European Theatres of Operations Game 2

[82ndtrooper]

the Romanian 1st Guards army has engaged the Greeks.

[82ndtrooper]

and now they pressure Thessalonika

[82ndtrooper]

and the Bulgarians continue to advance on Istanbul, the 7th Army has been given to order to assist in the capture of the Turkish Capital

[82ndtrooper]

I had considered quitting this game due to the Italians not waking up yet but after taking a real close look at things I have decided to continue.

The Hungarians,Romanians and Bulgarians have fought well and are a nice asset, I hope that the Romanian 1st. Guards with just a little help can take Greece and that Bulgaria can handle turkey once we take Istanbul. I will assign to them 3 Alpine Brigades to help since there is a lot of mountains.

This leaves me with 2 full Romanian Armies and the Hungarians 3 small armies to help with Russia.

My biggest concern is producing enough PP, I can produce all the units I need but I cant do that and produce enough PP a turn to raise war footing of the Axis Minors and tech up my armor. This is really slowing me down. I had to pull Luftwaffe from the eastern front to cover the north so that will mean I cant attack Russia until I get Sweden and Norway under control.
So Russia gets more powerful each turn.

If Italy came online right now I don't know if it would help or hurt because I would have to raise its war footing asap and support them in North Africa.

Things are still manageable and this is a very interesting situation I am in , I find that I have little room for error but I still think I can succeed.

Plus when winter hits I have to produce only supply because winter cost me about 16000 extra supply a turn. Hopefully I will have the axis minors war footing at 100% by then and that will really help.

Subs need a little attack boost I attacked 1 cruiser 1 destroyer and 1 sub with 4 subs and killed nothing. They are too expensive to make and are too easily destroyed by planes to not have a strong attack.

[krupp_88mm]

is it possible to add a modification that non-aligned countries put 1/2 or 1/4 their production into war footing, just to lessen the sting of a long period of inactivity, namely the italy situation.. as it is historical their war footing would raise slowly the more things heated up in europe

[82ndtrooper]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

An idea for naval a/c - why not split them into fighters and strike?  That way a player can outfit his air groups to perform whatever role he likes.

Naval fighters by the end of WW2 were as good as land based, while small air groups on escort carriers would often be entirely strike types for anti-submarine work in the Atlantic, US Light Carriers usually had about 70% fighters and only a few Avengers for ASW patrols - their role was CAP.

Originally they were going to be about 1/3rd each figher, dive bomber and torpedo.

So at each air-tech level you might have 3 different air-group types for naval - fighter, strike & mixed - mixed would be similar to the Naval in WaW with some AA, some anti-ship and some general bombing capacity if the player wanted to field mixed groups.

Good ideas mate however thats the way it already is in the scenario[:)]

[RufusTFirefly]

ORIGINAL: krupp_88mm

is it possible to add a modification that non-aligned countries put 1/2 or 1/4 their production into war footing, just to lessen the sting of a long period of inactivity, namely the italy situation.. as it is historical their war footing would raise slowly the more things heated up in europe

Thats a very good idea. I think the war footing needs a major rework.

For example Russia has come in two turns ago. Its war footing is at 20 percent. There is a long way to raise it up to 100 percent, in case every step will increase war footing by 6 percent as it is done for western allies. Beside PP, that have to be produced to raise war footing, there is staff needed as capacity of all HQs is at 20 percent. And supply is needed as well. No matter whether I decide to produce staff, supply or PP, there is a much to low increase in any way and a severe lack in the other fields. In case Axis had attacked Russia instead of Norway or Sweden, russia would have been overrun. I dont see how Russia would be able to survive til 45 at these circumstances.

Of course Axis has to produce supply, and therefore there is not sufficient production for PP to increase war footing for Italy. But western allies have to deal with the same problem as Greece, Turkey, Sweden and Norway came in at low level of war footing (45 percent) and have to stand the attacks of Axis before any major increase of war footing is possible.

[82ndtrooper]

I am not sure yet the war footing needs to be changed at all. Russia is huge and has massive resources and if you concentrate on war footing it will come up fast. The thing thing about war footing is every time you raise it you make it that much easier to raise it.  Thankfully you can only use a raise war footing card once per turn.

If I invaded Russia now it would take me a long time to get to Moscow, the distance is vast. Its so big I dont know if I could ever take it all. I simply dont have a large enough military to cover the whole country right now.
also don't forget those special supplies that you can produce as the west that aid Russia, lend lease I think they are called. Make some of them and tell us what they do please.

I just realized that Russia is also low on supply if this is the case then they need to start with a higher war footing. No one can fight if they cant make enough supply.

[GrumpyMel]

We'll see how it plays out, but the Soviets starting army as well is thier production is pretty huge compared to Germany's. If they started with a decent war footing, they'd just steam-roll the Axis. I'm not sure if 20 is the right number or not....but essentialy the Axis can't afford to give them enough time to get thier war footing raised significantly before they've conquered a large portion of thier production and destroyed a large part of the Soviet millitary.
 
Essentialy it's a race between the Soviets getting thier house in order and the Germans doing enough damage to push them beyond the point of no return....at least that's the way I had intended it should play out most times. Of course there is also the issue of the Allies, US War entry and the Axis having to worry about a 2nd front.

[RufusTFirefly]

Ok, I understood the idea behind your settings for Russia.

But I think you weakend Russia too much. This turn Russian army needs 38000 supply, warfooting is at 20 percent. Last turns I deployed some staff to increase staff levels up to 30 to 40 percent in the HQs, and accumulated 73 PP. This turn I will produce no staff, 60 PP and 11000 supply. So I will be able to raise war footing for the first time up to 26 percent and HQs will have a third of needed supply and a third of needed staff.

We will test if Russia has any chance to survive. But I guess it wont.

[82ndtrooper]

OK I will attack Russia when I would have normally attacked.

Since things have gone surprisingly different in this game I am unable to attack Russia right now and do it like I would normally do it.  I can see that Russia troops on the border have very low readiness and I could gain an advantage by attacking them right now. But I don't think its fair because i would already destroy them at 20% war footing and for them to be starving too would not be right.

I cant attack now due to the unexpected joining of Sweden,Turkey and Norway with the allies. This has caused me to strip my air cover from the Eastern Front and use it to cover the north and South. So I cant attack Russia right now because of that, I normally would never attack without air cover and I wont.
Also I really need to continue to raise the allied minor war footing to 100% asap while i can because when Italy wakes up I will have to switch to raising its war footing. I also need to save up enough PP to research either guns-II or Armor-II.

So playing as I normally would I estimate a minimum of 3 months (6 turns) which would mean October and that's not the best time to start an Invasion of Russia.

PS: the turn report and lots of screen shots in a little while

[explorer2]

ORIGINAL: RufusTFirefly
But I think you weakend Russia too much. This turn Russian army needs 38000 supply, warfooting is at 20 percent. Last turns I deployed some staff to increase staff levels up to 30 to 40 percent in the HQs, and accumulated 73 PP. This turn I will produce no staff, 60 PP and 11000 supply. So I will be able to raise war footing for the first time up to 26 percent and HQs will have a third of needed supply and a third of needed staff.
We will test if Russia has any chance to survive. But I guess it wont.

This is the HUGE problem of testing any WWII scenario that has Barbarossa in it. If it's going to be anything close to accurate historically, SU MUST be in desperate condition until spring of 42, and I mean desperate. BUt then GE is taxed perhaps a bit too much unless they've played it perfectly and SU, still pressed really really hard, is surviving.

When playing as SU, it can look impossible. But SU can't see what GE's situation is, and it's hard to see the results of massive production coming later.

This scenario may be grossly imbalanced, or it may simulate history better than any previous ones. It's just impossible to say until you've played it out several times.
I know it can be really really discouraging and look impossible, but the only real way to know is by playing it through.

Good luck to all of you in testing this VERY impressive looking scenario

[GrumpyMel]

ORIGINAL: RufusTFirefly

Ok, I understood the idea behind your settings for Russia.

But I think you weakend Russia too much. This turn Russian army needs 38000 supply, warfooting is at 20 percent. Last turns I deployed some staff to increase staff levels up to 30 to 40 percent in the HQs, and accumulated 73 PP. This turn I will produce no staff, 60 PP and 11000 supply. So I will be able to raise war footing for the first time up to 26 percent and HQs will have a third of needed supply and a third of needed staff.

We will test if Russia has any chance to survive. But I guess it wont.

We'll see what happens. Bare in mind that you can also tweak supply settings for units and determine which ones you want to feed and which ones you don't. One potential strategy is to pick the parts of your army that you think are not likely to get hit and just let them starve while you devote production to raising your war-footing, etc. You could even strat move units that you designate as non-combat ready to the rear and use them as a sort of reserve force.

It's entirely possible that 20 warfooting is too low...but that's what play-testing is all about. Bare in mind that 20 percent war footing does NOT mean that your units are fighting at 20 percent combat effectiveness. They would actualy be fighting at 60 percent. The formula is (100 + war footing)/2. Still no match for a german unit man for man, especialy if it's got experience.... but you should be able to afford to loose alot more men then germany can.

[82ndtrooper]

what does the lend lease supply things that the allies can produce do ? 

[82ndtrooper]

ok first a look at what i produced for this turn.

also this is an unusually good combat results from his turn.

[82ndtrooper]

and scrolled down

notice i am producing a lot of planes and armor right now. This is because i have to create air units to defend Sweden Norway and Turkey if I can conquer them and the armor units are to create a panzer division for each of my Romanian Armies. I will just create one for each so they will remain Infantry armies.

The CantZ506 are sea planes I am building for anti ship duties. I am curious how well they will perform.

[82ndtrooper]

now about that combat result, what happened was he attacked Breast France and i had put a lot of Flak there and all those planes seemed to have got shot down by the flak. None of my planes intercepted so it was just the flak.
He did knock out the town but the flak was very effective and that is good to know.

[82ndtrooper]

now a look at the Turkish front and this is before i attacked and took Istanbul.

I am glad I ordered the 7th army to assist the Belgians because i took heavy losses in this battle and it will take a couple turns to get the 7th back up to full strength.
The Belgians alone would have taken a real beating and may not have been able to take Istanbul.

[82ndtrooper]

this is the Greek Front and the Romanian 1st. Guards have continued to push south alone but finally the Waffen SS is catching up to them

[82ndtrooper]

and a look at the Romanian 2nd and 3rd Guards on the border with Russia. These are the two armies i am creating the new Panzer divisions for.