Which is why the Battle of Smolensk had major fighting in exactly that area.
The Great Patriotic Mud Offensive - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Moderator: Joel Billings
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Turn 8 Start of turn ---
More bad things in the north. He attacked across the Narva river, kept grinding forward into my defenses, and also unfortunately cut the double rail between Leningrad and Moscow. Although he did not actually occupy the hex with the rail and I will take it right back, nevertheless the rail is "destroyed" (not sure that is really realistic, since a unit never even went into that hex at all) and now unusable, and I have no way to repair it... He also brought the Totenkopf division south of Lake Ilmen and got across the little river there near Starya Russa, which is a bit worrying also on the southern flank.
In the center, Smolensk unsurprisingly fell (I had left just 1 division in it in order to avoid potentially losing more divisions), since I know from my Odessa experience that cities are not a magic hex that holds against German infantry. There was some minor progress here, but clearly he was going to be careful and rest his tanks for a turn or two after the Yelnia attack. Germany will be aware that I still have Rokossovsky and 2k tanks under Rokossovsky (in addition to others) lurking behind the lines. Having extra tanks in the Leningrad push is helping him there, but their absence hurts the push in the center.
More slow grinding around Gomel. Gomel itself fell, but I can just walk back into it since it is empty and make him take it again. [:D]
In the south, he didn't really expand the bridgehead... mission accomplished in that respect... So he just made another one instead. Well, this river defense is well and truly blown now.
Also he crossed in the far south in 2 places. 549 combat value here for example, which goes down to 100 in practice:
More bad things in the north. He attacked across the Narva river, kept grinding forward into my defenses, and also unfortunately cut the double rail between Leningrad and Moscow. Although he did not actually occupy the hex with the rail and I will take it right back, nevertheless the rail is "destroyed" (not sure that is really realistic, since a unit never even went into that hex at all) and now unusable, and I have no way to repair it... He also brought the Totenkopf division south of Lake Ilmen and got across the little river there near Starya Russa, which is a bit worrying also on the southern flank.
In the center, Smolensk unsurprisingly fell (I had left just 1 division in it in order to avoid potentially losing more divisions), since I know from my Odessa experience that cities are not a magic hex that holds against German infantry. There was some minor progress here, but clearly he was going to be careful and rest his tanks for a turn or two after the Yelnia attack. Germany will be aware that I still have Rokossovsky and 2k tanks under Rokossovsky (in addition to others) lurking behind the lines. Having extra tanks in the Leningrad push is helping him there, but their absence hurts the push in the center.
More slow grinding around Gomel. Gomel itself fell, but I can just walk back into it since it is empty and make him take it again. [:D]
In the south, he didn't really expand the bridgehead... mission accomplished in that respect... So he just made another one instead. Well, this river defense is well and truly blown now.
Also he crossed in the far south in 2 places. 549 combat value here for example, which goes down to 100 in practice:
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of Turn 8 ---
In the north I was able to counterattack successfully 1 hex in his snake to the double rail, because it only had 1 division on it and it was a clear hex, so even Soviets (in overwhelming numbers) could counterattack that. 3 Panzer divisions are cut off from supply. Other than that, not much in the north.
In the center, not much, similarly just adjusted the defensive line a bit:
But in the south... with the river defense blown, I ran. Technically most of the units didn't run, they transferred to reserves. A good # of those will end up going to the north and center, where I probably should have put them originally (the turn 4 reserves):
I also set up some defenses towards Kharkov and south to Dnepropetrovsk etc, but obviously that is not going to hold long term, just a temporary defense.
In the far south, I started retreating to Crimea and also towards Rostov:
In the north I was able to counterattack successfully 1 hex in his snake to the double rail, because it only had 1 division on it and it was a clear hex, so even Soviets (in overwhelming numbers) could counterattack that. 3 Panzer divisions are cut off from supply. Other than that, not much in the north.
In the center, not much, similarly just adjusted the defensive line a bit:
But in the south... with the river defense blown, I ran. Technically most of the units didn't run, they transferred to reserves. A good # of those will end up going to the north and center, where I probably should have put them originally (the turn 4 reserves):
I also set up some defenses towards Kharkov and south to Dnepropetrovsk etc, but obviously that is not going to hold long term, just a temporary defense.
In the far south, I started retreating to Crimea and also towards Rostov:
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Turn 9 start of turn ---
First of all, general overview of the situation at this point. As far as weather goes, it has started raining on and off. Currently it is raining all over the front, but unfortunately rain is not forecast next week:
As of Turn 9, I have 3.1 million men in the field, and 375k in the reserves. So I am gradually approaching 3.5 million total, counting the reserves. A lot of the reserves are the troops around Kiev that I transferred to reserves temporarily because it is easier/faster than actually retreating them.
Total men (on and off map) are about 5 million, fairly stable, but trending up slightly over the last 2 turns:
AFVs were holding up very well until the big tank battle at Yelnia, we took a hit then (but so did Germany). I had been trying to keep my AFVs out of combat insofar as possible until they could get stronger:
Aircraft - they didn't actually plummet this much, it just put a lot into the pool when it switched to smaller air group sizes, since I had a good # of air groups on "restricted":
On the map, my # of troops actually has gone slightly down the past few turns. Of course, that is partly due to the transfer to reserves. But still, that is a bit worrying, would rather have it go up. At some point I might have to start being more careful about throwing unready troops into combat to get routed:
Guns:
AFV, you can see the big drop on turn 8:
Soviet on-map planes have been fairly stable, Axis has been going down. We went up a lot this turn because I deployed a lot of level bombers. I was planning to use them to help with air supply. However, I found out that it costs AP to use level bombers for air transport supply, so I can't do that. If I can figure out something worthwhile to bomb, maybe I should send in the planes:
Manpower losses, gradually seem to be sort of trending down a bit (hopefully):
AFV losses, you can see Germany lost significant #s on turn 3 and 8 also. Other than that, I have been fairly good at keeping my AFVs around for later use:
Air losses seem not too bad in comparison to the German losses. That is helped by the overrun airfield, but overall it seems to me like these losses should not really be sustainable for the Axis. I can't really complain about the air war, other than turn 1:
Zhukov has been dismissed, so I can put him somewhere useful... I think that somewhere might begin with an "L" and end with a "grad"?
In the north, Germany continued to advance a little bit at a time. There is not much I can do against this many tanks other than keep throwing bodies in front of them and hope that eventually they stop (note the combat value dropping from 92 to 26):
In the center, more gradual grind forward, but notably no tanks charging boldy into Yelnia without protecting their flanks this turn:
Gomel falls, and this time I am not getting it back. With the failure of my river defense, the defense in this whole area will obviously be threatened from the south sooner rather than later. However, rather than simply giving up the ground here earlier than I need to and letting his troops in the center march east easily, I would rather contest the advance here (in the good defensive terrain) for as long as I can, and force his troops in the south to march to the north, rather than to the east, to threaten my flank and clear as much of this area as possible. Ideally he would send all his tanks in the south to the north, but I doubt he will do that. And if he did, then I would just start retreating.
He started advancing to the north of the Dnepr, but so far no direct attack on my big blob defense that is still protecting Dnepropetrovsk and the approaches towards Stalino. A very important question I will have to decide this turn is just how far to retreat in the south, because presumably his Panzers are resting and will attack next turn, potentially with a substantial amount of movement points. It is tempting to not retreat too much due to the fact that I have some forts constructed, and ideally I don't want to lose the industry and manpower in Dnepropetrovsk/Zaphorozie earlier than I need to, but realistically I probably need to retreat a bit at this point to avoid a potential significant encirclement. I will definitely run some recon in this area in particular to check that the Panzers are in fact still there, and are not trying something funny.
In the far south, the advance towards Crimea has begun (he will presumably get into Crimea and to Sevastopol FAR FAR ahead of historical schedule [:(]
Overall, Germany has made pretty close to historical progress in the north around Leningrad down towards the Velikie Luki area.
Around Smolensk, Germany has made historical progress to the Smolensk area, and been at least significantly slowed exactly at the historical place (down to the exact hex!) at Yelnya. However, for things to continue historically there, I would have to keep holding on there until October, which seems like it will be difficult to achieve, even with a lot of his Panzers in the north, he should be able to grind forward a bit even with infantry alone.
And in the south, Germany is WAY ahead of historical progress. It is only August 17; Kiev should be holding for another month from now... He shouldn't be approaching the entrance to Crimea for another month also. And Odessa should supposedly be holding for another 2 months from now... Which needless to say, did not remotely happen.
First of all, general overview of the situation at this point. As far as weather goes, it has started raining on and off. Currently it is raining all over the front, but unfortunately rain is not forecast next week:
As of Turn 9, I have 3.1 million men in the field, and 375k in the reserves. So I am gradually approaching 3.5 million total, counting the reserves. A lot of the reserves are the troops around Kiev that I transferred to reserves temporarily because it is easier/faster than actually retreating them.
Total men (on and off map) are about 5 million, fairly stable, but trending up slightly over the last 2 turns:
AFVs were holding up very well until the big tank battle at Yelnia, we took a hit then (but so did Germany). I had been trying to keep my AFVs out of combat insofar as possible until they could get stronger:
Aircraft - they didn't actually plummet this much, it just put a lot into the pool when it switched to smaller air group sizes, since I had a good # of air groups on "restricted":
On the map, my # of troops actually has gone slightly down the past few turns. Of course, that is partly due to the transfer to reserves. But still, that is a bit worrying, would rather have it go up. At some point I might have to start being more careful about throwing unready troops into combat to get routed:
Guns:
AFV, you can see the big drop on turn 8:
Soviet on-map planes have been fairly stable, Axis has been going down. We went up a lot this turn because I deployed a lot of level bombers. I was planning to use them to help with air supply. However, I found out that it costs AP to use level bombers for air transport supply, so I can't do that. If I can figure out something worthwhile to bomb, maybe I should send in the planes:
Manpower losses, gradually seem to be sort of trending down a bit (hopefully):
AFV losses, you can see Germany lost significant #s on turn 3 and 8 also. Other than that, I have been fairly good at keeping my AFVs around for later use:
Air losses seem not too bad in comparison to the German losses. That is helped by the overrun airfield, but overall it seems to me like these losses should not really be sustainable for the Axis. I can't really complain about the air war, other than turn 1:
Zhukov has been dismissed, so I can put him somewhere useful... I think that somewhere might begin with an "L" and end with a "grad"?
In the north, Germany continued to advance a little bit at a time. There is not much I can do against this many tanks other than keep throwing bodies in front of them and hope that eventually they stop (note the combat value dropping from 92 to 26):
In the center, more gradual grind forward, but notably no tanks charging boldy into Yelnia without protecting their flanks this turn:
Gomel falls, and this time I am not getting it back. With the failure of my river defense, the defense in this whole area will obviously be threatened from the south sooner rather than later. However, rather than simply giving up the ground here earlier than I need to and letting his troops in the center march east easily, I would rather contest the advance here (in the good defensive terrain) for as long as I can, and force his troops in the south to march to the north, rather than to the east, to threaten my flank and clear as much of this area as possible. Ideally he would send all his tanks in the south to the north, but I doubt he will do that. And if he did, then I would just start retreating.
He started advancing to the north of the Dnepr, but so far no direct attack on my big blob defense that is still protecting Dnepropetrovsk and the approaches towards Stalino. A very important question I will have to decide this turn is just how far to retreat in the south, because presumably his Panzers are resting and will attack next turn, potentially with a substantial amount of movement points. It is tempting to not retreat too much due to the fact that I have some forts constructed, and ideally I don't want to lose the industry and manpower in Dnepropetrovsk/Zaphorozie earlier than I need to, but realistically I probably need to retreat a bit at this point to avoid a potential significant encirclement. I will definitely run some recon in this area in particular to check that the Panzers are in fact still there, and are not trying something funny.
In the far south, the advance towards Crimea has begun (he will presumably get into Crimea and to Sevastopol FAR FAR ahead of historical schedule [:(]
Overall, Germany has made pretty close to historical progress in the north around Leningrad down towards the Velikie Luki area.
Around Smolensk, Germany has made historical progress to the Smolensk area, and been at least significantly slowed exactly at the historical place (down to the exact hex!) at Yelnya. However, for things to continue historically there, I would have to keep holding on there until October, which seems like it will be difficult to achieve, even with a lot of his Panzers in the north, he should be able to grind forward a bit even with infantry alone.
And in the south, Germany is WAY ahead of historical progress. It is only August 17; Kiev should be holding for another month from now... He shouldn't be approaching the entrance to Crimea for another month also. And Odessa should supposedly be holding for another 2 months from now... Which needless to say, did not remotely happen.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of Turn 9:
I didn't do too much overall, except for some slight retreats.
In the north, I did successfully counterattack this one hex again (same hex as last turn). It is clear terrain, so it is one of the few places I can counterattack with good odds:
Only slight movement in the center:
I am trying to retreat as slowly as possible from the Gomel area, hopefully making his infantry from the south march north up to there rather than it marching east. Over the next few turns I will have to pull back considerably from here, obviously. But there is a lot of swamp terrain etc and no Panzers around, so no reason to totally run until Germany makes me:
Some retreat in the south, but not very much. I am going to have to do more, hopefully this is enough for at least this turn; I would rather not lose Dnepropetrovsk sooner than I have to, but it will pretty clearly fall over the next 1-2 turns or so:
Next turn looks like the attack into Crimea will begin:
I didn't do too much overall, except for some slight retreats.
In the north, I did successfully counterattack this one hex again (same hex as last turn). It is clear terrain, so it is one of the few places I can counterattack with good odds:
Only slight movement in the center:
I am trying to retreat as slowly as possible from the Gomel area, hopefully making his infantry from the south march north up to there rather than it marching east. Over the next few turns I will have to pull back considerably from here, obviously. But there is a lot of swamp terrain etc and no Panzers around, so no reason to totally run until Germany makes me:
Some retreat in the south, but not very much. I am going to have to do more, hopefully this is enough for at least this turn; I would rather not lose Dnepropetrovsk sooner than I have to, but it will pretty clearly fall over the next 1-2 turns or so:
Next turn looks like the attack into Crimea will begin:
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 10:
The front line in Leningrad is starting to get really ridiculous...
I am not entirely sure how much, if at all, I should pull out of the obvious salient between his two long 1 hex wide Panzer attacks. I am not sure what is the best way to try to counter this sort of ridiculous attack. It definitely makes things awkward for me, but also at least somewhat, for him. The main problem is there are only certain hexes where I have any realistic possibility to counterattack successfully, because a lot of the hexes in this area are swamp/heavy forest.
The other thing I am not sure about is, I have all these reserves here. These are mostly the troops that I transferred to reserve from the Kiev/Cherkasy area. The question is how many of these should I throw into Leningrad. If he is going to cut the rail line sooner or later, from that perspective maybe it is not sending too many since then they will have bad supply soon in any case. On the other hand, maybe they could help hold the rail line.
I also deployed 9 reserve divisions here in the Leningrad area last turn, although the problem is now I have only limited room were I can deploy more reserves lol, and also these troops are not the best qualitatively [:(]
He also pushed a bit south of Lake Ilmen (Totenkopf division is there):
The center was pretty quiet again. However, that is the 2nd straight turn without his Panzers attacking in the center, which makes me worried. It is one of those "Quiet, too quiet" things. It is even possible he might have moved them a bit north (or more likely south) of Smolensk. I will definitely have to run some heavy recon here to confirm the location of his Panzer/motorized divisions. If the Panzers are still around Smolensk, maybe I should retreat a bit more. However, I have a strong defensive position. The problem is that is only on certain hexes, there are some swamps/heavy forest. Further in the back I have another line where the forts are starting to build up nicely, 2 hexes are up to level 3 forts. However, that is mostly the units I put there that are doing the building, not the forts themselves!
The problem with the defense in these swamp hexes is that there are clear hexes and light woods in between, so if I stay there too much he will sooner or later go around and encircle the swamp hexes. So I would really like to stay in the strong position there, but on the other hand with Panzers not having moved for two turns, I am not sure how wise that is?
Not much around Gomel/Kharkov:
Slow advance towards my lines in the south. I think I am going to have to retreat more and abandon Denpropetrovsk. I am not entirely sure if I should wait 1 more turn to totally abandon it, or just retreat another 4 hexes or so now. Also, at least so far there is no sign of any direct attempt to take Dnepropetrovsk itself, he needs it either encircled and/or strong infantry to attack it.
His strongest troops are in the south pushing into Crimea, 11th Army under Model. This was a level 3 fort (although on clear terrain) but with more or less fully equipped defending divisions. Not only did they lose the battle, but they routed, despite the fort.
The general Belov is just a core commander also, I have a 5.something rated general in command of the army there, but this is one place I also had a core commander. As with Odessa, I am not sure what to do about Sevastapol. I do have the option to defend it significantly (if so I would have to deploy some of those reserves). But if I do, I am sort of doubtful how long it will hold, and if it would really be worth it. It might be more worthwhile to stick some troops in Dnepropetrovsk actually, since at least Model and those strong German troops are not there (at least not so far).
The front line in Leningrad is starting to get really ridiculous...
I am not entirely sure how much, if at all, I should pull out of the obvious salient between his two long 1 hex wide Panzer attacks. I am not sure what is the best way to try to counter this sort of ridiculous attack. It definitely makes things awkward for me, but also at least somewhat, for him. The main problem is there are only certain hexes where I have any realistic possibility to counterattack successfully, because a lot of the hexes in this area are swamp/heavy forest.
The other thing I am not sure about is, I have all these reserves here. These are mostly the troops that I transferred to reserve from the Kiev/Cherkasy area. The question is how many of these should I throw into Leningrad. If he is going to cut the rail line sooner or later, from that perspective maybe it is not sending too many since then they will have bad supply soon in any case. On the other hand, maybe they could help hold the rail line.
I also deployed 9 reserve divisions here in the Leningrad area last turn, although the problem is now I have only limited room were I can deploy more reserves lol, and also these troops are not the best qualitatively [:(]
He also pushed a bit south of Lake Ilmen (Totenkopf division is there):
The center was pretty quiet again. However, that is the 2nd straight turn without his Panzers attacking in the center, which makes me worried. It is one of those "Quiet, too quiet" things. It is even possible he might have moved them a bit north (or more likely south) of Smolensk. I will definitely have to run some heavy recon here to confirm the location of his Panzer/motorized divisions. If the Panzers are still around Smolensk, maybe I should retreat a bit more. However, I have a strong defensive position. The problem is that is only on certain hexes, there are some swamps/heavy forest. Further in the back I have another line where the forts are starting to build up nicely, 2 hexes are up to level 3 forts. However, that is mostly the units I put there that are doing the building, not the forts themselves!
The problem with the defense in these swamp hexes is that there are clear hexes and light woods in between, so if I stay there too much he will sooner or later go around and encircle the swamp hexes. So I would really like to stay in the strong position there, but on the other hand with Panzers not having moved for two turns, I am not sure how wise that is?
Not much around Gomel/Kharkov:
Slow advance towards my lines in the south. I think I am going to have to retreat more and abandon Denpropetrovsk. I am not entirely sure if I should wait 1 more turn to totally abandon it, or just retreat another 4 hexes or so now. Also, at least so far there is no sign of any direct attempt to take Dnepropetrovsk itself, he needs it either encircled and/or strong infantry to attack it.
His strongest troops are in the south pushing into Crimea, 11th Army under Model. This was a level 3 fort (although on clear terrain) but with more or less fully equipped defending divisions. Not only did they lose the battle, but they routed, despite the fort.
The general Belov is just a core commander also, I have a 5.something rated general in command of the army there, but this is one place I also had a core commander. As with Odessa, I am not sure what to do about Sevastapol. I do have the option to defend it significantly (if so I would have to deploy some of those reserves). But if I do, I am sort of doubtful how long it will hold, and if it would really be worth it. It might be more worthwhile to stick some troops in Dnepropetrovsk actually, since at least Model and those strong German troops are not there (at least not so far).
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of turn 10
The north especially was tricky to move troops in. The problem is not only does the terrain limit your movement, but also with the way he is pushing his tanks forward in a long thin line, that makes zones of control that make it hard to move more than 1 hex for many of the units in between. I tried to firm up my defenses a bit more in the north. Somewhat reluctantly, I semi-pulled out of the big salient between his two tank attack lines. However, I kept 1 division in each hex rather than entirely pulling out, and actually he had left open a hex there (and also in a few other places), so I marched a division into the breach (also in other places). This may ultimately lead to a few encircled units, but if so it will probably be worth it for slowing him down, forcing his infantry to deal with that rather than keep pushing forward (somewhat), and making the line longer. I have more divisions than Germany does, and with his long thin pushes it seems like he is starting to have a problem filling each hex in the lines with a division.
In particular I tried to put as strong divisions as I could directly in front of his thrusts that seem to be trying to cut off my rail connection to Leningrad. I have for example 47 (supposed combat value) with 3 divisions directly in front of the east push, and 39 CV directly in front of the west of the two pushes. He is only 3 hexes from the 1st of the two smaller rail lines, which is a bit worrying, and it is still only turn 10, so if he can actually push that sort of CV in heavy forest/swamp (which he has been doing so far), then it seems like there is still time for him to do that, unfortunately.
In the center, I flew pretty good recon, but there are no sign of his Panzers in the Smolensk area which were just there last turn:
Where did they go? Apparently to the south towards the Bryansk area. I was a bit light on troops around there, so I rotated a bit of my troops to the south, as well as rotating northwards the remaining troops that were still screening the area in front of Gomel. So now I have pretty decent depth in this area which should hopefully be able to prevent any sort of big breakthrough next turn. I think that since my defense in the Smolensk area was pretty strong, he is maybe trying to go around it, either directly through Bryansk, or attacking north in front of Bryansk. It is also possible he could be planning to go further south, but that wouldn't really make too much sense since I am barely defending there in any case and he has troops coming up from the Kiev area:
Germany should have relatively bad supply in this area from Smolensk, however, what he may be trying to do is to bypass my defense in the Smolensk area and use the double rail line that runs from Gomel to Bryansk (and then keeps going north to Moscow via Orel and Tula!). However from what I had seen it looked like his troops around Gomel generally had bad supply, and it took him a while to take Gomel. But in terms of terrain, in some ways it may be easier to attack Moscow from that direction than from the Smolensk direction, since other than in the Bryansk area, there is a lot less forest in the way.
In the center-south (the westernmost part near Gomel is where I got a lot of the troops that are now near Bryansk) , I don't have many troops at the moment and am relying on time/logistics as a temporary defense. Sooner or later I will need to reinforce here. But he tried to snake forward with a few isolated mobile divisions and I could easily cut those off with cavalry (1 mech division also helped with the right-side of the two of those):
It is very easy to do that because Soviet cavalry has into the low 20s in MP, and on clear terrain you can go ~10 hexes and back very easily, for harassing attacks or to cut off incautious advances. With up to 35 MP (and most of my tanks/mech have 35 MP at this point), tank/mech divisions can pretty easily do any of that job cavalry cannot handle:
I am definitely going to have to reinforce in this area sooner or later, however. The situations for Kharkov especially, but also Kursk, are obviously worrisome. And obviously if he keeps going north he will fairly soon threaten the southern flank of the Bryansk area.
Bread also moved boldly forward between Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk, right in between a bunch of my cavalry (and tanks/mech). So I cut him off. Actually, my recon didn't show all of his divisions there, the gap looked a bit wider on recon than it does now (where it is only 1 hex wide with my cavalry stuck in between). That meant I didn't have enough MP to move them back to safety. But in any case it is sort of good to have a few divisions next to the Panzers to lower their CPP gain etc. I also put another 2 disposable Cav divisions there for that reason:
Each of these cav divisions has 2-3k men at most, so I am prety sure the sacrifice is worth it. Other than that, I pulled back somewhat but still am not totally abandoning Dnepropetrovsk. Historically Dnepropetrovsk apparently held until Turn 10, so by this time I am actually (narrowly) holding it longer than historical. It won't be long until I pretty much have to abandon in though, but there is no sign of strong infantry there to break it, so maybe I should think about leaving a few divisions in Dnepropetrovsk, and it could perhaps hold out for an extra turn or two. Here is the rest of that area, the southern flank is also threatened, so I can't stick around here indefinitely:
You can also see in Crimea I put more divisions spread out at the entrance into the peninsula to try to delay/create combat delays so that there is more time for my troops to get prepared in Sevastopol.
Overall, my biggest concern at this point is still losing Leningrad, particularly given how hard (and perhaps recklessly) his tanks continue to push forward there. But I am also worried about the south-center (lack of troops there) and the south. The road from Smolensk to Moscow looks fairly safe at this point, at least for now, but if he pushes too much around Bryansk at a certain point that will force me to withdraw somewhat.
Basically, if he pushes more or less along the black arrow here, my red line of defense which I am currently on may have to start pulling back towards the blue line that stretches from Smolensk area towards Tula. In that case the yellow highlighted area will be important, since that is the southern flank of my Vyazma/Smolensk area defense. Holding firm in the Vyazma area will only make so much difference if he just ends up going around it through the yellow area. Nevertheless, if that happens it will have still achieved something very important, which was to delay significantly the advance on Moscow. This would obviously have been a lot harder if he had the normal amount of tanks in the center rather than sending extra Panzer divisions to the north.
The north especially was tricky to move troops in. The problem is not only does the terrain limit your movement, but also with the way he is pushing his tanks forward in a long thin line, that makes zones of control that make it hard to move more than 1 hex for many of the units in between. I tried to firm up my defenses a bit more in the north. Somewhat reluctantly, I semi-pulled out of the big salient between his two tank attack lines. However, I kept 1 division in each hex rather than entirely pulling out, and actually he had left open a hex there (and also in a few other places), so I marched a division into the breach (also in other places). This may ultimately lead to a few encircled units, but if so it will probably be worth it for slowing him down, forcing his infantry to deal with that rather than keep pushing forward (somewhat), and making the line longer. I have more divisions than Germany does, and with his long thin pushes it seems like he is starting to have a problem filling each hex in the lines with a division.
In particular I tried to put as strong divisions as I could directly in front of his thrusts that seem to be trying to cut off my rail connection to Leningrad. I have for example 47 (supposed combat value) with 3 divisions directly in front of the east push, and 39 CV directly in front of the west of the two pushes. He is only 3 hexes from the 1st of the two smaller rail lines, which is a bit worrying, and it is still only turn 10, so if he can actually push that sort of CV in heavy forest/swamp (which he has been doing so far), then it seems like there is still time for him to do that, unfortunately.
In the center, I flew pretty good recon, but there are no sign of his Panzers in the Smolensk area which were just there last turn:
Where did they go? Apparently to the south towards the Bryansk area. I was a bit light on troops around there, so I rotated a bit of my troops to the south, as well as rotating northwards the remaining troops that were still screening the area in front of Gomel. So now I have pretty decent depth in this area which should hopefully be able to prevent any sort of big breakthrough next turn. I think that since my defense in the Smolensk area was pretty strong, he is maybe trying to go around it, either directly through Bryansk, or attacking north in front of Bryansk. It is also possible he could be planning to go further south, but that wouldn't really make too much sense since I am barely defending there in any case and he has troops coming up from the Kiev area:
Germany should have relatively bad supply in this area from Smolensk, however, what he may be trying to do is to bypass my defense in the Smolensk area and use the double rail line that runs from Gomel to Bryansk (and then keeps going north to Moscow via Orel and Tula!). However from what I had seen it looked like his troops around Gomel generally had bad supply, and it took him a while to take Gomel. But in terms of terrain, in some ways it may be easier to attack Moscow from that direction than from the Smolensk direction, since other than in the Bryansk area, there is a lot less forest in the way.
In the center-south (the westernmost part near Gomel is where I got a lot of the troops that are now near Bryansk) , I don't have many troops at the moment and am relying on time/logistics as a temporary defense. Sooner or later I will need to reinforce here. But he tried to snake forward with a few isolated mobile divisions and I could easily cut those off with cavalry (1 mech division also helped with the right-side of the two of those):
It is very easy to do that because Soviet cavalry has into the low 20s in MP, and on clear terrain you can go ~10 hexes and back very easily, for harassing attacks or to cut off incautious advances. With up to 35 MP (and most of my tanks/mech have 35 MP at this point), tank/mech divisions can pretty easily do any of that job cavalry cannot handle:
I am definitely going to have to reinforce in this area sooner or later, however. The situations for Kharkov especially, but also Kursk, are obviously worrisome. And obviously if he keeps going north he will fairly soon threaten the southern flank of the Bryansk area.
Bread also moved boldly forward between Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk, right in between a bunch of my cavalry (and tanks/mech). So I cut him off. Actually, my recon didn't show all of his divisions there, the gap looked a bit wider on recon than it does now (where it is only 1 hex wide with my cavalry stuck in between). That meant I didn't have enough MP to move them back to safety. But in any case it is sort of good to have a few divisions next to the Panzers to lower their CPP gain etc. I also put another 2 disposable Cav divisions there for that reason:
Each of these cav divisions has 2-3k men at most, so I am prety sure the sacrifice is worth it. Other than that, I pulled back somewhat but still am not totally abandoning Dnepropetrovsk. Historically Dnepropetrovsk apparently held until Turn 10, so by this time I am actually (narrowly) holding it longer than historical. It won't be long until I pretty much have to abandon in though, but there is no sign of strong infantry there to break it, so maybe I should think about leaving a few divisions in Dnepropetrovsk, and it could perhaps hold out for an extra turn or two. Here is the rest of that area, the southern flank is also threatened, so I can't stick around here indefinitely:
You can also see in Crimea I put more divisions spread out at the entrance into the peninsula to try to delay/create combat delays so that there is more time for my troops to get prepared in Sevastopol.
Overall, my biggest concern at this point is still losing Leningrad, particularly given how hard (and perhaps recklessly) his tanks continue to push forward there. But I am also worried about the south-center (lack of troops there) and the south. The road from Smolensk to Moscow looks fairly safe at this point, at least for now, but if he pushes too much around Bryansk at a certain point that will force me to withdraw somewhat.
Basically, if he pushes more or less along the black arrow here, my red line of defense which I am currently on may have to start pulling back towards the blue line that stretches from Smolensk area towards Tula. In that case the yellow highlighted area will be important, since that is the southern flank of my Vyazma/Smolensk area defense. Holding firm in the Vyazma area will only make so much difference if he just ends up going around it through the yellow area. Nevertheless, if that happens it will have still achieved something very important, which was to delay significantly the advance on Moscow. This would obviously have been a lot harder if he had the normal amount of tanks in the center rather than sending extra Panzer divisions to the north.
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
ORIGINAL: Beethoven1
Kiev fell, and despite using Tolbukhin there (the best Soviet general), the combat value went from 1022 to 162 with the leader checks etc... And not only did Kiev fall, but he also attacked successfully across the river. The troops in Kiev didn't retreat either, despite Tolbukhin. They routed. And lost most of their strength in the rout. Looks like this whole let's defend the Dnieper thing might not have been such a great idea... Arguably I shouldn't have even put any troops in Kiev, I don't know. If I had put in a city fort with a bunch of divisions, that would have just weakened my river defense and make it even easier for him to cross the Dnieper.
When you are outnumbered over 5-1, this is generally going to happen no matter who you put in there.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 11 -
First of all, on the macro level, my OOB is getting to be fairly good. I have 3.356 million men in the field, and if you count reserves, I have almost 3.6 million men:
In the north, he continued, unfortunately, to gradually push forward towards Leningrad, a few hexes at a time. Nothing can really seem to stop him, despite tanks not being the best in swamp/heavy forest. This is probably the most striking of the battles. I had 3 infantry divisions with a combined defensive combat value of 39 on a swamp hex, and they were just brushed aside by a Panzer division plus two motorized divisions, despite me having Zhukov in charge of those 3 divisions also. Leningrad seems to be the case of the unmoveable object against the unstoppable force, except the unmoveable object is not unmoveable. Even Zhukov can't even defend even in swamps, and also even when Soviets have air support and Germany has no air support:
Copy/paste of DMs with Bread:
In the center, not much happened except for some more slow grinding forward with infantry. A brave German infantry division entered the clearing in Yelnia again. The question is, is Rokossovsky really going to allow that?
Around Bryansk, surprisingly there were no attacks at all. I guess that is coming next turn probably:
Around Dnepropetrovsk, he basically just brushed aside the cavalry and advanced a few hexes, probably could not do more due to being cut off. At this point though, the Dnepropetrovsk-Zaporozhie salient is becoming pretty exposed. I probably can't hold on here too long without a significant retreat, but I still don't see any super-strong infantry coming for Dnepropetrovsk, although there are a handful of German divisions, most of those are broken down into regiments:
Southern Flank of the D-Z salient, and more grinding into the entrance of Crimea:
In the north, I am not sure how much, if at all, I should retreat from the obvious salient, or if I should pretty much just sit there. There is a case for both. I think ideally it would be better to stay if I can manage it, because even if I ended up getting troops encircled, the process of eliminating them would take time, and time is probably the #1 critical factor right now. Also, since to some degree I am going to be supply constrained in the Leningrad area, if I lose troops it is not purely a loss, in the sense that this means that my other troops that remain will end up getting better supply. If I have time, I can also throw in more reserves if need be, though it is getting more and more difficult to move reserves in (since you have to deploy new troops on a rail tile 10 hexes away from the enemy).
Anyway, so to help figure out the best possibility, it seems like the first thing to do is try an attack. Specifically, I am going to attack this one single Panzer division with a total of 15 divisions from 5 different directions (!). That is a lot of Soviets, which furthermore are all under the command of Zhukov/Vasilevsky/Govorov, and also have Eremenko as their front commander (yes, the Bryansk front is actually the Volkhov front, since I have to wait a while before the game creates the Volkhov front for me).
If I can push the Panzer division back, that will make this salient, at least for now, a lot less dangerous for me, and make positioning my troops easier (and it lessens the immediate risk to my railroad by 1 more hex, and every hex matters here). Note I am doing a deliberate attack here, but can only take a screenshot with hasty attack selected, because I can't hold down shift while hitting window + prtsc:
The attack succeeds with 2.6 to 1 odds, I am attacking with 170k men, nearly 2000 artillery, and 159 tanks:
Germany lost a lot of tanks, 93 tanks in this battle. A lot of those losses are retreat losses. I lost 85 tanks also. The tank division that I had there had fairly decent equipment (I had been refitting it for the last few turns) and had 77 T-34s and 23 KV-1s. I lost 36 T-34s and 3 KV-1s out of those. Germany lost mostly Panzer 38(t)s, which were obviously outclassed by my tanks in the gun/armor departments:
The T-34s were (I think, if I am understanding the battle display correctly) my most effective element, they also had 22 AP hits, which I assume was largely knocking out German tanks (the KVs for some reason apparently had 0 though, hmm):
I may also try one more attack in the north, in particular attacking this infantry division, which seems relatively weak. The reason for doing that would be mostly that this is a "quieter" part of the Leningrad front where he is trying to get away with just having small amounts of infantry. But nevertheless I have to keep decent troops here to guard against the risk that suddenly his Panzers turn direction and start attacking there instead. As a result, I have somewhat stronger troops there than I would need to defend just against the infantry he has there now. But yet, I can't really move them too much (at least not without replacing them), so I may as well use them in some way. And if I can push a bit into his flanks and infiltrate a division or two to create extra ZOC, that would not be a bad thing, if for no other reason than to remind him he needs to be at least minimally concerned about them. However, I am not 100% sure yet if I want to do that, because I am concerned about the 3 hexes to the north-east of this (with the 25/15/25 defensive values), and might need to move some better troops there. So I will come back to that after I have started moving troops:
In the center, I don't like how he is marching his infantry forward into the clear hexes between my swamps (Those are MY swamps). I don't like the 3 divisions in the north, but 3 divisions is probably too strong to do too much about now. However in the southern part, he is marching infantry into the Yelnya gap. So we already had the 1st Battle of Yelnya a few turns ago, now it looks like it is time for the 2nd Battle of Yelnya. This division here is very weak with a CV of just 4. Behind it there is a bit stronger of one with a CV of 12. What I would like ideally to do is to push back the one with the CV of 12, and then put 3 good divisions on that hex (between the two swamps) and try and make that into a more solid defensive line. I am going to try to attack that division with the CV of 12, with the hope that I can do that. However, if I can't do that, I should still be able to at least push back the division with the CV of 4. As a bonus, if I can push back the division with the CV of 12, then the division with the CV of 4 will be surrounded and then I should be able to rout it out. If I were really brave, I could even try to isolate it and eliminate it, but that is probably too much of a risk, as Germany might well break it out the next turn and then my defense here would probably end up in a worse position:
With overwhelming #s in my favor and under the command of Tolbukhin, the attack succeeds. However, the combat value dropped from 346 to 90 (lol) so I probably got lucky:
Next step now is I will occupy the one empty hex to the north-west of the division with 4 CV, and then it has nowhere to retreat to, so if it loses another battle it should then automatically rout out. And Rokossovsky just so happens to have a large number of good tank divisions ready to do the job. Then I can put 3 strong divisions on that clear hex in between the swamps that is the entrance to Yelnia and can try to hold there. In the worst case, if I can't hold on to that clear hex at the entrance to the Yelnia clearing, doing this (if successful) should mean that it takes an extra 1-3 turns or so for Germany to finally take Yelnia. Also, at this point, even if I can't beat the division with 4 CV, I can definitely put 3 units in the clear hex and in the worst case it will be isolated for next turn. Which might actually end up being better (but it is riskier).
The other nice thing about this is it ought to be a pretty easy battle to win given the low CV value on the German division, so by attacking it with a large # of my divisions, I can (hopefully) get a "win" which will get them all closer to eventually getting guards status. I am looking forward to the Rokossovsky Guards Tank Army. [:)]
Here is the setup, with a pretty big CV advantage for me even if I did a hasty attack (I am going to do deliberate to be sure though):
Although Rokossovsky's combat value gets cut basically in half from 312 to 154, it is still plenty high to win. 1000 tanks is pretty tough for a single infantry division on clear terrain to stop (lol):
I did lose 52 tanks here, which is mildly unfortunate, but the losses were mostly T-26s and T-38s, and it is probably worth it if for no other reason than to raise my troops morale and give them all an easy win on the way to guards status:
Now the path is clear, and I can put 3 very good mech divisions right there, with CVs of 7.5, 7.9, and 11.4, and a combined total of almost 600 AFVs between them. Also none of the 3 mech divisions participated in either of the two battles against the infantry divisions, so they have basically full CPP and almost no fatigue. It can be tough to hold clear terrain against a determined German attack, but if anything can do it these guys can. What I am hoping will happen is that they can hold long enough for a fort to get built up, that will make it easier. If this holds like I hope it will, then I can shift some of my tanks north to deal with the infantry that is trying to infiltrate there. But this will also probably be a reminder to Bread that he may want to be a bit careful about that, unless he wants to risk getting more divisions routed by Rokossovsky's (and Tolbukhin's) thousands of tanks and hordes of infantry. Also I can hopefully shift some troops south south towards Bryansk to defend in depth against the expected Panzer attack around there.
What is in Yelnya? Rokossovsky's house. And Rokossovsky says, "get out of my house."
Rokossovsky speaking with some German infantry that knocked on his door, in the Yelnia sector in late August 1941:
The south also looks ripe for a counterattack. Remember, the German tanks/motorized here were all or almost all cut off last turn, so they should be low on fuel/supplies/etc. The screenshot here is showing their fuel soft factor, you can see that it is red. The CPP soft factor also looks red (as well as supply red or in one case orange). He also broke down his Panzers into regiments here, and I have a lot of good tanks, mech, and also high CPP infantry right around here which can be used to counterattack. However, it is important to be cautious in how I go about this because there is no possible way I can counterattack ALL of the exposed tanks. I will need to save some MP to be able to retreat a decent amount as needed. But his regiment here has a CV of 1, the other tank visible with a CV of 2 is actually a full division, but still only has 2 CV:
One thing about counterattacking here, however, is that it will definitely mean abandoning Dnepropetrovsk (and presumably also Zaporozhie. But I pretty much have to do that this turn anyway. Also I can pull some of the tank/mech divisions to the north around Kharkov down to help as needed. That might mean that Kharkov falls slightly faster, but it is going to fall within a turn or two at the most regardless of what I do at this point.
First attack:
One win for Vatutin, and 12 German tanks destroyed for a loss of 27 of mine:
2nd attack:
At this point what I would like to do is try to beat that same regiment I attacked previously one more time. It is sort of unfortunate it retreated in the direction that it did, if it had retreated straight to the west it would be a bit easier. But if I can do that, then the 14th Pz division (that is the one with 2 CV) along with the motorized SS unit (it is the LAH) can hopefully be surrounded so that they cannot retreat, and then routed. The order for doing this is important, because i want to make sure that if things don't go as well as I would like, that I will have MP to be able to retreat etc. So the best order seems to be to first re-attack that regiment and get it to retreat to the west, then surround and rout the LAH unit, and then if MP and the state/quality of my divisions allow, try to rout the 14th Panzer division:
3/9 Panzer retreats, although it only loses a single tank in the process. It is annoying that the losses are so low in terms of # of German tanks, as trying to reduce their AFVs is pretty much the primary reason for trying to counterattack like this:
It actually also occurs to me now that it is probably better to try to rout the 14th Panzer division first before the LAH, because that would be a more important thing, and I can easily just move divisions into the 3 hexes where it could retreat now to make sure it can't retreat. I think to be on the safe side I will pull down some of the tank/mech divisions north of Kharkov to help also:
I select divisions to attack (for a deliberate attack), being careful to not pick any mobile divisions to participate that don't have a couple extra movement points > 16 available, so that they will be able to retreat, and also that any CAV/INF has enough in excess of 8 MP for a deliberate attack that they will be able to get to a (hopefully) safe enough defensive position:
The attack succeeds, although Germany doesn't lose quite as many tanks as I would like ideally (only 13). But this tank division only had 55 tanks (now make that 42). Probably that lack of tanks is one reason, in addition to the fatigue/fuel/etc, why its CV is pretty low, which is what makes it possible to counterattack like this in the first place:
Since this is a mobile unit routing, Germany also lost 263 vehicles. Hopefully over the longer term that little extra bit lowering Germany's truck count will hurt Axis logistics:
Divisions in place to attack. I similarly make sure to have enough MP to move away after. However, I do want to start my defense somewhere around here so it is ok for the infantry/cavalry to only have a few MP left after this:
And LAH routs, with another 207 vehicles also lost (I think that I capture at least some of those that are lost also, so not only does it hurt Axis logistics (a bit) over the long run, but should also help mine slightly:
Looking at the counterattack as a whole know, what it has achieved is not just routing the 14th Pz and LAH units (and also repeatedly beating the regiments of the 9th Panzer division), but also it converts back 4 hexes which now Germany will have to move through to the east again next turn without having admin movement. Also looking at it now I see that I should be able to displace the routed tank division also, will try that. I might be able to also attack the 2 regiments of the 9th PZ again, but will have to look at it carefully to figure out if the MP will really allow for that:
I do have enough MP for one more hasty attack here (also the routed panzer division was displaced in moving here):
Also, I thought I was done, but I realized I can get in one more hasty counterattack on this other Panzer division (the 13th) which has 2.9 CV. This one won't be great odds, but it should make sure that this division is also fatigued/lower CPP/etc for next turn:
This one failed. Vatutin's CV dropped from 70 to 22, if not for that maybe it would have succeeded.
But in any case by my count that is:
a) LAH motorized routed
b) 1 Panzer division (14th) routed and then also displaced
c) Another Panzer division's (9th) regiments made to lose 4-5ish battles and made to retreat repeatedly and take retreat losses
d) Another Panzer division (13th) which was already fairly low strength and had only 65 tanks counterattacked, and although the counterattack was unsuccesful, it lost 9 more tanks and should not be fatigued/lower CPP/etc for next turn
So that should be about half of their (German) mobile forces in the south beaten up fairly significantly. However, there are still a couple untouched mobile divisions which I will have to worry about defending against. But most or all of those were encircled the previous turn and should be low on fuel, and also in general they should be having at least some logistical problems. Nevertheless I will have to set up a good defense in depth in front of Stalino.
Also obviously Dnepropetrovsk is going to fall imminently. One question I still have to decide about is whether to totally abandon it or to leave its current garrison (right now that is just this mountain division, which is VERY good. 11 unmodified CV and 116 modified by the urban terrain and a fort.
Alternatively I could rescue it and move in a worse INF division that would nonetheless create a speedbump. I have these other 2 inf divisions which have 5 CV each right nextdoor also.
(note, I ended up leaaving 1 of the infantry divisions that had about 70 modified CV rather than the Mountain division)
HMMM one thing I just realized is these two divisions apparently do NOT have enough MP to retreat as far as I would ideally like, despite having 4 and 5 MP. I had thought that it costs 3 CV to enter an enemy territory, and 1 combat delay adds 1 extra movement point to leave a hex? So the 10th tank division which has 4 MP ought to be able to retreat 1 hex? And the 15th mech div ought to be able to retreat 1 hex into the territory that was originally enemy controlled for 4 MP and then do 1 more MP of admin movement into my own territory? But neither of them can move?
from the manual (22.2.7.):
The effect of the delay is that when a unit
moves out of a hex, it expends an amount of MPs equal to
the combat delay if a non-motorized unit, and three times
the combat delay if a motorized unit.
So I think my calculation would have been right if it were a non-motorized unit, but apparently it takes more to move a motorized unit from a combat delay and I didn't realize that [:(]
With that rule about combat delay being 3x higher for mobile divisions, that makes combat delay especially important for slowing down German Panzer divisions also. I didn't realize the effect was that large, that makes defense in depth very good for Soviets in stopping Panzer attacks. Because in addition to using MP for attacks, you also use that much MP from combat delay,
Overall in these counterattacks, Germany lost 4k men and 138 AFV (most of which are from Panzer divisions), I lost a total of a bit less than 8k men and 390 AFV:
Also the air trade in the ground support battles is pretty good, Axis lost 42 planes and I lost 55 planes. About 2/3 of the Axis losses are German also (14 of 42 are from Hungary/Romania).
With the exception of not realizing the math was different for combat delay with mobile units and non-mobile, this turn is going very well so far I would say. But now the fun part is over and it should be pretty much just movement placement and admin stuff.
First of all, on the macro level, my OOB is getting to be fairly good. I have 3.356 million men in the field, and if you count reserves, I have almost 3.6 million men:
In the north, he continued, unfortunately, to gradually push forward towards Leningrad, a few hexes at a time. Nothing can really seem to stop him, despite tanks not being the best in swamp/heavy forest. This is probably the most striking of the battles. I had 3 infantry divisions with a combined defensive combat value of 39 on a swamp hex, and they were just brushed aside by a Panzer division plus two motorized divisions, despite me having Zhukov in charge of those 3 divisions also. Leningrad seems to be the case of the unmoveable object against the unstoppable force, except the unmoveable object is not unmoveable. Even Zhukov can't even defend even in swamps, and also even when Soviets have air support and Germany has no air support:
Copy/paste of DMs with Bread:
In the center, not much happened except for some more slow grinding forward with infantry. A brave German infantry division entered the clearing in Yelnia again. The question is, is Rokossovsky really going to allow that?
Around Bryansk, surprisingly there were no attacks at all. I guess that is coming next turn probably:
Around Dnepropetrovsk, he basically just brushed aside the cavalry and advanced a few hexes, probably could not do more due to being cut off. At this point though, the Dnepropetrovsk-Zaporozhie salient is becoming pretty exposed. I probably can't hold on here too long without a significant retreat, but I still don't see any super-strong infantry coming for Dnepropetrovsk, although there are a handful of German divisions, most of those are broken down into regiments:
Southern Flank of the D-Z salient, and more grinding into the entrance of Crimea:
In the north, I am not sure how much, if at all, I should retreat from the obvious salient, or if I should pretty much just sit there. There is a case for both. I think ideally it would be better to stay if I can manage it, because even if I ended up getting troops encircled, the process of eliminating them would take time, and time is probably the #1 critical factor right now. Also, since to some degree I am going to be supply constrained in the Leningrad area, if I lose troops it is not purely a loss, in the sense that this means that my other troops that remain will end up getting better supply. If I have time, I can also throw in more reserves if need be, though it is getting more and more difficult to move reserves in (since you have to deploy new troops on a rail tile 10 hexes away from the enemy).
Anyway, so to help figure out the best possibility, it seems like the first thing to do is try an attack. Specifically, I am going to attack this one single Panzer division with a total of 15 divisions from 5 different directions (!). That is a lot of Soviets, which furthermore are all under the command of Zhukov/Vasilevsky/Govorov, and also have Eremenko as their front commander (yes, the Bryansk front is actually the Volkhov front, since I have to wait a while before the game creates the Volkhov front for me).
If I can push the Panzer division back, that will make this salient, at least for now, a lot less dangerous for me, and make positioning my troops easier (and it lessens the immediate risk to my railroad by 1 more hex, and every hex matters here). Note I am doing a deliberate attack here, but can only take a screenshot with hasty attack selected, because I can't hold down shift while hitting window + prtsc:
The attack succeeds with 2.6 to 1 odds, I am attacking with 170k men, nearly 2000 artillery, and 159 tanks:
Germany lost a lot of tanks, 93 tanks in this battle. A lot of those losses are retreat losses. I lost 85 tanks also. The tank division that I had there had fairly decent equipment (I had been refitting it for the last few turns) and had 77 T-34s and 23 KV-1s. I lost 36 T-34s and 3 KV-1s out of those. Germany lost mostly Panzer 38(t)s, which were obviously outclassed by my tanks in the gun/armor departments:
The T-34s were (I think, if I am understanding the battle display correctly) my most effective element, they also had 22 AP hits, which I assume was largely knocking out German tanks (the KVs for some reason apparently had 0 though, hmm):
I may also try one more attack in the north, in particular attacking this infantry division, which seems relatively weak. The reason for doing that would be mostly that this is a "quieter" part of the Leningrad front where he is trying to get away with just having small amounts of infantry. But nevertheless I have to keep decent troops here to guard against the risk that suddenly his Panzers turn direction and start attacking there instead. As a result, I have somewhat stronger troops there than I would need to defend just against the infantry he has there now. But yet, I can't really move them too much (at least not without replacing them), so I may as well use them in some way. And if I can push a bit into his flanks and infiltrate a division or two to create extra ZOC, that would not be a bad thing, if for no other reason than to remind him he needs to be at least minimally concerned about them. However, I am not 100% sure yet if I want to do that, because I am concerned about the 3 hexes to the north-east of this (with the 25/15/25 defensive values), and might need to move some better troops there. So I will come back to that after I have started moving troops:
In the center, I don't like how he is marching his infantry forward into the clear hexes between my swamps (Those are MY swamps). I don't like the 3 divisions in the north, but 3 divisions is probably too strong to do too much about now. However in the southern part, he is marching infantry into the Yelnya gap. So we already had the 1st Battle of Yelnya a few turns ago, now it looks like it is time for the 2nd Battle of Yelnya. This division here is very weak with a CV of just 4. Behind it there is a bit stronger of one with a CV of 12. What I would like ideally to do is to push back the one with the CV of 12, and then put 3 good divisions on that hex (between the two swamps) and try and make that into a more solid defensive line. I am going to try to attack that division with the CV of 12, with the hope that I can do that. However, if I can't do that, I should still be able to at least push back the division with the CV of 4. As a bonus, if I can push back the division with the CV of 12, then the division with the CV of 4 will be surrounded and then I should be able to rout it out. If I were really brave, I could even try to isolate it and eliminate it, but that is probably too much of a risk, as Germany might well break it out the next turn and then my defense here would probably end up in a worse position:
With overwhelming #s in my favor and under the command of Tolbukhin, the attack succeeds. However, the combat value dropped from 346 to 90 (lol) so I probably got lucky:
Next step now is I will occupy the one empty hex to the north-west of the division with 4 CV, and then it has nowhere to retreat to, so if it loses another battle it should then automatically rout out. And Rokossovsky just so happens to have a large number of good tank divisions ready to do the job. Then I can put 3 strong divisions on that clear hex in between the swamps that is the entrance to Yelnia and can try to hold there. In the worst case, if I can't hold on to that clear hex at the entrance to the Yelnia clearing, doing this (if successful) should mean that it takes an extra 1-3 turns or so for Germany to finally take Yelnia. Also, at this point, even if I can't beat the division with 4 CV, I can definitely put 3 units in the clear hex and in the worst case it will be isolated for next turn. Which might actually end up being better (but it is riskier).
The other nice thing about this is it ought to be a pretty easy battle to win given the low CV value on the German division, so by attacking it with a large # of my divisions, I can (hopefully) get a "win" which will get them all closer to eventually getting guards status. I am looking forward to the Rokossovsky Guards Tank Army. [:)]
Here is the setup, with a pretty big CV advantage for me even if I did a hasty attack (I am going to do deliberate to be sure though):
Although Rokossovsky's combat value gets cut basically in half from 312 to 154, it is still plenty high to win. 1000 tanks is pretty tough for a single infantry division on clear terrain to stop (lol):
I did lose 52 tanks here, which is mildly unfortunate, but the losses were mostly T-26s and T-38s, and it is probably worth it if for no other reason than to raise my troops morale and give them all an easy win on the way to guards status:
Now the path is clear, and I can put 3 very good mech divisions right there, with CVs of 7.5, 7.9, and 11.4, and a combined total of almost 600 AFVs between them. Also none of the 3 mech divisions participated in either of the two battles against the infantry divisions, so they have basically full CPP and almost no fatigue. It can be tough to hold clear terrain against a determined German attack, but if anything can do it these guys can. What I am hoping will happen is that they can hold long enough for a fort to get built up, that will make it easier. If this holds like I hope it will, then I can shift some of my tanks north to deal with the infantry that is trying to infiltrate there. But this will also probably be a reminder to Bread that he may want to be a bit careful about that, unless he wants to risk getting more divisions routed by Rokossovsky's (and Tolbukhin's) thousands of tanks and hordes of infantry. Also I can hopefully shift some troops south south towards Bryansk to defend in depth against the expected Panzer attack around there.
What is in Yelnya? Rokossovsky's house. And Rokossovsky says, "get out of my house."
Rokossovsky speaking with some German infantry that knocked on his door, in the Yelnia sector in late August 1941:
The south also looks ripe for a counterattack. Remember, the German tanks/motorized here were all or almost all cut off last turn, so they should be low on fuel/supplies/etc. The screenshot here is showing their fuel soft factor, you can see that it is red. The CPP soft factor also looks red (as well as supply red or in one case orange). He also broke down his Panzers into regiments here, and I have a lot of good tanks, mech, and also high CPP infantry right around here which can be used to counterattack. However, it is important to be cautious in how I go about this because there is no possible way I can counterattack ALL of the exposed tanks. I will need to save some MP to be able to retreat a decent amount as needed. But his regiment here has a CV of 1, the other tank visible with a CV of 2 is actually a full division, but still only has 2 CV:
One thing about counterattacking here, however, is that it will definitely mean abandoning Dnepropetrovsk (and presumably also Zaporozhie. But I pretty much have to do that this turn anyway. Also I can pull some of the tank/mech divisions to the north around Kharkov down to help as needed. That might mean that Kharkov falls slightly faster, but it is going to fall within a turn or two at the most regardless of what I do at this point.
First attack:
One win for Vatutin, and 12 German tanks destroyed for a loss of 27 of mine:
2nd attack:
At this point what I would like to do is try to beat that same regiment I attacked previously one more time. It is sort of unfortunate it retreated in the direction that it did, if it had retreated straight to the west it would be a bit easier. But if I can do that, then the 14th Pz division (that is the one with 2 CV) along with the motorized SS unit (it is the LAH) can hopefully be surrounded so that they cannot retreat, and then routed. The order for doing this is important, because i want to make sure that if things don't go as well as I would like, that I will have MP to be able to retreat etc. So the best order seems to be to first re-attack that regiment and get it to retreat to the west, then surround and rout the LAH unit, and then if MP and the state/quality of my divisions allow, try to rout the 14th Panzer division:
3/9 Panzer retreats, although it only loses a single tank in the process. It is annoying that the losses are so low in terms of # of German tanks, as trying to reduce their AFVs is pretty much the primary reason for trying to counterattack like this:
It actually also occurs to me now that it is probably better to try to rout the 14th Panzer division first before the LAH, because that would be a more important thing, and I can easily just move divisions into the 3 hexes where it could retreat now to make sure it can't retreat. I think to be on the safe side I will pull down some of the tank/mech divisions north of Kharkov to help also:
I select divisions to attack (for a deliberate attack), being careful to not pick any mobile divisions to participate that don't have a couple extra movement points > 16 available, so that they will be able to retreat, and also that any CAV/INF has enough in excess of 8 MP for a deliberate attack that they will be able to get to a (hopefully) safe enough defensive position:
The attack succeeds, although Germany doesn't lose quite as many tanks as I would like ideally (only 13). But this tank division only had 55 tanks (now make that 42). Probably that lack of tanks is one reason, in addition to the fatigue/fuel/etc, why its CV is pretty low, which is what makes it possible to counterattack like this in the first place:
Since this is a mobile unit routing, Germany also lost 263 vehicles. Hopefully over the longer term that little extra bit lowering Germany's truck count will hurt Axis logistics:
Divisions in place to attack. I similarly make sure to have enough MP to move away after. However, I do want to start my defense somewhere around here so it is ok for the infantry/cavalry to only have a few MP left after this:
And LAH routs, with another 207 vehicles also lost (I think that I capture at least some of those that are lost also, so not only does it hurt Axis logistics (a bit) over the long run, but should also help mine slightly:
Looking at the counterattack as a whole know, what it has achieved is not just routing the 14th Pz and LAH units (and also repeatedly beating the regiments of the 9th Panzer division), but also it converts back 4 hexes which now Germany will have to move through to the east again next turn without having admin movement. Also looking at it now I see that I should be able to displace the routed tank division also, will try that. I might be able to also attack the 2 regiments of the 9th PZ again, but will have to look at it carefully to figure out if the MP will really allow for that:
I do have enough MP for one more hasty attack here (also the routed panzer division was displaced in moving here):
Also, I thought I was done, but I realized I can get in one more hasty counterattack on this other Panzer division (the 13th) which has 2.9 CV. This one won't be great odds, but it should make sure that this division is also fatigued/lower CPP/etc for next turn:
This one failed. Vatutin's CV dropped from 70 to 22, if not for that maybe it would have succeeded.
But in any case by my count that is:
a) LAH motorized routed
b) 1 Panzer division (14th) routed and then also displaced
c) Another Panzer division's (9th) regiments made to lose 4-5ish battles and made to retreat repeatedly and take retreat losses
d) Another Panzer division (13th) which was already fairly low strength and had only 65 tanks counterattacked, and although the counterattack was unsuccesful, it lost 9 more tanks and should not be fatigued/lower CPP/etc for next turn
So that should be about half of their (German) mobile forces in the south beaten up fairly significantly. However, there are still a couple untouched mobile divisions which I will have to worry about defending against. But most or all of those were encircled the previous turn and should be low on fuel, and also in general they should be having at least some logistical problems. Nevertheless I will have to set up a good defense in depth in front of Stalino.
Also obviously Dnepropetrovsk is going to fall imminently. One question I still have to decide about is whether to totally abandon it or to leave its current garrison (right now that is just this mountain division, which is VERY good. 11 unmodified CV and 116 modified by the urban terrain and a fort.
Alternatively I could rescue it and move in a worse INF division that would nonetheless create a speedbump. I have these other 2 inf divisions which have 5 CV each right nextdoor also.
(note, I ended up leaaving 1 of the infantry divisions that had about 70 modified CV rather than the Mountain division)
HMMM one thing I just realized is these two divisions apparently do NOT have enough MP to retreat as far as I would ideally like, despite having 4 and 5 MP. I had thought that it costs 3 CV to enter an enemy territory, and 1 combat delay adds 1 extra movement point to leave a hex? So the 10th tank division which has 4 MP ought to be able to retreat 1 hex? And the 15th mech div ought to be able to retreat 1 hex into the territory that was originally enemy controlled for 4 MP and then do 1 more MP of admin movement into my own territory? But neither of them can move?
from the manual (22.2.7.):
The effect of the delay is that when a unit
moves out of a hex, it expends an amount of MPs equal to
the combat delay if a non-motorized unit, and three times
the combat delay if a motorized unit.
So I think my calculation would have been right if it were a non-motorized unit, but apparently it takes more to move a motorized unit from a combat delay and I didn't realize that [:(]
With that rule about combat delay being 3x higher for mobile divisions, that makes combat delay especially important for slowing down German Panzer divisions also. I didn't realize the effect was that large, that makes defense in depth very good for Soviets in stopping Panzer attacks. Because in addition to using MP for attacks, you also use that much MP from combat delay,
Overall in these counterattacks, Germany lost 4k men and 138 AFV (most of which are from Panzer divisions), I lost a total of a bit less than 8k men and 390 AFV:
Also the air trade in the ground support battles is pretty good, Axis lost 42 planes and I lost 55 planes. About 2/3 of the Axis losses are German also (14 of 42 are from Hungary/Romania).
With the exception of not realizing the math was different for combat delay with mobile units and non-mobile, this turn is going very well so far I would say. But now the fun part is over and it should be pretty much just movement placement and admin stuff.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 12 -
First of all, one weird/interesting thing is that Germany only did recon in the north. Other than this recon in the north, there is 0 recon anywhere else on the map at all:
The second interesting and somewhat frightening thing is that suddenly EVEN MORE Panzers showed up in the North. Here is the 10th Panzer division, and the 10th motorized division as well as 29th mot are also in the western flank near the Narva river. Those are from Panzer Group 2 AFAIK, which are normally in the center-south. Only 2 turns ago, the 4th Panzer division was near Bryansk, and I was expecting some sort of attack around Bryansk on the southern flank of the center. So I am not entirely sure what is going on here with the German center tanks:
This is sort of a bad time for extra tanks to be showing up there because just last turn I weakened my defense in that area in order to move stronger units in front of the main push of all the other German tanks/motorized divisions. I would like to send EVEN MORE reinforcements to Leningrad at this point, but I already have three entire fronts there (all of which are exceeding their command capacity, lol), the Northwestern, Leningrad, and Bryansk fronts (it would be nice if I could rename that front). So I am not sure I can really supply more troops. I will have to take a close look at the logistics tab. His main tanks that had already been around Leningrad actually didn't attack last turn, I am not sure if that is good or bad. He had been pushing relentlessly every turn with them and taking more and more hexes. By waiting, his CPP etc will go up (although he cannot really pull behind the front line to get extra CPP gain due to the absurd shape of the front line), so the attack next turn will be stronger. On the other hand, hopefully my troops will be more entrenched/prepared also.
Very little happened in the center:
In Bryansk Germany did attack, but only with infantry, not the expected Panzer attack. Did all of the German tanks leave to the north, or just some of them?
Fortunately, I would say, pretty much nothing happened in the south also. I was afraid about my defense in front of Stalino, due to not knowing about the 3x combat delay for mobile troops, I had defended further forward than I really wanted to. Rather than abandoning the 2 tank divisions that could not retreat as far as I wanted them to, I had simply defended further forward alongside them. It looks like he took the turn to refit his troops and gain CPP, so I think I will need to retreat and be careful for next turn.
In Crimea the slow infantry advance towards Sevastopol continued:
Now for a look at the logistics. I suddenly got a HUGE amount of supply this turn, 60k in comparison to 20k needed. This seems pretty strange, in all previous turns I had been getting only about the amount that was needed overall, not extra. All armies except the 27th, Luga Operational Group, 49th Army, Coastal OpGr Army, and 50th Army also got more supply than they need (and those ones only got a bit less than they need).
The only thing I can think of that really changed was this turn I had most of my army on supply priority 4. In previous turns I had mixed it around, with giving supply priority 4 to the ones that I really wanted to get supply to (e.g. ones in the Leningrad area and ones in the center with good commanders), but this turn I put almost everyone on supply priority 4. I had thought that by setting the supply priorities differently for different armies that would still result in pretty much the same total amount of supply being sent out, but simply prioritize where it went. However, it seems like maybe you simply just get outright more supply when on supply priority 4. If this is the case, then basically it seems like a mistake to ever have any of your army on less than supply priority 4 for the most part, at least for Soviets. For Germany maybe you still want to prioritize the Panzer Groups for good supply, but for Soviets you should probably just always have your entire army on Supply Priority 4, at least in the early game/1941. ???
Specifics for the handful of armies that had a bit less supply than they needed:
27th army - in the Northwest Front, the hardest area to get supply to, with supply priority 4
Luga Operational Group - same
Coastal OpGr Army - same
49th Army - This was a place in the center for collecting mostly routed/depleted units, I had it only on supply priority 2. Probably the fact that the supply priority was only 2 is why it was lower, because if everyone else could get so much supply, it should have been able to also
50th Army - newly formed army on supply priority 4 in wilderness behind Lake Ilmen/mostly north of Valdai
So from this it seems like I am somewhat logistically constrained in Leningrad, in particular in the western part where the Northwestern Front is. But I apparently have way more logistical capacity than I thought which had somehow not been being used, apparently due to the supply priorities being set too low. And all the other armies in Leningrad got more than enough supply, despite there being 3 whole fronts up there. So maybe I can in fact send some more troops up there. I will see how well I can reform my defenses there against this additional Panzer Attack on the western flank of the Leningrad area.
(note, in subsequent turns up through turn 15 I kept my whole army on supply priority 4, and continued to get lots of supply - basically my whole army now has full supply, which is nice, but perhaps I should have started going this on turn 1)...
First of all, one weird/interesting thing is that Germany only did recon in the north. Other than this recon in the north, there is 0 recon anywhere else on the map at all:
The second interesting and somewhat frightening thing is that suddenly EVEN MORE Panzers showed up in the North. Here is the 10th Panzer division, and the 10th motorized division as well as 29th mot are also in the western flank near the Narva river. Those are from Panzer Group 2 AFAIK, which are normally in the center-south. Only 2 turns ago, the 4th Panzer division was near Bryansk, and I was expecting some sort of attack around Bryansk on the southern flank of the center. So I am not entirely sure what is going on here with the German center tanks:
This is sort of a bad time for extra tanks to be showing up there because just last turn I weakened my defense in that area in order to move stronger units in front of the main push of all the other German tanks/motorized divisions. I would like to send EVEN MORE reinforcements to Leningrad at this point, but I already have three entire fronts there (all of which are exceeding their command capacity, lol), the Northwestern, Leningrad, and Bryansk fronts (it would be nice if I could rename that front). So I am not sure I can really supply more troops. I will have to take a close look at the logistics tab. His main tanks that had already been around Leningrad actually didn't attack last turn, I am not sure if that is good or bad. He had been pushing relentlessly every turn with them and taking more and more hexes. By waiting, his CPP etc will go up (although he cannot really pull behind the front line to get extra CPP gain due to the absurd shape of the front line), so the attack next turn will be stronger. On the other hand, hopefully my troops will be more entrenched/prepared also.
Very little happened in the center:
In Bryansk Germany did attack, but only with infantry, not the expected Panzer attack. Did all of the German tanks leave to the north, or just some of them?
Fortunately, I would say, pretty much nothing happened in the south also. I was afraid about my defense in front of Stalino, due to not knowing about the 3x combat delay for mobile troops, I had defended further forward than I really wanted to. Rather than abandoning the 2 tank divisions that could not retreat as far as I wanted them to, I had simply defended further forward alongside them. It looks like he took the turn to refit his troops and gain CPP, so I think I will need to retreat and be careful for next turn.
In Crimea the slow infantry advance towards Sevastopol continued:
Now for a look at the logistics. I suddenly got a HUGE amount of supply this turn, 60k in comparison to 20k needed. This seems pretty strange, in all previous turns I had been getting only about the amount that was needed overall, not extra. All armies except the 27th, Luga Operational Group, 49th Army, Coastal OpGr Army, and 50th Army also got more supply than they need (and those ones only got a bit less than they need).
The only thing I can think of that really changed was this turn I had most of my army on supply priority 4. In previous turns I had mixed it around, with giving supply priority 4 to the ones that I really wanted to get supply to (e.g. ones in the Leningrad area and ones in the center with good commanders), but this turn I put almost everyone on supply priority 4. I had thought that by setting the supply priorities differently for different armies that would still result in pretty much the same total amount of supply being sent out, but simply prioritize where it went. However, it seems like maybe you simply just get outright more supply when on supply priority 4. If this is the case, then basically it seems like a mistake to ever have any of your army on less than supply priority 4 for the most part, at least for Soviets. For Germany maybe you still want to prioritize the Panzer Groups for good supply, but for Soviets you should probably just always have your entire army on Supply Priority 4, at least in the early game/1941. ???
Specifics for the handful of armies that had a bit less supply than they needed:
27th army - in the Northwest Front, the hardest area to get supply to, with supply priority 4
Luga Operational Group - same
Coastal OpGr Army - same
49th Army - This was a place in the center for collecting mostly routed/depleted units, I had it only on supply priority 2. Probably the fact that the supply priority was only 2 is why it was lower, because if everyone else could get so much supply, it should have been able to also
50th Army - newly formed army on supply priority 4 in wilderness behind Lake Ilmen/mostly north of Valdai
So from this it seems like I am somewhat logistically constrained in Leningrad, in particular in the western part where the Northwestern Front is. But I apparently have way more logistical capacity than I thought which had somehow not been being used, apparently due to the supply priorities being set too low. And all the other armies in Leningrad got more than enough supply, despite there being 3 whole fronts up there. So maybe I can in fact send some more troops up there. I will see how well I can reform my defenses there against this additional Panzer Attack on the western flank of the Leningrad area.
(note, in subsequent turns up through turn 15 I kept my whole army on supply priority 4, and continued to get lots of supply - basically my whole army now has full supply, which is nice, but perhaps I should have started going this on turn 1)...
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of Turn 12 ---
This was a fairly quiet turn. In the north, I reoriented my defense a bit towards the new Panzer attack in the western flank of Leningrad and set up defense in depth. The Totenkopf division was temporarily cut off by brave Soviet cavalrymen.
In the Kalinin/Valdai wilderness, I am starting to set up more or less continuous defense, with help from a couple of reserve divisions:
In the Smolensk area, Rokossovsky did one counterattack against a single (and weak) infantry division that had encroached foolishly into a salient in our territory. Now 12 more divisions are +1 win closer to guards status. As far as I know, for guards status a win is a win calculated separately for each division, so if you are looking to farm guards status, a good way to do it is to attack single weak divisions with an overwhelming number of your own divisions, this then can give a large number of divisions wins from only a single (easy) battle:
I straightened the line in Bryansk a bit and started to put at least some token forces around Kursk:
Reluctantly, I pulled back from Kharkov and totally abandoned it. It will be given up without a fight.
The way the factory evacuation works, the amount of delay penalty and damage you get when the factory is moved seems to be based on the historical date of capture, but the time at which you start repairing is based on when you lose it. So at least if I am understanding the system correctly, if you are going to lose a factory before the historical date, then it is actually better (at least for the time when it will get repaired) to lose it earlier rather than later. The factory will end up being fully repaired sooner, and the date at which the delay will allow it to begin producing will be the same regardless of when it is lost. So if it is a given that you are going to lose it early and it will be force relocated early upon capture (which is clearly a given here), you will end up producing more from the relocated factory if you lose it earlier rather than later.
Obviously, you do lose the production from the current turn obviously. But if it were encircled, which it probably would have been if I had tried to defend it, then the production would have been isolated and lost anyway.
And there is also no VP reason to defend it also since it is not +/- 3 weeks of the historical date of capture. So it makes sense to defend it only if the tactical situation warrants it basically:
I also pulled back to the Torets/Stalino/Kalmius small river line to help ensure no disasters arise from the German mobile divisions which have taken the turn off. My troops in this area are a bit weak still from the aftereffects of CPP loss/fatigue/etc from the counterattack, and I have not been refitting them particularly, so a good # of divisions are unready (but this turn I refit them).
Likewise pulled back towards Sevastopol and Kerch:
This was a fairly quiet turn. In the north, I reoriented my defense a bit towards the new Panzer attack in the western flank of Leningrad and set up defense in depth. The Totenkopf division was temporarily cut off by brave Soviet cavalrymen.
In the Kalinin/Valdai wilderness, I am starting to set up more or less continuous defense, with help from a couple of reserve divisions:
In the Smolensk area, Rokossovsky did one counterattack against a single (and weak) infantry division that had encroached foolishly into a salient in our territory. Now 12 more divisions are +1 win closer to guards status. As far as I know, for guards status a win is a win calculated separately for each division, so if you are looking to farm guards status, a good way to do it is to attack single weak divisions with an overwhelming number of your own divisions, this then can give a large number of divisions wins from only a single (easy) battle:
I straightened the line in Bryansk a bit and started to put at least some token forces around Kursk:
Reluctantly, I pulled back from Kharkov and totally abandoned it. It will be given up without a fight.
The way the factory evacuation works, the amount of delay penalty and damage you get when the factory is moved seems to be based on the historical date of capture, but the time at which you start repairing is based on when you lose it. So at least if I am understanding the system correctly, if you are going to lose a factory before the historical date, then it is actually better (at least for the time when it will get repaired) to lose it earlier rather than later. The factory will end up being fully repaired sooner, and the date at which the delay will allow it to begin producing will be the same regardless of when it is lost. So if it is a given that you are going to lose it early and it will be force relocated early upon capture (which is clearly a given here), you will end up producing more from the relocated factory if you lose it earlier rather than later.
Obviously, you do lose the production from the current turn obviously. But if it were encircled, which it probably would have been if I had tried to defend it, then the production would have been isolated and lost anyway.
And there is also no VP reason to defend it also since it is not +/- 3 weeks of the historical date of capture. So it makes sense to defend it only if the tactical situation warrants it basically:
I also pulled back to the Torets/Stalino/Kalmius small river line to help ensure no disasters arise from the German mobile divisions which have taken the turn off. My troops in this area are a bit weak still from the aftereffects of CPP loss/fatigue/etc from the counterattack, and I have not been refitting them particularly, so a good # of divisions are unready (but this turn I refit them).
Likewise pulled back towards Sevastopol and Kerch:
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 13 ---
There are so many tanks/motorized divisions in Leningrad that it is unreal. I didn't send my reinforcements to Leningrad last turn, they mostly went to the Kursk area to form at least a basic screening defense there, and I am already wondering if that was a bad idea lol! Erwin Rommel also showed up to Leningrad, which sort of surprises me, because we are NOT playing with enhanced theater boxes. So apparently it is possible to send Rommel to Leningrad even without that option enabled:
Germany advanced a few hexes on most different parts of the front, including this important heavy forest hex, which had a level 2 fort and 63 supposed combat value. The combat value dropped from 821 to 153 after the combat resolution (typical):
In the Smolensk area this key heavy forest hex where Tolbukhin had been hanging out with 3 strong divisions was similarly crushed with pioneers. Combat value dropped from 538 to 138 despite Tolbukhin and the level 2 forts on heavy forest:
There was more slow forward grinding around Bryansk, but still no sign of any Panzer attack. The center is getting pretty eerie. I know that most of Germany's Panzers are in Leningrad, but there was at least one Panzer division near Bryansk not long ago, of which nothing subsequently has been heard. I think I need to literally count up all the Panzer/motorized divisions in the Leningrad area to determine just how many of them he has elsewhere!!!
In the south, Germany crossed the Donets in force. This will threaten the northern flank of my Stalino area defense, but it is not the worst thing in the world, since if he wants to get back there he will have to cross the river again to the south, and that will take MP. Next turn Germany will reach Sevastopol.
The other thing worth looking at is the logistics report again. Similarly to last turn, I got way more supply than needed again, with all my divisions on supply priority 4. Apparently supply priority does not just prioritize the distribution of supply, but it actually changes the total amount of supply you get. If you want more supply, use supply priority 4. If you want less, don't. You basically always want more supply, so in that case you should basically always use supply priority 4, I guess:
My OOB is up to 3.4 million on the map, with 250k in reserves, which is definitely well above the 3 million mark, so seems like overall a pretty good position:
In total, the following mobile divisions are visible in the Leningrad area (including Totenkopf on the other side of Lake Ilmen). It is a total of 9 Panzer divisions, 2 SS motorized divisions, 7 regular motorized divisions, and 1 motorized brigade. In addition there might be some more not visible, I will do recon to try to spot any more. But clearly a huge # of divisions are in Leningrad:
1st Pz
6th Pz
7th Pz
8th Pz
10th Pz
12th Pz
18th Pz
19th Pz
20th Pz
Das Reich SS
Totenkopf SS
3rd Mot
10th Mot
14th Mot
18th Mot
20th Mot
29th Mot
36th Mot
Lehr Mot Bde
There are so many tanks/motorized divisions in Leningrad that it is unreal. I didn't send my reinforcements to Leningrad last turn, they mostly went to the Kursk area to form at least a basic screening defense there, and I am already wondering if that was a bad idea lol! Erwin Rommel also showed up to Leningrad, which sort of surprises me, because we are NOT playing with enhanced theater boxes. So apparently it is possible to send Rommel to Leningrad even without that option enabled:
Germany advanced a few hexes on most different parts of the front, including this important heavy forest hex, which had a level 2 fort and 63 supposed combat value. The combat value dropped from 821 to 153 after the combat resolution (typical):
In the Smolensk area this key heavy forest hex where Tolbukhin had been hanging out with 3 strong divisions was similarly crushed with pioneers. Combat value dropped from 538 to 138 despite Tolbukhin and the level 2 forts on heavy forest:
There was more slow forward grinding around Bryansk, but still no sign of any Panzer attack. The center is getting pretty eerie. I know that most of Germany's Panzers are in Leningrad, but there was at least one Panzer division near Bryansk not long ago, of which nothing subsequently has been heard. I think I need to literally count up all the Panzer/motorized divisions in the Leningrad area to determine just how many of them he has elsewhere!!!
In the south, Germany crossed the Donets in force. This will threaten the northern flank of my Stalino area defense, but it is not the worst thing in the world, since if he wants to get back there he will have to cross the river again to the south, and that will take MP. Next turn Germany will reach Sevastopol.
The other thing worth looking at is the logistics report again. Similarly to last turn, I got way more supply than needed again, with all my divisions on supply priority 4. Apparently supply priority does not just prioritize the distribution of supply, but it actually changes the total amount of supply you get. If you want more supply, use supply priority 4. If you want less, don't. You basically always want more supply, so in that case you should basically always use supply priority 4, I guess:
My OOB is up to 3.4 million on the map, with 250k in reserves, which is definitely well above the 3 million mark, so seems like overall a pretty good position:
In total, the following mobile divisions are visible in the Leningrad area (including Totenkopf on the other side of Lake Ilmen). It is a total of 9 Panzer divisions, 2 SS motorized divisions, 7 regular motorized divisions, and 1 motorized brigade. In addition there might be some more not visible, I will do recon to try to spot any more. But clearly a huge # of divisions are in Leningrad:
1st Pz
6th Pz
7th Pz
8th Pz
10th Pz
12th Pz
18th Pz
19th Pz
20th Pz
Das Reich SS
Totenkopf SS
3rd Mot
10th Mot
14th Mot
18th Mot
20th Mot
29th Mot
36th Mot
Lehr Mot Bde
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Some notes on Supply Priority:
1) There are a number of attempts to supply units based on the Supply Priority. The higher the priority the more times the unit will attempt to gain supplies.
2) Each supply attempt includes an administrative leadership check.
3) Each supply attempt uses trucks (if greater than 3 hexes to the depot) to grab the supplies. This will increase the load on both the depot and unit trucks being used for gaining that supply,
4) Any unit within 3 hexes of the depot will use double the freight which will empty the depot faster.
5) The larger the distance travelled to gain supplies from depots puts more wear and tear on the trucks, lowers the unit MPs if unit trucks are used, and increases the amount of supply that depots are pushing out.
6) If your depots have only level 1 railyards then the depot will have a maximum of 10,000 freight and will be emptied quickly. This means that depots further back from the front will need to be used increasing the distance that the trucks have to go.
So if you are Axis this will ruin your truck supply very quickly. If you are Soviets it could do the same thing except you benefit from less unit trucks so you will not notice it quite so quickly. The Axis will notice it VERY quickly as their panzers suddenly have no support or supplies.
The major result for the Soviets (if they have a sufficient supply net in the first place) is the load placed on the rail net. All of that supplies being pushed to the front will place a large load on the rail net and possibly prohibit the use of rail in some areas for unit movement. It is also good to note that if the Soviets do not have a sufficient supply net then they will suffer the same problems that the Axis do with far distances and many trucks into the repair pool each turn.
1) There are a number of attempts to supply units based on the Supply Priority. The higher the priority the more times the unit will attempt to gain supplies.
2) Each supply attempt includes an administrative leadership check.
3) Each supply attempt uses trucks (if greater than 3 hexes to the depot) to grab the supplies. This will increase the load on both the depot and unit trucks being used for gaining that supply,
4) Any unit within 3 hexes of the depot will use double the freight which will empty the depot faster.
5) The larger the distance travelled to gain supplies from depots puts more wear and tear on the trucks, lowers the unit MPs if unit trucks are used, and increases the amount of supply that depots are pushing out.
6) If your depots have only level 1 railyards then the depot will have a maximum of 10,000 freight and will be emptied quickly. This means that depots further back from the front will need to be used increasing the distance that the trucks have to go.
So if you are Axis this will ruin your truck supply very quickly. If you are Soviets it could do the same thing except you benefit from less unit trucks so you will not notice it quite so quickly. The Axis will notice it VERY quickly as their panzers suddenly have no support or supplies.
The major result for the Soviets (if they have a sufficient supply net in the first place) is the load placed on the rail net. All of that supplies being pushed to the front will place a large load on the rail net and possibly prohibit the use of rail in some areas for unit movement. It is also good to note that if the Soviets do not have a sufficient supply net then they will suffer the same problems that the Axis do with far distances and many trucks into the repair pool each turn.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
ORIGINAL: carlkay58
Some notes on Supply Priority:
1) There are a number of attempts to supply units based on the Supply Priority. The higher the priority the more times the unit will attempt to gain supplies.
2) Each supply attempt includes an administrative leadership check.
3) Each supply attempt uses trucks (if greater than 3 hexes to the depot) to grab the supplies. This will increase the load on both the depot and unit trucks being used for gaining that supply,
4) Any unit within 3 hexes of the depot will use double the freight which will empty the depot faster.
5) The larger the distance travelled to gain supplies from depots puts more wear and tear on the trucks, lowers the unit MPs if unit trucks are used, and increases the amount of supply that depots are pushing out.
6) If your depots have only level 1 railyards then the depot will have a maximum of 10,000 freight and will be emptied quickly. This means that depots further back from the front will need to be used increasing the distance that the trucks have to go.
So if you are Axis this will ruin your truck supply very quickly. If you are Soviets it could do the same thing except you benefit from less unit trucks so you will not notice it quite so quickly. The Axis will notice it VERY quickly as their panzers suddenly have no support or supplies.
The major result for the Soviets (if they have a sufficient supply net in the first place) is the load placed on the rail net. All of that supplies being pushed to the front will place a large load on the rail net and possibly prohibit the use of rail in some areas for unit movement. It is also good to note that if the Soviets do not have a sufficient supply net then they will suffer the same problems that the Axis do with far distances and many trucks into the repair pool each turn.
That is some good information.
Some follow-up thoughts:
1) Here was my supply net on turn 12, when I got 61k supply (compared to 21k needed):
According to the logistics report, there was:
Unit Trucks used: 6806
Trucks Lost in Freight: 512
Total Freight Losses: 13902
Freight usage types:
125032 other depots
80888 depot fuel
5697 depot trucks
1219 misc
2) By comparison, on turn 11, I received 23k supply (20k needed). The logistics report said:
Unit Trucks used: 4153
Trucks Lost in Freight: 478
Total Freight Losses: 11354
Freight usage types:
157960 other depots
69258 depot fuel
4427 depot trucks
671 misc
That doesn't sound like too much of a difference, losing 512 trucks in freight as compared to 478, from using 6.8k unit trucks as compared to 4.1k. And I get 3x as much (!!!) supply!
Here was my supply net on turn 11:
This doesn't look very different to me, in terms of pulling from further away depots or anything like that. It seems like for the most part, there was plenty of rail capacity to ship supplies to my depots all along (which makes sense at least for Soviets, since they have an undamaged rail net to work with, unlike the Axis). But due to the supply priority settings being at normal values rather than all set on 4, the logistics system just seems to have decided "nah, we won't bother shipping you supplies even though we have extra rail capacity to do it, because your supply priority setting is too low, that must mean that you don't really want supplies. So you can just fight with poor supply, even though we could easily ship you more supplies!"
To the degree it works that way, it is surprising to me, as I would have expected the supply system to ship you as much supplies as it could up until your units are full on supply, and the main difference I would have thought the supply priority would have made is to the distribution of supply in cases where there was an overall shortage. But apparently it changes not just the distribution of supply, but the overall amount, and it can do so fairly significantly (at least for Soviets and presumably in other cases with an undamaged rail network).
3) It makes sense that increasing supply priority and getting more supplies shipped would raise truck use, at least in the short term. However, there should come a point where all your units are full of supply after a few turns of receiving substantial excess supply. Presumably at that point, the amount of supply that they will need and be sent should be equal to the amount that they consume each turn. For example, if all units are at 100% supply and consume 20% of their supplies each turn, then they will only need to receive 20% to get back to full supply each turn.
Alternatively, suppose that units are at 50% supply because you have a low supply priority set. They should still consume about 20% of their supplies each turn (or does the game actually have them be more sparing if they are low supply??). In that case, it should still take an amount of trucks required to ship those 20% supplies to them each turn. But they will just have lower supply (50%) at the end of each turn rather than 100%, and consequently have lower CVs etc.
If that is correct, then to at least a significant degree, the question with supply priority over the longer term may be less a matter of how many trucks you want to burn, but whether you want your units to have good supply or bad supply.
I would like my units to have good supply, thank you very much! [:D]
4) Checking on this, here is my situation on turn 15, after a few turns of having all my units on supply priority 4:
My supply need has dropped to 13.3k (I guess because many units are full on supply by this point), and I am receiving 31.5k now rather than 60k. So the amount of supply received has started dropping down closer to what it was on turn 11, but the difference is just that now my units have good supply rather than bad supply. I am still getting more supply than I was on turn 11, but that is probably from a combination of my army getting bigger over time and of the fact that some units are still filling up on supply.
Unit Trucks used: 9923
Trucks Lost in Freight: 550
Total Freight Losses: 4871
Freight usage types:
210163 other depots
76394 depot fuel
5307 depot trucks
3955 misc
And here is my turn 15 supply net, for the most part it doesn't really look like there is any problem with having to draw more supply from further away depots and using more trucks that way (except perhaps in the far south, but --- spoiler --- that is probably due to the loss of Stalino on turn 14 by coup de main):
It seems to me from this that it may be a big mistake in many cases (not necessarily in all cases, for Axis in 1941 in particular it may be different) to set your supply priorities too low.
RE: The Great Patriotic Rout - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
You have a good supply net and your rail net is also very strong (the advantages of defending and falling back on good repaired rails) so there is a good base for your situation. If you had started turn 1 by making everyone priority 4 you would have had much larger problems. If you go over on the offensive you will have much larger problems too. One large advantage you have is that the vast majority of the 41 Soviet Army is infantry and very low truck requirements. Once you have tank and mech corps your truck usage and requirements will soar. So my evaluation is that in your specific situation it is going well - but if things change drastically such as you lose too much more ground in the south without some backup depots then you will see more penalties arise. On the other hand, this is a great way for you to build up for a counter-offensive.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of Turn 13 ---
Here was my defense in the north at the end of turn 13. I forgot to move Purkayev's HQ (fortunately he was not killed by my forgetfulness). You can also see where Germany pulled back from in the eastern part of the Leningrad front, where my cavalry ha been trying to infiltrate around the Totenkopf division:
In the center I didn't do anything except straight my lines. In the area around Kursk I did a minor counterattack on Romanian and Hungarian mobile units that had advanced up by themselves ahead of the infantry, and were clearly running low on supply/fuel. I surrounded and routed a Hungarian motorized brigade which had only 1 CV, and I also attacked the Romanian tank division twice (once successfully, once unsuccessfully):
The Axis lost 235 trucks due to routing the mobile brigade. Partly for this reason I think it is a good idea for Soviets to attack and - where possible - rout Axis mobile units. Over the long term doing that repeatedly should eventually have an effect on their logistics:
In the attack against the Romanian tank division, they actually only lost 1 truck. That shows there can be a big difference between merely retreating and routing. So this result was a bit less good, but nevertheless it knocked off 15 Axis tanks for a loss of only 17 Soviet tanks (0 of which were T-34s).
I also again cut off several German mobile divisions with Soviet cavalry. Soviet cavalry is very useful for this, and also for putting in front of tanks so that it can rout (rather than having a better division with higher manpower rout instead). Although Soviet cavalry has fewer men than an infantry division, it takes the same MP to attack and can create the same combat delay. Germany really has to be careful moving tanks on any sort of a narrow front or salient anywhere that Soviet cavalry is nearby. Also note in the screenshot there are some troops arriving in Taganrog by sea (having departed from Crimea):
And here is the heroic Sevastopol Fortress defense garrison of 0 men:
I guess I could have disbanded the fortress since it has 0 men, but I wasn't sure if attacking an empty fortress would require an actual hasty attack (and hence a few MP on one Romanian division).
More on Sevastopol with the next turn update.
Here was my defense in the north at the end of turn 13. I forgot to move Purkayev's HQ (fortunately he was not killed by my forgetfulness). You can also see where Germany pulled back from in the eastern part of the Leningrad front, where my cavalry ha been trying to infiltrate around the Totenkopf division:
In the center I didn't do anything except straight my lines. In the area around Kursk I did a minor counterattack on Romanian and Hungarian mobile units that had advanced up by themselves ahead of the infantry, and were clearly running low on supply/fuel. I surrounded and routed a Hungarian motorized brigade which had only 1 CV, and I also attacked the Romanian tank division twice (once successfully, once unsuccessfully):
The Axis lost 235 trucks due to routing the mobile brigade. Partly for this reason I think it is a good idea for Soviets to attack and - where possible - rout Axis mobile units. Over the long term doing that repeatedly should eventually have an effect on their logistics:
In the attack against the Romanian tank division, they actually only lost 1 truck. That shows there can be a big difference between merely retreating and routing. So this result was a bit less good, but nevertheless it knocked off 15 Axis tanks for a loss of only 17 Soviet tanks (0 of which were T-34s).
I also again cut off several German mobile divisions with Soviet cavalry. Soviet cavalry is very useful for this, and also for putting in front of tanks so that it can rout (rather than having a better division with higher manpower rout instead). Although Soviet cavalry has fewer men than an infantry division, it takes the same MP to attack and can create the same combat delay. Germany really has to be careful moving tanks on any sort of a narrow front or salient anywhere that Soviet cavalry is nearby. Also note in the screenshot there are some troops arriving in Taganrog by sea (having departed from Crimea):
And here is the heroic Sevastopol Fortress defense garrison of 0 men:
I guess I could have disbanded the fortress since it has 0 men, but I wasn't sure if attacking an empty fortress would require an actual hasty attack (and hence a few MP on one Romanian division).
More on Sevastopol with the next turn update.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 14 ---
In the Leningrad area, Germany continues to attack with Rommel in the western part of the front, where there is generally light forest for him to attack through, but has stopped in the eastern part. It seems notable that the Totenkopf division has pulled back from the far side of Lake Ilmen, and a motorized unit pulled back from the salient in the farthest eastern of the 3 tank snakes. This may mean that he is giving up the push at least in that part of the front, which has better defensive terrain.
3 units (2 infantry and one naval infantry) are encircled, and some of the others on the western coast probably won't be able to escape being pocketed next turn. These are basically all low quality units, however, as I was aware that this area could potentially be cut off, but I still wanted to put at least some roadblocks there.
Not much happening in the center, just a few scattered attacks, and in the wilderness areas between Velikie Luki and Rzhev I am starting to get up to level 2 forts in places, which is making it difficult for Germany to make further progress without a great effort:
There is also still surprisingly little happening in the Bryansk/Kursk sector, just a few attacks with infantry. And in the Kursk part specifically, he seems to have stopped and pulled back at least with some of the forward units after the minor counterattack last turn:
Another point about Leningrad is that even if I get some divisions encircled, I have more reserves coming to replace them. At this point I think I will also probably send my reserves this turn to Leningrad as well to try and lock down the defense:
In the south, he seems to have stopped advancing at the Donets river and even pulled back some tanks from north of the river where he had crossed. This makes me suspect that, with mud season approaching, he may be planning to just sit behind the river where the logistics are better. This makes me wonder if he also intends to sit there for the winter, or if he plans to advance at all in the limited time between heavy mud and blizzard.
It is a strange situation, because I have very few units there (basically just one routed and one un-routed cavalry division), and yet Germany seems to not want to advance into the sparsely defended Steppe:
In Crimea, the great Siege of Sevastopol has ended. After a long and desperate struggle which required Manstein to be sent in with a huge amount of enormous siege artillery and after many months of holding out, German troops entered the city having won a hard fought victory.
No wait, scratch that. Sevastopol was undefended and the naval artillery was all disbanded for manpower.
Yeah... so unfortunately, to me it seemed like it was unviable and totally senseless to even try to defend Sevastopol.
Recall that Odessa fell in a single turn prior to even being isolated or a single naval interdiction mission run. Sevastopol has higher forts (level 5 rather than 3) and is rough terrain rather than clear. How much difference would that make?
Presumably some, but it would have to make a lot of difference to make Sevastopol worth defending. If all it meant was that it took 2 turns rather than 1 turn for Sevastopol to fall and that it had to be isolated first (hence the additional turn), would that be worth losing 100,000 or so defending troops and possibly getting a good general killed? I am skeptical.
Or if it took 3 or 4 or even 5 turns? I am still doubtful.
Maybe I am wrong, but I wouldn't attempt to defend Sevastopol against any Germany player competent enough to know what pioneers and siege artillery support units are and knows how to click the button to assign them.
When I moved my mountaineer divisions onto Sevastopol, they had only 20 or so defensive combat value. Granted, those were average-equipped divisions, not 100% TOE specially refitted, but still. Many of my divisions in Leningrad in heavy forest/swamp in level 1 or 2 forts at most have more modified defensive combat value than that!
10 normal (not specially selected) divisions would end up with around 200 defensive CV, which based on the combat results I have seen far I would not expect to last very long.
And so thus ended the 0 day Siege of Sevastopol, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
There is also absolutely zero VP reason to defend Sevastopol. Given the unavoidable reality that Sevastopol will fall (and in truth, not take super long to fall regardless), the only VP difference it makes is the +/-6 VP for the time it takes to fall relative to the historical date. Sevastopol historically fell on turn 54 (well into 1942!) and currently we are on turn 14... To gain even a single VP, I would have to hold Sevastopol until at least turn 51. Which, needless to say, is definitely not happening.
There is also not that much of value in Sevastopol. It has no industry and only 4 population. The only thing it has going for it are the level 5 port and the level 3 railyard. Those are something, but are not nearly remarkable enough as to warrant dropping everything else and focusing on Sevastopol. They would be worth paying at least some attention to, maybe, if Sevastopol were defensible in the first place, but given that it is not, there is nothing to be said about them.
Stalino, for example, seems much more important than Sevastopol, with lots more population and industry (and more railyards between it and the other nearby cities):
In the Leningrad area, Germany continues to attack with Rommel in the western part of the front, where there is generally light forest for him to attack through, but has stopped in the eastern part. It seems notable that the Totenkopf division has pulled back from the far side of Lake Ilmen, and a motorized unit pulled back from the salient in the farthest eastern of the 3 tank snakes. This may mean that he is giving up the push at least in that part of the front, which has better defensive terrain.
3 units (2 infantry and one naval infantry) are encircled, and some of the others on the western coast probably won't be able to escape being pocketed next turn. These are basically all low quality units, however, as I was aware that this area could potentially be cut off, but I still wanted to put at least some roadblocks there.
Not much happening in the center, just a few scattered attacks, and in the wilderness areas between Velikie Luki and Rzhev I am starting to get up to level 2 forts in places, which is making it difficult for Germany to make further progress without a great effort:
There is also still surprisingly little happening in the Bryansk/Kursk sector, just a few attacks with infantry. And in the Kursk part specifically, he seems to have stopped and pulled back at least with some of the forward units after the minor counterattack last turn:
Another point about Leningrad is that even if I get some divisions encircled, I have more reserves coming to replace them. At this point I think I will also probably send my reserves this turn to Leningrad as well to try and lock down the defense:
In the south, he seems to have stopped advancing at the Donets river and even pulled back some tanks from north of the river where he had crossed. This makes me suspect that, with mud season approaching, he may be planning to just sit behind the river where the logistics are better. This makes me wonder if he also intends to sit there for the winter, or if he plans to advance at all in the limited time between heavy mud and blizzard.
It is a strange situation, because I have very few units there (basically just one routed and one un-routed cavalry division), and yet Germany seems to not want to advance into the sparsely defended Steppe:
In Crimea, the great Siege of Sevastopol has ended. After a long and desperate struggle which required Manstein to be sent in with a huge amount of enormous siege artillery and after many months of holding out, German troops entered the city having won a hard fought victory.
No wait, scratch that. Sevastopol was undefended and the naval artillery was all disbanded for manpower.
Yeah... so unfortunately, to me it seemed like it was unviable and totally senseless to even try to defend Sevastopol.
Recall that Odessa fell in a single turn prior to even being isolated or a single naval interdiction mission run. Sevastopol has higher forts (level 5 rather than 3) and is rough terrain rather than clear. How much difference would that make?
Presumably some, but it would have to make a lot of difference to make Sevastopol worth defending. If all it meant was that it took 2 turns rather than 1 turn for Sevastopol to fall and that it had to be isolated first (hence the additional turn), would that be worth losing 100,000 or so defending troops and possibly getting a good general killed? I am skeptical.
Or if it took 3 or 4 or even 5 turns? I am still doubtful.
Maybe I am wrong, but I wouldn't attempt to defend Sevastopol against any Germany player competent enough to know what pioneers and siege artillery support units are and knows how to click the button to assign them.
When I moved my mountaineer divisions onto Sevastopol, they had only 20 or so defensive combat value. Granted, those were average-equipped divisions, not 100% TOE specially refitted, but still. Many of my divisions in Leningrad in heavy forest/swamp in level 1 or 2 forts at most have more modified defensive combat value than that!
10 normal (not specially selected) divisions would end up with around 200 defensive CV, which based on the combat results I have seen far I would not expect to last very long.
And so thus ended the 0 day Siege of Sevastopol, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
There is also absolutely zero VP reason to defend Sevastopol. Given the unavoidable reality that Sevastopol will fall (and in truth, not take super long to fall regardless), the only VP difference it makes is the +/-6 VP for the time it takes to fall relative to the historical date. Sevastopol historically fell on turn 54 (well into 1942!) and currently we are on turn 14... To gain even a single VP, I would have to hold Sevastopol until at least turn 51. Which, needless to say, is definitely not happening.
There is also not that much of value in Sevastopol. It has no industry and only 4 population. The only thing it has going for it are the level 5 port and the level 3 railyard. Those are something, but are not nearly remarkable enough as to warrant dropping everything else and focusing on Sevastopol. They would be worth paying at least some attention to, maybe, if Sevastopol were defensible in the first place, but given that it is not, there is nothing to be said about them.
Stalino, for example, seems much more important than Sevastopol, with lots more population and industry (and more railyards between it and the other nearby cities):
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 15
In the north, the 3 encircled units were eliminated, and 3 more stragglers (all weak units) were also encircled:
The big story, however, is that Germany pulled back its tanks from the two salients in the eastern part of the Leningrad front. Mud season is coming soon, and in fact heavy rain is forecast in the north (but not the south) for next week. So it appears that at least until the mud season is over, Germany is giving up the push on at least that part of the Leningrad front. There is simply too much heavy forest and swamp there for Germany to keep pushing, and too little time (and tanks are not ideal on that terrain).
The question I am not sure about is what Germany will do in the period after heavy mud but before winter blizzards start. Will Germany continue to push the western part of Leningrad, where the terrain (at least some of it) is more favorable? Will they move their Panzers and attack elsewhere? Or will they just entrench and wait for winter?
The front line has also stabilized in the center with only very few attacks:
In a lot of recent turns in a lot of places on the map, I had been putting weak units (cavalry, airborne brigades, etc) at the front as sacrificial units to slow down the German advance. Every turn, Germany attacks them, and they usually rout. This turn, a couple of them shattered (which they generally have not been doing). I may need to start paying more attention to their morale before keeping on throwing them in, although mud season should give them a rest from routing for a few turns:
Here is another shatter:
And another:
At least this turn, it seems like Germany did not do that many attacks, but the ones that they did do, they used a lot of support units on and targeted those weak units, I suppose trying to do as much damage as possible to them. Ordinarily they would not have those sort of support units available to attack weak units like that, but in this case they do because they have generally stopped trying to push in preparation for the mud, so I guess they may as well use the support units to try to shatter those weak units rather than just rout them.
In the south, Stalino fell by a Coup de Main. Remember at the end of last turn how I said Stalin had the highest defensive CV (61)? Well, apparently we should not pay too much attention to that. Despite two tank divisions reserve activating to help out, Stalino fell to this brazen German attack that ignored the huge # of Soviet units all around the area. I was vaguely aware that was possible, but figured it wasn't that likely since it had much higher CV than anything else. I guess not.
Manpower losses have been trending lower, with less than 80k Soviet losses each of the last two turns as the front stabilized more and then in significant parts of the front Germany stopped trying to seriously push:
One result of that is the Soviet OOB has swelled, with now nearly 3.6 million men on the map, and another 225k in reserve going into mud season, when it can be expected to keep going up further:
One interesting thing I notice is that the Axis seems to have sent basically all their planes to reserve, which certainly does not suggest that they plan on using their air force to help push any time soon.
Given that, it might be a good time to do some bombing? Possibly not due to the rain, but at least this turn it is only light rain.
In the north, the 3 encircled units were eliminated, and 3 more stragglers (all weak units) were also encircled:
The big story, however, is that Germany pulled back its tanks from the two salients in the eastern part of the Leningrad front. Mud season is coming soon, and in fact heavy rain is forecast in the north (but not the south) for next week. So it appears that at least until the mud season is over, Germany is giving up the push on at least that part of the Leningrad front. There is simply too much heavy forest and swamp there for Germany to keep pushing, and too little time (and tanks are not ideal on that terrain).
The question I am not sure about is what Germany will do in the period after heavy mud but before winter blizzards start. Will Germany continue to push the western part of Leningrad, where the terrain (at least some of it) is more favorable? Will they move their Panzers and attack elsewhere? Or will they just entrench and wait for winter?
The front line has also stabilized in the center with only very few attacks:
In a lot of recent turns in a lot of places on the map, I had been putting weak units (cavalry, airborne brigades, etc) at the front as sacrificial units to slow down the German advance. Every turn, Germany attacks them, and they usually rout. This turn, a couple of them shattered (which they generally have not been doing). I may need to start paying more attention to their morale before keeping on throwing them in, although mud season should give them a rest from routing for a few turns:
Here is another shatter:
And another:
At least this turn, it seems like Germany did not do that many attacks, but the ones that they did do, they used a lot of support units on and targeted those weak units, I suppose trying to do as much damage as possible to them. Ordinarily they would not have those sort of support units available to attack weak units like that, but in this case they do because they have generally stopped trying to push in preparation for the mud, so I guess they may as well use the support units to try to shatter those weak units rather than just rout them.
In the south, Stalino fell by a Coup de Main. Remember at the end of last turn how I said Stalin had the highest defensive CV (61)? Well, apparently we should not pay too much attention to that. Despite two tank divisions reserve activating to help out, Stalino fell to this brazen German attack that ignored the huge # of Soviet units all around the area. I was vaguely aware that was possible, but figured it wasn't that likely since it had much higher CV than anything else. I guess not.
Manpower losses have been trending lower, with less than 80k Soviet losses each of the last two turns as the front stabilized more and then in significant parts of the front Germany stopped trying to seriously push:
One result of that is the Soviet OOB has swelled, with now nearly 3.6 million men on the map, and another 225k in reserve going into mud season, when it can be expected to keep going up further:
One interesting thing I notice is that the Axis seems to have sent basically all their planes to reserve, which certainly does not suggest that they plan on using their air force to help push any time soon.
Given that, it might be a good time to do some bombing? Possibly not due to the rain, but at least this turn it is only light rain.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
End of Turn 15 ---
With the Luftwaffe mostly sent to reserve, Open Season was declared for VVS bombing. Yes, there was some light rain and some inexperienced pilots would crash in the poor weather, but in the words of Leningrad Front Air Commander, General-Mayor Aviatsii Aleksandr Novikov, "Better to be shot down by a raindrop than by a German. At least the rain doesn't accumulate experience points." Air losses were heavy as a result. 460 Soviet planes were lost, only one tenth of which (46) were lost to enemy fighters, and and about 30% (137) of which were shot down by flak. The remaining 277 planes lost were operational losses. On the plus side, this helped to clear out room in the airfields which were become overcrowded with growing hordes of planes.
Bombing included a bit of tactical ground attack bombing by IL-2s in the north against exposed German Panzer divisions, but mostly was bombing of numerous cities by long range level bombers, targeting their railyards (and in some cases ports). Here for example, 5 Panzer 38(t)s and 21 vehicles (as well as various other stuff) were destroyed for a loss of 16 IL-2s:
Some other raids went less well; in this one, 40 IL-2s were lost, but they only managed to knock out 2 AFVs. This was one of the worst raids. All 40 of those losses btw were from flak:
After some initial confusion and cries of "bug!" the VVS managed to bomb Pskov and Smolensk (as well as some other cities). Initially, the VVS would not perform bombing missions on Pskov and Smolensk, but would bomb other cities. Eventually it was revealed that the reason this was occurring was that - to great surprise - the VVS commanders did not know the locations of the Pskov and Smolensk railyards. After some sage advice from LiquidSky on the Quick Questions Thread on the WITE2 forum, some strategic recon missions were run and then finally the VVS automatons obeyed their orders to bomb Pskov and Smolensk. Stalin never fully understood what was meant by "quick questions thread," but after some confusion and awkward silences at STAVKA meetings, he went with it. Here is one mission that did 44% damage to the Pskov railyard from 48 bombers: (10 of which crashed):
On the ground, little happened, except in the south, where the Red Army retreated slightly in the area south of Stalino. The prior turn Axis infantry had retreated 1 hex behind the front and one hex behind the river Kalmius. This was somewhat surprising and seemed a bit strange. After some consternation and confusion, one STAVKA planner suggested that the most likely explanation for this was that "The Axis is preparing for an attack, they want to build up the CPP on their infantry to support a Panzer thrust towards Rostov perhaps, or two attempt to encircle some Soviet units along the coast?" So a slight withdrawal was ordered to make it more difficult to achieve such a possible encirclement. The last thing STAVKA chief Timoshenko wanted was a large encirclement just before the arrival of mud season would make it more difficult for the Germans to advance.
Directly in front of the Panzers sitting at Stalino, 3 strong Mechanized divisions were placed between Gorlovka and Makeevka. If Germany wanted to pound its Panzers directly into those divisions, which had 536 AFVs between them, that would be fine with the Red Army, because it would hopefully result in the loss of a large number of German AFVs. A number of other Soviet tank and mechanized divisions were placed on reserve to make a rapid response to any German attack that came in the area, and hopefully prevent further progress until the weather hopefully comes to the rescue.
With the Luftwaffe mostly sent to reserve, Open Season was declared for VVS bombing. Yes, there was some light rain and some inexperienced pilots would crash in the poor weather, but in the words of Leningrad Front Air Commander, General-Mayor Aviatsii Aleksandr Novikov, "Better to be shot down by a raindrop than by a German. At least the rain doesn't accumulate experience points." Air losses were heavy as a result. 460 Soviet planes were lost, only one tenth of which (46) were lost to enemy fighters, and and about 30% (137) of which were shot down by flak. The remaining 277 planes lost were operational losses. On the plus side, this helped to clear out room in the airfields which were become overcrowded with growing hordes of planes.
Bombing included a bit of tactical ground attack bombing by IL-2s in the north against exposed German Panzer divisions, but mostly was bombing of numerous cities by long range level bombers, targeting their railyards (and in some cases ports). Here for example, 5 Panzer 38(t)s and 21 vehicles (as well as various other stuff) were destroyed for a loss of 16 IL-2s:
Some other raids went less well; in this one, 40 IL-2s were lost, but they only managed to knock out 2 AFVs. This was one of the worst raids. All 40 of those losses btw were from flak:
After some initial confusion and cries of "bug!" the VVS managed to bomb Pskov and Smolensk (as well as some other cities). Initially, the VVS would not perform bombing missions on Pskov and Smolensk, but would bomb other cities. Eventually it was revealed that the reason this was occurring was that - to great surprise - the VVS commanders did not know the locations of the Pskov and Smolensk railyards. After some sage advice from LiquidSky on the Quick Questions Thread on the WITE2 forum, some strategic recon missions were run and then finally the VVS automatons obeyed their orders to bomb Pskov and Smolensk. Stalin never fully understood what was meant by "quick questions thread," but after some confusion and awkward silences at STAVKA meetings, he went with it. Here is one mission that did 44% damage to the Pskov railyard from 48 bombers: (10 of which crashed):
On the ground, little happened, except in the south, where the Red Army retreated slightly in the area south of Stalino. The prior turn Axis infantry had retreated 1 hex behind the front and one hex behind the river Kalmius. This was somewhat surprising and seemed a bit strange. After some consternation and confusion, one STAVKA planner suggested that the most likely explanation for this was that "The Axis is preparing for an attack, they want to build up the CPP on their infantry to support a Panzer thrust towards Rostov perhaps, or two attempt to encircle some Soviet units along the coast?" So a slight withdrawal was ordered to make it more difficult to achieve such a possible encirclement. The last thing STAVKA chief Timoshenko wanted was a large encirclement just before the arrival of mud season would make it more difficult for the Germans to advance.
Directly in front of the Panzers sitting at Stalino, 3 strong Mechanized divisions were placed between Gorlovka and Makeevka. If Germany wanted to pound its Panzers directly into those divisions, which had 536 AFVs between them, that would be fine with the Red Army, because it would hopefully result in the loss of a large number of German AFVs. A number of other Soviet tank and mechanized divisions were placed on reserve to make a rapid response to any German attack that came in the area, and hopefully prevent further progress until the weather hopefully comes to the rescue.
-
Beethoven1
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:23 pm
RE: The Great Temporarily Motoriotic War - Bread (G) vs Beethoven (S)
Start of Turn 16 ---
The weather is heavy mud over everything except the south, as was forecast:
Unfortunately, the forecast for next week is heavy rain only in the north, but not in the center or south, which could give Germany some opportunity to push there:
This last turn, Germany did very little. Soviets only took 45k casualties, and Germany 17k:
As a result, we are up to nearly 3.7 million Soviets in the field with almost 300k in reserve:
Soviet AFV #s are going up also. They had been pretty stable because I had been trying to preserve them insofar as possible, and now are up to 8,801 AFVs in the field, basically the highest it has been since around 1 month after Barbarossa began. Also the German # of AFVs went down significantly over the last two turns, despite there not being much combat, which (I think) means some Panzer divisions were probably sent to reserve to refit:
And despite the bombing I did last turn, not only did Germany not send at least a few extra fighters to the map, but the ENTIRE Axis air force is now gone, down to literally 0 Axis planes:
It is not even really worth showing screenshots of the front line/battles, because it is unchanged except for a handful of hexes. This is all the battles that there were. The 3 encircled units were eliminated, but other than that just a handful of not particularly meaningful attacks:
The German strategy here seems sort of strange. In part it obviously makes sense insofar as Germany cannot really attack in heavy mud, but it wasn't heavy mud yet, and also STILL is not heavy mud in part of the front (basically everything south of Kharkov. And yet Germany didn't attack there either. Germany has evidently given up on Leningrad for now, but is not yet 100% clear if they have totally given up on it or just temporarily. There are still a pretty large number of German mobile units visible even without running any recon:
In theory Germany might be planning renewed attacks once the mud ends but before blizzard begins, but the total absence of any Axis air makes that seem less likely. And at least in the Leningrad area, it wouldn't make that much sense to have pulled back the salients if they now plan to push there again prior to winter. So it seems like Germany's plan is most likely, more or less, to entrench until winter, try to get through winter in relatively strong shape, not overextend now, and then have good logistics in 1942 for some sort of Fall Blau.
If that is not universally the case, Germany is probably most likely to depart from that strategy in the south around Stalino/Rostov; maybe Germany is just waiting a turn or two for logistics to improve and will then try one last attack towards Rostov or something (but maybe not, because if so, why pull ALL the air, not even keeping a few fighters around to counter the VVS?).
Whether this is a good strategy or not remains to be seen, I guess. I am somewhat skeptical of whether it is, since the Red Army is just going to get a whole lot bigger and stronger if Germany doesn't even attack when it is just light rain/light mud (not heavy mud). Bread mentioned that Germany needs to be very focused on its truck situation, so that idea probably has a lot to do with the strategy.
As a result of this, at least for a while updates for this AAR may be a bit more boring if nothing much happens. But that will probably mean faster turns and more frequent updates, and I plan some sorts of attacks in winter.
I also need to figure out what exactly my plans should be for winter (any suggestions would be welcome). I am actually in a somewhat awkward position for a winter offensive, I think.
On the one hand, due to the terrain Leningrad is not the easiest place for a grand winter counterattack. I have a very large proportion of my forces, including many of my best generals, in the Leningrad area. It is also not the best area for assault armies, because once winter is over, I will want to be able to defend with high level forts in good terrain.
On the other hand, the Leningrad area is one of the areas where a succesful offensive would probably be more helpful. First of all, despite the fact that I have a pretty decent margin of safety in Leningrad (Germany is still 6 hexes away), it is definitely in much more immediate danger than Moscow, Stalingrad, etc. Also, since a lot of Germany's Panzers are still in this area, if I don't attack there, there will be less opportunity to damage German Panzer divisions during the winter, simply because there are not (many) tanks to damage in many other sectors.
One obvious place for a winter offensive might be the center, where we are still only 4 hexes from Smolensk, and also still (barely) holding Bryansk. In terms of VPs, Smolensk would be helpful. The main reason to not attack there. Also, while I do have a lot of troops there, I have less than I would if Germany had been more focused on pushing towards Moscow, so I have probably somewhat fewer troops to push with there than I would otherwise.
Another possible area of attack could be the south-center around Kursk and the Donets river. There is plenty of clear terrain here, but supply is relatively worse. I also have very few troops here, if I want to do any sort of big offensive here I would need to start getting troops in a better position for it. It would also be difficult to attack in the Donets sector itself due to the river, though it would be easier in the clear terrain elsewhere. If I attack in force here, it is one area where Germany might simply need to withdraw (or even want to withdraw voluntarily). On the other hand, anything I do take back will probably be difficult to impossible to defend as soon as Spring arrives, and I will end up retreating right back from my gains. There is also not much of real strategic value in the area; the only significant city is Kharkov, but the T-34 factory is long gone.
Another area of possible attack is the far south around Stalino. Having just lost Stalino, it would be nice to get it back. Since it is literally directly on the front, if Germany doesn't push a bit more in subsequent turns, it should be relatively easy to take back. The case for not focusing too much in this area would be that winter effects will presumably be less strong here. There may not be as much blizzard. On the other hand, I do have a decent number of troops in this area, including some good generals.
Another option might be to not really attack much in winter, if at all. That is probably not a good option, but is at least worth mentioning and thinking about. Even in winter, at this stage of the game I would expect Soviets to take disproportionate losses in a lot of battles, and while Germany gets hurt temporarily, reportedly they get back a lot of their winter losses by the start of 1942 (many are just temporariliy disabled by the cold). So if I don't really need to take ground back, as is the case in some areas, is it worth attacking anyway? If I don't attack, obviously I will continue to grow stronger. Also, forts will continue to build up. This would be an unorthodox option, but since it actually is an option, maybe it is worth at least thinking about.
I would actually consider this if for no other reason than it might be interesting as an experiment to see what happens. What happens if the Soviets don't do a winter offensive? How much stronger would Fall Blau end up being with a Germany that had not taken high winter losses? But on the other hand, how much more would a massive Red Army that also had not taken enormous winter losses be able to resist that 1942 offensive? One advantage is this would make turns go quickly, so we would get back to the interesting spring/summer part of the game relatively quickly also. I don't know if this was ever tried in testing, but if it wasn't, it also might be interesting for the game devs to see the balance that would arise from this.
For reference on the effects of winter, I am looking at turn 46 or CarlKay's game as Germany against the AI, since he posted saves for every turn (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... ge=20&key=). Looking at that, here were manpower losses in that game. In the winter period it looks like overall manpower losses were fairly even between Axis and Soviets:
That is true not just overall, but also during the Soviet action phase (so it is not just a German logistics issue):
So if I can get anything like a 1:1 trade, that is a good trade for the Soviets. So I had been wondering if Soviet losses were still typically high in winter, but it seems like at least in that game with AI they were not that bad (might be partly because of AI having extra morale bonuses though, this was a single player game). However, even if losses were up to 2:1 or so, that would still probably be a good trade for the Soviets. So from a purely strategic view, not attacking in the winter does not look like a good idea at all.
I would still at least consider/think about it just because it might be interesting (and might make 1942 more fun/balanced, potentially, idk), but it seems more clear than I thought that it would not be a good idea. Also, insofar as temporary motorization ended up snowballing things more in my favor than should really be the case (this was definitely at least a significant contributing factor), this might sort of reset/correct for that. So still maybe worth thinking about.
- The AAR at this point is caught up to the same turn as the actual game, so any thoughts/suggestions for what do do in winter from readers would be appreciated. I haven't played in winter before and am undecided about what would be the best course of action and where to focus any attacks.
The weather is heavy mud over everything except the south, as was forecast:
Unfortunately, the forecast for next week is heavy rain only in the north, but not in the center or south, which could give Germany some opportunity to push there:
This last turn, Germany did very little. Soviets only took 45k casualties, and Germany 17k:
As a result, we are up to nearly 3.7 million Soviets in the field with almost 300k in reserve:
Soviet AFV #s are going up also. They had been pretty stable because I had been trying to preserve them insofar as possible, and now are up to 8,801 AFVs in the field, basically the highest it has been since around 1 month after Barbarossa began. Also the German # of AFVs went down significantly over the last two turns, despite there not being much combat, which (I think) means some Panzer divisions were probably sent to reserve to refit:
And despite the bombing I did last turn, not only did Germany not send at least a few extra fighters to the map, but the ENTIRE Axis air force is now gone, down to literally 0 Axis planes:
It is not even really worth showing screenshots of the front line/battles, because it is unchanged except for a handful of hexes. This is all the battles that there were. The 3 encircled units were eliminated, but other than that just a handful of not particularly meaningful attacks:
The German strategy here seems sort of strange. In part it obviously makes sense insofar as Germany cannot really attack in heavy mud, but it wasn't heavy mud yet, and also STILL is not heavy mud in part of the front (basically everything south of Kharkov. And yet Germany didn't attack there either. Germany has evidently given up on Leningrad for now, but is not yet 100% clear if they have totally given up on it or just temporarily. There are still a pretty large number of German mobile units visible even without running any recon:
In theory Germany might be planning renewed attacks once the mud ends but before blizzard begins, but the total absence of any Axis air makes that seem less likely. And at least in the Leningrad area, it wouldn't make that much sense to have pulled back the salients if they now plan to push there again prior to winter. So it seems like Germany's plan is most likely, more or less, to entrench until winter, try to get through winter in relatively strong shape, not overextend now, and then have good logistics in 1942 for some sort of Fall Blau.
If that is not universally the case, Germany is probably most likely to depart from that strategy in the south around Stalino/Rostov; maybe Germany is just waiting a turn or two for logistics to improve and will then try one last attack towards Rostov or something (but maybe not, because if so, why pull ALL the air, not even keeping a few fighters around to counter the VVS?).
Whether this is a good strategy or not remains to be seen, I guess. I am somewhat skeptical of whether it is, since the Red Army is just going to get a whole lot bigger and stronger if Germany doesn't even attack when it is just light rain/light mud (not heavy mud). Bread mentioned that Germany needs to be very focused on its truck situation, so that idea probably has a lot to do with the strategy.
As a result of this, at least for a while updates for this AAR may be a bit more boring if nothing much happens. But that will probably mean faster turns and more frequent updates, and I plan some sorts of attacks in winter.
I also need to figure out what exactly my plans should be for winter (any suggestions would be welcome). I am actually in a somewhat awkward position for a winter offensive, I think.
On the one hand, due to the terrain Leningrad is not the easiest place for a grand winter counterattack. I have a very large proportion of my forces, including many of my best generals, in the Leningrad area. It is also not the best area for assault armies, because once winter is over, I will want to be able to defend with high level forts in good terrain.
On the other hand, the Leningrad area is one of the areas where a succesful offensive would probably be more helpful. First of all, despite the fact that I have a pretty decent margin of safety in Leningrad (Germany is still 6 hexes away), it is definitely in much more immediate danger than Moscow, Stalingrad, etc. Also, since a lot of Germany's Panzers are still in this area, if I don't attack there, there will be less opportunity to damage German Panzer divisions during the winter, simply because there are not (many) tanks to damage in many other sectors.
One obvious place for a winter offensive might be the center, where we are still only 4 hexes from Smolensk, and also still (barely) holding Bryansk. In terms of VPs, Smolensk would be helpful. The main reason to not attack there. Also, while I do have a lot of troops there, I have less than I would if Germany had been more focused on pushing towards Moscow, so I have probably somewhat fewer troops to push with there than I would otherwise.
Another possible area of attack could be the south-center around Kursk and the Donets river. There is plenty of clear terrain here, but supply is relatively worse. I also have very few troops here, if I want to do any sort of big offensive here I would need to start getting troops in a better position for it. It would also be difficult to attack in the Donets sector itself due to the river, though it would be easier in the clear terrain elsewhere. If I attack in force here, it is one area where Germany might simply need to withdraw (or even want to withdraw voluntarily). On the other hand, anything I do take back will probably be difficult to impossible to defend as soon as Spring arrives, and I will end up retreating right back from my gains. There is also not much of real strategic value in the area; the only significant city is Kharkov, but the T-34 factory is long gone.
Another area of possible attack is the far south around Stalino. Having just lost Stalino, it would be nice to get it back. Since it is literally directly on the front, if Germany doesn't push a bit more in subsequent turns, it should be relatively easy to take back. The case for not focusing too much in this area would be that winter effects will presumably be less strong here. There may not be as much blizzard. On the other hand, I do have a decent number of troops in this area, including some good generals.
Another option might be to not really attack much in winter, if at all. That is probably not a good option, but is at least worth mentioning and thinking about. Even in winter, at this stage of the game I would expect Soviets to take disproportionate losses in a lot of battles, and while Germany gets hurt temporarily, reportedly they get back a lot of their winter losses by the start of 1942 (many are just temporariliy disabled by the cold). So if I don't really need to take ground back, as is the case in some areas, is it worth attacking anyway? If I don't attack, obviously I will continue to grow stronger. Also, forts will continue to build up. This would be an unorthodox option, but since it actually is an option, maybe it is worth at least thinking about.
I would actually consider this if for no other reason than it might be interesting as an experiment to see what happens. What happens if the Soviets don't do a winter offensive? How much stronger would Fall Blau end up being with a Germany that had not taken high winter losses? But on the other hand, how much more would a massive Red Army that also had not taken enormous winter losses be able to resist that 1942 offensive? One advantage is this would make turns go quickly, so we would get back to the interesting spring/summer part of the game relatively quickly also. I don't know if this was ever tried in testing, but if it wasn't, it also might be interesting for the game devs to see the balance that would arise from this.
For reference on the effects of winter, I am looking at turn 46 or CarlKay's game as Germany against the AI, since he posted saves for every turn (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... ge=20&key=). Looking at that, here were manpower losses in that game. In the winter period it looks like overall manpower losses were fairly even between Axis and Soviets:
That is true not just overall, but also during the Soviet action phase (so it is not just a German logistics issue):
So if I can get anything like a 1:1 trade, that is a good trade for the Soviets. So I had been wondering if Soviet losses were still typically high in winter, but it seems like at least in that game with AI they were not that bad (might be partly because of AI having extra morale bonuses though, this was a single player game). However, even if losses were up to 2:1 or so, that would still probably be a good trade for the Soviets. So from a purely strategic view, not attacking in the winter does not look like a good idea at all.
I would still at least consider/think about it just because it might be interesting (and might make 1942 more fun/balanced, potentially, idk), but it seems more clear than I thought that it would not be a good idea. Also, insofar as temporary motorization ended up snowballing things more in my favor than should really be the case (this was definitely at least a significant contributing factor), this might sort of reset/correct for that. So still maybe worth thinking about.
- The AAR at this point is caught up to the same turn as the actual game, so any thoughts/suggestions for what do do in winter from readers would be appreciated. I haven't played in winter before and am undecided about what would be the best course of action and where to focus any attacks.