The Sun Also Rises ( D21 )

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
For Odessa I used all the Rumanian arty and HQ units plus the railroad guns and gave
them the beans for two turns. There was not much left in there afterwards.

Wow, with all that firepower I'll bet that Odessa fell relatively quickly. What turn
are you on? I'm not in much of a hurry myself there at Odessa. I want to avoid any
high-losses attacks and like you I railed a lot of the OKH arty down there, the RR
arty tubes, and they are making their presence felt. I've noticed that if there's any
ferry engineers in the Soviet stacks that sometimes the defenders will take to the
shallow water hexes to retreat.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T14 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

I airdropped some paratroopers on the small island capturing the supply point so as
to cripple the Soviet defenders a little bit. I'm pounding the defenenders with my
ships and bombarding them with my arty and I'm going to try to assault them with a
direct attack next turn to see how much more softening up they need.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on around Odessa right now. I'm compressing the defenders into
fewer hexes and other units are racing for the entrance to the Crimea. The railhead
is norh of Odessa already and the supply situation seems to be getting better.
Progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T15 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the face of war in the northern front lines right now. There's a lot of
fierce fighting going on and dominance varies from place to place. I've got
security forces on the front lines now, which should never happen because they get
withdrawn often. I've got a supply unit up here that I don't need. I'm going to
ship it to the south where they really need it. Some CD guns spawned on the north
coast of the peninsula. I've got one (1) RR engineer repairing rail from Pskov to
Narva in the bottleneck and so far I've been able to hold back the hordes in one
area to have a sufficient number of units to prosecute an attack in another area.
That tactic is going to fail me one of these turns.

[saudivan]

Is the Finnish Army contributing anything to the conflict? I see some of their units for the first time in your recent updates.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: saudivan
Is the Finnish Army contributing anything to the conflict? I see some of their units for the first time in your recent updates.

Sounds like I need to give you guys a tour of the Finnish front. Good idea, thanks for bringing it up. I'll see
what I can do.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a first rough draft of an overview of the Finnish front lines. In the far
north there's Murmansk and the crew up there is so low on supply, perpetually, that
they are in defensive mode only. Just holding what they have. Further south, every-
body is mostly light probes and defense. And just above Leningrad the Finns are
pushing south and making slow progress.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on near Murmansk right now. I'm dug in on the river and north
of that. There was a complex of hills near Da Nang called Monkey Mountain where the
North Vietnamese sappers would station a batallion or so and run their raids out of
there but they were so rare and caused so little real damage that they were mostly
ignored. I used to wonder if the US would ever mount an effort to take them out
entirely. I've got a situation like that near Murmansk where there's enemy troops
to my north that I'm defending against but I'm thinking that a campaign to take them
out would involve a whole unit for several turns and I may need those troops elsewhere.
I suspect the Soviets have objectives for the terrain I hold so I'm mostly defending
up here. I'm thinking of bombing his ship unit just to see what would happen. I don't
have any anti-ship assets up here. I may have to remedy that if I ever get serious
about the ship.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a closeup of the situation just north of Leningrad and as you can see the Finns
had to break down their units into pieces in order to have enough units to stand in
the front lines. There are still gaps but for the most part the Soviets are contained.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T16 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[EwaldvonKleist]

had to break down their units into pieces in order to have enough units to stand in
the front lines. There are still gaps but for the most part the Soviets are contained

Why is it important to have a continous frontline when on the offensive in TOAW?
Don't own TOAW and come from WitE where having gaps in the frontline is standard praxis for the Axis in 1941. If you know both games, I am curious which differences in the game mechanics cause this?
I highly appreciate your&all others Eastern Front AARs here, well done with great graphical presentation.
Thank you for all the effort Put into it!
Regards

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

had to break down their units into pieces in order to have enough units to stand in
the front lines. There are still gaps but for the most part the Soviets are contained

Why is it important to have a continous frontline when on the offensive in TOAW?
Don't own TOAW and come from WitE where having gaps in the frontline is standard praxis for
the Axis in 1941. If you know both games, I am curious which differences in the game mechanics
cause this?
I highly appreciate your&all others Eastern Front AARs here, well done with great graphical
presentation.
Thank you for all the effort Put into it!
Regards

Hey There EwaldvonKleist dude. Thanks for your question. The reason that I like to have a
contigous front line is because I don't want the Soviet units to advance through my lines
into my backfield. Also, contiguous front lines just look better. I'm old fashioned and
grew up with contiguous front lines and just prefer them now.

[larryfulkerson]

Totally off topic but something I just discovered is the configuration of your game
tools. This is the way I arrange them with the little dialogs on the lower left and
the bigger ones on the far right with the mini-map at the bottom. I've analysed the
way I play and I've found that I don't always need to move the selected unit so if I
don't then I just left-click on the "next unit" button and then right-click on the
mini-map to center the map on the selected unit. And then repeat the process for the
next unit in the OOB. So I've arranged the game controls to where I need them and I'm
wondering if there's anybody else who has found a good configuration and would want
to share it with us.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation just to the NE of Kiev and it appears to be adequate but
the okie dokie areas taper off quickly and at the tip of the spear it needs some. I
noticed that I'm fighting over the river crossings still. When the rivers freeze over
this winter I won't need the crossings.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the moves of T16:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the northern front lines looking south and as you can see there are places
where the supply is fine and there are places that have a need for higher levels
but the effort is being expended and progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

There's a place just south of Murmansk that I'm trying to crack and they have some
Soviet ships in support so I flew some fighters and a squadron of Stuka's up here
from the Pskov area using enough MP's for three turns worth of combat. I'll wait
a bit before using it operationally. But I'm after those CL's and DD's or whatever
he's got there. And then once the ship is gone I'll concentrate on that Soviet stack.

[larryfulkerson]

Smolensk:
I tried to get a Pincer operation started but the guys that were going to tke part came
down with the grey flu and are now resting on the places where the supply is the highest,
along the rails. They will be ready in a couple of turns, meanwhile the operation to
surround all that Soviet stuff and kill it is on hold for about two weeks, maybe four
turns or so.