Is the last German mission winnable?

[donjas]

I don't know why, I have restarted this mission 5 times and each time the moment my Tiger gets swamped all hell breaks loose. Any suggestions on how to proceed with this mission?

[thanghq]

Try to call arty on those Brit mortars at the beginning. Keep calling infantry squads and armored cars to aid the defense and bombard the crowded areas with you destroyer. Call a PaK when possible and at the first stage of the battle dont bother saving your points for tanks, you'll be overrun before you can get your hands on one. I dont know if flares can be of any use but I kept throwing them on the Brits to light up the area. Try to hold ground as long as possible but you'll be overrun eventually.

[corleone11]

flares are very important since you can see where the enemy is and take it out. but you cant really "win" this missions. sooner or later they'll overrun you and sometimes a cut sequence is triggered. you then take control of the units that were behind your last frontline. but dont worry just try oto hold them back as long as possible but you cnt stop them, just delay them.

[donjas]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will follow it.

[Silencer]

I couldn't hold the first line, but stood my ground a the second line.
With the 2 extra flaks 88, the small flaks. those helped a lot. and save your mortar, helps tonnes.
use a scout car to transfer ammo from the back.
in the end, i noticed the where heavy artillery guns, but I didn't use them.

When the missiong stops; I had 3 pvIVG, 1 tiger, 2 flaks en several captured allied tanks; 2 churchill VII heavies -->They don't have a heavy gun, but heavy superb armour.

only thing i couldn't do is do destroy the rockect launchers in time, in the mini-mission. I alway manage to get 2, but before I can kill the last one, it start's firing. any help here?

[thanghq]

I got the snipers to kill the officer first when I heard one of the soldiers said so. Then I moved to the bank and take cover there then showered them with grenades. Don't worry about your left flank since there is an AI soldier there to draw the enemy's attention (don't know how or why he's there though).
You only need to kill the crews (all those soldiers standing on the pier) to complete your objective. Don't bother destroying the launchers since the blast will throw your men back, even into the water below. After that you'll see a cutsence, then back to the main battle.

[geroj]

i did the mission without retreating to the second line, however, it was ridiculously hard, i saved almost every minute and reloaded the game 200 times to avoid tank casualties.

at the beginning of the mission i pulled my forces from the trenches behind the buildings in the village to avoid as much mortar fire as possible. i placed all the troops i could right behind the buildings and the rest to the round stoned area that provided cover thoughout the mission. i placed the tiger approximately to the center of the square so it could fire to tanks comming from both directions and remained hidden. this part of the front did not change too much i just ordered 1 panzer ivf as soon as it was possible along with an armoured car and pulled the soldiers from the buildings to the round stoned cover to the rest. later i captured 5 tanks in total (2 churchills, 1 matilda, 1 crusader and 1 of the medium tanks, i dunno the name). the tiger eventually run out of ammunition(!!!!!!) so i moved it to the right behind the barricade and used as anti personnel weapon.

as for the western part i think the key was to pull all forces near to the quad flak gun except 3 soldiers with at grenades, i moved them to the left near the walls in cover. these were crucial in destroying the mortar that was placed to the left at the beginning.

i shelled the mortars as somebody pointed out, taking these little rats as early as possible can save a lot of soldiers.

i ordered panzer iv f-s to 4 places in the game: to the extreme left to reinforce the heavy flak gun but it was also able to fire to the entrance of the oil storage facility(?), to the right of the quad (light) flak gun, to the square of the village and to the far right, however it was not necessary. instead of pak guns i ordered armoured cars to take car of the enemy infantry and infantry to pin down the enemy and capture enemy tanks (this was the hardest of all but absolute necessary).

successfully completing the side quest with the rocket launchers is also an absolute must as you can obliterate the enemy in the trenches thus gaining enourmous advantage.

i think i made 3 mistakes:
1. not ordering pak guns at all early in the game (though i suggest to order panzers as they are far more durable and they have anti aircraft machine gun that helps against the infantry)
2. not capturing any tanks in the far left, this would have been an enormous help
3. allowing my mortar to be destroyed early in the game (it fired to the building it was behind and the explosion destroyed it, epic fail)

the mission ends when you successfully defended the center of the village for more than 10 minutes (but this objective triggers after around 40 minutes after the rocket launcher side quest)

[ggvw]

I had trouble with this mission too. Very hard. Took me a couple of tries to beat it.

At the start of the game I made sure to destroy the mortars. They are annoying as hell and will kill all of your infantery if you don't destroy them.

I retreated to the second line just before they come with the heavier tanks. About that time my tiger ran out of ammunition.
There is a destroyed tiger somewhere and it's inventory has ammunition for your tiger! Use a vehicle to transfer the ammunition to your tiger. That definately helped me, because the tiger is almost indestructable. I repositioned my tiger to the 2nd line on top of the hill.

I aimed for the enemy tank turrets because there is a bigger chance I could capture them. I had about 4 or 5 captured tanks in the end. The guns on them are not that great but the armour is ok and they make a good distraction. Also, their mg's help kill infantery.

The flak cannon on the left was of great help. Accurate and could take out most tanks with 1 shot. If you destroy a part of the wall with an at grenade or HE round you can cover the entrance to the pit with the fuel tanks with that flak.

Make sure you call in reinforcements before you need them, because it takes a while for them to arrive.

The house with the radio operator on the southern (?) part of the map has boxes with ammunition, sandbags, mines and other stuff.

My strategy was to save every time my tank destroyed on of theirs and survived. Going to slow-motion mode helped also . If my tank got destroyed then I'd reload.

At some point in time a side mission is triggered where you have to destroy the rocket emplacements. For some reason all my captured tanks were repositioned to the right side of the map after I had finished that mission.

Hope this helps new players.

[Frosal]

Anyone able to finish the secondary objective, "If possible, keep the coastal air defenses intact."?

v1.17.5

Here's a screenshot where my forces start the scripted retreat and after Borg's last speech and cutscene this objective doesn't register...

[KnightFandragon]

The last German mission is not "winnable" in the traditional sense....you "win" by simply holding out long enough and falling back in an orderly enough fashion to do w/e is required to run w/e hidden timer this mission has....once you get clear to the back of the map, at some point the mission will say...you gotta leave africa, and what not and then it ends....so in short, you win by losing.....just a controlled Loss...

[Deathmachinept]

I really loved this mission :) beat in the first go but need some saves.
I used the tiger very successful eventually run out of ammo and had to look for it in some crate.
The key is using the tiger in the back as a sniper or as a reserve sometimes moving it in then reversing him out and parking at places where he hits most vulnerable parts of enemy tanks, I remember I parked him East of map in town when some churchs spawned out of the map east my tiger intercepted them and killed them by hitting they sides.

[FMAlanbrooke]

I held off wave after wave of British attackers with no result. I watched a Utube of the mission and decided it doesn't matter what you do. So I played the first defence line a bit, then put the game on maximum speed and virtually did nothing after that, just watched it while adding reinforcements as they became available and targeting the ship artillery - I still completed the mission!!!

There are some fun things you can do in this mission, for me it was the first to use all the most sophisticated aspects of the game:

1. officers - these extend the range of your guns (including machine guns) and make them much more effective. In other missions, the officers never seemed to have binoculars, so I never found them to be much use.

2. emplacements and mines. You can find the closest mines in a building within the fuel depot and the entrenchment tools in crates outside the vehicle workshop further south.

3. vegetation for Pak 40 AT guns - comes with every such gun, even though there isn't enough of it.

4. AT rifles - there's one (with ammunition) in the building within the fuel depot and another in one of the other buildings further south . There are also two MG 34 machine guns in boxes outside one of those buildings.

You can use a jeep to carry all the stuff around, I captured two of them, if you would rather not use a truck. There's also a kubelwagen in the radio shack.

My Tiger ran out of AT ammunition and then the defence collapsed. You can find 88mm ammunition in boxes next to the 88mm AA guns and also in the knocked -out Tiger tank next to the vehicle workshop. To top up your machine gun ammo all you have to do is drive your tank up to a destroyed enemy tank and then use the eye symbol on it to suck out all its ammunition directly into your tank.

The Germans soon run out of ammunition, particularly machine gun ammunition. There are also other things such as mines scattered around the map that they could use. Instead of destroying the British mortars, I was able to capture and re-use one of them, though I should have disabled the others by removing their ammunition, as I ran out of mortar ammunition pretty quick (the building with a fountain in a square has some). If you don't destroy or remove the mortars, the British re-man and fix them so you have to hit them with AT grenades or drive over them with your Tiger.

The Tiger can have trouble fighting the armoured cars because the armoured cars get too close for the Tiger to depress or fire its gun. There is simple solution: just ram the armoured car and push it over!!!

One tactic I wanted to try was a raid right at the beginning, before the first British soldiers and tanks arrived. I gave my troops a desperate mission to (a) run to a partly destroyed Crusader tank and get its machine gun ammunition plus repair kit (b) continue on to a wharf loaded with German stores just behind the British front line (c) load up a truck that was standing there with as much as they could in the short time available and (d) drive the truck back to my lines. On all previous runs of the game, the British attacked first on that (western) side of the map, so I didn’t think this would succeed. Fortunately in this game, the British attacked the other (eastern) side first.

Much to my surprise I managed to get the ammunition from the tank and kill all the British wharf guards for the loss of only one man (who, worst luck, was carrying the recovered ammunition). I then started to load up the truck, finding anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in the process. The men loading the truck then climbed aboard. Unfortunately one man had been severely wounded and was left behind nearby while he healed himself using first aid supplies (normally a foolish thing to do out in the open as it takes a long time).

This man, Karl, then became the hero of this little story (though hundreds are involved, each man in the game has a name). He firstly had to get the machine gun ammunition from the dead German soldier - but this left no time to get onto the truck. Thus he was told to protect the truck while the truck and its four remaining soldiers made a dash for the German lines. A single British soldier had moved up to the woodland next to the road and looked likely to foil my entire plan.

Incredibly, Karl was able to distract that British soldier without being killed and the truck was able to make its slow way to my base despite being unarmoured. Nevertheless Karl had been left behind enemy lines and was surely on a suicide mission. He had not been able to kill the well-hidden British soldier and he had to run out into open ground to get away. He was running out onto the open road when a column of two heavily armed British Jeeps turned up and started turning their machine guns (one .30 cal Browning each) toward him. Should he throw a grenade at them and go down fighting or run towards the British soldier in the woods? There were some rocks nearby so I got Karl to turn around and run towards them - well anything is worth a try! I looked around for support and got the German heavy machine gunners in German trenches to start firing at extreme range at the Jeeps – and the first one was hit! It then ran into the busted Crusader tank and had trouble turning around. The second jeep was unable to start shooting until Karl had got behind his rock and was lying down. This jeep then kept going as fast as possible and left Karl behind.

Karl now had a new, even more audacious mission. A couple of British soldiers had started setting up a mortar position near to him. If that mortar started firing, the German trenches would be indefensible. There were three other mortars and the German player was told he had to get them all. Karl had to not only kill the mortar crew, he had to destroy the mortar so it couldn’t be re-manned (which would happen quickly otherwise). The mortar was too far behind enemy lines for any other troops to have a chance at this. So he had to try, even at the cost of his life. He was already in grenade range, so firstly he threw an ordinary grenade. That killed the crew, but also another British soldier that had arrived. Now Karl had to get closer to throw a much heavier anti-tank grenade to completely disable the mortar. Other British soldiers were appearing nearby, but Karl managed to shoot them with his rifle first. He then threw the anti-tank grenade and the mortar never got a chance to bother the Germans.

This guy was already nearly dead once and a hero, could he get back to his lines safely? He had to run across an open road with that British soldier still hiding in the woods. He waited until the British soldier was reloading his rifle, threw another grenade at him (he missed), and then ran for his life. He ran for the jeep, which had lost its crew to the machine-gun fire. He didn't know if the jeep was damaged or not. It was running fine!

He jumped in only to find the Jeep had trouble getting away from the knocked-out Crusader tank. However he was able to disentangle it and drove all the way back to the trenches (though much slower than the jeep did originally). He then safely delivered his load of machine gun ammunition in time for the next British attack. His recovered repair kit was vital to the fixing up of one of my only two German 37mm anti-tank guns, shot up by the other jeep. I wish Men of War awarded medals and veterancy to such guys!!!