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T 55:

Clearing up the pockets leaves the Red Army down by 160k men, 1.8k guns and 80 AFVs - 30 units were lost.

Cherepovets and Volodga are occupied.

Yaroslavl is heavily defended, but I have the numbers to try a direct assault with heavy air support and manage to force the defenders to retreat.

Vladimir is taken as well, trapping 8 Soviet units.

Murom is reached, but not taken this turn since there is stil a Soviet rifle brigade next to it.

Arzamas is taken without any resistance and a small pocket established to the south of it.

Kuybyshev is encircled by 4. Panzerarmee with 2. Armee holding the south and west.

Down in the Kaukasus Batumi is occupied and Hungarian armor is 50km west of Tiblisi.

With 287 VPs I just need another light urban city (Kuybyshev/Ivanovo) or 3 cities (Murom, Cheboksary, Tiblisi) for a decisive victory, 1. Panzerarmee will just stay in the south since it is too far away to make any difference, but I try to send in 22. Panzerdivision from the east towards Tiblisi (air supply of 370t of fuel for them, bringing fuel levels to 106%).

In the center 4. Panzerarmee is resupplied by air for their assault on Kuybyshev. This is the major assault for the next turn and together with the 2 corps from 2. Armee I am fairly confident that the city will fall.


The Red Army lost another 105k men, 1.9k guns and 44 AFVs this turn with the Wehrmacht getting slightly stronger.

I am a bit unhappy about the lack of a Soviet air offensive, sure bombing does seem to have fairly minor effects and the Soviets would surely lose lots of planes, but in a desperate situation like this I would have hoped for some desperate attempts.

T56:

Despite being able to grab 2 light urban cities right at the start and ending the game right then - the AI abandoned Kuybyshev and Ivanovo (which I can understand even less than the AIs tendency to try to move its pocketed to the east inside pockets at this stage of the game) - I decided that I will still this turn like a regular turn.

The northern pockets is getting reduced, but the swamps make this fairly hard. In the end 20 units surrender with 85k troops and 1.1k guns.

In the Vladimir pocket another 8 units with 50k men, 0.6k guns and 88 AFVs are forced to surrender.

In the Kuybyshev pocket another 14 units with 133k men and 1.1k guns are captured by 4. Panzerarmee.

As expected Kostroma has been reoccupied, even isolating my division, but the connection is reestablished without problems. With cav corps defending Kostroma and the river it will not be possible to take it back during this turn.

My infantry gets within 20km of Gorky, replacing some airbases in the process.

Some additional airbases are replaced during 3. Panzerarmees push and occupation of Cheboksary. And I dont get any further since I have reached 290 VPs by this point...

I will still play this turn till the end to take a look at what the situation would be been.

Ivanovo is occupied and Murom is captured.

3. PzA makes it into Kazan (undefended).

A new small pocket is formed to the SE of Saratov.

My RR units trying to link up Stalingrad from the NW get within 80km of each other.

Tiblisi is defended by a CV 11 cav corps in a lvl2 fort, so it stays Soviet.

In the end I would have been at 297 VPs with a total of 54 Soviet units with 313k men, 3.4k guns and 99 AFVs destroyed.

Overall the Red Army lost 9 million men (about 6.2 of those captured), 121k guns and 22k AFVs with the Wehrmacht losing about 1.7 million men (575k killed, 15k captured), 14k guns and 4k AFVs - most of those losses occured during the blizzards.

1268 units were lost to the Red Army, 736 of division+ size, while the Wehrmacht lost no units to combat.

The first Tiger tanks started to be produced, but none made it to the front in time.

During the whole game I did not experience any serious production problems (concerning ressources that is - I still would have liked to put a different emphasis on production, but that is not my job as OKH).

In the air the Soviets lost 15.8k planes (about 25% operational losses) vs. 2.8k for Germany (50% operational losses).

I think I will try to write down some overall thoughts about this game either later today or tomorrow. And I am fairly sure that I will start a new game once the new 1.03 beta 3 is out, since the high defensive values of the swamps were bothering me.

Well played (extremely well) and thanks for the great entertainment!

I wonder how the oil from Baku would impact Axis overall production and readiness...guess we will have to find that out in another game

Production screen and equip. allocation....interesting, either bugged or unrealistic and hopefully it will be fixed (preferably possible to modify by the player). Lots of units competing for the one tank ever produced, Italy's airforce dwarfed by the Romanian one etc.

Major changes e.g. amphib, manpower and airwar seem to be in the pipeline so future games should not play out the same ...

Thank you, and yes, especially the light tanks have me wondering here and I just hope that the Italian airforce being this low is a bug (or maybe all planes went to Africa?).

Concerning the Baku oil since I have not seen any shortages this is something that will most likely only happen in '43+ when the multiplier gets higher.

Any idea what the appropriate difficulty level might be for my next game (Axis again)?

Challenging, hard, something in between?

Due to the blzzard experience I am fairly sure that I will move at least supplies up to 100% during the blizzards.