T4: What to build?

I played a long, 40-50 minute 1v1 earlier today, and lost the late game. I played the early game well and harassed the OKW med truck until he put up a flak truck next to it... I lost in the late game due to the enemy's armor (and their 75 mm infantry gun). A few times, I almost killed the enemy's panther, but it survived the whole game.
I made four shermans and lost all of them; I never had more than one out at a time (due to the fuel rate and the frequency of loss... ) but I had a Jackson live until the destruction of my army.
I had a Priest, but it hardly did any damage (efficiency was only 106%). My question is, in the given situation (and/or in general) what armor in T4 is the best to get? Should I have purchased the M8A1 motor carriage instead of another sherman and - hopefully - kept it alive? Should I have used two Jacksons instead of another sherman?

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  GBPirate

  TwiddleCZ

  GG on La Gleize

  by: Gbpirate map: La Gleize Breakout

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I'll give it a watch at some point tonight and get back to ya ;p

So I just watched the game and I can give a few general pointers

- I find that a trap that a lot of allied players fall into is that they forget to back tech to get units that will help the situation in favor of pursuing their current teching choices. I think that as games go on, you can try to pre-empt the enemy's tech changes, in this case you had sufficient time to get a captain and some actual AT out in reserve for tanks. Though, if you had chosen to go airborne instead you could also have had it air dropped.

- the AT would also serve as a sort of limiter for the movements of the panzerII your opponent got out and it dents armor quite well. They can also attack ground the OKW trucks from beyond the flak cannons range. If you could protect the AT it can basically snipe out trucks

- Back teching would also have let you get the howitzer which I find is quite useful on small maps like this. The AoE isn't amazing but it can help with tightly packed blobs like what they had.

- Keep in mind that the shermans also have HE rounds that can help kill blobs efficiently. Prior to the actual Panther, the panzer 2 couldnt have hurt the sherman anyway so HE rounds would have been helpful to thin out the blobs.

- The priest was an alright decision but they require heavy support (like units to get LoS) to really do the damage.

- A jackson would have been good but keep in mind you really need to do rear armor hits to make it worth it.

- Also, there are times when your shermans weren't firing at the enemy because of no LoS due to foliage, attack ground would negate this

- You could also have used some of your floated manpower to consider getting an OP for fuel to help get more tanks out or get munis to use for artillery on the trucks.

^^thanks. It's all stuff I know already, it's just hard to think and micro at the same time... I just played another game like the one above on Semoskiy Winter. It lasted an hour and four minutes. I got him down to 13 VPs. I couldn't deal with a double panther and he just spammed Falshirmjagers when his infantry died. I was fighting weapon teams and Falls, essentially.
Makes me kinda sad, you know? I went armor and... I had two M10s at one point. (yay). All the American armor dies due to the lack of protection and I'm not used to it. I miss Wehr's tanks.

Yup, just like the Russians, the US infantry/armor is generally weaker than their counterparts in the german army so it requires a whole load of combined arms.

Falls are annoying to deal with, especially on maps with a load of buildings. They just pop up from behind and wreck weapons teams and other infantry.

Nearly lost 3 squads to a falls squad that popped in from behind my forward retreat point. Quick thinking and retreats saved the two squads but I lost one rifleman squad

Generally I find US late game to be strong only if you keep your armour alive. If you keep making shermans and losing them piece meal you will lose badly. At all cost keep all armour alive and when you have 3-4 tanks you can use one smoke barrage and then flank and charge with all your tanks and vetted infantry. That's how I've been winning late game against OKW. You shouldn't be worried about sitting back with your armour as long as you keep a decent fuel income as OKW doesn't get as much fuel as you. If the OKW gets jagdpanzer 4 or higher armour tanks then you might want to switch up a sherman with a m36 jackson.

Yeah the smoke barrage is a super useful ability, if only I remembered to use it most of the time ;P