Decline & Fall AAR v2

[composer99]

Germany Setup - Greece

Another location which will have, once it is adequately reinforced, "dip" orders. Germany has only so many units. The thick mountain range between Athens and Belgrade is expected to slow up any Allied advance long enough... for the Red Army to beat them to the punch.

[composer99]

Germany Setup - The Balkans

The setup in the Balkans is currently designed to keep resources flowing. The northern part of the region, near Belgrade and Budapest, will play host to the retreating forces from Rumania and the Carpathians, and to reinforcements from Vienna.

[composer99]

Germany Setup - Italy & South France

The German army in Italy is desperately short of units. Yes, I have an armoured corps & engineer set up to march in from Vienna, but it probably won't be enough when stacked up against the forces the Allies have in place.

Southern France is even worse, but at least if the Allies want to make immediate progress they have to invade.

[composer99]

Germany Setup - The Western Front

Germany is also short corps here to fill out the coastal defences. Hopefully enough army will survive that, in combination with next turn's reinforcements, the Germans can form up a line along the Seine.

Germany's strategy here is to weather the Allied air assault, then try to destroy at least one invading hex right after the invasion.

[composer99]

The Eastern Front - Finland

In this sector, the Germans aim to hold off any Soviet attack on Helsinki for as long as possible: hopefully the Red Army never seizes the city.

[composer99]

The Eastern Front - Belorussia

Here, the German Army is positioned to hold the Red Army at bay initially, then withdraw in good order towards the Vistula.

The setup chart specifies only a handful of aircraft facing the USSR, a situation that unfortunately will likely be painful in this sector.

[composer99]

The Eastern Front - Ukraine

This sector of the Eastern Front is slightly more critical than Belorussia as the USSR is closer to Poland and, most importantly, closer to the Rumanian oil.

You will note in the lower right corner a corps remains in place in Sevastopol.

[composer99]

Germany Reinforcements & Force Pools

To get a handle on a production strategy for Germany, let us first review the German reinforcement track and force pools.

Here are Germany's reinforcements for July-August 1944.

[composer99]

German reinforcements for September-October 1944.

[composer99]

German reinforcements for November-December 1944, the last turn Germany sets up with available reinforcements (any reinforcements in future turns appear due to German production).

[composer99]

The German construction pool.

In all likelihood, with the possible exception of the submarine unit, none of these units will see the light of day on the map.

[composer99]

Germany's repair pool.

Due to the likely prevalence of Allied land-based air, there is little point repairing even the battleship, despite its good quality.

[composer99]

The German reserve pool.

Germany needs to churn out pilots, in addition to those already scheduled to appear, to get these air units on the map on top of any units built out of the force pools.

[composer99]

Germany's air unit force pools, excluding carrier planes.

Germany needs all the air units it can muster, especially more fighters.

[composer99]

Germany's submarine force pool.

Submarines are about the only naval units Germany might contemplate starting this scenario, as they can evade detection, unless Germany wants to fight, are cheap and quick to produce, and have one main use in this scenario: send Allied sealift to the bottom of the ocean.

[composer99]

Germany's force pool of infantry and related units.

Germany needs as many of these units as it can manage.

[composer99]

Germany's force pools of mechanized forces and artillery.

Germany also needs lots of these: anti-air and anti-tank guns, in particular, are badly needed this scenario.

Edit: Because German forces can usually expect to have overland supply lines, supply units are extremely unlikely to be required.

[composer99]

Germany Production Strategy

Germany can expect to produce somewhere in the range of 40-55 build points, until the Allies liberate France and knock Rumania out of the war.

With that kind of production, Germany needs to build:

Naval Units
Not much here, except for submarines: 0-2 build points per turn.

Air Units
Fighters, a smattering of bombers, and lots of pilots. Probably 15-20 build points per turn.

Land Units
The remainder of German production, probably around 20-25 build points per turn, will be used to build land units.

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

What's in those stacks up in Paris, Rotterdam, and Aachen? You have to be a little worried with the French putting their two initial partisans in say, Rouen and Boulogne, and then having their buddies sealift in (they'd take a land) and put down say, De Gaulle and an inf, as well as some divisions, which will be pretty tough to drive out, in addition to whatever other invading forces are on their way.


But this potentially grabs two ports without the risk of invasion and automatically staying face up, and a lot of places they can move to. (2 more ports adjacent to the beachhead)


So do the Germans have the force on hand to react and knock out, or at the very least contain, troops landing such?

[composer99]

Hiding under the air units in the woods are big, beefy blitz units, so if the Allies land straight away without disorganizing them, they will get blitzed off. If the French land in Rouen courtesy of partisans it will just be De Gaulle and a division or two; not exactly the kind of units you want to stack up against the kind of armoured forces the Germans can muster in 1944.

Rotterdam has a PARA corps, which will travel down to Rouen as the big ARM unit in Denmark comes down the line.

Aachen used to have a big ARM, which has been shuffled down to reinforce the Italian sector; it has an arm division still.

Paris has a 9-factor INF corps. If need be it can walk into Rouen, I suppose.

To be honest, I hadn't really considered debarking onto partisans with the French forces. I may consider it more now, but probably not. The Allies are usually better off waiting to land after a couple of waves of groundstrikes have pinned a few German units down.