Another night of frustrations.

Managed to take out the village of M3 Lee's, who crippled most of my tanks (a few destroyed, a few tracked, most with some dead crew and low on ammo).

I brought anti-tank infantry who joined the 4x infantry guns who I set to use HEAT rounds to try and ambush the 2x M4 Shermans that come along a bend in the road, about 15-20 minutes into the mission. They took out 1 (I wasn't watching when it happened - I was busy 'fighting' with my units, trying to get them to follow orders in the fight against the M3 Lee's), but the other got away with only a track being knocked off. All AT infantry and all infantry guns dead / knocked out. At least I used all of the gun's HE shells softening up all of the many AT and AA gun emplacements across the map! I know where all of them are by heart now due to playing this so many times. So, I got that going for me..

After clearing the village I was rewarded some reinforcement tanks - 2x M14's and 6x 75/18's, who spawned at a position that would put them on the rear side of the tracked Sherman. Should be simple enough, right? Have the 75/18's load up HEAT shells, the ONLY shell that I have that can knock out M3's and M4's, and roll up in a line to knock it out with one volley.

Oh, how wrong I was! Of course, matching the theme of the last 2 nights of complete and utter failure, Steam overlay doesn't work in my game right now so I can't upload screenshots of a graveyard of Italian tanks behind a tracked Sherman, but I'm sure you can picture it.

For some reason none of them could hit a stationary M4 at 250 meters. One scored a hit on the M4's gun, but only after the M4 took out >7< tanks. Now I'm sitting on the Sherman's side with the single surviving 75/18, point blank, and am still unable to knock it out.

Seriously - what are you supposed to do in this mission? In the previous mission there were 5cm Pak 38's, which would have been perfect for ambush tactics in this mission, but those, and ALL anti-tank guns mysteriously aren't available in this mission.

I'm going to keep reloading until I get the result I want, but this is just silly..

Hi Toaster, Its been a while now but I still play it using full mission editor. As i recall i never won this battle. I tried keeping my AT and tanks in a hull down position in the valley and tried to get the troops to trigger the tanks to move out of the left side village and enter the valley where my reverse slope tanks might have a decent chance of getting shots of first at close range. small howitzers were kept back in concealed reverse slopes to pin point attack 40mm bofors in central village...spotted by crawling/concealed officers. Flanked right and kept some offensive force in reserve once AA and bunkers were softened up. I think the trick is to force their hand initailly and make them reveal and come out of their positions. Timing is crucial. Keep saving......good luck. Forza Italia!

PS. Dont be too frustrated...there used to be bugs in the game whereby one could never trigger the win events cos some troop would be hidden in a building or something. I think the steam versions are fully patched and much better than the earlier versions. Try mission editor afters...its quite good, access via context menu in steam library. i play graviteam and Combat Mission these days but still really like ToW titles....especially Africa.

Thank you for the response!

I reloaded a save a few times and everything just went "right" with one of the tries, and I managed to finish it!

My tank destroyers nailed the M4's with HEAT rounds as they came around the bend in the road, knocking them out almost immediately.

I lost a few M13 / M14 tanks in the engagement against the M3 Lee's in the village, but it was a reasonable amount of losses, so I just rolled with it. After that it was really simple mopping up infantry and AT / AA guns with the IG18's, using sneaky infantry as spotters like you mentioned.

I'm now done with all of the campaigns, so I moved on to Theatre of War: Kursk now - so far it's pretty fun, though seemingly more difficult than Africa 1943. I'll be moving on to Graviteam once I'm done with the ToW series, and then maybe Combat Mission :)

Ha excellent! Sounds like your're totally ready for combat mission (same devs). Check out Usually Hapless CM youtube vids...I think you'll like them. Also, combat Mission Fan Club on FB. Keep in touch if you like and i might see you on the battlefield
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9egpHJiRis89uHkeyJiEug

Funny you mention it, I just found Unusually Hapless last week and have been watching here and there. I've been really enjoying his Battle for Normandy series!

Nice. The other channel with excellent tactical videos is double vision. Really breaks it down.