"I have no idea what I'm doing" Bread (Axis) v Fracas (Soviet)

[RedJohn]

The OOB. The Soviet army (on map) peaked at 6.162 million men, before the shitshow that was the 42 offensive, and has stayed at roughly 5.3 million give or take since then.

[RedJohn]

Our Panzers are extremely beaten up. AFVs on both sides are looking very low. I currently have 60 more AFVs than the Soviets, them sitting at 5,763 AFVs to my 5,827.

Of course, one side produces hundreds of tanks a turn. And it's not me. [:(]

[RedJohn]

I have have a high water mark of 676. I can't be bothered doing the math, but solely by VP I believe I have pretty much won unless he gets the +6 VP everywhere.

Or not, I don't really know. VPs are boring anyway, I am excited to see the 43/44/45 red army!

[RedJohn]

Turn 85, the northern front. Consolidation of Leningrad continues, slowly. If I can secure the leningrad area, I can free up an entire army for redeployment elsewhere and feel very confident in defending things.

[RedJohn]

Rzhev was unfortunately taken in a surprise attack with a few rifle corps. Since that was the only VP in the area, I elected to move back a number of hexes and straighten the line a bit.

[RedJohn]

Moscow/Tula front. Occasional attacks, still no major developments here.

[RedJohn]

No movements here either.

[RedJohn]

The battle for kursk rages on.

[RedJohn]

The slow push also continues here.

[RedJohn]

As does the worrying advance at Rostov.

I lack reinforcements, and desperately need manpower - but it is nowhere to be found!

[RedJohn]

I abandon my foothold at Kerch. I only kept it up so far due to port supply, but I'd rather free up the infantry division here and hold the Peninsula itself, and I'm slowly but surely losing ports to supply in East ukraine anyway.

[RedJohn]

And Yalta.

[RedJohn]

I am incredibly fed up with the commitment to Yalta here, so I've decided to deploy my entire airforce to Crimea and will bomb them into submission.

They broke the hex with the battle on it last turn, with a mere 2 rifle corps. Very frustrating.

If anyone has any tips to help with the air stuff here, please do post. Right now the plan is to bomb the port and naval interdict.

[RedJohn]

Mein Gott, we have a new army!!! After the 11th was so cruelly taken away from us for no reason (we didn't even approach Stalingrad, smh) I have had my command capacity problems worsen extensively. Many of our corps are attached to axis allied armies, and I even had to resort to attaching them to frozen armies 70+ hexes away so as to not overload things.

With the arrival of this army however, I feel much more confident in defending the south.

[RedJohn]

As the months tick on, I find myself increasingly being distraught at the idea of playing to 43 as the Axis. It seems utterly, thoroughly, miserable. I had a very good 41, a pretty poor 42, and the result of that poor 42 seems to be that 43 is relentless. Even with a 5-5.5m OOB, it seems the Soviets are having an easy time of it with their offensives. I am contemplating abandoning everything east of Smolensk - perhaps establishing a line from Vyazma to Bryansk, then Bryansk to Kharkov.

I dread to think of facing the Soviets in a game where I don't have a good 41 - it seems quite literally impossible. It seems unless you manage to keep up your momentum, the following year you'll be reduced to having no counterplay.

[Jango32]

Soviet logistics go brrrr?

[RedJohn]

I do find it ridiculous that my enemy only had to deal with the logistics system only after losing Moscow, yes. It's partly why I'm considering just abandoning vast amounts of land also.

[AlbertN]

I do share your sentiment here RedJohn about how frustrating can be to play Axis.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: RedJohn

I am contemplating abandoning everything east of Smolensk - perhaps establishing a line from Vyazma to Bryansk, then Bryansk to Kharkov.

From the perspective of playing Soviets in StB, I would advise against that. One thing to realize is that Soviets gain a lot less manpower per turn in 1943 than in '41 or '42. Also, in the current patch Soviets can take pretty big casualties doing attacks (at least up until the point I have played in early '43). So you might be able to do fairly well in terms of the war of attrition, the more so that you can hold on to Soviet manpower centers, especially since you have a large OOB. While Soviets can certainly attack, it can be difficult to keep it up without causing the size of the Red Army to start going down, so some of those victories may have a somewhat pyrrhic character. If you let them take back manpower centers, then that won't be as big of an issue. You can probably judge if that is the case in your game or not by looking at the graph of Red Army size (not just map men, but total men).

That is, unless the situation in StB is sufficiently different, which it might be I suppose for various reasons.

[RedJohn]

Before I do an overview of things when I get the next turn back - turn 100 - I must say, naval invasions are one of the stupidest things I've encountered in this game. I fortified every Black Sea port I held, but apparently it is viable to just ignore that small detail, as a temporary port has generated. This initial port is also large enough to accommodate the ferrying over of additional divisions.