increasing his kill points total.

[Gamer58]

Playing it now. Destroyed all armor in their first attack using one of the guns.

The first thing I did - withdrew the platoon on the orchard to the rear of the villa, with the exception of the rocket guys who are on the 4th floor. Hide all infantry except your platoon commanders and an MG. The M2 should do some damage on those tanks, so keep that at the ready.

Reinforcements arrived. The Sherman is going on their left flank on a hill in the distance to their far right. The infantry is going to the left down the hill to the U shaped road ready to blast them. The two machine guns are heading to the foxholes at the front of the villa. I had already deployed the orchard platoon, originarlly redeployed to the rear of the villa, toward that area, near the vineyard. I have nearly two platoons about to hit them on their right flank if they decide to come close enough. The line they need to clear is now 3x longer than the front line of the villa. If they decide to go to the villa, I will roll them up from their right flank.

The GMCs are going on the hill to the rear of the villa until I need them. Then they will emerge and blast anything coming close.

[lordhedgwich]

the shermans are actually very capable of taking on the pivs in game and i think they get 5 not 6 if i remember correct

[Vinnart]

I won it playing on both defense, and offence, but found the defensive a bit harder. The Shermans had a harder time taking out panzerIII than I expected with lots of ricochets. On defense I kept the engineers together, and put them on ambush in the woods located on the left side. They repeled the Italians, and added to my couterattack on the orchard toward the end. I think this is good spot for them in this scenario. Another good tip is to blow a hole in the tall wall to move troops to and fro from the woods and monistary in good cover. All in all it is a tougher job defending than attacking this map, but you can win either way.

[womble]

Yeah, it's 5 PzIV to go with the 3 PzIII, 5 R35s and a Semo 75. But the Sherman's a better tank than any of those.

Having played this as the Axis vs a human player, I think the defender's job is pretty much to slow the attackers down so they run out of time. If you don't use your Shermans right, you're still outgunned, so you have to make a human player cautious, and put yourself in a position to cut down the AI when it makes its moves.

Having had a look at the initial setup presented in the scenario, I wonder if some of the problems might be because no changes were made. For example, the Ma Deuce is set up on the ground floor, with possibly the most restricted FoF ever (to the back wall of the villa's garden), which is no use whatsoever until the Axis infantry reaches the Villa, at which point it's probably too late (if the HMG survives the arty pasting that long).

The patches of woods to the left and right of the high ground (you can set up in the left one, but not in the right) are key terrain, and I think must be contested either by having fire to bear, or boots on the ground.

[rooibos]

cool, thanks for the replies.

i think i was being too aggressive with my counter attack.

i wasn't away that the m2s could take ot those italian tanks, knew they'd make them button up- but i'll be sure to bring more fire to bear on them

[womble]

i wasn't away that the m2s could take ot those italian tanks, knew they'd make them button up- but i'll be sure to bring more fire to bear on them

I think the Renaults are a bit better protected than the Semovente, and there are five of them, so if the Ma Deuce is the only thing firing at them, it won't last long, even to their stubby 37s or Bredas.

On the attack, I used the R-35s as "infantry tanks", providing somewhat less directly vulnerable DF HE and MMG fire to suppress the target position. They can lay some hurt from outside of Zook range if there are no guns bigger than .50cal to properly waste them. The key of course being to make sure there are no such assets with FoF over where the cuddly little obsolete things are advancing, and that any such assets which appear are speedily neutralised by your overwatching PzIVs and PzIIIs. I don't think the AI could reliably execute such a plan.

[rooibos]

beat it today, but it wasn't much of a victory.

i still lost most of my tanks to their pzivs. that last group up off to the left i can't seem to do much about.

i managed to slow down the group coming from the highway from the right, took out the lead tanks and immobilized the rest. this kept them in a strong overwatch position.

managed to slink my final tank behind it, was literally 60yards behind it, shot at it 3 times, each hit, but produced nothing.

started to turn his turret- i had run out of ammo so i pulled back.

2 shermans surviving, 1 with no ap ammo, and 1 with main gun destroyed.

still some scattered infantry, repulsed their attack on the villa but they had a few hiding in the bushes which i didn't see- gave them the victory on that condition but i took the rest.

still, 1 pziv immobilized and a great view and 3 perfectly intact pzivs somewhere roving around on his rear.

also, the ai sure likes to cover their mortars with mgs. made the mistake of rooting out their mortars with a small team, crossfire from 2 hmgs.

assault gun took out most of my .50s in the villa, couldnt get much fire on him. dropped my remaining arty and 2 mortar barrages to try and stop him, no luck. that 150mm gun wrecked alot of my men. managed to get to him with my sherman.

really enjoyed ferrying around men in my jeep and halftrack. found more favourable position with my guns hidden in a small grove, got a ton of kills and took out a many italian tanks

can i complain about my sherman shooting the pziv thrice from behind at point blank only to have them bounce off?

[Gamer58]

I played it differently a second time, this time deploying the platoon originally deployed in the orchard to the far left of the map in the woods there. That platoon was eventually routed, but it did allow me to move up my Shermans (the three reinforcements) to the far right flank of the enemy and do substantial damage.

Here's the final deployment at around 40 minutes to go.

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I declared a cease fire and these were the results. Difficulty settings were on Iron.

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I feel I could have lost fewer of the infantry in the counterattacks to their right flank, when I tried (sometimes successfully) to have engineers use satchels on their tanks at the very end of the battle. You can see one such team trying to run up onto the last remaining Axis vehicle, a Mk III.

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I deployed the GMCs to the left and right of the villa, and they did a remarkable job on infantry and enemy armor. The heavy artillery was called in across the front of the orchard as enemy infantry had taken position but was being held back from advancing over the open ground. Remember, you may reposition your sandbags near the villa, I did for a few.

Let me know what you think of my result. I'm always willing to learn something.

[womble]

...managed to slink my final tank behind it, was literally 60yards behind it, shot at it 3 times, each hit, but produced nothing...

...can i complain about my sherman shooting the pziv thrice from behind at point blank only to have them bounce off?

Yeah, that's definitely worth a letter of complaint to the Dice Gods... Just to be sure, I tested it, and my Sherman's first shot penetrated, with the second shot causing casualties and destruction of the PzIV. So you got (possibly very) unlucky. The Sherman is entirely capable of killing the bejazus out of PzIV from the front at ranges well over 60m, so rear aspect shots should generally penetrate at that range, with plenty of "excess" energy to wreak havoc in the engine compartment and beyond.

[rooibos]

jesus, iron difficulty? i must really be bad at this game

[womble]

jesus, iron difficulty? i must really be bad at this game

"Difficulty" levels refer almost entirely to the difficulty of interacting with the game. The AI gets (as far as we have been told) one, slight advantage in C2 under Iron (the range of "distant vision" control is greater for the AI). The rest of the difficulty is purely in the embuggerance factor that you encounter.

Play Warrior.

[Gamer58]

You have to treat your infantry very carefully. Take small steps, not bold ones, even if there is some cover. Expose only one unit at a time, dont swarm forward in a large line if you can help it. Remember to split your squads into three if you can, and use them to pin the enemy and then maneuver with the other squad to the enemy's flank or at another angle. Here are some more screenshots from the game. I am sorry but they are a little out of order - I think in reverse chronological order. You can see that one unit made it up behind the topmost overwatching Mk IV and took it out with satchels.

[Gamer58]

More screenshots.

[rooibos]

killer. been real busy with work and excited to reattempt this.

[J Bennett]

I just finished playing this scenario last night. Very enjoyable. I played Americans. My Shermans took out almost all the axis armor.As someone said in this thread, one must avoid the temptation to go offensive in this one. I made the mistake, however, of trying to grab the orchard/plateau objective with my Shermans, I thought I had taken out all the enemy tanks but a  Pzkw Mk IV sat quietly in the trees. As my lead Sherman approached the crest line, BOOM! , drilled in the turret by a 75mm shell. That caused me to jump out of my chair. it startled me. I like that about this game, it sometimes does that to me.  Some people are critical of the games A.I. but I thought that was clever how that tank decided to ambush me like that. I stayed on defensive the rest of the game and got a narrow victory. I have to take better care of my infantry too, I always lose too many.

Edited March 9, 2016 by J Bennett
clean up post