Defending Mother Russia Saper vs Harrybanana (No Saper)

[Harrybanana]

T28

Didn't manage to encircle many units this turn, but I'm trying to set up a few for next turn.

North

[Harrybanana]

Tula Area

[Harrybanana]

Centre

[Harrybanana]

South

[janh]

Looks like he's really loosing feathers now! [X(] How the heck did that happen? Many seems to be "just" regiments, but Pelton may be right with the snowball effect. Initiated the withdrawal a turn too late if not two? Saper might grown complacent with his recent successes...

Never underestimate blizzard... it is meant to change the initiative dramatically, and the combat odds, just so it does -- do you think you can retake Kursk, Kharkov and Stalino in time?

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: janh

Looks like he's really loosing feathers now! [X(] How the heck did that happen? Many seems to be "just" regiments, but Pelton may be right with the snowball effect. Initiated the withdrawal a turn too late if not two? Saper might grown complacent with his recent successes...

Never underestimate blizzard... it is meant to change the initiative dramatically, and the combat odds, just so it does -- do you think you can retake Kursk, Kharkov and Stalino in time?

I don't think he has any blizzard exp. You need to begin retreating last turn of snow and he did not. Hes also defending with regiments which is a huge no no.

I expect things to fall apart quickly.

[carlkay58]

I am currently playing Saper and there is a good reason why he might not have much Blizzard experience - most of his Soviet opponents have probably given up well before the blizzard. He has a new strategy for the Axis and it is very difficult to try and counter - but I am working on it. I plan on trying to do an AAR on it, but right now keeping the details quiet while he works it out better.

[gingerbread]

I would guess that saper is used to be facing a decimated Soviet army during blizzard and that is not the case here.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I am currently playing Saper and there is a good reason why he might not have much Blizzard experience - most of his Soviet opponents have probably given up well before the blizzard. He has a new strategy for the Axis and it is very difficult to try and counter - but I am working on it. I plan on trying to do an AAR on it, but right now keeping the details quiet while he works it out better.

What he did in past has been nerfed. Thats why you saw his summer offensive drop off in this game as soon as patch went into plase.

Why I changed my play style before the mule/HQ nerf patch.

Sapper will have to ajust or fail on the fly now.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: janh

Looks like he's really loosing feathers now! [X(] How the heck did that happen? Many seems to be "just" regiments, but Pelton may be right with the snowball effect. Initiated the withdrawal a turn too late if not two? Saper might grown complacent with his recent successes...

Never underestimate blizzard... it is meant to change the initiative dramatically, and the combat odds, just so it does -- do you think you can retake Kursk, Kharkov and Stalino in time?

I have received Saper's turn 29 and things are not going entirely my way. He successfully counter attacked a 10 CV (well really 5 CV I suppose as Soviet blizzard units are artificially doubled) tank division and 2 cavalry corps, routing one of them. So I will not be isolating as many units as I hoped this turn. Many of my units are far from supply while he is now fighting next to his railheads. Kursk, Kharkov and Stalino are all blizzard objetcives, but may be difficult now.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

I don't think he has any blizzard exp. You need to begin retreating last turn of snow and he did not. Hes also defending with regiments which is a huge no no.

I expect things to fall apart quickly.

He does have some blizzard experience, namely against me in our last game. Not sure about him, but that is the only blizzard experience I have. Believe me I was doing a lot better last game.

Defending with regiments keeps his losses low; but does allow me some easy victories to increase morale and achieve guard status. It also allowed him to send a lot of units home for Christmas.

Unfortuantely his defence is stiffening not weakening. The next few turns will be interesting.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I am currently playing Saper and there is a good reason why he might not have much Blizzard experience - most of his Soviet opponents have probably given up well before the blizzard. He has a new strategy for the Axis and it is very difficult to try and counter - but I am working on it. I plan on trying to do an AAR on it, but right now keeping the details quiet while he works it out better.

Yeah he told me he was working on something even better. This guy is scary good. There are a number of things he could have done better against me, such as combining HQ Buildups with his air supply tactic. I really don't think he used HQ Buildups as much as he should have.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I am currently playing Saper and there is a good reason why he might not have much Blizzard experience - most of his Soviet opponents have probably given up well before the blizzard. He has a new strategy for the Axis and it is very difficult to try and counter - but I am working on it. I plan on trying to do an AAR on it, but right now keeping the details quiet while he works it out better.

What he did in past has been nerfed. Thats why you saw his summer offensive drop off in this game as soon as patch went into plase.

Why I changed my play style before the mule/HQ nerf patch.

Sapper will have to ajust or fail on the fly now.

Saper tells me that he doesn't think the changes will affect him too much. The level bombers and transports that fly the air supply missions have very long range so should be able to remain within 5 MPs of a railhead and still fly those missions, albeit maybe not quite as many as before. I think his summer offensive fizzled because of the mud weather I got at opportune times (Saper says he will never play with random weather again), my cutting of his AGC railheads and my stiffening defence. Air resupply to the motorized divisions does work, but it does have some limits. The motorized units can't do it all on their own.

[Harrybanana]

One of the things I am doing to keep my offensive going is "merging" all of my infantry brigades with the understrength divisions. Not only am I using the brigades that arrrive as reinforcements, I am building 4 to 6 every turn as well. I have even, god forgive me, on 6 occassions merged together two weak divisions to create one new strong one.

Is this wise or very stupid, or done in moderation wise, but done to execess (which I am definitely doing) stupid? Guess I'll find out come summer. But it is all part of my leaner tougher Soviet army plan.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

One of the things I am doing to keep my offensive going is "merging" all of my infantry brigades with the understrength divisions. Not only am I using the brigades that arrrive as reinforcements, I am building 4 to 6 every turn as well. I have even, god forgive me, on 6 occassions merged together two weak divisions to create one new strong one.

Is this wise or very stupid, or done in moderation wise, but done to execess (which I am definitely doing) stupid? Guess I'll find out come summer. But it is all part of my leaner tougher Soviet army plan.

Don't recommend doing this. You are just eating into your future rifle division strength this way. You really want to have as many of these as possible. It's hard to defend with much less than 400ish rifle divisions.

You can get something like 75 extra rifle divisions by avoiding this and waiting until May to combine them into divisions. That's enough to fill out nearly two Fronts.

Air supply is grossly overpowered in WITE. I'm hoping this gets tamed in WITW, or the Western Allies will be in Berlin before 1944 is out. Everybody is just abusing the hell out of the Luftwaffe nowadays and making it do impossible things.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana


Air supply is grossly overpowered in WITE. I'm hoping this gets tamed in WITW, or the Western Allies will be in Berlin before 1944 is out. Everybody is just abusing the hell out of the Luftwaffe nowadays and making it do impossible things.

I totally agree and it should be nerfed big time.

A quick and easy fix for the next patch would be to only let bombers be able to drop supplies.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Don't recommend doing this. You are just eating into your future rifle division strength this way. You really want to have as many of these as possible. It's hard to defend with much less than 400ish rifle divisions.

You can get something like 75 extra rifle divisions by avoiding this and waiting until May to combine them into divisions. That's enough to fill out nearly two Fronts.

Air supply is grossly overpowered in WITE. I'm hoping this gets tamed in WITW, or the Western Allies will be in Berlin before 1944 is out. Everybody is just abusing the hell out of the Luftwaffe nowadays and making it do impossible things.

So what is the solution than, or is there one? With attrition + combat losses+ further and further from supply the front line infantry divisions deplete very quickly and without those merges I will soon (ie 2 or 3 turns without doing this) have very few units capable of attacking, particularly in those difficult to supply areas. Not saying you are not right, I am burning through a lot of APs to build more brigades, just don't know what the answer is. I suppose I could turn my TOE down to 50% on all units not engaged in combat, in partucular the newly arrived units that need time to train up anyway. But will the replacements reach the front line units anyway? Another possibility is to rotate units in and out of the front lines. But this is difficult when the front lines are in places 2 or 3 turns marching distance from the nearest railheads.

With respect to air supply I am trying to give Saper a taste of his own medicine by using it to keep some of my own units far from railheads in good supply. I thought air units could only fly one air supply mission per turn, but I'm not sure if that is the case. I'll have to pay more attention my next turn. But are they only suppose to be able to fly one?

[Flaviusx]

If you want to do it on a limited basis, that's probably okay, but I wouldn't go nuts with it because it will cost you in the long run. The war isn't going to be won during the blizzard. It could be lost during summer of 42 if you eat too much of your seed corn.

I always leave the newly arriving mass of brigade shells on depleted mode until mud hits and then flesh them out. You need to become very particular about refits at this stage and make sure that replacements are going where you want them. If you do it right, you don't even need to tinker with the TOE of these units...they will just remain depleted and get very little until you make a point of setting them on refits at the end of the blizzard. I suspect you've got way too many things set to refit at present. Prioritize.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

Use the ARM squeeze on the ground as motivation to figure out how to get maximum use of your air force. They do not cost any ARM (well, the ammo used does, but if they are consuming ammo, some thing's got to be right [;)] ).

Any suggestions anyone on how to accomplish this? Of all the aspects of WITE I think I understand the air model the least.

Here is what I am doing:

1. Each turn as my first action I send to Reserve all air units that have morale of less than 45 (I note that MT uses the same number, what are the odds of that)
2. Each turn I also send to Reserve all units with less than 30% ready aircraft. This I learned from MT, but I can't remember now what number he uses as his %.
3. Each turn I make sure that all aircraft that I want to upgrade to newer aircraft are set to auto-upgrade and all others are set to Manual. I prefer to let the computer upgrade my aircraft for me to save APs, but sometimes I will upgrade a particularly high morale/high experience unit that is flying crap to a better model.
4. My goal is to have 7 airbases attached to each Front Air Command HQ and to have these HQs commanded by a "6" or better air rated leader. However, due to a lack of airbases and 6+ leaders neither of these goals is currently achievable.
5. Two airbases per Front are stacked with 9 fighter groups. Of the total of 18 fighter groups 4 or 5 are set to night missions as Saper loves to bomb my HQs at night. Two airbases per Front are stacked with from 6 to 9 tactical bomber groups. Two are stacked with 4 level bomber groups and the final airbase has 1 recon airgroup and 3 level bomber groups (with good range) set to Night missions.
6. As for airdoctrine, I am going by memory as I am doing this from work, but I believe I have almost all my levels set at or close to the maximum except % needed to fly which is only 10%.
7. In terms of using my airforce, other than interception which occurs on my opponents turn, I use them primarily for combat support. I seldom bomb enemy air bases. I will bomb his ground units 2 to 5 times in advance before I launch a ground attack if I think the battle is going to be close and/or it is an important attack; but this is probably only once or twice per turn. While Saper has had great success bombing my Army HQs, when I have reciprocated the results have always been dissappointing.
8. As one of my last actions each turn I go through my airgroups and bring them up to full complement (9 for fighters, 6 to 9 for tactical and 4 for level) by transferring units in from Reserve (for newbies, you don't want to do this earlier because transferring in aircraft will reduce your airbases movement).

So what am I doing right and what am I doing wrong?

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I suspect you've got way too many things set to refit at present. Prioritize.

Hmmm... well if just about everything is too much than you could be right[:)]. I will follow your advice, prioritize and see what happens. Thanks.