Christmas trouble

[edwards_i2]

How on earth are you supposed to defend at the start?
Tried 5 or 6 times, and just get over run.

[edwards_i2]

this mission is wayyyyyy to hard.
Where are the stretchers? How do I defend against that lot?

[Asken]

You need to micro the AT guys, hide em behind houses, then take rest of the units for objective 2, fix that, and fall back.

[edwards_i2]

OK, defended the bridge. Now Artillery are picking off my men half a map away crawling about. How can they spot them from there? I`ve switched the game off out of frustration.

[Yakubian Ape]

At the start move your at guys to the walls by the cemetery so they can catch the enemy armor as it comes, you'll have to micro them so they don't die.

Every cutscene that plays skip it on the top right by clicking "Continue" because while they play the AI just keeps driving its tanks and will kill your guys.

Once you fall back to the town hide bazooka guys behind houses/inside them and wait for the tanks to push and keep your mortars on top of the supply truck so they can spam mortars against the incoming infantry spam. You'll have to micro your AT guys and bring them back to the supply truck when they run out of ammo as the tanks are the real threat in this part.

There's also a Sherman 105 in the village you can use with a tank crew beside it, I did not notice it until after the battle was over so maybe you can get some use out of it.

The stretchers are marked on the mao with rotating triangles, they are in a building to the back of the village and 2 are outside the building by some tents. You'll have to rotate your camera to look inside the building unfortunately to see them but you don't need to bring back all of them for the objective, I missed two on accident and still got the objective completed.

Once you fall back accross the bridge just line up your guys all along the walls looking at the river and put your mortars next to the supply truck behind the field hospital so they can continue spamming mortars.

Once you finish this part and kill all tanks from a distance or by sending bazooka guys accross the bridge to kill the tanks you can send a few guys into the village to capture it and win without having to destroy the arty.

There's a easter egg objective I believe to the far east (top right of the map) once you cross the bridge and have to defend the field hospital and if you send a few guys over there a cutscene will play and a Sherman Calliope will spawn that you can repair and use to destroy the German rocket arty from a distance.

You don't need to destroy the big guns to beat the mission.

I beat this on hardcore first try and it's a very fast mission, the cutscenes screw you over if you don't skip them and it's all dependent on your micro of the bazooka AT soldiers.

Last thing, Panthers are vulnerable on the side to bazookas, you can get an ammo explosion kill and insta kill them. For Pz 4s aim at the turret so they can't shoot back and then they are easy pickings.

[Pdguru]

I like a challenge... but when you have to come here to find out how to succeed in a mission and find Easter eggs to do so, I assume I might be a bit too much for me, lol!

[Pdguru]

Well, I tried that mission - the long range artillery are more accurate than a sniper at 50 yards, so the last part, taking back the town would need a miracle. The huge guns take 2 secods to reload and can hit a single running man instantly. Frankly, a tad effing stupid. Even if you try a sneak flank attack with infantry through the woods using the little trail hidden at the map edge the artillery simply obliterates you again with sniper accuracy. If anyone has found a way to deal with that, let me know!

[Metal Izanagi]

Christmas Trouble is a real pain, yeah. You have to heavily micro your AT infantry and keep them from getting noticed before they can kill any armor that the Nazis send. Ambushing is the only way to get anywhere, and if you don't get the optional Calliope when it becomes available you'll be in a much worse spot.

[Pdguru]

Hi Metal,
I've handled all the attacks and got out the injured - and now there are at least a couple of German tanks camped in the town (including one indestructible Panther who can kill the US tanks instantly at long range)... and I can't get to them because of the artillery snipers who obliterate anything that crosses the bridge within seconds. You can even go way out where you get the Calliope and cross the footbridge and go along the river with vertical cliffs - and the artillery automatically sees you, crawling or walking, and kills you instantly with their vertical-dropping shells. Absolutely stupid level design. And the Calliope is worthless because it doesn't shoot rockets and won't have enough rockets to do any harm anyway, even if it did. The supply truck is already empty. And the uber artillery can also hit you on your (the far) side of the river... so you have to evacuate (after half the buldings and all the rescued strechers have been blown up and casualtles killed) and can't form up an attack anywhere near the bridge even if you wanted to try. Oh, and add to all that your one artillery piece is stuck inside a house and cannot be moved. Bottom line is this is a very poorly designed level.

[Metal Izanagi]

Originally posted by Pdguru:

Hi Metal,
I've handled all the attacks and got out the injured - and now there are at least a couple of German tanks camped in the town (including one indestructible Panther who can kill the US tanks instantly at long range)... and I can't get to them because of the artillery snipers who obliterate anything that crosses the bridge within seconds. You can even go way out where you get the Calliope and cross the footbridge and go along the river with vertical cliffs - and the artillery automatically sees you, crawling or walking, and kills you instantly with their vertical-dropping shells. Absolutely stupid level design. And the Calliope is worthless because it doesn't shoot rockets and won't have enough rockets to do any harm anyway, even if it did. The supply truck is already empty. And the uber artillery can also hit you on your (the far) side of the river... so you have to evacuate (after half the buldings and all the rescued strechers have been blown up and casualtles killed) and can't form up an attack anywhere near the bridge even if you wanted to try. Oh, and add to all that your one artillery piece is stuck inside a house and cannot be moved. Bottom line is this is a very poorly designed level.

I absolutely agree that it's not a well-designed level. It gives the Germans all the advantages of their standard doctrine and forces the player as the US to deal with the issues the US faced without any way to work around them. :/

[Kruppt808]

yah i tried this level a couple of times and having to micro the wounded and deal manually with the panzers via zookas and AT guns plus retreat units across bridge for NEXT fight is to much micro for me. I gave up as just one of those missions i need to work to hard to beat where it stops being fun. 1st one for Lib DLC so far.

[Pdguru]

Agree with you Krupp. The mission before it was the opposite - a tad too easy. That said, the game's habit of shooting you invisibly from off-map, units not moving and firing when you tell them to, guns getting stuck on map items, and AI spamming unending tanks and infantry into areas you have already won makes all of the battles somewhat challenging! This scenario had the same effect on me as the one in Ostfront where you try to defend a large town, at night, with no tanks against literally hundreds of never-ending Russian tanks who seen impervious to mines. Infurating, lol.

[Asken]

Originally posted by Kruppt808:

yah i tried this level a couple of times and having to micro the wounded and deal manually with the panzers via zookas and AT guns plus retreat units across bridge for NEXT fight is to much micro for me. I gave up as just one of those missions i need to work to hard to beat where it stops being fun. 1st one for Lib DLC so far.

did the exact same, i hide all my At around the town, then i took all my normal inf to take the injured, (SPOILER) tho in the end battle it was a hell, had no tanks, or AT left, so i had to take the TNT etc from ruined tanks and blow em up.

[Pdguru]

I discovered that retaking the town does not mean you have to reoccupy the town or take out the sniper artillery or the vehicles outside the town (the ones that attack in the first stage of the level). That's a game changer! The game should more clearly tell you what's needed
I only found out by the fact that I managed to take out the 3 tanks and 2 Panzerwerfers in and just behind the town. Level won! I managed to knock out the Panther with the last round on the howitzer truck, and the next step It was as much luck than anything else - the Calliope suddenly decided to fire on its own and killed the more distant Panzerwerfer... triggered only by having survived a salvo from the darn thing. Once the tanks in town are dead, the level ends. What a crazy tough level.

[Mas]

My advice with regard to the field artillery is, once you have neutralised enemy tanks within the town and secured the river, to form up your flanking force (halftracks, tank, infantry in support) at the bottom of the empty fields. Concurrently with your assault, move a squad or so of infantry over the hill (accessed by the small bridge) - widely-spaced to distract the fires of the field guns. I directly controlled a Sherman to target the field guns. Assaulting positions like these requires coordinated assault from multiple axes with enough redundancy in your main force to close with the enemy.

Also, I had used the Calliope in Direct Control to rocket barrage the Panzerwerfers prior.

From there I was free to clear any enemy in the town.

[D3lta88]

Beat it... but one of the stupidest missions EVER.... very lazy.