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in the centre,
collecting guards and cavalry behind the lines.
All the reinforcement brigade also stay behind drawing reinforcements.

In the South,
crimean skulkers still won't rally
i'm bringing in some reinforcements and shuffling units around.

Turn 21 not much to report.
reinforcement coming online, reorganisation......
north Caucasus MD turned to front, which gave me a gig boost in AP.
i spent some on some extra cavalry divisions It could be useful...
Upgraded a fexw fighter units and changes some arly leaders too.

Turn 22.
snow has come.
the germans did not move, so i keep getting reinforcements in.
Some good units. but many still unready.
16 guards divisions now.

Routed units need an HQ close by, and can be helped by a leader with a good morale rating.

Turn 23
The germans launched an attack against my Crimean defenses and pushed my units.
Otherwise everything quiet.

I launched a few attacks along the front to test his defenses.
I managed to retreat a division and a few regiments but it was rather costly. I suffered 2 or 3 times the Axis losses.

volkov front arrived this turn. I will have to fill it. reinforcements keep coming in. I now have around 5 500 000 men about 3 500 000 of them are in infantry units.

reinforcing divisions keep filling the armies up to 12 divisions.
1st shock army now has a nice 12 guards divisions
My cavalry is grouped by threes. i'll be able to build about 20 cavalry corps.

Front HQs take the RR construction brigades from army HQs , Basically RR brigades are sent to repair damaged rail hexes and then get back to the front HQ instead of the Army HQ . This is annoying and I do not know how to avaoid this. so I reduced my building of Construction brigades and i have launched a campaign of sapper regiments building. I will need bothh RR brigades to to repair the railroads when I will be advancing towards berlin (wishful thinking can't hurt) and sappers for the combat units, so It's not a waste.

I keep upgrading I153 and I16 to better models. Mainly mig 3 and Lagg 3. I have plenty of aircraft in the pool. I'd be more than happy to shift part of my aicraft production into something more useful like tricks or armamament. Tanks should also be plentiful once the brigades will be filled.

I do not know what i will do with all those tank brigades. I'll turn a few of them into tank corps. I might disband the rest of them and build tank support units instead. Cavalry will provide me with about 20 mobile corps. but they will be short on tanks at first. I'm not sure whether tank and cavalry will mix very well and early tank corps will be rather weak and still somewhat short legged..........

More armament would be welcome to fill all those units.

Sounds like you are getting organized, which is good.

Some thoughts from the cheap seats:

Put some of that cav you plan on turning into corps into the shock armies. The extra moral will help them a lot.

Guards units in Shock Armies used to be really good because the bonus moral for each used to stack. That has since been nerfed. You only get the benefit of either the HQ OR the guards unit.

Having said that, I used to put about half guards and half regulars in shock armies. The idea was the guards were strong enough to "carry" the regulars to victory often enough that the shock armies would turn into "guards units generators". I would transfer out new guards divisions and transfer in fresh infantry. Of course, this only matters until you get a fair number of guards units and can't get any more because of the percentage limitations, but until then, it works fairly well. With the change, it makes sense to keep guards units in other armies and regular units in shock armies to a point to maximize the moral bonus to as many units as possible in your army.

Make sure your cav commanders have a good mech combat rating as I believe they are considered mech units.

Goodluck!

Turn 24
Germans did not move.
my infantry divisions concentrated on the frontline.
I launched a few attacks on some weak spots of the Axis line. They were succesfull but costly.
about 17000 axis losses against 50 000 soviet. That's not very promising.
I hope things will get better once blizzard strikes.
 
I have 32 infantry armies along the front. Not all of them are fully organized but there are enough divisions around to bring all of them to 12 divisions.  over 75% of the divisions are ready. However a few turns of heavy fighting would certainly change that.
 
I keep moving factories towards the rear.  Plenty of aircraft factories. 1000s of aircraft are going to pile up in the pools. I already have large stocks. Tanks should not be a problem once the leningrad and kharkow factories get back online and start expanding.
 
Trucks won't be a problem before mid 1943 as I turned all the tank and motorised divisions I could into static mode. My truck pool is full at the moment.
 
Armament will be the bottleneck. from 1943 on I'll probably have to disband all the artillery support units and turn them into on map divisions, unless the production multiples increase later on at the moment it's 300 per factory.
 
Manpower may also be scarce. i need several million more men fo fill my units so i have to be careful, soviets may seem like they can afford unlimited losses but they're quite tight on Manpower, so i have to be careful.
 
Pelton did not go for my army in 1941 so my losses have remained low so far. Also relatively few infantry divisions were lost and i lauched many succesful counterattacks during the summer. so I should soon get a good number of guards units. already 16 guards infantry divisions. by the end of the blizzard i should have many more. this is a top priority. 
 

Turn 25
The Germans reorganised their positions an regrouped their divisions.
My forces launched some attacks. Losses were heavy  68 000 soviets against 28 000 Germans.
however my troops were well rested  and had spent about two months refitting. German forces were forced to withdraw in most places. Only a couple of hold results for around 30 attacks so i hope they will suffer many more casualties during their turn. Cavalry divisions were organised into corps.
all available units were ordered forward to the front. 17 guards divisions by now.
 
Most success was south of Moscow. His positions are strong in front of Moscow and I did not attack. a few attacks by kalinin and NW front.
 
In the South Kharkow and the stalino group may be within reach. i'll see how things turn out. I have many fressh units behind the lines so I think i'll be able to push for a few turns before my offensive runs out of steam; i hope it will be enough to cause significant casualties to the axis forces and reduce their offensive capabiliteis for the summer.
 
somme armamnt factories are comming back online but i keep moving some stuff. so far a little over 200 armament factories running.

Screenshots please?

just have a screenshot of the North for this turn and little happened there . here it comes though

in the north Leningrad front if facing the fins. It has theree armies It's still short of divisions though.
Infantry and tank brigades are all under stavka command at the moment.
Moscow defense zone arrived this turn....... in the Urals.
Apparently this gave a bosst of AP and I may have lost some as I started the turn with 500 APs.
Last turn I built some sapper regiments in the armies, but some were taken by the fronts
what do I need to do to keep support units in the armies?
 
SW front launched a few attacks.
Kalinin front liberated Rzev.
Moscow front launched a couple of attacks.
 
Most attacks were on the southern part of the Front. Over half of the axis frontline  was successfully assaulted.
Many units did 2 deliberate assaults so i was not able to advance in many places.
 
i can't maintainsuch an offensive for more than a few turns before my units get worn out. Hopefully it will be enough to break through the German defenses. Guards and cavalry are still fresh so there is some offensive power in reserve.
 

Given the rate at which Leningrad falls in most of these games - I wondered if it was worth, using the troops that remain in the north, keeping up the pressure on the Finns - since all told their army isn't that large, and try to wear them down over time?

just finished my turn, plenty of reorganisation, took some sceenshots, pressed the end turn button and............
Stuck on sending no response
 
Spent over 4 hours on this one, looks like i'll have to do it all over again

Get an error 99

Looks like it finally worked. I hope it will be fine.

Turn 27 I continued my attacks along the front. most attacks went well but a few very bloody repulses. Many German units were retreated again and some parts of the German front are getting weak.



I now have 26 guards divisions.

About two thirds of my frontline divisions are still ready. Weakened divisions have been put to refit on second line.

I'm pushing slowly. The aim is to cause as many casualties as possible while maintaining my losses low. Aan attack that goes badly gives a result like 150 German losses to 4000 soviet losses. so i do not want that to happen too often



Reinforcement divisions keep trickling to the front line armies.

A third army was taken from western front and assigned to the volkov front. I think I will assign the remaining armies to the Moscow MD and Moscow defense zone.



western front will then be free to take command of the shock armies, which still need to get organised. i'm grouping the cavalry corps into armies under stavka command.



I have three infantry armies in the line under stavka command between caucasus and SW front. waiting for an other front HQ to arrive and take command there.

As I get many retreat results the Germans should suffer quite a lot of casualties during the Attrition phase. Many German divisions are in rather bad shape. Some 1 CV infantry divisions starting to appear. i manages to get a few succesful hasty assaults. There are still some positions too strong for me to assault, but i can try to Bypass them. Those successes should bring me many additionnal guards units. aloso I may have some of my top army leaders promoted so That I'll be able to put them in charge of a front.

My manpower pool which was quite stable up to now has been growing heavily over the last couple of turns. Possible result of the offensive. With combat and attrition soviet and axis loss should be around 100 000 men a turn so far; So the red army suffers, but so does the Wehrmacht. the aim is to kick him har enough to delay the offensive in 1942. so far losses are about 3 000 000 soviets to 900 000 Germans.

In the center I suffered a few setbacks in front of Moscow . Bryansk front also suffered.
i'm regrouping the parachute brigades. I just recieved a big batch of them.
i'm taking the depleted divisions out of the line. however I recieve so many new units that there's little mapower left to reinforce front line units........

The south has been quite successful so far. his units are worn down and I have cleared the fortified line.
I'm now within reach of Stalino.

the Crimea is quiet.
Naval infantry is concentrated around Krasnodar.

Do not forget that you can make landings. A landing behind the German front can be a serious problem for the Germans. Unless you have agreed on any house rules, the Soviets have an enormous landing capability, you can easily land several divisions. Make sure you capture a port though, for the supply.