Adventures in Russia

[larryfulkerson]

The supply levels in the Crimea aren't high eough for sustained operations and the
units are saving up their supply for a good push sometime in mid-October in about
two weeks game time. That's about four turns of rest for the units and they may
not be ready then. They may need more rest yet. I want them all ready to go at
the same time for one good push to see if I can make any headway at all using the
11th Army units.

[larryfulkerson]

There's a spot near Vyazma that spells trouble and I'm not sure exactly what to do.
I've got an infantry unit in one of those horseshoe hexes where three adjacent enemy
units ( stacks ) can attack simultaneously and that's not a good place to be and
the Soviet units are the more stout ones. I'm tempted to pull him back one hex to
get him out of the horseshoe hex.

[larryfulkerson]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the northern front lines right now. I attempted a three-dot attack at
Leningrad with infantry and armor and the Soviets lost 36% and I lost 34% and
now my units are resting from that and I need to rotate the tired ones out of
there and put some fresh ones in to try it again. I'll wait until I can include
the ships in the attack, they were resting last time I got an email from them. I
brought up all the RR arty that was used at Odessa and they have been really
helpful in disentrenching the Soviet units. Half of them are resting right now
because I used them in the three-dot attack and some of them turned yellow.

The Brendenburgers, the paratroops, are foot movement now so I've been parking them
along the river bank as an early warning outpost to allow me to sleep at night. I
used to worry about the Soviets using an engineer to get units across the river
in spots where it's wide open. I'm using the natural defensive boost that the
river gives because I have to defend only at the river crossings instead of along
the length of it.

The railhead for the northern front lines is up amongst the troops building rails
to the east and the front lines along the river bank.

[larryfulkerson]

The 1st Panzer Division's tank element participated in the first attempt to push
over the Leningrad defenders and that was the attack in which I lost 34% and now
the unit is pulled to the rear where supply is better and it's resting because it's
readiness and proficiency are so low that it's not combat ready and won't be for a
while. It's got to fill back up with all the equipment that's missing. That may
take several turns. I've got it's HQ unit parked with it to help out.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what typically happens in places like this one. I pull my units up to a
Soviet one intending to surround it and kill it and I get 1/4 set up and my turn
ends. During the Soviet turn some Soviet units join in our little party. Sometimes
I'm forced backward and have to rethink my approach. Most of the time I can usually
hold what I got until more Axis units show up to help out. Then we have a small
group started. The group get's larger when more units from both sides show up and
then you have the formation of a front line of sorts. I like to outflank them when
that's possible, or at least try to drive a recon unit around the enemy group to cut
off their supply before the take-down attempt.

And a lot of the time there's these Soviet units in the background that watch with
indifference until THEIR trigger is pulled and then they join in. I'm not sure what
triggers them but I think it has something to do with proximity. I'm calling them
lurkers.

[larryfulkerson]

I did a save game of turn 31, zipped it up, and attached it here below for those
of you who want to check something out in detail. Like Rick for example. To see
if the PO is doing what it's supposed to, to get an idea what the losses are like,
or play this game from this point on yourself.

[larryfulkerson]

It's turn 32 and this is the first mud turn and as I predicted the German rail net
collapsed. The supply levels dropped off a cliff. The northrn front lines is the
best supplied area I have and it's poor now. I hate to see what happened to the
supply levels in the south.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

Great stuff as always. Thanks for writing this up.

Have a good day,

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Larry,

Great stuff as always. Thanks for writing this up.

Have a good day,

Hey there Mike. Thanks for the kind words. You're too kind by half. I'm probably
documentating what not to do in a D21 game. I have to admit the red green yellow rule
has made this a different game. The units I'm driving around have more punch than the
same unit if it was yellow or orange or red. I'm keeping them in the green always so
that I can get max performance from them. Aircraft too. I've noticed too, that there
is the occassional unit that can have 48% proficiency and still be green. I have
started to check the numerical number instead of just the color of the health dot and
rest those that are less than 50%. I get a lot of mileage from my aircraft. I've got
the fighters on three-dots still because of the really healthy air shock advantage I
have right now.

The mud season has caused the movement of units to be somewhat less than formally. And
the 0 supply levels has shut down movement or attacking until the levels start to rise
again in about 10 turns. I won't have to retreat, to pull back to good supply if I just
stop operations for a bit. It's going to be a long war I think I can afford a 10 turn
delay in the advance. I was going to have to call a halt anyway because of the low
supply levels.

I've been keeping the bridges fixed that I run across. Supply flows much better over an
operational bridge. I've been giving thought to maybe dropping the bridges immediately
behind the Soviet units to isolate them from their supply source. If possible. Some
paratroopers would come in handy right about now, no wait, they would be handier past
the mud turns. The FJ division is posted near Leningrad on foot because I don't have
any air cap. Or they are foot movement only, one of the two. Also the Brandenbergers.

The game will return to full-time reporting as soon as something significant happens.

[larryfulkerson]

To the east of Kiev I was expecting no supply at all but I see that there's some
hexes that have 1's and 2's in them and the rails only go up to 22. I'll have
to call a halt here too but it's not too bad because the rails are close and it's
headed toward it's customers, and there's 3 RR engineers in this group. Some RR
engineers are by themselves, specifically the RR engineers up in the northern
front lines just below Leningrad. He's building a path to the east to feed the
troops that I'm going to thrust toward Moscow as soon as I take care of Leningrad.

So it's not all bad everywhere, and it's for only 10 turns.

[larryfulkerson]

Down south near Z-town where the supply is turned off I've called a halt to the
advance which is too bad too because I'm getting closer to Stalino and the Soviet
industry that is there. I have no idea whether or not there's a supply point there
but I want it whether or not it's got a supply point. As soon as the supply returns
I'll press further east.

[larryfulkerson]

I've got a pioneer unit that somehow got itself into the hex and now it can't laave.
Way back during the early game phase when the advance was passing through this area
the Pioneer unit moved itself into the hex and now it can't leave and the pestilance
effects have whittled the strength down to nothing because it's got only three of it's
trucks left for equipment. I can't disband it because it's out of supply. I'm
wondering what will happen to it finally.

[larryfulkerson]

Leningrad finally fell after a three-dot attack by an armor unit, which releases the
Finns and I'll use them to kill all the Soviets north of Leningrad and all the German
units will press toward Moscow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T34 before I have moved anybody. Most of the progress is
still being made in the south.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the northern front lines right now. I'm trying to kill all the Soviet units
around Leningrad and the Finns are helping now that Leningrad has fallen they don't
have to abide by the stop line rules any longer and I've got them pushing and shoving
from the north. I'm thinking if I attack from all directions they will give up faster.
This is all possible only because there's enough supply to do it. Out in the field it's
a different story. Whole sections of the front line have no supply at all and things
are at a stand still until the supply levels are good enough to operate again, maybe 9
more turns or so.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the typical supply situation out in the field where the rails aren't very
close. So these units are stood down and are doing close watch operations and
short patrols and not much else. Some of the units are yellow already. There's
no easy way to rotate them back to the good supply areas because they are almost
all indispensable to the maintaince of the front line. I'd like to have a regular
infantry unit on the front but I find that I'm having to use engineers, recon, AT
guns, AA guns, etc. to fill an opening in the front lines. This won't work for
the late game period when the Soviets will have more units yet. I'll just have to
break down the divisios into pieces. The problem with that is that they can't stand
by themselves on the front line without some kind of support, arty or otherwise.
And CS is iffy, depending on the ambient weather locally and breaking down the units
into pieces will lessen the proficiency of the individual pieces slightly. There
are no good answers. Somebody should have said "no" to Hitler about Russia.

[larryfulkerson]

According to my careful calculation I've discovered that the Finns aren't getting
any supply from Helsinki and need a boost from south of Leningrad so I need to move
all the Soviet units away from the city and clear a path for the supply to get to
the Finns. It's a war changer kind of move.

[larryfulkerson]

I was setting up an attack just now and noticed that a lot of my CS missions are
in reorg and can't fly. D'oh. So I'll have to measure my use of the planes for
direct CS missions. Only one plane per battle instead of two, say. I'm wondering
what caused them to go into reorg.

[MikeJ19]

I'm having similar problems near Falaise with my planes reorging. The AA units on the airfields have been reorging almost all game...

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
I'm having similar problems near Falaise with my planes reorging. The AA units on the airfields have been reorging almost all game...

Is your enemy bombing those AA units or something? I've seen planes go into reorg when they get
into a furball and lose a significant number of planes. Or maybe it failed a morale check or
some other kind of check that it needed to pass. I'm not really knowledgeable about what triggers
reorg but I'm fairly sure there's some kind of check that they are failing. The units sometimes
come out of reorg the next turn but sometimes it takes a couple of turns. Same when they riot.
Maybe it sez in the toawlog file what check it's failing. It can be the source of some irritation
in some players. Not much we can do about it. What are you supposed to do for your AA units that
are continually reorging? I guess you could move a land combat unit into the hex with it so that
attacks will spread out their fury on more units than just the AA unit. Or if the attacks are
coming from the air maybe more AA units yet for that hex will suffice. I'm guessing a change is
needed of some kind.