Part 3 of FitE 5.0

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Dr. Foo
Wow, so now is it on to Berlin?

Yeah, now the Russians get to beat up on the Germans, for a change.

[kfmiller41]

miller41(at)tds(dot)net

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: miller41

miller41.....

Don't expose your e-mail like that. It might be scanned and doomed to drown under very very very large amounts of spam! Do it like this or something similar:

Miller41 (at) tds (dot) net

Edit: Use the edit function to change your original message.

[kfmiller41]

Thanks, forgot about that[&o]

[larryfulkerson]

The Soviet's got another partisan near Wilno and it's not as strong as the other partisans I've seen.  Also since we're in a cease fire it can't move....that's going to make it easier to surround it:
 

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some Soviet losses so far.  The total number of units is still less than the Axis but so far the Soviet dudes have been doing a good job of hiding behind rivers, etc. so that the number disparity isn't so pronounced, yet:
 

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a boatload of reinforcements that the Soviet dude is supposed to get in turn 34, and it's like this every turn now:
 

[glvaca]

Lerry,

The Russian reconstituted divs, do they arrive full strength? How about supply and readiness values?

Thanks.
Best,
Glenn

[glvaca]

ORIGINAL: Industrial

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I think the problem the soviets face in the early war years in this scenario is simply a lack of sufficient units on map. A large chunk of those 2000 Soviet units arrive as reinforcements much later, so the designers have given the Soviets tons of replacements to assure them the ability to rebuild destroyed units as soon as possible to try and keep as many units on map in the early part of the scenario as possible.

I don't think this is a scenario design problem but is quite historical. All through 41 the Russians simply didn't have the troops to form a decent front line accross the whole of the Soviet Union.
If you are familiar with the boardgame FitE on which, I gather, this scenario is based, you will be faced with the same problem. The only solution against a competent Axis player is run like hell and blow up every rail, bridge and airfield in site. Unfortunately TOAW does not allow for blowing up rail lines and airfields making it easier for the Luftwaffe to keep up. Also not modeled in TOAW is regauging which is a rail pain for the Axis in the Boardgame. As you need to repair all the rails first and then regauge them. In fact, by running far enough the Axis will run out of supply and certain objectives will just be unreachable untill the rail lines get repaired. It seems to me that most Sovs make the mistake of fighting to close to the border, get their lines pierced and then cannot disengage fast enough, and get surrounded, and killed leaving gaps which cannot be plugged. A common mistake I seem to see is fighting heavily for the South while in the boardgame it is common practice to leave the South to the Axis while using the troops to help defend Leningrad and Moskva. I'm not saying that you cannot leave rearguards in Kiev and Odessa, and other places, far from. But fighting along the whole length of the Diepner through to Gomel, Vitbesk, Velekiey Luki unto Leningrad in the summer of 41 is just asking for trouble. As pointed out before, a competent Axis player will concentrate his forces on 3-4 spots, break through and surround the rest. Quite historical.

IMHO the South should be sacrificed initially to reinforce the Center and North. Allowing for a determined defence 100-150 km from Moskva up to Leningragd in the North and hanging on Voronezh. Well fortified and reserves plenty. Only then the South should be considered. If the Axis runs far in front of his supply local counter attacks can put him in his place.

When all is said and done, remember that the Russians lost Kharkov, Kiev, Smolensk, etc... and still managed to win the war. The Russian should conserve his strength untill winter when he has the advantage. Alternating the tune "run, run away" by "run, run away and delay" [:D]

Sorry for hijacking this AAR, but that is exactly my experience aswell, a good Axis will simply surround and annihilate every soviet opposition he runs into, the soviets simply dont have enough units to stand and fight, and if they do, they will lose.

This is a screenshot from my last FitE where I played the Axis, it was abandoned at turn 12, partly due to real life interferring, partly TOAW burnout syndrom, but I guess that game was won already at this early stage.

As you can see the soviets have almost no defence left, Leningrad is surrounded and cut off from supply, so the entire pocket is unsupplied, the frontline is mostly held by militas anyway and I guess the city would have fallen in 2-3 turns. Moscow is somewhat good defended, but even here the soviets lack divisions they lost early on, the frontline is held by only one divison with very little deepth, and as the majority of the german army advances into this direction the city would have fallen soon.
The south is completely hopeless, only at Kharkov are some dvisions left, but they cant secure their flanks, would be surrounded next turn and than annihilated, with them gone there would be nothing left from that point forward up to the Ural.

Friendly:Enemy loss penalty: 40:298

FitE's opening stage plays very different compared to DnO, where the soviets have a far better stand, thanks to the countless units they get to throw into the Axis path to slow them down, and I agree that the unit limit should be upped considerably (why is there a need for a unit limit at all??).

Oh well, guess I should try FitE as the soviets once, to see whether I can do better and stop the Axis drive

Without wanting to imply you are not an excellent player, which you obviously are, I would wager a guess your opponent has not followed the strategy outlined above. Should he have done so, I would wager some good money that things would not have gotten so bad.

Best,
Glenn

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: glvaca
L[a]rry,

The Russian reconstituted divs, do they arrive full strength? How about supply and readiness values?

Well, as a for instance, the third one from the top in the expected replacements is the 43rd RD div.  Below is the turn 34 unit report, and as you can see the game engine has staffed it so that it has a full complement of equipment but I suspect that the readiness is calculated from how many veteran / green squads it has ( or something ) and the supply is probably the supply it had when it was killed last time:

[larryfulkerson]

Well, the Soviets have finally gone over 1100 units in play.  ( We're due to come out of the cease fire during turns 39 or 40 ):
 

[larryfulkerson]

The Soviets have strengthened their lines remarkably, two and three units deep in some cases:
 

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the north half of the front lines in Axis turn 40 just before the resumption of hostilities:
 

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the south half of the front lines coming out of the cease fire in turn 40:
 

[glvaca]

Question for, you Larry, since you have played both sides in the same game, I was wondering if you could provide some information about the correctness of the figures given as shot down each turn. It would be interesting to know what is reported on both sides for a particularly heavy turn. Could you help? Thanks.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: glvaca
Question for, you Larry, since you have played both sides in the same game, I was wondering if you could provide some information about the correctness of the figures given as shot down each turn.

Um......as I understand it the figures for the enemy planes shot down is inflated to mislead the player into believing he/she shot down more than was actually shot down. The figures for the friendly side I believe is always correct. So, for example, if the Axis player is looking at the air losses report and sees 15 friendly losses and 159 enemy losses there probably were exactly 15 axis losses and somewhat less than 159 soviet losses. Probably some multiplier is applied to the soviet losses to arrive at the 159 figure or something like that.

[Menschenfresser]

The multiplier for enemy air losses is (or was in COW) 1.5, 2.0 or 2.5. So whatever you see there, divided by 2.5 and you know that's the minimum you've destroyed.