(oh) For a Few Panzers More –loki100 vs smokindave34 (game over - Allied major victory)

[LiquidSky]

That's rather gutsey parking divisions on the coast. They won't defend as a division unless they are in a port. And if he does hit that hex, they will lose all their movement, so wont be able to help repel the hordes...and may end up isolated as they cant move.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



That's rather gutsey parking divisions on the coast. They won't defend as a division unless they are in a port. And if he does hit that hex, they will lose all their movement, so wont be able to help repel the hordes...and may end up isolated as they cant move.

ah, at the time he landed there was only a single regiment in the landing zone (the mtn reg at Civitavecchia), the final image is after I'd tried to counterattack and seal off his landing. Given he has 3 TF committed, and its the end of 1943, I'm not afraid of a follow up invasion in the Med for some time. The other 3 (? I forget if the allies have 6 or 7 at this stage), must be in the UK preparing to invade France?

[Q-Ball]

I think it pays to build a line of fortifications one hex off the coast from Lido to Piombino. It's not expensive at 1 AP ea, and then you have a line of level 3 forts to step into. If you break up a couple Panzer Divisions and leave a regiment in some of the forts, you can even potentially defeat a para drop. The result could delay him. Too late now, but for next time.

Looking at the situation around Rome, you probably will have to delay him long enough to extract everyone out of Southern Italy, and form a new line at the Gothic Line. You're almost at 1944 anyway, when the VPs for Rome will drop. Rome is the only thing left south of Florence worth fighting for, since you've already lost the airfields around Foggia and the heel.

I also am not sure leaving a division in Naples is a great idea. That's a better strategy in France at some point.

I've also found the same thing as you: Beachheads are almost impossible to take, even with big odds. You can inflict alot of casualties though, as you found out. I have only taken one by using like 3 full stacks on a single division. Even isolated, they aren't easy.

[loki100]

you are right about pre-building etc. Its just that in addition to the lack of hordes of orcs, I'm a bit surprised at the lack of admin pts on the Axis side.

I get everything out, make him pay with casualties and if I can bring the war in Italy to an end with a defense of the Appenine crinalle that will be ok for me.

Found playing the AI that not getting Naples for a while is actually a real problem ... those ports in central Italy are not enough for decent supply ... so again may help close off this theatre?

But still learning a lot about the axis side, its not always obvious what choices to make when the consequences are 10+ turns away

[loki100]

Turn 26: 1- 6 January 1944

So lets see what happened on New Years Eve, some more allied units arrived in Italy



8 Airforce bombed near the Ruhr and Bomber Command hit Dresden [1]



VP situation for the new year, shifts a little in my direction. To be expected given the losses I inflicted last turn.



My pools seem to be ok.



And the East Front seems to be stable.



I've sent some infantry divisions, spare corps and a Pzr division, plus a number of bomber squadrons.

On the ground, my Pzrs had resisted most attempts to break out. In turn I attack those rather inviting Paras



That is at least one unit dispatched back to N Ireland.

Good thing is I can set up to contain the landings for another turn which should allow me to complete my redeployment.


[1] By hit I mean they seem to have used their planes as bombs ... clearly sending very drunk aircrews into action is a mistake.

[IslandInland]

None of the screenshots posted by Loki show up for me. I've tried in Chrome and Firefox. Is anyone else having the same issue?

[LiquidSky]

I can see them. Is it only Loki's screenshots you can't see, or is it everyone?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: XXXCorps

None of the screenshots posted by Loki show up for me. I've tried in Chrome and Firefox. Is anyone else having the same issue?

I've got the same issue - seems to be a problem with imageshack. But I'm away with no easy IT access so it'll be a week or so before I can chase it up

[IslandInland]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



I can see them. Is it only Loki's screenshots you can't see, or is it everyone?

Just Loki's. I've checked other AAR's and threads on the main forum where screenshots are posted and they are fine.

Thanks for your reply, Loki. I thought it was just me.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: XXXCorps

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



I can see them. Is it only Loki's screenshots you can't see, or is it everyone?

Just Loki's. I've checked other AAR's and threads on the main forum where screenshots are posted and they are fine.

Thanks for your reply, Loki. I thought it was just me.

still seems to be some problems with a few images .. imageshack used to be pretty bad for this when it was effectively free but got better once they charged a small annual fee.

anyway, apols at the slow pace of updates. We are moving a bit more slowly than in our last game as we're both away a bit more (and I can't play WiTW on my older laptop), I want to keep a few turns behind. More, I'm finding it hard to write up as the Axis, its either incredibly detailed ... where I moved my fighters to etc ... or very schematic and in that case best to conflate a number of turns where really only small variations of the same thing happened.

think this reflects playing the Axis side in WiTW, its interesting, certainly a challenge, and you need to plan well ahead but it is essentially re-active.

[loki100]

Turn 27: 8-13 January 1944

Main events in the Allied turn were that they made some gains around the bridgehead and were following up my units retreating from the south.



In the air, the US 8 Airforce had another bad week.



I'm taking gambles with my fighter deployments and tending to set them in clusters while leaving other areas relatively exposed. The result is some turns the allied airforce comes to where I am strong. I expect this to lose its impact as the Americans gain better escorts but for now I'm pretty content with my air defensive planning.

Seems that Bomber Command were given the week off, presumably they were being retrained in how to fly their planes [8D]

In Italy, I fling in the Luftwaffe again, trying to minimise re-supply and set up some interdiction to hurt any allied breakout.



I then execute a huge run away ...



Leaving stay behind garrisons at Naples and Gaeta.

It was tempting to fight one more turn, really for the VP gain but I've managed to achieve my first goal of pulling out all the units in southern Italy. If the Allies enter northern Italy that is one set of garrison rules I can ignore and I'd like to move XIV Pzr Corps to France before the Allies start to bomb my rail net.

[Seminole]

Did he break the line at Termoli, or just exploit your retreat after invading at Rome with that advance by the Canadian armor?
What armor have you identified in Italy thus far?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Seminole

Did he break the line at Termoli, or just exploit your retreat after invading at Rome with that advance by the Canadian armor?
What armor have you identified in Italy thus far?

the east coast advance was unopposed. His stuff in the west/centre is snagged up on a weak defensive line and my stay behind division at Naples. So I think there are only 2 armoured divisions in action, that Canadian unit and another that was part of his landings north of Rome. There may have been more off to sea but it seems as if the Allied forces in Italy are mostly infantry.

[loki100]

Turns 28-30: 15 January - 4 February 1944

Again, I'm going to conflate a number of turns as events are fairly repetitive.

Following my successful (or disastrous) escape at Rome, the land war settled down to a stalemate. I'd suspect that without Naples and with a limited rail net, the Allies are struggling for supply in central Italy. In addition, I strongly suspect most of their better units will be pulled out for the invasion of France.

The air war continued as before. Generally each major allied airforce went for a single hex target, 15 Air made its first appearance and ran into a fighter cluster I'd deployed waiting for them. From my own experience, its hard to properly escort this air group in southern Germany/Austria and inflicting heavy losses should render it inactive for a while.

Last turn of this sequence shows a typical pattern. Bomber Command hit Stuttgart.



8 Airforce mostly went for the V-weapon factories on the Baltic. Oddly so far the Allies haven't hit the launch sites in France which is unusual. I find them easy to knock down simply using the Halifax/Wellingtons of Bomber Command. A second raid hit Braunschweig.



15 Air was hiding after being beaten up the previous week.

VP situation for the end of January. The liberation of Rome is boosting the allied per-turn gain, lack of sustained combat keeps their lost VP for casualties pretty low. But overall I'm happy enough with the VP situation for the strategic air war.



The last turn they had limited air losses as all their raids evaded the bulk of my fighter cover. I've no idea if the overall loss situation is ok, but at the moment all my fighter units are only using trained pilots and most are fully operational.



I think I've inflicted fairly heavy losses on the Allied strategic bombers (both Lancasters and B-17s).

This shows my Italian defensive line at the end of January.



Really my goal is to allocate enough forces to be annoying and delay the allies but hopefully have the bulk of the army ready in France.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: XXXCorps

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



I can see them. Is it only Loki's screenshots you can't see, or is it everyone?

Just Loki's. I've checked other AAR's and threads on the main forum where screenshots are posted and they are fine.

Thanks for your reply, Loki. I thought it was just me.

Just as a follow up to this, I had this email from imageshack (this is what I use for image hosting), main bits are:

Dear ImageShack users, on September 29th '15, ImageShack has suffered a very large service outage. We wanted to take time to explain what happened, and how it affected your accounts as well as Image delivery.

During a routine maintenance, a small mistake crept up into one of our management tools that caused all our of servers to wipe out their operating systems as well as most of the image storage systems. You may want to ask, how can something small cause such a large issue? Don't we have backups. And Yes, indeed, we do have at least 3 copies as backups of all your images.

ImageShack has been around since 2004, during that time we have grown to store billions of images, and used hundreds of servers to deliver those images to the internet. We always relied on automated systems that allowed us to keep our team relatively small, so that we could pass to cost savings to you, our users. Unfortunately, with system automation comes a risk of a mistake such as described above.

The good news, we were able to restore most of the images,and continue to deliver them to you pages. The bad news is that we lost about 4% of all images, across all accounts (paid and free). This means that if you have a page with 100 images embedded, there perhaps would be between 3 to 5 images missing. .... .

[loki100]

Turns 31-34: 5 February – 3 March 1944

Again I'm going to conflate quite a lot of turns. Same reason, I'm finding the German side very reactive (as it should be) and a combination of setting up some long term ideas and fiddling around with the relative layout of my fighter defences and so on.

So far, I've been keeping the experience level of my fighter squadrons high by setting them to TPI only for replacements. The result is I have increasing number of planes in the pools and a few squadrons below the eligible to fly % [1].

I'm going to try to manage this by scrapping some squadrons and manually re-assigning their pilots to my best units. In effect, I want to see what happens if you end up with a small but elite fighter force in the late game. In the reverse game, Dave allocated untrained pilots from about September 1944 and the result was massive operational losses and I stopped even bothering to hunt down the Luftwaffe (as I had been doing from May-September) as it was no meaningful threat.

Anyway, my brave troops are determined to prevent the fine people of Naples from being forced to drink milky tea by the British ...


[2]

On T31, US 8 Air was the one that flew into a trap



They decided to do the same on T32 as well



On both turns the hapless 15 Air was clearly sent off on a compulsory training course. Many cows wandering around in Swabia found themselves being used for target practice.

T33 brought an odd VP event. I lost 10 for the east front, despite, as far as I can work out more than meeting the requirements. Any ideas why?



T33, both US strategic air groups hid and whimpered (at least that is what the email discussion claimed) but Bomber Command took over the task of flying to where my fighters were most concentrated,



On T34 my chums in 15 Air returned, this time clearly aiming at something more important than the Swabian dairy industry.



VP situation at the end of February. Given the lack of much ground fighting, I think that is ok.




[1] I know I can reset this but its a useful safety net in case a unit is caught and hammered early in a turn as it prevents massive losses of both pilots and morale.
[2] Idea here is to delay any chance the Allies have to build up supply in Italy – finally fell on T33.

[Joel Billings]

The front line is at 212, but it should be at 214. Since it has moved 2 hexes west of the victory line, the Allies score 2x5 or 10 points.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

The front line is at 212, but it should be at 214. Since it has moved 2 hexes west of the victory line, the Allies score 2x5 or 10 points.

ah, thanks, I was clearly reading the table upside down [;)]

[loki100]

Turns 35-36: 4 March – 17 March 1944

Usual bombing patterns on T35, 8 Air hit Jena and Bomber Command went for the Ruhr (15 Air hid under the duvet and whimpered).



Increasingly 8 Air seems to be well enough escorted not to take many losses in air combat but my night fighter force is still effective. Add on the flak concentrations in the Ruhr and the British took heavy losses.



Anyway with the new patch, I decided to see if I could escalate the war at night. There is a new (and rather fun) air superiority mission now that you fly in your opponent's air phase and it basically puts your interceptors over their bases when they return [1].



This was also accompanied by a day time recon mission.

Despite their losses, next turn theBritish returned again to the Ruhr [2] and 8 Air went for the v-weapon sites. My favourite chums in 15 Air returned with another devastating raid on the Swabian milk industry.



Allied losses are starting to reduce.



First signs they are becoming nosy about what is going on in Europe.



This turn led to a major re-organisation of my day fighter deployments. First I swapped out all the long range fighters for the new FW models. I then stripped out some squadrons and allocated them to the France for escort duties. Final step was to create two clusters in Germany with all the remaining day fighters in them.

My logic is if I now intercept with limited planes it makes little difference to the well escorted Americans (already most of their losses are due to flak). I'd rather try to catch them out badly if they walk into a trap rather than contest every mission.


[1] – the only problem is you don't get to see the outcome ... I think it works as the units I have allocated to this mission have taken some losses.
[2] – so we've reached that phase where losses (numbers and morale) might weaken the allied bombing campaign but not actually stop it

[Q-Ball]

Good job on Italy; I personally think it's not worth it to hold Rome much past April, because you're going to want to pull troops from Italy anyway once France is invaded. That's easier to do along the Gothic Line.

His 8th AF strikes don't seem to have much of an escort, if any......he should have plenty of P-38 to use in that role, not sure what the story is there