GC41 Exalted tests the axis allies

[exalted]

Turn 21
Winter arrives with cold weather and a removal of nearly all mud from the map and blizzard in the northernmost areas. While most everyone north of PzGrp 2 hunkers down for the winter with only counterattacking and routing weak soviet units being on the menu. The forces in the south dash to make some final gains before blizzard, I would like Stalino and Kharkov and both are doable in a 2-3 turn time frame. Which is possible if Blizzard doesn't strike the major part of the south before december. Well lets hope.

Turn 21, Southern Sector, lots of action for all nations..jpg (210.98 KiB) Viewed 1612 times

Southern sector sees a breakthrough created by the 17th army and various Italian manned corps while the Rumanians take up position covering the ground to the west waiting for 11th army to dash towards Stalino. PzGrp1 exploits the gap in the soviet lines and reaches the outskirts of Kharkov, which could be assaulted or surrounded in turn 22. At least that objective seems achievable.

Some italians do make great strides for the cause here are some examples but the losses in such attacks seem rather steep compared to those germans suffers with the same odds.

Turn 21, Italians do good.jpg (96.29 KiB) Viewed 1612 times

Turn 21, Italians do good again.jpg (90.7 KiB) Viewed 1612 times

So on to a real victory for last.

Turn 21, United facists of europe to victory.jpg (85.74 KiB) Viewed 1612 times

[exalted]

Turn 21, Romanian elite on the attack!.jpg (88.24 KiB) Viewed 1611 times

Romanians also launches an attack with what looks like overwhelming force when launched but both FoW and the final CV are disappointing.

[exalted]

Several turns in a row today since I couldn't put up any turns yesterday and those axis allies have been working hard from turn 24 and onwards.

Turn 22 - Winter is here
Mostly little movement as I surround Kharkov and move into the salient created last round as well as some hard fighting by PzGrp 2 to link up with the main offensive. For the rest of the line some soviet probing attacks but mostly complete calm as 11th army moves up for an assault towards Stalino but waits for optimal circumstances to start the fighting.

Turn 22 Souther Sector, Kharkov Surrounded.jpg (182.54 KiB) Viewed 1573 times

Also attempting to redress the lines towards Stalino and prevent soviet counter offensives so some fighting by the forces north of Dnepropetrovsk.

Turn 22 Italian Infantry vs Tank Division Who really won.jpg (85.5 KiB) Viewed 1573 times

Italian infantry wins a dubious victory against a Tank Division. Sometimes you wonder who got the better of an exchange.

Turn 23 was lost in time and space somehow but saw mostly the beginning of the Stalino offensive and increased offensives in the same areas as before but over the next few turns up to 27 the soviets would loose an average of 200k men a turn in brutal fighting for all of December never had this intense fighting usually I end offensive operations sometimes before real blizzard starts.

Turn 24, Southern Sector, Blizzard Counter Offensive.jpg (239.63 KiB) Viewed 1573 times

My blizzard counter offensive hits basically all weak soviet divisions along the line from 2nd pzgrp up to narva, routes and shatters several units.

I also decide that I want a more advantageous line between Kharkov and the 4th Army which would gain my about 5 hex to defend. The plan is later abandoned in favor of reaching Kursk but that did seem impossible at this time.

Turn 24, Southern Sector, Stalino Winter Offensive.jpg (258.5 KiB) Viewed 1573 times

In the south between Kharkov and the sea of Azov a double rail link is identified as critical for the supply situation and a reasonable line between Kharkov and Stalino would shorten the front by 9 hexes which would make it a lot easier to refit and build up some troops for the spring offensive. Orders are given to attempt this ambitious winter goal half disbelieving that it would be possible to accomplish.

The fury of half the italian army, the entire rumanian army and numerous german formations is unleashed along the front.

[exalted]

The next few turns include a lot of fighting from all nations of the axis and I won't comment on each battle but in general I think with the modifications I've put in they do preform reasonably. They are still reduced to <1 CV when manhandled and tired but can accomplish their goals against soviet formations when used wisely and in great numbers. Most importantly they don't rout at the first defeat and no longer seem to suffer the excessive casualties they do in an unmodified game. Are they worth keeping germans in the west for? Probably not but they are capable of fighting and advancing against the soviets in this period of the war even thought the hard fighting does require german support or one of the elite italian formations like one of the italian armored and some elite alpini like 3rd Julia. Maybe some formations have 5 or so moral too much but it is really fun to be able to use the Axis Allies as something but garrison troops.

If they have any excessive weakness it is probably that their leaders make fighting a real gamble when not using decent german commanders. Some of them could probably have a few 6's here and there to make it a little bit less of a game of chance to use especially the rumanians.

All in all I'm actually satisfied with the axis allies performance in December 41 the hardest month of the war even if they where mostly reduced to <1 CV at the end of it.

Turn 24 Slovaks, Italians and Germans United.jpg (89 KiB) Viewed 1570 times

Turn 24 Rumanians choose not to retreat.jpg (81.1 KiB) Viewed 1570 times

Turn 24 Romanians Performing.jpg (83.61 KiB) Viewed 1570 times

Turn 24 Romanians Performing kinda.jpg (86.47 KiB) Viewed 1570 times

[exalted]

Turn 24 Romanians Performing kinda 2.jpg (73.09 KiB) Viewed 1569 times

Turn 24 Romanians Overpreforming.jpg (90.23 KiB) Viewed 1569 times

Turn 24 Overwhelming Italian Attack.jpg (86.15 KiB) Viewed 1569 times

Turn 24 3rd Julia is overwhelming in defense.jpg (91.09 KiB) Viewed 1569 times

[exalted]

Turn 25
As mentioned before December 41 will be one of the periods with the highest losses during the war on both sides with the soviets loosing nearly 1million men during these five turns. In turn 25 this includes 51 routed soviet divisions, some shatters and some retreats.

Turn 25 High Combat losses 51 routed soviet divisions.jpg (18.68 KiB) Viewed 1568 times

The goal of the turn had been to inflict damage on the soviets so that their Blizzard offensive would be weakened and it succeed above all expectations even if there are little territorial gain. Basically most soviet hex along the line from Narva to Stalino was attacked.

Turn 25 Southern Sector, little territory gained but attacks along the entire front.jpg (226.63 KiB) Viewed 1568 times

Some more examples of axis allies fighting hard or something.

Turn 25 Romanian mobile forces destroy soviet armor.jpg (86.87 KiB) Viewed 1568 times

Turn 25 Italians retreat in good order.jpg (88.31 KiB) Viewed 1568 times

[exalted]

Turn 25 Italians attack, low enemy losses.jpg (95.67 KiB) Viewed 1566 times

Turn 25 Italians move some soviets.jpg (87.69 KiB) Viewed 1566 times

Then two examples of the Italians retreating in good order, not something they usually do well in normal cases.

Turn 25 Italians retreat in good order again.jpg (85.57 KiB) Viewed 1566 times

Turn 25 Italians retreat in good order.jpg (88.31 KiB) Viewed 1566 times

[exalted]

Turn 26
Even more furious fighting as blizzard continues and the soviet lines start to look very ragged in the south while they actually do shift some regiments and even divisions of germans along the front from Smolensk to Pskov. These retreats are considered temporary setbacks however and there is room up there to loose a few hexes here and there and retreat in good order. Basically I wonder if the AI isn't a bit too aggressive during the blizzard turns if it isn't strong enough to pull of an offensive wasting men and CV to little point in the south at least.

Turn 26 Southern Sector, More furious winterfighting.jpg (259.06 KiB) Viewed 1563 times

The lines doesn't advance much but the plan set up on turn 24 does start to seem not just feasible but perhaps even a bit conservative. Various german formations are moved into place to take advantage of the apparent soviet weakness.

Turn 26 132nd Ariete to new victories.jpg (87.97 KiB) Viewed 1563 times

132nd Ariete and 3rd Julia have started to be my personal heroes of the campaign, a lot of hard fighting and more or less always delivering.

[exalted]

Turn 27

Turn 27 Rommel and Manstein find and opening and rush towards Kursk, soviet lines disintegrates....jpg (206.47 KiB) Viewed 1561 times

Two major developments during this turn, first of all pzGrp2 sees the weakness in the soviet line as a possibility for breakthrough and before them the soviet line collapses. New goals for pzGrp2 is to start a few hexes from Kursk at the start of the spring campaign so that it falls within days of spring arriving. Also hard work from the Italian forces west of Kharkov including mobile Celere and Mot Formations pressing the soviets back. The soviets have more routed than active units in the area it feels like.

Turn 27 Von Vietinghof and Fretter-Pico Disobeys orders to stay in cities or forts for the winter.....jpg (218.16 KiB) Viewed 1561 times

Second development is my resting tank corps both XXXXVI Mot Corps (4PzDiv's) and LVII Mot Corps (2 It Arm Div, 1 Mot Div) finds the ability to link up with 11th army and actually create a pocket in the middle of winter probably collapsing the soviet defenses west of Stalino. Sure most tanks in both corps broke down but they might recover, even thought the plan had been to keep them out of the fighting in Urban and Fort 2 areas but well it was too tempting and too big a win to miss.

[exalted]

Turn 28

Turn 28 11 Soviet division pocketed, 240k soviets lost during the turn..jpg (171.45 KiB) Viewed 1511 times

A very good day during the blizzard as soviets loose a quarter of a million men and a lot of them are captured, still my entire army is out of steam and the soviets are about as bad off so it will mostly be flailing back and forth from here with very limited gains for a few turns.

Turn 28 2nd PzGrp, Nearly at Kursk.jpg (239.36 KiB) Viewed 1511 times

2nd PzGrp close in on Kursk.

Turn 28 No real news on the northern front.jpg (252.21 KiB) Viewed 1511 times

Not much happening in the north some of my weakest lines north of smolensk sometimes get shifted where there are only regiments on the line but not much action otherwise but thought it was time for an update even on the boring front.

There is also some fighting and I wonder about how damage is calculated in some of these battles.

Turn 28 Italians do well but why.jpg (86.57 KiB) Viewed 1511 times

[exalted]

Turn 28 Sometimes even rumanians inflict 20 times their own casualties.jpg (77.81 KiB) Viewed 1509 times

Turn 28 Low damage from both sides.jpg (83.31 KiB) Viewed 1509 times

Turn 28 How are causalties really calculated.jpg (80.37 KiB) Viewed 1509 times

The next few turns aren't very interesting so they will go quickly with an update a few turns onwards since little battle is happening. But turn 30 had a good one.

Turn 30, Rommel improves WHAT.png (13.52 KiB) Viewed 1509 times

Noticed a few more improvements have these become more common?

Frequently happening to my mid tier commanders so some of the improvements even matter

[Stamb]

I really like how you name your images

[exalted]

Thanks

Its part of my process of remembering stuff after playing 2-3 turns, like why the hell did I think this could be interesting.

Looking at the spring I'm going to have to start to disbind the lower moral italian divisions, even with a huge manpower pool after blizzard with close to 1 million men in it is starting to disappear quickly. Especially the italians.

It really is a bother that there isn't a manpower setting you could set to 150 percent or something because the italians have decent production. It would also be a nice setting to increase when you don't want to play against a 120 AI which simply does magically / cheating well.

[exalted]

So after a lot of mud and stuff lets go to turn 45, the Heer and its allies have readied for a spring offensive and mud has disappeared at least in the south (the important part of the map). The most interesting event during those turns was probably the Luftwaffe returning to the battlefield after blizzard concentrating 100% of its available force between Kharkov and Kursk in aid of the spring offensive and this little message promoting one italian commander to vague competence.

Turn 40, Giovanni Messe becomes a competent commander.png (19.71 KiB) Viewed 1440 times

Turn 45, Status Spring 42.jpg (102.01 KiB) Viewed 1440 times

In my experience the most important measures of success in War in the East is the size of the Soviet Army and it is of a manageable size. Second I have a considerable advantage in manpower pool which will be somewhat drained during the next turns as I still have some divisions with low ToE. Third soviet casualties have reached nearly 6 million a nice figure it could probably be higher but it isn't really a to bad figure for rather less than optimal play

[exalted]

Next to the status of our unmatched and essential troops the axis allies, did disband three italian inf divisions to get some manpower loose but the situation is stabilizing, might have to disband a few more once the offensive gets going but I got a lot of them.

Turn 45, the might of the Italian Army.jpg (227.87 KiB) Viewed 1437 times

The Italians actually look pretty good and have been fighting hard, probably due to halfway decent mostly german commanders they have increased their Moral a lot and are in excellent shape for the upcoming fight. It is probably the small divisional sizes and poor equipment that limits their CV values the three armored divisions will likely fall very quickly in CV.

Turn 45, the not so mighty Rumanian Army.jpg (223.5 KiB) Viewed 1437 times

The Romanian army has been doing so so at best during the campaign so far and it is always a struggle to get any useful work out of them. Still on paper V Rum Corps have a lot of combat power probably because its last engagement was before the fall of Crimea and it has been sitting in Kerch since.

Still some decent CV here and there but even with increased nm few units have actually gotten above 60 moral due to poor leadership I'm guessing since it feels like the Italians are doing considerably better on that front.

Could note that 1st Rum Armored for a while was one of my highest CV units but this is due to some very nice attached german units adding nearly as many men as the original division.

Turn 45, the sleepy hungarians.jpg (96.14 KiB) Viewed 1437 times

Not too many hungarians active yet and the two armored divisions are attempting refit in the reserve. Still those brigades that I got have been useful temporarily serving under the 2nd PzGrp around Kursk but now transferred to other units. Still even slightly buffed they are not exactly overpowering

[exalted]

Turn 45, Axis forces.jpg (204.84 KiB) Viewed 1433 times

Some rough positioning of the Axis forces. Italians and Hungarians are something of a mess but most of them rapport to the 4th PzGrp and 2nd Army but some from corps directly to Army Group South.

Turn 45, Operational Map 42, the mad plan.jpg (502.01 KiB) Viewed 1433 times

The plan for 42 is primarily focused on Ryzan and Stalingrad. Neither are I think really good objectives but if there was a Hitler around he would want at least some ambition put into the plan. So basically get to Ryazn to have a jump off to make Moscow the primary target of summer 43. Stalingrad to be able to isolate Caucasus in 43 even thought I will go for Astrakhan if it is even remotely possible.

[exalted]

Puh that was one heavy turn to plan and execute but it is done!

Turn 45, Summer Offensive Starts
Setting everything soviet to 120 felt heavy but really they probably need it, 41 has gone very well even if the territorial gains might be less than some axis players accomplish it feels like the losses inflicted are very nice compared to the AI games I've played before which should make the AI foldover completely in 43 if I don't increase the settings.

Turn 45, 1st PzGrp on the Rampage 27x inf div surrounded.png (1.87 MiB) Viewed 1407 times

The 1st PzGrp "easily" link up with the 11th army mobile elements. This cuts off a confirmed 27 inf divisions but probably quite a few more formations. Hopefully it collapses the defense in the direction of Stalingrad and Rostov. Still infantry bounced on the soviet front line so 1st pzGrp and the 11th army pz pretty much did all the hard lifting.

In some ways the decent weather happened to early leaving some newly trained in pz's and fresh infantry out of the fight.

Turn 45, Not so easy for the 2nd pzgrp.jpg (227.51 KiB) Viewed 1407 times

2nd PzGrp had a bit more difficulty to break through look at that hex with 4 attacks on it. Shit I don't know how many reserve activation's they got on each defense. After seeing the result I really did go in the wrong direction, should have gone east and attempted to link up with 1st pzGrp surrounding I don't know how many more soviet divisions. 4th Army and some other infantry also start pushing but the main point is thinning out the frontlines.

While the axis allies mostly help with holding some hexes there is some interesting data on the effects of one turn of combat on the armored forces.

Turn 45, Axis Armor pumped up to the max.png (858.08 KiB) Viewed 1407 times

Armor before one turn of attack.

Turn 45, Axis Armor after 1 turn of offensive operations.png (899.53 KiB) Viewed 1407 times

After a turn of attack, is it reasonable? Possibly but 2nd PzDiv went from 42 -> 11 CV after two successful attacks. It doesn't feel reasonable.

[Stamb]

After a turn of attack, is it reasonable? Possibly but 2nd PzDiv went from 42 -> 11 CV after two successful attacks. It doesn't feel reasonable.

50% CPP drop in any attack is doing its job.

for example here panzers just steamrolled poor FZs and as a result in 3 attacks they went from 11.9 CV to 5.6.

[Stamb]

but yeah, it does not make any sense

[exalted]

Actually I think its worse than CPP drop since CPP drop stacks with losses in supplies/ammo/fuel and stacks with building up fatigue.

It would be a lot better to have CV drop less and be lower CV from start. A CV 42 division is never going to have CV 42 unless it happened to start next to an enemy division and since you don't know what CV it will have after a movement how the hell are you going to plan without constantly putting excessive force it just becomes a chain of gambles unless you over commit (this in turn encourages going for a strategy of destroying soviet forces rather than pushing for strategic objectives). This is one of the things that I dislike and think is worse in WITE2 compared to how things where in WITE but it is still a superb game.

Well lets go with next turn.

Turn 46.

Turn 46, 1st PzGrp surrounds another 15x inf div.png (1.98 MiB) Viewed 1354 times

The southern sector is rather successful we have more surrounded soviets than we can handle with italians and other misc forces, reminds me of early 41 in fact. Even as displayed CV on soviets and often actual CV on soviets is skyhigh with soviet divisions usually having higher CV than german ones at least according to my scouting rapports. Certainly makes me cautious.

Turn 46, 2nd PzGrp surrounds some soviets.png (2.38 MiB) Viewed 1354 times

Was a bit worried about the 2nd PzGrp's objectives when it had to fight through a three deep line of entrenched soviet divisions last turn but suddenly Orel is partially surrounded and about eight additional soviet divisions fall into a pocket. Perhaps the soviets are weaker than I thought if I can get them out of their prepared defenses.

Turn 46, the kind of victory that is a Rumanian Specality.png (632.66 KiB) Viewed 1354 times

Last but not least a glorious rumanian victory my only real axis ally fight of the turn. How the **** do I get these kind of results? Its obviously not moral based or at least not entirely moral based and the combat ratio is ok