Does Anyone Use Stukas?

[danconnors]

Have to admit I don't use them at all, and this is very different from the beginning of the real war. But as the game plays I just can't afford them. For one thing you have to have absolute air superiority for the tac bombers to be any use. I have not been able to achieve this yet--unlike the actual war. In France the French and Brits start the Battle of France with air parity, and it's all I can do to maintain the fighter bomber unit. With strictly limited numbers of core units the Stuka just can't pull its own weight. It takes quite a while for it to get any real accuracy. In Russia there are unending waves of Russian planes, and they will keep piling on a Stuka till it goes down. I also don't know of any main battles where there are outside core units of Stukas to play around with

So, I guess the question is: has anyone managed to use the plane in his army?

[braccada]

Certainly! It is one of the best units in the game. Without at least one Stuka it is very difficult to deal with heavy tanks. So you can take out key units with it and even just looking at the numbers it is one of the most efficient.

To keep it alive, you can either send an escort or win air superiority quickly. In case you do not know, a fighter next to your Stuka will defend it and the AI will not attack it if escorted.

[danconnors]

The fighter's only good for protection against one attack. I've had fighters defend against fighters on transports. The second one gets through and plasters the transport. In the main game I've never won air superiority yet. In Panzer General 2 I've gotten air superiority often, but there is no limit on your core units there.

[braccada]

I see, that can be a problem. If they have a better target they won't attack a defended bomber or transport. But yeah if they do, the Stuka is in trouble. Often that happens by accident, like if they do not see the defending fighter right away. Air battles can be rather tricky. AA guns are helpful, but not easy to use either. Best way is to trap the enemy planes. Show them a target and trap them with a hidden fighter.

[cerberusiv]

Stukas are pretty crucial for the first half of the Grand Campaign. They are the only German unit, apart from 88's, that can really hurt enemy heavy tanks.

Air superiority is not too hard but it takes a few turns. Do not overcommit the Luftwaffe early in a scenario. The AI will attack visible ground units with its fighters if there are no viable air targets. This favours fighter traps. Show the AI a juicy ground target like a high value artillery piece just at the edge of what it can see and position an air defence unit and a fighter one hex back where they cannot be seen. Often it will attack, taking losses from your AD and fighter. If the attacker survives the AD and fighter can finish it on your turn. Keep doing this. Focus your other fighters on unescorted bombers and weaker enemy fighters (most of the french and russian types are easy meat). The AI can also be reluctant to attack escorted units if the defending fighter is strong and its predicted losses are high so put your best fighters on escort.

Fighter experience is key so don't leave your fighters doing nothing. If there is no enemy air activity attack enemy ground units. Work all your planes hard once you have the upper hand in the air. In the GC focus on building experience in the awarded fighters with named heroes particularly.

You only need a couple of good Stukas for the early years. Once the Me410 comes along I switch most of my tac bombers to this and eventually to FW190G's.

[braccada]

By the way, I have collected a lot of data, that shows how effizient different units really are. The data at the moment is for 39 only, 1940 will follow soon. However you can already see how good the Stuka is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9dFerhCiJo

[danconnors]

I couldn't get into your video. I kept getting an error message. In any event, mostly because of the strictly limited core slots, by the time I get to Russia I have around 7 infantry units, 6 or 7 tank units, 5 artillery units, 4 fighter units, 1 me110 tac bomber, and one JU88 naval bomber. The fighters just have to function as strafing bombers when they aren't busy shooting down enemy planes.

The forthcoming PC 2--I hope--will lengthen the main campaign without lopping whole sections out of it for the DLC's. Although I bought the DLC's for Panzer Corps I didn't spend much time playing them because they were so removed from actual history. The main campaign spent no time in Africa, truncated Yugoslavia to a skirmish, and completely skipped Crete. This really weakened the main game. In addition in order to have a chance to win Russia I was forced to take Guderian's short cut to Moscow in August of 1941. This cut Russia down to only 2 scenarios.

[danconnors]

In addition I went back into Russia 1 and saw I had three vacancies in my core slots. By now the Russian air force was almost blasted out of the skies, and I had about 500 prestige accumulated. So, I bought two second model Stukas. The first attack in the next found the stuka did 3 damage to a Russian tank unit, so, great!

I'm playing general difficulty now--with the change that the enemy only gets 11 percent more prestige than me (and dice chess) so the AI must have gobbled its resource up at the beginning of the battle.

[cerberusiv]

The best advice I can give you is to forget the Wehrmacht campaign and play the DLC's. Try GC 39 and then take your core units forward to 40. Then you will get reasonable life of of units and be able to really build their experience. Then everything come together.

[braccada]

I agree! If you want a detailed long campaign with more historical maps you should try the Grand Campaign. Also Afrika Korps offers a historical route.

[danconnors]

I was under the belief that you can't carry your army from the Polish DLC to the French Campaign, and then advance that army to the Africa or Russian Campaign. I thought the central campaign was the only way you could play one army all the way through the game.

[danconnors]

@Braccada: OK I was able to look at your presentation. You believe the PZKW 1 is better than the T-38? In Poland regular campaign I try to get as many of my tanks graduated to T-38's as I can afford. It's a much better tank. Admittedly a 3.7 cm cannon isn't much of a gun, but still it's much more powerful than a machinegun--or even a 2.0 cm gun. The evidence I have in the one battle of Poland is the effect of a Czech T-38 on a Polish cavalry force compared to a PZKW 1's effect. The T-38's much harder on the cavalry.

The one tank I stay away from is the PZKW III because it maxes out as a push over. Any of my early tanks that I upgrade go either to a T-38 or a PZKW IV. You also seem to have a very small number of tank units compared to infantry, but I may not be understanding you there. I usually try to have about as many tank units as infantry, because tanks go harder and faster. I know that the German tanks in France were criticized because supposedly the French and Brit tanks were better than them. They may have had more armor and slightly bigger guns, but the German tanks were much faster and maneuverable. This shows in the tank versus tank battles.

My tank on tank battles don't go much like the example, because I don't get the III's but the IV's. In spite of the PZKW IV's slow gun it was ample for taking A Char B's or Matilda 2's tread off. And that would usually mean the end for the Char or Matilda. Of course if I had been the Germans I would not have built the Tiger or the Panther, but four times as many upgunned PZKW IV's. That was the real choice. Because of the relatively small numbers of Tigers and Panthers, both were defensive only tanks. There were never enough of them to make an effective offense.

[cerberusiv]

Originally posted by danconnors:

I was under the belief that you can't carry your army from the Polish DLC to the French Campaign, and then advance that army to the Africa or Russian Campaign. I thought the central campaign was the only way you could play one army all the way through the game.

No, the GC is based on taking your core army from Poland in 39 through France in 40, on to Russia and then a choice between either West or East going through to the end in 45. So you can take a unit from Sept 39 right through to Mar 45 an have it upgrade from a zero experience Pz I to a 5* King Tiger with three heroes.

The GC does not include any North African battles as they are in the separate Akrika Korps DLC. There are no fantasy battles invading North America either.

As for tank upgrades I can't say anything about the basic campaign as I have not played it much. It all depends on how many scenarios you are likely to get from a particular model before it has to be upgraded. Do not think this game absolutely reflects the historical nuances of tanks in combat. It generally reflects their strengths and weaknesses but with adjustments for game balance.

In the GC you get many more scenarios out of any given model of tank. There the Pz 38 dead ends quite quickly compared to the Pz III which gets reasonably competitive family upgrades through to 42. The Pz IV does not really upgrade significantly until the IV/F2 appears. So the cheapest path that keeps your tanks competitive is to run a mix of III's and IV's. The III's eventually become Panthers and the IV's become Tigers.

You are not limited to the small numbers actually built historically. My current GC playthrough is on hold but I am on the Eastern front in 44 and have around 15 panzers, a mix of Panthers, Tiger I's and King Tigers. The only IV's I still have are a few 3 or 4* ones that I do not use, they are there in reserve purely so I can upgrade them to replace any losses amongst my front line panzers with a reasonably experienced unit (green units generally do not last long if introduced this late in the war). I also have 4 Elefants. Historically Elefants were pretty useless but in this game they own any tank the Russians can field from their introduction in 43 through to mid 44. Nothing less than a Panther can survive by that stage as any PzIV that shows itself gets demolished by an IS2 followed by a swarm of T-34's.

[braccada]

Originally posted by danconnors:

@Braccada: OK I was able to look at your presentation. You believe the PZKW 1 is better than the T-38? In Poland regular campaign I try to get as many of my tanks graduated to T-38's as I can afford. It's a much better tank. Admittedly a 3.7 cm cannon isn't much of a gun, but still it's much more powerful than a machinegun--or even a 2.0 cm gun. The evidence I have in the one battle of Poland is the effect of a Czech T-38 on a Polish cavalry force compared to a PZKW 1's effect. The T-38's much harder on the cavalry.

The Panzer 1 not better, but it is more cost efficient. The Pz38(t) is simply not worth the investment and not needed in 1939 anyways. So my advise would be to skip it. The Grand Campaign in general compares not so well against the vanilla campaign, because it is so much longer and you get to use your equipment longer and switching to a completely different type happens very rarely. And yeah Infantry rules the battle field at least in the first few years. You can't get into tank battles with CharBs and Matildas and hope to do well.

[Telfram]

Stukas really are needed when you go against the Russians. Banging heads with an overstrength KV-2 with only Pz III and IV is always going to end badly unless you can weaken them. Arty and Strat. bombers help with suppression, but you need the killing power of an experienced Stuka.

[danconnors]

The two games must play very differently, because my PZKW IV's do very well against French and British tanks. That's in the main campaign, which I'm now wondering why they call it the main campaign. If they come out with a Panzer Corps 2 I hope they will stick to one very long central campaign, and end the confusion of the present setup.

But really, the original T-38 had the same gun as the PZKW III--a 3.7 cm cannon. The T-38 was lighter (and I thought cheaper) than the III. In any event didn't they later convert the T-38 to an anti tank chassis?

I'm going to try to go back and play the DLC's and see what happens. I just got finished playing the tutorial for the first time, and it was a pretty interesting campaign itself--especially the last two scenarios.