Sapper 22 Invades his Homeland

[Tom Hunter]

@821 Bobo, I have used this tactic before, if you stack three units you can certainly stop the repair of a rail line you do not want repaired, but you cannot always steer the RR engineer to the one you want fixed.

I find it really funny that I have 11,000 armed men stopping the RR engineers from conducting a useless repair. If the rest of the Red army was that determined the Germans would still be in Poland.

[jwolf]

I find it really funny that I have 11,000 armed men stopping the RR engineers from conducting a useless repair.

Well said!  Your comment shows very clearly the irony of this part of the WITE design.  It's only frustrating for players to have units you can't control be displayed on the map.  Either the player should have some direct control over them, or their function should be abstracted into the background.

If a few of those "11000 armed men" were NKVD that would stop the problem in a hurry!

[Tom Hunter]

Not that Tula in itself is particularly important, but it flanks Moscow from the South. I'm thinking very seriously of forming two shock armies right behind the Bryansk front to come at Moscow from the South. Should I put them in Bryansk or keep them with Stavka? Bryansk is under Timosheko, Stavka is under Zhukov.

I'm fairly happy with attack optimization. Saper222 habit of putting regiments on the front allowed me to bring several divisions to 5 wins, I think they need 11 to start converting to guards. I also slapped another infantry division twice, which ought to beat up its moral a bit, and certainly raises mine.

The Red Airforce continues to join the ground attacks on a larger scale, you can see that in the screenshot. Part of Saper222's defensive strategy is putting airbase forward in the (correct) expectation that the Luftwaffe will fly in and (the no longer correct) expectation that the bombing will mess up my odds and win him the battle instead of me.

The only real downside of this offensive is time, this took me 4 or 5 hours over two days to move.

[Tom Hunter]

Saper222 has given me a small chance of pocketing 2 infantry divisions and a regiment near Moscow. For new players I want to show how I am attacking, and if you’re a veteran and you see things missing please chime in.

In this case I have to use two armies, because I am coming at a hex behind the original front line. 43rd army is coming in from the North, and 4th from the south. 4th is commanded by a 4mech 6 inf with an init of 5 and no hair (Maslennikov) 43rd is exactly the same (Kurochkin) what are they doing, cloning these guys? If you look at the map you’ll see that I could get 4th Cav into action, and two inf and a cav divisions from 43rd. One of the inf is the 258 rifle, which has 12000 men. Each attacking stack has a full stack behind it on Reserve, inf moral is in the 40s, cav in the 50s and one of the armored brigades is in the 50s as well. All the stacks marked R have full reserve status and at least 5 movement points.

The night witches have already bombed and scored a hit. Daylight bombers follow and hit an art, I did not run the attack at a level where I could see the details, but if I got a gun it was likely a good attack. That is the situation before I send in the attack.

[Tom Hunter]

A total of 5 divisions and 6 support units joined the battle. I shot down 7 German bombers, which is a win in of its self. 5 on map units gain a victory, improving my chances of getting guards later in the game. Saper222 has to counter attack to save the forward units, and my armies still have momentum so its possible the German divisions will be pocketed and surrender T31 or 32. The best possible results would be Saper222 committing too many troops to save them and multiplying his losses.

I'm not going to analyze to many attacks this way, but I thought it would be helpful to see how its done. Note that none of the reserve units joined, but sometimes they do.

[Tom Hunter]

I bombed the main fighter base near Moscow before a round of attacks. We had a big furball, and I guess the Luftwaffe escorts were busy, because the 111Hs showed up without them, and found some old familiar foes.

This move my air loss ratio from 1:7 to 1:5 this turn, which is back in reasonable territory, and I am not done attacking.



The attack after this one shot down another 15 bombers. It seems if you pound the losewaffles long enough they get tired and start flying the wrong stuff.

[jwolf]

Too bad Moscow looks like it will be out of reach.  But you're doing well with the winter offensive.  Do be careful once you get to February the Axis forces will recover quite a bit, and then in March they can hit hard.  But enjoy the winter while you can!

[Tom Hunter]

Turn 30

The Red Army advance continues, but a combination of the fading winter bonus and distance from the rail head is slowing progress. I’m starting to switch from a focus on ground gaining hasty attacks to a focus on getting two or three stacks together to hit the Germans with 60,000 or more troops. That seems to produce a lot more casualties than the one to one attacks, and it gives a lot of units a victory, which gets me more units closer to guards. My first guards unit appeared this turn, there are a number of units pushing up past 9 victories, so I think I will have a bunch more before winter ends.

I’m trying hard to steer the RR engineers. It does seem that they want to repair North-South rail more than they want to repair east west. This turn I sent a bunch of the guys working the N-S back to HQ, and blocked the lines they were working on. I am hoping this puts some more effort into the lines I need. Some of my main axis of advance have seen 14 and 18 hexes of progress, but only one or two hexes of rail repair from T22 to T30. If this works I will report back on it.

The game continues to be very strange on the casualty and replacement front. The Red Army has increased in size a lot since T15, and the Germans have shrunk a little bit, Saper222s armor is back so he is not losing tanks, we seem to both be shooting down all the new aircraft production, and I am slowly grinding up his artillery. I don’t think I am killing enough stuff to win but at least some stuff is gone.

Soviet Change since T15 German Change since T15 Axis allies Change since T15
Men 5.7 1.6 3.14 -0.16 1.6 -0.2
Art 52500 17500 32000 -1000 13274 -726
Tanks 2600 500 3000 500 330 -170
Planes 6800 300 2900 100 912 -188

Numbers of troops are in millions all others are what you see. The Slovak airforce is hiding, and I run all planes with moral below 45 back to reserve.

On the map I am threatening Tula and Moscow with forces at the edge of both cities, further North I am somehow threatening Kalinin, and there are troops just a few hexes from Kharkov and Stalino. The Kharkov attack is way past its railhead and running out of steam, but I get the impression Saper222 did not run any trains there either, so I might just take the place. Near Moscow I am starting to pound Sapper and the railheads are closer. Stalino is very much up in the air, we both have a lot of troops and are counter attacking each other vigorously every turn.

I'm starting to deploy troops and forts at various places that I think battles are likely. I'm planning to continue to hammer Saper222 in areas that have good rail support and relatively weak Germans during the snow, and pull back to railheads where I am far from my own supply.

[M60A3TTS]

Don't assign shock armies to Bryansk Front, keep them under STAVKA. Bryansk Front tends to be located between Western and Voronezh-Southwestern/Central Fronts which will have more important roles then Bryansk Front.

[Tom Hunter]

@M60A3TTS

Are you saying this because there is a unique quality to Bryansk front? Or because you usually put it in a place that is less important? I asked about this a few posts ago no one said anything, what is the logic of putting them under STAVKA?

[Tom Hunter]

As posted I am trying to steer the RR repair guys to the places that are important, while they desperately try to subvert the war effort. No wonder Stalin was always looking for spies!

I put the blocking force on the last hex of RR in this pic, and they got by it:

[Tom Hunter]

I also sent a number of units back to headquarters, some of them came back in places that are much more helpful, like on the road to Stalino, which the RR repair abandoned for a while.

One more thing for the Soviet player to watch.

[M60A3TTS]

My Bryansk Fronts tend to end up opposite the Pripet marshes, which is a geographic dead end. Also that front tends to see less fighting in general, so it doesn't give as much experience to armies under it. My shock armies usually get combined with tank armies in '42 and together to form a sort of shock front once southwestern front arrives later in the year. But people do things differently. I think the maneuver armies with STAVKA initially allows you to move them about freely where front armies tend to remain in the same general area.

[Flaviusx]

I also tend to keep shock armies under STAVKA control because I tend to think of them as strategic level assets, either to push forward an offensive, or as a fire brigade to respond to one. They can wind up anywhere along the front depending on circumstances.

It's a lot easier to shuttle them around the front line where needed when they aren't tied down to any single Front. Reassigning armies gives me serious sticker shock.

[Tom Hunter]

I’ve been working on building up my wins to get myself some guards units. I’ve only been pushing at this for 4 or 5 turns, and Saper222 often withdraws to limit the number of my attacks. You can see the results in the table, above 8 wins is easy to see, I have 14 units at 8, another 14 at 7, and 19 at 6. It’s turn 32, so it will be snow (not blizzard, change over is T27) before the units below 6 wins start to get up into the 10 or 11 victories range which makes conversion to guards likely. I have adjusted my attack style and focused more on getting good odds and involving as many units as possible in wins. Still if I had really understood this I would have started earlier. Another thing for the Soviet player to keep track of.

One of the things I noticed while starting on this, the Leningrad front seems to win a lot of battles, it’s a side show, and I keep smacking the Finns around.

Now that we are half way through winter feel I can start to comment on the hard and soft winter discussion. Saper222 has used a careful set of counter attacks and withdrawls and though he has lost a significant amount of territory his casualties have been light compared to historical. If you are not using house rules to constrain the Germans then I would suggest playing with the hard winter, because its not actually that hard. If you are using house rules that stop the big Lvov or other moves I can see why a German player might want a softer winter.

[Tom Hunter]

Near Moscow Saper222 seems to have me held infront of the city a couple of large deliberate attacks failed this turn. North and South of the city his troop concentrations and forts are not as strong, and I have been able to hit him at 2 to 1 or greater pushing back stacks of one or two divisions. You can see I’m on the outskirts of Kalinin in the North. I’ve pretty much switched focus from gaining territory to pounding Germans, I’m ahead of my railhead, Saper222 is close to his, so if I do not advance deliberately I get counter attacked and sometimes routed.

Across the front as a whole Saper222 launched 11 successful attacks and I launched 18, he had no failures he held my attacks three times.

[Tom Hunter]

South of Moscow Tula is looking like a safe bet for the Red Army. Saper222 and I have traded counter attacks here but we are both off the rail net and I have new armies coming into action so I think he will have to fall back. I might even get another German unit, though I suspect he will get away successfully. The green armies to the South are coming North, not driving West. This means they are actually moving a bit closer to the railhead, which is also helping me on this part of the front.

In the air Saper222 has moved up a lot of stuff, and contests just about everything. The results is that I am a little off balance, so I’m starting to move air units from the Southern offensive near Rostov to the North in an effort to unbalance him. Over all I am happy with the air situation, Saper222 shoots down far more of my planes, but there are some air battles that I outright win, and both sides are getting bombed in major attacks instead of the Luftwaffe free for all that happened earlier in the game. Unfortunately the airwar engine seems to reward numerous small flights of bombers, if you send in five raids 10 at a time you get 2 or 3 fighters coming after each raid and they get few kills. If you send 50 with escorts then a bunch of Germans show up and you lose planes. I’m not sure a game is better when it rewards doing small repetitive tasks.

[Tom Hunter]

But not very successfully. This map shows the railhead for most of Russia, as you can see I outran it long ago.

On the bright side there will be a nice big wasteland for Saper222 to march through when the weather changes. I've got 20 RR construction units in play, is that too few?

You can also see the construction units trying to run North South when ever possible, and the line from Stalingrad to Stalino often has no engineer on it all all in spite of my best efforts. It vanished again in T32 after fixing one hex in T31.

Is there a way to see the German rail net? You would think this is something that the combination of spies and air recon would know.

[Flaviusx]

My rule of thumb is: 2 RR engineers per front, and 6-12 more assigned directly to STAVKA. 20 is too low imo.

While your methods of steering railroad engineers are clever, I think it is best to beat the problem by brute force and not be using maneuver forces to herd RR engineers around.

[Tom Hunter]

I've started adding more, but I think you are right it would be wise to start the winter with closer to 30, maybe a few more. I think the Soviets need a combination of active management, numbers and steering in certain places.