It's a Long Way to Tipperary - Round 4

[ComradeP]

Non-alt Shermans compared to the alt Shermans in the current tournament scenario are slow, have mediocre Soft Attack values and a range of 1. In fact, their Soft Attack value is the same as the value for the Stuart. With limited effort, the German player should always be able to retreat into a -40% TRENCH hex. If the German player uses the ridgeline, it's -65% due to TRENCH+elevation. That's in Clear or Field terrain. Hex fire limitations limit the effects of massed Sherman stacks as well.

Even with 1 hex gaps between German stacks, that should mean if a target hex can be fired at from 3 hexes, the Allied units in 2 hexes can also be targeted by the German stacks on their flank.

Moving ZOC-to-ZOC is a helpful strategy, but it's an obvious threat. The German player can see it coming and has time to move units in behind the potential targets. The commandos would then face fire from -40% TRENCH hexes which will, over time, murder them as they're company-sized units.

The small command ranges, which only applied to the Allies, bothered me as well compared to the "standard" command ranges in recent titles. Allied regiments get range 4 and Axis infantry regiments range 20? VI Corps has range 10? Really?

The ability to sustain losses of the trimmed and functional US infantry battalions is limited, particularly against the mostly 12 SA value German infantry units. The British troops are worse, and one of their divisions will remain Fixed for about 2/5 of the game.

It's worth mentioning that for large parts of the game against Brancaleone, not a single Allied infantry battalion was at the frontline, yet I still lost about 100 Men per turn on average mostly from artillery fire. The losses were not that stiff per unit, but I have no illusions about the ability of the Allied infantry to face nearly 3 German battalions in a hex. I tried assaulting with two infantry divisions against mostly C quality defenders. That was painful and went nowhere.

I tried to force the Germans to split their units between two flanks, moving most tanks to the Fallschirmjaeger without a range 1 Hard Attack but the offensive ability of the Allied forces was not enough to cause any serious difficulties.