On to 1943!

[weinsoldner]

Will show losses for the Axis as soon as I open the game later today

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

Respect for continuing in this situation.
[&o]

But much more commonly, the shortage is in resource production.

You explicitly mean resources, and not supply (produced by heavy industry factories)?

I am very surprised there are resource shortages given the wrecked industry leads to lower consumption.

The game forked into two games as far as I can see. One of the versions (the original game) is now on turn 51. TheDoctorKing as taken a version with German players that know the password and our working their way through. This can present a problem in that the Soviets post information pertaining to the original game that is not as far along might be ruined either intentionally or unintentionally. The DoctorKing has been advised before by Slitherine.

[thedoctorking]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

Respect for continuing in this situation.
[&o]

But much more commonly, the shortage is in resource production.

You explicitly mean resources, and not supply (produced by heavy industry factories)?

I am very surprised there are resource shortages given the wrecked industry leads to lower consumption.

It says a shortage in resources hindered supply production. Yeah, I thought it was weird too.

I'm thinking it is maybe because we evacuated too much HI and not enough Armaments? We didn't really lose too many resource production hexes - the Axis never got across the lower Don and into the Caucasus or Kuban region.

[thedoctorking]

Destroyed units from the pockets I got in 1942:

262nd Infantry Division
111th Infantry Division
17th Finnish Inf Div
2nd Finnish Inf Div
6th Army HQ
III Panzer Corps HQ
23rd Panzer Division
75th Infantry Division
255th Infantry Division
298th Infantry Division
56th Infantry Division
4th Mountain Division
24th Panzer Division
9th Panzer Division
1st Fortress Rumanian Inf Div
52nd Torino Italian Inf Div

And a bunch of SU. I can list them if anybody's interested.

[thedoctorking]

Total losses as of turn 73:

Axis 2,106,549 men (of whom 742,324 dead, 290,319 captured, 1,073,906 disabled and 302,646 returned), 42,001 guns, 4,282 AFV, 1,319 AP and AC, and 8,009 aircraft
USSR 6,284,648 men (of whom 1,528,486 dead, 2,681,621 captured, 2,074,541 disabled of whom 389,397 returned), 67,336 guns, 20,688 AFV, 4,995 SP and AC, and 26,652 aircraft

[thedoctorking]

Resource shortages on turn 74.

[MarauderPL]

Hi, why was thedoctorking banned from the forums? I wasn't an active member recently (guess why?) but what is happening in this community is sad and is getting sadder. I do not think that thedoctorking has violated any of the forum rules in this thread.

[weinsoldner]

Yes because of this censorship(in lack of a better word) I haven’t posted anything yet in this thread.

[thedoctorking]

To continue the story of our version of the 2by3+ game, Weinsolder and I have played through the winter of 1942-43. Weinsolder used a flexible fall-back defense that avoided major disaster. I formed a second “shock front” in addition to Crimean, using Southwestern and staffing it with a Guards Army, two Tank Armies, and a regular army. I relocated both armies to the central sector, with Crimean driving towards Orel and Southwestern moving on Moscow. The relocation took time, by the way, with the newly-limited (in v 1.12) Soviet rail capacity and the enormous lift cost of armored units.

Here’s the situation on turn 87:

[thedoctorking]

You can see the Southwestern Front spearheads (they’re the guys in pink) near Moscow. They started out driving in from the southeast, from the direction of Ryazan, headed for Kaluga with the intent of turning north. Strong resistance there led them to loop around to the north of the city, cutting off a couple of divisions from the heavily fortified line that the Germans had constructed last winter in front of the city. The heart of SW Front is four mechanized corps, created in the fall. By the time the offensive was over and they withdrew for refit, they had experience ratings in the 50’s, but they started out pretty clumsily. The offensive could also have moved more quickly with better supply. A combination of these two factors prevented me from trapping many German units in this sector, though I did take the objective; Moscow fell on turn 89. Heavy fighting to the south of the city was inconclusive, but did allow me to wrap up one Panzer Corps, my biggest gain to that point.

In the image, you can see the Crimean Front guys pushing towards Orel. This is a more conventional force centered around Guards Rifle Corps. We started to be able to build Heavy Tank and Assault Gun Regiments using the KV-1s and very helpful SU-122 platforms. These give the Rifle Corps a solid armored punch allowing them to engage German armored formations on equal terms. I’ve noticed in many playings of Barbarossa in this game that Soviet infantry attacking German tanks in the open often fail even when the displayed odds are much better than 2:1. This doesn’t seem to be a problem when your attacking infantry unit has a couple of hundred AFV’s backing it up.

Another key aspect of our newfound offensive punch is the use of artillery divisions (and some brigades). You can start building light gun brigades back in the fall of 1941, and they are useful, but the guys with the real big clubs are the Artillery Divisions and Rocket Divisions. I have tons of rocket launchers in the pool and so can get at least one of these divisions into each of the armies in the offensive fronts. This means that even if the defenders are in level 3 forts, I can normally break them down (sometimes by using more than one artillery division) and bust defenses that look pretty powerful going in.

The downside of all this mechanized stuff is the use of vehicles (artillery units take lots of trucks too). I think I mentioned last time that the Americans started giving me 4500 vehicles a turn in January 1943, and I expected to have my vehicle shortage sorted in a couple of months. Well, it didn’t work out that way. Turn 91, I’ve got a shortage of 54,000 vehicles in units and 40,000 in the pool. Supply deliveries are averaging like 40%. I put the three northern fronts (and the guys in Crimea) on static mode at the beginning of the winter and that helped a little, but now that the Germans are withdrawing in front of Northwest Front, they had to go back on mobile mode. I can’t put the southern fronts on static until they get to fortification level two, which will take at least six or eight turns.

So here’s the overall position, starting with the south: After busting through the Stalino sector, and pocketing a few more divisions, we pushed forward against light resistance as far as the Dnepr. The Germans are obviously not willing to see us cross the river and they have put powerful defenses in our way. To the north, we got Kharkov and rolled westward, again against a flexible fall-back defense.

[thedoctorking]

In the Steppe sector, we pushed towards Kursk and have managed to develop a potential pocket in Bryansk Front’s sector. There are powerful German armored forces between us and Orel and to the south of Kursk, I don’t expect to actually get too many of those guys. There might well be some German counter-attacks south of Kursk to distract me.

[thedoctorking]

Farther north, the Moscow sector has begun to quiet down. SW Front withdrew to behind Moscow, on the rail line, to refit. Some corps were down to 70% strength. Infantry units can be refilled easily using the merge unit function. Tank corps can similarly be refilled if they are short of tanks by merging in tank brigades, but if they are short of infantry, you can’t merge different types of unit. Mech corps could presumably be pumped back up by merging in mech brigades, but I don’t have any mech brigades – ditto for cavalry corps and cavalry divisions. So, we have to sit back on the railroad for a couple of turns. Mud is coming soon, so there you go. SW is done for now.

[thedoctorking]

In the air, the winter was marked by the absence of Axis air power. The Luftwaffe was mostly back in National Reserve (shooting at American bombers, perhaps?). The few remaining Axis squadrons were mostly empty or nearly so. I continued to build the Red Air Force with regular live-fire exercises over the front. I’m up against the hard limit of 600 Soviet air groups. I’m aiming for about 150 fighter or fighter-bomber groups, 100 level bombers, 50 transports, and 300 ground attack squadrons. I’ve been disbanding the lower-experience fighter-bombers and building IL-2 squadrons. Some U2VS squadrons can now convert to IL-2’s (if their designation is changed from GNBAP to GLBAP). I’ve still got 93 U2VS groups, though – and they are among the best units in my air force. There was a long period there when I had almost no IL-2’s because of the chaotic evacuation of factories back in 1941. Some of my U2 squadrons have over 600 kills, though, so I’ve gotten good value out of them.

My air force skill level is improving – I now have 53 air groups with experience 80+. Over the blizzard turns, I couldn’t fly too many missions, so experience gain was slower than during the summer months.

Starting with the snow turns in March, 1943, the Luftwaffe returned to the air, with their fighter squadrons now equipped with FW-190’s. Air losses over the last couple of turns have been closer to equal – turn 91 was 289 Soviet to 236 Axis. The Axis has mostly stopped interdiction now – an invitation to get bombers blown up. The FW-190 is a superior fighter to anything the Soviets are flying right now, but there aren’t very many of them.

Production remains below optimum levels, with 22,125 supplies not produced on turn 91 because of resource shortages. We captured several resource production centers during the winter, but they have not yet returned to full production. I think we will be back to full supply production, such as it is, by the end of mud and we will then be facing an armaments shortage.

Deployed forces are 7,232,800 Soviet manpower to 3,735,719 German and the usual 1.5m or so Axis minors. AFV are 13,903 Soviet to 7,077 German and about 300 Axis minor. In the air, 14,117 Soviet aircraft face 2,358 German and 525 Axis minors. From the beginning of winter, we are up about 300,000 men and they are down about 250,000. We gained almost 4,000 aircraft and they went down about 300.

Destroyed Axis units since turn 72:

8th Rumanian Cavalry Division
268th Infantry Division
7th Infantry Division
17th Infantry Division
170th Infantry Division
72nd Infantry Division
198th Infantry Division
295th Infantry Division
Mountain Rumanian Corps HQ
1st Rumanian Infantry Division
7th Rumanian Infantry Division
5th Rumanian Infantry Division
1st Rumanian Cavalry Division
4th Rumanian Mountain Division
2nd Rumanian Mountain Division (all the preceding came while wrapping up the Stalino region – they were nearly cut off as of the last report)
24th Infantry Division
50th Infantry Division
20th Panzer Division
7th Panzer Division
8th Panzer Division (the preceding to the south of Moscow, caught between the two assault fronts)
87th Infantry Division
102nd Infantry Division
292nd Infantry Division
5th Jager Division
8th Jager Division (from the line to the east of Moscow)
162nd Infantry Division
2/3 of 30th Infantry Division (in the city itself)
XXXXII Corps HQ
XXXXIX Mountain Corps HQ (surrendered for unknown reasons in a normal battle)

[thedoctorking]

2by3+ Redux AAR, turn 111

Continuing our version of the 2by3+ game, Weinsoldner and I have now arrived in mid-summer of 1943. Things have continued to go well for the Soviets, with the Axis fighting a stubborn delaying action in the south and center, while the major Soviet offensive in the north met with unexpected resistance but did achieve its objectives in the end.

My summer offensive objective was to drive the Finns out of the war and re-capture Leningrad. To this end, I spent the mud turns moving my two shock fronts north. North Caucasus Front (formerly Crimean), consisting of 1st, 3rd, and 4th Shock Armies, 6th Guards Army, and 21st Army, and mostly composed of Rifle Corps with a couple of Tank and Mech corps and a liberal allocation of artillery, was tasked with breaking the Finnish defenses between Lakes Onega and Ladoga and driving around the north end of Ladoga. Southwest Front, consisting of 7th Airborne Corps, 1st and 2nd Tank Armies, 34th Army, and 3rd Guards Army, was tasked with breaking across the Volkhov and sweeping through the clear terrain to the south of Leningrad, aiming for Pskov and Narva. Leningrad Front would hold Southwestern’s right flank and attack the city of Leningrad, driving north to capture Vyborg. Volkhov Front would hold Southwestern’s left and clear the area south and west of Lake Ilmen.

As you can see from the picture, on turn 99, the first clear turn, we were not yet in position. Southwestern (the pink units) was mostly in the area, since they were withdrawn from the Moscow region at the end of snow and refit in the Vishny Volochek region. North Caucasus (lime green) had to come all the way from the Orel-Tula region. Rail capacity has been sharply cut in v 12.0 and we were only able to move at most one army a turn.

As you can see, we were caught in a big traffic jam. I had plans to clear everything up in a couple of turns, and I assumed that not much would happen during the period when mud and clear turns were alternating. I thought I had until June to get ready to kick things off.

I had been as energetic as possible in destroying Axis recon planes so that they wouldn’t realize what was going to happen to them, but Weinsolder figured it out anyway. On his turn 100, he began to withdraw the Finns back towards the narrow gap at the north end of Lake Ladoga and pull the troops south of Leningrad back to the Volkhov River, where he had prepared some fortified defenses. Ready or not, I started my offensive.

[thedoctorking]

By turn 103, I had achieved a breakthrough north of Ladoga and had captured the space to the south of Leningrad. Narva, Pskov, and Vyborg (required for Finnish surrender) were in sight and would be achieved in a few turns. The cost was a continuation of the gargantuan traffic jam, as North Caucasus and some elements of Leningrad Front crowded together in Karelia while Southwestern pushed on towards Pskov with the tiny driblets of fuel that we could deliver with our limited transport capacity. The armored forces from North Caucasus were deployed south of Lake Ladoga, with the goal of bypassing Leningrad once the Narva crossings were forces and trying to cut in behind the retreating Finns from the south.

I didn’t realize how fast the Finns would surrender once the three key cities were captured. Uncertain if I could take Pskov quickly, as German armored reinforcements poured into the region, I aimed at capturing a city in the post 1939 borders of Finland, said to spark immediate surrender. In the event, I got caught with several good units (two Guards Cav Corps and a regular Cavalry Corps along with some good SU) inside Finland when they surrendered, which (in what appears to be a bug) resulted in their destruction, not just relocation.

I reorganized my air forces, putting the level bombers and transport planes in their own air forces with long-range fighters (P-40B’s for the most part) for escort. These air forces fly bombing missions when they can, but mostly they are dedicated to air transport missions, getting fuel and supplies to the spearheads.
Here is the situation on turn 111. In the north, we have cleared the Leningrad region and are deploying for future moves into the Baltic region.

[thedoctorking]

The rest of the front was pretty static during May and June. I launched local attacks to keep the Axis occupied and keep them from drawing troops off to reinforce the northern sector. In the south, we continued to work our way across the Dnepr into Ukraine. In July, I launched a major push with Central and Voronezh Fronts, aiming to push along both banks of the Dnepr towards Kiev, while Transcaucasus Front pushed southwest along the Desna from in front of Kursk towards Chernigov.

There are powerful Axis armored forces in this area, so I’m not expecting a big breakthrough like I got in the north. I’d be happy with just keeping them occupied, though it would be good to recapture the major population center of Kiev and break the major defensive line of the Dnepr.

As you can see in the picture, as in the north before the big offensive there, the Axis have begun to withdraw. They want to avoid casualties and are trading space for time. As the front narrows, their defenses will no doubt stiffen.

[thedoctorking]

A big development that I’ve been pursuing in the last several months has been transferring my armor as much as possible to tank armies. Though the tank armies are smaller (15 versus 18 CP), they give a bonus to armored units. I’m going to leave a couple of tank brigades in each army, plus armored support units at the corps or army level, but most of my armored strength will be deployed in about six tank armies. I have four right now. They are expensive in AP, though, and I can only build one new one every two turns. I’m naturally planning to put my tank armies under the command of my tank aces, Rotmistrov, Rokossovsky, Rodin, Katukov, etc.

I’ve got Koniev, Purkaev, Kozlov, Meretskov, and Zhukov in charge of Fronts, a legacy of the early turns in the game and my unwillingness to spend the 20-odd AP each to replace them. I’m debating whether it is a better idea to have a good general in charge of a front if that front is going to be fighting a lot. The front commander only has 1/3 the chance to affect any given battle than if he was an army commander. However, if all the armies in a front are going to be fighting, there are usually four or five armies, and this should mean that the leader will have more impact on battle results at the front level. This is contrary to general received wisdom in the game, however. Mostly, people try to keep Zhukov and the other big generals at the army level. We made these choices back when we knew nothing about the game but it seems to be working out OK.

As of turn 111, our deployed manpower is up to 8.05 million, with 17,521 AFV’s and 13,826 aircraft. German deployed manpower is 3.35 million, with 7,872 AFV’s and 2,088 aircraft. Axis allies are at 0.98 million men, only 130 AFV’s, and 520 aircraft (the Italians still have 57 aircraft in the fray despite having joined the Allies a few months back, what’s up with that?)

On the logistics front, our vehicle total has climbed to 55% of requirements, thank you Detroit! We are also no longer resource short. Those resource production centers that we recaptured in the winter are not back to 100% production (they only heal at 1% a turn) but some of them are back above the 50% level, meaning that we are getting something out of them. Railyards recaptured during the winter, including especially the big prize of Moscow, are back online, meaning that we have much better results moving supplies. And I have two NKPS rail repair HQ’s now. Things are still not ideal – my spearhead guys are starting in the 30-40% range for supplies, but nobody appears to be in danger of starving.

The air war has been relatively quiet. Some German fighter squadrons, equipped with Fw190’s, have been present but, based far behind their lines, they are not able to interfere with our operations over the front. We have some fighters that can reach their bases – P-40B’s – but not sufficient numbers or aircraft quality to confront massed Fw190s. My level bombers have been mostly delivering supplies to spearheads, while the IL-2’s bomb front-line positions, and fighters go along as escort and hope to find the occasional daring Axis fighter out for a spin.

Axis units destroyed since turn 91:

293rd Infantry Division
384th Infantry Division
251st Infantry Division
206th Infantry Division
76th Infantry Division
336th Infantry Division
320th Infantry Division
82nd Infantry Division
2/221st Security Division
8th Rumanian Infantry Division
6th Rumanian Infantry Division
2nd Rumanian Infantry Division
14th Rumanian Infantry Division
35th Reserve Rumanian Infantry Division
1st Guard Rumanian Infantry Division
6th Rumanian Cavalry Division
15th Rumanian Infantry Division
And all the Finns

In exchange, the Finnish bug got

1st Cavalry Corps
17th Guards Cavalry Corps
3rd Guards Cavalry Corps
2nd Guards Separate Tank Regiment
10th Guards Separate Tank Regiment
108th Separate Tank Battalion
109th Separate Tank Battalion
122nd Ski Battalion
124th Ski Battalion
122nd MG-Artillery Battalion
129th MG-Artillery Battalion
110th Flamethrower Company

Grumble, grumble!

Another thing: It is pretty silly to have Southwestern and North Caucasus Fronts fighting in the Baltic States. I really wish we could rename front HQ’s. It would be a nice thing to add to WitE2 if it isn’t possible in this version without a lot of re-coding.

[SparkleyTits]

Damn man, you got some grit to see this one through.
Gratz on dragging the Soviets through to their current course

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: thedoctorking

Axis units destroyed since turn 91:

293rd Infantry Division
384th Infantry Division
251st Infantry Division
206th Infantry Division
76th Infantry Division
336th Infantry Division
320th Infantry Division
82nd Infantry Division
2/221st Security Division
8th Rumanian Infantry Division
6th Rumanian Infantry Division
2nd Rumanian Infantry Division
14th Rumanian Infantry Division
35th Reserve Rumanian Infantry Division
1st Guard Rumanian Infantry Division
6th Rumanian Cavalry Division
15th Rumanian Infantry Division
And all the Finns

[thedoctorking]

I just want to see what happens. Weinsoldner did some stuff that I wouldn't have done but he's sure hung on better than I did in my game with you, Sparkley. Taking out the Finns is a big advantage in terms of narrowing my front. I think the Axis are narrowing theirs now, too. They have a real reluctance to get units killed now.