8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus


[HLYA admit it you are hooked - you want to do spreadsheets!]

[/quote]


Na, not getting into the spreadsheet arena


The Reds answer to your bombing campaign should have been immediate imho. How long did it take? The fighter aircraft >>> IL-2's imho if you are trying to keep the Soviets from gaining air superiority.

Soviet Air settings are incorrect imho from the photos. Which is good on your part since they will end up losing most if not all the battles with that setting.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: SparkleyTits


I see little honour in this carnage!

LOL, Honor in war. It is all about advantage and who will take it without flinching.

[thedude357]

Turn 11 Army Group South

My extremely weak encirclement SOMEHOW held?! Maybe the Soviet infantry in this sector were far weaker than I realized? But of course I realized they didn't even attempt a breakout. They moved South to stay in supply one more turn from the Crimea...but that is completely cut off this turn. Due to the Soviet inaction, it allowed a panzer corps to get much more fuel than was expected and turn a lot of hexes over to the Axis. As well as push much further and swipe Rostov while it was weakly defended. The fate of the Soviet Stalino defenders is sealed and they lost Rostov until at least the blizzard. Unfortunately the Soviets evac'd the 15 point arms factory at Rostov the turn prior. Kharkov was also re-captured. There is about a 9 hex wide hole with zero Soviet units all the way to Stalingrad.

The minor concern I have here is the Soviet position on the Don. Will the cavalry attempt to cutoff the forward panzer corps or remain in a static defensive position? An SS motorized division was air dropped fuel and has plenty of MPs for the next turn if the Soviets decide to get aggressive...but that is probably unlikely.

The Soviet defensive position to the entrance of the Crimea has HELD, but its fort level was practically destroyed to 0 and the defensive CV had a severe drop. It will for sure not hold another week.

[Zorch]

I'd say the Germans are in real good shape and headed for a decisive victory in 1942. Soviet losses of men and factories are very serious. Thoughts?

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch

I'd say the Germans are in real good shape and headed for a decisive victory in 1942. Soviet losses of men and factories are very serious. Thoughts?

It's a good question. I would say we are doing well in terms of industry and formations. But I could imagine in terms of sheer manpower many would say the Soviet Union is still good?

Historically I would still expect a Soviet conquest of Berlin. Although if we are doing really well that might not be within the hard-coded 225 turns limit.

In game terms this a bitter end scenario with points. As I understand it that means there are no sudden death wins? That would mean no victory for anyone until turn 225? Also some players have joined after the game began. I was exchanging messages with one veteran player who described a team game you can see described in the forums where none of the original players were the ones to finish it. So each player may have their own measure of how the points changed since they arrived to say how they have done? Personally I am not so motivated by the win/loss as I am more interested in the historical what-ifs and turn by turn play.

Nevertheless you can make a judgement of a win/loss for each team as if it were the campaign game. Or some rules give an automatic victory if Moscow, Leningrad and Rostov say are captured. However that house rule is usually meant to be an estimation of each players ability rather than a fact that the Soviet Union cannot come back from losing those cities. As players on each team have changed you cannot use a measure of how they have done so far as to how they will do in future. So the house rules would not make sense here. If you have teams where players do change by the law of averages you would expect each side to be roughly equal in ability over time anyway. But in addition I think the dynamics of a team game mean players learn how to play better more quickly. This is not meant to be a coaching game - but just being on the same side means you can see and learn a lot more than you can from an opponent or AAR, as well as just common sharing of ideas or best practise. Also I think that there is a skill level for the team which is not just the average of each players individual skill level. As everybody in each team has not played a team game before, I think, then each team side has room for a lot of improvement in how to play as a team. And time to improve is the one thing which is very much in the Soviets favour. So for all these reasons I do not think you can judge this as you would a normal solo game.

[Telemecus]

Turn 11 03-September-1941 Air War (AKA SparkleyTit's Dishonourable Carnage Report)



The Soviet turn saw only a little recon plus a few bombing attacks on our motorised units. And this large bombing attack on our storks.



For the first time we find the bulk of the red air force that had been there the previous turn is no longer on the map. So we are left only fighting a portion of the airforce.



Soviet interception continues to be very weak - allowing us to conduct most bombing missions without an escort and leave the fighters to stay fresh.



Our Rumanian tactical bombers are no longer the poor relations, their scores of aircraft killed on the ground are in the 100s and morale and experience in the 90s.



(By special request for Soviet player EwaldvonKleist, neither whitened nor blackened but reddened out)

House rules state there would be no resupplying of partisans for the first ten turns - although they did in three of them. Now the Soviet team are free to supply partisans but did not do so.

[Telemecus]

Turn 11 03-September-1941 Economic War

This turn the advance of Axis forces meant the factories at Rostov have been lost by the Soviet Union. In addition the factories at Stalino, Makeevka, Gorlovka, and in and around Leningrad cannot currently be evacuated - if we assume these are too are lost total Soviet indutrial losses are

96 Arms (4 Minsk, 3 Kirovgrad, 3 Krivoi Rog, 3 Odessa, 2 Kremenchug, 3 Nikolaev, 6 Dnepropetrovsk, 8 Poltava, 15 Kharkhov, 3 Kramatorskaya, 1 Mariupol, 29 Stalino, 3 Makeevka, 3 Gorlovka, 2 Taganrog, 8 Leningrad and environs)
55 Hvy (4 Rostov, 4 Minsk, 3 Kirovgrad, 3 Krivoi Rog, 3 Odessa, 2 Kremenchug, 3 Nikolaev, 2 Dnepropetrovsk, 4 Kharkhov, 2 Kramatorskaya, 5 Stalino, 3 Makeevka, 3 Gorlovka, 2 Kaluga, 2 Tagnrog, 10 Leningrad and environs)
25 Vehicle (20 Kharkhov, 5 Stalino)
Su-2 (Kharkhov)
LaGG-3 "11 series" (Taganrog)
BA-10 Armd Car (Leningrad and environs)

Strategic Bombing

As the polish bombers being used by the Rumanian air force are the only Axis bombers to have the range to hit our longest range targets, the Rumanian air force is doing the things the Luftwaffe is simply incapable of doing.



Our strategic bombing continues but deeper and narrower this turn. Strategic bombing for long has been the aunt sally of the game. So for a game I feel I know well the city bombing screen feels relatively alien. But now I am getting to know how to use it well and I see the difference - so I thought it worth describing for anyone else who goes down this route.

Firstly there is no automatic selection for city bombing missions - every time it will present a screen to manually select which airgroups to use for the mission just as when you specifically want to do so in other such missions. And it will give you as options at most 14 bombing airgroups.

So far I have done our strategic bombing in the sequence of most important first as they get the freshest highest compliment air groups. But with many more than 14 airgroups availiable for this you will not usually get the best 14 offered. So this turn I started to switch to nights all but the 14 I wanted to start with - this meant switching stab airgroups/ low complement airgroups and high fatigue/low experience/low morale units to night missions only. You can also select for airgroups with the heaviest payload models or use a version of "Ketza"s method of selecting those with enough airmiles for only one more mission always for the longest distance ones.

In Northern Russia we wanted to maximise the bombing of the LaGG-3 factory in Gorky. As we want to also hold down the expansion of the tank factory there this usually means we can only bomb the aicraft factory once every turn. Using this method a far larger number of bombers than previously went for our target, and there was a markedly higher damage. For the first time I could imagine getting the fighter bomber factories to 50% damage by the blizzard. As we went down our bombing list, whenever less than 14 bombing groups were presented we simply switched to days the next best ones. So we got better results for our priorities and worse for the more peripheral targets. If I had known this several turns ago we would be that much further forward.

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
The fighter aircraft >>> IL-2's imho if you are trying to keep the Soviets from gaining air superiority.

Spot on! The Il-2s were evacuated on turn 8 and are no longer in range. The fighter and fighter-bomber factories as they have come into range have been under constant bombardment, or in the case of Taganrog just overun.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

(By special request for Soviet player EwaldvonKleist, neither whitened nor blackened but reddened out)

OMG, I LOVE the RED out!

Some very very useful information for players to gleen from this excellent post.

[SpicyJuan]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: Zorch

I'd say the Germans are in real good shape and headed for a decisive victory in 1942. Soviet losses of men and factories are very serious. Thoughts?

It's a good question. I would say we are doing well in terms of industry and formations. But I could imagine in terms of sheer manpower many would say the Soviet Union is still good?

Historically I would still expect a Soviet conquest of Berlin. Although if we are doing really well that might not be within the hard-coded 225 turns limit.

In game terms this a bitter end scenario with points. As I understand it that means there are no sudden death wins? That would mean no victory for anyone until turn 225? Also some players have joined after the game began. I was exchanging messages with one veteran player who described a team game you can see described in the forums where none of the original players were the ones to finish it. So each player may have their own measure of how the points changed since they arrived to say how they have done? Personally I am not so motivated by the win/loss as I am more interested in the historical what-ifs and turn by turn play.

Nevertheless you can make a judgement of a win/loss for each team as if it were the campaign game. Or some rules give an automatic victory if Moscow, Leningrad and Rostov say are captured. However that house rule is usually meant to be an estimation of each players ability rather than a fact that the Soviet Union cannot come back from losing those cities. As players on each team have changed you cannot use a measure of how they have done so far as to how they will do in future. So the house rules would not make sense here. If you have teams where players do change by the law of averages you would expect each side to be roughly equal in ability over time anyway. But in addition I think the dynamics of a team game mean players learn how to play better more quickly. This is not meant to be a coaching game - but just being on the same side means you can see and learn a lot more than you can from an opponent or AAR, as well as just common sharing of ideas or best practise. Also I think that there is a skill level for the team which is not just the average of each players individual skill level. As everybody in each team has not played a team game before, I think, then each team side has room for a lot of improvement in how to play as a team. And time to improve is the one thing which is very much in the Soviets favour. So for all these reasons I do not think you can judge this as you would a normal solo game.

Historically speaking there's a certain breaking point for the Soviets politically and militarily. IMO you're close to reaching the political limit with the capture of Moscow and Leningrad. Militarily, clearing out Leningrad and encircling Moscow will break the Red Army's back and the capture of the Volga basin would effectively diminish the Soviets capacity to fight to the point where the 1942/43 campaigns are effectively a mop up campaign

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

(By special request for Soviet player EwaldvonKleist, neither whitened nor blackened but reddened out)

OMG, I LOVE the RED out!

Some very very useful information for players to gleen from this excellent post.

So the Soviets need to get fighters next to your bombing areas & on top of that the Soviets will need to attach construction workers to the city to repair the damage quicker I would assume.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: SpicyJuan
Historically speaking there's a certain breaking point for the Soviets politically and militarily. IMO you're close to reaching the political limit with the capture of Moscow and Leningrad. Militarily, clearing out Leningrad and encircling Moscow will break the Red Army's back and the capture of the Volga basin would effectively diminish the Soviets capacity to fight to the point where the 1942/43 campaigns are effectively a mop up campaign

In Robert Harris' Fatherland the Eastern Front ended up being a far Eastern guerilla war which was nevertheless debilitating on the Third Reich. I do think there was enough commitment, and plenty of experience from the civil war, to carry on a "war" by other means even if the centralised control had gone. If the Nazi offer was of independence, or at least autonomous subservience, there would have been plenty of "white" factions to counter them of course - but that was not a route they went down even in more adverse circumstances. But it is one of the great what-ifs of history.

In game terms there have been AARs of games where the Axis have reached the Urals, and still been beaten back to Berlin. I remember reading of an incident when in 1941 Stalin was considering a peace offer of ceding the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine for peace - and of one person in the meeting insisting they would still win even if they were back out to the Urals. So it was not inconceivable to them then. If more western allied production had gone to equip cheap Soviet soldiers rather than the best paid GIs for instance, it may even have been more effective. Whatever the case the game, without sudden death conditions, does not model a political collapse. And it gives enough offmap/farmap industry that the Soviets could always get to Berlin eventually if they were given a sufficient number of turns.

[Telemecus]

Turn 11 Allocations

For information only - turn 11 Axis team allocations

[Stelteck]

I do not think any german victory or city, even moscow, leningrad, stalingrad or whatever could have significantly changed the course of the war against the soviet union.

I do think Germany could have won the war.

Germany could have won the war, by adding to military victory, the promotion and support of local independence movement (Baltic states, Ukraine, etc...) and taking the lead in a popular revolt against Stalin and Bolshevism, which was not well loved.....

But a Nazi Germany could not do that. Nazi ideology was looking only for slaves and empty lands. And the german army began committing war crimes since day one against civilians and prisoners of war. Peoples in soviet union quickly realized that the Germans were not their friend and their only hope of survival was to fight to the end.

It was then over.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

I do not think any german victory or city, even moscow, leningrad, stalingrad or whatever could have significantly changed the course of the war against the soviet union.

I do think Germany could have won the war.

Germany could have won the war, by adding to military victory, the promotion and support of local independence movement (Baltic states, Ukraine, etc...) and taking the lead in a popular revolt against Stalin and Bolshevism, which was not well loved.....

But a Nazi Germany could not do that. Nazi ideology was looking only for slaves and empty lands. And the german army began committing war crimes since day one against civilians and prisoners of war. Peoples in soviet union quickly realized that the Germans were not their friend and their only hope of survival was to fight to the end.

It was then over.

You know that Germany was the one that was responsible for giving the Soviet Socialist the opportunity in the first place to take power. All began in WW I. It is funny how history works.

[Stelteck]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

I do not think any german victory or city, even moscow, leningrad, stalingrad or whatever could have significantly changed the course of the war against the soviet union.

I do think Germany could have won the war.

Germany could have won the war, by adding to military victory, the promotion and support of local independence movement (Baltic states, Ukraine, etc...) and taking the lead in a popular revolt against Stalin and Bolshevism, which was not well loved.....

But a Nazi Germany could not do that. Nazi ideology was looking only for slaves and empty lands. And the german army began committing war crimes since day one against civilians and prisoners of war. Peoples in soviet union quickly realized that the Germans were not their friend and their only hope of survival was to fight to the end.

It was then over.

You know that Germany was the one that was responsible for giving the Soviet Socialist the opportunity in the first place to take power. All began in WW I. It is funny how history works.

Ho Yes quite funny. Imperial WW1 Germany was cold and pragmatic. They could have fare better in WW2.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
Ho Yes quite funny. Imperial WW1 Germany was cold and pragmatic. They could have fare better in WW2.

I read a quote that Russians under German occupation in the first world war described it as "firm but correct." If they had carried that over to the second history would have been different.

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

I do not think any german victory or city, even moscow, leningrad, stalingrad or whatever could have significantly changed the course of the war against the soviet union.

I do think Germany could have won the war.

Germany could have won the war, by adding to military victory, the promotion and support of local independence movement (Baltic states, Ukraine, etc...) and taking the lead in a popular revolt against Stalin and Bolshevism, which was not well loved.....

But a Nazi Germany could not do that. Nazi ideology was looking only for slaves and empty lands. And the german army began committing war crimes since day one against civilians and prisoners of war. Peoples in soviet union quickly realized that the Germans were not their friend and their only hope of survival was to fight to the end.

It was then over.

You know that Germany was the one that was responsible for giving the Soviet Socialist the opportunity in the first place to take power. All began in WW I. It is funny how history works.

Ho Yes quite funny. Imperial WW1 Germany was cold and pragmatic. They could have fare better in WW2.

This is a good clip from an old BBC series "Fall of Eagles" that covers the decision made by the kaiser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjt452YzkM

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

This is a good clip from an old BBC series "Fall of Eagles" that covers the decision made by the kaiser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjt452YzkM

Brits can be proud of their costume period dramas - been years since I have seen this though.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
attach construction workers to the city to repair the damage quicker I would assume.

I think the repair is always on a fixed 3% a turn schedule - but thinking about it construction attachments should repair factories quicker. Perhaps someting for WitE1.12 or WitE2?

[Nix77]

The German strategic bombing campaign in this AAR is extremely interesting! Soviet players aren't that keen on preventing it though. I tested how Soviet interception would prevent this kind of bombing campaigns, and a fighter base stationed near the factories is really a deathtrap for the Heinkels...

Telemecus, how long do you reckon the German level bomber pools could hold out against an actively defending Soviet player? I haven't delved into the German production details that much but I'd guess a few failed sorties (20-30+ bombers shot down) might cause the bombing to cease?


EDIT: I did the maths.. GE has 400 old Ju-86/He-111 level bombers in the pool and around 1000 Ju88/He-111/Do-217 on the fields. They produce 66 more each turn. So losing 50-100 bombers a turn isn't that catastrophic. I guess you're using the level bombers strictly for strategic city bombing?