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My $.02 - you're a month ahead of things minimum - I'd clean up and dig in at Leningrad and the Crimea - prepping for the Sevastopol assault, clean up Kiev & Stalino, grab Voronezh and grind the Moscow front with small encirclements and artillery while waiting for the 42 campaign. Consolidation mode.

You broke Leningrad, next break Moscow then flow south and east. Stalingrad and the steppes will be harder to defend from both the north and west. The other side of the Volga comes after the Caucasus.

This is the T26 round 4 look around the Moscow area just now. I'm very slowly pushing the Soviets backward at the cost of lots of losses. The supply levels are great and there's very little mud and the weather is holding up just fine. I have no idea how long it's going to take to push up adjacent to Moscow but I'm thinking it'll take until probably mid-November or early December. We'll see.

Cpl GAC wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:02 pm My $.02 - you're a month ahead of things minimum - I'd clean up and dig in at Leningrad and the Crimea - prepping for the Sevastopol assault, clean up Kiev & Stalino, grab Voronezh and grind the Moscow front with small encirclements and artillery while waiting for the 42 campaign. Consolidation mode.

You broke Leningrad, next break Moscow then flow south and east. Stalingrad and the steppes will be harder to defend from both the north and west. The other side of the Volga comes after the Caucasus.

Another good analysis. Thank you very much. I'll see what I can do to make it happen.

Here's the front lines in the north. I don't remember getting this far east before. A first for me.

You are actually closer to Moscow that I thought. I think most of my analysis remains the same, you just need to adjust the lines so there aren't big gaps.

COA is course of action.

This is fun to watch - you are knocking on the door at Tula. That's big. If you get that and the rail line to Ryazhsk from Tula and grab Ryazan (and that bridge crossing) and can hold that space then you can wheel north and then later southeast. Taking the Ryazan-Ryazhsk line puts a crimp in the Soviet north-south railing too.

Graymane wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 7:23 pm You are actually closer to Moscow that I thought. I think most of my analysis remains the same, you just need to adjust the lines so there aren't big gaps.

COA is course of action.

OOooops....I've got big gaps. I'll break some more units down into pieces and form a solid line like in a real war. That's my next COA. Thanks.

Cpl GAC wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 9:01 pm This is fun to watch - you are knocking on the door at Tula. That's big. If you get that and the rail line to Ryazhsk from Tula and grab Ryazan (and that bridge crossing) and can hold that space then you can wheel north and then later southeast. Taking the Ryazan-Ryazhsk line puts a crimp in the Soviet north-south railing too.

Thanks for kind words. In your analysis you've named some places that I'm unaware of. I'll have to look them up [ just press the letter 'b' and type the name of the city in the box and the game engine will take you there ].

I've been busting bridges around Moscow to see what good that does. If anything. Elmer has been busy railing all the troops in the world to places where I didn't need them. This war is going to get busier. I'll have to post more often so you guys can get in on the fun. I don't remember having this much fun with a game agaist the AI.

If you put the lines behind super rivers, you need fewer units.

Graymane wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:17 am If you put the lines behind super rivers, you need fewer units.

That's a good idea. I'll do that. Thank you for the heads up.

It's now T29 round 1 and I'm on the verge of clearing out the Leningrad area of enemy units. The Finns are needed north of here where the Soviets are blocking progress to get to Murmansk and Archangel. The rest of the units are pushing east to uncover the road to Archangel. If I can capture that it will cut down on some of the Lend Lease that the Soviets get each turn. There's some rail to fix and I'll need to leave a garrison in Leningrad and I'll rail a small security unit up here to do that. I finally cleared out the Kiev area last turn but Odessa is proving to be a hard nut to crack. But progress is being made at Sevastopol.

Here's the Kharkov area and I'm holding what I've got here so far. The first cold front has passed through last turn so the weather is turning colder because it's already late September '41 and the mud season isn't far away. I've lost 31.8K HRS's, there's 20.9K HRS's assigned, and I have 645 HRS's on hand. The number of assigned HRS's is way too low for me to be comfortable. I'd rather have 29K assigned when going into the Soviet Winter Offensive which is T42 I believe. So I'd best cut down on the tempo and just do limited operations for a couple of game turn months.

Here's the Kalinin area and I'm trying to push to the east up here. I need to find a good defensive area and just dig in and hold what I have here.

Here's the Moscow area right now and this is as close to Moscow as I can get I'm guessing. A lot of my formations are worn out and need rest and refit. I'm going to see if I can't replace all my Panzer units with leg infantry and then use the Panzers as a reserve.

Here's the Tula area right now and I'm still pushing to the east but I need to find a good defensive spot and just dig in and hold what I have. Maybe after capturing Tula.]

Here's the T29 front lines just before the first combat phase.

Compare where you are to the examples up above I gave. You'll find you are close. You need to shrink some of your lines back behind the super rivers and focus your efforts on taking towns like Tula and Kalinin to remove production and then pulling back. I don't think you need to hold them now, just take them. Try to anchor your flanks on large bodies of water or difficult terrain. Try really hard to defend such that they are sitting on a river to attack.

Graymane wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 8:36 pm Compare where you are to the examples up above I gave. You'll find you are close. You need to shrink some of your lines back behind the super rivers and focus your efforts on taking towns like Tula and Kalinin to remove production and then pulling back. I don't think you need to hold them now, just take them. Try to anchor your flanks on large bodies of water or difficult terrain. Try really hard to defend such that they are sitting on a river to attack.

Sounds great. I'll see what I can do to make it happen. I really appreciate your advice and thanks for helping out. Keep that good advice coming. I need all the help I can get.

I parked my Ju-86's at Berlin to keep them out of harm's way, and the reason I did that is because I'm not building any of those any longer and I've already lost 14 of them and I have no more of them on hand. The unit itself doesn't start receiving late model Ju-87's until T75 so I need this unit to rest until then when I can run it up to the front lines to take part in the war again.

It's still T29 round 1 and I'm slowly sneaking up on Rostov where I intend to halt the push and give my units a chance to rest, refuel, and refit. Quite a few Soviet units have been passing through Rostov headed north so plugging that hole will tend to stiffle the introduction of reinforcements a tiny bit. I had intended to continue the push out to Stalingrad but I have an uncomfortable number of HRS's assigned ( 20.8K ) and I need that number to be quite a bit higher in order to survive the Soviet Winter Offensive that happens, I think, in T42 or so. Now that Leningrad has been captured my priority is now Moscow. That means I need to decrease the operational tempo, therefore decreasing the number of HRS's lost. That's the theory.

Here's what it looks like near Sevastopol right now. I've moved all the arty that was nearby and used it to help my assaults to gain 2 hexes so far but there's still more to do and the Soviet stacks are resilient to say the least. I'm also using my bombers to give the attack a little more juice but I'm not sure they are helping very much. One wishes one had a naval TF to use as well. At least I managed to sink the 2 Soviet BB's that were stationed down here. Elmer has 6 CD guns within range and they are a pain in the a$$. I have split my RR arty between here and Odessa because I'm trying to take them both down simultaneously. But the more I think about it I would put my priority on Sevastopol because I need to take it down by 04Dec41 to obtain the services of the Bulgarians. And I'd really like to use those guys down south to grab the oilfields the Soviets have near Bacu. So I need to rail all my RR arty to this AO. And soon.