How do deal with an immortal Nomad army?

[BoogieMan]

I have had a group of Nomad armies pinned into a single hex at the edge of a map for quite some time. They have a lake to the east, and my armies to the north and northwest. They seem to be absolutely immortal. They don't seem to need ammo, food, supply - anything. Because there is no way they are getting any. I cannot kill them. They seem to be entrenched into some ruins and getting such an absurd bonus that they are essentially invulnerable. They seem to be poorly equipped and their stats are much lower than my soldiers.

-Enemy Forces-

1000x Nomad Infantry
1000x Biped Cavalry
200x Militia Biker
90x Irregular Truck
10x Militia Buggy

-My Forces-
Approx 7000x Riflemen - Gauss Rifle/Envirosuit
Approx 2000x Machingunners Gauss Machinegun/Envirosuit
400x GR Grade MG Light Plasma Blaster/Padded Envirosuit
10x GR Vortex Tank 100mm Mass Driver/150mm Liquid Armor
400x GR Grade Inf. Laser Rifle/Combat Armor

-Militia-
2500x Militia Riflemen
600x MG
300x RPG
130x Irregular Truck
100x Militia Biker
80x Irregular Artillery
20x Militia Buggy

Most of my units have embedded special units that increase morale, xp, and such.

Enemy Forces: 2300
My Forces: 13520

My forces are supplied by a truck station and supply base 2 hexes away, which itself is just 5 hexes from my capital city. I have no shortages of resources.

Round after I round I just pound them and it's doing almost nothing. What can I do other than hold them in for a long time until I out tech and outman them even more than I already do? It doesn't seem like they have any logisitical concerns so it doesn't seem like they are able to be starved out.

Sure, they're dug in - but if they can't retreat or relocate, how can they be this durable while being technologically outclassed and heavily outnumbered in a harsh tundra?

[FourGreenFields]

My advice: Bring artillery. It won't be all that "killy", but it'll allow you to reduce enemy entrenchment and combat readiness (and a tiny bit of morale), which should then allow you to kill them.

If that's not an option, try to bring other "firepower" - tanks (preferably with howitzers, due to being mostly soft targets), most notably. Planes doing strafing runs (even with just their guns) will help too.

If that's also not possible, let them move to an area where they don't get (as much of) an entrechment bonus, and where you can attack from more sides (which gives an attack bonus).

You are correct in noticing they don't need supplies. Minors that do not (typically) have a city (like nomads) do not, as per the manual.

[Slippy]

As FourGreenFields said - bring artillery (or planes) and bomb them into the ground. Each hit will reduce their moral, readiness and entrenchment. You have 80 militia artillery pieces, every turn you should be doing ranged attacks. You will make a dent in them.

If you are slamming your troops in round after round it sounds like you might have low readiness. If you do, your actual combat stats will be much lower than otherwise predicted. There is also an over saturating penalty for attacking a hex with too few targets with too many units - which you will also be suffering from if your recon on their numbers are right!

You could also pull back a few hexes and see if they come out of the ruins into some hexes which ideally they will have less entrenchment. If they do THEN you attack. If you can get them into plain hexes and bring up light tanks with howitzers or some reasonably tanky buggies you should tear through them.

Finally, if you dont NEED to fight them you can always leave a much reduced holding force and let them be.

[BoogieMan]

The artillery didn't touch them. It either did nothing or very little each bombardment.

I even had 10x Hellraisers join my artillery and drop tactical nukes on them. They survived with minor losses, 30% lost at most.

I don't have planes or the ability to build more artillery yet, it's pretty early. However, I pulled all my forces back and they came out to reclaim territory which split them up, they were still bizarrely durable. but I imagined to take them out.

However they wasted so much time that I wasn't able to get to my real target which was an enemy city before another major friendly to me sealed off access by claiming the hostile territory. I never expected them to get something like 95% damage reduction hiding there. I also didn't know until I had invested too much time that they ignore logistics.

Lesson learned, I guess.

[Slippy]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

The artillery didn't touch them. It either did nothing or very little each bombardment.

Artillery is more about reducing entrenchment and readiness than scoring kills. Unless these are some sort of super nomads over time you can wear them down.

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

I don't have planes or the ability to build more artillery yet, it's pretty early. However, I pulled all my forces back and they came out to reclaim territory which split them up, they were still bizarrely durable. but I imagined to take them out.

If they are bizarrely durable it feels like you are probably missing something when it comes to combat. Readiness, moral, entrenchment. Even knowing that on the attack your infantry will largely suck even with better gear.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

The artillery didn't touch them. It either did nothing or very little each bombardment.

Did you check the textual combat overview, and have decent recon? That shows the change in overall enemy readiness, etc..

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Irregular artillery is quite weak when it comes to doing damage, but can soften up an entrenched foe. Still better to have real artillery (probably lighter units or you will devour the supplies available) or real tanks with decent guns for getting rid of those nomads and that might help a lot against whatever else threatens you like that enemy city or the major you wanted to corral.

[BoogieMan]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

Irregular artillery is quite weak when it comes to doing damage, but can soften up an entrenched foe. Still better to have real artillery (probably lighter units or you will devour the supplies available) or real tanks with decent guns for getting rid of those nomads and that might help a lot against whatever else threatens you like that enemy city or the major you wanted to corral.

In the future I will approach it differently, and wait for light tanks and artillery but IMO the defensive bonus they got was beyond absurd, it allowed them to shrug off atomic missiles after several turns of assaults and bombardment by supplied armies with good morale. I would never have fathomed that outcome I didn't think they'd be able to even harm GR Vortex Tanks. I figured with bikes, buggies and the sheer number of units I'd have decent intel on the hex after having surrounded them for some 8-11 turns.

I took an enemy city and all their territory who had the same tech as me with 1/10th the effort and time than those random nomads on that 1 tile.

[Hasefrexx]

Nomads are push overs, you very likely had an issue such as lack of supplies. You probably had fire saturation penalty too, sometimes adding in militia actually reduce odds of success. You would need to have a look at combat modifiers to identify the issue. Also sometimes low recon can be pretty painful, ruins reduce recon and the bonus from entrenchment and being hidden can be pretty massive when infantry in the attack has serious penalties during the two first rounds. This can compound into triggering retreat before the mali are gone.

[BoogieMan]

Originally posted by Hasefrexx:

Nomads are push overs, you very likely had an issue such as lack of supplies. You probably had fire saturation penalty too, sometimes adding in militia actually reduce odds of success. You would need to have a look at combat modifiers to identify the issue. Also sometimes low recon can be pretty painful, ruins reduce recon and the bonus from entrenchment and being hidden can be pretty massive when infantry in the attack has serious penalties during the two first rounds. This can compound into triggering retreat before the mali are gone.

Yeah, I learned early on how poor militia is, if they weren't part of the bombardment they went in first with the hopes of softening them up a bit, before the professional soldiers did there thing. Sometimes after to see if the order made a difference, it didn't much.

They were supplied, and besides, that wouldn't have affected Hellraiser nukes being dropped on them, and they shrugged that off too.

[Slippy]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

They were supplied, and besides, that wouldn't have affected Hellraiser nukes being dropped on them, and they shrugged that off too.

If you have an earlier save before you made the attacks it would be great to see the combat odds screen. That way we can pinpoint exactly why you were having problems with them.