Impressions - Hard difficulty

[ChuckBerger]

Holy sea of red, this is where it is at! This is where real DC:B players need to be. Hard difficulty is... really hard.

What fun. Turn 3, and I have a panzer and motorized division reduced to little more than Kampfgruppe each by a concerted, and successful, breakout from a pocket I had formed around Lvov.

I almost gave up right then and there, but I decided to see it through to the end. Glad I did.

Took Leningrad in early August, and Rostov on 22 September. I'm sitting in Kalinin, but the Russians still have Rhzhev and Vyazma, and I have no immediate prospect of advancing on Moscow more than one gruelling hex at a time. My Panzers are mostly at around 30-40% strength in AGC.

I might win.

The Russian AI on hard difficulty is brutally unforgiving, and can inflict catastrophic losses if you're not careful. Or even if you are. Pockets are hard to hold shut. Russian activation bonuses mean they have 65AP if they don't activate at all, 90AP for partial activation, and 130AP for full activation.

This now really feels like Barbarossa - the endless hordes of Russians, the desperate lunge for one more hex, even though your troops need a rest and a refit, the fear of impending winter, the neverending Russian counterattacks, even though they lose 4-5 to 1 in losses. I'm being ground down, and there's little I can do about it.

Enjoy...

[ChuckBerger]

Best game I've ever played against an AI.

Auto-victory on October 12, following the capture of Moscow, the last of the three main objectives.

I had to do a very careful dance in the final stages in AGC, I thought there was no chance but finally the pace of Soviet reinforcements slowed, and with three Panzergruppen focusing on Moscow I was able to achieve an unexpected breakthrough.
The integrity of nearly all my panzer and motorized division in AGC is below sixty, and the lowest is at 32, and that's after the latest round of replacements just arrived. They were as low as 24, so I had to be very careful in the final stages...

Final losses about 3.2 million for the Russians, and 605,000 for the Axis. That's a loss ratio of just 5:1, terrible for the Germans! I had just 865 panzers left at the end.

So Hard can be beaten. As for "Very Hard" and "Super Hard", well, I suppose they can be beaten too, but I don't think by using any conventional strategy. I doubt Moscow can be taken at those levels. Possibly a "military independence" strategy, with Leningrad as the target, and focusing 2 Panzergruppen on that objective. With an advantageous initial setup in the north. Might be doable. Have to try...

[Vic]

Congratulations! Its good to see somebody trying out (and winning) at the higher difficulty levels.

Best wishes,
Vic