Burns vs. Flaviusx

[Flaviusx]

Quiet turn, heading into October here and not feeling like pressing my luck too much further.

I'd like to grab Kursk and Orel if I get some clear weather, but that will be luck not planning. Otherwise, the summer offensive is drawing to a close. I consider the German summer offensive to have been a success. Now it is time to prepare for the Western Allies.

[Flaviusx]

The paras are very strong, not going to lie, but imo this offsets the power of the hold order, which imo is also a bit too good in this game. It's very hard to turn positions when the line is set to hold. So vertical envelopment helps even the score.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I had built the second paratrooper a year earlier. I always have one ready to go and this is pretty huge.

[Jim D Burns]

25 September 1942

In what is I hope the last clear weather turn for the 1942 campaign season, Germany shatters one last Soviet Army in the south. Just to make myself feel a bit better, I hammer a German infantry unit next to Bryansk from the air and force it to retreat getting a decent casualty ratio to boot. Not significant but at least I can say the Soviets successfully attacked at least one time in the 42 campaign season.

Tried a few bombing missions in north Africa on an Italian unit which convinced me to leave the bombing missions to ground attack planes and let the tac deal with interdiction and airfield strike type stuff. So I'll have to be patient and wait for proper air support.

[Flaviusx]

Memo to self: check air unit status at the end of each turn. I had my fighters set on mission where you attacked and left that part of the front uncovered.

Mud comes to all zones except North Africa proper. The Wehrmacht decides to take a breather. 43 assault, close support, and heavy tank tech all just came in. Time to upgrade the whole damn military.

[Jim D Burns]

9 October 1942

Rain everywhere and nothing to report anywhere, so I decided to show the losses tally today. Granted a lot of the Soviet losses are from last winter, but the numbers are still bad. Germany hammered the Soviets in 1942 and manpower went below the 50% mark this turn as reinforcements siphon off another huge chunk of manpower this turn.

I'll refrain from new builds as the number recovers over the winter and will que up some new units next year to arrive in time for next spring.

[Flaviusx]

I shattered better than 1 unit an average per turn this summer, including I think about a half dozen mech, which brings your mobile units down to a large, but manageable figure. Something like 15 or so. That's still a lot, mind you.

For whatever it is worth, German manpower is starting to feel the bite as well, I'm at 57%. That's down about 20% since May. There are no cheap wins in the Eastern Front.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
I shattered better than 1 unit an average per turn this summer, including I think about a half dozen mech, which brings your mobile units down to a large, but manageable figure. Something like 15 or so. That's still a lot, mind you.

Na I haven't even noticed an effect on my oil, Russia can handle a ton of mech no problem. I really do think the tight German oil situation has made you a bit gun shy about mech troops. The allies simply do not need to worry about it.

What they do need to consider though is repair costs. 1942 was an expensive year for repair bills. I had too much mech on the front lines.

Next time I play allies, I will forgo the winter attacks and build a ton of inf to put on the line while mech act as reserves. A lot of the mech you shattered simply could not regain strength fast enough due to cost of repairs, thus they shattered due to their low strength. I see that as the mech's Achilles heel now, repair costs are crippling during intense heavy fighting.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

I just think it is better to have a lot of infantry even in 1941, as opposed to building so much mech prior to Barbarossa. I'd rather go into the very first turn of Barbarossa with enough production in the kitty to order up 10 41 tech infantry armies from the very getgo, they will be there in two months, just in time. You underestimate the defensive potential of infantry, particularly in bad terrain. You don't need mech in swamps. This is important in Leningrad in particular, which has plenty of swampland for infantry to dig in.

The key is keeping the Germans away from this defensive belt long enough for the grunts to arrive.

You winter offensive was not a bad idea, I just think you pressed it too far. Had you stopped at, say, 45% experience, you would've had plenty of production in the bank to order up a batch of 42 reserve infantry armies with acceptable experience levels. Incredible to me that you banked 2k production, that's a lot of armies. Even half of that would've been a nice boost. That's 4 armies right there.

[Jim D Burns]

I agree completely, I over did it, but in my defense I was testing a theory and wanted to see how far I could go. Lesson learned. Had I any notion of just how bad manpower losses would be in 42...

4 armies? heh, 214 each that was 10 for the whole 2k+ or 5 for a bit over half of it. I'm down to 17 mech left now (counted them), so had I built those armies and put them in the line to pull out some mech to reserves, I'd easily be close to 20-25 left.

Another lesson learned, do not focus on assault tech with the Soviets. Anti-tank only, you need every last gun you can get on defense vs. German armor, I am regretting building assault inf that will never be strong enough to actually attack the Germans. Armor and mech will be my offensive stuff, should I survive, which I'm doubting given how much manpower I've lost.

Jim

[John B.]

It's interesting to see that German/Italian air losses are running nearly equal to allied air losses.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: John B.
It's interesting to see that German/Italian air losses are running nearly equal to allied air losses.

Hasn't been a lot of allied air activity this game. I spent a good chunk of early allied production on naval stuff and airforces are just now coming online. Also for some reason it seems impossible to keep planes (efficiency) in my units in Africa.

Most planes were down to 10%-20% efficiency this turn, but nothing is ever reported in the combat lists. So I assume routine auto missions that interdict supply at his ports are the culprit or something. I had to pull all my planes back and stand them down this turn in hopes they refill some efficiency. The game really needs to do a better job informing players what's going on in the air war auto missions.

Another couple of turns should see allied airforces in Africa reach a level where hopefully I can go over to the attack finally. Been mass producing supply trucks for every nation lately, as I think that is the only way to launch an offensive in such a low supply environment. So may have to wait for those to finish before we can assault anything.

Nothing really happening in game so no regular reports right now, I'll chime in again when the action picks up.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

As I have already said, I regard trucks as absolutely essential. Panzer chocolate. Even for defensive purposes they are useful in bringing up readiness in beat up units. On the offense, you have to have them.

I build them each and every turn, at least one, and during the winter months, more, to build up a big pool for clear weather operations. Having 100 or more in the pool come May is not too much. You will spend the trucks.

Other countries may not need to build them quite so much as the Germans, but I like them for everybody.

[Jim D Burns]

One more quick tip for readers, I learned a new lesson recently. Had the UK ship a bunch of production to north Africa (Vichy minor nation) so it could build some air bases to put in the hill and mountain terrain near Tunisia.

Turns out even though I advanced from Algiers (north African controlled territory) into German occupied north Africa, the hex control does not convert to the owning nation. Instead it is controlled by the UK...

I am now wondering if I had advanced with north African troops instead of Canadians, would the minor get control back? Anyway a bunch of new airbases now dot the landscape around Algiers, far too far in the rear for use (can only be placed in controlled territory of constructing nation). So UK had to build some more airbases... Lesson learned, check control first.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

I saw that, clever move. And I saw that you built some up north in the Soviet Union as well, also a good move. There are very few basing locations in northern Russia.

One of the reasons I fell back a bit into Tunisia was because of those airbases, so don't feel the production was wasted. I was very worried that the mighty US Army Air Force was going to show up in those bases.

[Flaviusx]

Oh boy. Iberian Peninsula campaign incoming. Allied diplomats went on a binge in Portugal and drove it up to like 86%.

I had all of two diplomats to respond to this and got a whole lot of nothing from them. And the allied airforce is already moving to locations within flying range of Portugal.

This is well timed for the allies. Get it going by mid 43. No need to screw around with Normandy or building landing ships or whatever. And Lisbon is a level 9 port with a rail connection and can support everything. Looks like I am going to have to strip the Eastern Front of some units to manage this.

On the bright side, it looks like Tunisia is on hold, I see no allied airpower there. So Italy may linger long enough to clinch a minor victory, yay.

Spain is a pretty decent minor, but will require considerable support before it can get its military fully up to speed, so that's production being diverted away.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
On the bright side, it looks like Tunisia is on hold, I see no allied airpower there.

Blind as a bat, blind I say.

Not all here yet, but it is building up.

I have recently pulled back a bit to try and get my air units to draw replacements. I "think" the issue is due to port stockpile rules. While I don't get the basic supply message for my units, all of my stockpiles are sitting at zero, so I'm wondering if that is the cause of no replacement draw.

I'll be experimenting with supply trucks to see if that helps, just don't want to burn a bunch on front line troops, so pulled everything back from the front.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

Getting air units to replenish and upgrade is a pain in the neck, even if set to priority. I'm only now getting caught up with mine and this is after several turns of setting replacements to 400+.

[Jim D Burns]

Think I've got it figured out, it all revolves around supply. There is so little supply in Africa your air units efficiency will tank very rapidly if set to support. So leave all but your fighters on manual only. Then make sure you have enough HQ's to keep all your active support planes adjacent to one and have it burn a supply truck every turn.

That's the only way air power is going to work for you in low supply areas, and I suspect on the continent as well as no matter how many ports you own, until you get a main supply source you will be burning massive amounts of trucks as the allies.

I wish there was a way to link air units to port stockpiles, as there is no need for a land unit to use stockpile supplies unless it is on the attack. But from what I can tell there is no way to feed what little income ports give to the units that are active every turn.

So to give an example of how damn expensive this is going to be, I had to burn 12 trucks to supply 4 armor units. If your army has 16 tanks, you need to burn 48 trucks a turn to keep it out of basic supply so it can recover effectiveness every turn. And a large airforce will be as expensive or more expensive, not to mention all your infantry. This is going to be nuts.

I "hope" once you capture a primary supply source, you will no longer need trucks. But until you do you'll need thousands built and ready to fight on the continent to have any chance of succeeding.

I was thinking of trucks as an emergency measure, or a way to temporarily over-boost supply. But they are an integral part to overseas combat, without massive numbers of them your army simply doesn't work.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

The newly upgraded luftwaffe tests its strike capabilities against the Red Air Force with satisfactory results.

The German High Command felt a demonstration of these capabilities was needed after spotting some Soviet strat bombers in the Crimea.

[Jim D Burns]

26 February 1943

With a new year and the first big batch of US supply trucks arriving, the allies launch their long awaited offensive in Africa. Ground strikes pound one of the two German infantry units along the front and Canadian armor leads off the assault on the other, followed up by US reserves replacing a worn out Canadian infantry corp.

Neither hex is breached but both German units (the two strongest along the entire front) look well worn by turns end. Next turn should see our first breach I hope. I went after his strongest units first to reduce the risk of counter attacks in his turn.

Here's a shot of the area around Tunisia, as you can see the US airforce is present in strength now and there is a large reserve of Sherman's just waiting for that first break in the enemy lines.