Caen: The Crucible
All major elements of the 12th SS Division have retreated from Caen. However, small pockets of opposition remain to delay Allied forces. 3rd Battalion must strike into the heart of the city and eliminate all resistance.
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#1
Caen: The Crucible
All major elements of the 12th SS Division have retreated from Caen. However, small pockets of opposition remain to delay Allied forces. 3rd Battalion must strike into the heart of the city and eliminate all resistance.
Just failed this, although I have no idea why. Annoying after playing it for a couple of hours.
Overwatch does not work. Ignore it, just hotkey your howitzers and drop barages manually. Grab the enemy mortars you find and place them in the ruins so they can shell the VPs. Tommies with rifle nades work really well too, when enemy infantry attacks the VPs rifle-smoke them from cover and between the rifle grenades and the mortars you should shred the counter-attackers.
Where can I find the Hummel? At the end of the mission it was listed as a failed objective although I never really got noticed to look for it.
^^
North East corner, it should show up as a secondary objective (yellow circle on the tactical map). After the Hummels (two I think) take some damage they will make a run for the NE corner and leave the map, so make sure you don't attack them until you have enough AT to take them down quickly.
If there are two in ne I kill them and then finish the mission later and get failure for not killing hummells. Happened twice now, going back is getting boring. Are there 3 hummells????
do you have to kill them before they fire??
kz
wasted another 4 hours trying to get by this crap, whats with THQ, this is garbage, it seems there are several bugs they have no control over and its up to the players to get lucky and bypass or your fked... simple
It took me awhile to realize this is sh...t, even when I killed both hummel and game stated "you killed a hummel" TWICE, I still get a failure, this is fked thank you for nothing...
Attack cathedral area first, then move to right, there are many snipers.
Use two heavy tanks to kill hummel, send one direct to the two guns, another to the eastern corner to cat off the escape road.
destroy the right side two bridges with tank-mortar. Send mortar to eastern corner to bomb enemy cross the river, enemy will counter-attack this mortar fire by sending units through the left bridge, set AT/MG at left bridge for it.
Move all units(except the mortar at eastern corner) to the left bridge. Kill the crew of the 88mm gun. Send three tanks to the the bridge at the north corner to destroy enemy truck, use tank-mortar to destroy the build which creating the trucks. Once this building is destroyed and all existing trucks are destroyed, the objective is completed.
Once all four points are taken, there will be a counter-attack from North-eastern board(with 2 entries), then this mission is finished. So to prepare for this counter-attack and also for the next mission, build mine fields all over the map. Also build trench at key points.
Since I will destroy all three bridges in next mission, the defense directions will be south and south-eastern.
If I replay this mission again, I will replace all Churchill tanks/light tanks(and most of mortar and MG) to Sherman tanks and infantry/engineer(before the end of this mission). Because next mission is a tank mission, heavy tank/AT/trenched infantry is a better choice.
Secondary objectives:
1. (For a medal) Kill the German propaganda officer - he's in the cathedral.
2. (Just a secondary objective) Destroy the supply trucks and truck depot.
The trucks appear from a building at the extreme West of the island, with lots of overhead pipelines around it. They drive off northwards and disappear over the bridge at the North of the island. Your task is to destroy them all before they can escape, and then to destroy the depot.
The trigger for the appearance of these always annoyed me - it was always at a time when I wasn't ready to storm the island and whack the trucks. I was playing through this mission again on Hard, and figured out the triggers:
a) If you capture all the requested points except the island.
b) If you set foot on the island.
c) If you attack the island with arty.
So here's what I did:
1. Pop-cap is a bugger in this mission - it never goes above 100, however many points you cap; and a Howitzer with the island in range comes in very useful. You should still have your old Howie in the Chateau from the previous mission. Keep it for now, as it has the effect of "reserving" popcap, which otherwise gets eaten up by reinforcements you don't really need.
2. To prepare for the next mission (Storm Front), have your PIAT Sappers heavily mine all the map entrances in the lower half of the map. Some mines in the narrow streets just north of the "schoolyard" where your HQ will be are useful as well. (To make Muni for this, I move my Tank truck to the High Munition point way off in the southwest).
3. The Hummels will initially concentrate fire on your old Howitzer, and on your Tank truck (neither of which takes much damage at that range). Keep the Howitzer healthy by occasionally repairing it with the PIAT squad. You don't need to use it (it doesn't have enough range to get to where you want to go), but you need it to "reserve" popcap for a later Howitzer in a better place.
4. Capture the "schoolyard" point south of the docks and set up your HQ truck there.
5. Proceed westwards to the cathedral, dealing with mines, snipers, MGs etc on the way. (The heavy Churchills are good for this - a mortar, which you can pick up from the Chateau, is also useful).
6. Attack the Cathedral from two directions at once. e.g. an AVRE from the south road (lob a HESH at the officer once you see him), and have a couple of Crocodiles parked North of the cathedral. Once sufficiently wounded, the officer will try to retreat in that direction onto the island. The Crocs have a good chance of BBQ-ing him as he goes, which means you don't have to search for him on the island later.
7. There's a weird trigger just south of the Cathedral, where the southern road hits the western boundary. You may check along there and find nothing - but if you ever send something up the steps leading to that point from the south (they're Teller-mined), this will spawn an AT gun, some Shrecked Stormies in a house and a sniper.
8. Cap the Cathedral point, build some trenches there and stick a couple of Tommy-sqads in them. This forms Stuka-bait when the Germans get annoyed later on and starts spamming incendiary-rocket attacks from the island. The trenches are so good against these attacks that you don't need to worry - the Tommies just laugh it all off.
9. The area north of your "schoolyard" HQ can easily be cleared of mortars, MGs and AT guns by a heavy Crocodile sticking to the narrow streets. (You could do this before going for the Cathedral, as those mortars are annoying).
10. Don't go north-east of your HQ towards the docks until you've got some AT set up. On Hard attacking/capping that point spawns 2 PIV ISTs and 2 Panthers. It's nice to lure them down into the fire of a 17-pounder you prepared earlier.
11. Don't cap any of the points east of the docks, but proceed slowly up there to wipe out the two Hummels (my task force was 2xCrocodiles, Command Tank and Firefly).
12. Now you've cleared all the land not on the island (but not capped it all), it's time to go after the trucks.
13. Bring your tanks back to the area just North of the Cathedral. If you move them as far westward as you can, they should get ignored by spammed Stuka attacks, which will concentrate ineffectively on your entrenched Tommies in front of the Cathedral - so you can get all your tanks over-repaired without Sappers constantly dying.
14. Get rid of the 88 to the NW of the bridge over to the island. A mortar on your bank will do the job, decrewing but not trashing the gun. The AVRE can drive half-way over the bridge and HESH it, but this will trash the gun as well. You could also get rid of the Wirbelwind and MGs in this way. But watch out - don't drive beyond 3/4 over the bridge, or the trucks will spawn, when you may not be ready to deal with them. Don't be tempted to go after the Stuka halftrack, annoying though it is.
15. Build a Howitzer to the left of your end of the bridge. There's just enough room. To get popcap, just delete your old Howitzer back in the Chateau. Don't be tempted to arty the island yet - this will spawn the trucks.
16. Line up your tanks in front of the bridge, ready for a charge. I had 2xCromwells + Command tank at the front (fast tanks), and 2 Churchill Crocodiles behind them.
17. Switch on Flank Speed and charge the Cromwells straight over the bridge, and straight up the road to the bridge on the other side of the island. They'll form a backstop to make sure no trucks make it over that bridge.
18. Charge the Churchills halfway up the road to the Truck Depot (which, as soon as your Cromwells set tread on the island, will start spawning trucks). The Crocodiles flames and your arty will make short work of the depot and trucks.
19. Now that's done, you can cap all the points, the one on the island last. Have your tanks ready to repel the counter-attack that comes over the North bridge (the one the trucks try to run to). Your arty just south of the island can reach the top of the island as well.
Lt. Slothrop, thanks for that. I like figuring out triggers too (and plan ahead exhaustively). To the extent I play in -dev to use FOW_RevealAll sometimes to really see what's going on
I am currently going through the missions again on hard level and have reached the 3rd mission Storm Front. I have noticed that you start with whatever was left over from this mission.
My question is, if I capture some 88's in this one will they be there when storm front starts?
Yes is the simple answer.
The two by the school yard are useful. and I also like the one on the island as it covers the bridge and off map approaches.
A glitch in the cathedral area? Like a diagonal black line stemming from the cathedral up to the sky at an angle towards the right?
I spotted it the last time I replayed the mission, when my artillery levelled the place, propaganda officer and all.
I can't make out what it's supposed to be, maybe a wire for the prop officers speakers, or just a glitch.
Anyone had the same issue?
"Never will those who wage war tire of deception" - Sun Tzu
Replayed the mission last night, captured all the points, except the one on the island; then built tons of mines, barbed wire and went over my popcap.
It must have taken me about an hour just to lay the mines and when I capped the last point, to trigger the counter attack, Germans start running into mines - it happened : Fatal scar error, execution paused message displays. It never happened before while playing CoH, so I'm wondering why now?
Thanx for the help.
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