The Fall Of Moskva

[JagdFlanker]

i'v been seeing a lot of posts recently mentioning that the fall of moscow is a catastrophic loss and when moscow falls the soviet union loses. from my experience, all things being equal germany can pretty much always take moscow every game. now, in my opinion, if you plan on moscow falling and take the 'appropriate actions', the fall of moscow hurts but isn't catastrophic by any means. as far as i can tell germany can't generally hold on to moscow so you get some of the oil and resources back soon, and with savy factory railing you can keep a nice core of production going. the only real damage germany can do is cut the moscow draft population to 1/3 (or something like that). but if you can keep your summer inf losses to perhaps 90k (guessing! - mabe 80k?) at the most, you should be in pretty good shape for the winter.

so here's a question to you veterins - is the fall of moscow really a game breaker? i don't think so, but i havn't played a lot of games. i did lose in my only as germany after taking moscow, mostly due to big blizzard shatter losses. whadaya think?

[PzFaust]

It all depends on what the Germans lose in taking Moscow.

I have lost moscow in 1 game and was thought russia would fall but the Germans lost east poland in my winter counter attack!! after germanys failed 42 summer attack he surrendered.

Taking moscow has a bigger effect on the russians players moral than lost production.

If germany choses to strat bomb russian cities they will not produce much at all so losing moscow is not the end for russia. losing moscow and other production areas is another story

[Forward_March]

The effects of Losing Moscow are bigger than losing so many tanks and planes per turn. REadiness loss due to the loss of heavy industry hurts a lot. Bad enough, your opponent can do industrial damage to other places like Stalingrad and Saratov before ivan can mount an air defense that will stop the German bombers from getting through. Leningrad is within easy fighter range, as is Moscow after a few turns.

Like the Germans in 44-45 after the USAAF has done it's damage, the additional readiness loss is crippling.
Add to this a great bite out of the manpower pie...after Leningrad has already been sliced off...Ivan has zip...nada..nothing.

Losing Moscow by itself would only be bearable if Leningrad weren't taken by the enemy.

Savvy use of the rails could help, but the loss of time it takes heavy industry to recuperate means that poor Ivan is trying to run on little over 70 points of it.

Also, losing both Leningrad and Stalingrad has very adverse affects on the Soviet ability to fight effectively.

Only terrible play by the Geman player would allow anything to go well outside of the blizzard 41-42 season.