Artillery Bombardment ends turn early!

[cillmhor]

Just wondering if anyone has had this happen to them? I wanted to soften up a target hex with arty and get them out of entrenched. I had done so with artillery on several other turns in the current game without the turn ending prematurely before I could initiate the attack. However, to my surprise after two phases of bombardment, on the third phase, which should have left me with 70% of the turn, using the same arty pieces, the turn ended abruptly! I know that arty can fail cooperation etc and perhaps cause some problems for an attack, but I can't remember in my admittedly short TOW experience the turn ending after such a bombardment. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Alasdair

[Bigwig]

There's a chance every combat round of the turn being burned. This is based on force proficiency - with a good army (70%+ Prof.) you can expect many rounds of combat, with a weak army (I've seen some as low as 30%) don't plan on more than a round or two of combat.

There are other factors - I'm lead to understand units set to "ignore losses" will suck more rounds of combat before they stop firing, and of course you should double-check the turn counter to make sure you don't have an arty. unit which has moved before firing sucking up a bunch of combat rounds.

But all in all, sometimes turn burn just happens, and there isn't always a way you could have prevented it.

[cillmhor]

Thanks for this. Army proficiency was pretty high, and casualties were set to minimum. I guess I was just unlucky. I'm glad I now that there is a random factor with bombardments or any attack, I assume, where it can end a turn prematurely despite the turn counter suggesting it will only burn 10%. Still worth the risk in many cases to dislodge defenders before I attack, I would have to assume, as in my uses of the bombardment so far it has only happened once. Nice tip on the force proficiency as a factor. I would not have thought of that.

Cheers

Alasdair