Berlin falls 1943 in a a no early end 1941 Grand Campaign

[CaedusZ]

This is the result of a slightly modded PVP server game of me as soviets versus David as axis. Only modification was Germany receiving five additional Infantry divisions around turn 20 for the winter war and leader end dates were set to 1945 as I thought this might stop heart attacks (it didn't).
David and I played a game with the same roles before, which ended in me almost isolating army group center by collapsing their flanks at their advance to Moscow in winter 1941, so there might be some psychology having played a role in his strategical and tactical decision making as the game progressed.
We started with Version 1.03.09_Beta and finished on 1.03.10_Beta. Used the new morale mods to add 15 morale for Italian units and 10 for Romania and Hungarians each, option for reduced routing losses was turned off. Besides that we played with open TBs, no paradrops, naval invasions or motorization.

This screenshot alone sums up the game pretty much.

Battle of Berlin.PNG (2.37 MiB) Viewed 793 times

Short game summary: German focus during 1941 was in the south, neglecting the north. By the onset of winter frontline grinded to a hold at Pskov, Vyazma, Kursk and Rostov. By turn 26 Soviets fielded nearly 6 million men. Losses up to this point were 575k axis and 2.3 million soviets. Winter war was bloody, between turn 26 and 30 german total forces shrunk by 250k men, axis allies 133k, Soviets by 115k. Most importantly though was the gain of guards rifle divisions and corps. By turn 50 soviet oob reached 7.5 million. and stayed around 8 million until the end of the war. Those men were used to crush the german frontline near Khakov, allowing the tanks and cavalry corps to flood into eastern ukraine. After some back and forth nearly 285k men surrendered.

T53 Kharkov pocket.PNG (2.11 MiB) Viewed 793 times

Shortly after, further 82k men were pocketed at Smolensk and surrendered quickly. German forces abandoned the front, retreating to Daugava river by turn 69. My offensive in the south stopped after capturing Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhye, but not taking Kiev. All my focus went into the north. By winter 1942 Wehrmacht retreatet to Lithuania. Fighting was mostly grinding, while pocketing only smaller stacks which were too exposed. Despite some difficulties in the earlier turns, german CVs dropped quickly as they were beaten again and again.
Turn 93, after resting one turn during the earlier heavy mud, my guard rifle corps again ripped open the german front, allowing motorized units to quickly follow.

T93 Bagration.PNG (3.8 MiB) Viewed 793 times

German forces quickly retreated to prevent isolation. So a lot of ground was claimed. By turn 100 Vistula River was reached. After some preparation and fighting Warsaw surrendered, Wehrmacht losing every battle against by units.

T102 Vistula.PNG (2.88 MiB) Viewed 793 times

Germans had prepared their defenses at river Oder, which was reached by turn 107. Every single hex from there on towards Berlin had a level 3 fort. So it took until turn 118 to isolate Berlin. 119 to surrender northeast and west berlin, and 120 to finally take the german capital.
By turn 102 62(!) Axis leaders were killed in action. By the end of the war it was probably around 70, with many further executed after losing battle after battle. At the same time I only lost 13 leaders.
The war ended with 5.3 million axis losses, 7.7 million soviet losses.

Game related reasons why the game ended as quickly as it did:
1. 1941 is the single decisive year for the outcome of the war. I was able to preserve my army which let me do some more risky attacks in winter and preventing any german initiative. As soviet manpower production skyrockets in 1942 despite the current OOB, this accelerated the already existing extreme imbalance of both sides. Meanwhile German manpower production was idling until '43 besides the losing war. I know the game aims to reproduce historical accuracy, but thats a reason why manpower and morale changes should be affected by game state instead of some fix year, as players will always act faster or slower than the historical original.
2. Guards rifle corps. I used them in my assault fronts with my best leaders and three rifle brigades attached. That lead to battles where I beat a german tripple stack with one corps with a superior number of men and guns, having plenty to follow up and attack the same unit again and again. In my honest opinion they shouldn't have +10 but +5 morale compared to regular units. Furthermore being allowed to attach three brigades without stacking penalty is just too much. At the same time even without actively refitting my units were in pretty good shape although advancing from Smolensk to Frankfurt an der Oder basically without being sent to a depot to refit once. I never stopped and rested, not even in heavy mud. I can't emphatize this enough: I did never actively refit them or didn't moved them to regain cpp, so they basicly walked from Smolensk to Berlin in 50 Turns.
3. Pockets. Due to their ability to win single battles easily, soviets have a lot of units and movement points around to flood the gaps. At the same time, soviets can move a lot of units behind the front to prevent meningful breakthroughs by sheer mass. This lead to lots of german units surrendering, as well as an insane amount of leader kills, deminishing the strenght of an army (or corps) for eternity. I had the feeling, that leader deaths are way too likely when HQs are getting displaced.
4. Initiative, grinding, snowballing. Once a Wehrmacht unit is beaten, they quickly lose a lot of combat capability for the following turns. A unit losing morale after every single battle just means the end for wehrmacht, once soviets beat them three times a turn until they rout and lose even more morale. Morale drops after battles should be capped per turn.
5. Supply for the soviets was never an issue. When supplying my units at the romanian border with trucks from Kiev I never lost more than 1500 by turn during the logistics phase. Even in front of Berlin supply was pretty okay. They didn't receive a lot of freight, but at the same time soviet units simply need very little to continue fighting. By end of the war I was 140k trucks short, neither my supply or motorized units were overly noticeable impacted. I set supply priority 4 for all HQs at Turn 1 and let it untouched until end of the game.
6. I hoped the national morale settings for axis minors would help to give them some combat capability, but I never got that impression when attacking them.

Huge respect for David to fight until the bitter end!

[tm1]

Impressive !!
This new " grinding " tactic seems very painful for either side that can take advantage from it, though I still prefer encirclement's.

Well done and to your opponent, well done also for fighting to the bitter end.

[Nikel]

Indeed, games like this require a lot of dedication and "morale", congrats to David, a real wargamer!

And to you, of course, for winning.


I hope your comments help to improve the game.

[CaedusZ]

Thanks to both of you!
The game took place over a two-month duration, allowing us to maintain an impressive average of 2.3 turns per day, with turns taking approximately 1-2 hours each.

Early during the game I tried to plan larger operations preparing my units and mobile units to go for pockets, by mid of the game I mostly attacked every single german unit I could see in order to drop their morale, TOEs and equipment stockpiles. This ended up in some german divisions routing after just one attack the next turn. I noticed attacking the same units for a long period of time, so I believe they had below 50 morale which makes them very likely to rout. The only units that were really scarry to attack were the ss ones, as they have +10 morale. That being said they kept that morale as I mostly circumvented them to go for weaker targets. The simple answer to this is unit rotation, but as red army pretty easlily trashes whole AGN and half of AGC every turn, germany runs out of units to rotate with.

Simply the threat of encirclements forced Wehrmacht back easily. And as isolations in this game hold only one week instead of months (Demyansk: 8 February – 20 May 1942), Stalingrad 19 November - 2 February 1943) there is a good reason to do that. Maybe the current isolation rules should only apply to the early turns, but being dependend on supply afterwards.

Biggest issue of the game balance imo is the strenght of Guard Rifle Corps. Even exhausted ones with average TOE require a huge german investment to be beaten. So the option for counterplay is slim, and almost vanishingly small as the war progresses.

While I take pride in achieving success in the game, I cannot ignore the sense that certain aspects of the game mechanics favored my position, creating a feeling of unfairness.

[Beethoven1]

Good game and good analysis. A lot more games would turn out like this, the main difference is that usually the Axis player surrenders at some point from winter 41 until 43 when the situation gets too obviously overwhelmingly hopeless.

I think more Axis players would probably stick it out if it were genuinely possible to hold (and to actually make some non-negligible counterstrikes) until 1945, but few have the wherewithal to stick it out if it is clear they are going to lose in 1944 or even 1943. So I think we all have to give your opponent a lot of credit for playing it out.

I think you are right, and also you are right that Guards Rifle Corps in particular, with both +10 morale and also the extreme power concentration from being able to stack 3 SUs on top of that, are a bit too overwhelming. But the thing is it really depends a lot on how many and how quickly Soviets are able to get those.

But once the Soviet streamroller starts going and picks up momentum, there is no stopping it. To some extent that should happen, but it is very often happening faster than historical.

One aspect of the problem may be that it is harder to naturally reach national morale level when your national morale is high (i.e. Axis) than when it is low (i.e. early war Soviets).

Soviet units in 1941 can start at 30 morale, but they quickly reach 50 even without winning any battles. Whereas Axis units with 75+ national morale can have a hard time getting back up to the national morale level if they lose a few battles and sink below national morale. So this is part of the reason why even a few turns of Soviet wins in a row can quickly snowball and give Axis no chance of ever recovering.

In addition, because Guards Rifle Corps are so strong, the Axis is disinclined to counterattack them. But that means the Guards Rifle Corps only ever do attacks, and all attacks are successful because all are massive affairs with at minimum 100-300k men overwhelming the defender. So once Guards Rifle Corps get on a roll, they tend to end up at least 10 points or so ABOVE national morale level, and never really to drop from that back down to national morale level.