Well China is trying to flex it's muscle and is building up a viable force just north of French IndoChina, so it's time to send in the Air Force.
(BTW, Paullus mentioned Auto Supply was off for him, i just found out it is off for me as well, look slike were on Manual supply for this game, Oleg hope that won't cause too much pain for you as you have the longest supply chains to move through)
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Maurice Buttazoni
Project Coordinator, Playtest Coordinator
I'm OK with manual supplies, it drives home the point as to how much supplies are really important when you have to haul them accross the map yourself. [:D]
We played another turn but almost nothing happened. I even forgot to take a screenshot. Anyway, I am reinforcing Egypt - brought two militia units that were used against Italians in East Africa previous turn. Also established conwoy route from UK via Med to Egypt and brought supplies and unit or two. Egypt front (actually it's not even "front") seems stable for now, and I think Germans will turn their attentions to SU very soon. Noticeable buildup on German east borders.
As you can see from paullus' screenshot, he's moved his units into position for an early launch of Barbarossa. Breaking it down, you see that his force disposition is as follows:
1. All armor (6 or 7 armor units, I believe) is in East Prussia.
2. Infantry & supporting units in Poland.
3. Infantry & supporting units in Rumania.
I assume that he will launch Barbarossa in the next turn -- Winter 41. Paullus and I have played each other a lot and we both know that the earlier he attacks me, the worse the situation for the USSR. Also, I've stymied him at Leningrad a few times, and he's clearly not going to let that happen in this game: I have no doubt that Leningrad will feel the brunt of the entire armored force.
Cracking Leningrad is the key to the North -- I suspect that paullus will then use the Finish army to take Karelia. I'll then have to figure out how to stop this army as it marauds through the undefended northern areas.
I've done what I can to strengthen the front lines. The artillery produced last turn will hopefully take a toll from the advancing Germans, weakening their spearheads. I switched to militia production this turn in Leningrad and Kiev -- if he does invade in Winter, any other units I put into the queue will not be ready, and thus that production would have been lost, so better to churn out the weak militia and make him have to commit more resources to those areas. Rear areas will continue to focus on unit production; I also built more supply and continued to research armor and infantry improvements. My goal is to have armor units that equal the Germans within a year after the invasion. We'll see how that goes.
"The very word Moscow meant a lot to all of us....it meant all we had ever fought for" -Rokossovsky
If he attacks in Winter will you counter attack immediatelly with whatever you have to use the "first winter" and "Russian winter in general" rule(s)?
Actually I expected him to attack either in Fall 40 or Spring 41, Winter is not a good season to launch Barbarossa...
We'll see I guess. We'll watch it like a good football game [:D] (lets forget for a moment that for various WA nations the very word "football" can mean very different things [:D]).
If he attacks in Winter will you counter attack immediatelly with whatever you have to use the "first winter" and "Russian winter in general" rule(s)?
Actually I expected him to attack either in Fall 40 or Spring 41, Winter is not a good season to launch Barbarossa...
We'll see I guess. We'll watch it like a good football game [:D] (lets forget for a moment that for various WA nations the very word "football" can mean very different things [:D]).
O.
Actually, this is something we need to talk about on the dev board -- I don't know if this would be treated as the "first winter after invasion" for the purposes of the rules.
You want me to counterattack? WHERE'S MY LEND LEASE?!!!!
[:D]
"The very word Moscow meant a lot to all of us....it meant all we had ever fought for" -Rokossovsky
Actually, this is something we need to talk about on the dev board -- I don't know if this would be treated as the "first winter after invasion" for the purposes of the rules.
If Germany initially attacks the SU on a Winter turn, the SU bonuses for "first winter counterattack" occur in the next Winter turn.
Maurice Buttazoni
Project Coordinator, Playtest Coordinator
We unleashed Phase II of our offensive operations this turn. To the west, we used a combination of air & U-Boats to decimate the WA shipping lanes. No fewer than 8 transports were sent to the bottom or the repair yards, cutting England off from both North America & Africa.
To the East, we did not want the Russian Bear to get anymore powerful, so we launched our offensive operations there. There was no guarantee that our armor would be able to take Leningrad, so instead we took Belorussia. Reinforcements are on the way & the WA have more to worry about now, so the assault continues.
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Never Underestimate the Power of a Small Tactical Nuclear Weapon...
bombed some more Chinese units (shown is the new combat info pop-up in the latest version) other than that just built up my offensive support bases a bit.
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Maurice Buttazoni
Project Coordinator, Playtest Coordinator
As Barbarossas go, paullus has hit me with worse before...of course, once I thought I was fine after the initial invasion, and four turns later the game was over. [:@]
Strategy: no factories are immediately threatened, other than Vladivostok, so I elect to preserve rail capacity (and the units under construction!) and not move any of the factories in the west just yet. The Vladivostok factory I move to West Kazahstan, which has a nice pop & resource base (that way, it's protected if Mo gets any ideas about heading north). I have 14 supply sitting in Vladivostok, so I use my 10 remaining rail capacity to send 10 supply to W. Kazahk, and repair the factory (taking 5 of the 10 supply moved).
Then, strategic deployment begins. We form a wall running Kursk-Kharkov. Despite the armored dagger sitting in Belorussia, I hope that paullus will not have the forces to take Kursk this turn. Kursk borders so many provinces that it makes defense in the south a nightmare if you lose it. Two infantry from Kharkov head off to Odessa, and drive out the occupying German militia -- naughty paullus trying to hold his front line with crappy Rumanian militia! That should set the southern schedule back a bit, and will cost him supply. One of my early goals, by the way, is to make the German fight for every province, spending precious supply.
Leningrad gets a lot of love. I move some infantry, militia and artillery from other regions to Leningrad. Paullus has the ability to send 10 units into Leningrad if he chooses -- 4 infantry and 1 artillery in the Baltic States and 5 armor from Belorussia. I like my odds with 16 combat units in the province, but decide to make things a little safer by reducing the forces in the Baltic States: My heavy bomber in Moscow sallies forth and blasts the German artillery unit to bits, and damages German rail to boot.
Did I mention that bombers LOVE artillery? They target it like there's no tomorrow. I've got a defense that relies heavily on artillery, and all of paullus' heavy and tactical bombers are on the West Front. I like that, I like that a lot.
Lastly, I see that the Germans have two transports lounging about in the Baltic sea, and one more in the Black Sea. The Leningrad fleet heads out and damages both of the former transports (I have one sub damaged from this and do not intend to repair it for the time being). The Black Sea fleet heads out and destroys the latter transport, which means if paullus wants transports in the Black Sea, he'll have to take Turkey to get them there.
In the production phase, I've got a few more infantry and artillery coming on line this turn, so I can't order many new units. I was three research units away from a breakthrough on infantry evasion, so I put a couple of units on hold and take that research -- improving units on the field seems to be a better use of my resources. I've nearly closed the gap in research with the Germans. My infantry evasion and armor attack are still 1 level behind, but one is better than two. Armor attack should get closed next turn.
Finally, at the end of my turn, the Soviet mobilization is triggered: militia units are created in every Soviet province based on population (no population = no militia).
Two screenshots: the first is the battle screen for Odessa, the second shows the map after the militia mobilize.
Let me know if you all find these types of posts helpful.
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"The very word Moscow meant a lot to all of us....it meant all we had ever fought for" -Rokossovsky
Here's the second screenshot (it only lets me upload one screenshot per post). I had to reduce the size of this one to meet forum restrictions, so please forgive any resulting ugliness. [:)]
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"The very word Moscow meant a lot to all of us....it meant all we had ever fought for" -Rokossovsky
Wow, interesting turn for WA - made interesting mostly by fact GE shattered our conwoy routes.
One look at the map of Atlantic revealed the dimensions of the disaster (picture below). With ASW rating of our DD fleets and LR bombers still low, I thought there's no sense in reopening the routes this turn, so I settled for rebuilding of my transport fleets. I recalled all fleets to ports: Scapa Flow, Alexandria, Liverpool whatever etc.
I sent one LR bomber to Iceland, to try to help with ASW over Atlantic gap.
We hope Japanese will do something foolish very soon, and US will be in war, which will help us immenselly.
UK will have to make do with what they have for now, only route I did reopen is UK-Gib, and that was reopened just to be able to recall some fleets from Med.
