Hitler Launches a Surprise Offensive into the Ardennes Forest!

[DarthVeda]

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Herbstnebel, also known as Autumn Mist or the Battle of the Bulge has arrived after six months of work and playtesting. I'm very happy with the final result and now it's available for download.

This scenario is only playable by the Germans.

Enjoy!

The scenario can be downloaded at the following locations:

http://darthveda.tripod.com/herbstnebel/

Or directly courtesy of Apolyton Civilization Site:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81587

 

[DarthVeda]

Oh. I should probably mention this scenario is for MGE.

 

[insurgent]

As I said on Poly, great work!

 

[gerryandersson]

This is REALY nice.

 

[Boco]

Absolutely!

 

[DarthVeda]

Any tales from the front lines? Frustrations?

 

[kobayashi]

Played the first day and ran the batch file and reloaded. It still looks like day...is it supposed to be that way?

I like is so far, seems a lot of good work put into all areas, research (I mean into the details of the battle), map, look and feel etc. I sometimes just give up when I see a big map but I'm going all the way on this one.

interesting tricks I've found so far,

making the terrain below a city look like a razed city.

kubelwagen as recon units a nice touch. You need these to find out where the home city of invincible bunkers are.

Splitting big cities into multiple cities.

Fractional movement for Infantry so they can move one step on roads and then attack at full strength.

other minor comments-

Units like Panzer IV are practically useless for attacking towns. They cannot even damage infantry fortified in towns. On the other hand, Stug IV can pound cities to paste. I think it should be the other way round, turreted tanks can ignore city walls and turretless armour should have higher defense stats.

All the tank units cannot fortify (even in cities even though the message says they can't fortify unless in a city) and its a great disadvantage.

Many unit names are too long and they cover the unit stats in the military advisor window.

Could play the music on turn one for effect.

How does making american POWs help?

As Yop mentions, it would be nice to see the american stats. I have no idea whether the units I'm attacking are powerful or not (like the roadblocks). I think there is a way to see the stats via the science advisor, maybe you could mention this.

 

[DarthVeda]

If you want to fortify tanks in cities, you have to go into the city view, right click the unit, and click fortify.

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
If you want to fortify tanks in cities, you have to go into the city view, right click the unit, and click fortify.

What's the trick for the tanks? Domain 3 units?

I realised I made a mistake in the files and night does come. I'm going back a few turns to play the first night.

 

[kobayashi]

On the second night now, still no Allied planes yet. Learnt a few things.

1. Recon every city.

2. Always have infantry infront of tanks.

3. Kill everyroadblock immediately after taking a city.

4. Useless to go after the holy city first. A lot of the bunkers are homed in XXX (didn't want to reveal to other players) so I'm going to concentrate everything in the North while trying to isolate the shermans and Hellcats which keep appearing in the south.

 

[kobayashi]

Daylight falls on the third day. The scenario is still offering gripping excitement. Still no allied airpower.

In the South I've captured everything as far as Donnage.

In the North, I've captured Stavelot which had tons of units. St. Vith North is still holding out but I should be able to capture it at daybreak on day 4.

Even further North units are now bypassing Vervier on their way to the 4 Liege cities. Seems this part was not part of the actual German advance. I hope I don't find bunkers everywhere when I get there. I mean if I'm to get to Antwerp, I have to go in that direction right?

Progress seems to be even slower than history. I think I should have reached the outskirts of Bastogne and Laroche by now.

 

[kobayashi]

Morning of the 22nd now. Snow has started falling.

Progress has slowed a lot and I'm only at the outskirts of Werbemont in the North and just short of Hollange in the South.

As it turns out all the cities like Liege in the far North had bunkers homed to each other so they are invulnerable. I had a force of over a dozen tanks touring the area aimlessly for seven days. That is probably a fatal mistake. The concept of bunkers is well applied along the 'route' you are supposed to take but I think its not fair if huge parts of the map are off limits.

The event scripted events are excellent and the arrangement of terrain to slow you down are very thoughtful. However there is the matter of a huge force of tanks miraculously appearring time and again in the St. Vith area even though I captured St Vith and all the surrounding cities long ago. They've stopped now but I think a trigger based on city capture would have been more appropriate.

In spite of my nit-picking, overall a very well done scenario and I recommend it to everyone.

One thing I found very novel was the use of food to represent fuel. At a certain time it starts running out at the hinterland German cities and random units are abandoned. I'm supposed to find Allied cities with fuel dumps to rehome the fuel starved untis but after Aerial recon of a large portion of the map, I still haven't found a single allied city with a fuel dump.

 

[kobayashi]

Night of 23rd December, the skies have cleared and casualties from bombing are begining to mount, especially in the attempt to get BD Fraiture (my northern pincer). I have a southern pincer going for Bastonge stalled at Hollange. Also many tanks have run out of fuel. The Allies seem to be flanking in the far south from Luxembourg but I am holding them off with my reinforcements.

Heres the score card so far

Infantry Casualties
German 69 Allies 333 plus additional 89 roadblocks

Mech Infantry Casualties
Germans 30 Allies 120

Tanks Casualties
German 33 Allies 95

Tanks Destroyer Casualties
German 14 Allies 70

SP Artillery Casualties
Germans 10 Allies 18

AT Guns Casualties
Germans 7 Allies 1

Planes shot down
Germans 0 Allies 5

Recon units lost
Germans 7 Allies 2

I don't seem to be getting anywhere in the last few turns but atleast I'm making the Allies pay in blood.

 

[DarthVeda]

Good to see you've made it so far. Once the allied airpower arrives the offensive is pretty much at an end. If you haven't made it to at least Marche by that point you're gonna get chewed by the AF pretty bad.

Also the reason you don't see Fuel Dumps when you do air recon is because the cities reside on top of them

 

[kobayashi]

Since you put it that way, I'm going to give up and give it a second try. I'm supposed to get to Marche you say, I'll make that my priority. I know all the tricks now.

1. Stop building half tracks and get all the motor infantry killed to free up fuel. Buy units as soon as they are 2/3 built.

2. Refuel newly built units at Daum and Bitburg before going into action.

3. Get every armoured unit to Iron Cross status by using green units to slaughter roadblocks.

4. Place veteran Tiger I on strategic elevated junctions to block off sections of the map.

5. At night use HE111s stacked with units to get close to heavily defended cities.

6. Use paras as bridges to bypass ZOC bottlenecks.

7. Use Panzer IVs for city defence.

 

[Boco]

A tactic that worked in early beta test was to put Panther or Tiger I stacks in elevated or urban terrain adjacent to cities that are important to the Allies. They would tend to waste themselves against the stack, leaving the city vulnerable to the German city busting units.