George vs. Seille - A Russia 1941 AAR over 60 turns

[george1972]

As an intermezzo, the overview of the forces at in Turn 30, the turns you just saw. I've taken the German overview at the start of their turn and the Russian overview at the start of theirs (so after the German move).

Compared with the overview of Turn 24, it shows some remarkable differences.

Despite a hefty production in Tanks, German tank strength has fallen by 14%, while the Russians managed to increase their tank strength by 100%.

The Russian advantage in Staff, Rifle and SMG is also increasing rapidly while German Infantry Strength has fallen by 10%.

The most unexpected figure found here is the fact the Luftwaffe's fighter strength is almost 25% higher than that of the Red Air Force's fighters. It has taken about 20 turns to repair the damage in that area, but the results are very welcome.

Overall, the Wehrmacht remains more lavishly equipped with supporting weaponry, especially the Mortar II units and of course more mobile. The investment in horses last year has paid off in the advances made during the last summer/fall campaign.

But... now the '43 production has come on-line. This makes the production war look like this:

Germany:
2 major centers (50k)
3 minor centers (15k)
6 captured minor (30k)

Total: 95k

Russia:
5 major centers (125k)
2 minor centers (10k)

Total: 135k

Without the '43 production and the pending fall of Baku, this game would surely have ended in a German victory. But now, the clock is ticking in favor of the Russians...

[george1972]

Germany, Turn 31, February 12, 1943

I divert some production to AG North. I have sufficient PP's now to upgrade to Rifle III, but I will be needing a truckload of supplies to upgrade my troops so the full effect of this upgrade will not be felt in the short term.

[Grymme]

Really nice AAR
 
I have some thoughts/questions of a tactical nature.
 
If you look at the overview you can see that George uses Inf guns to some degreee. He hase 18 of them. Seille has none.
 
I am wondering in what role George uses them and for Seille, why he doesnt use them? there is clearly a difference in policy here.  
 
Also why neither of you seem to use scouts and/or AT-guns?

[seille]

AT guns are not bad, but i use them only in static defense.
At this point of the game i don´t want to be much longer defensive.
I want to attack. Unfortunately the only place i can do it is Leningrad....
 
Inf guns are offensive weapons. George bought his for defensive if i remember right
(he wrote this in one of his production reports). I have no idea how they perform
in defense, but in offensive they are not bad especially against fortifications.
I try to keep my forces at least at foot speed, so mortars are my choice. Use them mostly
in Leningrad together with SMG. A good combination.
 
I would like to use units like scouts, but i need PUNCH..POWER.
My opponent already fights with level III infantry, so i cannot waste any ressources
for scouts even i would like to use them. But i have to set priorities.
During this game i had never the luxus for extra research or extra units. I was happy to replace my losses.
 
AT gun...I used bazookas early in this game, but i was not happy with.
Imho they aren´t effective enough.

[george1972]

The idea I had was that Inf Guns are "rear area" troops, so they keep firing on the enemy during the entire battle. But in practice, I was more happy with mortars. They are rear area troops as well but it's less of a disaster if you lose one of them...

The Northern front shows AG North retreating to the West and the Finns entrenching in Leningrad. To mobilize troops recently hit by Seille air attack, I had to transfer out their guns to get my movement rate up in order to escape the inferno.

[george1972]

In the South heavy battles are fought East of the Volga. The Russian rate of reinforcements is tremendous and I'm at a tactical disadvantage due to the fact the Russian can come from any direction.

Maikop is given up by the Russians. Almost 5 months after it was first captured, the city is now secured by the Romanian-led forces. Will there still be time to make the most of this success?

[Appren]

Enjoyed reading this AAR, and trying my luck against Seille myself in a game now, I wonder if he end up sending my Germans back to Berlin or not

[seille]

Russian turn 31.
Very hard fights with my focus on Leningrad and the south now.
Leningrad is nearly broken. Germans run away, so i can send most
of my fresh troops now to the south.
I also plan to send my planes down south as fast as possible.
At this point i had no idea that Germany had more fighters than i had overall.

As a addittional protection against the german plane masses in the south i plan
to give most of the units in Stalingrad area two flak guns. This will make german
air attacks much harder.

[seille]

The north and center

[seille]

The south.
We did some attacks with concentric bonus. Near Stalingrad the only way
to be successful against the germans.
The german units have a much better unit mix and a high advantage in XP.
All we can do now is to throw MASSES of reenforcements into the battle.
Two production centers support Stalingrad now. Unfortunately the open terrain is very bad for us
and we have no engineers there.

[TheArchduke]

Off the top of my head I predict that the south will fall, if George turns south from Stalingrad, whilst he will loose the north. If this happens, well things could still develop into quite a stalemate..

Which was probably the case.
The question is if Helsinki is holdable if George doesn´t reinforce his northern flank.

[george1972]

Germany, Turn 32, March 4, 1943

This turn I am pleasantly surprised by a spell of very good weather. Since both Stalingrad and Maikop are starting to produce now and Leningrad is still in my hands (though not for long), on the production side, things look bright.

I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that Seille upgraded to Rifle III just one turn after me. He had some very good luck getting two R&D events in quick succession. One other thing I noticed during this AAR, is that my U-Boat arm was completely ineffective. Not a single Murmansk convoy was hit in the whole game up until this turn...

But, as I already had some Rifle III in some front-line units, better mobility and only green troops opposing me in several key areas, this was the time to hit hard.

[george1972]

(This hitting hard excludes the Northern part of the front, ahem)

[george1972]

In the Center the SS shows what fully mechanized and experienced units can do against a feeble opponent in good weather.

[george1972]

In the South the battles rage on. The situation at Stalingrad is now most critical, since the Russians on the East bank of the Volga are getting stronger, while AG South's strength is not going as fast as its opponent's. If I'd had Baku now, I would not have had any problems keeping this area under control.

Nevertheless I launch a series of attacks and enlarge the bridgehead and straighten my lines to prevent counter-attacks. If Seille needs to divert troops to other sectors I might still come out of this fight on top...

The Romanians pursue the Russians towards Baku, but the poor terrain hampers my advance.

[TheArchduke]

Seeing the massive forces east of Stalingrad why did you decide that diverting forces were a good idea? Especially the Luftwaffe retreat puzzles me.

[george1972]

One of the drawbacks of an AAR is that I don't always remember why I made some moves. This is one of them. The most logical reason I can think of is that I was planning to send it to support AG North in case of some catastrophe in the North... But in hindsight, it was a pretty bad decision.

[Smirfy]

Hi great AAR. I was wondering in the South how much effort would it have taken to put some LB's between Baku and Sevastopol to reduce both. Is it a viable tactic in MP?

[seille]

I´ll answer for George. Most of the time i had seveal locations well protected by Flak and/or fighters.
In Sevastopol i had a couple of flak which would make any levelbombing expensive and not very effective.
In Baku i had some fighters, so LB attacks are possible only with enough fighters escort.
But it would have been possible.
I think George had not enough production capacity and lost already too many of his initial 10 LB.
I use LB myself not very often. They are effective only with a good surprise and if you come with higher numbers
for a one time knockout. The next turn the target is usually hard defended....
 
I´ll do my next turn tomorrow[:)]

[george1972]

I had no real experience in using LB against cities, so I wasn't sure of their effectiveness. During this game I used most of them in the ground attack role. I don't really know how many bombers it would take to level a minor or major production center, maybe something to try out in a game against the AI.