Prestige economy during defensive battles on field marshall or generalissimus difficulty

[Hochmeister]

Ok guys, we already know, that it's crucial to have ability to do effective forcing surrender to be able to continue and keeping your forces at 100% strength and have the best equipment on those difficulties. You can do it in pure offense mission and in ¨first defence, then counterattack mission¨

But what about pure defence mission like Tunis, Berlin, Sicily, or in other saying the missions, where you are hit really hard, that you have really not much room for encircling and forcing surrender and you can't afford to leave opening in your lines even for short moment. How to manage prestige economy there?

[Magni]

You can also do it in defensive missions towards the end if you have bloodied the attackers enough. Spending the last couple of turns to counterattack and creating and liquidating an encirclement can yield some pretty nice results.

The other part is to keep your own losses low. Have infantry dig in on your frontline with AT and artillery support on hand, keep your own tanks in positions they can't be gagned up upon, keep AA (88mm guns in particular) far enough behind that they don't draw artillery fire. Try to let the footsloggers or your heaviest armor soak up the attacks to save on replacement cost. Keep your planes within your AA envelope and don't bring out expensive strat bombers or ground attackers until enemy fighter presence has been taken out.

And, well, by Berlin you really don't have to worry about prestige anymore unless you're nearly out of it alltogether.

[Path]

If you want to capture enemies it's usually better to use a controlled retreat rather than focus on holding the line, as the AI has no concept of support and will advance units as far as they can move, inevitably leading to lines being stretched. Once that happens you just punch through the weakest link and you're good. Very few scenarios force you to actually hold ground -- it's typically enough to have hexes secured by the end of the scenario, so by all means sacrifice a few VHs if it'll get the AI to stretch its lines.

Here is an example[www.slitherine.com] using the largest AI offensive in the game (Bagration).

[Hochmeister]

Originally posted by Magni:

You can also do it in defensive missions towards the end if you have bloodied the attackers enough. Spending the last couple of turns to counterattack and creating and liquidating an encirclement can yield some pretty nice results.

The other part is to keep your own losses low. Have infantry dig in on your frontline with AT and artillery support on hand, keep your own tanks in positions they can't be gagned up upon, keep AA (88mm guns in particular) far enough behind that they don't draw artillery fire. Try to let the footsloggers or your heaviest armor soak up the attacks to save on replacement cost. Keep your planes within your AA envelope and don't bring out expensive strat bombers or ground attackers until enemy fighter presence has been taken out.

And, well, by Berlin you really don't have to worry about prestige anymore unless you're nearly out of it alltogether.

Hm, I guess, that the big reason, why I struggled lot in defence missions so it seemed to me impossible to have room for forcing surrender, was low combat experience of my troops in my first campaign.

[fluffybunnyuk]

I go infantry heavy from the start. I blood pioneers taking flags to 2* experience. I put them into reserve while blooding new pioneers. By rotating new pioneers in ,and using experienced pioneers changed into grenadiers they usually make 5* by Berlin.
As for defensive scenarios say like Berlin. I field 24 grenadiers (1943), and 6 pioneers(originals, saves 6 slots)) split into 12. 90 slots. They dont need trucks because theyre not going anywhere.
That allows grenadier-pioneer-grenadier around each of the 12 victory hexes with an anti-tank gun (plain gun one, not truck or jadgpanther) sat on the victory hex. What happens is as the turns tick by the pioneer doubles all their entrenchment speed. By the time attacks get serious my units are on close hexes with 100% entrenchment. Have you tried trying to shift something 100% entrenched backed by AT using a tank. The damage is brutal. First the 5* AT unit fires as support inflicting massive casualties, then the infantry blow the tank away cos its on closed terrain.
The only thing to fear is planes/rocket trucks.
I use 4 AA guns sited NE,NW,SE,SW and 4 truck AA 7/1 units (16slots). that solves the aircraft problem.
I then have 50 slots for tanks. conveniently thats 6 panthers, and 4 flammpanzers (overstrength)
The panthers, and flammpanzers roam around blowing anything away that attacks my infantry. The other job they do is to en masse nuke rocket trucks. Rocket trucks cause terrible suppression etc, and are the only real danger to entrenched infantry.
With the rocket trucks going boom goes any chance of the AI having the units to break any victory hex.
Nope thats right i dont have 1 jadgpanther , elefant, or tiger II or aircraft. You dont need them unless your going on the offensive.
If you want money wait for stuff to arrive at your infantry surround it from behind against the infantry,and force a surrender.

[Accolon]

Well, if the split point comes I always have like 20k-30k Prestige in my pocket. So if I choosed the historical path I keep 10k so its nothing I normally worry about. Have 50-60k at Berlin. BUT I take Trophies of War and Killer Team with "No Overstrengh" as negative trait. If you take "no prestige making" traits you have to start gaining prestige from Day 1 of your campaign. There are several superb Missions for gaining Prestige in the Campaign like Kiev, Kursk, Gazala. I get easily 10k -15k prestige on each of those maps. If you are unlucky with heroes (no envelopment, etc) you just have to spare enough core slots for splitting your units. Which is 3 slots just for encirclement!
2 for your Recon cars and 1 for your Tank which forces surrender. Keep in mind that suppression is the key here not damage. The more intact the enemy unit is the better.->more prestige.

If you dont have 2k prestige after the 2 poland mission (without trophies of war, then you should have 4k) then you did something wrong. You may try to get those 2k via poland north - Bug River first. NEVER Rush always keep your infantry supported,Artillery gives the pace) which means ALWAYS. And don't buy too much tank units...I see this very often in streams that player fail around cuz they have too much tanks. 2 tank units are minimum 3 are good and 4 is max.(whole campaign) Thats it^^.

[Magni]

Originally posted by fluffybunnyuk:

I go infantry heavy from the start. I blood pioneers taking flags to 2* experience. I put them into reserve while blooding new pioneers. By rotating new pioneers in ,and using experienced pioneers changed into grenadiers they usually make 5* by Berlin.
As for defensive scenarios say like Berlin. I field 24 grenadiers (1943), and 6 pioneers(originals, saves 6 slots)) split into 12. 90 slots. They dont need trucks because theyre not going anywhere.
That allows grenadier-pioneer-grenadier around each of the 12 victory hexes with an anti-tank gun (plain gun one, not truck or jadgpanther) sat on the victory hex. What happens is as the turns tick by the pioneer doubles all their entrenchment speed. By the time attacks get serious my units are on close hexes with 100% entrenchment. Have you tried trying to shift something 100% entrenched backed by AT using a tank. The damage is brutal. First the 5* AT unit fires as support inflicting massive casualties, then the infantry blow the tank away cos its on closed terrain.
The only thing to fear is planes/rocket trucks.
I use 4 AA guns sited NE,NW,SE,SW and 4 truck AA 7/1 units (16slots). that solves the aircraft problem.
I then have 50 slots for tanks. conveniently thats 6 panthers, and 4 flammpanzers (overstrength)
The panthers, and flammpanzers roam around blowing anything away that attacks my infantry. The other job they do is to en masse nuke rocket trucks. Rocket trucks cause terrible suppression etc, and are the only real danger to entrenched infantry.
With the rocket trucks going boom goes any chance of the AI having the units to break any victory hex.
Nope thats right i dont have 1 jadgpanther , elefant, or tiger II or aircraft. You dont need them unless your going on the offensive.
If you want money wait for stuff to arrive at your infantry surround it from behind against the infantry,and force a surrender.

For that kind of thing, 15cm sFH 18s would actually work even better than AT guns. Infantry tears up armor in urban combat well enough even with the lesser effect on tanks of the field howitzers, and the fire support agianst enemy infantry is a big boon.

Also, for late-campaign urban or dense terrain fighting, Volksgrenadiers beat Grenadier '43s. Grens are better at defending open ground, but Volks are second only to Pioneers in closed terrain fighting.