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 The Americans have a desire to get to Paris, and then Berlin, as quickly as possible. The Cobra breakout if they'd been leading it would have gone something like this.  American Campaign: Cobra July 1944  The operation will begin with a push right through the center of the German line, using both American and British forces. As the advance rolls forward, the secondary groups on both sides will make their way along the flanks. Most of the British units will eventually move east to the areas not along the roads, while our core sticks to the roads. After reaching the Seine[?], the core will turn toward Paris and take the last few cities of Tours, Blois, and Orleans (if the British haven't made it that far yet).  This month the American tactical bombers were upgraded to the fantastic A26 Invader. That's where most of the prestige was spent, but on the ground one artillery unit gets an update too. The M4A3(105) takes the M7 and makes it even better. It has the same gun, but loaded on a chassis that's not only much better armored, but faster to boot. It only sacrifices a bit of fuel, and actually can load more ammunition.  The initial attacks lead to heavy losses to our armored units. Heavy flak takes out a number of Allied planes as well, and we lose a B26. The Germans are being reduced at a roughly equal rate, however. We're pouring in more man and tanks every day while their reinforcements will be slow in coming.  A few days later and we still haven't made much forward progress. But we have managed to eliminate many of the German units that hemmed us in to our small patch of Normandy.  By the end of July the breakthrough has been made. The western side of the Axis line has collapsed up to Avranches as well.   Two variations on the US anti-tank units become available in August. The M18 carries the same gun as the M10 on a lighter, faster vehicle. It can be used for rapidly filling holes in the line, but can't hold its ground the way the M10 can. The M36 is more powerful all around. It has the best American tank gun, and retains the decent armor of the M10. As a consequence it moves a bit more slowly, and costs a bit more. For now we're happy with the M10's we already are using.  As the main striking force regroups at Alencon, the western force continues to make good progress. They're now converging on Rennes.  The British find Dreux to be heavily defended, although to the south, Chartres is not as well prepared.  On August 3, the airfield at Le Mans is captured, allowing our bombers a better base for bombing all the cities in the region.  At Rennes we use our air force to suppress the Panthers, while our experienced tanks handle the Stugs.  It takes several days to chew through the defenses of Dreux.  After we made the breakthrough, our core hasn't really had to deal with very much, aside from a few dug-in infantry units in the cities. Tours is up next. Incidentally getting a result like this can be pretty great on this map. Since the village is neutralized, nobody has to bother trying to end their turn on it to capture it. Sometimes these locations can become permanently uncapturable, leading to missing out on a small bounty of prestige, but it's not really enough to matter for us at this point.  One week into August sees the western force ready to start attacking Nantes.  Thanks to the easy capture of Chartres, the British arrive at Orleans well ahead of us, and find that it, too, is lightly defended. Blois is kind of another story.  Nantes is liberated on August 9.  The British side of things is effectively stable too.  Clearing Tours takes us a bit longer than expected, so the British begin the fight at Blois.  By August 12, Blois succumbs to the British assault, and we prepare for the march on Paris. Ending Prestige: 2290 Result: Major Victory (1900 prestige awarded)  Now I would have liked to put the full animated map here at the end. Unfortunately, since this was a mini-update I didn't record every turn as I was playing it. Normally I can rely on the game replay to get it back. Weird thing with this one, though -- it's not working. I think I may have run into similar bugs before (where it crashed on replay) but somehow it always eventually worked. This one doesn't. I even wasted time tracking down almost exactly where it goes wrong. One of the combats gets calculated wrong, and eventually a unit that's supposed to die doesn't, and from there nothing can move properly. I tried loading it on another computer and got the same result. I could conceivably follow the replay file manually like a script to recreate it, but honestly that's not going to happen just for the sake of this strategic map. So, end result is that replays may be busted, and I'll have to be more careful with my recording in the future. There's probably only one more that won't be a full update, so it shouldn't cause any more problems (I hope). I did find out that as recently as last year, there was an update to PGF (nothing major), putting it up to 1.02. Didn't help me with this problem, though.
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| ← # ? Mar 30, 2014 08:31 |
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