Campaign Advice Requested in Dec 41.

[Champagne]

Pic C (disregard duplicate at the bottom)

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Pic E

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Pic H

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Pic I (Sevastopol is besieged with two Rumanian Divisions)

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pic 11

Same pic without the Dialog Box obstruction present in pic 10

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Taking Leningrad in 1941 is something I am yet to do, so congrats on that, hope fully you can hold it throughout the winter also good is the fact that you inflicted nearly 4 million Red Army casualties that should help greatly.

P.S.
Would have enjoyed you doing a full AAR would have liked to see how you captured Leningrad .

regards

In order to take Leningrad in 1941 from the AI on Normal Setting, your Germans have got to concentrate lots of heavy artillery SUs in the 4th Panzer Group, 18th Army and 16th Army. Good Pioneer and Flammpanzer SU support helps.

Of course, the concentration of forces required to take Leningrad by late September, 1941, as I did in this game, caused a shortage of forces and deficiency of Fort Level build up on the Army Group Center area.

As soon as 9th Army can clean up the Minsk Pocket, it must march to the Northeast in order to protect 4th Panzer Group's long East Flank, as the 4th PG drives directly North from Pskov to the Luga River to Leningrad. 4th Panzer Group must gain a bridgehead over the Luga River by the End of Turn 5, or the timetable for taking Leningrad is threatened.

Sending the whole 9th Army to protect the East Flank of the Drive on Leningrad does weaken Army Group Center both offensively and defensively, but, I don't think that the Drive on Leningrad can succeed unless 9th Army shifts its mission from the "Drive East with the 4th Infantry Army Mission" to the "Drive on Leningrad Flank Protection Mission."

Additionally, 9th Army's Flank Protection mission is not a static defense mission. 9th Army must attack to the North and North East right into the flank of the huge Soviet assembly of forces that are surely massed and lined up to attack directly West into 4th Panzer Group's Eastern Flank.

[Champagne]

Axis Rear areas of the same game, same Turn.

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[M60A3TTS]

Soft factor display- Ammo isn’t the best normally, I prefer supply with an occasional switch to fuel for the panzer and motorized divisions.

Airpower- You don’t need much in the way of aircraft on the map in winter, except for Ju-52s and later the Me 323s. You have a bunch of overloaded airbases in the south. Send the aircraft to the reserves until Spring arrives.

Theater Box Management- Are you not managing your TBs? If you prefer not to, ok, but you’re a lot better doing so, especially once you know what you’re doing. Some folks like to winter in panzer divisions in the WE TB in order to release additional infantry divisions, while others just want them to stay on the map. Others release mountain divisions from Norway/Finland because they can perform much better in winter conditions. What’s your preference?

Supply situation- Decent enough in the north, although not sure what Pskov is doing with all of the supplies. May want to set it priority 3 to flush the freight to the forward depots.

I prefer to be brutally honest so you’ll get the most from the advice. Your supply situation is pretty poor. But…it’s consistent with how a lot of players starting out do this, so don't beat yourself up over it. Turn all of the depots in Germany to supply priority zero. The freight you have been shipping to all these places in Germany nets you nothing. Set Danzig to 2, so it supplies Tallinn or Leningrad by sea.

Setting all these rear depots to level 1 doesn’t help a lot unless you just did that to bring freight forward. They receive far too little supply on a per-turn basis. Berlin needs to be sending freight to a lot of depots, but that is not happening. You should have Poland depots at 2 and various Soviet depots at 0, 3 or 4. You should consider the all-fours approach to depot priorities, particularly in the south.

In the south, you need the ports of Nikolaev and Kherson pulling in as much freight as possible. The export port of Constanta in Rumania is normally priority 2 or 3.

What are your FBDs doing? They could be providing super depot support where you need it. And you are going to need it.
As manpower is lost due to the weather, you are going to want to be able to quickly replenish divisions that are ground down. Typically a beat up division needs one turn in a well supplied depot to recoup all the needed ground elements. The supplies don’t go to the unit until the following turn, so having air units in a position to run supplies to these units on the turn after the manpower arrives can get them back into action more quickly. What you don’t want is your manpower pool ballooning from damaged elements that were repaired but that you are not getting back into units quickly and efficiently.

For newer players you can get Sevastopol later, but to get gud you need to take it before Spring. That means all of 11th Army plus one Rumanian army plus Rumanian mountain units go to the Crimea. All LW4 aircraft support the effort. Ju-52 transports as well flying supplies into the Crimea. The rest of Army Group South has to do without air support for a while. Clearly 11th Army just got put into the line and you didn’t rail them there I have to assume. Marching them up to the front from the Crimea is a killer. What you should do is get the rail line connected from Nikolaev-Kherson to D-town. While that is in progress, 11th Army hangs around the port cities to resupply and build up prep points. Then 11th Army is railed forward.

You’ll probably withstand the Red Army well enough for a couple weeks before the cracks begin to appear. You seem to have few reserves available to plug the holes that will develop.

Overall, it’s not great, but again in the context of doing this for the first or second time, it’s ok. Props for taking Leningrad. But your logistics have got to be better before you can take the next step.

[Champagne]

Thanks very much! I should re-play this game with Leningrad Falls as the re-start point in order to implement your guidance.

This game itself is a re-start from Game Turn 2 of my first game vs the AI, so I am stuck with Computer AI control of the TBs and the Air War.

I am in control of the Depot Management, however, and those deficiencies are on me.

[Champagne]

Your comments about 11th Army are interesting. They didn't march up from Crimea. They stayed in the line in that sector from the beginning. My intent was to keep 11th Army headed East. There must be something wrong with them now, if somehow they caught your notice.

My FBDs are building Railroad hexes, rather than serving as Super Depots, but, based on your comments, the Super Depots are needed at this point.

Quick question: Fort Level building happens when a unit stays put and doesn't move around, correct? If a unit is re-positioning itself to improve a defensive line every turn, then, it won't build much Fort Level. I might have forgotten this lesson.

[56ajax]

Most of your divisions will suffer combat attrition simply because they are next to an enemy unit.

Consider a chequerboard defence and breaking down your divs into regiments, with 1 regiment held in reserve.

[tyronec]

For the start of the blizzard would aim to have more level 3 forts where you are going to stand and fight. The alternative is to create a buffer and pull back so that the Soviets cannot attack.
Your Panzer divisions are going to take a lot of panzer attrition on the front line, better to protect them during the winter.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=365358

[Champagne]

Checkerboard defense sounds interesting. I can keep the regiment set up in reserve on Reserve status.

Level 3 Forts: I'd love to have those built on every hex, instead of just a few. But I don't seem to have enough units to cover the front line in every hex. And I've got to find a way to let the Division just SIT in place, not move, and collect Build Points for that Fort Level.

My Depot Network: I have internalized the lesson about "spamming" depots every 5 hexes and set my network like that. Leaving the whole network on "Depot level 1" except for the Railheads worked in my previous game vs the AI when I tried that in the 1943 and 1944 years, so, I implemented that in this game for 1941. Turns out, the Spamming technique is correct but the "All Fours" feature is much better. "All Ones" is ineffective, as kindly shared with us from M60A3.

[tyronec]

But I don't seem to have enough units to cover the front line in every hex.

You can't defend the whole of the front during the blizzard, the Soviets are going to be able to win some battles somewhere. So whatever strategy you are going to use, prepare for it during the mud and snow turns - or better still towards the end of your summer offensive. It is possible to have level 3 forts manned by German inf divisions along some of the front.
One strategy would be to have AGN and AGC cover half of the front line, and get them fully dug in with a solid line and with reserves (motorised divisions are good). While AGS covers the rest of the front with a thin screen which retreats fast enough to avoid combat. Allied units and Panzers are best kept out of combat.

[Teo41_ITA]

Not sure how much it could help you, but here is how I survived the winter of 1941 against the AI (on Impossible difficulty). As tyronec said, level 3 forts turned out to be crucial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tusw8hwujpc

[Champagne]

I replayed a part of this game. I returned to the turn in which Leningrad fell and started again from there, armed with all of the great advice in this thread. So, starting in late September, I was able to Rail 4th Panzer Group to Smolensk, because the front lines North and East of Smolensk were weak and would be defeated without significant help. 4th Panzer Groups achieved its mission in that sector, during the whole of Winter 41-42. I tried to keep the Panzer Divisions out of the front line but, as a last resort, sometimes they were needed to fill a hex-wide gap in the line so that the Infantry Division that was there could withdraw to a Depot for Refit.

The key difference between the situation presented in this thread with the screenshots and the situation present for the Replay from Late September 41 was Logistics improvement. The rear-area sector behind Bryansk and Kursk had absolutely no Rail Net repair, because that area was the site of a large Encirclement Battle that wasn't cleared up until late September. So, from the first turn of the Replay, I sent an FBD Rail Repair unit or two in order to fix the situation. Once the Rail net was built up, that front line sector held throughout the Winter. You can see the sector of the front line that I'm speaking about in the Screenshots that I have posted. The front line was about the same in the original game and in my partial Replay.

M60A3 was absolutely correct when he advised me to change the Depot settings from 1 to 4. Following that advice was the most important part of improving the Rail net/Logistics net well enough to hold out.

I spent a great deal of time in the Commanders Report with my Locked HQ units, redistributing Artillery, Pioneer and Construction SUs as evenly as possible, because I wanted to keep the Combat Units in place, digging earthwork Fort Levels. This worked. I had mostly 3 and 2 Level Forts all along the line for the whole Winter. There was no significant loss of territory, but the pressure in the South sector between the Black Sea coast and the front directly East of D-Town was heavy with very persistent Soviet attacks all Winter. A key point to remember is that your Construction SUs assigned to Corp and Army HQs can and do help with building the Fort Levels of you front line units.

It was difficult to hold off the Soviet Offensive in this sector of the front stretching from the Black Sea coast to about 20 hexes inland. The Rail net in that sector is poor, even after you build it up, so, you've got to rely on the Black Sea coast Ports to bring in some Freight to Refit your Combat Units. Even so, it's not enough, so, I had to send almost all of the incoming reinforcing Combat Units to that sector of the line to prevent a Soviet breakthrough.

It is now late April 1942 in the game, the Winter Soviet Offensive is ended. The Soviets are digging in and are apparently now committed to playing Defense, rather than Offense.

[M60A3TTS]

Congrats on surviving your first winter. Now you know it's not all doom and gloom.

Do not forget about Sevastopol. Bring it down, and not just tell yourself you will deal with it later.

To take your next step, you want to figure out how to get back to attacking just as soon as possible. With practice that can be as early as April. A lot centers on how quickly you reconstitute your panzers.