What I have seen of the fort situation for the German, you will utterly crush him in the blizzard. The German has left himself exposed badly and will have to run to avoid a disaster. I'm thinking let him keep on advancing if he wants and load up the bulge areas to really do some damage if he tries to stay.
True but do remember that the Red Army is holding by a thread. Normally I'd get 4 turns of mud, which would result in a jump from 4 mil ish to around or just below 5 mil. Instead I'm at 4.1-4.2 mil thanks to these damned snow turns. Unreadiness is growing by leaps and bounds which has lead me to improvise the brigade screen tactic in order to preserve my divisions from frontline duty. The brigade screen is probably my best improvisation so far, keep my divisions from suffering attrition, keeps contact and absorbs attacks/mps.
This is something I hate doing, but if unreadiness is getting out of hand...you might have to cannibalize some brigades to bring divisions up to speed via merges.
I still don't think he's going to take Moscow, btw. He's not set up for it. That panzer push north of Moscow is going nowhere. He needs an assist from the south and isn't getting it. His panzers are all over the place and not properly concentrated for the big prize.
He's battering himself to pieces here. It's all momentum, like a shark moving, once he stops...dead. I 100% approve of your counterattacks, too, and your refusal to let him get away with regimental screens. It's a bluff.
The reminds me: do NOT put any of the incoming shell brigades on refit. Leave them as is in their depleted state when they arrive. That way they will get few if any replacements. Refits for divisions only. You'll be getting a swarm of these brigade shells about now and they soak up all your replacements dry.
Yes brigades are driving me crazy. I'd love to meet the fellow at STAVKA that decided force dilution was a good idea at this point in the war. It's strange, I had complete certaintity that Moscow would be safe until the weather gods decided to shaft me. The probability of no mud in the 3 Soviet zones for one turn is .0398 or 4%. The probability of no mud for two straight turns is .00158 or 0.2%, so 1 in 500. This makes me think we might have a possible bug in random weather. Going to put a bug report on it.
Possibly the game applies a single die roll on all the weather zones. Still bad luck for you, but not quite as low odds.
The brigades were sort of training wheels for the Red Army. They lacked officers with experience in handling larger formations at this stage. But I've always hated them. In the good old days of Beta you could merge them into divisions by the end of 41, and I did just that. Now you have to wait until May of 42.
They basically suck, but an amazing number of people swear by them, which I've never understood. They can't dig. They can't attack. They can't defend. They make nice screens and pickets, and are decent for reserves (higher chance of succeeding) but that's about it. I'll take a rifle division over them anytime.
the reason Axis players think they are useful is it gives the Soviet union an abnormal amount of units to tarbaby/picket Axis units, which is true. The problem is by the time the brigade floodgates are opened, you're not interested in tarbabies as you need to hold territory.
Picketing and tar baby and the host of delaying tricks is mostly a 1941 thing, btw. These expedients will not work in 42, nor can you afford them from an AP standpoint. You need mass in 1942, and reserves. Throwing rifle brigades at the German is quite useless at this stage, unless you plan on running to the Urals or something.
Oh yes, I have every intention of having a strong line and plentiful reserves in 42, and I have no earthly clue how brigades (particularly rifle brigades fit into that.
Here's a table comparing historica losses for Barbarossa (until December 1st) and our losses (up to the present, October 30th). Soviet losses are about half the historical amount whereas Axis losses are already much closer if not greater (especially the 700 extra AFVs we've blown up). Source is the infallibly reliable wikipedia.
EDIT: Seems I accidentally cropped out a five on captured. Its 2117705 captured.
Truthfully, the replacement and reinforcement system in this game makes it impossible for the Soviets to lose what they did historically in 1941 and keep fighting. I doubt very much there's anything like 7 million men available by the end of the year between reinforcements and replacements in the first 6 months of the war. Figure on average 150k men/turn for 30 turns, that's 4.5 million in replacements. The bulk of the reinforcements that arrive are shells and get filled out from the replacement pool.
If you lose 7 million men in those 30 turns...you won't have an army.
Right now you've got a hair over 4 million in the Red Army. You've lost 3.5 million. Historical losses are 7 million. I leave the rest as an exersise for the reader.
I suppose it would be possible to loose 7 million if the shells and cadres came as full divisions, or if hq and support assets could really be killed insted of displacing (an abstration I don't really mind btw), though we always have to remember them's is wikipedia numbers. What is impossible is to defend Moscow with the number of men and armies the Soviets had after the Typhoon pocket (too lazy to check, iirc it was between 70k-110k dispersed around some 10iah armies). The Axis would just blow past that.
Mud in the Center and North, snow in the south and clear in the European zone. Unfortunately we've been kicked clear out of the peninsula, which sucks, but that's what one turn of mud in all of October will do to you. Also put a picture of all our Guards so far. 2 divisions and 8 artillery regiments. Will I be able to combine those regiments into on map guards arty divisions? I'd quite like that.
The latest attack by 6th Army, I mean LIV Corps, on Rostov. I'm trying to rotate troops as best I can. 130k men in one attack. Not one step back comrades.
I do, but they're not activating. Don't understand why but every unit is in reserve. The river access to the city passes through two Axis ZOCs, so I think reserves don't have the MPs to get there.
This is how I think the battle of Moscow is going to break down. Red line is where I think he will be by next turn. If he doesn't protect the neck of his advance, I can always counterattack from 4 hexes and push him right back out.
