Advice for the winter

[admiral9]

So first things first, I should note that I am loving the game, I've slowly been turning more control over to myself with the only thing I'm really not daring to touch yet is manually assigning support units, mainly due to my terrible memory meaning I'm afraid of missing or forgetting something important.

But anyways that aside I started my first game of Barbarossa, I got off to a pretty decent start, managed to take Leningrad and Moscow and managed to move up all my forces in a holding position around november. It all started going wrong after that, I had a frontline that managed to just barely have a 1 division per hex frontage, this meant no issue in the north where i was honestly even over strength due to the appalling soviet supply situation, but in the south of Moscow the soviets managed multiple breakthroughs and committing my fresh armored divisions Didn't really achieve much due to the weather ruining them before they arrive. The Romanian armies were all depleted and routed (around the Stalino region) and the German armies between Orel and Kharkov (for me the 2nd and 6th armies) were steadily being routed. I over extended that was clear to me but what I wonder and do not see a clear answer to is what could I have done differently, the frontline is equally wide if i do or don't take Moscow and taking Leningrad makes it shorter. My biggest wrongdoing was committing the 17th army to securing a bridgehead in the Kuban region I feel, had I kept that army in the Ukraine I could have shortened the frontlines for the Romanians most likely.

I make this thread mostly just to ask for help from those more experienced, how do you consolidate between december 1941 and march 1942? It's close to impossible to move armored reserves where you need them, supplies don't reach your troops and the divisions you get also either have to take up all the rail capacity and hence deny supplies or go by foot and take upwards of 2 to 3 months to reach the front.

I'm thinking of restarting with full manual control and with the lessons I've learned but I have no faith in my ability to survive that winter.

[Erik Rutins]

What difficulty level are you playing on?

1. Certainly do not over-extend. You need to realize that your troops are not prepared for that first winter and will suffer greatly unless you prepare ahead of time.
2. A turn or two before the winter hits in full, start withdrawing towards your railheads and depots if you've gotten far from them. Establish front lines without major bulges or over-extensions if you can avoid it. Try to get to Fort Level 2+ for extra protection from the winter.
3. Switch your Assault armies to normal status to allow for more fortification.
4. Send badly attrited units back to reserve for a few turns.
5. Ideally , make sure as much as possible that you have rails and depots close to your front lines and that you have city/urban terrain with good railyards and priority 4 depots nearby. These will serve as places to put your FBDs for the winter to increase supply draw and also as places to pull occasional units out of the front lines for the protection of the city/urban terrain from the weather and refitting. This cycle of rotating and refitting units is important for maintaining your front lines through February and March as the attrition of winter builds up.
6. As soon as you can, pull in as many additional infantry division as possible from other theaters. You can even send a few panzer divisions out of theater (their tanks will often be damaged during the worst of the winter) to make room for more infantry divisions if you wish. Those fresh divisions will help you fill in gaps in your lines and make sure you have a reserve for counter attacks.
7. Counter-attack from your Fort 2+ and city/urban strongpoints whenever the Soviets break through. Your offensive CV is not penalized and while your attacking troops will incur a lot of fatigue and damage from the weather, they are still strong and will often rout over-extended Soviet breakthrough forces. That rotation/refit method above will also help you to make sure your reserves are as fresh as possible for counterattacks when needed.
8. Set your supply priorities carefully. Areas where the counter-offensive is not strong can be put on Priority 2, to help the key armies be on 3 or even 4 to help get enough supplies through the terrible weather. Park those HQs on the depots as well. Don't worry about burning trucks, it's more important to keep as much going to your front line units as possible.

Hope that helps.

[admiral9]

I'm playing on normal difficulty, I wanted to avoid easy difficulty out of fear of me getting used to it. The other advice does help yes, funnily enough I managed to get excellent supply to again the region from Novgorod to Moscow but again once you go south it becomes really bad. I moved my other FBD's southwards but there's so much to convert there and so much frontline to cover that it was a lost cause with the time I had.

I can't upload screenshots but 4 breakthroughs were achieved by the soviets of which 2 were particularly bad.
Oh and this might be a Tangent but does it happen more often that the game does not allow you to bring in any air groups from reserve?


I can move them to other theatres fine and when I use AI air assist they also get transferred to the map, it's just when I want to use the manual function that I do not see any air groups. Again I'd like to show a screenshot but I can't the game informs me I could transfer 23 airgroups though and I know it should be possible due to the AI doing it but when I open the 'Bring new air groups from reserve' screen I just see no air groups, its always an empty screen.

Thanks for the help and advice either way, greatly appreciated.

[MechFO]

In December/January heavy snow hexes your attacks are 3 to 6 time as effective as your defence. No defensive terrain except urban and maybe heavy woods/rough can even hope to compensate for that. Realistically you probably can't exceed fort level 2 for wide parts of the front, and don't want to anyway since the supply cost is too high given your strained logistic system.

Ergo, consider putting your main defensive infantry armies in the center and south on Assault. The fort level 1 limitation doesn't really matter given the way defensive CV is cut and your main defensive weapon is counter attacks which will need CPP, now your most valuable currency. Where you can afford to, especially where it moves the Soviets into clear hexes, withdraw a hex every turn or 2 to limit Soviet attacks and agressively counter attack.

This might lose you a lot of ground up north that would rather keep and if you can anchor on heavy wood/rough hexes you might be better off with a conventional defence but to the South of Moscow counterattacks are the way to go.

Not tested yet.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: admiral9
I managed to get excellent supply to again the region from Novgorod to Moscow but again once you go south it becomes really bad. I moved my other FBD's southwards but there's so much to convert there and so much frontline to cover that it was a lost cause with the time I had.

Yes, south of Orel it certainly gets harder. Once winter hits, your FBDs should be done converting and ideally positioned on key Priority 4 frontline depots at good repaired Railyards to help draw supply. If you can't get the rail close enough, then consider withdrawing towards the rail.

Oh and this might be a Tangent but does it happen more often that the game does not allow you to bring in any air groups from reserve?

I've been able to bring reserve air groups in without an issue, though you do have to wait for a turn after they arrive in the reserve. If you're having problems beyond the arrival turn, post a save in the tech support forum and we'll take a look.

Regards,

- Erik