The D21 Road Not Taken....

[larryfulkerson]

It's T9 and this is the Pskov area now. I'm arriving there in force and I'm going to try to blast a hole in the Soviet lines since they are so sparse. I'm hoping to outflank them on the south end and move north.

[Hellen_slith]

ORIGINAL: danfrodo

I saw some comments on the other current D21 thread and it said had to help the PO sometimes

Hello, I hope you don't mind me chiming in here, since I am helping Elmer in D21. Just wanted to note reasons why.

This is not a "dig" at the creators of the scene, only my meager observations. I don't know how the PO works "under the hood".

When I "took over" the Soviets at turn 40 or so, to bolster the defenses of Leningrad and Kharkov, I was having problems w/ my system. Changing to Win7 compatibility (and turning "New Turn Rules" OFF) seems to have cured whatever was crashing the game on my system.

When I did look at Elmer's results up to then, I (as a stickler for formation and strategy) found that there were some things I would have done differently as a Soviet player. Don't get me wrong, Elmer was a challenge for me (but I'm just a Patzer ...)

Two things stood out, though: (1) Elmer seemed to have spent a lot of rail points moving up flak and engineers from the Far East .... whereas I would have chosen to focus on getting the infantry and armor up first, and, (2) Elmer seemed to "boondoggle" the formations to a certain extent, that is, he sent formations to positions that were not as "tight" as I would have liked to see them.

For example, I have spent much of the last Soviet move "re-forming" the 29th, 30th, and 31st Soviet Armys, so that they are in better communication and supply w/ their HQ and each other.

Don't get me wrong, Elmer is a fair opponent ... but, he is not human, and as a result does not have that "human quality" that makes a fleshly opponent so much more challenging and unpredictable.

I hope this helps! It is a fun scenario, please don't let my comments dissuade you from trying it!

[gliz2]

Well last time I've let the Elmer do things he was just moving units around without any logic behind it (maybe it just wanted to use all the railtransport points).
On the other hand, playing as Soviets I have done a terrible mistake of committing too much units to Ukraine allowing Germans (also led by my hand) to swipe North. In result the Germans have captured Moskov in late August'41. So humans do bad big time as well

PS. I think there must be some calculation Elmer does like X amount of rail transport points divided by Y amount of units that can be moved to A, B and C and then he goes for highest possible value (in terms of number of units transported).

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the area between Minsk and Orsha right now. I'm trying to use the broad front approach to move up to the MLR ( main line of resistance ) as a solid line of troops with no infiltration routes between them. The supply level drops off a cliff on the east side of the river so this is just about as far as I can go right now. I have to refit the troops anyway. The rail lines have a long way to go to be truely useful. I feel like I'm behind schedule still.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like in the Odessa area right now. The Rumanians and Hungarians are helping clear Bessarabia over to the river. I need to grab some of the river crossings over the river to the east in order to start a footrace to the Dneper River that flows through Kiev leading south to D-town. If I can get there before the Soviets can I think I can trap them, isolate them, surround them, and destroy them enmass. I'm going to just surround Odessa with the Rumanians and refit the besiegers long enough to get some RR arty down here to bombard the port.

[larryfulkerson]

I've found a spot in my front lines where there's gaps and holes in the front lines and I need to correct that stat. I've got an excess of troops both north and south of that position so I think I can fix that by next turn. I forced my way into Pskov the city and now I'm fighting for more crossings over the river(s) in that area. So far no partisans have appeared anywhere. Supply is still a problem in the south.

[larryfulkerson]

This is what Kiev looks like now. I'm trying to use a broad-front approach when moving east into the meeting engagement(s). No gaps this time. I have run out of combat units to stand in the front lines so I've recruited the cooks and bottle washers and more than one HQ unit. There's a paratrooper between my main forces and the Kiev defenders that has captured an airfield and it screems out to me to move a fighter group over there. ASAP. It's T9 already and I'm only this far from Kiev. I feel like I'm behind schedule. We're into the last half of July and I believe I'm supposed to be aligned up against the river by now with Kiev defenders being probed by my forces. I need to rail some RR arty to this AO and get them busy bombarding the Soviet arty.

[larryfulkerson]

I wanted to clear out the peninsula prior to my assaults on Narva but I'm only just now deploying units in that area along the coast. I'm going to have to deploy a large regiment to the west coast to deal with all the CD guns. There's some kind of advantage for capturing Talinin as I recall. I don't remember what the bonus is however. It's now T10 and I need to review the losses so far.

[gliz2]

Larry, with all due respect you WILL NOT get on schedule. There is no way a player can repeat the initial onslaught of the first two weeks of the campaign.
You can get better results in some parts of the front (especially in the North).
I think I will tweak the FITE2 and/or D-21 to start after the initial onslaught with variable weather conditions. This way the Germans stand a fair chance.

[danfrodo]

Thanks for the input Larry Hellen & Gliz2. I suppose the correct answer to my question is "play a human, dummy!" I also thought of picking up Grigsby's war in the east, hoping it has better AI response. I loved this east front game from long ago. Early 90s or some such? For now I'll hold off on D21 and fight some smaller stuff. And start doing PBEM sometime soon.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: gliz2
Larry, with all due respect you WILL NOT get on schedule. There is no way a player can repeat the initial onslaught of the first two weeks of the campaign. You can get better results in some parts of the front (especially in the North).
I think I will tweak the FITE2 and/or D-21 to start after the initial onslaught with variable weather conditions. This way the Germans stand a fair chance.

I think that is a pretty good idea. I wonder how much different it will play out. Keep us posted will you?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: danfrodo
Thanks for the input Larry Hellen & Gliz2. I suppose the correct answer to my question is "play a human, dummy!" I also thought of picking up Grigsby's war in the east, hoping it has better AI response. I loved this east front game from long ago. Early 90s or some such? For now I'll hold off on D21 and fight some smaller stuff. And start doing a PBEM sometime soon.

I forgot what your question was. I own Grigsby's WITE and it's a different treatment of the war but it's basically FITE with different looking units. The air war is it's best feature. It's fun for about the first four games or so and by then you've explored most of the what if's you can do and it becomes rather boring, being the same game again and again. With TOAW you can play just about any conflict that has ever happened and some that haven't yet. And you can build your own situation and save it as a scenario. You can mod scenarios to tweak them. Some people find it more fun building scenarios than playing them. Have you tried the Road to Moscow series of scenarios? Short scenarios from Operation Barbarosa. You may find them fun.

[danfrodo]

LarryF, thanks for the comments. I also have Road to Moscow on my 'bookshelf'. And I loooooove TOAW so it's not like I am leaving it. Actually, all I play is TOAW & Battlefront's Combat Mission WW2 games. I'll hold off on grigsby's game & give this a go.

[larryfulkerson]

About 4 or 5 years ago a really good guy, Steve, I think his name was, bought me a copy of WITE just so I could play him and I paid him back by buying a copy of it and gave it away to a young student in Italy, Mario I think his name was. At any rate Steve and I had several games together for about two years and then something came up in Steve's real life and he had to quit to deal with it and I went to playing the AI for a while but it just wasn't the same as playing a real person. So I came back to TOAW and have never turned back. I've got one WITP-AE game going right now with Brian in Ohio, hey I just got an email from him just now...it's his moves to me. So I've got to go. Talk to you later.

[larryfulkerson]

It's T10 and this is what it looks like north of Leningrad. I've been doing moves for other games and I've just come back to this game after the lapse of about 6 hours and I can't remember if there's a rail from Murmansk all the way to Leningrad or not but there needs to be. I'll look into that. EDIT: I can see from the map that the rail would have to be in possession of the Soviets.

[gliz2]

Larry there is a direct line between Murmansk and Leningrad (via Pietrozavodsk where historically Axis took control of it) which runs by the cost thus making it hard for Axis to cut it.
I always attack it with Fins and Germans from the Sala and it's like 50% success rate. That rail line was crucial for Soviets as most of the Land-Lease goods were transportee using it. I'm curious how this is modelled in the scenario.

[larryfulkerson]

I think that if the Axis forces capture Murmansk then Lend Lease is cancelled.

[larryfulkerson]

It's T11 and I haven't posted anything for a while, I've been so busy playing, that it just felt like it was time to post something. Here's the area east of Minsk and you can see how the Axis forces are fighting over the crossings and it appears that I was successful down in the south of this image. I'm toying with the idea of moving all the free units down to the breech to follow up and expand the bubble and see if I can't get into the Soviet backfield. The rails are way behind and the supply levels are really low and I'm going to have to stop all this and refit.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the area just north of Kiev and shows how I'm fighting over the river crossings again and I've gotten across one river and I'm fanning out and converting hexes and searching for enemy troops. I may be able to grab some more crossings before too long. More captured crossings means more supply can flow. And the supply levels are notoriously low.

[danfrodo]

[/quote]
I forgot what your question was. I own Grigsby's WITE and it's a different treatment of the war but it's basically FITE with different looking units. The air war is it's best feature. It's fun for about the first four games or so and by then you've explored most of the what if's you can do and it becomes rather boring, being the same game again and again. With TOAW you can play just about any conflict that has ever happened and some that haven't yet. And you can build your own situation and save it as a scenario. You can mod scenarios to tweak them. Some people find it more fun building scenarios than playing them. Have you tried the Road to Moscow series of scenarios? Short scenarios from Operation Barbarosa. You may find them fun.
[/quote]

Hey LarryF, took your advice & am doing Road to Moscow What If scenario. A masterpiece! Having a ton of fun, thanks for the tip!! I might do an AAR later since I have a save of each turn.