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Turn 2 Epilogue:

1/9/20 - turn end saved and sent off to GamerDad. Axis at 154/290 VP

Total losses at end of Soviet Turn 2: Axis 25466 men, 356 gun, 322 afv, 25 spac. Soviet 781856 men, 11070 gun, 5294 afv, 1773 spac
Net loss of about 8200 vehicles this turn: 6.3k lost, 2k captured by the invaders, 0.1k seized.
Air losses: Axis 11 (this turn), 80 Total. Soviet 258 (this turn), 3652 Total. 25:1 ratio is not going to cut it, even if many of those were training crashes. Important Soviet type losses: 10 MiG-3, 3 LaGG, 4 SB-2 Rcn, 3 IL-2.
Unit Losses: 1 Army, 3 Corps, 4 TankD, 2 MotD, 6 RifleD, 1 Airbase, 1 Abn Bgd, 1 AT Bgd, 2 SecRgt, 6 Fort.Reg (5 disbanded).

Pool of modern planes: 112 MiG-3, 239 Yak-1, 239 LaGG-3, 24 IL-2, 146 IL-4, 358 SB-2R, 2 Li-2

Overall things are starting well enough. My harassing defense is slowing down the Germans, compared to how things went in our first game. I’ve got most of his panzers spotted, and over half of them are getting zip for supply to start Turn 3. Not much progress has been made toward Kiev so far. In the center, German advance is average or a bit better, and should reach Mogilev and Vitebsk on T3. AGN is ahead of historical, though over half of their panzers are chasing north to Tallinn. That’s much better than Pskov from the Soviet PoV (at least imho).

Using export and spreadsheet really helped get air units moved around. I’ll have to spend another couple hours in Turn 3 moving more ready units back to the front but this has definitely been quicker than my old method of just checking the available units in the ‘assign’ window.

ORIGINAL: Shalkai
I don't know if battalions set to no-manual can upgrade to regiments. I will wait and see, then turn back on auto Bomber upgrades if no 10-plane units upgrade in turn 4.

ORIGINAL: Shalkai
Earlier I turned off auto upgrade on all my air battalions, but I think I’d better put it back on. Not sure if battalions get to regiments otherwise. Hum..I’ll turn the fighter ones on auto, leave the bombers. We’ll see if that setting is relevant.

I believe their upgrade is hardcoded, although depends on a die roll. So they all will eventually upgrade to regiments, but you cannot hurry it or slow it down with airgroup settings?

ORIGINAL: Shalkai
The Minsk and Lvov conversions support evenly spaced army groups, but don’t push railheads very far east compared to existing paths to the border/rail.

I always think this is a mistake. Yes it may help at the beginning. However by concentrating your repair out of Rumania and in the Baltic zone and then repairing towards the centre from them later on you actually get better railheads to the centre than repairing all the time in the centre. And late summer/autumn is when you really want rail heads to be closer for your central forces.

ORIGINAL: Shalkai
Using export and spreadsheet really helped get air units moved around. I’ll have to spend another couple hours in Turn 3 moving more ready units back to the front but this has definitely been quicker than my old method of just checking the available units in the ‘assign’ window.

Also allows more flexibility for slicing and dicing. If you want to select airgroups with multiple criteria like more XP than X, more morale than Y and more ready than Z this is beyong the internals of WitE.

Great AAR. You are doing a really good job with harassing/cutting off his panzers. Your opponent should start improving his flank security or should stop being so aggressive which would be good news for you.

Losing a couple of Rifle Divisions to cut off/delay panzers for a week is a great trade off. With the new manpower multipliers and the fixed experience bugs, losing such units should be less devastating.

Looking forward to new updates.

Turn 3: 10Jan2020:

Supply woes for the panzers means the Axis made little progress in their Turn 3. Their advances were mostly 3-5 hexes or so, and I lost less than ten units in combat. A total of 13 units are isolated, mostly around Stanislav. In Ukraine, Panzer units have broken down into regiments so there is finally a solid line. I won’t be able to open that Stanislav pocket a third time. Perhaps some supply drops, we’ll see. The advance to Moscow cleaned out my units screening and isolating panzers but didn’t get up to the Vitebsk/Dnepr line. The spearheads toward Leningrad are still short of Pskov and Narva. The PzKorps by Pskov probably did an HQBU, and maybe one of the AGC PzK east of Minsk. I can see most of the AGS panzers and they are low on fuel.

Vehicle Pool: 89k (53k needed), in the green now. RailCap starts at 40011/144808. There’s that 50% penalty in June gone.
40k is probably more than I need for railing units this turn but we’ll see.
Manpower-3532, Port-151, Railyard-296, Vehicle-150, HInd-232, Oil-128, Fuel-149, Resource-196, Armament-366.

Event Log shows 3 Army HQ and about 30 divisions formed up, mostly around Moscow and Leningrad (right where I need them). 7th Ind. Army is unfrozen along with some other units. About 20 air units upgraded to late model planes - yay!. Two more air battalions (10 plane) units renamed and upgraded to air regiments (20 plane).

Key stats from EvLog production totals: 91.5k Armaments produced, 1500 vehicles, 285 aircraft, 193k manpower. About 1125k armaments and 210k manpower surplus after replacement phases, but draining the surplus will continue. Down at the bottom of Event Log, Resource Status now shows Rail at 94% - 193k free, 204k needed. Warning about 24k supplies not being produced. 11 partisan battalions now formed, and 11 supply drops done from VVS airbases.

CR Battles tab shows a light combat turn. 30+ recons, probably one round of auto finding air bases. Axis recon escort still on. 25 ground battles or so with Axis clearing their way forward, and about 10 interdictions by Soviets with few planes flying and minimal results. This makes me curious, so I go and check Air Doctrine - which seems to be back at defaults. Huh? I reset everything:
Air Doctrine %fly 5, GrdSpt 100-100, GrdAtk 100-100, AirAtk 120-120, IntAtk 80-80, CityAtk 200-100, FtrInt 80, NgtInt 40, GS-on, Rcn-off

Axis main-line rail repair progress: 57,34 in Riga. 62,52 SE of Vilnius. 57,65 towards Minsk. 52,87 toward Tarnopol. 68,103 Rumania.

CR Units tab lets me tweak ToeM on new or very low morale/%Toe units. CR HQ tab reminds me to fix 9th Army in SF. I move 8 divisions from 9th to 18th Army and disband a fort.region, 9th Army now fixed. A bit north, I move several divisions from 6th to 5th and 12th Army, which partially fixes the imbalances in SWFront. About 12 AP are used fixing the two armies. The front itself is still 54 CP over limit. About half that number is due to the trapped units near Stanislav.

Air Groups tab shows no one with Fatigue problems. Damaged plane counts are very high but I don’t transfer many back to NR this turn - the switch from 40 to 20 max ready planes just happened. All air units with Exp+Mor<95 are sent to reserve (10 or so total). All bombers in VVS that arrived this turn are set to night missions.

11Jan2020: I started on unit moves last night, and used up 17k of rail movement getting units from Urals and Caucasus forward. The far north units may have unfrozen according to event log, but I can’t do anything with them. I’ll hit them next turn. I’m going to work on the front lines from south to north. Ukraine has a decent number of units, and panzers are pretty scattered and low on gas, but they are in good supply range.

Southern Front holds at the Dnestr River even though five German ID are close. They will break across a bit north of Kishinev next turn but hopefully the level 2 forts will make it costly and the second defensive line will keep them from getting more than two or three hexes deep. Six decent RD are now in/adjacent to Odessa and the fort levels are rising. We’ll see if I can hold on there for a while once GamerDad arrives.

SWFront is going to pull back 10-30 miles in most places. A couple of air supply drops are made to isolated units in Stanislav, but they aren’t enough to get them out of isolated status.

German Infantry is near Rovno in strength, and Panzers will be able to penetrate and pocket if they concentrate. Rovno itself fell, but at least he had to use panzers and not infantry to do that, and didn't get much further east. A regiment of 13th PzD is counterattacked and pushed back; German losses 250 men and 9 tanks, Soviet 1000 men and 8 tanks. I have two Mech Corps nearby and they are inspired to attack, seeing that panzers can be pushed back if caught working as regiments. An attack on 2/13PzD, then a second attack on 3/13PzD does force them both back, and briefly surrounds most of 4 panzer divisions near Rovno. That’ll be over a third of his AGS mobile divisions getting nothing next turn.

No other Panzer regiments are as exposed, so that’s the limit of my ‘counteroffensive’ in Ukraine this turn. Soviet losses were nearly 100 tanks, but almost all of them were T-26, which are basically just target practice for German AT guns and rifles. I have enough units to make a good multi-line defense about 60 miles deep, though it certainly won’t hold. I just want to hold losses to 30-50 miles. One new rifle division is railed from near Moscow to Kiev so defenses can be built up there.

Here's a shot of Southern Front. Nothing unusual - line pulled back to Dnestr River forts, working on Odessa defenses, preparing for infantry assault northeast of Kishinev. Southwest Front units can be seen at top, pocketed around Chernovtsy (we'll miss you!) and trying to hold the hills to the east.

12Jan2020: Battle reports are checked to see if the night supply drops to partisans faced any Axis fighter intercepts - answer: No.

Next I review defenses and threats on sections of the front line to see how many more divisions might need to be railed up from Leningrad or Moscow. I run some recon flights to get a better idea what is north of the Dvina and moving toward Narva and Pskov. Narva line has three units west of the river, and then two more as a screen behind. They face only 3-4 panzers w/o HQBU and no infantry. Line should not be pushed back much thanks to terrain and low panzer fuel.

Pskov line faces probably 3 panzers and 10 infantry divisions in range to attack. I’m betting this Panzer Korps did an HQBU. About all I can do is reclaim some hexes with units moving forward from their entrenchments (shown in pic below), then they’ll move back to the bunkers.
That will slow down the advancers a little, and the Infantry won’t be able to knock my screen back more than a hex or two. That PzK can break through both my lines so I need a little more depth. Two extra divisions are railed down, which gives me a good shot to hold the city. I may bring in one more after I take a look at other needs. (I did, to start a 3rd line).

Here's the final Pskov/Narva defenses after some units are railed in. The two panzers up near Tallinn are at or past supply so aren't much threat. I think the Pskov defenses are now deep enough to keep those couple panzers from making a pocket. Long-term defense anchors are started by the units moved into Novgorod, and just south of Lake Ilmen. That area will be getting lots of attention in the next five turns or so, as the surest way to take Leningrad is a deep push past Lake Ilmen and up the Volkhov River to Sviritsa. 'Taint easy, though. I plan to make it very, very hard even if AGN gets heavily reinforced.

Vitebsk region faces very strong panzer forces, but they are near their supply limit. A few divisions are railed forward to fill in holes in the first and second lines. I expect the first line will be blasted back, and Vitebsk will probably be lost, but 25-hex limit will restrict how far they can get.

Several divisions are railed forward from the Moscow region to man the Smolensk defense line. I end up using all 40k of the unit rail allotment. 4 fortified regions are built for Leningrad, and five for Moscow, at a cost of 36 AP. 8 AP more are spent building construction battalions to help level up the final defense lines.

Screenshot of Middle Dnepr defenses is at end of this post. Lots of panzers west of Mogilev, but again at 20+ hexes from railhead. They'll be able to reach river but I doubt cross it or take Mogilev. Orel and Kharkov MDs are defending this stretch (they only have 36 CP each, half that of a Front until they activate) but it lets me keep Western Front out of CP overload. Western itself still has stragglers trying to get back to mommy from the Pripyat Marshes.

Now, back to spreadsheet wars. I get a bit more organized this turn. There are 102 air regiments in NR, and I sort by type, morale and exp to find ones ready to go back into action. This goes quicker this time, and ten minutes finds all the units I could pull out if needed. Now the air armies are checked and reinforced, Moscow axis first, then Leningrad, then the south.

After the central zone air armies (Western, Orel, Kharkov, Moscow, LongRange) are moved into better positions and brought up to strength, I bomb the forward German units. Ground attack bombings cause light casualties and take light losses. The nearest Luftwaffe airfield has a Stuka wing so I try an airfield attack. That is an unmitigated disaster - I lose 7 MiG and 38 bombers, but down only one LW fighter and don’t even touch the airfield. A night attack is ineffectual as well but at least doesn’t lose any planes. I’ll need to wait for some fighters to get above 60/60 Mor/Exp before trying daytime airbase attacks again.

Since I can’t hurt the dang Stukas, I at least want to know where they are. All four groups of StG77 are in that one airbase I hit, so he may have not split up the ground attack between Army Groups. Another ten recon flights confirms that - all three StG are currently within forty miles of Minsk. Interesting - and this also means the Moscow push has the lion’s share of ground attack power. I’ll need more fighters here to counter them. I up the Air Doctrine settings for intercept to 100 for daytime. That’ll get some more planes up during ground attacks and ground support.

More ground attacks are done by NW, N, S, and SW Fronts with fair to good results. Total casualties for all Ground Attacks was around 600 men, 30 guns. Not much, but I’ll get the air attrition over 1k/turn in only a few more weeks.

Time for turn end work. DtHq listing starts with only 7 units once isolated and frozen are filtered out. 3 I can fix. I’m keeping things organized at least. Reserve and refit is checked and set, then I tour through HQs, pulling down arty (Stavka has a surplus) to armies and a few key corps. When done, 21 of 25 armies have all/most of the SU they need and are locked. I will need about 20 more construction battalions to fill them out.

Top generals not assigned yet: Zhukov, Purkaev, Vatutin, Eremenko, Khozin, Sokolovsky, Timoshenko. My AP are all spent this turn but I’ll start beefing up key armies soon. Factory Evacuation: Mogilev 3 Arm, 3 HI. Kharkov 53 T-34 to Sverdlovsk. Voronezh 2 BM-13, 1 BM-31, 12 IL-2, 1 IL-10 to Ufa. Odessa 1 Arm, 2 HI. I managed to use up 99.9% of my rail cap for both units and factories this turn. :p

That should finish things. I scroll around the map one last time, decide to move up the N. Caucasus Air command a bit, then save and send. That wasn’t bad, a three day turnaround. I should be able to keep it at 2-3 days now that I’m getting on top of the Soviet side playstyle again.

End Turn 3: Axis at 157/290 VP. Pic of Ground Losses screen below.

Current Turn/Total losses at end of Soviet Turn 3:
Axis 14028/39494 men, 136/492 gun, 100/422 afv, 15/40 spac.
Soviet 75740/857596 men, 701/11771 gun, 520/5814 afv, 122/1895 spac
Net loss of about 3000 vehicles this turn: 2.6k lost, 0.4k captured by the invaders, minimal seized.
Air losses: Axis 16 (this turn), 96 Total. Soviet 351 (this turn), 4003 Total. 22:1 ratio is only a slight improvement. Le Sigh.
Important Soviet type losses: 24 MiG-3, 5 LaGG, 3 SB-2 Rcn, 3 IL-2.
Unit Losses: 1 TankD, 1 MotD, 2 RifleD, 1MtnD, 10 SecRgt, 4 Fort.Reg (4 disbanded). 6 destroyed is WAY better than the 170 units lost during the first two turns!

Pool of modern planes: 176 MiG-3, 116 Yak-1, 200 LaGG-3, 43 IL-2, 156 IL-4, 349 SB-2R, 5 Li-2
German OOB: 3296229 men, 33178 gun, 5038 afv, 3498 plane. Sov OOB: 3572350 men, 44133 gun, 15243 afv, 9204 plane.

No huge disasters to this point - well, no huger than normal for Soviets in Summer ‘41, anyway. My harassing and isolating panzers, plus the v12.02 supply limit bug, prevented any major pockets this turn. Next turn will likely be rougher. Ground losses will be higher, too, as the isolated Stanislav pocket will likely be cleaned out, and that’ll be 90k or more losses right there. I’m pleased by the ground casualty ratio this turn, only a little over 5:1. The 22:1 air casualty rate is not as pleasing. Early days, though. If I can get German casualties up to 20k/turn without giving up huge pockets, and get the air loss ratio down to near 10:1, then I’ll be pleased.

One thought I’d like to try is making the Southern Air Command into a ‘combat training center’ by getting good units down there and trying to farm kills off the Rumanian air and ground forces. Maybe in a couple turns, after all the air unit resizing and repairs settle down. Recon losses for the 40 or so missions I ran were light.

One bright spot is the huge reinforcement list arriving next turn. A Front, four armies, and over 50 division/brigade ground units. Most are shells, but a ZOC is worth something.

If I can offer a small suggestion, screencap smaller regions (windows shift s to clipboard) excluding far sides and top bars. This makes it so the reader doesn't have to 1) scroll left and right or 2) zoom all the way out. Especially egregious when reading on a small phone in bed

Nice work otherwise!

ORIGINAL: eskuche

If I can offer a small suggestion, screencap smaller regions (windows shift s to clipboard) excluding far sides and top bars. This makes it so the reader doesn't have to 1) scroll left and right or 2) zoom all the way out. Especially egregious when reading on a small phone in bed

Nice work otherwise!

I'll see what I can do, eskuche, about trimming pictures a bit more. However, in a lot of these screen shots the whole pic has useful information - garrisons far to the rear, hints of where enemy HQ and air units are gathered, units moved in to make defense lines around Moscow, etc. I know it is hard scrolling around full 1080 HD screenshots on a phone or iPad (I use those sometimes as well when reading these forums), but I'd have to double the post count to get in more but smaller pictures if I tried to cater to that as my baseline. A little more trimming won't cost me much time or effort, and I appreciate the feedback.

ORIGINAL: Shalkai

ORIGINAL: eskuche

If I can offer a small suggestion, screencap smaller regions (windows shift s to clipboard) excluding far sides and top bars. This makes it so the reader doesn't have to 1) scroll left and right or 2) zoom all the way out. Especially egregious when reading on a small phone in bed

Nice work otherwise!

I'll see what I can do, eskuche, about trimming pictures a bit more. However, in a lot of these screen shots the whole pic has useful information - garrisons far to the rear, hints of where enemy HQ and air units are gathered, units moved in to make defense lines around Moscow, etc. I know it is hard scrolling around full 1080 HD screenshots on a phone or iPad (I use those sometimes as well when reading these forums), but I'd have to double the post count to get in more but smaller pictures if I tried to cater to that as my baseline. A little more trimming won't cost me much time or effort, and I appreciate the feedback.

As an alternative why not consider resizing too? I know resizing to 90% or even 80% leaves screenshots perfectly readable. I go further when I consider there is stuff I do not mind too much being being blurred. But even if you want to keep everythign visible, resizing with perhaps some minor trimming can turn bg screenshots into ones that just fit in?

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: Shalkai

ORIGINAL: eskuche

If I can offer a small suggestion, screencap smaller regions (windows shift s to clipboard) excluding far sides and top bars. This makes it so the reader doesn't have to 1) scroll left and right or 2) zoom all the way out. Especially egregious when reading on a small phone in bed

Nice work otherwise!

I'll see what I can do, eskuche, about trimming pictures a bit more. However, in a lot of these screen shots the whole pic has useful information - garrisons far to the rear, hints of where enemy HQ and air units are gathered, units moved in to make defense lines around Moscow, etc. I know it is hard scrolling around full 1080 HD screenshots on a phone or iPad (I use those sometimes as well when reading these forums), but I'd have to double the post count to get in more but smaller pictures if I tried to cater to that as my baseline. A little more trimming won't cost me much time or effort, and I appreciate the feedback.

As an alternative why not consider resizing too? I know resizing to 90% or even 80% leaves screenshots perfectly readable. I go further when I consider there is stuff I do not mind too much being being blurred. But even if you want to keep everythign visible, resizing with perhaps some minor trimming can turn bg screenshots into ones that just fit in?

+1 But this is not meant as a criticism. You're AAR is very interesting!!

Turn 4:
15Jan2020: First glance shows a VERY quiet Axis turn. Very few attacks - just cleaning up the pockets and some isolated screens. German Infantry is now up against the first defense line along almost the entire front. Cleanup around Stanislav was left to the minor allies, so there are still a few holdouts hanging on for one more turn.

Vehicle Pool: 105k (44k needed), still growing. RailCap starts at 42614/136944. We’ll see how many rebuilt units I can rail up with 42k.
Manpower-3503, Port-151, Railyard-295, Vehicle-150, HInd-232, Oil-128, Fuel-149, Resource-196, Armament-366.

Event Log shows only five isolated units (the ones mentioned above, north of Rumania). Arrived Unit list shows over 50 (mostly rebuilt shells). Units on the north half of the Finnish border are now unfrozen and have MP. Six air units upgraded to late model planes - yay! Four more air battalions (10 plane) units renamed and upgraded to air regiments (20 plane).

Key stats from EvLog production totals: 90.5k Armaments produced, 1500 vehicles, 290 aircraft, 192k manpower. About 975k armaments and 0k manpower surplus after replacement phases, now I’m down to what I recruit each turn, soldier-wise. Down at the bottom of Event Log, Resource Status shows Rail at 100% - 183k free, 176k needed. No warnings. 13 partisan battalions now formed, and 10 supply drops done from VVS airbases.

CR Battles tab list is short. 50+ recons, including some peeks at major goal cities. Axis recon escort still on. Only 12 ground battles clearing pockets and taking the area around Rovno. There were five interdictions by Soviets with minimal results. Air Doctrine checked - still good. Settings = %fly 5, GrdSpt 100-100, GrdAtk 100-100, AirAtk 120-120, IntAtk 80-80, CityAtk 200-100, FtrInt 100, NgtInt 40, GS-on, Rcn-off

Axis main-line rail repair progress: 60,33 E of Riga. 62,48 NE of Vilnius (he changed rail lines). 60,63 towards Minsk. 55,86 toward Tarnopol. 70,104 toward Kishinev.

175 AP this turn due to the Reserve Front arriving. Only about a dozen units appear in the Urals or very far east. I’ll only need to rail 20 or 30 units.

Then it is time to export and off to the micromanagement spreadsheet. I up the standards for having planes ready for action to Mor+Exp>105. 20 minutes gives me a nice list, there are almost 50 units in the reserve that pass that standard. Then I switch back in game to the Air Unit report and start sending beat up units to the reserve before I start flying or moving anything. Units with more than 12 damaged planes, or under Morale 45 are sent to reserve. Everything on-map is OK EXP and fatigue-wise.

Below is a sample of a LibreOffice sheet after I import and break out air units into separate OnMap and Reserve tabs. This is from a different game but shows how easy it is. I sort by plane type/plane name/morale (descending). The OnMap sheet is the one showing. I tag units I want to move yellow, then tag them green after I actually move them.

Ground units are now checked and ToeM set low for new arrivals and weak or low-EXP units. Partisan ToE are building up, hopefully I’ll have some active by turn 8-10. Now I can start unit moves. The north first; Leningrad only gets four new units nearby. One is sent to the far north to the Lake Jan defense line. All unlocked units are pulled back from the Finn border, and the border forts dismantled and shipped south of Leningrad. [i.e. several fortified regions are built on both banks of the Neva River]

Pic shows units mostly moved in to the Lake Jan line, as well as divisions down by Leningrad digging like mad.

AGN is poised to take Tallinn, but I decide to ship in a rifle division to try and tie up a couple of infantry divisions even longer. Defense CV is about 25, at fort level 3.1, so it might hold. One AGN PzK is west of Narva, the other west of Pskov, both about 40 miles behind the line. I reclaim one hex west of Narva, which lets me see one MotDiv’s fuel levels, and they are low. With woods and swamps and rivers to help them, the Narva lines get only a couple more units this turn.

I suspect the Pskov panzers are decent to full on gas. I’m going to need a lot of depth to the Pskov defense. A half-dozen units are railed in; I’m down to about 20k rail moves left. Most sections of Northwest Front pull back about two hexes though I do leave two RD defending the western approaches to Pskov. Down in the lower right, you can see the light green units belonging to Moscow MD. Two small armies and the Moscow Air Command have come forward and are taking a section of line in between Northwest and Western Fronts. AGC is getting concentrated for a big push, and the Luftwaffe has all their Stukas and most of the other tac bombers focused on Smolensk. These are part of the Soviet forces moving up to oppose them.

Looking south of the Dvina, there is a Scary Wall of Panzer Divisions from Vitebsk down to Mogilev. Apparently someone told Guderian that Mogilev was a party town - there are three full stacks !!! of panzer divisions (OK, 8 divisions, 1 regiment) adjacent to the city. HOWEVER...all those units are low on fuel, and over 25 hexes from railhead - so they are supply isolated. No gas for you next turn!! My 61st Rifle Corps has a defensive CV of 50, and ought to be totally inspired to dig in even deeper with all those engine sounds rumbling to the west. I’m actually going to stay put here and make him fight. I’ll lose, but it should cost the panzers both some veteran troops and most of their fuel if they try to crash my commissar party.