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Soviet Turn 12 (Feb 4, 1943)

Half way through the turn, I remembered that since it was now 1943, that meant I could make a new assault front. In fact, I could have done so several turns earlier, but sadly didn't realize/forgot. I had been saving up AP and was going to do some larger command changes, but making a new assault front has to come first, since apparently I can.



Naturally I made the Don/Central front be the new assault front, since it is commanded by Rokossovsky. As a result of this (and also of only doing it half way through the turn), my army disintigrated into a somewhat disorganized mess. Even more so than it already was. But on the bright side, this solved any lingering command cap issues. And now I am simply not using the Voronezh front at all, because I don't need it.


I tried to run naval interdiction in Lake Ladoga, but it only ran one mission of 24 planes for some reason, didn't do much. The way to protect Soviet convoys crossing lake Ladoga is apparently to use our bombers to bomb the German navy which is in Lake Ladoga. Hitler has ordered the Bismarck to be disassembled and transported over land and re-assembled in Lake Ladoga. In addition, the Germans have been launching new U-boats daily in Lake Ladoga, so we must use our bombers to counter those.

I finally started attacking again at Velikie Luki. However, I attacked a different hex, which was light forest and defended by one division rather than attacking the same hex again. I did the attack before getting the new assault front, otherwise I might have tried to do the attack with an assault front army. At any rate, fortunately it succeeded. Also, since it is light forest, my defensive CV is higher in defending it, which will make it tough for Germany to take back. It starts building an additional small salient. Salients are good for me (I think).

2 attacks in the Rzhev area. Germans stacking the rails are threatened with potential encirclement if they don't withdraw.




In the Orel area you can see the disorganization of my army, a chaotic mix of different fronts mixed up together...



I finished off the surrounded infantry, and then pressed forward the attack, with a LOT of attacks. I attacked this German infantry division 3 different times. It kept retreating, and then I hit it again. It was already weak before the turn started, and on the third attack it routed.

I am very happy with these attacks, for a couple of reasons. First, it adds/expands another salient into the German lines. It is difficult for Germany to fill the front line when it is not straight, so that is good for me. Secondly, I took a lot of light forest hexes and even 3 swamp hexes. That is good because it will be difficult for Germany to take those back and reduce the salient (if they wanted to), so it will be more secure. Although it would have been more obvious to attack to the south where there was clear terrain instead, that would have left me a lot more vulnerable to counterattack than I am here.


Following the retreating Germans... I explored some gaps in behind the lines with some tanks to flip some hexes in the German rear. 2 of the rail routes to Kursk were cut.




Rostov is threatened with encirclement if the Germans don't either get more troops there quickly, or else withdraw. Tolbukhin had another successful attack with his guards corps against weak units. An attempt was made to exploit this situation with another river crossing against Romanians, but the crossing attempt failed. I knew the CVs were not in my favor in this case, but I figured it was worth a try because they were Romanians, after all.




Krasnodar fell in the Caucasus to a numerically large attacking force. The CVs didn't nominally look that great for me, but it seemed worth a try due to the bonus VPs ticking down and because I thought numerical advantage might do the trick. The only division defending was a Panzer division which had been battered in previous turns (cameron88 said it was at about 50% TOE). Somewhat surprisingly, the Panzer division not only lost, but also routed. Apparently the combination of it being fairly weak, and possibly also the penalty to AFVs in urban terrain might have done this.





I did a bug report about the routing issue, but apparently it is WAD -

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5082414

Axis Turn 13 (Feb 11, 1943)



The usual German bombing in Leningrad. I tried to run my own interdiction finally to counter. I did, but only 7 planes flew, probably my mission settings are at issue, will try something different.



In Demyansk my men held... but then routed...



No counterattacks in V.L./Rzhev. Just the usual air supply and a bit of scattered bombing, with a chance of rain. Also some recon, it is the first time I have seen any recon missions being run. Maybe the Germans have some sort of counteroffensive idea here over the medium turn, or is worried about something...



Bad news in the Orel sector. A mechanized corps is surrounded, because it retreated into enemy territory. The tricks of manipulating retreat paths seem to be key for getting encirclements, which is kind of weird. It turns out it was a mistake that I routed that unit last turn, because that flipped a hex to my control, which then I retreated into. I guess I should not have attacked successfully, so that I could not retreat into enemy territory when the Germans counter-attacked. [&:]

It will be difficult to break this out and I probably can't do it, but will try.



The loss of men won't matter much, and the "corps" only have 9 AFVs left after losing that battle. But it has 2000 trucks, and it would be a shame if Germany captures those.



A bit more retreating near Kursk:



Somewhat surprisingly, there was no retreat from Rostov. However, Germany encircled a rifle corps. I think I can probably break that one out, but there is a chance I might not. It seems like Germany is starting to get more aggressive with counter-attacks and counter-encirclements, so maybe I will need to start being a bit more careful.

Minor counterattack in the Caucasus:

Turn 13 Soviet Air Phase


One bombing mission ran with 40 bombers this time after changing some settings. Still only one mission flew though. this seems to have had very little effect in any case, and it lost me 9 fighters. All to bomb German ships on Lake Ladoga (where in reality there were not really any significant number of German ships to bomb as far as I know, just some local patrol boat type things).

I also set up some air superiority missions again with advice from Hardradi, but those didn't fly any missions.

4 Italian torpedo boats sailed in Lake Ladoga in 1942. Your bombers can help keep them at bay.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

4 Italian torpedo boats sailed in Lake Ladoga in 1942. Your bombers can help keep them at bay.

Oh yes, oh yes.

Believe you me, we will sink those 4 Italian TP boats. My pilots will sink them not once, not twice, but 20 times. And on the 21st time that we sink them, we will dig them up from the bottom of Lake Ladoga and return them to the Germans (no wait, the Italians) just so that we can sink them again. My bomber pilots want the target practice just that badly. [8D]

They will be the most heavily bombed torpedo boats in the history of bombing torpedo boats. Or of bombing anything. [8D]

In seriousness, I get that it's an abstraction, as all things must be to varying extents, it just seems a bit weird that the way to stop Leningrad and keep my supply lines going is to bomb the Germans, as opposed to doing something that stops the Germans from bombing my supply lines (i.e. air superiority with fighters). Not really a big deal though.

So let's take a look at the situation with the encircled mech corps. I would like to have the best chance to break it out, and it looks like that is gonna be a tough nut to crack.



I see 3 possibilities:

1) I could attack the 30=44 hex which has 1 Panzer, 1 Infantry, and 1 SS division. This is maybe barely possible, but seems very tough against 3 good German divisions in light forest, partly because most of my units right there are low on CPP from attacking last turn. An advantage is at least I could attack from 2 directions though.

2) I could attack the 14=29 hex which has 1 SS and 1 motorized division. A disadvantage is I could only attack from one direction. Although I could maybe attack from 2 if I could get the 4=22 division to retreat to the south-west.

3) I could try to go around both of the those two well defended hexes. If I do that, it doesn't seem viable going to the north through 3 visible infantry divisions due to all the ZOC/combat delay, but might possibly be going to the south, through the area with the 4=22 motorized unit and also the 2=5.

#3 seems to me like probably the best bet, so I would like to do it. However, I am not sure if I have enough MP to do that. For that to have a good likelihood of success, to me it looks like I would need to be able to move my encircled mech unit to the hex circled in blue. Then I could link up if I can get the 4=22 division to retreat two times, which seems pretty doable since that is a weak division (although in swamp). As long as there is no German unit in any of the 5 hexes circled in red (I doubt there is), there should be no enemy ZOC to block moves of my isolated mech unit through the two light forest hexes to get to the blue hex (directly following the path of the rail).

I *think* I have enough MP that I should be able to do that, but I am not 100% sure, because the movement rules to calculate the MP cost of moving are pretty opaque and complicated. Here are (some of) the rules from the manual to see the complexity of it:



What would be really nice is if I could hover my mouse over the hex I want to move to (or something similar), and it would calculate for me the movement cost to that hex (under the assumption that there are no un-seen enemy units with ZOC that would block me). To me, it doesn't seem like knowing that would be a violation of fog of war. The element that reflects actual fog of war is the uncertainty as to whether there are any German units there, but not the basic movement point calculations.

So, let's try to calculate using the rules what I *think* should be the MP cost of moving from the Dyatkovo hex (swamp) to the circled light blue hex (assuming no hidden enemy units):



That would be moving into a woods hex (2 MP base cost). Entering an enemy hex should cost me another 2 MP because my unit has between 51-80 morale. There is also snow, which is +1 MP cost, for a total of 5 MP cost. I think that is all. If that is right, when moving into that hex I should have 5 MP left.

Next question is how much does it cost to move into the final blue circled hex where I want to get to from there. That is a light forest hex as well, so if nothing else were different that should be 5 MP. However, it is over a minor river and the blue circled hex has a road (average roads). There is also level 6 water and level 7 snow. I think that means that it is frozen, but I am not sure, because there is nowhere I see in the UI that displays if a river is frozen (you can only hover over hexes, not rivers which are between hexes). Anyway, table 38.7.6 says that for a minor river with no enemy ZOC with ice level 5 (I assume corresponds to the snow?) it should be +0 MP. Also when I have been moving in other places, I have noticed that it hasn't been taking me any more MP to cross minor rivers. I think the roads might lower the movement cost, but I am not sure, because 38.7.4 doesn't list anything for regular woods (only heavy woods), so it might not. But even if it doesn't, as long as the river is indeed frozen, it should cost me 5 MP to move across it.

So, I will save, then try it to see how many MP it actually does take. If it takes the number that I calculated, I will stick to that. Also if there are hidden German units in one of those 5 hexes providing a ZOC blocking it, then I will stick with the movement, because that is a legitimate FOW surprise. But if I don't have the MP, then I will reload and try to break out the unit through the direct attack (and also ask anyone who is reading what if anything is wrong with my calculation of what the MP cost should be). So we will see. I have been surprised before by these complicated MP calculations.



My biggest point with walking through my guesstimate on the MP cost is I should not have to do this calculation. It has a deterministic answer if I knew/understood all the criteria of the game correctly, but it is a pain to try to calculate when the game could/should be able to simply tell the player.

Wellp, apparently something in my calculation is wrong. I am not sure what.

And more surprisingly, it is wrong about the FIRST hex, the one I was pretty sure was indeed 5 MP. There is no enemy ZOC, but it costs 6 MP to go to the first hex that doesn't have a river for some reason.



So my plan to break out by moving to the blue hex apparently isn't viable after all. So I will reload, because at least IMO it is not my fault that I can't calculate the MP costs correctly, and that doesn't have anything to do with actual fog of war.

An interesting question which is now purely academic is if the other hex would also have taken 6 MP, or if it would be more or less. Not sure.

So I will have to do a direct attack to try to free the mech corps. But I will try to set things up so that I can do not just 1 attack, but 2 attacks with different units. The first one I expect will fail, but perhaps on the 2nd attack there will be a better chance because the German units will be tired. I will have to spend more time looking at that to figure it out.

So first, let's look similarly closely at the other encirclement, which is more straightforward. For that, it seems obvious that the easiest way to free it is to attack the 17=17 hex. I can attack from 2 directions, so if at all possible I will want to try to attack with 6 different corps-sized units to make sure the attack succeeds (no divisions need apply). - Approximate attacking CV running total = 13

So let's see what we have to work with.

Unit #1 --- On this hex, I happen to start the turn with 2 guards and 1 regular rifle division which can form a guards rifle corps for 5 AP (not entirely a coincidence, actually, I had been half-planning on maybe making that a guards rifle corps, just wasn't sure yet if I would need the AP for something else):



Unit #2 --- Last turn, I left a bunch of units (the green units) un-moved just to the north of here, gaining CPP, and also so I would have the option to either send them north, or south, or straight up the middle as needed. The 6th Guards Rifle Corps has enough MP to get there (should need 6 to attack with infantry and 16 MP to attack with mech units). If I hover over the 13=8 hex, it won't actually tell me how many MP it costs to move there. IMO this is another (small) problem with the UI where some improvement could be made. Of course, you should not be able to actually move there if you already have 3 units there, but you should at least be able to see how many MP it will cost you to move there *IF* you move one of the 3 units out, without having to actually move it out. Because if you do move it out, you might not be able to undo it without reloading. - Approximate attacking CV running total = 28



Unit #3 --- Same thing with the 41st Guards Rifle corps to the north (17 CV!) - Approximate attacking CV running total = 45



Unit #4 --- I also have the 1st Guards Mech Corps up there with 15 CV and enough MP to come down and join the attack. - Approximate attacking CV running total = 60



These 4 units should give me almost 4x as much CV to attack with, plus strong numerical superiority. If it were just a run of the mill attack, I might stop there and just add 2 divisions rather than finding 2 more corps. But this attack is extra-important because it will determine the fate of a 25k man Rifle Corps. So I am going to throw in the kitchen sink. And then throw in the refrigerator also. And the sofa.

Unit #5 --- So, I also have the 37th Guards rifle division back in Millerovo, and the 14th Guards Rifle Division already right next to the 17=17 German hex. So I can move the Guards division there along with another Rifle division - there's a 100 CPP and 4.73 CV 231st Rifle Division in that 7=5 hex I have just to the north-east, so I will use that one. Also I want to use that one because it has only 1 win, so it is better to use that than another division which has more wins (because another division with more wins may become a guards division itself soon if I just leave it alone). So I will make a new Guards rifle corps with these 3 units, which should have something like a 11 CV. - Approximate attacking CV running total = 71



Unit #6 --- I could actually form yet ANOTHER new Guards Rifle Corps. But if I did, it would be weak, since the two other guards units were the ones that Germany just beat up attacking last turn. So instead I will attack with the 5th Guards Tank Corps, which has 8 CV. - Approximate attacking CV running total = 79



Units #7 and #8 ---

It actually gets even better. I can attack with MORE than 6 units, because I have 2 artillery divisions here (the other one is just to the south-east). They can move and attack from 2 hexes away. - Approximate attacking CV running total = 82



Finally, I can add some support units attached directly to some of these divisions. I will lose some CV moving the units up to attack through attrition/fatigue etc, but adding extra support units should more or less offset. I have a lot of support units I can add. Some divisions already have them, others don't:



So attacking with 6 corps + 2 rifle divisions, with about 82 to 17 CV, with good generals on an assault front and strong numerical superiority, I will be very surprised if this attack does not succeed.

I won't attack yet, because the other attack to free the mech corps will be more difficult, and I want to make sure that will have #1 priority for Support Units from STAVKA and possibly AP for forming more corps. But we have it all planned out now, and looks like this attack would cost 10 AP. I have 30 AP to work with.

Because I keep using AP like this to form new corps opportunistically, some of my command changes keep getting delayed.

In general, as far as I can see, this is the way to do it with Soviets:

A) Try to pick on weak points and weak units, even if it is not the most strategically important area, because over the long term that will wear them down (and also make it more likely that I actually get wins).

B) Always or almost always try to attack with an assault front and a good general, and to have all the units that are attacking be from the same front (not necessarily the same army, but at least the same front, so you get less command penalties).

C) Generally throw in everything that is possible to throw in, pretty much always attacking with more units rather than less if it is possible to attack with more.

D) Try not to focus ONLY on CVs. CVs are important, but manpower numbers also matter, so it is probably easier to attack e.g. a regiment with a 30 defensive CV than to attack a division with 15-20 defensive CV.

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

...

What would be really nice is if I could hover my mouse over the hex I want to move to (or something similar), and it would calculate for me the movement cost to that hex (under the assumption that there are no un-seen enemy units with ZOC that would block me). To me, it doesn't seem like knowing that would be a violation of fog of war. The element that reflects actual fog of war is the uncertainty as to whether there are any German units there, but not the basic movement point calculations.

...


My biggest point with walking through my guesstimate on the MP cost is I should not have to do this calculation. It has a deterministic answer if I knew/understood all the criteria of the game correctly, but it is a pain to try to calculate when the game could/should be able to simply tell the player.

2 partial answers.

At one stage I did try to generate an inclusive MP cost table, if we could post it as an interactive web page with drop down menus it would just about work. As a flat image it was insanely complex due to the way the different parts of the MP rule system apply or don't.

The reason the UI won't give you potential MP costs for hexes you can't currently enter is a mix of FOW and the game engine. The FOW bit means that can never be accurate - I realise you accept this. The game engine is that it can't drop part of the calculation.

You see a simple version of this problem on T1. Take a unit north of the Ukraine MP boundary and sketch out a move path south of the boundary - it will be cheaper/look like you can move further than you can when you actually make the move (here the problem is the overview calculation can't take account of the varying actual rules). There are other T1 problems that are similar such as when you move past Minsk.

Not being defensive, but worth bearing in mind the underlying game engine code was written in 2000 (when Joel, Gary et al first planned WiTE1) - some things are just not changeable (unless prepared to deal with massive repurcusions)

edit - and kudos to an excellent practical gameplay example, should help a lot of less experienced players in how to read the map and a particular situation

Thanks for the well considered response, and also in general for your and others' work to make the game as good as it is and support the community.

ORIGINAL: loki100

At one stage I did try to generate an inclusive MP cost table, if we could post it as an interactive web page with drop down menus it would just about work. As a flat image it was insanely complex due to the way the different parts of the MP rule system apply or don't.

I would take an interactive webpage where you input terrain type etc and it spits out expected MP cost. Although probably the vast majority of players would not use it if it were not integrated into the game. Probably not the highest priority thing.

The reason the UI won't give you potential MP costs for hexes you can't currently enter is a mix of FOW and the game engine. The FOW bit means that can never be accurate - I realise you accept this. The game engine is that it can't drop part of the calculation.

...

Not being defensive, but worth bearing in mind the underlying game engine code was written in 2000 (when Joel, Gary et al first planned WiTE1) - some things are just not changeable (unless prepared to deal with massive repurcusions)

I definitely understand that code structure can impose limitations and make some things more difficult than they appear. From my perspective though, it at least appears that information is stored somewhere in the save file on which units are visible/known to each player. For example, with me playing the Soviets, when I load a turn I can see some of the German units, while others are not seen. But the game also keeps track of the actual positions of all units.

If I am interpreting you correctly, when you say "The FOW bit means that can never be accurate - I realise you accept this" what you mean is that if you calculated the hypothetical movement cost to move somewhere, it might turn out to be incorrect, because there might be an unknown enemy unit that turns out to affect the movement cost via ZOC etc. And on the other hand, we should NOT want it to always show an accurate MP cost of a hypothetical move, because that would be giving away information that there is (or is not) a hidden enemy unit, and that information should rightly be shrouded by FOW. If so, I am agreed on both points.

Of course it may well not be so simple - that may be what you mean by "The game engine is that it can't drop part of the calculation." If that means that the ACTUAL location of all the units on the map is built into the MP cost calculation and can't be dropped out of it and replaced with only the list of KNOWN locations of VISIBLE units for technical reasons, then that makes sense.


But if that is not an insurmountable technical obstacle, suppose I want to move into a light forest hex that has a hidden enemy unit that I don't know about with a ZOC next to it which would affect the movement cost. The way the game actually calculates the real movement cost seems to be that it calculates the impacts of terrain, weather, roads, and all those other factors, and it also takes into account the actual position of each unit. I am assuming the data is structured in some sort of way like a matrix/set of vectors with rows/columns storing different information about each unit, with two of the data points stored for each unit being its actual location and also whether it is visible. If so, in principle it seems like you could set up a hypothetical movement calculator that instead of refer to the list of all units with their actual locations, instead only inputs the vector of units which are visible to the player into the calculation, i.e. the same list of units that is used to determine which German units are visible to the Soviet player.

If so, a hypothetical movement calculator might tell me that it expects it will take me 5 MP to move into a light forest hex. That is based on a calculation that refers to the vector of units which are visible to the Soviet player, rather than referring to the vector of ALL units. But then when I actually try to do the move, I find that rather than taking 5 MP it takes 6 and I can't do it.

If that happened, I would be totally fine with it, because that would be bona fide fog of war. To my mind, the fact that this hypothetical movement calculator would be incorrect insofar as there were unknown enemy units hidden, and indeed that would be a benefit/feature to it. Basically it could show you what you think you can do if there are not more enemy units, but then the player has to decide if it is worth the risk of running into an enemy unit and getting unexpectedly delayed (as undoubtedly happened many times historically with enemy units popping up unexpectedly and slowing down an advance).

You see a simple version of this problem on T1. Take a unit north of the Ukraine MP boundary and sketch out a move path south of the boundary - it will be cheaper/look like you can move further than you can when you actually make the move (here the problem is the overview calculation can't take account of the varying actual rules). There are other T1 problems that are similar such as when you move past Minsk.

I have indeed noticed that before, in particular that I seemed to be able to move units further past Minsk, but I didn't understand why the calculation seemed off. Makes sense now, thanks.

Random note -

I have had the supply priority for my ENTIRE army on priority 4 for the entire game so far. As far as I can tell so far, it has not caused any particular problems. I have 19k trucks in the pool.



And here is my truck usage:



I have only lost 726 trucks in freight. And this is in the middle of winter, with reasonably stretched supply lines in places from a quick advance.

Compare that to the 3290 Axis trucks captured and 1302 Soviet trucks captured. Seems like avoiding getting mech units isolated and destroyed is more important for conserving trucks than worrying about what supply priority you are.

And I am producing (I think 530 vehicles per turn and getting 4500 vehicles in lend lease, not sure if the LL is every turn or every month or whatnot, but either way it seems a lot more significant than the truck losses from freight).

What, really, would be the advantage of setting a lower supply priority? My units would send trucks less far away to pick up supply, so I would save a small amount of trucks from fewer breaking down transporting supplies. On the other hand, if I get more extra supplies for my units this turn, they are not going to use all the supplies this turn, so that means they will need less additional supplies next turn, and hence less truck use next turn as well.

And what do I need those trucks for? I could make more mech/tank corps. But I don't have enough AFVs to fill all the tank brigades I have anyway. AFV losses are sufficiently high that if I have extra, that just means I can just attack more with them, and tank brigades attached to infantry units seem plenty useful.

So maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me like trucks are something the Axis has to worry about, especially in 1941, but not so much the Soviets. At least, I have not had to worry about it so far.

I also have not had to worry about going out of my way to refit stuff on depots (have done that a bit when convenient, but not particularly, and haven't had any need to send a single unit to refit in reserve), and my manpower pool is stable, not going up.

I guess we'll see if I run into problems because of this or not. So far so good. Maybe it will get tougher as we get farther from the national supply sources. But at the same time, lend lease and vehicle production should keep going up with time.

Few bits on trucks re 1943-44.

You might want to scan the mid-phase sections of the pre-release AAR I wrote as it picks up on some of this.

Things are going to get bad for a few reasons:

a) to sustain progress you ideally need an army up around 6.5-7m;
b) the depot system struggles to sustain that - even using all the tools and tricks
c) so units go hunting for freight - you know the consequences
d) this is rather masked at this stage as you are still close to your main NSS, it starts to hit when you reach Kharkov-Smolensk and escalates
e)the enduring artillery shortage doesn't ease till the end of 1943, and even then its mostly the 76mm that becomes widely available
f) rockets offer a route around this ... but (yep they want trucks)
g) the VVS is mostly short range, so to get it into real effect means its using airbases that share depots with the combat formations, your US LL stuff is a real bonus but there isn't a lot of it. As discussed in one of the airwar threads, the Pe-2s etc are fine but its the sturmoviks that do the real damage;
h) keeping mobility into Rumania and Hungary is a struggle - again while you can do a lot with the depot tricks, the trucks have to take the strain
i) its only in 1944 is the LL truck supply enough for your purposes, the more you have a deficit at the end of 1943 the slower this bonus will be to come on line
j) in the end mobile formations < 30 are not a great asset, while you mostly can't get sweeping multi-hex offensives you still need enough MP to ride out ZoC/Combat Delay costs.

I'd say the transition to a semi-motorised army by mid-43 is as big a shift in game dynamics as say the first winter. Just the latter is readily studied (for both sides) this is a bit hidden as so few HtH games get to this phase (with the unfortunate tendency of axis players to bail out when an auto win in 1941 disappears). The StB scenario helps as you hit it at a stage when both sides are still involved.

FWIW here's my current supply. I have some units that seem to be pulling some supply from far away depots, but it doesn't look like it is a huge number at least right now. But presumably that will become more of an issue over time, I will keep an eye on it:

I looked around at all the units that could try to break out the mech unit, and this is what I found. Normally I wouldn't write this down in this sort of detail, but I would do a similar sort of check for what units I could move to attack as for the other encirclement. But it is maybe useful to talk about what to look for, in particular because for any attack to succeed against a strong defense, I would probably need at least 2 attacks.



For a reminder, this is the part of the map we are looking at:



The first two columns show what the MP of each of these units would be if they move into either of the two hexes next to the 30=44 German hex, light forest to the north-east and swamp to the east. To see this, I had to move units out of those hexes so that it would show me the MP cost to move other units in. I had to be careful to not move or touch anything else, so that the option to "undo" would not disappear. The 3rd column is the unit's CV, and the 4th is the unit's starting movement points. The last two columns show how many MP a unit should have left if they did a deliberate attack from that hex (costing 16 MP for a mech unit or 6 for a foot unit).

Knowing how many MP they would have left AFTER an attack is important if you want to be able to do multiple attacks, because you want to attack first with one set of units, and then be able to retreat them so that other units can move in and attack also, without one of the 3 slots in the hex being taken up by the participating units in the first attack. It would take 3 MP to retreat an infantry unit back 2 hexes and would take 8 MP to move a mech unit back 2 hexes.

Although I have a lot of units that could potentially attack, unfortunately they are mostly fairly low CV/CPP from the previous turn's attacks. I was also hoping I might have some strong infantry divisions that I could form into strong rifle corps to join the attack, but all the infantry divisions that are not already in corps are weak/low CV, in contrast to the other encirclement where I have stronger units.

My conclusion from this is that it is very difficult/unlikely for an attack to succeed. If I attacked with all the 6 highest CV units, I would have around 11 + 10 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 8 CV = ~56 CV. That is more than the 47 CV of the German defenders, but not much more. Rarely if ever have I seen attacks work against good German units with roughly even CVs, unless there is massive Soviet numerical superiority. I would have numerical superiority, but not necessarily an overwhelming amount because I would be attacking with 6 units against 3. If there were only one defending unit with a defensive CV of 47 on the other hand rather than 3 units with a combined defensive CV of 47, then I would try the attack and think I had a good chance of winning (probably more likely winning than not, actually). But with 3 good defending units, it would probably take a major random failure of German leadership rolls to win, which is not very likely with the German leaders.

So I decide to look around to see if there are any other options.

The other thing I see as a possibility is this. If I don't think I can break out my unit, what could I do instead? If I could isolate and destroy a German unit instead, that would be at least as good as rescuing my own unit (except for the 2000 lost trucks [:o] ).



I think I can probably encircle the red circled 4=14 German infantry division. I would just need to push back the blue circled 6=34 stack and the black circled 1=8 unit. Hopefully they would both retreat straight to the west. It is possible they could also retreat to the yellow highlighted hex right behind the 4=14 unit, which would make things more difficult, but not impossible. I would just need to get units moved into those 2 hexes, and also into the yellow highlighted hex, and then hold it closed. I am pretty sure I could move units there, because I do have a lot of high MP tank/mech and also Cavalry units right there. I am less sure if I can actually HOLD it closed, but I might be able to. And even if I failed to hold it closed, it would force a German attack with their good SS units to open the pocket, which would leave those units weaker the next turn. So this now seems like my best option here. With luck, maybe I can trade giving up on my isolated mech corps for bagging the 4=14 infantry division instead.

The first and most important step is to get the 6=34 stack to retreat. I want to move in a few stronger units to attack, namely this tank corps and also the other guards rifle corps that I have just to the north in my 17=81 stack. So I retreat two infantry units to make room, and move them up:



I attach a couple extra support units and will be attacking with 52 CV or so against 36, but with 5 corps against 2 fairly weak divisions, I think I should win. Most of what is giving the defenders the high CV is the terrain and the fort, but their combined offensive CV of 5 indicates that those units are probably pretty low on strength, so it will probably be similarish to attacking a single fully equipped division:



I could attack with more, and it is tempting, but I want to preserve some of the strong units for other attacks and to hold the potential encirclement.

I won the attack, but as soon as I attacked I realized I forgot to move up the artillery division I meant to also include. And unfortunately, the two German units retreated the wrong way. [:(]

One of the most important determinants of whether you can get an encirclement can often be which direction units retreat, and I got unlucky for my plans here. [:(]

Also, I only barely won the attack, another reminder that when attacking you should throw in the kitchen sink. But I was greedy here, and almost paid the price for attacking with too little.

Now I am not sure I will be able to get the encirclement because of the retreat paths. I will try attacking the other unit also, hopefully that at least doesn't retreat there as well.


Anyway, setting up for the 2nd attack. Unfortunately, earlier I moved this unit out of the 6=25 hex to here, and now I can't move it back. I did that because I wanted to see how many MP it would take to move other units into that 6=25 hex in order to try to break out my mech corps. I want to attack with 2 units, which means unfortunately I will have to move the mech corps. I think/hope it should have enough MP to move in to get the encirclement anyway, in part because I think it may take less MP to go around the other side through the north anyway.

So I will attack with 2 rifle corps and an artillery division, with more than double the CV (with deliberate attack). This attack should succeed more easily, the only question should be which direction the Germans retreat:



This time, fortunately they retreat straight to the west. Also, the combat delay is 2, rather than 3 (yet another reason to try to attack with overwhelming force and generally skimp as little as possible on throwing in the kitchen sink into attacks):



Now the only thing left to do is to (hopefully) move the 6=34 stack and seal the pocket as best as I can. I know that in reality this stack does NOT have 34 defensive CV, it is just that the defensive CV doesn't update when they retreat. There is no fort in the hex they retreated to, and also they will be tired from the previous battle. Let's look at that previous battle:



Out of a total of 453 rifle squads, 38 were destroyed, 88 damaged, and 168 disrupted. That is a total of 294 out of 453, or ~65%. Taking that as a rough proxy of the damage done by the previous battle to the divisions overall, they will probably be fighting at 1/3 of their previous strength in my next attack. So I doubt their true defensive CV is even 10. Probably more like 5-6. Now we just need to see which units I can/should move in to attack and try to seal the pocket.

I want to keep my mech units as fresh as possible, so I can have them be rested and at least a bit higher on CPP to face off the German relief attempt. So it looks like the best thing to do is to attack from the north, which I can do by forming some more rifle corps from the infantry divisions that are to the north.

And here, I notice what seems like a bug (or weirdness in the MP cost calculation that I don't understand)...

I pulled these two divisions off from the north. They have enough MP that they would have 6 left when moving to that hex, enough for a deliberate attack (and actually the 124th division would have 7):



And in addition, this other unit would have 6 when it gets to that hex:



But then if I move that down to the same hex as the other units, then select the whole stack, it says that if I move them I will only have 5 MP left. I want to form a rifle corps from these 3 divisions and move them, but obviously only if I have 6 MP or more so that I can attack (that was the whole point):



And the weird thing is if I select each of the divisions individually, it still says that each of them individually will have 6 or 7 MP after moving there, none of them would have 5 individually. And this is also BEFORE trying to form a corps. Huh?:

290th division selected, should have 6 MP:



341st division, should have 6 MP:



124th division, should have 7 MP:



So I will try merging them to a rifle corps and then see what the MP is of the combined rifle corps. The rifle corps I form should have enough MP that it will have 6 if I move to that hex and should be able to do a deliberate attack. We will see, if it doesn't then I will reload, cuz there is definitely something funky here.

Well, the rifle corps has 5 MP even though each of the divisions individually has at least 6. That is some buggy seeming shit, so time to reload and I guess put some other divisions together to form a rifle corps.



So reload, and will try using the 351st division instead to form the corps. Supposedly this should have 6 MP:



This time it actually does have 6 MP:



And actually now, after all this I think I remember that it only takes 3 MP to attack from one direction with infantry, it is just attacks from 2 hexes that take 6, so I guess actually the other one should have been ok lol. So I should also be able to move in this corps to attack again:



I bring up two artillery divisions here to join the attack also:



I then attach 3 guards tank brigades to the newly formed corps that I just made:



And then I am ready to attack. Or at least I thought I was. When I select those two hexes and hover over for an attack, it doesn't include selection of the rifle corps with 5 MP:



Whereas if I just select the hex with the rifle corps by itself, it will select it and also keep it selected for a deliberate attack:



It seems there is yet another complex quirk in the MP costs. Apparently including the artillery corps counts as attacking from another direction, even though no extra troops would be involved in the attack (just artillery shells), so that according to the game engine apparently is supposed to make it take 6 MP to attack or something rather than 3.

So I guess I have no real choice but to attack with the rifle corps alone without the artillery divisions. If it fails because of not including the artillery divisions, I am gonna be pissed. [:'(] It should succeed easily though, because like I said earlier, the retreated stack doesn't actually have 34 defensive CV, and I expect I am probably attacking like 5-6 CV at most, with 27 CV, that ought to be an easy win even without the extra artillery:



The attack does indeed succeed, although then I notice that actually only one of the corps joined the attack, wtf.

So then I consult the manual again, I remember reading about this a few weeks ago. It says the movement cost for a deliberate attack with a non-motorized unit should be "6 (3)" :



And now I realize... OH, that 3 is a reference to the FOOTNOTE number, not the MP cost. LOL. I think I got confused by that a few weeks ago also when I was looking at that, and then misremembered about it. And the footnote says "Non-motorized type 2 units pay only 5 MPs for a deliberate attack (i.e. those that have vehicles for supplies and all non-infantry, non-infantry weapon elements."

Well, since I had 5 MP on that unit, if it were a type 2 unit, then apparently it should have attacked, so I guess it must not be. Looking at that unit, it apparently had 287 vehicles, compared to 193 that were needed. That sounds to me like having more vehicles than it needed, so I don't understand why it didn't count as a type 2 unit? And also there is nowhere in the interface that says if a unit is "type 2" as far as I am aware.

You really never cease to run into new complexities and quirks with this game, it is that complicated. I guess that is what I like about it though in part, the complexity makes it hard to figure out and truly master.



So, let's get this pocket sealed. I have a variety of strong mech/tank units around, including these ones, but also quite a few others that can get into those 2 empty hexes where I need to seal. And fortunately that 9=18 mech unit that I moved back earlier can get into the middle pocket sealing hex with just 2 MP to spare.

It also occurs to me that I *could* attack the 3?15 hex with the retreated German units in and probably win that quite easily. But if I do, I might end up retreating into enemy territory next turn, so better not. Also because I am pretty sure I wouldn't have enough MP to go on and successfully attack the 2=8 hex and free my mech corps.



This is what I came up with for the best/strongest units to seal the pocket. Both hexes have 44 defensive CV, I tried to equalize them intentionally by adjusting the support units so it is not an easy call which one to attack for Germany next turn.





I may adjust the tank brigades a bit more, but I am done with this for now and will come back to it later and adjust things in this part of the front. I think I will probably try attacking the 5=5 German infantry division so that Germany can't attack the northern of the two pocket sealing hexes from 3 directions. I am very happy to have at least gotten a German unit isolated, that is about as good or better as rescuing my mech unit. Only bad thing is losing the trucks, but fortunately we have lend lease to send us more trucks. [8D]

Note that two of the units I sent to seal the pocket were cavalry corps. The alternative would have been to send tank corps that would have had about the same CVs. So why did I choose to send the cav instead? Because they have more men. Not just CV matters in combat, but also numbers of men quite clearly matter a lot.

Hopefully walking through that step by step was helpful for some people. I probably won't do that extra level of detail too often, it is a lot of extra work to write that up, but I have read similar things in other AARs (including for example HLYA's ongoing one) which have been helpful to me in learning how to play and organize attacks etc.

The merge of the corps leading to less MPs is not necessarily buggy. You probably had good morale in the unit with less MPs, and that made the cost to move that unit lower. When you merged, your morale got dragged down, while you got the MPs equal to the lowest of the units that combined. Thus, you would have been better to move the units first, then combine them. I know it's a pain, but that's how things have to be done as we have to average the morale of the units but also need to take the lowest MPs to be most accurate.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

The merge of the corps leading to less MPs is not necessarily buggy. You probably had good morale in the unit with less MPs, and that made the cost to move that unit lower. When you merged, your morale got dragged down, while you got the MPs equal to the lowest of the units that combined. Thus, you would have been better to move the units first, then combine them. I know it's a pain, but that's how things have to be done as we have to average the morale of the units but also need to take the lowest MPs to be most accurate.

Yeah, that is true with the morale affecting the MP of the guards rifle corps. But the weird thing though was that the UI told me it would take a different amount of MP to move the individual units one by one, as compared to the stack of 3 units (WITHOUT them being a rifle corps - and not even with them being a broken down rifle corps, just with them being 3 different units in one stack). I would have (if the UI is correct anyway) 5 MP left if I had moved the whole stack at once, but if I moved each of the 3 units individually, I would have (supposedly) had 6, 6, and 7 MP left.

That might be purely a visual/display issue though, going on what Loki said maybe it is similar to the special turn 1 rules not displaying correctly past Minsk or something of that nature.

Stack move info is not accurate due to different morale values.

Soviet Turn 13 final positions (Feb 11, 1943)



Overall, despite the 6th Army not being destroyed, it seems like I am making approximately historical progress in most areas (and in some places, maybe even getting ahead, like around Rostov), which seems sort of surprising. However historically Germany pulled back at around this time from Demyansk, the Rzhev salient, and and back to a narrow position on the Taman peninsula. Germany has been slow to pull back and reluctant to abandon those places, so maybe that is the explanation. Also, Soviets historically launched an operation to relive Leningrad, which I have not done. If not, it might be that the 6th Army doesn't actually make that much difference (given the amount of time it can delay logistics etc by holding Stalingrad for a considerable number of turns), or maybe Soviets are just too strong.

Anyway, in Demyansk now that my forts have started being built back up, I am looking for weak units to attack again, and so I did:



I moved Katukov's tank army to Velikie Luki and also put Petrov in charge of the 4th Shock Army, and assigned them both to the Western Front, since that is an assault front. I had been thinking about giving Petrov a front earlier, but I have excess command capacity especially now that I realized so I don't really need to use all my fronts anyway, so he can command an army. The way this will work is Katukov will command the mech, and Petrov will command the infantry. I will use these assault front armies to attack, while the neighboring Northwestern front armies will build forts as hexes are taken.

I attacked with them against the dreaded clear hex just to the west of V.L. where I have failed before. This time my attack succeeded, although to my surprise it only just BARELY succeeded without particularly favorable losses, despite 10 to 1 numerical superiority. Seems to show that level 3 forts with non-weak rested German units are pretty strong.

Supply should come back again on the single rail line from V.L. back to the west again now that all the hexes surrounding V.L. have been taken.

In Rzhev I am just trying to make things more precarious for the Germans. If they want to stay on that rail, for now I think that is ok with me... I even left an open hex to the north so they can overextend even further if they want...



My mech unit is abandoned to its fate, so at least might as well cut a rail line. Unfortunately my attack against the 5=5 infantry failed, so my 24=47 stack can be attacked from 3 directions next turn. That means I bet it probably won't hold, and the German infantry division is likely to escape, sadly. However, that is only if Germany does actually attack. They probably need to use all/most of their best SS/Panzer/motorized units for that attack, which at least will hopefully mean they take some significant losses and those units are fatigued and worn out for a turn. I ZOC hugged the 25=51 SS unit near Orel mostly to try to make it harder to have that unit participate in an attack to free the German infantry division.



Germany left out a bunch of regiments near Kursk, so I basically just attacked them as much as I could and inflicted fairly favorable losses. There was one unit that was actually a division with only 2 CV but I thought it was a regiment. Since I thought it was a regiment, I thought I could do a hasty attack with 3 divisions (after already having beaten it once), but then lost probably mostly due to it being a division that actually had 15k men, rather than the expect 5k or so.



I freed the infantry corps. We both took heavy AFV losses, but this is probably worse for Germany. Now those 2 Panzer divisions will only have about ~30 AFV left between them.



cameron88 was in a rush to finish the previous turn, and forgot to move some units:



Some of those were apparently at Rostov, and were apparently intended to guard the rail line/flank of Rostov a bit more.



I didn't want to take advantageg of that too much for the sake of the game. So although I could easily have isolated Rostov at Taganrog, I didn't. I did advance a bit forward into the free territory, but I left a path out of Rostov and made it 2-wide so that units that he forgot to move would not be ZOC locked when trying to get out.

One of my tank corps could have reached the hex next to Stalino, and (if it is not occupied by a unit) could have taken Stalino. But that seemed like it would be overextending too much, so I resisted, but the temptation was great.



Now that I have Krasnodar back, there is nothing of particular value left in the Caucasus. So I am not in a particular hurry to push Germany out here and have already sent some units away.