GC 1941: Beethoven (Soviet) vs jubjub (Axis)

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

The only saving grace to this defense is the major river. Without the Major river this defense would crumble.

Really wish for turn #'s in header or in the body of the post Give you a dollar.

That is what Axis faced on Axis turn 3, I normally include the turn number, but didn't here since the real (non-censored) part of the AAR is going to be delayed a few turns.

As for it not working (or at least not as well) without the river, there is a reason why I am doing that defense there rather than in the middle of the open Steppe of Ukraine. The river makes it harder to encircle too many of the units. and limits how far/effectively the defense can just be plowed through.

But a lot of the delaying function is also just pure simple combat delay. Each point of combat delay costs 3 MP on motorized units, so if you have 5-deep defense, that should end up costing 15 MP to move through just from the combat delay alone even if every delay is just 1 delay-point. And even if all the terrain is clear and weather is good etc, it costs 3 MP to move into a hex, so that is another 15 MP. So base value is 30 MP taken up to get through 5 hexes, and in practice that will generally be higher due to additional terrain movement costs, plus movement taken to do all the actual attacks.

Dont get me wrong, you did well with the major river. With that major river you pretty much dictate where the attacks could fall. Personally I would just rest as German here & at a minimum take Vitsbek.

[Beethoven1]

I now present to you the best division in the Red Army:

[&o]



[&o]

What makes this division so valuable is that it can be sacrificed for essentially zero real cost. It is also even better than a NKVD border guard or an airborne unit, since its counter looks like an infantry division, and for all jubjub knows it might have 10,000 men in it. Yes, it will say that it has 0.1 combat value or so when jubjub hovers over it, but it will say the same thing when he hovers over my 30-something morale divisions which have a lot more men (and I have plenty of those). Actually, I just checked, and its CV is actually higher than some of my other units that have a lot more men.

This division is more likely to shatter or rout as a result of being so severely understrength, yes. But... almost every division is likely to rout, so this one is not particularly distinguished by that. And as for shatters, if it shatters, that means that it won't be getting replacements for the next several turns until it re-forms. And that means that there will be more replacements to go into my OTHER divisions, which in turn means that those other divisions will be less likely to shatter. So that probably offsets more or less overall.

I only wish that I had more divisions like this to sacrifice.

[&o]

[Beethoven1]

End of Soviet Turn 3


The Voroshilov Offensive is now well underway! The German invaders have been stopped in their tracks and are now already being thrown backwards! The Voroshilov Offensive has already achieved unparalleled success!

Near Velikie Luki a German Panzer and Motorized division have been surrounded by forces of the Northwestern Front. The German troops in the pocket will be crushed in the coming week and forced to surrender.



And near Smolensk on the Land Bridge, Red Army forces of the Western Front have also pushed back the fascists and surrounded their Panzer division. This unit will also be destroyed shortly.



With the anticipated loss of three mobile divisions, the Wehrmacht will be unable to sustain any further offensive operations, and will be forced to go on the defensive. All thanks to Marshall Voroshilov, the Greatest General in the Red Army, whom Stalin, in his wisdom, placed in command of the Western Direction after General Dmitri Pavlov's treachery was revealed.

And in the Bobruisk region, the birthplace of the initial operations of the Voroshilov Offensive, further ground was also made gained. Red Army troops are now nearing Minsk. It seems that the Germans will only have managed to hold Minsk for a few weeks before we take it back!



In light of these offensive successes, the morale of units across the Red Army is soaring. Like in this division, which has 29 morale!



Onwards to victory, Comrades!!!

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

I now present to you the best division in the Red Army:

[&o]



...

interesting logic, but it must be on the border of being depleted? If so it loses all value apart from just falling back as the Axis units move next to it?

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

I now present to you the best division in the Red Army:

[&o]



...

interesting logic, but it must be on the border of being depleted? If so it loses all value apart from just falling back as the Axis units move next to it?

It is on the border of being depleted, but it is not depleted (just barely). So jubjub will have to attack it and use MP to attack it. Or, maybe he will encircle it, in which case we will mourn the loss of 1,805 brave soldiers becoming POWs.

One thing I have noticed is that sometimes you have divisions with 5000 men which are depleted, and sometimes you have divisions with far fewer men that are not depleted. That probably depends on what ground elements it is that they have left. In this case, this division probably has ground elements left that average out to more than 10% of a division, but which require fewer men per element than some other elements. Whereas when I have seen divisions of 5000 men which are depleted, those often seem to have e.g. only support elements left, as an example.

[Beethoven1]

Axis Turn 4 (July 13, 1941)


I am afraid we have some bad news...

It seems that the Voroshilov offensive has turned into something of a failure.

Item 1) Bobruisk was retaken by the Germans. The Great Bobruisk offensive has come to an end [:(]



Item 2) The best division in the Red Army, the 1805 man strong 108th man rifle division, somehow routed from its un-fortified positions encircling a German Panzer division on clear terrain on the land bridge. Nobody can understand how this could have happened:



Item 3) The Germans somehow broke out of the encirclement in Velikie Luki, and in the process shattered one of our other very best divisions, the 186th Rifle Division (in seriousness, in some ways this is a good thing because now that division won't get reinforcements for 10 turns or so until it comes back, which means that the rest of my on-map units will get those reinforcements instead and become stronger).



Item 4) Pskov fell.



By the way, the unit that was defeated on the Lake Pskov isthmus was the one that I airlifted to safety a few turns ago from inside a pocket.



Although this was technically outside of Voroshilov's area of responsibility, I blame him for it. But Stalin disagrees as to whom is to blame.

Stalin, shocked by the failure of the Voroshilov offensive, decided that Voroshilov was not responsible for its failure. Instead, Zhukov was responsible and had to be removed from command of STAVKA. The final proof of Zhukov's responsibility, Stalin contended, was that he commanded the fortified units near Pskov that had surrendered. Although from my perspective, they did their job since they should have caused a combat delay and also forced a German unit to expend some MP to attack it:



Zhukov was therefore replaced with a better general who understands the power of the Soviet cavalryman, namely General Budyonny:



Budyonny understood the power of small, highly expendable cavalry units with high MP but low numbers of men and (just as importantly) low numbers of trucks that could potentially be captured by the Germans, and therefore formed 20 reserve cavalry divisions, most of which will be deployed to the front next week.



I requested that Budyonny form many many more of these units so that we can cut off jubjub's Panzers again the next time he doesn't break down into regiments. Hopefully Budyonny will listen, but he told me that at some point we will run low on horses. If we run out of horses, I am hoping that maybe he can make some more NKVD border guards and airborne brigades instead.



Other than the final liquidation of the Vinnitsa pocket, there was not much combat in the south. An NKVD border guard routed from Zhytomyr, having been ordered to hold the city to the last man.



And also my front line (yes, I do in fact have a continuous front line in the south) was reached and a couple of units were routed in the far south along the Bug river.



Now a look at the losses and the size of the Red Army so far. My Manpower pool has been getting put into units relatively slowly. That is partly by choice (I have a lot of units on 65% and in some cases 50% max TOE), but also partly due to having railed a lot of units to the Smolensk area in particular, using up freight, and even now I still have a backlog left in the pool:



I also did various things like sending machine gun battalions to the Northern Front and motorcycle regiments to the Transcaucasus (normally would have disbanded them, but decided to get the minor benefit of them until they disband by themselves) which make me temporarily weaker on the map.

A side effect of that, however, is that reinforcements have generally been going to the units that I want them to go to, and as a result I have quite a few beefy 100% TOE high morale units with offensive CVs that are climbing into double digits, as well as almost all my HQs being 90% or higher TOE.

My overall losses are definitely a lot higher than in previous games I have played, at 1.37 million so far:



And I have only 2.26 million men in the field and 4.43 million overall:



As a comparison, here are losses that jubjub posted from the Soviet game he was playing against HLYA on turn 4 before HLYA gave up:



Jubjub then:

2.69 million in the field
4.67 million total
11k AFVs
1.18 million losses
930k captured
Axis losses - 60k, 880 guns, 409 AFV

Me now:

2.26 million in the field
4.43 million total
10k AFVs
1.37 million losses
914k captured
Axis losses - 78k, 1668 guns, 375 AFV

I also have more troops in reserve than jubjub did. That is not because I have not been deploying units immediately (all units have been immediately deployed as soon as available, and I am deploying artillery once it gets up to 45 experience). It is probably mostly due to me using more freight railing units, having more TOE restrictions on units, and generally defending forward.


So I am running about 200k men behind in total losses. I can see a variety of reasons that probably contributed to that, in no particular order:

1) Losses are in general higher in this patch. You can also see that Axis has taken higher losses as well. I haven't actually lost more men captured than jubjub did at this same point, but I have lost an extra 200k fighting. If we were playing with the old patch, my guess is my losses would be more in a similar range.
2) I have defended aggressively forward especially in the center rather than retreating, and am naturally paying some price in losses for that.
3) Jubjub had a strong opening especially in the south, which destroyed a large number of units in Rovno.
4) In jubjub's game against HLYA, HLYA had an uncharacteristically weak opening in the south and did not advance much at all (probably because he was focusing on the north). I am pretty sure you can easily do well more than what he did in the south even with just 1 Panzergruppe.

Jubjub is happy with the losses:



But as for me, it was less than I was really expecting, at least for this turn, because 150k or so started the turn isolated. This turn, only 9,411 men are isolated at the start of the turn, so I am expecting lower losses partly for that reason. For the price of those losses, I think I have bought a good amount of time and space in the north and particularly in the center.



As for the south, jubjub is advancing faster than historical, and he seems to take that as a sign of success:



As for me, I think Axis will basically always advance faster than historical in the south, so I don't really view things as going badly there so far relative to "normal/expected." We have a front and we are defending, delaying a bit, gradually falling back to the Dneper, and now in the process of adding reserves. If jubjub overextends and starts outrunning his supply, which he hasn't particularly done so far, then he opens himself up to counterattacks from Vatutin. Which is probably why he seems to be happy with his pace of advance in the south. And I am ok with it too, at least for now.

[Beethoven1]

No complaints from me about the air war this turn. The Axis lost 65 fighters, and overall only got about a 2 to 1 loss ratio against me:



The best battle was this one, where 13 Bf-109s were downed by my MiGs and I-15s:



70 skill on those MiGs. Sadly I am pretty sure those pilots won't last that much longer with that kind of skill:

[Beethoven1]

It is raining in the north, down as far south as the area between Pskov and Velikie Luki. Rain is also forecast for next week (turn 5) for the whole north, and going further south, looking like it should include pretty much the whole center. Hopefully this will produce some light mud to help slow the German advance a tad.

[Beethoven1]

Returning to the question of losses, and comparing Soviet losses so far in this game to various other games -

Hardradi made this very nice chart showing losses from AARs of various games on turn 1:



The average for games where turn 1 was played prior to the 1.01.15 beta is 240k. It is also 240k if you remove the two outliers (Rosencrantus and Zovs, where the players were apparently trying approaches of routing everything vs limiting attacks as much as possible).

The average for the 3 games with turn 1 after the 1.01.15 beta is 365k Soviet turn 1 casualties.

So on average, Soviet turn 1 losses have been about 125k higher with the new combat changes than beforehand.

That probably explains a pretty good part of why my losses are higher in this game than in my previous games, and also higher than in jubjub's Soviet game we compared to above.

An interesting question is what does this mean for strategy? Does it mean it is better for Soviets to simply retreat and run away, to try to avoid the losses? Or alternatively, does it mean that Soviets have to stand and fight earlier, because if they retreat too much early on, rather than holding firm, now their units will still rout near Moscow and Leningrad if they retreat all the way back to those without fighting earlier.

I suspect it may be more of the latter based on what I have heard about some other games being played with the newer patches, but that is still speculative.

At any rate, I suspect Soviets will probably normally take something closer to historical losses now than before the combat changes.

[jubjub]

This is useful, but I think it would be more interesting to see the loss totals come out to after a later turn.

[Hardradi]

I have this but not quite as much data.

Have you got final losses for Turn 2 for this game as Axis?

[Rosencrantus]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

Returning to the question of losses, and comparing Soviet losses so far in this game to various other games -

The average for games where turn 1 was played prior to the 1.01.15 beta is 240k. It is also 240k if you remove the two outliers (Rosencrantus and Zovs, where the players were apparently trying approaches of routing everything vs limiting attacks as much as possible).

The average for the 3 games with turn 1 after the 1.01.15 beta is 365k Soviet turn 1 casualties.

So on average, Soviet turn 1 losses have been about 125k higher with the new combat changes than beforehand.

That probably explains a pretty good part of why my losses are higher in this game than in my previous games, and also higher than in jubjub's Soviet game we compared to above.

An interesting question is what does this mean for strategy? Does it mean it is better for Soviets to simply retreat and run away, to try to avoid the losses? Or alternatively, does it mean that Soviets have to stand and fight earlier, because if they retreat too much early on, rather than holding firm, now their units will still rout near Moscow and Leningrad if they retreat all the way back to those without fighting earlier.

I suspect it may be more of the latter based on what I have heard about some other games being played with the newer patches, but that is still speculative.

At any rate, I suspect Soviets will probably normally take something closer to historical losses now than before the combat changes.

My name was spelled wrong [:@]

Here's another picture of ground losses for T1 and T2 in a GC41. I played this game against Bitburger on the 1.00.07 patch I believe.

[Rosencrantus]

ORIGINAL: Hardradi

I have this but not quite as much data.

Have you got final losses for Turn 2 for this game as Axis?

Here are the T2 losses for my game against Sil01. Don't remember the patch but it was before 1.00.07 for sure.

[Hardradi]

Cheers. Spelling error was me.

[Beethoven1]

Turn 5

This is the recon that jubjub saw on German turn 5 in the Smolensk area. He has the AA/flak view on, which in some ways gives some more information than what is shown just in regular recon, because how much AA a division is is correlated with how strong it is, generally. At least, it was until this turn I started adding in AA support units to depleted units so as to confuse him [:D]:



Due to the terrain, there are only a few ways that Germany can really attack well around Smolensk. This map shows hex control from the start of Soviet turn 5. Weather is turned on, only so hat you can see that it has now started raining and there is some light mud in places (it was not raining on turn 4 when jubjub attacked, though). But it will be next turn.



Anyway, circled in red are heavy forest, swamp, and urban hexes. These are very good defensive terrain that also costs extra MP for Germany to move through. So the natural German avenues of attack where Germany can use less movement points and attack Soviet troops with lower combat values are in the blue paths which go around that terrain. To the south of Smolensk, there are two routes. There is one going north from south of Smolensk, but this crosses a river, so it is not necessarily that great even though it is clear terrain. There is also another route south of Smolensk through clear terrain towards Yelnya. Due to the fact that I had held firm the previous turns on the Dnieper, Germany had not advanced all that far on the southern side of Smolensk yet, so I could still get by for another turn by putting a bunch of trashy NKVD border guards, airborne brigades, and understrength, low morale rifle divisions in that clear terrain south of Smolensk, which, if jubjub tried to push through it, would cause combat delays in every hex. And which, if jubjub tried to encircle those units, all he would be doing is destroying some very weak and low-manpower units, which would inflict a lot fewer losses than if he were to encircle an equal number of full-strength infantry divisions. He could advance that way, but it would take another turn of combat delay to plow through all the low quality troops there. So for this reason, it seemed like the main immediate threat this turn was on the northern side of Smolensk.

And north of Smolensk there is only a single non-swamp/non-heavy forest route of advance. That route passes through the yellow highlighted hex, which is a light forest hex. That makes that light forest hex a vital chokepoint.

And on that light forest hex stood Alexei Zhadov and his 300 men. No wait, I mean Alexei Zhadov and his 3 divisions.

Alexei Zhadov and his men, defending the chokepoint:



Alexei Zhadov and his three divisions would hold (in level 1 forts) not once, not twice, but thrice against the jubjubite onslaught. First they sent the 121st infantry division, the 12th infantry division, and the 17th Panzer division on a hasty attack, supported by pioneers and a lot of artillery.

To that, Alexei Zhadov said, "Nah, get that out of here. A hasty attack, seriously?"



Next the Germans sent the same three divisions back in again, with another hasty attack.

Denied:



Next the Germans finally realized that hasty attacks were not gonna cut it. And so they sent in the third Panzer division, with 23 CV, with pioneers and even with the Fuehrer Begleit Infantry Battalion attached. And they did a deliberate attack rather than another hasty.

Sorry, but the Fuehrer and his Battalion are not gonna just drive through Zhadov's chokepoint. Not if Zhadov has anything to say about it, anyway. Mr. Lemelsen, this is not a Wendys, we don't do drivethrough:



Finally, the fourth time, the Germans sent in the 18th Panzer division and the 29th Motorized division with another deliberate attack. This time, at long last, Zhadov and his men broke. What can you say, they are only human. You can only withstand so much, even if you are Alexei Zhadov. But they put up a good fight, taking 37 of Lemelson's troops with them for a loss of just 7842 Soviets:



The moral of the story is, never attack Alexei Zhadov with a hasty attack. Do not underestimate the staying power of Zhadov and his 4th Airborne Corps (which does not include airborne units, but that's another story).


Here's my view of the front line at start of turn 5. Although jubjub did manage to take the light forest hex, he did not attack either the swamp or the heavy forest hexes to the north/south of it:



You can also see slow progress around Pskov. The rain probably helped me there a bit, as it was raining in the Pskov area.

In addition to the rain last week that extended as far south as about halfway between Pskov and Velikie Luki, this week it is raining all the way from the north down nearly to Dnepropetrovsk. And next week more rain is forecast for the north and for much of the center:



My men in the field took a jump this turn from just under 2.3 million men in the field to nearly 2.8 million thanks to the arrival of the massive Turn 4 reserves. I am still quite a bit below 3 million, though. I have paid a price for not retreating more, at least in the north and center. I am not happy with the size of the Red Army, but all in all I would rather have a 2.8 million strong and still be near Pskov and Smolensk than to have a 3 million strong army and be fighting back at Luga and Vyazma at this point.

Total losses this turn were 108k. Germany actually lost slightly more AFVs than me, because I managed to keep my tanks out of combat this turn. They are waiting for the right opportunity.



I would promote Zhadov to be front commander of the Western Front if I could, but Stalin won't let me. So I guess I will just have to settle for this guy instead. His name begins with a "Zh" and ends with an "ov" as well, so surely he can't be that bad?



One last thing I will say is that jubjub has still not fought my really high morale divisions yet. Zhadov's 3 divisions were just normal (but fully equipped) infantry divisions with 50 morale. Only one of my really high morale divisions (a 60 CV infantry division) has fought so far, an infantry division that was in Pskov that got beaten (sadly) when jubjub took Pskov. And so, because my best divisions have stayed out of combat so far, they have some pretty nice CVs:



And, to be honest, those are not even their full maximum CVs, because my assault fronts were slightly delayed so these units are not quite at full CPP quite yet. And they are also not all at 100% TOE, though they are all not-too-far from it. So their CVs will go higher next turn, as long as I don't counterattack with them this turn (and it doesn't look like there is either an obvious need or opportunity for that quite yet).

I think I can now post my un-censored turn 1 AAR, so after this I can explain in that the reason why my assault fronts were slightly delayed (jubjub may have been wondering about that). But these units should be pretty much at or close to full CPP next turn though, with most of them having Zhukov as their new Shock Front commander, in addition to having good army commanders and corps commanders for many of them. So they will see combat sooner or later, at the appropriate time and place.

[Beethoven1]

One thing I am not that happy with is that the Germans have captured 14,000 trucks. That is a few thousand more than I would (ideally) like. It seems like about 10,000 are pretty much guaranteed from the turn 1 pockets in general. Jubjub got somewhat more than that because of his Rovno pocket, and a bit more also from subsequent early pockets, especially the turn 2 pocket in the south.

[Beethoven1]

Overall front line at the start of Soviet turn 5:

Odessa fell at least ~ 10 turns faster than historical, as is the case in every multiplayer game of which I am aware.

[Beethoven1]

Start of uncensored AAR posts with a slight turn delay:


Soviet Turn 1

Whatever else might be said, let it not be said that I didn't try to defend forward and I just ran away and only retreated. Forget defending the Velikaya river, how about the Daugava/Dvina river instead. Red Army forces massed around Riga and Daugavpils in the north, in preparation for the counterattacks which would occur next turn and drive the Axis bridgeheads back across the river. My strategy here is obviously premised upon delaying the Axis advance here with combat delays, forcing MP to be expended on attacks, and ZOC. I also have units 1 hex behind the river with ZOCs to increase the movement point costs of crossing the river in places other than the original bridgeheads.



This is obviously a risky strategy, because many units are in exposed positions. If he wants to, he can probably encircle a good number of units. But the question is, does he really want to send the motorized units to the north necessary to do that, or does he want them to head to the east towards Smolensk? My guess is he probably wants the latter, although the opportunities to destroy some units here may be tempting for jubjub. Alternatively, he may rout many of my units. Either way, I doubt I will escape without a lot of casualties. Hopefully it will end up being worth it, though.

I was a bit worried about losing trucks if tank/mech units are captured, however I looked at their TOEs and this turn most of the tank units still have very few trucks, mostly not more than 100-200 or so each. So if some extra tank/mech units are encircled now, Germany will capture some trucks, but not an excessive amount.

For those who demand that the Soviets fight early on rather than simply run away, this should be a good test of what happens if Soviets in fact attempt to do that.



On the land bridge, I have 5-deep defense. Is that enough? STAVKA member Bread thinks that Germany might be able to break directly through the land bridge despite having so many units there. Granted, many of the units are quite low quality. I have ZOC behind the river to try to make it cost a lot of MP to cross.

If jubjub attacks head on, there will presumably be a lot of routs - hopefully not too many shatters. I also may get some units encircled. If so, hopefully not too many. This sort of defense seemed to work in the previous patch because of the combat delays it created, does it work in this one?



Gomel is sparse, hopefully just enough to stop a river crossing (relying largely on the ZOC). BTW, I learned this about ZOC 1 hex behind to defend a major river crossing from jubjub himself, now it is being used against him. Wonder if his own tricks can defeat him.



The Kiev area is perhaps even sparser, a natural consequence of jubjub having isolated so many units in this area. 3 tank divisions are highlighted, each of which I actually could have sent to reserve/theater boxes. I seriously considered sending them all to the Transcaucasus, but decided not to so as to have at least minimal speedbumps there. This may or may not really have been a good idea. They are all very weak divisions, one of which has only 2000 men or so. But related to this, they also all have very few vehicles, so not much will be lost if jubjub decides to encircle them. If he doesn't, it will at least provide some sort of very minimal delay, though not much of one. There is not really much more I could have done here though.



Further south, I have at least a bit more of a defense. My main objective here is to shield the Southern Front from total destruction as best as I can and protect retreating troops from south of Lvov from being totally overrun. This is no easy task, with germany having advanced to Proskurov. I opted to sacrifice 1 mech division (highlighted) to cut off Proskurov, which was weak/unready/without many trucks. It had 7 MP. If I were doing it again, I am not sure, but might have pulled it back instead. However, it ZOC blocks the most efficient path for further advance, so jubjub can either rout it to get it out of the way (costing some MP), or else can encircle it and lose some MP because other units will have to go around it. So its sacrifice should create a little bit of delay to help the other units.



I also moved some Southwestern Front troops (highlighted in yellow) into Bessarabia, also to help protect my other troops and cover their retreat lines. General Malinovsky is in the area circled in blue, so this also to a limited degree protects him and reduces his chance of being KIA on turn 2.

Other than that, the main thing I am trying to protect against here is an armored thrust north-east by the Romanian armor division. If I didn't move troops in the way, it could attack along the red arrow, and could potentially meet up with the German Panzers coming from Proskurov and encircle many of my troops that are retreating near Vinnitsa. This is what has happened in some other games with AARs. The purpose of this defense is to try to stop that sort of large scale encirclement rolling up the southern front.







Here's another little thing I did on turn 1. Reluctantly, I spent all but one of my APs on leader changes. I found armies with leaders who had low political ratings, whose leaders could be replaced relatively cheaply, and put the best Soviet leaders in charge of them. Vatutin, Purkayev, and Tolbukhin all got an Army to command on turn 1. After that, I had 4 AP left, I put Vasilevsky in charge of a corps (yes, a CORPS!) because I could do that for only 3 AP.

This is really just a waste of AP which I should not really have to do. But if I don't, the AI might well put them in control of a pocketed army that gets displaced during the Axis ground phase next turn, and consequently get them killed for the rest of the game. At least this way, I should be pretty close to 100% sure that at minimum my very best leaders will not die pointless deaths (which are ahistorical) at the very beginning of Barbarossa, when in reality many of these leaders were nowhere near the front. I will now have to spend additional AP in future turns to put Vasilevsky somewhere useful, and also I did not really want Vatutin/Purkayev/Tolbukhin in charge of these particular armies. I would have put Tolbukhin in particular in charge of the 26th Army, because in about 20 turns that will become a shock army, but it could not get far enough from the front in the south to be completely sure that it would not be displaced next turn.

This is not my ideal use of turn 1 AP, but better safe than sorry.

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 5


Let the Interdiction begin!!!



We order bombing missions on 7 different hexes, each of which are to be interdiction-bombed with 100 bombers. Each of the hexes is part of the key chokepoint(s) through which jubjub is advancing. Whether fighters will actually escort the missions, God only knows. I hope so, but honestly, who knows if they will?



And... here are the results... First of all, it took a long time to set up. It doesn't even run the mission on one of the 7 hexes, the one with the 23=23 infantry (despite I think pretty clearly having enough planes?):



Conclusion: do not do interdiction missions, they are just a waste of time. The only time when it might be worth setting up an interdiction mission, at least with Soviets, is if there is a literal 1-hex chokepoint where the Axis has advanced. In that case, maybe you will get lucky and the interdiction will actually interdict that 1 hex (2 in 7 chance, or 29%, insofar as this attempt was representative).

The problem is, in the more realistic case, for interdiction to have any actual usefulness, it needs to reliably interdict more than a single hex. The typical use of interdiction would be for something like a river crossing, where the enemy has crossed and controls 3 hexes across a river. In order for interdiction to actually do anything useful in that case, it needs to interdict ALL 3 of the hexes. Because if it only interdicts some of them, then the enemy can just cross the river the next turn in whichever hex was NOT interdicted successfully, and then get no penalty to movement. The probability of interdiction actually successfully doing that, if you need 3 hexes and the base chance of success is 2 in 7, is equal to (2/7)^3. That is the same as 0.0233236151603, in other words a 2.3% chance that interdiction actually does anything to slow down an enemy river crossing on a 3-wide front.

If I am wrong about this and anyone has actually managed to find interdiction be useful in a realistic circumstance like that, I would be interested in seeing careful tests showing that it actually works. Because, at least for Soviets in 1941, it seems to be totally pointless. So I lost nearly 200 planes in 7 missions for absolutely no purpose, unless I am missing something.

[Beethoven1]

Just to make sure nobody is confused, the point I am trying to make regarding interdiction is NOT that it should necessarily be buffed.

I am no expert on the historical air war. It seems entirely plausible that interdiction bombing by the Soviet air force in July 1941 was in fact historically totally ineffective. If so, then ok, I am fine with that.

My point is merely that in the game it seems like a totally useless mission for me to be ordering, and I don't really see myself ordering it again unless there are some magical tricks through which it actually produces decent results.

I'll just use my level bombers for ground support and ground attack and pray that they get escorted by fighters, I guess. And maybe for some naval interdiction if we get to the point where it is needed for some reason. Or maybe at some point I'll try bombing some railyards.