AAR Allies May 1944

[shermanny]

Turn 8 in Italy. I should have mentioned it earlier, but in this game, surrounded units do not wither nearly so quickly on the vine as they did in WITE. If they're caught out in the open, their shortage of supply will doom them quickly all the same, but in good terrain or when defending a fortress, surrounded units can hold out for weeks or months. They have to be attacked to finish them off.

Here, we're about to see a lot of this. The Germans have pulled back also in Italy, leaving behind involuntary rear guards who will probably be a lot of trouble to finish off.

[shermanny]

Here, we're looking at a different screen. Hit "n" and you get a view of your depots and your rail net. My "explosion" has netted control of LeHavre and pocketed a number of divisions and regiments in Brittany, and some on the other side of the Loire. What it has not done was to systematically write down the German Panzer force. The Germans have avoided mortal combat in Normandy, though it might have been done more smoothly, and they still have a Panzer arm. They have as many artillery tubes as we do. If the mission were merely to liberate Western France, we'd be done. But Berlin is not in Western France. So why am I messing with it? Because Germans allowed to get away are Germans who will have to be fought in November, in the mud, in Lorraine or the Ardennes or on the approaches to Antwerp. Furthermore, those depots are few and hardly swollen with supplies. And my over the beach supply, while pretty good in fair weather, will not be feasible later on. I must have at least some of the Brittany ports.

Many of the squares are shaded. That's the game engine's way of showing you which hexes are yours, and which are his.

[shermanny]

Here's a picture of the situation in Italy at the end of turn 9, but with the Order of Battle screen overlayed. The blue bits are live links to further detail, if I would click on them. But the basic numbers are up front. The Germans have 2.4 million men, 38000 tubes, 2300 tanks, and 2800 planes left. Their minor allies are negligible. For our part, we have about 3.6 million men, 37000 tubes, 14000 tanks (but these are neither Panthers nor Tigers!) and about 14000 planes. We could trade him one for one except in guns, and the road to Berlin would be open. But the VPs won't let me pave that road in British and Yankee blood. Not even electronic blood. The Allied player is constrained to be mindful of casualties.

There are similar screens for losses, production, and a host of other things, among them, the running count of VPs, plotted and separated out by source. The game engine is a real horse. It keeps track of tonnage in depots, of tonnage with units, of the state of the various rail marshaling yards, of trucks and wagons and even horses. It probably doesn't keep track of cabbages or Kings. The player doesn't have to watch all this turn by turn, but to play reasonably, some attention must be given to logistics. It's a big part of war. Ports and railroads and rail yards must be put into working order and stocked. Divisions can be motorized, but only by tapping the fleet of supply trucks. Offensives, if they are to succeed, must be liberally supplied. HQs must be brought over from England, and support units such as combat engineers must be attached to individual divisions or to Corps HQ if they are to be used effectively. The player need not watch over all of this every turn, but it's part of effective command to keep an eye on these matters and attend to them on some sort of regular basis. Building the rail net has to be on the agenda every turn.

[Here's the image for this post: fb.asp?m=3751682]

[shermanny]

And now, we skip ahead to turn 11 and close out this report. The Allies decided to clear Lorient and St. Nazaire but merely to mask Brest. St. Nazaire put up a fight and it will take another two or three weeks to reduce it, probably.

Paris is liberated and the main Allied mass is moving East. The rail net is filling in slowly behind. Nantes, Angers, Tours, and Orleans on the Loire are all in Allied hands, which provides security against annoying raids from SW France. The Germans have some mobile brigades that they could cheerfully sacrifice to tear up the Allied rail net. It will be a while before the guys in Brittany can finish their work and join that main mass, but we should have a few weeks in September to get up to the line of scrimmage and hit the Germans and see about maybe clearing the channel ports or getting Antwerp or Metz. After that, there will be rain, clouds, shorter days, and mud. The Allied air arm will become increasingly less effective.

Mud in France is not the same as mud in Russia. Most of the French roads are paved, and that makes a huge difference. This is reflected in the game by having two categories of mud, light and deep. Even deep mud does not bring combat to a standstill like it does in WITE, though a prepared attack against a strongly held position is going nowhere in deep mud.

The Allies will be very dangerous, though, in December. The Germans in this game will probably not be able to recapture the initiative the way the historical Germans briefly did. The time saved by an early breakout from Normandy will have consequences for the later turns.

The opening is over and the Allies have an advantage. Not enough to be assured of a major or decisive victory, though. To already be to that point, I'd have had to invade in Calais and found the Germans stacked up in Normandy waiting in the wrong place, too far West and too slow to get back in time. My choice of invasion location was safer but didn't offer any prospect of quick victory. The middle game has begun.


Losses so far: Axis 357K men, 5.2K guns, 1425 AFV, and 3.5K aircraft. Allies 134K men, 0.5K guns, 1811 AFV, and 6.5K aircraft, along with 73 troopships and 362 cargo ships.

[shermanny]

Postscript: The air war is a game within the game. What's involved?

The Germans have three main weapons with which to fight the air war. First is flak. German flak takes a far greater toll of Allied planes than German fighters. We can shoot down their planes but we can't shoot down their flak and trying to bomb flak out of existence is like using tanks to hunt antitank guns. It's a losing proposition. All we can do is try to avoid flying into flak when it's not necessary.

There are three ways to do this. First, don't schedule missions that don't matter. Don't fly interdiction attacks if you don't really need the interdiction effect, for instance. Second, route the bombing missions to avoid the worst of the flak. Third, American bombers should fly at high altitude. 25000 is a good choice. German flak comes in low and high varieties and the low kind can't reach targets at that altitude. Of course, dive bombers and their American functional equivalent, the P47 (Jabo, to the Germans) cannot attack from that altitude either, which is where the low level flak has its day.

So here's a day in the life of Air Command, in pictures.

The shorter range planes need to get into France, nearer the front, when that's feasible. Here, we're looking at one of the screens. One hits the button "F10" to bring up this screen. Air units can be moved from within this screen. To move the 36th fighter-bomber group (if that's the right word) again, I'd left click on the green-shaded hex (circled) near Evreaux, and a field at the upper right of the game screen would display a dark green box with text "36th USAAF FB Grp (61)". I'd left-click in the dark green field inside that box, to the immediate left of "36", and a picture of an air division would display. I'd move the cursor over the airfield to which I wanted that group to transfer, and right click. If the air unit has enough fuel and time left in the turn to make the transfer, that will do it.

So now, let's zoom out, away from the weeds, to look at the bigger picture. What's this flak, and how do we know where it is? That's for the next frame.

[shermanny]

US 8th AF is going to bomb Hamburg. To see the flak, I go (SHIFT)O, (not zero) and the flak shows. The plot line can be manipulated (click and drag) and I've dragged it out to sea a bit so as not to fly over avoidable flak.

2nd RAF tactical AF is going to be flying air superiority in the same general area, just so if the Germans decide to contest this raid they'll face fighters unencumbered by escort duties as well as fighters glued to the bombers.

In the next screen we'll take a look at how much damage has, and has not, been imposed on the German war economy. The raid on Hamburg, incidentally, would seem to be a silly mission. Wasn't Hamburg destroyed in a firestorm? Well, no. A lot of people were killed, but only a few of those were adult male factory workers. A lot more were rendered homeless, but even a homeless man can camp out in the rubble, sleeping rough, and go to work in the morning. And factories can be repaired. The bombing campaign is a bit of a hamster wheel because the Germans can effect repairs.

Then again, what sort of game is it where the other side has no counter at all to what you're doing? And what sort of simulation would it be if the Germans in the game could not do what they did in reality, and make repairs? The thing is, the Germans have limited resources. There are only so many repair crews, and the static divisions at the front need the same vehicles that the repair crews need, and so forth. The system can be strained, even if it can't be brought down by the air war.

[shermanny]

The second way to combat bombers, after flak, is with fighters. These can be left on the ground in areas the Germans think Allied bombers are likely to venture, especially if the bombers are likely to be unaccompanied by their own fighter escort. They will automatically rise to intercept bombing missions. They can also be put to their own air superiority missions.

Third is repairs. The German player gets administrative points (AP's). These can buy commander changes, they can convert static divisions to mobile mode, they can buy the release of flak units from city protection so that they can be attached to, say, divisions or corps. But they can also be used to set repairs in motion. The Germans are probably wise to busily repair damage to targets that are well protected by flak and yet tend to get hit by the Allies.

This is all we have to show for you for now, but soon you will be able to take command yourself and continue the fight!

[PaulWRoberts]

Wow! What a detailed and illuminating AAR. Thanks for the excellent pics and write-up.

You give us a really nice sense of the flow of decision-making and action. It will be interesting to see how German players deal with the possibility of alternate invasion beaches.

Here's a question:

Suppose the German decides to "go big" in the West and temporarily pull armored units from the Eastern Front. Would it be possible (given the time it takes) to do so in response to an Allied invasion and then return units East in the later summer? How much would this allow the Russians to steamroll the map on their side?

I imagine working out the transfer of units will be as fun for the German player as it was for the originals.

[Phoenix100]

Superb AAR. Thanks so much. Gave us a real taste of it.

[FroBodine]

What do all the circled numbers in each hex mean in the image in post #7?

Also, in the same post, you mentioned that "boxes with the parachute symbol in them indicate where an airborne division is slated to drop". I do not see any boxes with parachute symbols. Where are these, please?

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: jglazier

What do all the circled numbers in each hex mean in the image in post #7?

Also, in the same post, you mentioned that "boxes with the parachute symbol in them indicate where an airborne division is slated to drop". I do not see any boxes with parachute symbols. Where are these, please?

The circled numbers are the air interdiction values - you can set air directives to impose interdiction impacting on unit movement through that hex. In Normandy the way to breakout is to attrit the Axis and prevent his resupply.

I think Shermanny is referring to the hand drawn black boxes with the 'm' symbol.

[Numdydar]

The para symbol is hand drawn just SE of Cherbourg.

The circled numbers represent the amount of interdiction a hex has from 0-9. 9 being very bad for the Germans and 0 being just a small amount. Any hex without a circle has no interdiction on it at all so the Germans can move freely.

[Numdydar]

Beat me by 5 mins lol

[bairdlander2]

ORIGINAL: Paul Roberts


Suppose the German decides to "go big" in the West and temporarily pull armored units from the Eastern Front. Would it be possible (given the time it takes) to do so in response to an Allied invasion and then return units East in the later summer? How much would this allow the Russians to steamroll the map on their side?

I imagine working out the transfer of units will be as fun for the German player as it was for the originals.

I cant do that as the Axis has to spend admin points and I never have enough.Also if I left the Eastern front short units,SU takes Berlin faaster and game over.

[Gilmer]

I enjoyed reading this. Thank you. I was especially intrigued by how you can plan out bombing routes to avoid flak or whatever you wish to avoid.

[warshipbuilder]

I was especially intrigued by how you can plan out bombing routes to avoid flak or whatever you wish to avoid.

I see that you came in from the west and you exited to the west. Can I assume that you are not being beat up more by the flak as you do a 180 over the target? I would think that coming in form the north and exiting to the west would reduce your time over the target and time being shot at. Of course you can always fly above the flak with the commensurate loss of accuracy. If you loved yesterdays target gentlemen wait until you see today's![:D]

[CaptBeefheart]

Excellent and very helpful AAR!

Please note that Post #22 has the wrong screenshot (it's the same as the previous). If you could fix that, it would help increase our understanding of this game.

Cheers,
CC

[Erik Rutins]

Here's a corrected image for Post #22:

[shermanny]

That's partly a question for intuition and partly a question for experimentation. Say we're in the May scenario. If I as the Allied player saw that I was scoring big time in EastFront VPs during any turn before I'd already made my invasion, I'd hurry the invasion forward. The Germans won't then be able to get their transferred divisions into the new theater in time to be on the beaches, or even to take up the slack as new garrisons so the old garrisons can move to the beaches.

I'd also put all my strategic bombers on railroad interdiction and railyard attacks in France. That way, the extra divisions would have a hard time reaching the battlefield in time to make a decisive difference. Meanwhile, their absence could be expected to make a big difference in the East.

So as with so many things in this game, both players have some sort of counter to what the other might do. Whether it will suffice? Experimentation. My guess is that it's a mistake to draw heavily on the East Front unless and until absolute disaster looms in the West. You don't want the Allies bouncing the Rhine and surging into the Ruhr in January, say.

[shermanny]

The game goes on, and so we'll be keeping you posted as things proceed. Turn 12 sees a lunge across France toward Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. Taking these ports should give me some security in the event of an Axis counterattack, and also should improve the supply situation. We can't do anything really ambitious just yet, because the forces now investing La Rochelle must finish the job there and then move East, and because the logistics net must be fixed. Railroads must be put back in service, railyards repaired, ports repaired.

In Italy, the surrounded mountain men of the Gebirgs Korps finally have to surrender. Here, too, it will take time to bring forces up the boot and face to face with the new German line, which runs straight across from Pisa to Rimini. Mountainous stuff, most of the way.

The picture shows shading for control, and shows, with upside-down green triangles, where I've now got depots. The way the rules work, Allied depots are automatically established at captured ports, while others can be built in cities connected by fixed-up rail to ports. It's a long truck drive to the front, which is why I need those ports and why I need to fix up the rails, connecting Lorient, Cherbourg, etc. to Paris and points East.