76mm GC-ALT VC (No Zonso)

[76mm]

Finished Turn 17 and am currently playing in the mud in Turn 18. Here are screenshots from after my moves on Turn 17:

Moscow: he has penetrated my fort belt around Moscow (see circled units), which could cause problems in the snow; the battle for Moscow is just beginning I'm afraid:


Here is a shot around Voronezh, my units are very thin on the ground:


Here is the south, also a very thin line:


Now here are some org shots; first OOB--my army seems very weak, not much bigger than his (actually smaller counting his allies):


Here are losses:


And finally, production; while I seem to have plenty of supplies, I am short of supplies in units for some reason:

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Just finished Turn 14; no dramatic developments so no screenies. I've lost several of his panzer divisions, I expect he is doing a HQ buildup or two for a pre-mud push, so the next few turns could be tough.

Pelton, while I feel better about holding Moscow than I did a few turns ago, I'm not sure if I'm out of the woods yet, we'll see...

Only 3.5 million men and 3.5 million dead.

Your in rough shape and he took Rostov. Holding them 100 Moscow manpower points is huge. You can recover, but the odds are against you.

Allot will depend on his blizzard and 42 exp as has been seen in some AAR's. Allot of players lack post 41 exp and can snatch defeat from the jags of victory by hanging themselfs.

[76mm]

Right now I think my army is too weak to do much damage in the blizzard, but maybe it will pump up over the next few turns; right now many of my units are depleted...

In my game against Ketza I lost 3.9 million (but by the blizzard, not by mud), but my army was not this weak in that game--I think they reduced the manpower multiplier or something since then to reduce the Sov's bodycount.

In retrospect, I think the only way I could have done better is to run as fast as possible. Except by running, it is impossible to keep a decent German player from creating pockets, and the more pockets he creates the easier it gets to create more. The only thing that saved me from an even worse debacle is that many of Zonso's pockets were rather sloppy, and I was able to reopen them once or even twice.

[gingerbread]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Here are screenshots from after my moves on Turn 17:

And finally, production; while I seem to have plenty of supplies, I am short of supplies in units for some reason:

Interesting - I have seen that myself and it has the scent of a bug.

Could you do me a favour and post a screen (two, actually) showing the CR list of Inf directly attached to STAVKA from an odd turn (T17 is fine) with Phase 1 and Phase 2 respectively (example below). Check that it's the same units showing for both phase 1 & 2.

I'm seeing that these units are not getting any supply delivered to them during odd turns. On even turns they get.

Edit: Another tell is that affected units that did not receive supply nor had enough in store can have mode changed from Refit to Ready. Possibly also loss of morale.

[Flaviusx]

You shouldn't be having supply problems here, no, not with the Red Army this beat up. (Armaments are another story. You will surely be tapped out on that score.)

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Right now I think my army is too weak to do much damage in the blizzard, but maybe it will pump up over the next few turns; right now many of my units are depleted...

In my game against Ketza I lost 3.9 million (but by the blizzard, not by mud), but my army was not this weak in that game--I think they reduced the manpower multiplier or something since then to reduce the Sov's bodycount.

In retrospect, I think the only way I could have done better is to run as fast as possible. Except by running, it is impossible to keep a decent German player from creating pockets, and the more pockets he creates the easier it gets to create more. The only thing that saved me from an even worse debacle is that many of Zonso's pockets were rather sloppy, and I was able to reopen them once or even twice.

You needed to do better by Leningrad...and stop the Finns cold at the choke point. But that aside, yeah, things are rough nowadays. More and more Soviets are getting forced into runaways, especially down south. If the Red Army drops below 4 million going into autumn, that's generally the point where things start to snowball out of control. Replacements simply won't keep up with this kind of loss ratio.

[76mm]

Gingerbread, I've already sent back Turn 18, I will try to remember to get your screenies on Turn 19.

FlaviusX, yeah, my eyes weren't opened on the bottleneck until after I'd gotten past it in this game. I would try it next game, but I don't think I'll be playing after this one.

On armaments, obviously I'm at zero now. Somehow, in my game against Ketza many patches ago, I built lots of artillery and other units and still had almost two million AP points despite losing a lot more AP in that game than in this one. Oh well...

[Seminole]

Right now I think my army is too weak to do much damage in the blizzard, but maybe it will pump up over the next few turns; right now many of my units are depleted...

Don't underestimate how badly the blizzard gimps the Axis.
I suffered pretty egregious losses by turn 17 and 25 (but held onto more manpower than you have) and still had an outstanding blizzard.

Turn 17



Turn 25



I only had 212 rifle divisions on the map on turn 17, and only 267 rifle divisions by turn 25. Units lost by turn 25:



Focus your cavalry corps in the Shock Armies and give them your best generals (high Inf/Adm/Init) so you can get good MP and not get your CV hammered on rolls. Those cavalry corps are your exploitation force, and they are what will enable you to unhinge his line and capture units whole if he retreats too slowly.
Focus your refit NOW so you can get some units to decent TOE for the blizzard. You don't need the whole army ready to go, but you need some units to crack the line for your cavalry. With the rains you can rest some of your divisions on the rails and refit them, don't have everyone on refit. At the end of each turn you need to be going through and checking who is on refit. During the blizzard you'll need to be refitting some divisions while those your rested during the rains make their assaults, then you can rotate.
Use your rifle/tank brigades maintain contact with the enemy, let them suffer the attrition/counterattacks. They'll have much lower losses than if you left your rifle divisions and cavalry corps on the front line, and having those units behind the line will help them get better replacements, supply, and rest than ending each week locked with the enemy.
You have 9 weeks of blizzard in Dec-Jan to get things done. After that the German penalties will fall enough, and your own units will be burned out / far from supply, that you can't expect too much more.
You should have three goals in the blizzard. Getting units Guards eligible, getting more units Guards eligible, and driving down the morale of as many Axis units as possible. Once you can get the Axis pushed out of their initial forts they'll suffer.

[821Bobo]

ORIGINAL: Seminole
Focus your cavalry corps in the Shock Armies and give them your best generals (high Inf/Adm/Init)...

Are you sure with the inf rating? I thought that cavalry is considered as motorized/mechanized unit.

[Flaviusx]

Cavalry benefits from the infantry rating and, yes, this is weird.

I'm a lot less optimistic that even a wildly successful blizzard can fix things nowadays, btw. If the Red Army goes into summer of 1942 too weak and thinly spread, even killing dozens of Axis divisions during the blizzard may not be enough. Especially with the new manpower multipliers. The replacement situation is very fragile now. 76mm is probably looking at not much more than 90k men/turn in 1942 and it's extremely difficult to build up the Red Army with that once you factor in attrition, let alone combat losses. Successful blizzard offensives don't come cheap, either.

Am watching Kamil's current game very carefully in this regard.

[Seminole]

Successful blizzard offensives don't come cheap, either.

Totally depends on how his opponent plays. If he just runs away as fast as possible and offers 76mm no chance to fight in the 9 weeks he has a chance to, then I'd agree, he's in serious trouble. All the same, his opponent may underestimate what is left of the Red Army and pay dearly.
That's why we play the game. [8D]

[hfarrish]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Cavalry benefits from the infantry rating and, yes, this is weird.

Damn - is that a change? I had thought for sure it had been received wisdom that Cav operated from the mech rating. There's some APs down the tubes...

[821Bobo]

ORIGINAL: hfarrish
Damn - is that a change? I had thought for sure it had been received wisdom that Cav operated from the mech rating. There's some APs down the tubes...

Tell me, I just wasted some 50APs because of that in my game vs Pelton.

[76mm]

It's been awhile since I posted, but this game is still continuing, so I thought I'd catch up. I just sent him turn 24, so next turn will be the blizzard. But more on that later.

Someone has asked me for screenies of the supply situation for armies. Below I've pasted this info for turn 19 and 20:
TURN 19 PHASE 1:


TURN 19 PHASE 2:


As you can see, lots of zeroes, although I'm not sure what is normal.

TURN 20 PHASE 1:


TURN 20 PHASE 2:


I'll let someone smarter than me figure out if this is normal, but I will say that in the supply line on the production screen, I am short by almost quarter (I need 28 have only 23), which seems odd given the small size of my army. I'll get a screen next turn, forgot to do so.

Zonso really kept attacking right through Turn 24, none of this retreat to Poland stuff for him. Here are a few screen shots from Turns 22 & 23:

TURN 22:
Moscow--holding tough!


Voronezh--here is a failed encirclement attempt, or maybe was just trying to get me to pull back a bit. I did pull back a few hexes.


South--my strength continues to grow (from zero) in this area, at the top is a pocket I managed to open.


TURN 23:
Moscow--he continued to attack here, getting right to the gates of Moscow.


Center--here is the center, with another opened pocket.


South--more of the same:


Crimea--held most of it:


I didn't bother getting new screenies for Turn 24, not much changed. He launched a bunch of attacks all along the front for the last few turns, but didn't try any penetrations or encirclements.

His front line looks to be pretty disordered, and I hope to be able to wreak a little havoc during the blizzard, although my army is weak (only about 4 million), so there will be a limit as to what I can do. I guess it depends on him as well, if he starts pulling back or intends to hold what he's got.

Main main goals are still under consideration, welcome any thoughts. I'll also post production, OOB, and casualty screens from the beginning of Turn 25 for anyone who cares about such things.

[gingerbread]

Hi and thanks for remembering to post!

As you wrote, it's been awhile and the issue I saw is considered to be resolved with fix 3 in 1.06.19 (changing status) and I have not seen any signs in any of my games since.
In your screens, the odd one/unit out is 225 Rifle Division that did not receive nor consume any supplies in turn 19 (seen as SupR = 0 in both phases and SupC = 0 in Phase2, respectively). It is a reinforcement in that turn so it cannot be due to isolation and new units should at least consume even if it arrived with enough to not draw any new supplies. I could also be that you did not have any men left in the regular replacement segment and that the unit therefore didn't have enough men to consume a quantity that would show up as '1' or more. Partisans use different rules.

As to the situation in your game, I'd say you should be very selective and opportunistic in your choice of attacks during the blizzard season. It can be very costly in manpower to go for wins in order to get guards and that is a luxury that you can ill afford, as are attacks made just to lower the defenders morale. Air power does not cost any men so mass your air where you choose to attack, but keep the bases on rail (MP to rail = 0) to reduce vehicle losses. In sections where your not attacking, look for units that can be rotated back (10+ hexes) to train morale by refit.
A final caveat: An opportunistic doctrine can lead to very strange front lines so balance this with one eye towards where you want your defensive lines in '42.

Again, thank for posting the screens!

[76mm]

Woo hoo! First turn of the blizzard is over! As promised, here are screenies with some of the admin stuff:
OOB:


Losses:


Production:

How do these production numbers look? Are AP and HI OK? It sounds like they are not much of a factor at this point, but let me know... How about manpower? I've lots lots of cities, but hopefully nothing too bad.

Oh yeah, the turn itself; nothing too exciting, he pulled back a couple of hexes all across the front, so I could only get in about ten attacks, most of which were successful. Formed as many cav corps as I could, would like to buff them up.

I don't intend to be too aggressive with attacks, but we'll see how things go. The main thing for me is to get more space in front of Moscow and get back some ground in the south to prepare for 1942. I've only been through one spring of 1942, and the game has morphed pretty seriously since then, so I'm worried about next year.

[TulliusDetritus]

ORIGINAL: 76mm
I don't intend to be too aggressive with attacks, but we'll see how things go. The main thing for me is to get more space in front of Moscow and get back some ground in the south to prepare for 1942. I've only been through one spring of 1942, and the game has morphed pretty seriously since then, so I'm worried about next year.

What I saw during 1942 did not please me. Basically unstoppable concentrated armored spearheads (turn after turn), and mere 1:1 ants on my side (dramatic drop of morale, and I had pulled back minimum 100 rifle divisions after the blizzard massacres...). Had I known this (on my other previous game the Red Army was way too strong though) I would have ran away, leaving behind some victims... I would have avoided catastrophic losses that is.

[gingerbread]

You need to channel the ARM points produced to your front line infantry divisions. The way to do that is to set most of everything else to 50% TOE - all artillery to 50% is a must as are the motorcycles.
You should also be able to afford RR Brigades (no ARM) to a total of 40-50. This will use up manpower, but I doubt you will be able to get the 900k in the pool out into units until mid-April in any case. Keep the RR's at front level. The RR's will save on vehicles lost in supply operations.

Your ARM situation will eventually improve, but then you will face the July '42 Rifle squad upgrade so it will be tight for quite a while. 348 is a good number of ARM factories, 159 HI is adequate for your needs.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus
What I saw during 1942 did not please me. Basically unstoppable concentrated armored spearheads (turn after turn), and mere 1:1 ants on my side (dramatic drop of morale, and I had pulled back minimum 100 rifle divisions after the blizzard massacres...). Had I known this (on my other previous game the Red Army was way too strong though) I would have ran away, leaving behind some victims... I would have avoided catastrophic losses that is.

Yikes, this is what I was afraid of... My last Spring 42 was pre-fort-nerf and it was still a scary experience...

[76mm]

Haven't received a turn from Zonso in weeks, and he is not responding to my e-mails; I hope he has not abandoned this game just as we got to the blizzard, that would be most unsportsmanlike. Will wait another week or two before drawing any conclusions...