Guidelines / Setup
--- EMERGENCY NOTICE ---
After further testing, this mode is too hard on Western Front maps against the Americans. With the exception of the very few hedgerow and city/town maps, it is impossible to advance without being blasted by the seemingly infinite number of M3 halftracks the AI can spawn on Hardcore.
Most importantly, the M3 halftrack, all American tanks, and sometimes even the Jeep are all immune to the German AT rifle, meaning you have to kill every single one of these halftracks with AT grenades until you research the Panzerschreck...
Overall I warn against playing against the Americans in this mode. Or, at least, bring a lot of call-ins to nuke their damned .50 cals before you move in.
Anyways.
This mode is borne of the idea that in WWII, having a tank in the area was an exception, not the rule. What this means in Gates of Hell is that calling in five tanks at once to support your infantry attack was pretty rare. More often than not, you had to attack positions with no tanks, and no artillery support.
Now, what I've called 'masochist mode' is really just Hardcore with more restrictions.
To set up, simply start a new conquest, set the difficulty to Hardcore, the economy to Low, with the campaign length being up to you.
I recommend the following mods:
- Unlimited Corpses
This stops corpses from despawning, which doesn't cause too much lag in my experience. It's useful because after you've killed all the enemies in a mission, you can loot their bodies for useful equipment.
- Twice over the Vistula
This mod adds a ton of variety to your choices in infantry; it adds five different varieties each of Fallschirmjäger and Pioneers to correspond with their evolution from 1939 to 1945; the new Sturm-Division squads from 1939-1945 with their StG-44s and Radio Operators who can call in artillery strikes with their flare pistols; and finally SS squads from 1939 to 1945. Overall, you just have more choices for unique infantry than in vanilla.
Now, the...
Guidelines
- You may not use any tanks, armored cars, half-tracks, or any vehicle with a mounted weapon. However, you may use any of the above as a transport vehicle, so long as you can take all its weapons out (for example, a Kubelwagen can be used if you give its MG-34 to one of your infantrymen).
- You may not use any emplacements at all. This means no MGs, mortars, AT guns, field guns, infantry guns, or anything. You can only use any weapons that an infantryman can hold in his inventory (i.e. belt fed MGs, AT rifles, rifle grenades, bazookas, Panzerschrecks/fausts, etc).
- If you kill the crew of an enemy emplacement, you may not use it against other enemies during that battle.
- You may capture any vehicle or emplacement, so long as you sell it immediately in the unit selection screen once the battle ends.
- You may loot any vehicle, enemy infantry or emplacement.
- You can use any supply crate or truck.
- Finally, call-ins. Because they make much more sense than having artillery on the map, I leave this up to you. If you want the full masochist experience, then not having any handy artillery or 250kg bomb call-ins to destroy that pesky AT gun might just be the difficulty you're looking for. But if you want a few mortar barrages to 'soften up' the enemy, I don't see that as breaking the 'intended spirit' of Masochist Mode.
- Goliath tracked mines are the same situation. If you want to use them, go ahead. To my knowledge, that's what they were used for (supporting infantry by demolishing strongpoints).
These guidelines might seem harsh, but keep in mind that to truly have an infantry-only Conquest, you have to use infantry, and nothing else.
Tips
Masochist mode is hard. If you are trying not to lose too many men, you should expect missions to take two to three or even four times longer than usual, because of how much longer it takes to figure out what to do; where you'd usually just order your tank forwards, or blow up something with your artillery, now, you must sneak a man around behind the offending AT gun / MG, crawl a ways to avoid being spotted, and finally destroy it with a grenade.
Here are some things I've found after playing through a few missions of Masochist Mode:
1.) Cheap infantry like Sicherungs or Conscripts are as good an option as elite infantry, because usually what will tip a battle in your favor is whether you have enough men to execute your plans. However, you'll have enough money left over from not buying tanks / AT guns that you will probably be able to afford elite infantry.
2.) Scavenge as many bandages and frag/smoke grenades as you can from dead enemy soldiers. In defense missions, your medic might not be able to give your men more bandages without getting shot.
3.) Enemy emplacements like mounted MGs and AT guns have a 'field of view' to spot you, shaped like a cone in front of them and a couple of meters in a circle around them. If you can sneak up behind an enemy AT gun that's alone (i.e. without any enemy infantry spotting for it), then the AT gun won't see you until it's too late.
3.) After the first mission, once you can afford it, it's a really good idea to get more than one medic team. The same goes for AT rifle teams and grenade rifle teams. If you have more than one, you can take more risks with them and not worry about losing your only AT potential.
4.) AP miners, AT miners, and field engineers become way more important than usual. You can use them to turn choke-points (things like hedgerows, fences, walls or roads with houses on both sides) into deathtraps for enemy infantry. The AI likes to flood the battle with the cheapest infantry possible, so you need a way to kill a lot of them at once without artillery or tripod MGs. The Engineering Truck is also pretty useful because it gives your AP and AT miners a place to refill their mines.
5.) For God's sake, do proper reconnaissance! I was about to attack this objective... I had five infantry squads lined up behind a hedgerow next to the objective, ready to swarm out and overwhelm the enemy defenders (probably only like 10 guys)... but I had a nagging feeling that there were more enemies on the objective than the ones I had seen.
So, I sent my Officer around to scout the area with binoculars. Lo and behold: two tripod MGs, a quad fifty-cal, a 75mm field gun, a 37mm anti-tank gun, and a 150mm howitzer. Had I charged out immediately, it would have been a massacre.
6.) Finally, look up infantry tactics. Things like "fire and maneuver" (one squad fires on the enemies, keeping their heads down, while the other moves forwards, then they swap, etc) don't really matter when you have tanks to work with; but now that you don't, these legitimate infantry tactics become important.
Pros/Cons To Masochist Mode
PROS
- A fresh and new way to play the game!
- Gets you to do fun things like group all your MGs together, make them lay down in a bush, wait for the enemy to advance until you can see the whites of their eyes, and then shred an entire conscript squad in five seconds.
- It almost never gets boring during defense missions because of how much more intense it is to have to destroy a tank with nothing but an AT grenade, than to sit back in your AT gun position and pick off tanks from range.
- Things feel way more realistic and 'gritty' than when you have five artillery pieces and five tanks at once.
CONS
- Really, really hard.
- Sometimes you have to run around the entire map to avoid getting blasted by seven AT guns and two howitzers (the AI really brought that against me once).
- Pretty micro-heavy (AI is incredibly retarded and sometimes does things like run along the side of trenches instead of through them, or sometimes climbs out of trenches for seemingly no reason when a tank is looking right at them).
- After a couple of missions, the AI starts to field things like artillery that make it hard to do anything without getting blasted.
- It takes a lot more time to salvage all the stuff that will help you win the next battle (grenades, bandages, AT rifles, etc).
- Losing whole infantry squads (especially elite ones) can be annoying.
- Some maps really make infantry have a bad day... especially if the map is really flat without things to hide behind, or if the AI suddenly has a brainwave and sites its expensive AT gun away from the wall that you can toss grenades over while staying in cover.
Some Infantry Tactics
Here are some tactics to start you off:
- Crossfire
It's far better to have multiple men facing the 'kill-zone' from different directions than it is to have them all bunched up, looking from one direction. This is because with fire coming from one direction, the enemy knows they can flank or find a 'blind spot' to sneak through. With many men from different directions, you have no blind spots for enemies to hide in.
The cover of this book shows a cross-fire onto the 'killing zone' of a town square.
- Baiting
When you are spotted by the AI, it will send its soldiers out to investigate. If you set up a small kill-zone and draw enemy soldiers into it, you can use this on the attack to 'siphon off' the defenders of a point; this weakens it so that you can more easily take it later.
- The Bait & Switch
This is a tactic to use on the defense. Essentially, the AI prioritizes both of your objectives equally; but you can choose which one works the best on defense. This is where AP and AT miners come into play...
If you leave a point mostly undefended, and fill it to the brim with Bouncing Bettys and such, the AI will sometimes lose a hundred men trying to take the point. If you hide an Officer in some secluded corner, perhaps with some SMG infantry with him - all pointing at the entrance - the AI won't begin to capture the point until they kill the officer, because he counts for something like 30 men in terms of capturing the point.
Meanwhile, you have been fortifying the crap out of your intended[/] strongpoint, and have used the time bought by your land mines to position all your men in ideal defensive positions.
- Fire and Maneuver
As the diagram shows, to advance across a field, automatic weapons and MGs suppress the enemy, while you use cover and smoke grenades to advance. Keep in mind that this only works when you don't have enemies to your left or right, because they can still see you if you threw smoke grenades to your front.
- Encirclement
This one should be fairly self-explanatory. Because you aren't buying tanks, you will probably have enough men to completely surround an objective. Because enemy guns can't fire in every direction, provided you are willing to accept heavy casualties, then you can use this method to rapidly overwhelm enemy defenses.
End
I hope that you don't get thwacked by fifteen mortars or get bum-rushed by ten Shermans... though that is a possibility.
I hope you'll give Masochist Mode a chance, it can be really fun.
- Jeb T. Firefly
"Virgin Fallschirmjager v.s. Chad Blau Division"
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3105261913
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