Yay its Xmas! The war is over! The war is over! The war is...vast ist los?
Apparently my dumbkopf generals cant follow simple orders. Its time for the AG commander to come to Berlin for a little 'chat'
Army Group C commander Ferdinand Schoerner is dismissed
Maximilian Fretter-Pico takes command of Army Group C
My attacks have stalled out. I took no new ground, although I did kill a lot of allied tanks. A couple hundred at least...you know....a days production.
On a good note, the allies decided that bombing the interior of Germany would be a good idea. 500 well trained Fighter Pilots showed them that it was not. Luftwaffe ist uber! Hmm..I wonder if you can get one with the app?
Attachments
Dec25th1943.jpg (178.05 KiB) Viewed 416 times
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
Well its 1944. Snow is falling all over Europe freeing me from the bothersome bombers. Factories are being repaired. VPS per turn are a lot less for the allies then they were before. (10/turn for cities, 6 per turn for bombing), but my garrisons have skyrocketed to around -6 per turn.
I've retreated back to my Northern S-Curve Fort Line. I doubt the allies have the force to pierce it, but we'll see.
Which brings us to the next phase of the war...SECOND FRONT.
Where to land?
Landing in the Netherlands gives a direct route into Germany..along with the largest ports for supply. Problem is it is easy to be trapped by the terrain. A major river coupled with cities for strong points means you aren't likely to breakout.
Which brings us to a side invasion...the south must be invaded...it is very hard to defend and bottle up, although German air can be very annoying. The south opens up all of France, which means that no matter how much the German player wants to stay...he will have to evacuate France and back up to some eastern line anchored by Switzerland.
It wasn't Cobra that made the Germans run back...it was the threat of all those allies coming up from the South.
Denmark is kind of a dumb area to land in....its way too far for air to help you effectively, (and bomb Germany at the same time). It feels like a sneaky move, but really its easy to defend against.
The channel ports are kind of a risky area to land in. The ports themselves will be difficult to take outright, leaving the German with fortified locations adjacent to your landings. On a plus side, your air power will be devastating, with airfields in easy reach. On the minus side, every German mech unit will be glued to your front line, and you will probably lose units...and casualty points. Also, the area is straddled by the Belgium/NE France garrison line, so you will probably be releasing the entire German army.
Farther down you have the Abbeville-Dieppe-Le Havre area. Invading Dieppe...what could go wrong?
I've seen this in a couple of games, so I have a pretty good idea how it goes. The biggest problem is it is right in the middle. That makes it easy for the Germans to get reinforcements there. I remember being able to drive all my mech from as far away as Brittany and Belgium the turn I was invaded. The area lacks ports, so once you start to break out, supply will be a problem. However, it does place you on the other side of the Seine making a defense of western France impossible.
Which brings us to Normandy. Like the Netherlands, it is an easy place to hem in the invader because of the good terrain. Its in easy reach of a lot of allied airpower, and that good terrain also makes it hard for the Germans to counterattack. A fairly safe place to invade. If you couple it with the taking of the channel islands, you can even land paratroopers inland on the bocage to really mess up the German defence. But it is history..and who wants to mimic history? Those old farts had no idea what they were doing[;)]
Finally...Brittany. I've been hit here before as well. It is extremely easy to invade here, not because of terrain etc. but because there are just more important areas for the Germans to defend. And getting from Brittany to Berlin is a long long road. On the plus side you are only going to be in one garrison zone for a while (until you invade the south).
I don't think invading the western coast is viable. It would be just as easy as invading Brittany, but without the air cover. And you have to invade north of the Beachhead VP line anyways.
So...a limited number of German divisions, and a lot of coast to protect.
Over the next 16 turns, my opponent is probably going to gain 5-10 vps per turn. Which means before he invades France, he will have a minor victory. So I doubt he would risk that by invading a high casualty area like the channel ports, or south of that...he's winning anyways, he just has to keep bombing me.
So from what is left Netherlands is not a bad choice. A bit risky, but it makes bombing even easier...it can be fortified if you can reach the Major River so it becomes a bastion of defence whilst you bomb the enemy to victory.
Problem is it is too good. So I will defend it heavily with infantry. I don't need the tanks here because of the Polder. And I have already started fortifying the cities which may make it expensive for him to reach the magical 10 hexes he needs to avoid the vp penalty.
Normandy is not bad...but it also is a bit constrained in space. It is possible to not make the 10 hexes you need for vps....and some of the terrain is open, meaning counterattacks are possible. But it also gives you the option of breaking out and pushing into France and Germany for more city points....kind of compromise choice
Brittany. Now if I was a betting man, I would say this is the place he will invade. It is easy to get the 10 hexes you need to avoid the penalty...you can suck up a few turns of fighting to build a defensive wall by fortifying the neck. And then bomb bomb bomb to victory. It is by far the safest of the Netherlands, Normandy or Brittany options.
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
Things are very quiet. Snow still falls over much of Europe. The allies don't dare cross the Northern Italian Garrison death line.
Some things I have noticed..despite having had a lot of my Fuel and Oil infrastructure bombed heavily...the lack of movement on my panzers and Luftwaffe means my Fuel pool is growing very large. Its higher now then it was at the start.
Hopefully it will have enough to last me the war when the action starts back up again in the spring.
My defence of Netherlands is almost complete. I decided to put the paratrooper army there because it is such an important area to defend. All the cities are being fortified since they don't need a fortification unit to reach level 3.
Belgium is also looking good. A little more work needed there.
I haven't touched the Pas d Calais area yet. But I think I will group a lot of the PzG units there. They can move rapidly to where the action is. I have to move some infantry back to the ports as well.
Normandy I plan to build a line of forts along the bottom. At the moment all my admin points are going to disbanding Ost Battalions for the paltry rifle squads they give. But I have run out of manpower, so every bit counts.
Brittany. This is a tough one. I was thinking of also building a line of forts across the neck, but not sure if I have time. I will probably put a strong panzer corp just south of Normandy to use either in Brittany or in the Dieppe area as a reaction force.
I like how my Luftwaffe is building back up after the mauling it took before winter. I was down to 400-500 active fighters in Luftwaffe Reich. 35 pilots a turn may not sound like a lot, but over 6 turns that is over 200. I'm beginning to eye the NF squadrons to. Their slacking days are almost over.
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
Do you remember that you gave me permission to read and post here? If you forgot than I will not read this thread again until our game is complete. I stopped reading the above as soon as I realized it contained some perhaps classified information.
On the other hand, if you did remember than either:
a) you are being very generous with your thoughts and information, or
b) you are very cleverly providing misinformation.
Nah..you can read all you want. I know from experience that it is very easy to find all the German units. And the fort levels will be easy to see as well.
And while I have more or less finished the Netherlands defence, I have barely started on the other regions, so I have plenty of time to set them up.
Also..no pictures [:D]
EDIT: I believe that the best way for the allies to invade the continent is to not be sneaky. Sneaky doesn't work very well.
What does work well is a systematic and continuous bombardment of the area you want to invade. (when the weather clears a bit). Sure it telegraphs the intent, but the constant interdiction kills trucks carrying supplies, messes up any divisions that want to move to the area (and continually keeps hitting them).
There is no defence to a coastal hex so the invasion cannot be prevented from happening. The paratroopers can be prevented from landing, but they can be saved for follow up attacks for breakout.
Feel free to post pictures of what the coast defences look like while I make them [;)]
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
Another thing LiquidSky does very well is maximize the negative VPs from garrisons. See Screenshot below where the maximum -8 Garrison VPs were scored. This means that LS has all of the garrison zones, including Denmark, over garrisoned. My guess is that he has most or all of them over garrisoned by at least 40CVs (as anything over 40 won't give you any extra negative VPs).
So again, just like using all (and I mean all) of your construction battalions to repair factories this make perfect sense. But how many people are actually doing this? I know in my game with QBall I am not; but I probably will next game. The only risk is if the Allies do an early invasion and you have 40CV worth of extra units a long way away in Denmark; but those 40 CVs probably are not going to make a big difference anyway.
The air war is now so large, I cant fit it on my monitor to see it all at once. He is also bombing the V-wpn factories in the north, and hit Stuttgart in the south.
I have 4 fighter pilots with 20 kills or more, and 3 with 19.
Attachments
Feb191944AirWar.jpg (799.95 KiB) Viewed 415 times
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
And this turn I lost over 600 planes and over 400 pilots....although some of them were axis minor. Not a lot of bombing though so it must have been air superiority missions.
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
It looks like a lot of air combat over Holland. Are those DAY combats?
If so, you have the LW based too far forward. Everyone should be based no further forward than Central Germany. Outside of P-47 range.
That's just my opinion. It's not that the P-47 is a wonderplane, but that's roughly the range of both the P-47 and Spitfire, types the Allies have plenty of, and would gladly dogfight all day with
I bounce my airforce around a bit. I built up the airfields in the Ruhr and at Berlin and some of the other cities. I should have rested my airforce that turn but I didn't expect such a violent reaction. I have to stop underestimating my opponent.
Here is an interesting turn. My airforce is recovering and the allies still manage to lose over 200 planes and pilots.
Attachments
Mar4194..sualties.jpg (48.87 KiB) Viewed 415 times
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
I bounce my airforce around a bit. I built up the airfields in the Ruhr and at Berlin and some of the other cities. I should have rested my airforce that turn but I didn't expect such a violent reaction. I have to stop underestimating my opponent.
Here is an interesting turn. My airforce is recovering and the allies still manage to lose over 200 planes and pilots.
I flew a lot of missions this turn as bad weather is expected for next turn. Basically every air group with 50+ morale was in the air. This included a lot of "unit" bombing in Holland and Brittany. The losses were all to flak or operational, with most being operational. I assume many of these operational losses were units badly damaged by flak that crashed on landing.
LS stated in an earlier post that I was free to post screenshots of my air recon over NW Europe. I was thinking of doing so, but other than ports and major cities he doesn't appear to have any units within 3 hexes of the coast anywhere from Normandy to the Dutch Border. So there is really not much to see. I can only assume he moved them back to avoid me bombing them.
Here is the VP total as of turn 46, or seven turns ahead. It looks like:
--Harrybanana is about 100 points ahead in City points
--He's a little behind me in Strat Bombing (but is logging more points than I was at that point, so I must have had a better 1943)
--He's did a better job on U-Boats than I did
--He's lost a lot more guys; this is because this game has more combat in Northern Italy
Overall, I think harrybanana is ahead of me in this one if you are comparing Allies to Allies, because he has Central Italy and I don't. I also anticipate a really tough slog later on, because I haven't caused enough damage to the Wehrmacht.
The big thing I lost so far in this game was Italy. Invading around Rome with the entire Western Army unhinged my defence. I hung on as long as I could, but it wasn't a good time to lose a chunk of my army so I had to pull back to the safety of the north.
So Rome (the big one for vps) and all those lesser cities are counting early for him.
I'm not too worried though....invasion is coming, and there will be casualty points to farm that will bring the score down. And he will get less and less points for cities, and bombing will give less return even though it will get easier to do.
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
LiquidSky continues to surprise, mystify and out guess me in the Air War. This last turn he appears to have moved all of his FBs out of Germany and rebased them in France where they devastated 2nd TACs Vwpn, railroad and Unit bombing attacks. I think I read somewhere that it is not really necessary to escort FBs performing ground Attack missions as they can look after themselves. Trust me, that is not true; at least not if LS is your opponent. He shot me down by about a 4:1 margin in air to air combat and pilot losses were even worse. I would have thought that the French underground would have been able to save some of those Allied pilots who bailed out, but apparently not. The only good news is that 8th and 15th AFs both had relatively easy runs this turn.
But what is really annoying is that I thought I had finally figured out why his NFs are shooting down my NFs and Night Bombers by such a wide margin. He was basing his NFs in Holland and that way getting several shots at me both on my way to the bombing targets and again on the way back (at least I assume the latter). So I thought I could counter this by having 9th AF bomb his Airfields in Holland during the day the first part of the week, and then bomb at night on the last 3 days. The problem is that 9th AF was completely incapable of destroying any aircraft on the ground (see below). So my usual question: What am I doing wrong? Why were my airfield bombing attacks so dreadful? True I only used 50 aircraft per mission, but to get absolutely nothing seems a bit odd.Is it because the airfields in question are in urban and city hexes? I mean surely the airfields don't get the benefit of the urban type terrain? Or do they? If so that would be bizarre. I means it's not like the aircraft are sheltering in the brothels of Amsterdam's Red Light District and then using the city streets as runways. In an urban area or not they still have to have have lots of unsheltered runways and hangars.
