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ORIGINAL: GFelz

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

Most of the Southern front is moved to the reserve. I keep some elements behind to delay as much as they can. Malinovsky's HQ is safely sent to the reserve, as is Pavel Batov's.

When you say moved to reserve, do you mean moved back as far as possible, railed away or transfered to the Moscow(?) Reserve?

By send to the reserve I mean sent to the TB reserve box. This avoids using up any rail capacity, and the only real downsides are the delay it takes to get the units there and the drainage of their supply. Often units will arrive at say 30 percent supply which isn't ideal, but I don't expect any of my units to hold anyway so it's a minor inconvenience.

Any supply issues will be fixed by unit supply priority 4, the free trucks from LL and moblising, and supply priority 4 depots.

Sending the SW front to reserve also let's me time things such that I can deploy them on my turn 3, arriving turn 4 in conjunction with the multitude of free milita divisions. This will hopefully stall any German advance for a long long time.

To be most efficient one should probably also use corps, but the only corps I use are the mech corps. I already have 1500 AFVs building up CPP in the back, and will increase that by a few thousand over the coming turns. These will attack any exposed panzers.

Be sure to create the super, 600 AFV strong tank divisions.

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

To be most efficient one should probably also use corps, but the only corps I use are the mech corps. I already have 1500 AFVs building up CPP in the back, and will increase that by a few thousand over the coming turns. These will attack any exposed panzers.

Here is an example of this, turn 3 of my other game. These units will be put under Rokossovosky or some other such mech general. Many hundreds/thousands of AFVs will be lost in battles, but it's a worthy sacrifice.

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

To be most efficient one should probably also use corps, but the only corps I use are the mech corps. I already have 1500 AFVs building up CPP in the back, and will increase that by a few thousand over the coming turns. These will attack any exposed panzers.

Here is an example of this, turn 3 of my other game. These units will be put under Rokossovosky or some other such mech general. Many hundreds/thousands of AFVs will be lost in battles, but it's a worthy sacrifice.

I believe I know where you are going with this. But I feel many are still playing WITE1 on how they are advancing and attacking. But what you are about to write should pan this out rather nicely.

I have sent the entire Southwestern front to reserve, and they will be deployed to Moscow and Leningrad. I do not believe the South is worth defending remotely, and most Axis players will get +6 VPs regardless. I will not bother evacuating industry - it is a mechanic I have ignored so far, and will continue to ignore unless I reach the unlikely state in which Leningrad, Moscow, Tula, or other such cities that did not fall historically are threatened.

If the Soviets don't defend the South would expect Axis to achieve a sudden death win in '41, am not sure if that is what you are aiming to demonstrate ?

Maybe it is no early end? Or maybe he will redeploy some of the units on the next turns?

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

To be most efficient one should probably also use corps, but the only corps I use are the mech corps. I already have 1500 AFVs building up CPP in the back, and will increase that by a few thousand over the coming turns. These will attack any exposed panzers.

Here is an example of this, turn 3 of my other game. These units will be put under Rokossovosky or some other such mech general. Many hundreds/thousands of AFVs will be lost in battles, but it's a worthy sacrifice.

I believe I know where you are going with this. But I feel many are still playing WITE1 on how they are advancing and attacking. But what you are about to write should pan this out rather nicely.

I understand that Axis should not leave panzers as screening forces, but in the same time you do not want to attack with panzers. And if there is no motorization (which is an exploit IMHO) then it takes ages for an infantry to come and fight. So if you do not risk with a panzers - you will not make pockets, unless Soviet player is not smart enough to retreat. Maybe you will show some magic in your AAR, but I would like to see what would you do vs running Soviet without motorizaton.

ORIGINAL: tyronec

If the Soviets don't defend the South would expect Axis to achieve a sudden death win in '41, am not sure if that is what you are aiming to demonstrate ?

There won't be a sudden death Axis win, there are not enough VP in the south for that. It is also not that he will literally never have any troops in the south, he just won't have any until around the time Axis gets to Kharkov/Stalino - not so much to defend those, but to make sure they don't get to Stalingrad and the like in 1941, which is what you would have to do in 1941 for any hope of a sudden death Axis win, given that Soviets will be holding Leningrad and Moscow with all the extra troops sent there.

From my point of view the only way to make Soviets defend upfront - change VP allocation so it will really hurt them for giving cities for free as well as make armament factoiries matter.
Stalino, Dneproterovsk, Krivoy Rog is taken 2 month ahead of schedule? Less arty/weapons for ID are being produced. Not how it is right now.

Imagine giving whole country (Ukraine) for free. How ahistorical...

Another cool interaction would be dynamic NM. Losing cities ahead of schedule is reducing Soviet NM and boosts Axis. Soviet manage to take back major city? Vise versa (when urban combat is fixed ofc). It would make Soviets think twice if they want to have 30NM division in the winter for giving cities for free.

ORIGINAL: tyronec

I have sent the entire Southwestern front to reserve, and they will be deployed to Moscow and Leningrad. I do not believe the South is worth defending remotely, and most Axis players will get +6 VPs regardless. I will not bother evacuating industry - it is a mechanic I have ignored so far, and will continue to ignore unless I reach the unlikely state in which Leningrad, Moscow, Tula, or other such cities that did not fall historically are threatened.

If the Soviets don't defend the South would expect Axis to achieve a sudden death win in '41, am not sure if that is what you are aiming to demonstrate ?

I have not once came close to losing sudden death after abandoning the south. Its very possible it happens this game, sure, but it would be my first ever soviet loss if so.

The south will be defended by solely cavalry and when I can afford it a contingent of armored units to hit panzers. Cavalry will cut off any deep spearheads that recklessly advance, and also flip hexes to remove admin movement.

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Another cool interaction would be dynamic NM. Losing cities ahead of schedule is reducing Soviet NM and boosts Axis. Soviet manage to take back major city? Vise versa (when urban combat is fixed ofc). It would make Soviets think twice if they want to have 30NM division in the winter for giving cities for free.

This would not make any difference, because Soviets will always lose e.g. Kiev ahead of historical schedule. Same for Odessa, the only other VP city that is accessible in the first few turns for the Axis in the south (at least assuming that you don't have the exploit of spamming 80 small un-intercepted interdiction missions for Soviets). The only way it would make a difference is if there were a difference between losing a city such as Kiev on turn 3 as compared to losing it on turn 7.

So what would happen is you would end up with the same national morale from losing Kiev and Odessa early regardless of whether you try to defend them, in which case you will lose them earlier than historical, or if you don't try to defend them at all, in which case you will also lose them earlier than historical.

The same reasoning applies to the VPs from losing cities early. It doesn't matter if you lose Kiev on turn 3 or on turn 9, Axis will get the exact same VP from it for early capture. And you are definitely not holding it until turn 13, its historical capture date.

My dynamic NM idea is not supposed to work only like captured date ahead of histrocial? true/false

As you wrote - the closer historical date is the lower the penalty.

Some cities should not count and be an exception, like Odessa. As clearly it is not possible to hold it for so long.

Right now for VP you have base value and bonus. With a time, bonus points are lower and lower. From +6 to +4 and so on.

ORIGINAL: Stamb

From my point of view the only way to make Soviets defend upfront - change VP allocation so it will really hurt them for giving cities for free as well as make armament factoiries matter.
Stalino, Dneproterovsk, Krivoy Rog is taken 2 month ahead of schedule? Less arty/weapons for ID are being produced. Not how it is right now.

Imagine giving whole country (Ukraine) for free. How ahistorical...

It is not just a matter of *making* Soviets defend in the south, it is also a matter of them having the ability to do so. Even if Soviets try as hard as they can to defend the south, they will not be able to do so, and will easily lose both of them well before their historical capture dates. So even if you increased the VP penalty for losing cities in the south, it would probably still not be worth it for a Soviet player who is trying to maximize VPs to defend the south - at least not unless they have some sort of special trick up their sleeves like K62 in his game against tyronec with the naval interdiction not getting intercepted due to the flights being too small and numerous.

It is true that there have been some games where Axis has advanced slowly in the south and has not taken cities by their historical dates, but for the most part that is because in those games the Axis players either were new players that did not know how to play Germany at all, or alternatively they were experienced players who did not want to advance more quickly, because they are aware that advancing too fast is very bad for their logistics and in the long run is detrimental to their trucks and long-run logistics. As an example of that, you can probably look at HLYA's game against jubjub, and I would bet also his game against Zov. HLYA will advance fairly slowly in the south, but that is not because he could not advance more quickly, it is because he believes it is not a good strategy for the Axis to advance too quickly.

So the idea that you can punish Soviets for not defending the south and letting the Axis take it too quickly also assumes that the Axis wants to take the south quickly. But it may not actually be a good idea for them to take it too quickly.

ORIGINAL: Stamb

My dynamic NM idea is not supposed to work only like captured date ahead of histrocial? true/false

As you wrote - the closer historical date is the lower the penalty.

Some cities should not count and be an exception, like Odessa. As clearly it is not possible to hold it for so long.

Right now for VP you have base value and bonus. With a time, bonus points are lower and lower. From +6 to +4 and so on.

You would then also have to have an exception for Kiev as well as Odessa, and likewise for Sevastopol and I would think Zaporozhie, and perhaps Kharkov. That leaves only 3 VP cities in the south which realistically can be held until the historical capture dates - Dnepropetrovsk, Stalino, and Rostov (perhaps Kursk if you consider that the south rather than the center).

This would mean that the Soviet player would still be better off not defending the south or having a minimal defense in the south, and instead making sure that they held other cities in the north and center which can potentially be held for longer, such as Pskov, Smolensk, Tallinn, Rzhev, Kalinin, Tula, and Orel. If Soviets concentrate on doing that, I think they can probably avoid even losing some of those cities in the north/center at all and hold them outright (at least unless Axis makes that their main target in 1942). For example, if Soviets heavily defend the center by re-deploying the entire Southwestern Front there in the first few turns, Axis may never take Kalinin at all, ever. Holding Kalinin alone would be worth 16 VP, which is about the same as the VP cost of losing 3 cities in the south earlier than historical, and while the specifics of your proposed dynamic national morale might be a bit different, similar sort of logic would presumably apply.

I understand this, but there is a huge problem with ahistorically low Soviets losses.

From wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... viet_Union

4.4 mil total losses for 1941 Q3 and Q4. Show me a game where Soviets have such losses. There is no, maybe against an AI.

If Soviets are defending upfront then they will take maybe 3 mil. As a result they have insanely huge army already in first winter.

Check topic about h2h games: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5076008

Try to guess who is winning more. And I think by a huge margin. Part of this is huge army as Soviets has no reason to risk with divisions and fall back while in reality they would be killed for retreating.

Those are also with the Krivosheev casualty figures, which are readily agreed to be far too low for 1941.

I think this is very successful Axis campaign and look on the losses. https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... age=1&key=

Which leads to my point. Can Soviet defend cities in the south - no. Can they delay the advance - yes, and they have to pay for it with their divisions. Otherwise get hit in VP/production/NM.

What do we have now? Retreat, get huge army, smash Axis. It is enough to break through initial defense and most likely there will no second line of defense for the Axis side and there is just not enough divisions.
So you will not only get VP back, you can basically win a game.

Of course there are different AAR that goes into 43 or 44. But they are rare. And probably Soviet players do not understand how powerful retreat is.

Hopefully comrade RedJohn will show it and this topic will bring more attention to this problem

ORIGINAL: Stamb

I understand this, but there is a huge problem with ahistorically low Soviets losses.

I don't disagree about overall casualties. I think if you have Soviet and Axis players that both know what they are doing, Soviet casualties will end up less losses than historical in 1941, mostly due to avoiding major historical encirclements (although I think that Axis casualties in 1941 may also be less than historical, though I am not sure about that).

My general opinion is that it is too hard for Soviets to defend the south, but too easy to defend the north/center. With the artillery patch it was a lot harder for Soviets to defend the north/center, but since that was a result of a bug, now it is pretty trivial for Soviets to hold in the north/center due to the terrain. I think that more historical results might possibly be achieved if it were slightly harder to defend swamp and heavy forest terrain, but slightly easier to defend clear terrain.