East we march

[xBoroNx]

Pskov and Kholm:

Heavy fighting around Pskov, the situation there is slightly troublesome, but i have two trumps:
1. The Leningrad Airforce
2. Stavka could strategically redeploy in my army reserve or most of last turns production.

Around Kholm i did a small fake retreat last turn to lure Freeboys armor spearhead there in artillery range which worked.

[xBoroNx]

Smolensk Area:

There Freeboy more or less wiped out one of my armies and the arriving reinforcement army (blue) will probably be not enough to fill the gaps neither.
Here Freeboy is currently doing well, but AGC did have to fight hard for every inch of sacred soviet ground there too. So the situation here is under control too i think because AG North and South do so well.

[xBoroNx]

Kiev:

Freeboy did bleed badly here. Last turn he tried to force a breakthrough through the Kiev Forts, but was bloodily repulsed. I had ~18 Fighter III there on intercept. They shot down about 12 german fighters and 5 bombers and lost about 5 fighters. Bryansk and Orel Front armies are also marching in direction of Kiev.
AG South lost about 40-50% of their armored divisions in Front of Kiev already i think.

[xBoroNx]

Dnepreprotovsk:

Here i have a Front already too, though not yet fully covered. But there is no need to because the Romanians are not doing well and have not reached this front yet. I could even retreat an artillery unit from the orginial border front there.

[xBoroNx]

Crimea:

Here i am only trying to delay. The soviet fleet is harrassing with great success. Every now and then i land a small army unit, otherwise i bombard always some rumanian units. But my plan there was to eventually give up the crimea and just try to delay as much as possible because it is imho a rather unimportant front. The only thing of slight worth there is sevastopol because of the 1 vp.

[xBoroNx]

And finally my reserves gathered around Moscow:

The first 4 turns i simply tried to evacuate any surviving Truck and gathered them all in Stavka. From the 95 Trucks there i only built 4-5 and all others i saved from destruction by tranfering them from the surviving initial armies to Stavka. Turn 1 i finished the already half built tanks in the factories. In those factories where there was a medium tank i only needed 1000 more production, so i used the remaining to produce trucks. The tank reserve you see there are those initial produced tanks and those already present in Stavka at the scenario start.
The Artillery in Stavka is the artillery from start and some saved artillery via strategic redeploying.

Turn 2-5 i only built fighters then, thinking that this will surprise Freeboy maybe. And it worked great. Because the first 4 turns he could do what he wants because of the blitz but from turn 5 on i contended with him for air supremacy. I researched fighters II and III quickly. In turn 6 i shifted my production. Only 3 more fighters per turn and replaced 6 fighters with 12 armored cars. Also researched basic infantry II this turn.
With my infantry training centers i currently only produce basic infantry + staff. My reasoning for the air heavy strat and now the infantry spam was that i am mainly fighting for delaying in 1941. And i get 10 free mobile tank units with the sibirian reinforcements anyways. But to also be able to do some quick raids i now shifted to the armored cars.

In general my plan was to often shift production and also my "Schwerpunkte". This way i hoped to very often be able to surprise Freeboy and force him to react at least on some fronts rather than only act and force me to only react.

With the nearly 100 trucks Stavka can now easily transfer every turns reinforcements to any of my fronts and even 2-3 additional divisions. And i can also try to let my airforce rotate around. A few turns e.g. station it in Kiev + Leningrad, then maybe uniting all of it around moscow, then splitting it up again etc..
Overall i think that this way my soviets were already almost as flexible as the axis and because i can focus my production totally on combat units since currently for the soviets there is no need for mobility despite i only have a slight economic advantage over freeboy and am still 2500 power points behind Freeboy (Report says 11900 Soviets, 14500 Axis, but i think this turns losses Freeboy and i suffered are not in yet, + Freeboy would suffer some significant losses if i would play my turn and we would continue the game) the gap narrows every turn.

But i expect to have a much harder time in our next match. If Freeboy destroys e.g. 20-30 more of the initial soviet trucks my flexibility would already be much worse. Was a short but imho good match. Thanks Freeboy [:)]

[Barthheart]

So it appears that air power is some what too powerful. This needs to be nerfed a bit either by air costing more to build or reducing their ground kill %. It's all good for uber-stacks of fighters to fight for air supremacy but that same stack should not really do much to ground units. Even dive bombers and level bombers are way too powerful vs land units.

[xBoroNx]

ORIGINAL: Barthheart

So it appears that air power is some what too powerful. This needs to be nerfed a bit either by air costing more to build or reducing their ground kill %. It's all good for uber-stacks of fighters to fight for air supremacy but that same stack should not really do much to ground units. Even dive bombers and level bombers are way too powerful vs land units.

Hm i think in this scenario airforce is balanced. First there are lots of city hexes which are indestructable. Then each side starts with lots of engineers. Vs Bunkers Airforce is very bad too. Only if it catches ground units in open ground it is powerful. But the Airforce is a huge supply hog. And you have to have air supremacy to use the airforce to good effect. But you still need ground units too.
I did my airforce spam mainly because of psychological reasons and only for 4 turns. Now i would have shifted to fast land troops. My hope was that Freeboy is too scared of my Airforce now so that he wastes some turns of his production on airforce.

So while my airforce was useful my artillery was as useful and most losses i inflicted upon Freeboy where to brute force counterattacks by ground troops on exposed axis troops.

In WAW Airforce is for sure too good, but here i have my doubts. At maximum a reduction of fighters land attack capabilities of 25% or 33% may be needed imho in GPW. Or maybe splitting the factories into tank and plane factories.

[seille]

ORIGINAL: Barthheart

Even dive bombers and level bombers are way too powerful vs land units.

Ohhh, my favourite discussion....
You should forget that, Bartheart !
Why too powerful ?? The bombers cost a lot and it´s their job to do a lot of damage
in air attacks.

Ways to reduce their effect:
1. Keep forces out of plain hexes
2. Protect hexes and neighbour hexes by AA guns (less effectivity for the bombers)
3. Protect own terrain by own fighters
4. Entrenchment

Bombers are like artillery very expensive and they have to be powerful !
If a player uses 100 fighters you should not forget that they represent often the total production for several turns
and that you could also face 100 light tanks here instead which would not be much better, or ? [;)]

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: seille

ORIGINAL: Barthheart

Even dive bombers and level bombers are way too powerful vs land units.

Ohhh, my favourite discussion....
You should forget that, Bartheart !
Why too powerful ?? The bombers cost a lot and it´s their job to do a lot of damage
in air attacks.

Ways to reduce their effect:
1. Keep forces out of plain hexes
2. Protect hexes and neighbour hexes by AA guns (less effectivity for the bombers)
3. Protect own terrain by own fighters
4. Entrenchment

Bombers are like artillery very expensive and they have to be powerful !
If a player uses 100 fighters you should not forget that they represent often the total production for several turns
and that you could also face 100 light tanks here instead which would not be much better, or ? [;)]

Well then they need to cost even more. With bombers able to completely wipe a land unit from the face of the earth, never even possible in RL, something must be done. So you spend two turns entire production on nothing but bombers. The next few turn you can completely wipe out an advancing army.... not good.

The setting are fine now for random games but for historical games changes need to be made.... IMHO....[8D]

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: xBoroNx

...Or maybe splitting the factories into tank and plane factories.

I think this is a great idea.

[jjdenver]

Well I'm not sure that I agree - Western Air was absolutely dominant in France in 1944 - the only reason the Germans could have any success at Battle of The Bulge for example was that it was overcast. Airpower was very powerful for the west.

[seille]

And air power destroyed complete divisions in the east and the west

[freeboy]

one mod being toyed with, per Jamian is in a waw game having the xp levels restrict upgrades, ie from one to two for planes need 40 two to  threee 50 etc
works

[seille]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

one mod being toyed with, per Jamian is in a waw game having the xp levels restrict upgrades, ie from one to two for planes need 40 two to  threee 50 etc
works

Yes, the upgrade per XP is nice, but could cause a bigger imbalance in general use.
If i remember that Boron killed that much of my forces with only very small losses he would probably
have level IV units agains my green level I units.
The disadvantage when you have to throw your fresh production into fights without letting them get some XP.
So they die before learning anything....
and the XP has a brutal impact on the game.

Or did i misunderstand and you have to reasearch level II and need Additional the XP level to upgrade ?
This would be much better than. King Tiger only for the best divisions [:D]

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: seille
Or did i misunderstand and you have to reasearch level II and need Additional the XP level to upgrade ?
This would be much better than. King Tiger only for the best divisions [:D]

That is correct. In my mod, the supply upgrade costs are generally double to tripled from what they are in the generic version, and baseline XP levels must be achieved for each upgrade. For Level I troops to upgrade to Level II, they must have 40 XP. For Level II to upgrade to Level III, they must have 50 XP. For Level III to upgrade to Level IV, they must have 60 XP. To top it all off, I drastically increased the tech level PP costs as well, so it take a lot of effort and diversion of resources to get to higher tech levels in the game.

If you'd like, I can send you my latest version to evaluate.