Barbarossa to the Volga or Berlin? ComradeP vs notenome

[Altaris]

I think you're making a good move diverting motorized units down south, where the open plains are more suited for the big encirclements, and there's certainly a lot of Soviets down there to bag. Getting across the Dnepr and driving up to assist AGC seems pretty solid to me. AGC still has loads of panzers even taking out 2 armor corps, and you only need so much armor once you get to the swampy Minsk-to-Smolensk area anyway.
 
Good luck!

[ComradeP]

A fairly disheartening turn, the Axis logistics have already broken down somewhat and my mobile units didn't have a lot of fuel, nor was there a way to send them more.

I didn't have any special objectives in mind aside from advancing.

One of the changes pre-release was decreasing the engagement distances in cities and terrain like swamps, which dramatically lowered the effectiveness of attacking with armour in that terrain. Unfortunately (as I see it) the results can be really unpredictable and in some cases just plain weird. The Axis can forget about making historical drives through swampy terrain, as it isn't going to happen. Any hasty attack with a mobile unit, or a stack of mobile units is more or less doomed to fail unless the defending unit is truly awful.

With not enough fuel to go around the swamps in the Pskov area and the inability to remove a 1=1 Rifle division with 3 mobile divisions, my drive towards Leningrad has more or less stalled with little to nothing I could do about it during turn 3. I advised my opponent to retreat to the swamps, but I wasn't expecting my attacks to fail like this against the weakest unit in the line.

Note the modified Soviet combat value.

[ComradeP]

Not much to report in the AGN area, I'm hoping I can take Riga next turn.

Aside from some peculiar combat results, by far the most annoying thing is that Halder keeps failing admin rolls, which significantly increases the cost of reorganization. At this point, I'm not sure why he keeps failing. As a result of that, the Panzer corps in the Pskov area are now assigned to OKH through their Panzer corps with an army between them, which isn't ideal.

I noticed whilst looking at the screenshot that one of my Panzer corps HQ's isn't in the stack where it should be as I forgot to move it back after resupplying it, so notenome will displace it. I guess I was still too focussed on how to compensate for Halder's poor rolls.

[ComradeP]

Nothing special in the AGC area, he can probably break the isolation in the Minsk area. Again, the breakdown of supplies after 2 turns meant few MP's for the mobile forces.

[ComradeP]

Limited advances in the AGS area.

[ComradeP]

The situation on the Romanian front hasn't changed much.

[ComradeP]

I'll probably need a turn for reorganization on turn 4, as with the MP and hasty attack rolls I'm getting, the current push isn't going to work.

Turn 3 losses, I disbanded some recon air bases:

[Mynok]

What are you doing that requires Halder to take admin rolls?

[ComradeP]

Hmm, good one. I have always assumed that the leader rolls were for the receiving leader, not the current leader. Now that I think about it, it would indeed be more logical if they are for the current leader. The blame isn't on Halder then. Still, the corps commanders have an admin rating of 7 or 8 so they're almost as good as Halder. I can't find a good reason why they keep failing their rolls.

[MrLongleg]

In my campaign I am facing the same problem with swamp dwellers. And Miller41 is skillfully placing I.D. into the swamps. But I guess it is a fact that mobile divisions are not performing great in swampy terrain - I now decided to use PzGroup 4 elsewhere because the terrain between Pskov and Leningrad is not tank terrain anyway.

[ComradeP]

Removing the Panzers from the area would also essentially mean giving up on capturing Leningrad in 1941 and thus probably for the rest of the game, as you need some mobility to unhinge the defenders between Pskov and Leningrad.

I'm not unhappy with the progress thus far, I'm just unhappy with some of the "behind the scenes" rolls. I still have time to change my dispositions if needed. As long as I can get a decent amount of fuel to the front each turn, my advance should not truly halt.

[ComradeP]

notenome bombed some of my airfields this turn, an interesting development. About 50 planes were lost in total. I had set the Luftwaffe to 110% required to fly, so there were no interceptors. That was a deliberate choice, not an oversight. If planes had flown, they would've intercepted some of the recon missions he would fly and would drop from the sky like flies due to the fatique bug (which will be fixed for the next official patch, it has already been fixed in a tester hotfix). My operational losses would probably have been higher had the Luftwaffe flown missions.

As predicted, due to the HQ switching, the units near Pskov have minimal amounts of fuel. I'll pull back some of them to get in range of the nearest rail line, which has just crossed the Daugava. The rest of my mobile forces have reasonable fuel levels and MP's though.

notenome didn't displace the exposed Panzer corps HQ. Whether he didn't spot it or did so out of some sort of courtesy, I don't know.

Due to the new hotfixes (which will also be included in the next patch) that dramatically reduce leader casualties, I haven't lost anyone yet.

[ComradeP]

I've been pondering, and I see the following strategic problems currently:

1) Due to the terrain that heavily favours the defender, getting to Leningrad in a timely fashion is probably impossible. An entire Panzer group has been held by 4 divisions in swamps/rough terrain for 2 turns as the terrain gives super CV modifiers to the Soviets. notenome might call that a victory, I'd call it being defeated by the system as it doesn't feel right that any kind of attacks through swamps with mobile units will essentially fail (this means, for example, that the historical drive to Tikhvin is a pipe dream).

The choice now is whether to keep advancing with my Panzers, knowing that it might very well be impossible to take Leningrad, or to move my Panzers to AGC and just let my infantry push the front forward a bit.

The AGN area is currently the main area where a historical advance isn't likely due to the terrain, if cleverly used. The modifiers the Soviets get in swamps are just too awesome (and also, in my opinion, too effective). They're also extremely random it seems. In one deliberate attack, modified CV was 8 times as high as the initial value, in another modified CV was half the initial value for no clear reason at all. Even after the lengthy debates about CV's on the tester forums, the "under the hood" functioning of the system remains something of a mystery.

As I don't like to gamble, and certainly don't like situations that seem to depend solely on luck, the "move the Panzers to AGC" option sounds very enticing. There just doesn't seem much of a reason to keep pushing with mobile units in the AGN area.

2) Due to the limited advances in the AGC area, the Dnepr's probably fortified. How much of a problem this will be remains to be seen. It was a deliberate choice to commit fewer forces to AGC, and thus far I don't mind, but getting across the Dnepr will be tricky.

3) There's probably a huge concentration of troops in the Kiev area by now, so a northern hook will probably be needed to encourage them to go. That's one of the reason why I'm storming through the Pripyat marshes.

As the Soviets, it's difficult to grasp the limitations imposed on the Axis, but in some ways they're pretty impressive. The reduction of engagement distances in difficult terrain really changed the nature of the campaign, making swamps real fortresses even when held by seriously understrength Soviet forces. The main problem is the lack of Axis force multipliers. Their initial CV's usually won't raise much to get to the modified CV, air power isn't always effective and the Axis support units are often too small to make a real difference. I was expecting mobile hasty attacks to fail in swamps, but I wasn't expecting deliberate attacks by infantry to fail at this rate.

[ComradeP]

In the AGN area, two Panzer corps have been moved within 10 hexes of the nearest rail line, I might move the Panzer group to AGC as I'm not getting anywhere in the Pskov area solely due to the terrain.

Edit: the defenders of Riga routing is WAD.

4th Panzer Group is now assigned to OKH.

[ComradeP]

Some gains in the AGC area, mostly in the swamps. The front is slowly being pushed east.

All mobile forces in AGC now belong to 3rd Panzer Group.

[ComradeP]

In the AGS area, mobile forces push towards Kiev. They'll turn south next turn probably, leaving Kiev to the infantry.

[ComradeP]

Nothing spectacular to report on the Romanian front.

[ComradeP]

AFV losses are mounting, mostly due to vehicles not being repairable (about 100 each turn). The Luftwaffe's still in good shape mostly due to not flying many missions (my bombers have only been flying supply missions once a turn). Some missions were costly this turn due to a lack of escorts, but production is still keeping up with many of the losses.

I expect that notenome's bombing campaign and my fighter intercepts of his recon missions will increase operational losses.

[ComradeP]

notenome's bombing campaign on my airfields and on some of my units is surprisingly effective given the period. I've posted some results on the tester forum as I was wondering if they were WAD. The Soviets are losing about as many planes as I am, sometimes even less, and my CAP and AA don't seem to do much. Considering that this is July 1941, with poorly trained pilots and bombers with low payloads, I dread what will happen later on.

[Klydon]

The air campaign he is waging seems to point out there are indeed some issues with the air model.

The intercepts on the recon stuff need to go because they do nothing except screw up your own aircraft. Rarely does something happen to the recon planes while your own aircraft attrition is ridiculous. Soviet forces trying to do heavy bombing of German units in 1941, especially early, doesn't seem to have the correct feel.

Leaning back to a game like Fire in the East, the Red Air force could do some things but only if they went where the Luftwaffe was not, otherwise they would get slaughtered. Trying to bomb Panzer HQ's that would have ME 109's close by would pretty much be out of the question and why historically it didn't happen.

While there are a lot of aircraft losses to operational stuff and some to flak, it doesn't seem like there are very many to air to air combat casualties and that needs to change, especially for the Germans causing casualties against the Russians if they insist on trying to fly aggressively in 1941 against front line German units. The Germans had over 100 pilots get 100+ kills during the war.