StB Beethoven (Soviet) vs cameron88 (Axis)

[jubjub]

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.

Try doing multiple 100k attacks against the same unit. The fort level should become reduced after each attack and the Germans will probably be low on ammo for the second assault. There's also diminishing returns for FPE the larger your attack is. The Germans tend to fire a lot on defense without killing much, so large assaults deplete their ammo quickly. Human wave tactics are quite strong in this game..

I wish attacks over a certain size would have automatic disruption applied depending on the terrain. For example, it seems unrealistic to be able to push 200,000 men through swamps without tripping over each other.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: jubjub

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.

Try doing multiple 100k attacks against the same unit. The fort level should become reduced after each attack and the Germans will probably be low on ammo for the second assault. There's also diminishing returns for FPE the larger your attack is. The Germans tend to fire a lot on defense without killing much, so large assaults deplete their ammo quickly. Human wave tactics are quite strong in this game..

I wish attacks over a certain size would have automatic disruption applied depending on the terrain. For example, it seems unrealistic to be able to push 200,000 men through swamps without tripping over each other.

I like to re-iterate that the losses incurred from such massive attacks are minimal too from my experience on the large attacking forces Thus the "without killing much" that Jubjub said is totally correct.

[Beethoven1]

Axis Turn 14



The usual bombing/naval interdiction continued in Leningrad. If nothing else, this should end up being a decent test of whether Germany can have any effect on it if they are willing to immolate much of their air force over Lake Ladoga. Overall, the Axis has lost 2.5k planes and 1k pilots by flying the Luftwaffe freely during winter. 1.6k of the Axis losses have been operational. I have lost a decent amount as well, 3.6k planes, although many/most of mine were on the first turn when I accidentally left air support on turn 1, not realizing how massive the losses would be. I am also losing some fighters each turn contesting the bombing.

Hopefully when spring rolls around and I start actually using my air force, things will be a bit better due to the Axis losses.



One thing a bit weird is on one of the naval interdiction missions, it says "air transported freight," and if I click on that it takes me down to Rostov where they did air supply missions (totally unrelated to the Leningrad interdiction). Not sure if that might be a display bug or something:



One of my counter-interdiction missions had a minor effect bombing the 4 Italian torpedo boats. Hate to see those 4 operational losses [:(] . We will bomb them again in the snow next turn too, and crash trying. I am not sure if I even really need to be flying at all (I think not) since Axis has never "controlled" the Ladoga hexes, they have always been Soviet or neutral, but anyway:



This turn I didn't get supply through, but I *think* that is just because there is too much freight in storage so the supply system is not sending more rather than the interdiction. Here I have 26 Soviet interdiction and 21 Axis. It has been similar sorts of numbers the whole time:



I am having a hard time getting the Osinovets depot to send on supply to the Leningrad depot which has a bit more storage space. I know this turn they were both on supply priority 4, but in the previous turn I had Osinovets on 3 and Leningrad 4 to try to get it to send some on to Leningrad (not happening).





56 damage on the port and 52 on the railyard in Osinovets, btw. I am not sure if I should put more construction or AA units in, in part because if I have more troops there then they will also need more supply. The army HQs have a bit more AA also:



The Great German Demyansk offensive continues, with two attacks each with 70k Germans. The Germans are apparently learning about the effects of superior numbers and trying to do the same thing as I have been doing... Although nominally I had higher CV, the CV collapsed under weight of manpower. So if I want to stop them pushing there, at some point I will have to send more men I guess, but for now it seems ok.



The other German attack with 70k men, I had roughly equal nominal CV but it similarly collapsed.



No counterattacks in Velikie Luki, but they are still desperately holding on to the rail line in the Rzhev salient.



I am not sure if it is really hurting my supply at all not having it open though now that the rail from V.L. back to the west is cleared - I think it may not be. I got 4800 freight in the Nelidovo depot and also 2400 in Zapadnaya Dvina (pretty new depot I made a turn or two ago with still 66% damage). I also am consistently getting 7-8k in all the depots on the double track towards V.L.

As I had expected, Germany broke out the encircled infantry division. This was prefaced by 1000 bombers worth of ground attack, which clearly disrupted a lot of Soviet ground elements:



At least Germany lost a lot of AFVs in the process (so did I, but more easily replaceable) and much of these losses should be from the SS divisions which should weaken them in future turns:



Lots of counterattacks around Kursk on weak units:



And similarly a lot of counterattacks around Rostov, mostly against weak units except for this one, which was a REAL rout against the corps that was previously encircled:



Now... you can see that Germany did NOT retreat from Rostov... So, about that:



So I will try and eliminate the Rostov Pocket now, and Germany can try to break it out. As a reminder, this was the situation on turn 12, so they should not be any more or less ZOC locked now than they were then, so seems like at this point it is fair game:



There are:

1 German infantry division
2 German motorized brigades
4 Romanian infantry divisions
2 Romanian cavalry divisions

And down near Taganrog I presume is the Romanian Armored division, which was routed last turn and should be super-weak. In the worst case for the Axis, if the lose all of those, it is a lot less bad than Stalingrad, and mostly Romanians rather than Germans.

My supply there could be better, but it is not that bad. Tolbukhin's leading Spearhead, the 57th Army got 1147 out of 1642 needed supply, as well as 2k replacements. Other armies in the area are similar, and across the whole front I got 49k supply out of 35k needed. After having my whole army on supply priority 4 this entire time, we seem to have pretty much reached the point where they are starting to need less supply in current turns because they have gotten so much in previous turns which they now have in stock.





There is something else that still doesn't make sense - replacements. My manpower pool is still stable.



And yet, my troops in the field got 111431 "RepMn Rec" as you can see in the logistics report in the previous screenshot.

So if I am actually only getting 65-70k replacement manpower each turn, something doesn't seem to add up here. My total losses this turn (actually pretty high) were 109k, basically almost exactly equal to the "RepMn Rec." So you would think that if my losses were exactly equal to my replacements, the total size of the Red Army would remain the same. But according to this graph, the total size of the Red Army is still getting smaller. I just don't understand how the math is working here:



Logically I would think it should be Total_Army_Size_This_Turn = Total_Army_Size_Last_Turn + Replacement _Men_Received - Losses, but that formula doesn't seem to be satisfied and I really don't get it. I can understand that maybe not all the replacements would be getting to my troops due to overstretched logistics, but that does not seem to be happening since the manpower pool is stable (as are reserves and theater boxes).


Just minor additional retreating in the Caucasus. I repaired the rail up to Krasnodar and... forgot to make it a depot. [:D]

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

I like to re-iterate that the losses incurred from such massive attacks are minimal too from my experience on the large attacking forces Thus the "without killing much" that Jubjub said is totally correct.

Yep, I have generally been taking good loss ratios by attacking with large numbers of men. Which is why I have been doing it.

It does seem like sometimes losses are somewhat higher for the attacker, but if so they are also seemingly higher for the defender as well. But what more often seems to happen is if the defender loses a certain amount, then they just retreat more quickly and so you might end up with similar losses on both sides as if you were doing a successful attack with fewer troops.

TBH I do like numbers mattering in general, but possibly at some point it might become too much a loop of "I attack your 1 unit with superior numbers" followed up by "I counterattack your 1 unit with superior numbers" and on and on.

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Air Phase Turn 14



When doing the Soviet air phase last turn I set up ground attack missions on the hex I would have attacked to try to break out my mech corps. But it didn't run (I think because I didn't have bombers deployed for it and you seem not to be able to deploy them on the same turn). This turn it did run because I accidentally kept the check mark on, which I didn't want. So I reloaded so I could uncheck the accidental ground attack missions (it was the 15th air army ones):



The more interesting thing is when I re-did it, it only ran 1 single interdiction mission in Leningrad for some reason. Whereas the first time I ran it, it did 3 (this was from the first time):



I don't think I had anything differently set up - in both case I pretty much just clicked through the air. The only thing I did in the Leningrad area was 3 groups of new bombers (which shouldn't fly anyway this turn since they are newly deployed). I then assigned these bombers to 1 SAK and that was selected to do the naval interdiction:



So the question is, is there any obvious reason they didn't/wouldn't do more missions than just 1? Could it have to do with having them under 1 SAK rather than the main 13th Air Army? I'd rather ignore this and/or let AI deal with it and get on with the ground phase, but can't really since clearly Germany is going to keep bombing. And apparently I may need to figure out how to get more of my bombers to fly more missions bombing the 4 Italian torpedo boats, because now the Axis interdiction went up to 40 and it says Axis has control for the first time rather than neutral control:



That is bad for me, but if nothing else, at least this means we can see if that has any effect next turn on Leningrad being isolated or not.



FWIW, in the previous turn or two I had the bomber directly under 13th Air Army, I am not sure if that makes any difference. It is hard enough for me to keep track of which Air Army # is which (I would like to rename that to be Leningrad Front Air Army simply for QOL ease of use), much less to keep track of all the sub-groups, so whenever I am forced to deploy something manually I have been deploying it directly to the main air armies, which makes things at least a bit less work.


Side note - I would like ideally to be using the AI air assist to handle most of this, but it seems like it is not a realistic option (at least until summer) because it is all-or-nothing. If I used AI air assist, it would deploy a bunch of bombers everywhere across the front, not just some fighters. But all I really want is to have relatively small numbers of fighters deployed to defensively counter the Axis bombing/air supply etc and to have a small number of bombers in Leningrad just for naval interdiction (and I guess it might be smart to have some bombers for emergency use like for that last encirclement, but previously when I set up bombing missions in the first few turns they were not running).

Even in summer, the Volkhov front for example will presumably be pretty quiet and shouldn't need bombers, so in a perfect world it would be nice if AI air assist had some sort of toggle for whether to deploy different kinds of planes to different air armies (i.e. an option to un-check bombers for Volkhov front etc). Just a minor thing, nothing too important in the grand scheme of things though.

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 14 Mid-Turn Update



Well, this has been an interesting turn, and the next turn or two are going to be very impactful and have a lot of decisive effect one way or another on how the game goes on from here...

I haven't been making any particular effort at operational security, but in this case I will up the encryption due to the extra importance of this.

First of all, here is Rostov:



The one attack was against two Panzer divisions that had only 5 combined defensive CV sitting out in the open without forts, so I took the opportunity to whack them:



And also attacking (again) the Romanian armor division and routing it. It may not be the best idea to keep letting that be left out in places where it can be routed, because when that happens Germany loses vehicles. Notice 209 vehicles lost:



The pocket in Rostov is pretty thick, and for all of the Axis braggadocio that they can break it out, I doubt they can.



However, the real interesting part is at Kursk... You can see the pocket of converted hexes is reasonably thick, and I also have a couple units left to move that can potentially widen it further:



On either flank of Kursk, the only thing defending was some infantry regiments and a weak Luftwaffe division. This led to a combination of retreats (in a good # of cases multi-hex retreats) and routs, which opened up large gaps in the German lines.





There was one poor regiment that I attacked not once, not twice, but three times (this was #3). And I am pretty sure I had been attacking it in previous turns also:



With a total of 12 such attacks and re-attacks of the same unit like those, along with 1 failed attack against an infantry division at the end when I was getting greedy. Incidentally, this turn I have 38 attacks in total, 36 of which were successful (pretty darn lopsided). The combat system seems actually pretty predictable, at least if you are attacking with assault fronts and good generals which a lopsided manpower advantage as well as clear CV advantage against weak units, which is what basically all of these are:



Lots and lots of attacks, basically all deliberate (only really using hasty to re-attack previously attacked divisions occasionally), against weak units and in particular regiments. Combat results seem less predictable if you are attacking good units in good defensive positions & level 3 forts (you seem to get holds more despite seemingly favorable CVs/numbers in these cases). I have adapted from some previous turns where more attacks were failing and have been trying to for the most part only do attacks that I am pretty sure are very likely to succeed in almost all cases. Via Hardradi (excerpt from David Glantz's "Stumbling Colosus"), this sounds pretty similar to historical Soviet doctrine also:



But back to Kursk... The interesting thing is that apparently there are (at least) 4 Panzer divisions in the Kursk pocket.

There is (at least) one Panzer division in the ? stack and there are 2, with CVs of 13-14 each in the 27=27 stack. And there is also one in the city of Kursk itself with 6 CV. I knew about that one before I did the encirclement, but didn't find the other 3 or know they were there until I moved in to hug the units in the pocket.





Looking back again at the overall screenshot of the Kursk pocket, it doesn't appear there are many units outside the pocket in reasonable range to help break it out. The 5 infantry below it are regiments that I previously retreated/routed this turn.



There is that 4=9 Panzer division up near Bryansk, as well as the SS division and other SS + Panzer divisions further north. They could potentially help, but have a ways to travel. There are the German and Hungarian infantry to the east, but they are fairly weak and partly ZOC locked, so should be able to maybe do a few attacks on the outside of the pocket, but not too much more than that.

But what about the units INSIDE the pocket, especially those 4 or more Panzers? 13 or 14 CV is definitely quite a bit higher than most of my fatigued, low CPP units in the area. So they may well be able to break out. It probably depends quite a bit on how many MP they will have when isolated, as well as how much work ZOC lock can do for me. My guess is they unfortunately may be able to break out, and there is also a risk I could get some troops counter-encircled, especially over the next turn or two as reinforcements like those SS divisions show up.

This may actually even have been at least partly an intentional German trap:



So things are about to get interesting. Now I just have to look VERY carefully at what I can still tweak to improve my chances of holding the pocket and not getting counter-pocketed myself. By random chance, I did the Kursk area last, and if I had randomly happened to do it first, I would no doubt do some things differently with various units in other parts of the map. That is a weird thing that doesn't really make sense about the logic of turn based games, the order in which you do things during your turn matters and can make a difference.

[Beethoven1]

Update -

I moved in another unit to "hug" the pocket, and that gave me more intelligence about the "?" Panzer unit.

It turns out that the ? stack is actually 2 Panzer divisions, not 1, and they have CVs of 9 and 10.



So there are 5 Panzer divisions in the Kursk pocket, not 4, which would have been a huge amount by itself!!!

Honestly that is probably a bad thing for me all in all, since it probably will make it more likely that he can break out from within.


However, another piece of news is that apparently the Panzer units in the pocket are short on trucks. This is because cameron88 Sent these (or at least some of these) Panzer divisions to the reserve, and when you send them to reserve it takes away all the unit trucks and adds them to the pool. Then when you redeploy them, they are stripped of their trucks, and only will get more trucks if the logistics system gives them. And it is hard to get the logistics system to give German Panzer divisions in Russia trucks.



So if he can't break out, there is a good chance it will be because of this problem.

As a suggestion, ideally maybe there should be some sort of "toggle" button when you send units to reserve, a toggle to "don't send unit trucks to pool, keep trucks with unit." Then if you send a Panzer division to reserve it would keep its trucks rather than them being added to the pool, and when you deployed it back out of the reserve then they would still have their trucks. Otherwise the reserve is, if not totally unusable for Germany, then at least very problematic to use for Panzer and Motorized divisions.

[RedJohn]

I remember sending all my panzers/mot to reserve in my first game, as I wanted to avoid the attrition.

Combined with my existing truck deficit, this led to Germany having 0 motorised capabilities in 42. So yeah, definitely don't send mot/panzers to reserve.

[Hardradi]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

Lots and lots of attacks, basically all deliberate (only really using hasty to re-attack previously attacked divisions occasionally), against weak units and in particular regiments. Combat results seem less predictable if you are attacking good units in good defensive positions & level 3 forts (you seem to get holds more despite seemingly favorable CVs/numbers in these cases). I have adapted from some previous turns where more attacks were failing and have been trying to for the most part only do attacks that I am pretty sure are very likely to succeed in almost all cases. Via Hardradi (excerpt from David Glantz's "Stumbling Colosus"), this sounds pretty similar to historical Soviet doctrine also:

Having been on the receiving end of Beethoven's application of this doctrine, this quote rings very true for me.

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

Update -

I moved in another unit to "hug" the pocket, and that gave me more intelligence about the "?" Panzer unit.

It turns out that the ? stack is actually 2 Panzer divisions, not 1, and they have CVs of 9 and 10.



So there are 5 Panzer divisions in the Kursk pocket, not 4, which would have been a huge amount by itself!!!

Honestly that is probably a bad thing for me all in all, since it probably will make it more likely that he can break out from within.

[X(] if it holds, the end is nigh.

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 14

I will now show the pocket etc without it being blacked out. We decided to start a new game (also StB scenario) using the new patch. The combat seems overall better (although I am a bit worried about the Soviet AFV losses in the new patch), and Germany's Panzers. We could in theory go on with the current game, but we would need to have some way figured out to get trucks into the Panzers to make it fair, because, as you will see, they could very likely break themselves out of the Kursk pocket if they only had trucks. Also, they would not all have been sitting concentrated at Kursk by the depot if not for the fact that they did not have trucks and were trying to refit to get them.

It will be interesting to see how a new game with the new patch develops as compared to how this one was developing, that may help give some picture of the impact of the changes on combat in 1942-43. In theory, we have the option to go back and continue the first game, but we might realistically only do so if the balance in the new patch turns out to be wrong and the game situational in this first game is actually more balanced than what we get in a new game starting with the new patch. The German units are just pretty beat up, and that combined with the trucks not refitting makes continuing this game less attractive than starting a new one with the new patch's combat in action from the start.



On the southern flank of the Demyansk area, I beat up on 3 weak units. Notice that in this battle Germany lost about twice as many men as me, a very favorable trade of losses for me. This is an example of why I think it is worthwhile to keep some troops and be prepared to attack in different places rather than just putting all troops in the clear terrain in the south and only attacking there. It is true that I don't get a huge strategic gain from this sort of attack, but it simply adds a lot more areas of the front where Germany has to watch out for and figure out some way to defend.



To the north of Velikie Luki, I took back two hexes that were defended by mountain regiments. Although these had good nominal defensive CVs, they were still regiments, susceptible to losing when attacked by 100,000 Soviets... Also note the losses were basically even (another good trade for Soviets) despite this being an attack into swamps.



I also started attacking again on the southern side of the salient down towards Smolensk. I had not attacked for a while there, so my units had been able to build up CPP and were ready to attack again. All the attacks succeeded except for this one - not sure why this one failed given the numerical superiority. Other similar attacks succeeded.



I also took two heavy forest hexes on the northern side of the Rzhev salient with big attacks. This one was pretty painful, with 174 AFVs lost. The only reason I thought it was worth it is to make the German position untenable and either force them to withdraw and free up the rails, or else give a serious opportunity to get an encirclement in subsequent turns. Otherwise it would not have been worth doing this attack.



Minor breakthrough towards Yelyna. I could have advanced further and flipped more hexes and created more of a salient, the only reason I didn't was initially because I wasn't sure it was wise to flip more hexes because I might end up retreating into enemy territory if I did. And then as I was doing the Kursk area I realized I needed more units sent down there. If by random chance I had done Kursk first, I would not have done these attacks at all.



To the north of Kursk, after I got the Kursk pocket I did some attacks against German SS/Panzer/motorized units that I did not expect to succeed (none of them did). I only did those attacks PURELY to reduce the German movement points and CPP for the next turn and give them some fatigue, to disrupt the next turn's rescue efforts.



Here is the Kursk pocket. It could have been better if I had done that part earlier in the turn, but too many units had already moved and done attacks elsewhere. Although it is fully sealed, the defenses on the southern side are pretty weak, with a lot of tank corps broken down into tank brigades with 1 CV. So if the Germans had trucks with enough MP to be able to attack and move, they would likely be able to break out of that.

The attack is against one infantry regiment that IIRC I attacked 3 different times in the turn, and on the 3rd time it routed.



Here's the Rostov pocket. I did one attack against some weak and exposed German Panzers, and they lost more AFVs than me (I bet that would not happen under the new patch...)

...

The Rostov pocket was much better sealed and protected than the Kursk pocket. I think there was basically no possible way he could actually have broken out of that, it would have held and been totally eliminated.



Still Romanians on the flanks in the Caucasus... And they were still routing. If you think that defending in swamps means that Romanians won't rout, think again... They will often rout regardless...

[Beethoven1]

I am going to continue using this same thread for our new game... So, without further ado... Turn 1 of the new game with the new 1.15 patch!



Soviet Turn 1

One attack at Demyansk to open things up. Not a great loss ratio. [:(]



I did a lot of attacks in the Velikie Luki salient. However, I attacked to the east a bit less than last time and sent some extra troops over towards Velikie Luki. You can also see that I did only a single attack on the western side of the Rzhev salient. More on that later.



Velikie Luki itself was taken, but it was expensive to take. 192 AFVs lost. Ideally I would not have used a bunch of tanks attached to take a city, but I wanted to make sure I would actually take it, and it was made harder to take in this patch, with a level 5 fort.

Let's take a look at the battle stats for the battle taking V.L.:



It looks like a small number of German AT guns were VERY BUSY. Between just 27 different 75/37/50mm German AT guns, they had a total of 226 AP hits. Busy day at the office for them. Seems like that is probably this "Germany gets the first shot at long range" thing that the new patch has.

In total in the turn, I lost 470 AFVs to 98 lost for Germany, so that one single battle accounted for almost half of my total AFV losses. The only reason overall AFV losses were this low is I was a LOT more sparing in my AFV use than in the previous game, and for the most part avoided attaching tank brigades to infantry to do attacks.



Overall losses on turn 1 were about even in manpower/guns. That would be good against Germans, but is a bit more meh considering that a good amount of the fighting was against Romanians on the flanks of Stalingrad.

Back to the Rhzev salient. The one and only hex I attacked was a heavy forest hex:



That and the other circled hexes are key defensive hexes that lock (or unlock) the Rzhev salient. If the Soviets take those hexes, all heavy forest/swamp/city which have interlocking ZOC, then it is mostly clear and light forest terrain behind those, which are a lot harder for Germany to defend. So I took the heavy forest hex near Rzhev because you can take that pretty easily on turn 1. Unfortunately, another attack on the heavy forest hex in the north-west side of the salient near Molody Tud failed.

However, it was not really a possible option to attack anything more than that. As we learned last game, it is not an option for Soviets to do the historical Operation Mars attacks. Instead, Soviets have to go IMMEDIATELY onto the defensive, because a large number of Soviet units are frozen, and Germany can encircle them. The frozen Soviet units will adamantly REFUSE to help free their Comrades if they get encircled, so there is no real option but to defend as best as we can against a possible German attack further to the south, and wait for our units to unfreeze.

So, I told all the units that were massed up to attack in Operation Mars, "Sorry, operation canceled" and moved them south to reinforce my defenses in this salient. By moving a lot of additional units south and also retreating a bit from the small salients, I was able to form a pretty good defense:



If Germany can still encircle Soviet units on the first German turn, then there is really nothing that Soviets can do to stop it, I did all that was really possible to anticipate and defend against that this time around. The only way I could have done slightly more was to move a few more units that attacked the heavy forest south. However, I really needed them to defend up there anyway, and my defenses are stronger there having taken the heavy forest than not having taken it.

Another thing to note... The Western Front starts off in this scenario using 200 command capacity. Since it is an assault front, it has 89 command capacity available, and what is worse, 73 of that command capacity is used up by FROZEN units, so there is in reality only 16 command capacity available for the Western Front to use in combat, or else you don't get any of the assault front bonuses in the new patch... So it is really not an option to do Operation Mars with the Western Front, given the scenario's set up and the changes in the new patch...

So what I did was basically change everything on the Western Front that was not locked mostly to the Kalinin front. I did my one attack on the heavy forest hex with an assault front army, and then also switched that to the Kalinin front, and switched the 3rd Shock Army in the Velikie Luki area to the Western Front so that I could attack Velikie Luki with an assault front Army. May as well do that in the meantime since I have to go on the defensive for Operation Mars.


Now, here's the big one you've been waiting for, Stalingrad...

This opening is based off of the one HLYA did a step by step guide for here in his AAR: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5015734

However, I did do some stuff a bit differently:

First of all, some of the units he used in his AAR used to not be frozen, but now seem to be frozen. That means Soviets have fewer units to form the Stalingrad pocket with. Secondly, HLYA's pocket looked to me like it might be (barely) potentially possible to break, and I wanted to make very sure that my pocket could not be broken, at least not on the first German turn (I will be very surprised if I am wrong).



1) I encircled the German unit I circled in red (a weak German Panzer division), and then also did a hasty attack against it with a cavalry division to give it some extra fatigue etc. This is one of the very few German units in a position to immediately respond to the encirclement of the 6th Army. So by encircling it, instead of it being able to do anything to help 6th Army, Germany will have to free it. It should be pretty easy to free it and I am not expecting that pocket to hold, but that takes that unit solidly out of the equation for the first German turn (and then it should still be low on supply etc for the turn after as well).

2) The 29=29 German Panzer division I circled in blue has 3 tank brigades with ZOC on it hugging it. I would encircle it too, but I don't think it is possible to get that far (but didn't check carefully). That 29=29 German division is the ONLY good strength German division that is in a position to be able to immediately respond to help the 6th Army. I am definitely not expecting my tank brigades to win a battle against that division, but Germany will have to expend MP and maybe do some attacks on my tank brigades, which will not leave them with too many MP left to help out the 6th Army.

3) The unit circled in black is another German Panzer division. However, I don't have to worry about it yet, because it is frozen for the first German turn. For my subsequent turn I will have to worry about it though.

4) The two German motorized regiments circled in yellow highlighter are not going to be eliminated, whereas HLYA tightly encircled them in his opening. I couldn't do that partly because of the extra frozen units in the updated scenario, and partly because I just wanted to be safer in making sure the Stalingrad kessel would not get broken. However, I cut them off anyway from supply for 1 turn. Flipping those small number of hexes with 1 motorized brigade and an infantry division like I did is enough to basically take them out of the picture for the next turn. They can easily escape to safety, but doing so will take a lot of their MP, since they will have to advance a long way through Soviet controlled terrain, and they won't have MP left to form back into a division with the other regiment and get into position to do anything to help out the 6th Army. At least not for another turn or so.


So, maybe I am wrong, but I think this Stalingrad pocket should be pretty much unbreakable. As a bonus, notice that I also took Kalach with one of my mech brigades. Kalach has one of the German depots with some of the 6th Army's supply, so this means they will have less supply and should not be able to hold on quite as long as a result.


Meanwhile in the Caucasus, I did some attacks on the German mobile units down there. These did not have good odds and I was not expecting them to really succeed - and as expected they did fail. The reason I attacked though was to tire out the German divisions a bit and steal some of their movement points and ammo etc. That way they will have a harder time getting to Stalingrad and will be weaker when they arrive, so they won't be quite as useful in contributing to a possible breakout attempt. This attack for example had 1:1 odds. That meant the attack failed, but iirc that is high enough that it may take up to 16 MP or so away from the 3/3rd Panzer next turn. That is 16 fewer MP that can be used to drive north to Stalingrad with.



Another thing we learned last game was that Romanians simply cannot defend anything, even if they have supposedly high nominal defensive CVs and even if they are defending good defensive terrain. So I applied that here, and rather than simply leaving this part of the map alone, I attacked. Specifically, I attacked weak Romanian units. One of the attacks failed (I was attacking rough terrain, after all), but the other one succeeded and the Romanians routed. opened up a hole in the line, and I marched a division into it. Now I am just 1 hex from the German rail line...



So basically, if Germany wants to stop this, they are going to have to put Germans there (and if they put just German regiments there rather than divisions, then maybe I can even still attack German regiments, if I attack with some corps with superior numbers of manpower).

There's not a lot of Germans to go around though... So rather than sitting back and being totally passive there again, this will hopefully put them in more of a pickle. If they defend with Germans, they won't have Germans elsewhere where they desperately need Germans. And if they defend with Romanians, then I can rout the Romanians, advance and hopefully cut off their supply and escape route on the Taman peninsula. Or they can just run away. Their choice. I am ok with whichever of those they choose.

[Beethoven1]

Axis Turn 2


cameron88 has learned how to do naval interdiction more effectively.



It is sort of weird that it gave him interdiction for the whole lake although he interdicted just two hexes.

He also attacked Oranienbaum, and the attack failed... but really it was a success, because it lowered the fort level. The defense there is not maintainable without the fort, so... If the scenario is intended to make it so that Soviets hold Oranienbaum, then it seems like it should be changed so it is not so easy for Axis to knock down the fort there and force Soviets to abandon it. Perhaps it should be a level 5 fort and/or the scenario should start with more Soviet troops there.



No real response yet in the center. My 2 mech brigades were routed away, which I was pretty much expecting, that is really all:



In the dreaded salient, there was no first turn Axis encirclement this time. Apparently I beefed up my troops there enough to stop that. I also deployed a whole lot of reserve divisions here, which will further beef them up for the next turn. I would have liked to have kept them training in reserves, but that is just not an option in the StB scenario, those troops really have to be IMMEDIATELY deployed and deployed exactly here, because Soviets do not start off with enough troops to be able to reliably defend in this Kaluga salient area, much less to attack. Maybe if Soviets at least started with level 3 forts it would be better... But with level 2 forts, it seems too easy for Axis to ahistorically attack.



In Stalingrad, as expected Germany routed away my tank brigades (on both sides of the pocket, but was not able to do any serious breakout attempt. Every single one of the battles was like this, with the one exception of the attack over the major river (which was a retreat), where Soviet tank/mech brigades lost basically 100% of their tanks and routed and Axis lost only a handful of troops/equipment/AFVs. Tank/mech brigades which were broken down were already garbage, and now they are steaming piles of garbage in the new patch. I am a bit skeptical that Soviet AFV losses should really be close to 100% in every single battle. Yes, they should trade at a bad ratio, especially when defending on clear terrain here like this, but losing every single tank every single time, I dunno, makes me wonder...



Axis is retreating in the Caucasus. Sadly, they took back the rough terrain hex where I had advanced near the Taman Peninsula. Maybe I can take it back, or at least force them to keep a few more troops there rather than just weak Romanians though. Hopefully the attacks I made in the Caucasus lowered the German MP enough to at least slightly slow the retreat.



My AFV losses were "only" 1,072 this turn. This is about as many as I took on the first turn in the previous game on the earlier patch, despite the fact that I used my AFVs much more sparingly this time.



With the AFV losses this high, I feel like I have no real choice but to refrain from using my AFVs in all but the very most important battles, at minimum until winter is over, or else my AFV stock will quickly crash down by many thousands. Joel Billings (I think it was him, might have been Loki though) mentioned that Soviet AFV losses were particularly high in this late '42 early '43 period, but get a bit better later if you wait because some Soviet command and control issues improve as a function of time.

So that being the case, I guess I will mostly just wait for them to improve before trying to use any tanks.

[loki100]

There's a few factors at play and its really a case of waiting to see how it settles down.

The last patch set up the relative German advantage at range but it also either restored or set up a better relationship between experience and actually getting shots off (for all elements). As ever, not easy to interpret which but to me, what we are now seeing is what I would have said was fairly typical say 4-6 months before the game was released.

The enduring issue is that, briefly, the Soviets are on the wrong side of the tank technology race. The KV is past its best and the T34/76 is increasingly out matched (& this is going to be made more brutal by the range changes). Add on that in late 42 you are still running around with some real junk and the flawed T60/T70 design choice.

Put it all together and it looks brutal but I think you just have to ride it out. There maybe some adjustment as the patch is evaluated but it may also be the game has been reset to the relative balance it had before release?

All of this, naturally, is pure supposition

edit: there is a wider bit here, Soviet players tend not to have the functional attitude towards their electronic troops as the real Soviet command did. So I'm not sure being cautious is the solution. The Germans are still hampered both by low production and problems of refitting battered formations, so it maybe better just to take the losses?

Its the same with the VVS, Stephen in our MP game is being ultra-cautious so my LW rules the skies in late 42. In my vs AI game, I was already feeling the pinch as the AI uses the VVS in a much more attritional role.

Again, just an interpretation of what I see but also a feel for the different ways the Soviet AI and Soviet players handle the late 42/early 43 transitions.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: loki100

There's a few factors at play and its really a case of waiting to see how it settles down.

The last patch set up the relative German advantage at range but it also either restored or set up a better relationship between experience and actually getting shots off (for all elements). As ever, not easy to interpret which but to me, what we are now seeing is what I would have said was fairly typical say 4-6 months before the game was released.

The enduring issue is that, briefly, the Soviets are on the wrong side of the tank technology race. The KV is past its best and the T34/76 is increasingly out matched (& this is going to be made more brutal by the range changes). Add on that in late 42 you are still running around with some real junk and the flawed T60/T70 design choice.

Put it all together and it looks brutal but I think you just have to ride it out. There maybe some adjustment as the patch is evaluated but it may also be the game has been reset to the relative balance it had before release?

All of this, naturally, is pure supposition

edit: there is a wider bit here, Soviet players tend not to have the functional attitude towards their electronic troops as the real Soviet command did. So I'm not sure being cautious is the solution. The Germans are still hampered both by low production and problems of refitting battered formations, so it maybe better just to take the losses?

Its the same with the VVS, Stephen in our MP game is being ultra-cautious so my LW rules the skies in late 42. In my vs AI game, I was already feeling the pinch as the AI uses the VVS in a much more attritional role.

Again, just an interpretation of what I see but also a feel for the different ways the Soviet AI and Soviet players handle the late 42/early 43 transitions.

Interesting. To the degree that it is a technological issue with the T-34/76, it may make sense to use them now, since they are not going to get better technologically just by sitting there and waiting.

However, what I meant by not using them as much is not using them for all my attritional attacks on infantry as much, so that doesn't mean I will be passive per se. I will still attack German infantry, just without attaching tank brigades all the time for every little attack. I may re-evaluate that though if it seems like I am losing significantly more battles without attaching tanks.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Just like that Soviet reinforcements appear with no effect on local rail, air, or supply.

[Elessar2]

Man, w.r.t. Stalingrad, history repeats itself. I think you bagged more than the Russians actually did in Nov '42...

[carlkay58]

HLYA - I would contend that your statement 'with no effect on local rail, air, or supply' is wrong.

When these units arrive from the Reserve, they are assigned directly to STAVKA with no trucks or supplies. This means that during the Logistics Phase they have high demand on the logistics in the area. This increased logistics demand affects the local rail and supply net far more than if they had been moved into the area through normal means - even by rail. While the rail use is probably less than if the units had been railed in, the logistics load is far more. Despite this increased load on the supply net these units will not be in very good supply for another turn or two - which drags out their effects on the local rail and supply net. This can be alleviated through the use of Air Supply.

I am not sure what you mean by the effects on air other than the use of Air Supply but you really need to use it to get these units ready for use next turn. Units arriving from the Reserve that are pushed into the front line on the turn of their arrival are operating at big minuses due to lack of leadership, supply, and trucks.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

Just like that Soviet reinforcements appear with no effect on local rail, air, or supply.

...

why post this in someone else's AAR. You've already got a thread making your argument, all this does is to break the rythym of this particular AAR?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1
...

Interesting. To the degree that it is a technological issue with the T-34/76, it may make sense to use them now, since they are not going to get better technologically just by sitting there and waiting.

However, what I meant by not using them as much is not using them for all my attritional attacks on infantry as much, so that doesn't mean I will be passive per se. I will still attack German infantry, just without attaching tank brigades all the time for every little attack. I may re-evaluate that though if it seems like I am losing significantly more battles without attaching tanks.

I discussed this with Joel pre-release as in the beta Soviet AAR I had a lot of T34/85 in the pools while my formations were still using /43 (sometimes /42) variants.

The logic is that the game systems are sticky about swapping out older but not totally obsolete tanks, unless in the national reserve.

So fully agree not to waste them but certainly don't sweat over saving them, in a way you want a load of nice empty slots for when something better comes along [;)]

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 2 (Nov 26, 1942)

Nothing much in Demyansk, the only thing is I am slightly concerned about a possible German attack on the highlighted salient, so I am trying to bring in a bit more troops there, and now have a continuous line there, which Soviets lack at the start of the scenario. It is still fairly weak though:



There was a pretty big gap in the line north of Velikie Luki, which I exploited with a mech corps, then brought it back and broke it down to regiments to avoid possibly getting cut off. I only did 3 attacks (all against weak regiments) near V.L., the rest was just advancing into empty territory. There are very few troops here. Might mean that a relief force is going to Stalingrad. Germany is seemingly just defending rail chokepoints, but I think they need at least something else here. All those German troops sitting in Demyansk could help, if they were not in Demyansk.

In the north-west of the Rzhev salient there was a reserve activation of that 13=13 motorized division which contributed to an attack failing. I didn't see many reserve activations in the previous game.



In this whole central area, I didn't do any attacks. Just building CPP and forts for the moment, and moving the newly deployed units to provide some basic defense in depth. I didn't bother re-assigning them yet from STAVKA, partly out of laziness and desire to just end the turn, and partly because it is really annoying to do when a lot of units/HQs are still frozen (and then have to re-do it AGAIN when they unfreeze). It shouldn't matter too much, assuming Germany does not suddenly attack (which I doubt).

Stalingrad looks like a total disaster for Germany, and it is not just the 6th Army, it is the handful of other units that start nearby. Surrounding and/or ZOC locking the 2 German tanks on turn 1, like I did, may be too strong/unbalanced possibly.



There are not many attacks here, the ones that there are were essentially all against Romanians by Soviet infantry. It is mostly just moving into empty territory where there are no Axis units. In particular, cavalry is very good for flipping these hexes. Break down a cavalry corps, and you have 3 units, each of which can flip a lot of hexes. I figured that even if I could not hold all of this territory, it was a good idea to flip hexes, so that any potential relief force would have to go a LONG way to get to Stalingrad (and now a lot of the rail is cut). And when they get there, they have to worry about helping all the other units before they can even think about helping 6th Army. I could lose some cavalry, but if so, that doesn't really matter, they are very much expendable.

The only upside for Germany is that my forward cavalry will have no supply. But I am not sure that matters if there are literally no Axis units there.

Cavalry seems so good here that I actually now also railed in two more cavalry corps from the western front...

In the interest of the game going not ending, it may be necessary to let some of the encircled Axis units out, depending on what/how many units they sent towards Stalingrad on turn 1. I was thinking that the new combat system in the new patch being more favorable for Germany would balance things out, but I am not so sure after this turn. All I really wanted was to make sure a relief force could not break the Stalingrad pocket, so I was just trying to make the pocket boundary as wide as possible.



In the Caucasus, 2 regiments of Wiking are still ZOC locked (on the south-western side I routed a Romanian regiment with 1 CV and then moved a guards rifle corps in to do the ZOC lock), and I attacked the other Wiking regiment to reduce its MP so that hopefully it can't escape to help Stalingrad. Cavalry is also already advancing on a vast northern flank and threatens to cut off everything, and already cut the rail (narrowly). Germany cannot really just leave Wiking by itself and retreat everything else. These units cannot help Stalingrad if they cannot secure their own retreat.




I re-took the rough hex from the Romanians, though to their credit they didn't rout this time around, just a retreat. This should be pretty problematic for Germany, because it means they cannot really pull many troops from here. If they did, then the retreat of their Caucasus forces would be threatened.



Bottom line, I don't think Germany can really do anything if they have vast undefended areas with 0 troops where Soviets can just walk forward and encounter no defenders, so something needs to change with that somehow, or the game will be over before it began. Almost all my units near Stalingrad are quite weak, but there are a lot of them, and not a lot of Germans, so I can just walk around the Germans for now at least...