DicedT (WA) vrs LiquidSky (GE) Part Zwei

[LiquidSky]

Well here we go. My first ever attempt at seriously playing the Germans. Must have spent a good 4 hours or more on turn 1.

I gave a lot of thought about how to gain victory points as the germans. There are not very many ways.

I can:

1) Cause casualty points. This is probably the biggest one. Attrition favours the allies, and the allies control when and where this can occur.
Doesn't seem to apply to shooting down planes.

2) Deny an Italian or European invasion. Yeah...right.

3) U-Boat/V-Wpn points. This one is tough for me to control. I could try defending them heavily with fighters as I may get more points this way then by trying to stop Strategic Bombing.
Who am I trying to kid....stopping bombing doesn't give me points, but it slows his down more then any gain I get from Uboat/Vwpn

4) Garrison values. This one is just a small nickel and dime climb. Hardly puts a dent in his city points.



This leads me to conclude that the only way to win is to win a morale victory. I have to crush an invasion so hard that the the WA gives up in disgust. I suppose I could try defending in such a way that he hammers himself into defeat with casualty points, but I have little control over that.

Which leads me to consider a kind of rock/paper/panzer strategy. Pick a likely area of invasion. Guard it heavily. Pick another far flung area (like Britanny, or southern France) Park the Luftwaffe bombers near by, but leave then on rest. If he invades the area with the Wehrmacht then I can contain, and attack the beachhead.
If its the area with the Luftwaffe, I can buy time interdicting the supply lines.

If it isn't either...well, its gonna be a long game.

[Q-Ball]

Good luck, are you playing EF Box on, or off? Any HR?

I find it difficult to control VPs as Germany, other than taking the opportunity to whack any exposed units to cause losses. Vs. Meklore, I have managed to rout a few units that stuck their neck out. But overall, WA set the pace.

[LiquidSky]

I feel the EF box adds a complication that I didn't want to deal with on my first run as an axis. It would probably take a few games before I would consider using it for the variety it would add.

No real house rules to speak of. He is welcome to invade wherever he likes.

[Seminole]

No real house rules to speak of. He is welcome to invade wherever he likes.

Planning to fight for Corsica and Sardinia?
As the Germans I want to force the Allies to fight for everything, and to fight very hard for some things.

[marion61]

Don't fight for Sicily hard. One opportune TF in the Ferry hex, ports at 100% damage your German Troops will surrender. Sardinia can be protracted and Corsica. When your opponent has an entire island have the ports occupied by axis units or you could get stranded. Once they have Sicily, Sardinia is not worth fighting for either, but Corsica I'd contest any landing so long as I had German troops on it.

One other consideration with the EF box on is that with it on it is easier to take the attack to the allies somewhat in the defense, and you don't have to worry about having enough people in Northern Italy on the Sept 43 turn to have enough garrisons to go around. With the EF box off, this is not really an option as you have to have so many combat units up there, that it leaves very little for south of the zone line.

[LiquidSky]

Well...a few turns in. Turn 7 I believe. One thing I like about playing the Germans is how fast you can get a turn done. The air phase is fairly straight forward and the most thinking I seem to do is how to spend my meager supply of admin points.

Speaking of which, I notice one way to try and keep the bombing vp's down is to spend the admin points and put all the construction battalions in OKW. My factories always seem to be stacked with the busy little guys.

The other big expense I have with regards to admin points is moving AA guns around. I am slowly bringing them in from far flung places and concentrating them on the Ruhr. I imagine by the end of the year Essen won't be such a good target anymore.

I wanted to move the RR AA guns around, but they are hard to find.

[loki100]

interesting to see your perspective on the German side. Apart from one very early test with the Husky scenario I've not played with them yet but really should, not least to gain a better appreciation of their real capacity and weaknesses.

[Seminole]

The other big expense I have with regards to admin points is moving AA guns around. I am slowly bringing them in from far flung places and concentrating them on the Ruhr. I imagine by the end of the year Essen won't be such a good target anymore.
I wanted to move the RR AA guns around, but they are hard to find.

Will AA guns in HQs contribute to AA defense in cities against strategic bombing?
Could available Corps HQ thusly become mobile AAA parks?

[JocMeister]

Good luck! Will be very interesting to see what you make of the German side!

[LiquidSky]

No..I put all my AA in one army HQ (along with my construction engineers) and parked them in Essen. No luck on the AA, although the construction units got down and dirty cleaning up the allied mess.

By making the UBoat repairs priority, I notice that they repair much faster.....and I get more vps (or he gets negative vps---however you want to look at it) when they suddenly repair. I went from 2vp to 3vp to 7vp in three turns.

And if he has to bomb the Uboats more often, It keeps the bombing vp's down. He is averaging around 4 per turn.

I was getting about 2 or 3vps for over garrison, but the September garrison change caught me by surprise for Northern Italy. I had the combat strength, but needed a security unit in Bologna...and the nearest one I could rail couldn't get out of rail mode. Doesn't help that he has been systematically destroying my rail yards in Italy. Its almost like the wants the place.

[Seminole]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
I was getting about 2 or 3vps for over garrison, but the September garrison change caught me by surprise for Northern Italy. I had the combat strength, but needed a security unit in Bologna...and the nearest one I could rail couldn't get out of rail mode. Doesn't help that he has been systematically destroying my rail yards in Italy. Its almost like the wants the place.

It's only obvious in retrospect, but the Sec unit you get a few weeks prior (38th in Turin?) is supposed to take that spot. I was fortunate I had the resources to fly one in when it first hit me.

[LiquidSky]

I saw that one sitting there, but wasn't sure if it belonged or not. I wonder why it couldn't have shown up in Bologna instead? Seems silly to have it show up somewhere else, then require it to sit in another place for the rest of it's life.

[LiquidSky]

Well..Turn 18. October 30th. Sardinia fell a couple of turns ago, Corsica just fell. I still hold Messina which now has a fortified unit and a level 4 fort in it. And the Italians are still fighting for me but are grumbling.

VP's are still negative, and are slowly dropping (in my favour). The bombing campaign has stalled due to Heavy Rain over the Reich....and I seem to have run out of Flak guns that I want to move into the Ruhr. I don't want to resort to assigning the ones in my HQ to cities, as I can use them to protect panzer divisions.

Not sure if it is his bombing style, or my excessive use of Flak guns, but bombing vp's never seem to go over 5-6 points a turn. And the Uboats fix pretty fast when you give them some construction units on priority, so they never stay down for more then a couple turns. I like the fact that once you start priority repairs, you never really have to restart them as the factory keeps getting damaged...its only the Uboat ones I have to spend the admin points on.

Also trying something different with the Italians..Hopefully they wont surrender when he invades Italy so I can give you a screenshot. Basically I broke down every division of Italians and spread them out along the coast. If his recon isn't high enough, they look like a mass of german units.

[Seminole]

Any reinforcements to the island fights, or did you let him fight the Italian army he chose to fight against instead of with?

[LiquidSky]

The fight for Sardinia wasn't too bad...it was an all Italian affair. He wiped them out but it took a few turns. The fight for Corsica was very short...I am beginning to think the Italians don't want to fight.

Nahh..that cant be it.

Up to Nov 17, 1943.

What started as a rather minor nuisance raid by me on Corsica on his new airfields is starting to turn into the Battle Of Britain, the Italian Edition.

I hit him...destroyed a few Lightnings. Next turn he hits me...gets a few bombers. I hit back and wipe out 100 typhoons. He strikes back and wipes out my TAC force. I hit him with a major 1000 plane raid and hit most of the airfields on Corsica destroying all his lightnings, and a few Spit squadrons....

I think the attrition is favouring me since I can bring more numbers into the battle, but then again...he can afford to replace the losses. I don't think I can afford for him to build Corsica into a major fighter base though...that's just asking for an invasion into Northern Italy. Without functioning airbases, I should be able to interdict the waters if he tries to invade up there.

I took a snapshot of my Italian defence, but I have to wait for him to invade or the Italians to surrender before I can post it.

Oh....and the Italian airforce is down to around 200 functioning planes out of 500 total. And a lot of those are transports that are sitting in the rear.

[LiquidSky]

Nov 27th...the air war rages on over Corsica and Northern Italy. Here is the damage so far:



As you can see the poor Italians have taken a good chunk of the damage...almost 2400 planes..or roughly half.

Of the remaining half, almost all the planes lost on the ground have been German. So my pilot pool is actually looking pretty good.

This turn saw a jackpot...I manage to hit a nest of allied transports lurking on the southern most tip of Sardinia. I wonder what they are up to?

The weather is starting to turn and still no invasion of Italy. The score is around -100 with the allied bombing stalled mostly because of the bad weather over Germany.

[LiquidSky]

Another week of bombing. I am beginning to think that Corsica is not as useful as you might think for the allies. I can't see how any allied player can protect it and still maintain a bombing force on the islands. The Axis have too many bases from Southern France to Rome to spread their airforce out on. I wish I had been better prepared in the beginning.

Having said that...a heavy weather front rolled in covering the islands, but not mainland Italy..so I launched my usual set of bombing runs to little effect.

On another note I lost Messina and all three islands are now Allied.

And the Italians are still fighting to the last airplane. Down to 200 effective fighters and 50 effective bombers. I will have to remember to look at the pilots next time to see if any of them are standing out.

[Seminole]

Turn 18. October 30th. Sardinia fell a couple of turns ago, Corsica just fell. I still hold Messina

Turn 18 and you still have Messina?!
DicedT still has some things to figure out...

[LiquidSky]

Not his fault really..I had a paratrooper parked in it until I got the fort up to level 4. I thought the fortification unit with the three artillery units would be enough to hold the place with some Italians..but after the para moved out, he took it.

[Seminole]

Not his fault really..I had a paratrooper parked in it until I got the fort up to level 4.

I disagree, it can be isolated and destroyed months prior with the use of TFs, and the Axis have nothing they can do to stop it. Nothing.
I think the reason Pelton flees Sicily immediately is because he figures if the opponent knows what he knows anything sent to Sicily is at risk of being lost to surrender. WA just has to be prepared to commit the assets.
I'm usually slower to leave because I want to see if my opponent understands what he has at his disposal. If he doesn't, stay and make him pay, but if you get carried away those TFs can show up off the coast at a bad time...