Grand Campaign West 42-45 (Ultimate)

[huckc]

Hey Huck? Are you finding yourself reloading a lot. Richard Martin has been discussing this a lot in his playthroughs. I tried Arras this morning and a I found myself reloading a lot, but I want to stop doing that as it just feels wrong, I may still reload some, but want to accept the rolls and make it teach me to play better rather than gaming the system.

Just want to know what you are experiencing.

One mid-scenario reload but lots and lots of restarts. I treat the opening few moves as a puzzle and solving it definitely helps avoid the need for reloading.

On Manstein starting from GC East 43 however I had to allow myself a mulligan each scenario. The number of core units at play + difficulty + going for the DV was just too much there.

[huckc]

Volturno Line

Defended the southern half of the map due to having more favorable terrain and lots of surrender opportunity on the Volturno. The bridge engineer that spawns helped with the latter by blocking retreats.

Played entirely through a few times due to how easy this approach was in order to maximize prestige, taking the best result.







MV 12 of 12

[huckc]

42-43 Recap

(7) Marginal Victories
(4) Decisive Victories
3275 Prestige with 55 units

Reloads:
(1) Etna Line North - Turn 3

[huckc]

Anzio

Pretty standard approach, moved south along all lines while letting the enemy take victory hexes initially in order to re-capture them for prestige.

The race to 4-stars has officially begun as I'll be permanently capped at 325 when starting 45 due to going the losing route.

Nearly lost my first core unit to a wolverine which would be a theme for the next few battles.







DV 10 of 10

[huckc]

Cassino

Focused on defending Cassino only and barely able to stabilize.

Only deployed two of the mines, saving the rest for prestige or maybe a cheeky deployment later on. I hate mines in principle though so probably the former.







MV 12 of 12

[huckc]

Monte Cassino

Went for the DV due to being relatively easily attainable. Only needed to extend a fex hexes out and the final wave doesn't hit until the last turn or so.

There's a quad .50 cal enemy AA unit that's annoyingly free to hit my planes at the start so I used a 13-strength Rudel to kill it while taking a point or two of damage.







DV 10 of 10

[huckc]

Beaches of Normandy

Went for the two western-most beach sectors, Omaha and Gold beach. Felt that taking those two one by one, starting west at Omaha beach, was the obvious choice for a myriad of factors. One in particular was being able to easily set up an air trap fixture in the east to tie up and kill the British fighters of which there are a great many. I still had to deal with the American planes, but that was made was much easier without double the trouble.

Accidentally deployed one of the aux units, 240 prestige down the drain

Forced 28 total surrenders on the beaches, they were a surrender factory at a bit over three per turn on average...

Turn: Surrenders
1: 2
2: 0
3: 3
4: 4
5: 3
6: 4
7: 3
8: 3
9: 6




Dep. Attacking force in the west. Air trap units in the east.



DV 9 of 9
Omaha and Gold beach secured

[huckc]

Bayeux

Stopped at Bayeux while shooting northwest with my fastest units to get the two captured vehicles. The former was harder than expected while the latter was easy.







MV 11 of 11
Gained the two capturables

[huckc]

Villers-Bocage

No air units so bought a ton of new artillery. A few wespes, a couple 10.5cm towed, and one of the armored wuhrframen.

Finally upgraded a tank to the Tiger 2, an SE with +1 move.

Also finally renamed all my units with their hero bonus. I'm the worst when it come to that.

I've always found this battle strange and unpleasant. Particularly due to all the well-entrenched units combined with 100% cloudy weather and no air making digging them out a chore.







MV 9 of 9
It seems that Oleh Dir and Rudel have a puncher's chance at getting their elusive 5-star so I'll be very aggressive with them going forward, even if it means taking damage from return fire as that gains the most xp. In fact at -50% xp rate and the 6% 4-star growth rate, risking return fire damage is the only reliable way to gain a full point per engagement.

[huckc]

Caen 1 Reload

Pretty easy one to get the MV, just need to hold your side of the Orne river. Also very easy to force lots of surrenders, tallied 38 total on the Orne hexes

Reload on turn 8 after losing an Fw-190 to an air wave. 2-star and a +2 attack hero not strong enough at 10-strength against a mass attack of 16-strength spitfires.

Got the three capturables, best to hold off getting them until the end as they really bite into the soft cap. I beat them up too for that reason.







MV 14 of 14
1 Reload

[huckc]

St. Lo

I find this scenario interesting and unusual, a nice change of pace from the normal victory hex grab. It's also very easy to get the DV, the premise and conditions being very generous.

The main reason though that I took this branch is the greater turn count to gain much needed xp.





DV 13 of 13

[huckc]

Falaise

Moderately difficult to get the MV, nearly impossible for the DV with -5 turns so I didn't bother trying for that. Would need to capture all victory hexes by turn 10 at the latest.







MV 15 of 15

Can I get these guys to 5-stars with only 33 turns remaining in the campaign? I'll have to take a considerable amount of damage, not sure if it's worth the prestige.

[PeteMitchell]

Wow, Ultimate seems to becoming the new normal nowadays... also with all the excting youtube developments going on, I like it!

[Nilex]

I am liking the huge overview screenshots, are you using a really huge screen or stitching smaller images together somehow?

[huckc]

Wow, Ultimate seems to becoming the new normal nowadays... also with all the excting youtube developments going on, I like it!

It's a fun final run, best as a second or third play as you miss out on some content with the -5 turns.

The only thing I don't like is the -50% xp rate. Makes infantry in particular very difficult to level and even less useful than on Manstein.

I am liking the huge overview screenshots, are you using a really huge screen or stitching smaller images together somehow?

In this AAR I'm just taking a single shot on a 4k screen.

In my big Manstein one I actually auto-stitched them using ShareX's scrolling capture feature. It was too much work however since the game doesn't use standard scroll inputs so I had to time the scrolling manually.

[huckc]

Arnhem

Very easy one despite having only three turns, a very hefty 63% reduction. More turns would've been nice to capture some of the remaining enemy flags but not necessary to get the DV.

Used bridge engineers along with four other fast units to cross the Nederrijn ASAP.







DV 3 of 3

[huckc]

Nijmegen

Another relatively easy one. No major issues getting the job done with only five of ten turns.

It's been a while since I played this but I think I had to restart after losing a core unit to the armored counter-attack in the south.







DV 5 of 5

[huckc]

Eindhoven

Getting a DV here is extremely difficult at any difficulty level and something I didn't achieve on Manstein, thus, going for it here on Ultimate was out of the question. Instead, I held up north of the Meuse for a somewhat cushy MV. I still had to take over enemy held cities/sectors from the British, Poles, and Americans while defending the Meuse Bridgehead against the British counter-attacks. Also the air waves were very strong.







MV 25 of 25

[huckc]

44 Recap

(6) Marginal Victories
(6) Decisive Victories
10883 Prestige with 82 units

Reloads:
(1) Caen - Turn 7

It feels like importing a non-Ultimate core gave me a bit of an edge.

[huckc]

St. Vith

Taking all victory hexes in only 9 of 14 turns with snowy weather? Nah, taking only the northern road which allows me to reasonably take all but the one victory hex in the very southwest corner.




Bypassed all but the northern route.


Turn 4 - Concentrated force ready to assault St. Vith


Turn 6 - Vith taken, moving out to take more victory hexes


Fin

MV 9 of 9