Clash of steel continued Smokindave (Sov) vs. Qball (Axis)

[gingerbread]

How many of the 1.2M men are in the Active pool?

[smokindave34]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

How many of the 1.2M men are in the Active pool?

Not sure what you mean by the active pool? I'm looking at the production screen and see 1.2 million in the pool. Maybe I'm missing something....

[gingerbread]

Press the text 'All pools' in the production screen to cycle the pool shown.

[smokindave34]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

Press the text 'All pools' in the production screen to cycle the pool shown.

Didn't know that, thanks Gingerbread. I have 1.1 million men in the active pool.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: smokindave34

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

Press the text 'All pools' in the production screen to cycle the pool shown.

Didn't know that, thanks Gingerbread. I have 1.1 million men in the active pool.

I know it's mud now, but you really need to start planning to kill some men. Germans, Russians, whoever. Just sitting there, looking over the front lines at the enemy, isn't going to get you to Berlin. You have to apply constant pressure to keep the Axis replacement capacity stretched. By the huge amount of Arms and Manpower you have accumulated, it shows that this game is simply not being played out aggressively enough.

[smokindave34]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

ORIGINAL: smokindave34

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

Press the text 'All pools' in the production screen to cycle the pool shown.

Didn't know that, thanks Gingerbread. I have 1.1 million men in the active pool.

I know it's mud now, but you really need to start planning to kill some men. Germans, Russians, whoever. Just sitting there, looking over the front lines at the enemy, isn't going to get you to Berlin. You have to apply constant pressure to keep the Axis replacement capacity stretched. By the huge amount of Arms and Manpower you have accumulated, it shows that this game is simply not being played out aggressively enough.

I had 17 attacks last turn (clear weather), I thought that was pretty high (for me). One thing that has held me back are the high losses I get when I lose a battle - although I guess I can certainly afford them. I'll go "all in" during the clear weather and attack anywhere/everywhere I have any chance to win a battle.....I'll post the results as we go through the summer.

[karonagames]

attack anywhere/everywhere I have any chance to win a battle

When calculating the relative CVs for deciding attacks, you need to have a feel for whether you are getting Air superiority, and how many artillery tubes you will have in support. If you are getting 60-100 aircraft in support, and you have 3K+ tubes, you can multiply the Axis face value CVs by 75%. You may also want to experiment with units in attacking reserve mode to help your win chances.

[smokindave34]

Thanks BigA....I have noticed that in a large number of my attacks I have a face value CV advantage of approximately 2 to 1 however I am winning some of these attacks with final calucated CV"s of 5 or 6 to 1. I'll add a 0.75 factor into the German CV where I have the advantages you mentioned (which is most points along the front relative to aircraft support).

[smokindave34]

T102:

Another clear weather turn and this allowed me to dial up the number of attacks on the axis front line. I launched 33 attacks this turn winning 26 and losing 7. The majority of these (all but 5) were against German units and I was able to crack a lot of level 3 forts. I kept a summary of the casualties for each battle and I ended up inflicting 54,389 casualties on Q-ball (I took about 58,000 casualties). I'm not sure why the numbers I added up were different from the losses screen which showed about 30,000 casualties?

I'm trying to spread my attacks out across the whole front line so as not to allow Q-ball to focus his reserves in one area of the front. I want to try and dilute his strength across the whole front.

In the north I was able to make gains and I'm now close to pushing through to an area where it appears Q-ball has no forts to fall back to. I suspected he had no reserves here (although an SS motorized brigade jumped in as a reserve in one of these battles) and hopefully I'm going to make him commit some reserves to this area...

One advantage I had this turn is that I know that the weather will be mud next turn so I felt comftorable leaving some of my armor units out in front. That won't be the case when the weather clears for good.

There are very few Finns on the front line so I'm thinking Q-ball has them back across the line so they don't incurr a morale hit. He will probably swap out German units for Finnish units north of the "no move" line and send his freed up Germans units down towards Lake Ilmen.

[smokindave34]

Voronezh:

I had the most success in this area and was able to clear his chain of forts just to the east of Voronezh. I should have toggled on "show forts" however the area near the Italian and Hungarian units is free of forts as far as I can tell.

[smokindave34]

Moscow:

[Flaviusx]

26 retreats/turn is a good start, but you'll need to increase that. You should be able to accelerate the tempo over time as you knock down forts and get more artillery divisions into the fray. And Q-ball will be stretched later on by withdrawals (the Italians, among others.)

I think you should put more cavalry up north and use those to exploit gains rather than tank corps.

The loss screen is quirky due to the way it refreshes itself. The more accurate way to track losses is via the individual battle reports under the commander's report, but that can be tedious to add up. 50k men per turn losses on the Axis is good grinding, though. That is well beyond replacement capacity for the Axis -- although the Wehrmacht is so strong right now that it will be some time before he reaches a crisis point even at that loss level.

[smokindave34]

The armies of the Leningrad front are not at full capacity so I just sent a cavalry corps north. If I can free up another (maybe from Western front) I'll send them up also. This certainly seems like the weakest area of his front and I should be able to start attacking units who are not in level 2 or 3 forts soon.

Thanks for the clarification on the losses screen - I'll continue to count up losses from individual battles.

[smokindave34]

Turn 103 (June 3 1943)

I made a mistake last turn in that I forgot that with the month changing to June we would have two back to back clear turns. I left a few of my mechanized units and rifle corps exposed at the end of last turn thinking that Q-ball would not be able to take advantage because of the mud. I was surprised to see that Q-ball only launched two attacks on my exposed units and didn't attempt to cut anyone off. I think Q-ball has gone over to the defensive almost entirely - I really gave him some opportunities to break through some thin portions of my line and he didn't take it. My mistake may have provided valuable insight into my opponents strategy - we will see.....

Not quite as many attacks this turn since Q-ball pulled back from Ryzan and the Bryansk front didn't have the MP's left after closing up on the Wehrmacht to launch any attacks. Overall I launched 20 attacks. I won 13 and lost 7. If you count Q-ball's two attacks into the totals the axis had 43,176 casualties last turn and the Red army had 67,302.

As expected a panzer corps (LVII) showed up east of Novgorod to stiffen the 16th armies defenses. I was still able to gain some ground here and I'm now attacking some units without fort protection

[smokindave34]

Moscow:

I had most of my defeats in front of Moscow due to Q-ball's panzers joining in as reserves. The Kalinin front really struggled and I plan on bolstering that front along with NW front in an attempt to take Rzhev back. Western front is fairly strong and I built two new corps in that area last turn.

[smokindave34]

The highligt of the turn was the 5th shock army throwing back elements of the II and III SS panzer corps. The pride of the Red army soundly defeated the LAH, 11, and 23 panzer divisions. I probably could have split up my divisions and maybe made an additional attack or two but I couldn't pass up the chance to attack these panzer divisions in clear terrain without fort protection.

[smokindave34]

Turn 107 (July 1st 1943):

It's been a month of game time since I last posted any progress. I continue to launch as many attacks as possible to try and widdle down Q-ball's strength. His OOB is still very strong (3.8 million men). During June I averaged inflicting about 40,000 casualties per turn on the Wehrmacht (I haven't been counting numbers for the axis minor allies). This turn I launched 24 attacks and went 19-5. The German casualties were 42,550. I've been a bit frustrated that the German OOB is not coming down as fast as I would like. I'll keep pounding and hopefully when I finally get Q-ball out of the level 2 and 3 forts his casualty numbers will go up. I'm getting close in a few areas to breaking into open country with no forts but in much of the line he still has forts 2 to 3 hexes deep.

I'm attacking evenly along the entire front and I have Q-ball's armor dispersed along the whole front. My plan now is to keep feeding all my newly formed corps and artillery into the Bryansk front (where he seems to be the weakest) to try and force the issue there. He will have to weaken other areas of the front to prevent a breakthrough in that area.

I continue to spend all my AP's on building corps and artillery divisions. I have 21 arty divisions and 5 arty brigades. I plan on continuing this until I run out of infantry divisions and brigades to form corps with. I considered re-organizing my leaders but thought that it is more important to get the corps formed first before I make any large changes to the Red army leadership.

Although I'm starting to see some chinks in the axis armor (which will be helped in a few turns by the withrdrawal of strong SS units) I'm getting more and more concernced that I have a LONG way to go in a fairly short period of time. Certainly I will pick up the pace after I get to open country but Q-ball is too good not to have a few defensive lines built and he won't make any foolish mistakes. I've had a few chances to break in behind his lines with my armor but I've held back as I still think it is too early to be "going deep". I may be forced to take some chances later in the summer if progress doesn't pick up......

Here is the situation in front of Bryansk front.. again I could have pushed further east with my armor but chose not to as I didn't want them to get crushed by a strong panzer counter attack.

[smokindave34]

In the North I'm starting to make a bit of headway near Rzhev. The 44th armies strong mech/armor forces have joined the NW front here to make progress. I'm sending up an army from the Kalinin front to try and put maximum pressure on his line here.

[smokindave34]

Voronezh and SW fronts:

The Vornezh front keeps slowly grinding west while the SW front grabs a bridgehead over the Don river (very bottom of the screenshot). Q-ball has his armor stacked up in a few small mega-fortresses in front of SW front. The SW front has my strongest armor/mech units and I keep slowly pushing his armor back. I'm considering sliding these units south over my Don bridgead to try and catch some axis minor allies manning the front lines. Soon (about 4 turns) a number of his strongest panzer units in this area will head for Italy (good riddance!) - that should give me some opportunities here.

[smokindave34]

Central and Southern Fronts:

I got a bit sloppy here and lost a guards tank corps when I pushed deep to take out two fortification units a few turns back. I was able to clear the forts which should help in the future however it was a mistake to lose the tank corps.

I've moved the 61st army up from the N. Caucasus front to support Southern front.