43 Campaign Flavio vs Bob, Soviet Viewpoint

[SGHunt]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I may never get quite caught up with all the things I'd like to do with it given the very tight budget.

That's just as it should be... [;)] You seem to be doing a startlingly good job as it is with your sub-optimal armies.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
There is still much to be done to optimize the Red Army. I may never get quite caught up with all the things I'd like to do with it given the very tight budget.

Seems like you wouldn't need to optimize and change leaders. If not for mud, you look like you could have pressed your advantage all the way to Berlin before long. Maybe during Blizzard you will make even more brilliant advances? The potential is there: you keep bleeding down his INF, and his armor gets weakened as well. This process will perhaps turn from gradual to chaotic dissolution if you eliminate another 500k-1M men? At that point, the Germans won't have enough anymore to keep it together and everything could fall apart in short order.

[SGHunt]

A destruction of AGC six months ahead of schedule? And this is without the foolishness of the Kursk offensive.

I wonder if we can get a scenario where the initial Kursk dispositions have not yet been set up - ie where we are at the start of the Rasputitsa in Spring 1943? This would allow the Germans to adopt Manstein's defensive strategy suggested for 1943 - recognising that the war was unwinnable, he wanted to bleed the Red Army dry so they would have to sue for peace.

[ComradeP]

Keep in mind that Flavio has advanced around 1 map screen worth of hexes at regular zoom level. He isn't going to be in Berlin any time soon.

The main Soviet Achillesheel is logistics, well it should be anyway and that is still being tweaked. The Soviets lack rail repair units until late in the war and due to some issues with construction battalions spreading out to repair non-essential rail hexes (issues which are also being looked at, I can only stress how quickly the developers try to solve problems we spot) the non-player controlled rail repair is not always optimal, and units need to be close to railheads to get good amounts of supplies.

The main problem with Bob's defensive strategy is that it exposes too much of his infantry: he keeps placing single divisions in line, which in turn get whacked one by one. At first, he also put (in my opinion) too many of his mobile units in reserve mode behind the front, which in turn resulted in even more losses for little gain. Essentially, he's providing Flavio with an abundance of targets, without being strong at any specific point of the line. That has changed a bit after the mud, but by now it might be too late. His defensive as such has been competent, but it has also been more costly than it could have been.

Soviet Rifle formations are still better at taking a beating than dealing it, unless massed and given lavish artillery support. Soviet mobile formations are quite strong, but not quite at their late war best yet. In mid-late 1943, the Tank and Mechanized Corps show their potential, but it isn't maximized yet. Given those shortcomings, Flavio has done an admirable job with his offensive.

[Flaviusx]

Bob would never allow such a thing to happen, he is too good for that and won't let an entire army group get bagged or find itself hanging out to an exposed balcony in this fashion.

The more realistic danger for him is gradual attrition of his forces as they get pushed back.

[Flaviusx]

Turn 24. Blizzard hits and the rivers freeze over. The Red Army launches attacks from Leningrad down to the Black Sea. Gomel, Krivoi Rog and Kirovograd are liberated, but the Germans are holding on tenaciously to Kiev still.

In the Ukraine the Red Army manages a spectacular breakthrough and pockets 9 German infantry divisions in and around Cherkassy. 3 Tank Armies pour through the hole as well as a horde of independent mobile corps attached to 5 different Fronts (Belorussia and 1-4 Ukraine.) In light of these developments I put the two tank armies near Vitebsk on rails and they are heading south to reinforce this. Something like 80% of my armor is going to wind up in this area.

Bob has many panzer units nearby, including the bulk of the SS. He stands a good chance of busting the pocket open. It is being held in considerable strength by fresh units, but even so. What happens after that is anybody's guess, since I could just as easily surround the lot again next turn. We are going to have a knock down, drag out fight here in the Ukraine with major consequences one way or the other.

[Flaviusx]

Turn 25. Western Front liberates Mogilev. 1. Baltic Front continues to develop its offensive past the Smolensk landbridge and is gradually pushing into Belorussia. I build a new Tank Army Hq outside of Smolensk and assign Chernyakovsky to it, which gives me a total of 6 such armies. It will absorb some of the independent mobile corps in this area and help sustain the drive. They are very expensive to build and fit out, and it's unlikely I'll build any more tank army HQs in this game.

[Flaviusx]

Somewhat to my surprise, Bob fails to relieve the Cherkassy pocket. A considerable disaster for the Germans, and 9 infantry divisions surrender in the cleanup. He is forced to cover the yawning gap in his lines with armor and can no longer hide them behind the landsers.

My own armor is rather exhausted from the lunge last turn and I decide to play it safe and consolidate my gains for now. This will allow the rifle forces to catchup, and the armor upfront to refuel. Most of them began this turn with under 30 movement points and their logistical situation clearly couldn't sustain a major exploitation. He also routed several of my units in counterattacks. I'm in the driver's seat here, no need to get greedy or hasty and throw away an excellent strategic position on some kind of backhand blow, which he remains perfectly able to execute.

4. Tank and 5. Guards Tank armies arrive by rail and reinforce the Ukrainian offensive. Everything will be ready to push in concert next turn, hopefully somewhat rested. Kiev remains in German hands, annoyingly. I'm almost two months behind schedule taking that, although well ahead of schedule in the south Ukraine.

[Flaviusx]

Order of battle for turn 25. Soviet losses in the winter offensive are piling up fast. I'm down around 400k men at this point from when I began it. Plainly I'm going to have to cease this broad front offensive and start getting more selective. I've got a quarter million men saved up in the replacement pool, which should just about cover me in the Ukraine on refits, but it's doubtful I can get much else back up to full strength past that.

The body blow to the Wehrmacht by Cherkassy has dropped them to 2.4 million.

[janh]

Hmmh, I would push relentlessly now, even at the rather unpleasing loss ratio of the last turn.  Pure math says that despite that loss ratio, he'll bleed white before you drop below 5 Mio men?

Plus, with much of his Landsers gone, the Panzer Divisions indeed need to occupy the defensive role, which should not suit them as well.  I would expect that also the process will not be linear, but the defeat will accelerate rapidly as his forces thin out -- until it turns into a chaotic dissolution and a nice mob-up of the battlefield.  I doubt he could stop you now if you pressed your advantage?  Would you agree?

[Flaviusx]

Bob will punish me if I overextend myself. He has done it before and can do it again. His armor remains intact. Nor is 30 mps a solid base from which to ruthlessly exploit, particularly in blizzard conditions. I had them fully rested and past 40 mps (out of a maximum of 50) when I initially formed the pocket.

A number of my mechanized units were below 20 movement points, even.

So, no. Logistics dictated a pause here. I also hate getting too far ahead of my artillery and rifle corps. As sexy as the tank armies are, they cannot win the war by themselves. A contest purely between my armor and his is mostly to Bob's advantage. The Red Army proceeds with the majestic deliberation of a pachyderm.

[randallw]

I noticed that Bob's Luftwaffe is being pretty strained, with about 1.5k operational machines; strangely your own Air Force hasn't recovered that well, in terms of size.

[Flaviusx]

Turn 27. Chernyakovsky's new tank army enters the line west of Vitebsk. Bagramyan's powerful 11. Guards Army pushes past Mogilev, assisted by two tank corps from Western Front. The German line barring the gate to Belorussia begins to sag dangerously under this pressure.

[Flaviusx]

Kiev was finally liberated on turn 26, just in time for the new year. Going into 1944, the Red Army tide in the Ukraine flows around a strong wall of panzers and continues to abuse axis infantry which is increasingly combat ineffective in this area. But the panzers can still strike back at my exposed spearheads. Bob is now falling back just enough down here to mostly stay out of contact with my artillery and rifle forces, so the burden of the advance is falling squarely on the Soviet armor.

Worse yet my replacement situation took a hit with the new year. I'm getting less manpower per turn now. Tank production just switched over to t34-85s, but this leaves my mobile forces in a somewhat awkward position of having to transition over to these new models produced in smaller numbers than the old models and losses greatly outpace even the large Soviet tank production capability. Everything is being thrown into the battle now, but this can't last for too long, I'll have to rotate units in and out of the front.

[Flaviusx]

Axis lines in the South Ukraine are near collapse and the Red Army is closing in quickly on Nikolaev. The Wehrmacht could only spare a single panzer division to cover this area -- that one got routed during this turn.

STAVKA would like to drive Romania out of the war before the rasputitsa if possible. Failing that, the Red Army is well positioned to stake claims in Bessarabia before the mud hits and be in position to force a surrender in the summer.

[Flaviusx]

Sorry I haven't been updating this the last two weeks. We've decided to wrap up this game going into 1944; 6 months in game play time gave us some very solid data about the state of the scenario and various tweaks to it have been made. Bob and I have moved on to some other playtesting projects for now. We may come back to this scenario at some future point and give it another go.

I hope this AAR gave you folks an idea of how the late war period plays out. As you can see, if the Soviets can ride out the emergency period from 41-2, they can get their revenge later on.

[Grisha]

Thanks, Flaviusx. I like how the game mimics the operational result of 1943 well. What would be interesting is if this sort of front wide offensive can be duplicated in 1944. Historically, it could not due to the losses in 1943, which were the heaviest of the war.

[Flaviusx]

The replacement situation gets increasingly tight as the war goes on, and you'll probably have to stagger your offensives with the Red Army in 1944 the way the Sovs did with Bagration. Already I was having to be extremely careful about refits towards the end of 1943, sharply limiting which units got constant flows of manpower to build up some kind of a reserve to deal with run down rifle formations.

Running an offensive across the entire front will dramatically increase your losses and risk burning out the Red Army at this stage.

[Grisha]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The replacement situation gets increasingly tight as the war goes on, and you'll probably have to stagger your offensives with the Red Army in 1944 the way the Sovs did with Bagration. Already I was having to be extremely careful about refits towards the end of 1943, sharply limiting which units got constant flows of manpower to build up some kind of a reserve to deal with run down rifle formations.

Running an offensive across the entire front will dramatically increase your losses and risk burning out the Red Army at this stage.

I agree for the most part. I wonder if it might be possible to put on a counteroffensive in 1943 that follows the 1944 pattern of layered strategic deception. If so, then losses might be lighter--though Kursk will always be Kursk. Personally, I don't think the Soviet's development of armored force structure was going to mature until the operations of 1944. Tank army TOE really didn't become refined until then. For instance, I doubt a tank army in 1943 could have done what Rybalko's 3rd Guards did in the Vistula-Oder operation of 1945. It would be fun to give a go in WitE though!

Lastly, a question back to you. Do losses impact future replacement levels, or are replacement levels hard-wired chronologically? For example, will lighter than historical losses for a side result in greater replacement factors in future? I realize it's not that cut and dried especially as there were factors outside the theater, but I would think such things would have some impact.

[Flaviusx]

Your replacement situation will depend on factories and population centers, so it is relatively hardwired. The factories have set limits as to what size they reach. You also have the option as the Soviet to evacuate factories (which temporarily drops their capacity.)

Manpower has a production multiplier based on the year, and drops over time. By 1944 it is becoming very tight even for the Soviet, and you definitely want to take back all those population centers in the Ukraine for that reason alone.

If you can reduce your losses early on, it is possible to build up a nest egg. Manpower in excess of your needs will accumulate in the replacement pool. You can also reduce the amount of manpower fed into units by controlling refits and replacements and starve the front line to build up a reserve in the pool. You even have the ability to reduce the TOE of units below 100% and accumulate replacements in that fashion (and feed those to another part of the front set at 100%.) Lots of options here.