Crippling Soviet production in '41

[ComradeP]

I'd say that, on average, the Axis will occupy what you call zone 1 and 2, but with less territory in the north and with some zone 3 territory in the center and south (most of the Tula to Kharkov area and the area up to and including Stalino and neighbouring cities). Of course, if the Axis player uses ahistorically often suicidal dashes without flank protection to get as far as they can, zone 3 areas might be captured, but I'm assuming both players won't resort to abusing the system.

That you can't really cripple Soviet industry isn't the main problem as I see it, the main problem is that you can't do nearly enough damage to Soviet manpower in terms of losses inflicted.

I see a number of reasons for that:

-Retreat and rout attrition are low.

-Displacing routed units only causes a few hundred losses for some reason.

-There is in my opinion not enough of an advantage for high experience/morale units. CV alone doesn't cut it. I've seen a fair number of battles where 90 experience/morale units inflict less casualties on 50 experience/morale Soviet units than those Soviet units can inflict on them. With the latest .exe, I'm seeing higher mobile unit losses than before.

Keep in mind that a fair amount of Soviet losses during attacks comes from the automatic increase to their losses. We're testing an .exe without the odds modifier and without additional Soviet casualties, as well as other features, which show that Soviet attacks can also be made with just a few hundred, instead of a thousand or a few thousand losses. That radically changes things as it significantly reduces the chance that the Soviet army will run itself into the ground.

-It's extremely unlikely that, after 1941, you can cause enough losses to the Soviets so that, on a 25 turn average (summer/winter campaign and mud turns), the Soviet OOB shrinks. The reason for that is, aside from the often fairly low Soviet losses in attacks in 1942, that many Soviet players prefer to turtle in 1942 or use a carpet defence and that good encirclements will be a rarity.

Those kinds of defensive tactics are unimaginative but they work, as the Axis are still cut down a size by the blizzard and regular attrition and the CV's of especially their infantry divisions are reduced. At best, the Axis will get something like 3:1 or 4:1 casualty ratios if they're lucky, which simply doesn't cut it as the Soviets produce about 8 times as much manpower per turn as the Axis in 1942 (assuming an average of 2500 Soviet manpower centers, which is a conservative estimate on the low side).

Backhand blows also don't generally result in favourable loss ratios and operational level envelopments are not possible as units rarely shatter and seem to have a 0% chance to surrender by themselves in the latest versions, and as it takes units a week to be isolated, something like Von Manstein's backhand blow, the main most damaging phase of which took about a week, is not possible in the game in terms of the casualties it would inflict.

-Axis manpower totals shrink each turn, more or less per definition. Even through regular attrition, without any combat losses, manpower totals in frontline units are likely to shrink by 10.000 to 15.000 per turn (replacements-attrition losses), depending on how many units are at the frontline. Add combat losses and you get to higher figures.

Soviet manpower on the other hand, is likely to increase on many turns, especially mud and winter/blizzard turns. Even in mud turns, Axis manpower shrinks by the above mentioned numbers whilst Soviet manpower will generally increase by at least around 100.000 men per turn. There is absolutely nothing the Axis can do about that.

That might be at the core of the issue: the Axis can post-1941 never really damage the Soviets to the extent that they can't fairly easily replace those losses during bad weather turns.

As defensive tactics like backhand blows don't result in good casualty ratios, the Axis are forced to hope that the Soviets will bleed themselves to death through their own attacks. Unlike Flavio, I'm not convinced that they will do so often, as it would require at least 100.000 self-inflicted losses per turn, which is a high figure.

[Flaviusx]

Pieter, 100,000 losses per turn is easily reached in 1942. The Red Army can immolate itself on German forts in the absence of rifle corps and arty divisions.

Only in 1943 can they expect to tackle a strong German defensive line with reasonable results. (And they can expect enormous AFV losses in 1943 even at that point, although the German losses will also be high.)

Also, I disagree with you about the effectiveness of carpets. They are indeed unimaginative and I feel a Soviet can get better results using different tactics. Furthermore, if mass carpets convinced the German to turtle, then a whole year is wasted. The Red Army cannot crack a German turtle in 1942.

[ComradeP]

Pieter, 100,000 losses per turn is easily reached in 1942. The Red Army can immolate itself on German forts in the absence of rifle corps and arty divisions.

You assume that the Soviets would be attacking before winter. What I'm talking about is a scenario where they're defending, but are not taking 100.000 losses per turn. They can attack in winter.

Keep in mind that, with an average advance rate of 1 hex per turn starting in mid 1943, they win.

Also note that we're talking about the Soviets attacking in 1942, whilst from a historical perspective we should be talking about the Axis attacking. That by itself shows how bad the problem can be.

Also, I disagree with you about the effectiveness of carpets. They are indeed unimaginative and I feel a Soviet can get better results using different tactics. Furthermore, if mass carpets convinced the German to turtle, then a whole year is wasted. The Red Army cannot crack a German turtle in 1942.

The tactics you normally suggest, although of course good from a military perspective, come down to luring the Axis into a trap. It depends entirely on whether the Axis come out to play, the Soviets have no way of forcing the Axis to do so.

The Axis need to cause damage to Soviet manpower, but if they encounter a carpet or deep defense, the decision is easily made to stop attacking, thinking that if the Soviets want to turtle, they'll just do so too. That in turn leads to an extremely boring game.

That's sort of the problem with the mid-late war years currently:

-The Soviets turtle in 1942 in almost every game. I also consider a deep defense to be similar to turtling, as it has the same effect: the Axis attack stalls soon after starting, or achieves negligible advances or at best advances that don't really harm the Soviet war effort.

-The Axis either send their mobile units off on a death ride, or they start digging.

-Soviet OOB figures go through the roof.

-The Soviets start attacking in 1943, over time more hindered by their mediocre morale which limits advances than by Axis resistance.

-Assuming they can keep up an average rate of advance of 1 hex per turn, the Soviets win a major victory or a minor victory if they're a bit slower.

It all becomes rather predictable and boring.

[carlkay58]

The only things that Soviets cannot more are Manpower, Railyard, and Resource points. These are what the Axis has to concentrate on - getting a bonus of capturing some factories is just gravy. Keep the pressure up on the Soviets and they devote more of their rail capacities for factory movement which lowers their mobility on the front and may allow you to destroy more of the Soviet Army.

[Klydon]

In 41 as a German, I should be interested in wiping out as much industry as I can because I won't really get another chance to do it against a good Russian player (or should never get a chance). The other issue for the Germans in 41 is their primary objective (destroy the Russian army) can't take place in the traditional way because the Russians get all their units back as shells. This does not mean the Germans should ignore the Russian army; they need to destroy as much of it as possible in order to avoid a crushing Russian winter offensive.

In 42 as a German, there is no geographical objective you can point to (other than Baku, which is not realistic) that will flip the game in your favor. Capture Moscow, great. Russians keep fighting. If the Germans attack, it must be with the destruction of Russian units. The Germans need to remove as many Russian units off the board as possible. This forces the Russians to spend points on rebuilding units, not forming corps. The Germans are not going to beat the Russians running them out of manpower/industry. IMO, 1942 comes down to the Russians avoiding any major encirclements. If they have to give up ground, so be it, but their mentality should not be "stop the Germans" in 1942, but rather "preserve the army". After that, they should have enough of an advantage to take the strategic offensive. (This is not to say they can't counter attack or launch limited operations in 1942; they should, but rather any Russian commander must keep the preservation of the counters of his army as one of his top goals).

Maybe I am coming across wrong Flav, but you have seen enough of my comments on AARs to know how I look at Russian pockets in 1942 and beyond. First thing I do as well is add up the units worth in points and also note what got caught for guards and corps.

I also agree with ComradeP about many of his comments about back hand blows, etc. Hopefully the game evolves to be able to reflect that some day. Until then, the German options are very limited in what they can do in game terms.

[Encircled]

IMO, 1942 comes down to the Russians avoiding any major encirclements. If they have to give up ground, so be it, but their mentality should not be "stop the Germans" in 1942, but rather "preserve the army".

Very historical at least, which is something

[carlkay58]

Another thing to remember is that the rulebook states that 50% of the factories were lost historically. Anyone even come close to destroying that much - even against the AI?

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58
Another thing to remember is that the rulebook states that 50% of the factories were lost historically. Anyone even come close to destroying that much - even against the AI?

Not that I've ever heard of, which to me underlines that it is far too easy for the Soviets to move their industry, and then get it working again somewhere else.

I haven't looked, but after moving a factory, how many turns does it take before a factory is working again? Most board games set that number between six months and a year, I suspect the number is much smaller here.

As someone else pointed out, one of the biggest problems with moving industry by rail in this game is that you can focus all of the rail capacity in the Soviet Union into one section of track in the course of one week.

That is every locomotive, crews to run the trains, crews to load the cars, enough cars to move goodness knows how much equipment (the equipment to build tanks is not small), enough wood/ coal/ oil to run the steam engines (there weren't a lot of diesel or electric engines in that part of Europe in the 1940s), water to fill boilers (you don't suppose the coldest winter in 50 years would have caused a problem in train water towers do you? Nah....) all being poured through one city, all that freight moving on likely only one single tracked length of track going in an out of most cities (the Soviet rail system wasn't very good to begin with, I suspect that double tracking didn't exist in most places).

I find it somewhat ironic that there is a quote in the game manual stating "professionals study logistics", and logistics was of huge impact to the War in the East (and in fact, the availability of supplies, fuel, and ammunition had as much to do with the tempo of the Soviet front as available manpower, and likely more than even the weather). And yet logistics is the most glossed over and simplified section of this game (well, maybe a toss up between the air war and logistics).

Other games have restricted the amount of movement through a hex, in this case what needs to be restricted is the amount of traffic along a particular section of track. Anything that moves by rail in either direction - which would include supply at the beginning of the turn - reduces the capacity for that section of track for that turn, once it hits zero, you aren't moving any more over it until next turn.

Yes, this would mean the computer has to keep track of a rail capacity for each hex of rail, its okay, it can handle it.

Of course, the hard part would be the developers figuring out what exactly the rail capacity for any given section should be, and if it changes for weather (answer - yes; snow drifts hinder trains, frozen water is hard to pour into a boiler, ice is hard to get a train moving on, etc.)

In particularly congested areas of the front, it will probably be quickly discovered that it is simply not possible to move enough supplies to support all those units (incidentally, this would definitely hinder the Axis as well as they are often working with a single long stretch of track instead of several tracks that run within a few dozen kilometres of each other - this is historical and one of the greatest problems for the German advance).

[Panama]

From:

The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945
Walter S. Dunn, Jr.

"Evacuation was well under way in the first week of August 1941. Sacrificing immediate
production, many factories closed in August, packed up, and moved to the Ural Mountains. But
because their products were needed, some plants remained in production until too late to be
moved. Only 17 of the 64 iron and steel plants in the Donbas were evacuated between October
and December 1941. The Kharkov tank factory was being dismantled when the Germans
arrived.29

The railroad made evacuation possible. As the railroads moved 2.5 million men to the front in
June, July, and August, they moved industrial machinery on their return. For example, on August
7, 1941, 3,000 rail cars per day evacuated iron and steel manufacturing equipment from the
Dnieper area—1,000 cars per day for the electrical industry, 400 cars per day for the chemical
industry, and others. From August 8 to August 15, 1941, 26,000 rail cars evacuated industries in
the Ukraine.30 In Moscow, 80,000 cars transported 498 factories, including 75,000 lathes,
leaving only 21,000. Production by many factories resumed by December.31

The pressure on the railroads was massive. A total of 914,000 carloads were evacuated by
November 20, 1941.32 Half the available cars were used for evacuation. Of the 700,000 cars
available 350,000 would have been used.33 The average turnaround time for cars in late 1941
was estimated to be 15 days, but using this estimate, 700,000 cars could have moved six loads in
three months or a total of 4.2 million carloads. If the 350,000 cars moved only 914,000 carloads,
the turnaround time must have been well over 30 days for evacuation trains."

It's also mentioned in this book that the evacuation of some machinery and workers began in late 1940 and early 1941. So by December evacuated factories started producing again. It probably took two to three months to get them back online.

[Peltonx]

Emir you seem like a bean counting newbie to the game.

I am now on my 12th 41-45 campaign I don't claim to know 10% of what Flaviusx knows but I know this for a fact. In every game that I have been able to top 100+ destoryed ARM pts the russian army is crippled during the 41-42 blizzard or what I considered cripped. I have played poeple that have railed out allot and have 6+ million men and I crush them in 42.

What matters is how much artillary they have not men.

In the one game I took out less then 70 arm pts I am lossing. We are now into 43 and Hooopers got 8 million men and had 108k artillary. I don't waste my time looking at how many men they have, its about how many artillary pcs they got.

Flaviusx is 100% right you cant just look at ARM pts or Manpower or factorys ect.

You have to consider them all.

My road to a minor victory has been right 100% of the time so far.

1. Manpower centers, Leningrad, Orel,Kursh to Rostov.
2. HVY 40+
3. ARM 100+
4. Dig in 3 deep level 3 before blizzard.

Major victory just add one thing.

1. Moscow

I have many of my games in the AAR section.

I made a few newbie posts like yours a while ago, so I forgive you for being a newbie blow hard.

Flaviusx is right and Emir your 100% wrong.

I also am right not because I am not smart or know what Flaviusx knows, I simply speak from my exp.

Play the game a little so you have some clue to what your talking about.

As far as factory evac goes if the Russians could not move anything until August this game would be a cake walk for any German player.

Pelton

[Peltonx]

Nice charts ect, I will be using them myself. If the Russians have 6 million infantry, but have less then 50k art and 4 k tanks by December 41 your going to be haveing some fun in 42 as the German.

If the Russian player has 5 million men, 90k art and 4k tanks your not going to be doing much of anything in 42 vs a good russian.

The key to game is artillary, not men or tanks or planes for that matter. They can help sure, but the Russain army is a usless bunch of junk without artillary. So HVY,ARM pts are huge!

Also someone talked about 1 hex a turn, I am thinking you got no idea how hard it is for the russain player to get a hex a turn. That sounds really nice on paper, but thats not how it works in the game. in 44 mybee but not 41-43. Also add in all the mud turns.

1 hex a turn?

Pelton

[ComradeP]

Pelton: most Soviet guns have only a low chance to actually fire, due to their mediocre experience, so at least for 1942, I'd be more worried about men than artillery, as it's the men that will block your advance, whilst artillery won't do too much for you when you're defending.

1 hex a turn?

On average, for 1943-1945, yes. Average German CV's will be mediocre to low by that point and as you get the odds bonus as the Soviets, it should be possible. Not necessarily front wide, just in critical sectors, 1 hex towards Berlin each turn.

You might say: "you have no idea how difficult it is", but look at your situation in your most recent game against Hooper in January 1943. Things can turn ugly in a hurry for the Axis.