European Theatres of Operations Game 2

[82ndtrooper]

and finally a small isolated town on the northern coast that I am not sure is worth the effort to try and take.

[82ndtrooper]

so that's the situation as it stands right now.

I find this to be extremely fun and challenging and I have to constantly re-think my strategy. My turns are taking me as much as 3-4 hours to complete because i have to check and double check things since I have almost no room for an error like forgetting to set a production center or moving much needed reinforcements to a theater of operations.

An example is my 7th army in Turkey.
I lost 69 infantry in my assault on Smyrna I had 57 infantry in reserve but it will take me three turns minimum to replace my reserves. I have to produce them in Germany send them to Romania and put them in a unit that can be airlifted and wait two turns while their readiness increases so they can be transported. Then I can finally transport them to Smyrna and into the 7th. OH and I cant get my airborne regiments out of Smyrna until I get the city repaired. To keep my army rolling I have to plan ahead and have reinforcements available.
So I have no room for any kind of silly mistake.

[82ndtrooper]

and finally I wanted to post some information about a battle that happened when i was liberating Greece from the harsh western oppressors.

The Royal Navy had moved into the area in force and was shelling my forces at will causing me heavy casualties.

But since our last encounter with the RN, OKH had the Luftwaffe producing planes designed to attack naval units and had them moved into the area. Goering assured Hitler that his anti-ship squadrons could deal with the RN without any help from the Italian Navy and it was time for him to put up or shut up. I personally wondered if this huge investment in aircraft could do the job.
So I selected the most powerful Royal Navy fleet and suggested Goering attack it. ( I have never liked his fat butt so I enjoy putting him on the spot when I can)

he ordered the most massive air-strike in the history of the Luftwaffe and even accidentally sent two squadrons of transports into the fray.

[82ndtrooper]

I must admit that the results where impressive.

[82ndtrooper]

statistics

[82ndtrooper]

The attack was a success !

we dealt the Royal Navy a heavy blow and while we took rather heavy losses we drove the RN out of theater and where able to liberate Greece.

So this attack proved that the proper anti-ship squadrons are an effective weapon against naval fleets. We didn't cripple the RN but we did enough damage that they didn't want to risk any more losses.
all in all I was pleased with the results , I would have been rather unhappy if we had crippled that fleet as I think fleets have to be able to protect themselves. as it is I sent a huge amount of planes to attack, i lost a lot and I did enough damage to merit the production of the planes. In the end from this battle I know I can hurt the RN at a heavy cost so I will choose my attacks wisely and not just attack when ever I see a chance.

So for now I think the balance is about right.
But consider I am at tech-III planes and his navy is still at tech-I.
This still bears thinking about.

[krupp_88mm]

hey thanks for the great aar update i have been waiting for some time now, one terrible thing i think the carriers weren't the first targets of the air-force wish that was changed , anyway nice attack, Fwo-190's have been known to have bagged a few destroyers themselves

[RufusTFirefly]

ORIGINAL: 82ndtrooper

So for now I think the balance is about right.
But consider I am at tech-III planes and his navy is still at tech-I.
This still bears thinking about.

This ships were mainly tech-level I ships. But as you can see in screenshot given by 62ndTrooper, there were two destroyers II. I have already upgraded to naval level II.

@ krupp_88mm: The carrier sent naval fighters for protection. So I think it is ok that the carrier was not sunk. Defenders should protect the most valuable unit first.

Here is a screenshot of enemy sub activity in the North Sea from allied view. Although I search the area, no sub was spotted.

[82ndtrooper]

haha man you where not kidding when you said you where looking for my subs.

I learned what I am doing here for anti-supply from what Bombur was doing to me in the other game. It really had me puzzled for several turns.

[82ndtrooper]

ORIGINAL: krupp_88mm

hey thanks for the great aar update i have been waiting for some time now, one terrible thing i think the carriers weren't the first targets of the air-force wish that was changed , anyway nice attack, Fwo-190's have been known to have bagged a few destroyers themselves

I also noticed that the planes didnt attack the three cargo ships that where with the fleet. So its hard to understand how they pick there targets ,it kind of looks like they go for whats shooting at them first.

[82ndtrooper]

I wondered am I giving enough information in this AAR or am I giving too much ?   I tend to skip the smaller battles and just post when more important things are happening but would people like a little more detail ?

[GrumpyMel]

ORIGINAL: 82ndtrooper

ORIGINAL: krupp_88mm

hey thanks for the great aar update i have been waiting for some time now, one terrible thing i think the carriers weren't the first targets of the air-force wish that was changed , anyway nice attack, Fwo-190's have been known to have bagged a few destroyers themselves

I also noticed that the planes didnt attack the three cargo ships that where with the fleet. So its hard to understand how they pick there targets ,it kind of looks like they go for whats shooting at them first.

Target selection in the AT engine is based off the SFT type (i.e. armor, soft mobile, guns, etc). AT places all surface ships in the same SFT type (surface ships). So it's entirely random whether the target would be a DD or CV. In order to give a targeting preference for a particular surface ship, I would have to place it in it's own SFT Type. This is possible, but would be alot of work. Not sure whether it would be something I'd want to attempt for this scenerio or not.

[82ndtrooper]

still struggling through winter, I have figured out that I consume roughly 3 times more supply during winter and reserve supply is getting low so I have had to switch production to additional supply. But I have a much better idea of how much i need to stock up on for next winter.
its funny that in this scenario if you have plenty of supply your readiness will stay up between 90-100% but in the WaW scenario your readiness drops no matter how much supply you have. So if done right in this scenario you can continue your campaigns if you keep enough supply it just slows you down some and once a unit loses readiness it takes longer to get it back in winter.

With that in mind things are going OK in Norway for me winter is really slowing me down moving my armies into place but they are still capable of a couple attacks if i can get them into position.

First thing is that the Western navies have been poking around the Norwegian coast, looking for my Wolfpacks I assume. Which they found but at a high cost to them. Just two turns ago I sank a cruiser off of the coast in almost the same spot as that Dutch fleet is in. So I was mildly surprised to see those fleets so close when the West has to know I have a couple Squadrons of anti-ship planes in theater.

also you can see i am moving towards Bergen but its a long way and winter is slowing me down. I fear Bergen will be a hard fight.

[82ndtrooper]

I was hesitant to attack because I am still building my Anti-Ship force up and am reluctant to take unnecessary losses at this point. The planes are mildly expensive and its an effort to squeeze them into my production queue. But I wanted to see how things went with that Tech-II cruiser. so I attacked.

[82ndtrooper]

the cruiser-II retreated so I attacked again. This time i lost a Cantz anti-ship plane.

[82ndtrooper]

My navy sank the other cruiser so this was the totals for that combat.
Not a good turn for the western navies. But once again it confirms that the anti-ship planes are a worthwhile investment.
I attacked the first time with 11 CantZ 506 and 10 regular heavy Bombers with a squadron of Stukas. I didn't send any fighters in the first attack because they seem to really take heavy losses and I am suffering heavy losses already with the constant probing attacks by the west off the European coast.

[82ndtrooper]

The next Norwegian town up the coast (I forget the name) will soon be under attack. I dropped some airborne regiments north of it and they have moved into position while the 11th Army is moving in from the Southeast. The 11th is fresh from its conquest of Sweden and has been reinforced and rested.

[82ndtrooper]

I thought I would give you all a look at my defenses on the Atlantic wall. First is a look at the Brest peninsula. This is IMO one of the weakest areas of western Europe and very hard to defend so I have built some fortifications along its length and have created the 8th army just to defend it.

[82ndtrooper]

with the 8th army in position.
Each fortification will have a mobile infantry division a small armored regiment and a artillery division along with a flak regiment for defense.

[82ndtrooper]

next is the 1st Army's AO.

The 1st is a huge army but it has a huge area to defend and is actually spread quite thin.
Personally I am not satisfied with the defenses here and have expressed my concern to the Fuhrer.

The 1st is red, the brown units are elements of AGC and black belong to OKH.