Since I’ve begun playing D-day again I’ve pretty much decided that Cherbourg is merely a distraction for the Americans and isn’t really worth the time and effort it takes to get reinforcements all the way there. I’ve begun to think that those reinforcements would serve far better to bolster the Areas around St. Lo and Caen.
What do you think?
I would definitely agree, for several reasons…
There is a threshold point that the Germans should not cross in how many territories they occupy, because then they will become more vulnerable to Allied aircrafts. Not going for Cherbourg means more concentrated AA.
The Allies waste quite a lot of time just moving down to Cherbourg. It is nice if your forces hold a little longer in Cherbourg, but seeing as how it takes the Allies 6 movements or so to trek down to Cherbourg and up to St. Lo, holding the city for one additional turn is not a huge difference in the delay of those forces. The Americans land 0 tanks until later in the game, so the force that takes Cherbourg will be predominently 1 movement units unless they take it late game.
Fighters are an obvious threat to any german units which decide to travel across the whole map.
And finally, if the Allies actually put a lot of units towards Cherbourg to take it very early (a fast start could be somewhat harmful to the Axis) then Germany easily has the offensive tank power to take advantage of that large Cherbourg invasion force by harrassing and destroying isolated British units and landing Allied units.
A viable option I see is keeping a mobile tank force between St. Lo and Cherbourg, so you could threaten a late reclaiming off Cherbourg. If the Allies compensate by leaving a large enough force down there, you can easily divert the tanks to St. Lo.
It really depends on where you focus your forces… You can try and bog down the Americans at Utah or you could force them to travel to Cherbourg, and fight into the city, keeping Armor forces needed at St. Lo away from where they should be… I wouldn’t “reinforce it” with “reinforcements” just local holding troops…
GG
I don’t usually send more troops into Cherbourg. If the dice are with me and I get lots of Allied casualties I don’t out and out abandon it. I often abandon it though. I try to keep the US from flanking St. Lo or bottle them up on the beacheads. I dig in if the US turns on it first thing off the beach. As a rule though I don’t reinforce it from the charts or send units on the St. Lo side of the line running between Utah and Omaha to Cherborg.
“I wouldn’t “reinforce it” with “reinforcements” just local holding troops…”
Yeah, that’s what I usually do. There is usually about 14 units down near Cherbourg, I think. 14 units can usually sustain at least 2 full turns of combat no matter what, unless the Allies have some tanks (which it probably won’t), or employs its bombers. The Cherbourg forces have a good amount of AA though, so it is risky for the allies to use their bombers.
What I like to do with Cherbourg is to have the units in the area defend off the invasion for as long as possible and even pull back the units that i have left into the city. For reinforcments I dont bother sending up much because of the air cover and also teh long treck that the units would have to go. On avarage I might send up 3-4 tanks if im doing well on the other fronts and a handfull of Inf. But when things get sketchy down south I cut off all the units that would be headed that way. As said before its like a distraction for the allies to help burn time, and maby even weaken the allies.
