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Flavius, thanks for the tips. Any rifle or cav divs which I build would be solely to faciliate the creation of more rifle and cav corps. Regarding tank brigades, I thought I had to buy them to create tank corps, and I currently don't actually have enough tank brigades to create many tank corps. Most of my rifle brigades are already gone.

I totally agree I need to seize the initiative, but to do so without the proper forces will just put my best troops into a noose. To create multiple echelons of three-stack rifle corps will require vastly more rifle corps than i currently have available, especially given the need to protect their flanks adequately as well. I'll probably get there, but not in the immediate future.

Strip the north to the bone. You really don't need a whole lot of stuff past the valdai hills. Concentrate your forces elsewhere.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Strip the north to the bone. You really don't need a whole lot of stuff past the valdai hills. Concentrate your forces elsewhere.

It is already pretty much stripped (the rifle corps that were there a few turns ago are now in front of Kharkov).

I was actually leaning towards putting a couple of armies (maybe 6 rifle corps and a couple of cav corps) up there for a couple of reasons:
1) the Finns are a pretty easy target at this point, and with limited forces I could force him to bolster them with some German divs;
2) Given the paper thin front, it would not surprise me it Ketza were to try something up there, despite the lack of tank country (note that I have already noted a couple of panzer divisions near Lake Ilmen);
3) Putting some kind of pressure on Lgrad might cause him to divert some troops up North;
4) he also doesn't have any reserves up there so there is some chance a breakthrough up north could lead to an interesting situation, unlike down south where I will just be grinding through multiple layers of fortifications;
4) I want Lgrad back, dammit!

Not convinced?

QBall, thanks for the tips.

I have tried to add sapper and tank SU to most of my rifle corps but have not completed this yet, and need to double-check that I have been as thorough as I thought I was (maybe I overlooked an army, etc.). I do have hundreds of tanks in the pool, maybe thousands of T-34s (not that many KVs, I lost the KV factory in Lgrad).

My vehicle situation is not that great, IIRC, I've got 87/113 or something similar, which is the worst I've ever had. For the rest of this year I think I'll hold off on the mech corps, maybe start building in early 1943. Arty divs are now available, I just noticed them last turn, I need to look at the full list of available units and see what is available at what cost.

I think things will kind of slow down in the fall because of mud, but I've never played this far in a game before so don't know what to expect from the weather (other than no blizzard effects this winter).

Not convinced.

The war is going to be won in the center and south. This is the killing ground of the Wehrmacht -- or the Red Army, depending on circumstances.

If the German wants to run some offensive up north, so much the better.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

If the German wants to run some offensive up north, so much the better.

heh heh, point taken.

While I agree, in general, that attacking up north is not a good strategy due to terrain (and not the place to bleed the Wehrmacht), I do think attacking the Finns pays dividends. Taking Leningrad isn't a realistic goal, but bleeding the Finns is a good idea IMO, and worth an offensive up north.

They get almost no replacements, so bleeding them dry will force the Germans to commit troops to cover that frontage. As a result, the center and south will have fewer guys covering it.

Just my two rubles

So what would you guys say that after having taken Leningrad, the German should do with the Finns ?

ORIGINAL: veji1

So what would you guys say that after having taken Leningrad, the German should do with the Finns ?

I personally would use them in the Blizzard, then figure out an exit strategy for getting them back to the no-move line; either surrendering territory, or replacing them with German units, and sending them back to Finland to build forts.

Between morale losses and attrition, the Finnish Army over time will become Northern Romanians, if you keep them over that line too long.

That's tough to commit that many Germans; another idea might be to rotate Finnish units, so they keep their morale up. That might work, but you can't use the whole Finnish army, IMO.

Turn 72 is over, another mud turn, so not much happened.

He did take out one of the stacks in the Crimea, however:


Frenkly, this result feels very wrong to me: a rifle corp and two rifle divs in the mountain, in a level 3 fort, in mud for chrissake, is taken out in one week? By panzers? Sorry, that's just kind of goofy in my opinion. They shouldn't even be isoloated, but should have beachead supply I thought? In any event, I air-supplied them last turn.

All of his attacks in the Crimea have been blessed with spectacular success, starting with when he broke into the Crimea in the spring. Looking at what forces he still has down there, I wonder if he might make a run at my remaining positions to the west?


There three rifle corps sitting at that bottleneck, and they have been there for months. Fortif level 4. If he pushes me out of this position, I'll be pretty disgusted.

Meahwhile, here is the situation in the far north; it looks like he is slipping Germans up past the no attack line to bolster the Finns.


Finally, I need help with my airforce:


Note that many of my units only have a handful of planes. I tend to send them back to the reerve when the get too small, but how long should it take to build back up?

Can you post a screenie of the production pool for air?
 

Sure, will do next turn. I seem to have lots of planes in the pool.

Turn 73 over, another mud turn, not much happened.

He made another successful attack in the Crimea, in the mountains, in the mud, although at least this time there was no forts or defending rifle corps:


I was able to reoccupy the hex, and air-supplied the stack in the mountains away from the coast.

I forgot to take a screen shot, but recon shows that he still has pretty strong forces in the crimea, including air forces, so will be interesting to see what he's up to. Yikes, I just realized he can make an airborne attack, which might be bad, need to redeploy if not too late. That would not be good...

Someone asked for a screenshot of the production pool:


I have lots of planes and tanks. Tanks makes sense, because I have not built a lot of tank units, but my air units are starved for aircraft, so I'm not sure why they are sitting in the pool.

He has basically stripped most of his front of air units, big clumps in the Crimea, Kharkov, and some near Lake Ilmen. Literally hardly a single airbase between the Kharkov area and Lake Ilmen. He didn't fly a single recon flight between these areas, or really north of Kharkov. This seems rather strange, although his recon planes have been taking a pounding in my bombing raids.

You've got a lot of obsolete regiments. The pools for these models may not be very high at this point.

Generally the AI does a reasonable job upgrading plane types automatically, but if you've got the APs to spare and want to hurry things along, it might be a good idea to manually upgrade of all these prewar regiments. It's getting a bit late in the day for I-15s and 16s and whatnot.

I am actually pretty short of APs, and most of those old planes are in out of the way places, so I doubt I'll bother swapping them out.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I see what's going to happen next turn, but it is too late to do anything now...

One more thing: the 15-bis regiments are set to ground attack missions. If you leave it up to the AI to convert them, they usually flip over to more advanced fighter bombers rather than shturmoviks. This may or may not be what you want. (Some fighter bombers are actually not bad in the ground attack role, especially some of the lend lease types with good range.)

Even though I mostly avoid manual upgrades -- they get very expensive -- I make an exception for these regiments and make sure they become shturmoviks. Once they flip over to any particular shturmovik model, they will continue to upgrade along that path and don't need further micromanagement.

thanks for the tip, I have actually never manually converted any air regiment...

I could be wrong as a lot has changed in the game over the patches, but in the manual it says:
Air Doctrine settings over 100 are allowed,
although for percent required to fly, anything
over 100 would mean no air group units would be available, resulting in no air missions of any
kind being conducted.

This might have something to do with the problem of interdiction as you set it above 100% most of the times. In fact, the one time I read you had a lot of interdiction, it was set at 100%...

Concerning planes, it's not so abnormal that you lose a lot of fighters if you keep or kept the crap fighters for so long. The Germans really tore them apart.
Consider manual upgrades for those units with higher experience and morale. Yak1's are the best, closely followed by the Mig3's. Lagg3's aren't that good (crappy climb and turn) but better then I planes certainly. However, the LA5's are coming in and they are better (or should) than the Yak1's, especially the LA5-FN's which start arriving spring of 1943. When you get these, manually upgrade your best regiments, they will give the Germans a hard time.

Generally speaking, the experience level of the German Gruppe will be sky-high after the huge amount of kills they have done due to not really managing your air force. My recommendation would be to open the commanders report, filter on high experience and upgrade the best to the best planes mùanually and create some elite air divisions which you use to support the most important offensives.

For tac bombers, focus heavily on IL2's. They're beasts. Do the same as with the fighters. It costs only 1AP to upgrade a regiment so it's not that expensive.

Regards to the low CV value for many units, have you checked their experience and morale level? Both things are very important. Really important! [;)]

Great AR!

ORIGINAL: glvaca

I could be wrong as a lot has changed in the game over the patches, but in the manual it says:
Air Doctrine settings over 100 are allowed,
although for percent required to fly, anything
over 100 would mean no air group units would be available, resulting in no air missions of any
kind being conducted.

This might have something to do with the problem of interdiction as you set it above 100% most of the times. In fact, the one time I read you had a lot of interdiction, it was set at 100%...

Actually, usually I keep the interdiction setting at 100%, I only mention it when I increase it. I don't think that the wording in the manual is very clear as to whether increasing the interdiction air doctrine setting will increase the number of interdiction attacks or increase their strength (so few interdiction missions), but everyone seems to suggest that it is the latter, so increasing the interdiction setting above 100% is a mistake, I guess. I would go back and look at past turns to figure this out, but since this is a server game, I cannot do so...

I usually keep my flying threshhold at 25%, but actually try to cycle air units back into the National Reserve once they fall down to 8 aircraft.

ORIGINAL: glvaca
Concerning planes, it's not so abnormal that you lose a lot of fighters if you keep or kept the crap fighters for so long. The Germans really tore them apart.
Consider manual upgrades for those units with higher experience and morale. Yak1's are the best, closely followed by the Mig3's. Lagg3's aren't that good (crappy climb and turn) but better then I planes certainly. However, the LA5's are coming in and they are better (or should) than the Yak1's, especially the LA5-FN's which start arriving spring of 1943. When you get these, manually upgrade your best regiments, they will give the Germans a hard time.

You guys really don't like my biplanes! All of these deathtraps are on quiet parts of the front (Leningrad, Northwest Fronts, etc.) where there is virtually no air activity other than whatever bombing missions I choose to conduct. On these missions, sometimes these old fighters do rather well, other times they get slaughtered, can't figure out why. In any event, I would rather reserve my better planes for the main arena down south. I will probably fly these things until they are all gone, although air regiments with 2-3 planes are not particularly useful.

That said, Flavius is probably right that these units have become so depleted because their production pools are empty, so I need to check that. Also, I have hundreds of better planes in the pool, so maybe if I manually change plane types these aircraft will be transferred from the pool to air units.

Regarding experience/morale: I will try to post a screen shot or some numbers next turn, but many, many of my air units have morale in the nineties, and many have experience in the eighties or nineties, so they are not doing bad.

The air war is going rather strangely, he has focussed his air bases in a few clumps along the front (Ilmen, Kharkov, Crimea), with the center completely devoid of air bases. I will try to post some screen shots next turn.
[/quote]

ORIGINAL: glvaca
Regards to the low CV value for many units, have you checked their experience and morale level? Both things are very important. Really important! [;)]

Actually, most of my CVs are "OK" at this point, the problem is that until I get multiple corps involved, they cannot take on his high level forts, the math just doesn't work. Most of my units have crap experience and morale because they have not had any opportunties to attack, and their attempts at defense are usually unsuccessful.

My Shock and Reserve Fronts are now poised to launch some attacks near Kharkov, we'll see how they go...

Because they suck bigtime!
You should try them in IL2-Sturmovik 1946. A Russian flight sim [;)] you'd know what I'm talking about [:'(] Very good one too.
Speed and climb are very important. Experience is key. Putting great pilots in these crappy planes is a waste!

Just a thought, if you're looking for things to improve upon for the next one, it really pays to check on morale and experience for your ground units. If they're low on morale, pulling them out, I think at leats 10 hexes away from enemy units, with a good leader, is key for them getting back morale. Morale is key for gaining experience upto nationale level.

It really makes a big difference. Don't grind your forces into the ground, after a few succesful attacks pull them back, let them rest/refit, retrain new elements. Get back in.

Good luck with the planned offensives, will be lurking to see how it goes!