jubjub (Soviet) vs HYLA (Axis) '41 Grand Campaign

[jubjub]

Settings


* 1941 Campaign No Early End
* Server Game
* FOG of War: On
* Movement FOW: On
* Lock HQ support: On
* Automate AI air assist: Off
* Enhanced Player TB control: On
* No Motorization
* No Paratrooper drops


I followed HYLA's early AAR's a while back, and he seemed to just roll over his Soviet opponenets by turn 5, and I think this was quite common at the time. Since then, I think the meta has shifted a bit towards favoring the Soviets slightly. I think it is mostly due to Soviet players becoming more experienced: they make fewer mistakes, get fewer men encircled, and play a more aggressive and active defense. I also think M60 and other players deserve a lot of credit for showing everyone how they manage the Soviet army. Hopefully I can add to this body of knowledge and show everyone an interesting game!


A couple things I will be looking out for this game:


Where does HYLA send his panzers? We'll be looking out for a north/south approach, northern blitz, PG 1 to AGC, or a 'default' approach (highly unlikely imo).


I'm very nervous about HYLA's ability to keep his panzers topped up on fuel. In general, I'll have to assume that they consistently have 40+ MP each turn. If you are struggling as an Axis player in this regard, I would highly recommend studying his logistics.


I don't want to give too much away, but I have a thread in the war room where I outline part of my approach to the Soviets, and we should see some of those concepts on display here.

[jubjub]

Germans Cross the Border in Force

The Germans invade the Soviet Union, opting to blow away the front line of defense. The German assault embarrasses the Red Army, as only two engagements with the enemy are held successfully. I expect to sack a lot of generals for their gross incompetence. In the meantime, STAVKA is in a frantic state of panic as high command decides where to allocate the remainders of the Red Army.

Where does HYLA send his panzers? We'll be looking out for a north/south approach, northern blitz, PG 1 to AGC, or a 'default' approach (highly unlikely imo).

Looks like it's the 'northern blitz' strategy, with most, if not all of PG 3 going north. The plan is to keep him out of Leningrad as long as possible and bleed out the bonus points from the rest of the map.


Very solid pockets, and it looks like he was able to keep most of the routed units from routing out of the pockets. The only attacks going on for me this turn are to scout and see which panzer and motorized elements are going where.

[jubjub]

Air Phase

I've found that the 24 plane missions don't always get the job done in bad terrain like swamps and hills, so I fly 50 plane missions. I normally fly interdiction on the right bank of the Dvina, but he advanced along too wide of a front to be practical.


The idea in the south is to interdict all of the swamps/hills that he has to pass through. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite get the job done in the south. Guess I should've flown more missions. HYLA's reinforcements will be advancing through a bad terrain hex regardless.

[jubjub]

Losses

My ground losses are fairly mild considering he blew away the front line. I suspect I'll have over 500k casualties next turn. A good sign is that he only lost 47 tanks this turn. This is a clue that the German player is skilled.


Confirmation comes with his air losses. I'm honestly baffled how he kept his losses so low when going for the 'no airfield bombing' approach. I've tried that approach before and now opt to bomb the airfields because my losses were too high.


My bomber losses are shown for the interdiction I ran. Just the price of doing business.

[jubjub]

Housekeeping

* Delete as many artillery regiments with the wrong TOE as we can. (See M60's AAR on how to do this)

* Set armies to level 4 supply priority and place them on depots. We want as many of these to get reinforcements before we run out of the initial manpower reserve.

* Set all support levels to 0. We'll lock this next turn.

* Send low morale (<40) artillery to the reserve.

* Group air units by aircraft model. I don't bother grouping the biplanes, they just go to Moscow air command until they get upgraded.

* Move units adjacent to airports and transport them supplies. This helps immensely at this stage, especially if you're sending them into combat.

* Set all high morale (>49) infantry to refit. This helps me identify strong units (that I don't want captured), and we also want reinforcements to flow to them.

* Panzer/motorized count: ~12 AGN. ~9-10 AGC. ~11 AGS. I don't have good intel on them yet, but I'm keeping a list of them.

[Q-Ball]

Interesting...if you're going to run interdiction, try running it in your own hexes, which you can do. Because you don't have to recon those hexes first, you get much better results. Obviously you have to pick hexes the Axis has to move through....

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Interesting...if you're going to run interdiction, try running it in your own hexes, which you can do. ...

which you can't do under any circumstances, this exploit was stopped about a year ago in the late alpha stage of game development

[OberGeneral]

Yes! Squash those exploits.[:D][:D]

[Rosencrantus]

My thoughts on this opening is if the bid for Leningrad fails, then you end up with a 1941 GC where there is much less terrain captured in AGC and maybe AGS. A 1942 offensive would be very likely towards Moscow as if the Axis does not capture enough ground in the Centre and South, then they won't have a good enough springboard even with a spring 1942 offensive to launch an effective summer offensive into the south. However, if Leningrad falls you free up many, many divisions (10+) to do so how ever you like. Lots to consider in an opening like this.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Rosencrantus

My thoughts on this opening is if the bid for Leningrad fails, then you end up with a 1941 GC where there is much less terrain captured in AGC and maybe AGS. A 1942 offensive would be very likely towards Moscow as if the Axis does not capture enough ground in the Centre and South, then they won't have a good enough springboard even with a spring 1942 offensive to launch an effective summer offensive into the south. However, if Leningrad falls you free up many, many divisions (10+) to do so how ever you like. Lots to consider in an opening like this.

That reminds me of my first game (and AAR) against Bread, where he tried to go for Leningrad with 2-3 Panzer groups.

I think Soviets can stop this move, but the key is that you have to get troops into position in the north quickly to do so. It becomes more difficult later to move more troops to the north (partly because of the rail lines), so you have to recognize it from the very first turn and react quickly. But once Soviets start to get density and depth of troops sitting in the heavy forests and swamps, it becomes very hard for the Panzers to dislodge them, and it takes a lot of movement points to move forward when you combine the bad terrain, ZOC, and combat delays.

It does appear most likely that HLYA is going to Leningrad, but I don't think it is 100% sure so far. It looks that way, but it could be misdirection. The turn 1 movement rules let Germany move using less MP if they go to the north than if you go east of Minsk (east of Minsk costs more MPs than west of Minsk). So to some degree it makes sense for Germany to gobble up as much territory in the north as they can on turn 1, even if ultimately they are planning to head into the center on turn 2. Especially if you can fool the Soviets and get them to put too many troops in the north and an inadequate defense in the center. So Soviets should watch out for that possibility as well.

[jubjub]

Turn 1 Leningrad Defense:


The Leningrad direction is confirmed. We've counted at least 12 motorized and panzer divisions going north, and minimal to no progress in the Center and South. This strategy is quite the gamble, since, if it fails, HYLA will almost certainly be doomed this game. However, it's going to require a huge effort to hold on to Leningrad.


Quick aside for defending as the Soviets. Basically, the goal is to identify the best/easiest routes for the Axis to advance, and increase the cost of moving along these routes as much as possible. On the contrary, area with bad terrain (Kalinin forests, Pripyat marshes) already have prohibitive cost movement, so we don't need to defend those areas strongly. We also only want to defend across rivers and/or in good terrain. The routes I identify as the best, and the ones I want to stop are shown as red arrows. There's always chokepoints or good terrain along these paths to defend. These chokepoints are identified in pink, and we typically want to put our best men in them. By focusing our forces in this way, we can defend a lot more territory with the same amount of troops. The most inefficient defense is a straight line across the map, which doesn't take these movement costs or defense advantages of the map into account. ANYWAY, enough rambling from me..


Shown here is my defense from last turn. There's just not enough units to cover every approach when the Axis player gets so far the first turn. Ultimately, I think the approach on the right through clear terrain is more dangerous because it expands the front and threatens the double rail line, so I deployed my best units in that direction. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a few divisions becoming trapped in Pskov. In the grand scheme of things, it's only about 5-6 divisions, but locally, it hurts pretty bad, since I don't start with much in this direction.


Fortunately, Pskov was not isolated this turn, and will likely hold out until turn 4. In hindsight, I should've swapped that security division in the rough terrain with one of the infantry divisions.

[jubjub]

Turn 1 Smolensk Defense:


I wanted to share this because I thought there are some interesting aspects to my defense here. The first thing you notice is that the Dnieper is barely defended. This is because it is impossible for his motorized units to cross the Dnieper as long as I have ZOC in each hex on the left bank. If you count the MP cost for the closest/best approaches to the nearest river crossing, the MP cost is over 50. A big mistake in this situation is to put your units on the riverside hexes. In this case, they can be attacked from across the river with a hasty attack. If they rout, the German can cross the river. However, you need a different approach if the first turn puts the panzers closer to the river.. It's still worth bearing in mind to see where the panzers are able to cross.


The key to defending the land bridge are the swamp and hills that are circled in pink. At least one of these hexes has to be taken to continue the assault. Assaulting these hexes with motorized divisions is kind of a headache for the Axis, and then they have to continue to the assault the land bridge itself. It's also pretty inefficient to encircle divisions in this area because of the rivers. Overall, I was able to get a way with a very light defense here since HYLA is directed towards the north.

[jubjub]

T1 southern defense


The first turn defense in the south depends on how far the panzers advanced. However, the first line of level 1 forts should never be defended because the next line is far superior. This defensive line takes advantage of the minor rivers in the area, and has some nice rough terrain anchoring the center. It's also 5 crucial hexes further away. However, this line south of Yuzhny Bug is not really defensible if they advance to Proskurov in T1.


The most common pocket area is circled in yellow. If you defend the first line, you are almost guaranteed to get everything in this direction surrounded..

[jubjub]

T2 Freight:

Freight backlog cleared after T1. My efforts to get my armies' TOE up paid off. I now have 13 armies with a TOE over 90%. We need to continue this effort this turn before our manpower pool runs out. In particular, Southwestern Front didn't get replacements and is sitting ~40%...


I don't know if anyone would be interested, but I saved my depot configuration in case anyone wants to see it.

[jubjub]

Dead Leaders - Disaster!

The biggest loss this turn was the loss of Nikolai Vatutin, who died after replacing another dead leader. I'm pretty sure he's the best leader behind Zhukov, and his death will make a huge difference down the line. We lost 5 others this turn (who we don't really care about). Usually 0-1 leaders die turn 2 for me, and this is by far the most deaths I've ever had. Admittedly, one of these deaths was from performing a displacement move to free up command points for the Western Front.


The leader replacement mechanic seems rather poorly thought out. I think the AI should replace leaders at random instead of selecting the best leaders to be suicided into the front lines. I also think displaced HQ's are bugged in that they retain the 50% leader death chance because the replacement leaders die at a very high rate. Once they are displaced out of the pocket, they should be subject to the normal 15% death chance on displacement. If it's not a bug, it's definitely a flaw.


Also, the logistics phase report is bugged for me this turn because it didn't show me the leader deaths. This makes it hard for me to see who replaced who

[jubjub]

Axis Advance:


Like I mentioned, little to no progress in the center and south. It's hard for me to believe, but so far, I've only counted about 2 corps worth of panzers/motorized divisions in the south. I don't think he has anything hiding in reserve because I've counted 26 motorized divisions across the map, which is just about all of them. I'm still wary, but it doesn't look like this front will need reinforcements anytime soon. Also, Das Reich has gone missing and we haven't seen the Wiking division yet.


Similar situation in the center. I have a feeling HYLA is reserving the option to send the rest of PG 2 to the north.


The situation in the north is pretty bad. The panzers managed to advance 3 hexes deeper than I would have liked. Pskov is cut off but not isolated.


It seems HYLA is a big fan of splitting out his divisions. I'm personally not a proponent of this tactic as axis and try to keep my divisions together as much as possible.






Edit: Forgot to include a capture of the Axis T2 in the north.

[jubjub]

T2 Air Phase

Quite a disaster I must say. I ran huge bombing runs on his forward elements with Leningrad and LRAC. I just learned from Beethoven's AAR that these can drastically reduce the MP of the motorized elements if done properly. These bombing runs are normally out of air superiority range of his airbases, so I flew them unescorted. He must have used drop tanks to extend the range of his air superiority missions, because he got tons of interceptions. Not only that, but the air directive switched from bombing units to running interdiction halfway through (wtf)! The bombing runs that targeted the units are shown, while you can see the effect of the interdiction missions..


Those bombing runs did disrupt around 900 men per unit they bombed, so I hope that his MP's are impacted. I think most of those are regiments, so that's like 1/5 of the men in each regiment that got disrupted. Still not worth it. Those long range bombers take forever to replace.


First time I've seen anyone use drop tanks. Painful lesson. I did a little bit of investigating, and it looks like Bf 109's normally have 10 hexes of range, and the drop tanks extend it to 16. However, the drop tanks degrade the performance of the bf 109-2's pretty significantly, making them worse than Yak-1's and Mig-3's in speed and maneuverability, while still retaining an advantage in climb rate.


At least the gulf of Riga is still in our control...

[AlbertN]

I learnt it late BUT Axis can rebase fighters during the ground movement phase.
And then air supply the airbase with the forward fighters.

It took me some MP games with my mind being boggled as the VVS was dominating the skies (since the Luftwaffe was keeping behind of the first turn advances), and my panzers and motorized components were bombed massively anywhere.
Alternatively one can set the BF110s to perform Air Superiority over the armoured spearheads locations. Albeit they won't perform adequately against Soviet fighters, they'll mince unescorted bombers.

So trying and reading around netted me some results!

[jubjub]

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

I learnt it late BUT Axis can rebase fighters during the ground movement phase.
And then air supply the airbase with the forward fighters.

It took me some MP games with my mind being boggled as the VVS was dominating the skies (since the Luftwaffe was keeping behind of the first turn advances), and my panzers and motorized components were bombed massively anywhere.
Alternatively one can set the BF110s to perform Air Superiority over the armoured spearheads locations. Albeit they won't perform adequately against Soviet fighters, they'll mince unescorted bombers.

So trying and reading around netted me some results!

I don't think this isn't the case here. The Bf 109-2's were flying air superiority missions, not intercept missions. As far as I know, air superiority missions have to be flown from an airbase that was controlled at the beginning of the air phase.

Intercept sorties are automatically flown in response to enemy air missions from any airbase that your planes are currently in. Compared to air superiority missions, they have a very small chance of intercepting bombers unless the bombers are flying deep into enemy territory.

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: jubjub

Losses

My ground losses are fairly mild considering he blew away the front line. I suspect I'll have over 500k casualties next turn. A good sign is that he only lost 47 tanks this turn. This is a clue that the German player is skilled.

There's not much evidence required to show how skilled he is. That's been proven numerous times.