Workshop for the new guys - Directive 21 (D21)

[larryfulkerson]

I dropped some paratroops near some river crossings to prevent the Soviets from getting away. It may be too late; I may
have dropped too close to the front lines for trapping any Soviets. I'm supposing I can advance up to the paratroops
before they are trapped and killed. They knew what they were getting into when they signed up.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm doing mop up on the west side of Riga and the hordes are advancing on the east. Soviet resistance is slight so far.

[larryfulkerson]

I just forced the crossing at Daugavpils and that makes about 5 river crossings in my hands....that ought to let a lot
of troops across the river quick enough. I'm in a footrace, have I mentioned this before?, that Pskov is then next
natural defensive position that's needed by the Axis because a key railroad runs through there so I need to get there
before the Soviets can drop the bridges and so on.

[larryfulkerson]

Now I'm trying to get a surround completed around Minsk before I take it down. That way all the equipment that I
destroy won't go back to their pools. Every little bit helps.

[larryfulkerson]

The 60th Motorized Division made it across the rivers and creeks and finally got a toehold on the east side of the first
river crossing of many to go yet. Odessa isn't looking all that far away all of a sudden.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, I've moved everybody and I'm reviewing the battles and they are all under the time budget but there's one with a
particularly low AR that I might have to cancel. I like to have AR's about 200+ if it's possible. A lot of times the
hex the target is in is so important that I'm in the habit of accepting AR's in the low 100's.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's that low AR attack and I can completely understand what the numbers mean now. One Rumanian infantry unit attacking
a Soviet tank unit isn't a good idea and can lead to losses; I cancelled the attack. I like flank attacks best. Or
at least those places I can get three attackers in on one hex target.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the results of all the attacks. I cleaned up a few hexes and made a good start on some more and things are
going rather well at the moment.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what happened in the first combat round of Turn 5:

[larryfulkerson]

This is T6 now and as part of my new turn procedure I check the deployment of the aircraft and give them missions PRN
and Iv'e ordered a lot of bridge attacks to see if I can hamper the flow of Soviet reinforcements to the front.
Probably wont' hamper them a bit but at least I feel like I'm doing something constructive.

[larryfulkerson]

The Axis forces are sneaking up on Pskov but I don't see very many Soviet units between the Axis forces and Pskov so I
guess the Soviets beat me there. Or there weren't any units to chase down. At any rate progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the Minsk area now. I'm having terrible traffic trouble as you can see. It's really crowded and I need to
spread out the troops more. All of them are moving east and we're approaching Orsha and Smolensk and the path
through the middle is a hard row to hoe. Lots of Soviet resistance all the way there.

[larryfulkerson]

And south of Minsk north of the Marshes there's a spot where I'm approaching the Soviet main line of resistance. There's
a complex of rivers there and the main defense is at the third river in the path from west to east. But the other two
rivers have the occasional Soviet roadblock and river crossing strong point. I have to defeat all that stuff to get to
Moscow so it's a good thing that the terrain is better on the east side of the third river.

[larryfulkerson]

And a little further north along the same river(s) is the town of Orsha and I'm sneaking up on it. It starts the place
in the terrain where there's no defensive river and not much in the way of helpful defensive terrain, most of it is
clear and difficult to defend and I'm wondering if I can force my way through there.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T7. I'm seeing a huge bubble of troops in the middle and I wonder how that happened. I'm
going to have to send some of those guys to the SE and fill that vacuum a little bit. Most of the progress is being
made in the south.

[FaneFlugt]

exciting AAR! I am currently playing the same scenario as you, I am a bit ahead of you (turn 14). I had ONE combat round, then some unit failed a proficency check and my army lost the rest of the turn. Then the Soviets moved and trashed me ... then they got the initiative and they got another turn (2 in a row) and trashed me again. outside Kiev and on the Finnish front. Total clusterfuck... But you seem to be doing quite well. I haven´t even got around to decide what to do with my Brandenburgers yet, they haven´t seen action.

[sanderz]

thanks again larry

it would be interesting to see a screen shot showing the supply numbers

cheers

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: FaneFlugt.DK
exciting AAR! I am currently playing the same scenario as you, I am a bit ahead of you (turn 14).
I had ONE combat round, then some unit failed a proficency check and my army lost the rest
of the turn.

I think you'll find that the next time it happens that it's actually caused by your force
proficiency check that failed. It's happend to me more than once. It's frustrating, forces
the player to play defensively even when attacking. Sometimes it's a good idea to have two
units in each adjacent stack and dig one of them in for defense and attack with the other one.
I'm guessing that the only way to improve the force proficiency is to make sure that all your
units are healthy ( green dot ) and rested, but who can achieve that in the middle of a shooting
war?

ORIGINAL: FaneFlugt.DK
Then the Soviets moved and trashed me ... then they got the initiative and they got another turn (2 in a row) and trashed me again. outside Kiev and on the Finnish front. Total clusterfuck... But you seem to be doing quite well.

I seem to be doing quite well because I've done it about 12 times before. I got to turn 63 one
time before I restarted for a reason that escapes me at the moment. Especially frustrating are
the mud turns when you can't attack and moving is problematic for about 15 turns in a row. But
then the ground freezes and you can move again. The aircraft don't seem to have a problem with
mud though and fly their missions like there's nothing strange happening.

ORIGINAL: FaneFlugt.DK
I haven´t even got around to decide what to do with my Brandenburgers yet, they haven´t seen action.

Brandenburgers are especially handy to have to stop up the escape avenues your enemy will have to
use to escape your advance. There used to be a house rule about dropping them 10 hexes from one
of your units and now I see it's a scenario rule. I can live with that. It's realistic. And anyway
you don't want to drop them in a place you can save them from except in maybe an emergency condition
that requires action immediately. I especially like to drop my airborne on enemy airfields because
they can leave the next turn if needed. I don't like to lose my paratroopers and I hate it when
they land in a hex that already has an enemy unit in it ( invisible to me at first ) and it gets
evaporated. That's happened to my 3rd Brandenburger dudes and I'm down to just four left. I'm
careful where I send them now. It's got to be an important mission for me to fly them somewhere.
I haven't found much use for them lately what with all the slashing and dashing and the enemy
presence largely unknown that far behind their lines. I like to chase partisans with my airborne.
It's a safe job and usually I can dispatch one of the line divisions to deliver the killing attack.
I've got the Slovic contingent guarding the marshes, that's where a lot of the partisans emerge.

The Hungarians are SO useful on the battlefield that I've toyed with the idea of using them to
garrison bases that are important around the Marshes as protection and insurance against partisan
invasion. I'm getting some traction from the Rumanians however, and I count on them for their
share of the load. The Italians aren't active yet, but they have one of the longer ranged fighters
that when it appears I like to base it near the Italians for it's AS mission capability. And I've
gotten some utility from the Italians too. It depends on how you use them. I don't like to put
them on the front lines because you have to stack them to get enough juice to be able to stand
there in the face of Soviet attacks. And when I play the Soviet side I use three-dot attacks a
lot. It's sometimes a waste of troops but the Soviets can afford to lose a lot of troops.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
thanks again larry

it would be interesting to see a screen shot showing the supply numbers

cheers

I get that. Supply is the one thing that hampers my advance almost as bad as the Soviets. I
frequently have to rest my units for a turn or two before they gather together enough supply
to move and still have 50% or so afterwords. I like to use 50% as a rule of thumb for whether
or not my units are combat worthy. I rest those that aren't when possible. I like the idea
of setting up rest camps behind the lines to send the units to when they get especially tired.
Those units that are going to take more than just one turn to recouperate I liek to move to
high-supply areas with an HQ unit in attendance to boost the recovery rate. In a city or other
high-supply area. Usually an urban area of some kind. They like to rest in urban areas.
I like to put the HQ in a place where there are crossroads so that I can stack up the tired
units in each of the adjacent hexes on the road or rail for the best supply retention rate.
WITE has a way to drop some supplies to specific hexes but TOAW IV doesn't know
how to do airdrops yet. It's a needed mission IMHO. That and night missions. It's frustrating
to have a Port Moresby stocked to the gills with enemy fighters and you have all kinds of
bombers at Rabaul and you can't bomb Port Moresby without extravagent losses. Night missions
would permit bombing in the face of all those fighters to get hits on the base without all the
losses. But TOAW IV doesn't know about night missions yet. At least there's a good
supply model in the game engine. It's realistic and workable. You can use supply against your
opponent by dropping bridges in his rear. Separate him from his supply source and he's got to
move. That's the theory.

[larryfulkerson]

We're starting to get into the single digit supply situations near Mimsk. That means the rails haven't been keeping up
with the fighting and I may need to call a halt to the advance for a turn or two to allow the rails to catch up because
I can't fight in low-supply areas. It doesn't work well. The units turn cherry red and that's not a good thing.

EDIT: I used to know the reason for the different colors on the supply dots. Gold means something and blue means
something else and I've forgotten what the difference is. Something about sharing that hex's supply with the enemy
force or something. It's a mystery to me now. I guess I need to RTFM again.

[larryfulkerson]

Oh, yeah, I wanted to say above that I'm using OKH to service those four airfields in Minsk with it's HQ ability. I
just need to base a lot of planes there now. It's a good location at the moment with the front lines being where they
are. Soon the front lines will move and I'll have to find other good places further east. But for a while it's
glorious to have four airfields close together so I can use just a single HQ unit for them.