advantage of encircelment

[killkess]

It may sound silly, but so far i was not able to encircle any larger enemy formations because even without the supply-bonus the enemy is almost always able to break out off the encircelment.

What are the thougts/ideas and tipps off the community about how to conduct large encirclements?

[ComradeP]

Use armoured forces to break through and move through the enemy lines to cut units off, don't use them to attack large concentrations of infantry formations. Instead, encircle them and let the infantry handle them. The golden rule is to keep your armoured/motorised forces moving, and not get bogged down in attacking enemy formations that are a minor threat to you.

[Lützow]

ORIGINAL: killkess

What are the thougts/ideas and tipps off the community about how to conduct large encirclements?

Do small encirclements with sufficient forces. [;)]

I destroyed plenty of Russian units by creating pockets.

[jjdenver]

Here are some ideas:

Be sure to use air interdiction to slow units in the pocket that you are trying to form.

Also get units adjacent to the potential pocket units to slow their movement as they try to escape the pocket.

Perform your breakthrough with multiple divisions. You want to break through with 2 divisions, have a 3rd division to exploit and attack any reserves or roadblocks found, and hopefully even a 4th division to move through the areas cleared by the 3rd division. Strong attacks against the first line of defense alone won't get you breakthroughs - you need many successive attacks by reserve breakthrough forces to completely destroy the area of the line where you hope to break through. Massed artillery can be useful because it can help to increase retreat chance (I guess that an artillery hit causes greater chance of retreat for a stack) and also cause losses to unentrenched units that have retreated so that your designated breakthrough divisions can more easily wipe out all opposition in the breakthrough sector.

[hank]

I just finished a game as Axis against the AI (recommended level and historic AOs).  I had two large encirclements with roughly 20 or 30 units in the pocket; and one smaller one with  6 or 7 units.  I didn't have any problems reducing it ... a clean way to put it considering the destruction involved. 
 
The big one was 12 hexes or so west of Smolensk ... I pulled up the big guns and "reduced" them the safe way, from long range.  Once the units were whittled down to one or two steps I went in and assaulted with gusto.  ... low casualties for the Axis ... the troops were a happy bunch with that method.
 
my 2 pennies

[jjdenver]

ORIGINAL: killkess
It may sound silly, but so far i was not able to encircle any larger enemy formations because even without the supply-bonus the enemy is almost always able to break out off the encircelment.

FYI, here's a screenshot of encirclements created 2 Pz Armee at the end of its turn 4. This is from a PBEM game vs another human, not the AI.

I've circled in green existing and also potential encirclements. The chances are that most but not all of the potential encirclements will turn into real encirclements on turn 5 with effective use of interdiction to slow escape from the forming kessels.

The key (I think although I'm no master) is to create actual breakthroughs using multiple divisions along the same axis of advance. I usually start turns by scouting the enemy deployment using my recon units then choose some roads to push hard on so that I can create encirclements.

The encirclements shown are created even without a motorized and a panzer division from 47 Pz Korp that have been ordered to push along the road toward Smolensk just south of the Dniepr.

Anyway this screenshot shows what's possible in PBEM - I'd guess it might be even easier vs the AI.