The Sun Also Rises ( D21 )

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T2 and you can see that I made a mistake in that I seem to have concentrated on clearing out
the Soviet units rather than getting on the road to Riga so now I'm a little bit behind schedule. Maybe I can make it
up this turn

[larryfulkerson]

This is the view down south right now. I've run into a rather significant roadblock
or what I thought was a roadblock.....it turned into a strongpoint complete with
armor and everything. I've got some Panzers helping out because of the size of some
of these units. Besides it's bvest to use a tank against another tank. So needless
to say the schedule is slipping a little again. I hadn't counted on so many Soviet
obstacles.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm sneaking up on Minsk and I've just noticed two places where the leading tanks of
the Panzers are helping clear the roads when they should be zooming down country
roads converting hexes and looking for more Soviets. I must be getting tired if I've
ordered those clearing actions earlier. Or maybe I just need another Dr. Pepper.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm squeezing them down from small groups to a single hex and then making sure it's
surrounded I endevor to kill it. The stuff in the middle is mopped up already and
the forces are released to advance once again. Supply isn't a problem yet since the
rails work when the hex is converted, rail damage being zero so far. I'm driving my
recon units mostly on the rails where possible just to convert them as soon as I can.
I think the rail damage starts to grow in T3 or so. Then I'll have to start repairing
rail again. This has been a huge leap forward for the rails however. Maybe it'll
help me catch up in the schedule.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T3 before I have moved anybody. I'm not at all that far
from where I started out from back in T1 compared with where I should be by this
time. I'm supposed to capture Riga and Minsk by T4 and I'm not sure I'm even close
to doing that.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like up north right now. I'm doing some mopping up and there's
at least one meeting engagement going on. The railhead is almost at Riga already.
Which is a good thing. I'm going to ship three more RR engrs up here to help out,
so that will make a team of four of them. There's another team headed for Minsk and
one down south.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like around Minsk right now. I haven't gotten sizeable forces
near the city yet so I'm behind schedule but I'd rather not splinter my forces and
mingle with the enemy in an out-of-supply position where I can be surrounded and
ambushed. Slow and together is the rule.

[larryfulkerson]

And down south I have a decision to make reguarding the three RR engr units for this
area. Do I want to develop the blue line from Railhead "A" or do I want to develop
the green line from Railhead "B"? Or both at the same time. No, that's out. The
trouble is that I only need one of them at a time and B is shovel ready while Route A
has a broken bridge to fix and I'm not sure how long it'll take to fix the bridge.
I'm not sure the RR engrs will fix a broken bridge, I think not. I'm sticking with B
for now and the Green Route.

EDIT: Now that I've had a better look at the situation I notice that the green route
has a broken bridge as well so that changes things. Just on the principle of "least
movement to duty station" I'm sticking with the green route unless it's proven useless
because of the lack of bridging engineers in which case I'll switch to the blue route
whichever bridge gets repaired first.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the north again but I've been moving units and the face of war up here has
changed. It's going to change some more when I get around to moving all the units
in this image. I've already moved the 12th Infantry Division and they came from
further south and ran out of gas where they are now and it's only just now that I'm
getting any LCU's close to Riga. I'm just about a turn behind schedule in the
north.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the north again and I've captured Riga and one other spot on the river.
I've discovered a Soviet engr unit up agains the river and I've got units headed his
way. I'd like to get everybody on the west side to the east side of the river in two
turns or so. That way I think I'll be on schedule again in this area.

[Kursk1943]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Here's what it looks like up north right now. I'm doing some mopping up and there's
at least one meeting engagement going on. The railhead is almost at Riga already.
Which is a good thing. I'm going to ship three more RR engrs up here to help out,
so that will make a team of four of them. There's another team headed for Minsk and
one down south.

Seems that this time your RR engrs are the spearheads of your offensive...[:D][:D][:D]

[piotre]

Seems that this time your RR engrs are the spearheads of your offensive...[:D][:D][:D]

My thoughts exactly [:D]

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: piotre

Seems that this time your RR engrs are the spearheads of your offensive...

My thoughts exactly

Greetings gentlemen. I got spectacularly poor performance from my RR engrs
on the last game so I'm especially keen on watching what they do this time.
When the rail damage was 0%, last turn, I could just drive the RR engrs out
to the end of the rail but this time there's enemy units present and I need
a security detail to protect them. That it's almost at Riga already is just
about the best I can expect of them I guess. I've been wondering if I might
get more performance from them if I break them into pieces. Perhaps not.
Which reminds me....I need to look at the losses sometime soon.

[larryfulkerson]

According to this readout I've been loosing about 1K HRS's per turn so far. That
can't continue for long because I'm not making that many per turn. So the size and
strength of the Army is decreasing slowly as fewer squads are assigned each turn
because of the losses. I'm aiming for about 30K assigned squads in the HRS category
for a lower limit. Any lower than that will jepardze their mission.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm going to see if I can't make one of those moving pictures kind of images so this
is the "before" picture because I haven't moved any of these people yet and I'm
planning on the great leap forward this turn. We'll see how they do.

[larryfulkerson]

The picture didn't come out exceptionally well abut at least it's moving. I'll do
a better one. At least you can see the advance made by the Panzers.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me sneaking up on Minsk. I intend to surround the city before taking it down
if at all possible, to maximize the losses to the Soviets. It's going to take another
couple of turns to invest the city I'm thinking.

[larryfulkerson]

The Hungarians are active this turn so I can start to tackle the Soviet security
forces in the mountains. I can't leave 'em behind without a babysitter so it's
easiest just to kill them. They will respawn and be employed near Leningrad or
somewhere. The thought just ocured to me that the Soviet units can respawn about
four turns after it dies and it can respawn as many times as it gets killed I guess.
I'm wondering how many units get killed for a second time etc.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T4 front lines before I have moved any of the LCU's. Before I move any of the LCU's I like to check the
deployment of all the aircraft and make sure everybody has a mission appropriate for the situation and THEN move the
LCU's.

[larryfulkerson]

I zipped up a saved game file and attached it here below for those of
you who want to review all the dialogs and maybe take a look at the
Soviet side, maybe move some units around.