TGW v1.8 playtest

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how the air war is going right now. Soviet planes are STILL falling out of the sky. I would have thought they would have
run out of planes by now. They must be making a boat-load of them. Or maybe Lend Lease is helping out.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the Odessa area now. I'm just on the verge of breaking into the Crimea.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T14 front lines. I'm seeing a large contingent of troops in the middle when I really need some more troops in the
north. I'll get after it.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally captured Leningrad in late T15, I lost count of the rounds of combat expended. I THINK this is the end of the first
combat round to be honest. I need a nap.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, here's the T17 front lines and the supply net has collapsed this turn so I'm putting a moritorium on movement and attacking.
So these front lines will probably look pretty much the same for a bunch of turns until about T30 or so. I'm going to keep looking
for things to attack with the aircraft to keep the Soviet loss count high and I'll process the RR engineers each turn and there's a
couple of 1 hex MP's garrison units that I'm moving to a rail somewhere but other than that I guess most of the game will be quiet
for a while.

[larryfulkerson]

Here in T18 I was going through the aircraft assigning missions according to the readiness of the unit and I found a unit that's
glowing yellow health-wise and I looked into it and it's because they are down to their last 11 HE-111 aircraft and the unit usually
has about 32 or so. So I thought maybe they should be relegated to a quiet section of the front lines so losses would be low
but then I thought.....every little bit helps.....so I thought I'd put them into the thick of the fighting until they lose one more and
then park them at the museum in Berlin.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, I wanted to say also that I thought I'd restrict the range on the unit to make them fly over only one small
section of the front lines to keep the losses low.

[larryfulkerson]

So here's an update: I've been working the RR engineers and the relavent pioneers to repair the rail and rebuild some bridges
but mostly everybody has been digging in and standing fast. Around turn 30 or so the Soviets started attacking and I've lost
a couple of hexes already. The supply isn't up and running yet so I'm having to give ground. D'oh. But everything else is
coasting right along. I expect some supply soon.


EDIT: Oh, yeah, and I wanted to say something about the Soviet attacks.....they must be three-dot attacks because I'm seeing
whole Rifle Divisions evaporating in their attacks on my units. There's been about half a dozen such cases so far. I'm running
really low on supply and some of the arty tubes are out of ammo already. Those I'm going to rail to Berlin or somewhere so they
can fill up again. This not having ANY supply really hurts the advance.

[larryfulkerson]

As you can see the supply came back in T38 partially. The war is on again. My units can move and attack like they used to.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how the air war has been going on the last couple of turns. The Soviets are putting worn out planes, tired seldom trained
pilots into the sky with the world's best pilots with the latest fighters so that the only defense the Soviets have is the weather.
It's springtime and there's storm clouds all over the place. Lots of muddy fields on the map.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the view of Sevastopol now. I'm leaving a hole in the front lines around the city to allow the occupants to leave the hex and
my three-dot attacks are just trading losses and nobody is moving. I'm going to have to bring in a lot of arty to pound them for a
week or two.....maybe a month. The trouble is that the supply levels are way too low for sustained combat ops south of the bottleneck.
So this operation may take until '43. I hope not.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how the air war is going in T40. Same as T39 and several turns before that the carnage continues. I'm wondering
how much longer the Soviets can field some aircraft. My numbers must be inflated by enthusiastic pilots.

[larryfulkerson]

I estimate another two months of game time for the railhead to reach Kiev. The southern front is still suffering from no supply in some
areas and the advance can't continue defending in this condition. I may have to pull them back a lot to get them into the supplied
areas.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a view of the supply problem down south and the extent I may need to pull back. And with all the Soviet attacks my units
are getting tired and worn down and this is not a good thing.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally captured Sevastopol. I moved some of my siege units and allowed the enemy units to leave the hex because it's a
supply point and when I captured that the enemy units were out of supply and collapsed rapidly when attacked.

[larryfulkerson]

I found a weak spot and pushed and shoved and destroyed some Soviet units and voila, I have a breech to pour units through. I'm
going to strip the front lines and find those units that absolutely need to stay where they are and move the rest to this breech. One
good thing is that the rail travels from the north end to almost the south end so moving those units won't be major hassle. Keeping
the momentium going is going to be hard because of the lousy supply situation. I think I'll move the RR engineers up north again
just to lengthen the rail to include the path of the advance. That will stall the movement in the south entirely probably but the rail
in the north seems more important right now.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, I've been moving units and this is what the Moscow area looks like now.

[Cmdr_Vessery]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I finally captured Sevastopol. I moved some of my siege units and allowed the enemy units to leave the hex because it's a
supply point and when I captured that the enemy units were out of supply and collapsed rapidly when attacked.

I think it's a replacement spawn point, isn't it? Nice capture by the way... I'm still making my way into the area now, NOV42... Slightly behind by a year.. lol

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Cmdr_Vessery

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
I finally captured Sevastopol. I moved some of my siege units and allowed the enemy units to leave the hex because it's a
supply point and when I captured that the enemy units were out of supply and collapsed rapidly when attacked.

I think it's a replacement spawn point, isn't it? Nice capture by the way... I'm still making my way into the area now, NOV42... Slightly behind by a year.. lol

You know, it wouldn't surprise me to find out it IS a spawn point. I'm not sure but I believe it. And about you just now getting
around to capture Sevastopol..........better late than never. I'm thinking seriously about leaving a skeleton staff in the south and
moving most of those troops to the north just to get around to capturing Moscow. I'm not really serious about getting any
objectives......I just want to destroy Soviet units. Wouldn't that be cool to wipe the map of Soviet units? I'm not sure that's
even possible.

[Cmdr_Vessery]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: Cmdr_Vessery

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
I finally captured Sevastopol. I moved some of my siege units and allowed the enemy units to leave the hex because it's a
supply point and when I captured that the enemy units were out of supply and collapsed rapidly when attacked.

I think it's a replacement spawn point, isn't it? Nice capture by the way... I'm still making my way into the area now, NOV42... Slightly behind by a year.. lol

You know, it wouldn't surprise me to find out it IS a spawn point. I'm not sure but I believe it. And about you just now getting around to capture Sevastopol..........better late than never. I'm thinking seriously about leaving a skeleton staff in the south and moving most of those troops to the north just to get around to capturing Moscow. I'm not really serious about getting any objectives......I just want to destroy Soviet units. Wouldn't that be cool to wipe the map of Soviet units? I'm not sure that's even possible.

With as many re-enforcements as they are getting every turn, that sounds like a heavy order. But, if you create a salient, the might just push units into the area to place a defensive line.. And then, if you have the right number of mobile units on each side, you might be able to encircle a large force.

I've been destroying a lot of Soviet units lately, but they keep showing up with more.. lol

Taking Leningrad and then Moscow was my primary goals. Wasn't worried about objectives in the south early on. With the Soviet war machine production at top speed, the enemy air force is being a pest now, and getting interdiction's when I move troops on behind my lines. And, so they airfields down south need to be taken.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Cmdr_Vessery
Taking Leningrad and then Moscow was my primary goals. Wasn't worried about objectives in the south early on. With the Soviet war machine production at top speed, the enemy air force is being a pest now, and getting interdiction's when I move troops on behind my lines. And, so they airfields down south need to be taken.

I'm not all that keen on capturing any more objectives and that's a problem. That means any player playing this thing in the
future may feel that way too. There may need to be some kind of incentive to do so. Something like a drop ( 5%) in the Soviet
reinforcement rate or the supply level or an increase in some Axis parameter of some kind.
Can we do something like that Steve? It would help the scenario quality.

EDIT: I read you describing what your plans are for the future in the quote above and I take away the impression that you don't
have a set goal........it's more like you're playing it by ear now. Me too. We need a set of objectives that it would pay us to capture.
Minsk, Smolensk, Riga, Pskov, Leningrad of course, Kiev, Odessa, etc. Cities that are important to have.