The thank you morvael mild blizzard AAR-Toidi welcome

[rmonical]

Starting on T-24 with a status overview. Not clear from the overview is I poorly defended the center and Toidi executed an epic raid on Moscow/Tula and got most of the factories. This will be my second blizzard as Soviet and I am intensely interested in how the new rules play out. Armaments finally zeroed out this turn but also finally ticked up to over 60K.

[morvael]

Did he prepare for the blizzard by building forts? That's what the AI failed to do, and so I have only seen how are the new blizzard rules working when someone does not prepare for it.

[rmonical]

Turn 25. You can see he had level 2 forts in front of Moscow. Only the one occupied by two divisions held. My initial conclusion is the Soviets will not steamroller over the relatively stronger Axis, but I will be able to push them away from Moscow.

The next front of interest will be the Lower Don basin after the Don freezes as the North Causcus Front is in decent shape. Other than the Western, Volokh and North Caucus, my fronts are in pretty bad shape. For the first time in many turns, I have a manpower pool. Zero armaments but production is slowly recovering.

[rmonical]

T26 - more of same. A little more contact so more battles. In general, I attack a fortified division with two stacks. There were no holds this turn though a close call where I had a one stack attack. Moving through the initial fortified positions. A level 2 fort with an infantry division does not hold in clear terrain.

[morvael]

Is he using a lot of reserves or not? At least you are forced to make deliberate attacks, instead of winning with just hasties. I guess level 3 forts are needed to really stop the Soviets.

[rmonical]

T27. More of same. Because I'm using deliberate attacks, just grinding forward. The ability to create a hole with hasty attacks is limited. I did get multiple attacks with the Volokh Front cavalry stack. I'll see what I can do next week now that I am mostly through the fort line. So far, no Axis reserve activation. Much harder in blizzard. Also, no sign of the mobile troops. I suspect they are refitting in the cities.

[Toidi]

Morvael,

I doubt forts level 3 will really stop Soviets, as apparently the only unit Robert builds is sappers (and if he decides to build something else it is some more sappers). So yes, a deliberate attack is required, but that's it. Not to mention that building a lvl 3 fort is almost impossible when you have 30 mp to rail (I try to build one lvl 3 in Kerch, started around turn 10, last turn it was level 2.94 - this turn port in Kerch started to work, so I expect it to get to lvl 3 next turn).

In the north only recently I got the rail everywhere to the front so units are within 10 mp of rail, so they build forts somewhat ok. Yet in blizzard building forts is a laborious exercise - I would be slightly better dug in if I did not get 2 blizzard turns before 1st Dec, but certainly no lvl 3.

As for reserves, I initially have plenty of units (regiments) on reserve, but they rarely activated. Also, if it is a regiment, it almost does not matter as the cv is so low it does not really change much unless it is extremely close battle (you know, most of the cv is due to the fort; when we are talking of cv in battle report around 150 - randomly adding 10 or 15 does not change much; actually my motorized regiment (split from a division) in the south added 2 to 120 as a reserve, so not really that much - the units from hq coming with the reserve actually had more cv than the regiment itself). So I try with divisions, but getting divisions activated is tough (so far no luck). Hope things will change a bit in January.


T.

[rmonical]

only unit Robert builds is sappers (and if he decides to build something else it is some more sappers)

(3 per army or roughly one per corps) and RR Construction (1 per army) and tank battalions (one per planned cav corps). I think Flaviusx had this suggestion.

I notice in later war scenarios, the Soviets have very few sappers. The first thing I did in Red God of War was build sapper regiments.

[rmonical]

T28. The northern fronts, starting as the weakest and facing the strongest opposition, are running out of momentum. Next week, the Axis get an increase in effectiveness. Still moving to contact in the south.

[rmonical]

T29: It's January. The north is even stiffer. I'll be able to grind forward with the reinforcements that are on the way. Moscow is very stiff. That means the the Axis must give way in the south.

[rmonical]

T30: 500th post.

[Toidi]

There seem to be a bug with the reserve activation. Surely the whole tank division (display attacking cv around 6) is worth more than 2 pioneer support units. That may be connected to the attack cv bug, as the attacking cv is divided exactly as with old blizzard rules - but from the lower ceiling. That leads to attack cv of infantry division in January being equal to roughly 1/5 of the displayed attack cv.

[morvael]

I didn't remove "loss on attack" penalty, it's even mentioned in the readme. However, I don't know how reserves work, never looked into that, perhaps only some random % of a reserve unit is included in combat?

[rmonical]

T31: more of same.

[rmonical]

T32: No attacks north of the Moscow area as the Germans get stronger faster than my depleted fronts. The German line directly in front of Moscow is solid and requires grinding attacks. Volokh front has been doing great, but needs a rest. Further south, Southern, Caucus and Transcaucus fronts are finally getting into action. Toidi and I agree that this is setting up for a repeat of history. So far, the German mobile troops have not been committed outside of their cities so are getting strong. That threat and the stronger Germans has kept me from getting adventurous with my cavalry corps in the south.

[rmonical]

Some attacks against fortified positions from our prior v7 blizzard game. The relative strengths were much more in favor of the Soviets.

[Toidi]

The strengths in battles are almost exactly the same as before. Remember that in the initial report and visuals with normal blizzard, Soviet troops strength is multiplied by 2. As such, you get exactly the same results as before, but without initial visual x2 multiplication. That multiplication done due to division of the German cv in each attack by 2 (and sometimes more, depending on the leadership rolls, and the initial division depends on the month). So in current game, the 524 reported would be 262, 283 would be 141 and 311 would be 155. So still before and current the attacks are on the 1:2 initial odds, roughly). In current version the strengths of Axis would be a little bit higher in the forts, but probably the same or even lower in the open - but I am not sure about that as I do not know whether the attacks you show are from December, January (which I suspect) or February (in such case the Axis strength is almost the same in both cases).

I had an impression that this dividing of cv both in case of attack and defence is not present with the milder blizzard version (the only penalty being the % of troops getting unready before the fight). As this cv is still lowered based on leadership rolls (admin & morale checks) - as confirmed by Morvael - the old blizzard rules and the new blizzard rules do not differ much. Now I think the only difference is in the display value for Soviets (i.e. lack of x2 display which actually make it more difficult for Axis as assessing the units strength is more difficult) and the slight adjustment of the cv when in towns/fortifications (as fortifications raise cv a bit more and towns also contribute to slightly higher cv). But all in all the difference seems to be nowhere near as substantial as I thought. Of course, the balance of December - January - February is slightly different, but again, that is not a major adjustment (ok, let me see February, but so far it does not seem to be very big - January is almost exactly the same as before).

I would suggest returning the display values of Soviets being x2, that makes it easier both for Soviet player and the Axis player, as the dividing factors are still there. Even better it would be to adjust the Soviet strength to each month minimum divider of the Axis cv (I do not have the manual at the moment, so I do not remember the factors, but I remember 2 was a bit low in December and way to high in February).


Now that I know the dividers are still in place as before, I would probably shape my line a bit differently . Good I did not stick to the silly idea of defending in the south; however, I still had the silly idea of defending south of Moscow - had Robert's army not been crippled during '41 offensive both in terms of manpower and armaments, I am sure I would have paid a high price for that. Also, luckily Robert did not concentrate all his best troops and all his cavalry in one area - had he done that, I guess I would have been toast with multiple divisions lost.

Luckily February is just around the corner [:)]

[rmonical]

These examples are January

There are still significant improvements for the Germans:
1. Counterattacks should be more effective: especially in December. In addition, the December defense looks to me to be stronger.
2. In our game, my units that successfully attacked had 45+ morale and 80%+ strength. In a full blizzard game, much weaker Soviet units are successful.
3. The morale for German units in combat is no longer further degraded by this rule: "Added a loss of 1 morale for non-Finnish Axis units whenever they are attacked and the final end of combat odds are greater than 1:2." Had this rule been in effect, the German line would be weaker now.

[morvael]

To clarify: CV is not divided in half or something like that. Lowering of the CV from what you see on the map to what you see as initial CV in combat comes from disruption that Axis suffer when attacking in First Winter. Similar to the one they get each turn, even if not attacking. Something like disruption you get when attacking across rivers. And this disruption is huge, as it's 20+Random(10)%. Look at 22.3.2.1. This was the rule I mentioned in the .11 readme. Perhaps it should be reduced for defensive reserves, but otherwise it's still there.

[morvael]

Unfortunately the 1:1 -> 2:1 is causing a lot of retreats like on the last screenshot (2 out of 3).