Best combination of heroes

[FJMeyer]

Hi everyone, first off, let me say that I like to reload games until I get the heros I want.

My question is:

what is the best combination of heroes going into GC 44 and 45 on
- tiger 1
- tiger 2
- Panther G and
- stug 3G

Would it be
- att+3, att+3 and ini+1
- att+3, att+3 and mov+1 or
- att+3, att+3 and att+3

I kinda reckon that in 44 and 45, the battles will largely be defensive in nature so movement heroes aren't quite necessary even on the very slow tiger 2.

Thanks in advance

[BiteNibbleChomp]

If you have a movement hero, make sure it is on a Maus (or Tiger II is you don't have Mauses). All other units don't need it.

I think the best for the set you pointed out would be:

+3 attack, +3 defense and +1 spotting (allowing you to set up ambushes).

having 2 or 3 of the same hero can end up leaving your unit quite vunerable when it is doing something other than the hero's specialty. (And honestly, do Tiger IIs need +6 attack if they are well experienced?)

- BNC

[captainjack]

Rudel with an extra 5 in attack heroes is how I found out that the maximum chance of a kill is 81%. Eventually it sank in that I didn't need the Ju87G tank buster cannon anymore so he now has a Hs129 which attacks everything at 29 (10 for hard and soft, plus 5 experience and 14 in attack heroes). Still maxes out at 81% but at least he shares the love (and 75mm shells) equally. I could have gone for a me410 but the 129 removes the temptation to attack aircraft instead of KV85, SU152 and SU85 and (suppressed) SPAAG.

I would rather have super defence heroes. 6D or better makes it very hard to suppress or damage your units. This means they usually attack with more strength so are more effective, and because they are less likely to take damage you can afford more overstrength (since it lasts longer, you get more value out of it) so they hit more times. I reckon this makes it much better overall than having high attack heroes. Plus if you get stuck in unfavourable terrain it hardly matters, since your Flammpanzer 2 CD is now 12. So in most cases I'd rate big Defence heroes over big attack. However, +6 attack on a strategic bomber minces ships and even takes damage off IS1 and 2 as well as stripping their ammo, and +6 attack on an AA unit means you can almost certainly prevent any air damage to any adjacent unit.

I don't rate spotting heroes that much - I had a great excess in one game and it spoilt my view a bit, but if you get two units with 4 spotting (eg Kradschutzen with +1) or 5 (Ronsdorf with an extra +1 spotting hero) you can pretty much do away with recon ever after and rely solely on combat units, which is good.

I usually prefer +move over range for most artillery. The one time I had 2 move heroes on towed artillery it was great for keeping up with the infantry. But then extra range is great for counter battery fire, suppressing AA units so Rudel can visit and 5 range arty is lethal if you also have a 4 range on because you can fully suppress almost any soft unit without a return shot.

[jkombae]

I just got the second +3 Defense hero for an Elephant unit. It is nice to have a AT unit that survives infantary or aircraft assaults with minor causalities only...

[Zleepyhead]

If you have a movement hero, make sure it is on a Maus (or Tiger II is you don't have Mauses). All other units don't need it.

... and +1 spotting (allowing you to set up ambushes).

- BNC

Does a spotting hero help you launch an AMBUSH on defense? I didn't ever think about that.

[proline]

If you have a movement hero, make sure it is on a Maus (or Tiger II is you don't have Mauses). All other units don't need it.

I think the best for the set you pointed out would be:

+3 attack, +3 defense and +1 spotting (allowing you to set up ambushes).

having 2 or 3 of the same hero can end up leaving your unit quite vunerable when it is doing something other than the hero's specialty. (And honestly, do Tiger IIs need +6 attack if they are well experienced?)

To further generalize what BNC is saying, it far better to have heroes that negate a unit's weaknesses than compliment its strengths. That may seem counter-intuitive, but it is generally true. The reason being that enhancing a unit's strength doesn't really change what it offers you, nor does it broaden how the unit can be used. Here's some other examples from the infantry world

1) Putting an initiative hero on a grenadier does nothing as the grenadier attacks first anyways. Putting a move hero on a grenadier makes it get in a lot more attacks and it rocks
2) Putting the move hero on para infantry just encourages you to get them too far ahead of your army. Put a defense hero on that para and suddenly it can handle a lot more situations
3) Put an attack hero on a pioneer and you won't see much difference. Put an initiative hero on a pioneer and you get a wrecking machine

Now obviously this isn't 100% true- an obvious counterexample is that recon dies to pretty much anything after 1942 and no number of defense heroes will fix it. Move/vision heroes help them the most even though they are already good at that.

[captainjack]

Putting an initiative hero on a grenadier does nothing

That's not quite correct. Greater initiative does give you an advantage up to a point, both on attack and defence.
Equal initiative means that both side attack at the same time.
+1 initiative means that 20% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attacks,
+2 initiative means that 40% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attack, up to
+5 initiative which means that 100% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attacks.

So if your effective initiative difference is between -5 and +4, +1 initiative will make a difference, which over the course of many combats could have quite a big cumulative effect.

The idea of changing your units eg from para to grenadier or pioneer so that they benefit from the heroes is definitely a good plan, and I know that there are others who select Panther or Tiger upgrades based on the type of heroes the original units have.

[proline]

Putting an initiative hero on a grenadier does nothing

That's not quite correct. Greater initiative does give you an advantage up to a point, both on attack and defence.
Equal initiative means that both side attack at the same time.
+1 initiative means that 20% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attacks,
+2 initiative means that 40% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attack, up to
+5 initiative which means that 100% of the damage and suppressions takes effect before the lower initiative attacks.

So if your effective initiative difference is between -5 and +4, +1 initiative will make a difference, which over the course of many combats could have quite a big cumulative effect.

The idea of changing your units eg from para to grenadier or pioneer so that they benefit from the heroes is definitely a good plan, and I know that there are others who select Panther or Tiger upgrades based on the type of heroes the original units have.

A valid clarification- I was exaggerating a bit. I'd still maintain though that you'll notice the difference of an initiative hero a lot more on pioneers which tend to take a lot of expensive hits when left to their own devices compared to putting it on grenadiers or paras which tend to do fine. Giving a grenadier a move hero and taking away its transport makes it very cheap to repair and very effective overall.

Staying on the theme of negating weaknesses, move hero tanks should basically always become tigers. With a defense hero, you could make the case for a panther. A panther with a move hero gets very little extra effectiveness as they are already among your fastest units and their main weakness is that they take damage from late game Russian armor if not used properly. Making them faster does not help you use them carefully.

[captainjack]

Proline, you've raised a very interesting point.
Should you enhance strengths or negate weaknesses?
I suspect that negating weakness would save prestige in the long run, but maybe enhancing strengths would be the best way to win well. On improving strengths, I usually convert artillery with +3 attack to 17cm, as this helps them flatten or suppress most hard targets, but generally I try to improve weaker units (eg 3 range nebelwerfers or +defence on mobile artillery).

I haven't tried a superfast panther, but I did once convert Oleh Dir into Kradschutzen to see what happened. He spent every fourth turn refuelling, which was a bit disappointing. I could have used a +10 fuel hero on that one!
However, I do like having one fast - and preferably cheap and expendable - unit for clearing up damaged units. Maybe that's a good use for the recon move heroes.

[braccada]

Should you enhance strengths or negate weaknesses?

I think you have to look at strengths and weaknesses in relation to the opposition. So I doubt there is a general answer and most stats are quite high already, so the impact of heroes genrally is much lower than in the early stages. For late german tanks there are several issues.

• Movement: If a tank lags behind and you have problems bringing it into action each turn, movement should be your priority. +Attack is useless if you have no target after all
• Attack: +3 gives a bonus of approx. 10percent to hard attack (depending on exp level). That is nice, but a Tiger II has little problems destroying targets anyway. The situation is different for early tanks, where the fire power is often not high enough against T34s or Mathildas.
• Defense: Keeps the tank longer at effective strength, resulting in lower prestige spending an fewer breaks for reinforcement. Especially concerning close defense the hero is a significant boost.
• Initiative: Especially the combination of high attack and initiative can be effective to suppress and reduce losses. However this is situational and different initiative caps can limit the effect.
• Spotting: Ideally spotting is done by recon units, because they have multiple step movement and are cheap. If you want to cut those slots a spotting hero is great, but because of the single movement you might miss your attack. On Jagdpanzers on the other hand spotting is great, because a vision range of one often means trouble.

For artillery and planes the situation of course is completely different...

[MartyWard]

Should you enhance strengths or negate weaknesses?

It is all about reducing your losses. You usually have the equipment to kill the Russian quite well.

I think you would first want to do what you could to make sure you got the first shot at the highest percentages. This will cut your losses by a lot by allowing you the first shot in most cases. Then work on your weaknesses to cut your losses even more.

[proline]

Proline, you've raised a very interesting point.
Should you enhance strengths or negate weaknesses?
I suspect that negating weakness would save prestige in the long run, but maybe enhancing strengths would be the best way to win well. On improving strengths, I usually convert artillery with +3 attack to 17cm, as this helps them flatten or suppress most hard targets, but generally I try to improve weaker units (eg 3 range nebelwerfers or +defence on mobile artillery).

Not sure I can agree with you on this one. the 17cm only has a ROF of 8, so it isn't taking full advantage of the +3 attack. If you give it to a 21 cm Nblwf it will have the same hard attack as the 17 but with a full ROF, and it will have a brutal soft attack of 24. Now when it comes to negating weaknesses, a +range 30cm nebelwerfer has got to be the most effective artillery piece in the game (against soft). It can absolutely annihilate anything soft from a safe distance.

I haven't tried a superfast panther, but I did once convert Oleh Dir into Kradschutzen to see what happened. He spent every fourth turn refuelling, which was a bit disappointing. I could have used a +10 fuel hero on that one!

Glad I'm not the only one who's tried that. My first couple times I thought it would be cool to have Oleh moving around at 11 and giving me vision of the whole map. No matter how careful I tried to be I'd get him killed at some point. The Kradschutzen has no defense and it is just too tempting to send him ahead. (I've also had to sadly accept that scouting is irrelevant in PC. The enemy always comes from the same place so once you've done a scenario once you know where everything is. Besides, there is no real way to scout even if you want to- air units have too small sight radii to stay away from AA, air scouts weren't included in the game even though they were extremely important in WWII, and ground scouts die so easy you have to keep them with your army anyways so they have no strategic value whatsoever and only minimal tactical value. Sorry to rant but this is my biggest gripe with PC which is otherwise excellent.) So now I always make him a pioneer without a transport. His initiative and speed negate the pioneer's two weaknesses, making him the best infantry unit in the game.

[MartyWard]

So now I always make him a pioneer without a transport. His initiative and speed negate the pioneer's two weaknesses, making him the best infantry unit in the game.

He makes a pretty good Grenadier in the late game too.

[captainjack]

I usually convert Oleh Dir to grenadier unless I've had recent rugged defence problems, in which case all move hero infantry converts to pioneers for the next few games. .

I see the argument in favour of the 30cm nebelwerfer, but with only 4 ammo they seem to be permanently about to run out, which annoys me. I usually stick with 10.5 artillery for the ammo and rate of fire, as they are capable of suppressing any soft targets or removing entrenchment. For me the attack hero 17cm conversion is handy in 42 and 43 East when soviet armour becomes too tough be damaged by the 10.5s. The ability to take off a point or two and suppress at least some points seems to work quite well on both attack and defence, and while the lower RoF is a minor nuisance, it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem in the anti-armour role, though I agree that against soft targets it isn't so good.

I agree with the earlier comment that the best units are the ones that that are able to fight most often, and that it's a good idea to use heroes to improve the useful time in combat. That's why I'd love an ammo hero as an alternative to spotting on artillery or initiative on strategic bombers. More ammo = more time firing.

[Horst]

Defense heroes are always useful as the AI tends to ignore units that it can’t damage well. Low strength units always invite the AI to continuously attack them. High-defense units will save a lot of prestige as you don’t need to reinforcement them so often. Such hero-units should be your front-line units as they can defend best against enemy artillery-suppression what prevents surrender.

Initiative is some kind of defense too, but won’t help when you are bombarded by artillery and planes. You don’t really need initiative when you more or less completely suppress targets before an attack or have a sufficient artillery support as rear-guard in defense.

Attack heroes are useful to quickly sweep opposition away when the enemy is nicely suppressed. They works best if your unit has already the better initiative value, what is often with fighter vs. bomber planes. Such heroes are always useful on artillery/aa, as you rather need only offensive power there.

Movement heroes are typically a waste on most units, but fine to have as bonus on slow units like towed guns and heavy infantry.

Range heroes are always welcomed too as they allow attacking sometimes enemy support units what is otherwise not possible. They become handy if you need to defend a long front line where you either like to focus artillery fire on single attackers to force them to surrender, or need to shoot down planes as you can’t always cover every single unit of yours with AA and planes.

Spotting heroes can be useful for units with only Sight 1, recon and high-defense front-line units, but they are generally less useful than the other hero types.

[captainjack]

I was just thinking about flame tanks. While I like +3 or more defence to help keep them alive long enough to be useful (especially good in close terrain) the 140% RoF would give you a lot of value from your +3 attacks. This is especially true for the crocodile where raising the HA9 to HA12 with an attack hero allows it to damage a wider range of armoured targets.