8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[EwaldvonKleist]

I am confused, who is the third?
Nr.1, Generaloberst/Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist
Nr. 2, General-Armii/Marshal of the Soviet Union Ewald von Kleist

Who is the third one? Is there a Western Allies EvK? An Italian one? An admiral for the Japanese Navy?

Great quote [:D]
Nasty move of M60/Timoshenko to denounce his loyal subordinate EvK when it was him who secretly worked for the U2.

What is the story behind those weird spaghetti letters?

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
What is the story behind those weird spaghetti letters?

Georgian would have been Stalin's native language - so he would have been signing his name with their squiggly letter alphabet before anything else.



I knew the Caucasus is the home to more languages per area than anywhere else (with the possible exception of New Guinea) - and that when there was a separate language spoken by very few people in a village far from being simpler it makes German look regular. But they did not tell me before hand each language had its own alphabet.

When I was in Yerevan I had to go to the opticians to replace my broken glasses. It was going really well until they held up the card with the letters for the sight reading test. My answers were not "A,B,C.." but "squiggly line, loopey loop, ..." etc with the whole Opticians practice laughing. They tried bringing out the reading test card using the (Russian) Cyrillic alphabet - but that was not much better for me. I can understand why the Soviet trained opticians with their multiple degrees speaking several languages wondered how they ever lost the cold war to barbarians like me.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Thanks [:D]

with the possible exception of New Guinea

Something I learnt through guns, germs and steel!

[Telemecus]

Soviet Industry Track T001-T054

Another one for the nerds! Attached is the spreadsheet we used to track Soviet arms and heavy industry. This includes damage levels due to evacuation and strategic bombing. The calculations for total arms points and supplies produced are using the latest version multipliers. Do let me know of any errors. Before handing over the AAR to Crackaces I will do another post appraising the Strategic Bombing campaign.

Interstingly industrial evacuation has continued in the Soviet Union even in the last few turns with factories being evacuated from Stalingrad, the Caucasus and Gorky. Curiously the same factories at Dzerzhinsk, which would be overun on the way to Gorky and are more susceptible to bombing, were not evacuated.

I hope also developers will take note how painful it is for the Axis side to do this. Having to click on every city each turn to work out if industry has been evacuated to or from them is no fun. Please give us a summary page for this information rather than make us work so hard to get it.

[Telemecus]

Finnish Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54

Having had so much fun bombing the Soviet air force left in swamp hexes for so many turns, Finnish bomber pilots were slightly bereft when that lark came to an end. Hence to give them something to do they started their own "strategic bombing" campaign. However the box that the Finnish air force is allowed to fly in is largely bereft of significant targets outside of Cherepovets.



So the decision was made to go for the manpower factories everywhere they could bomb them. The above picture shows the damage levels they had built up by turn 54. There are 26 manpower points they could target - which would be equivalent to some divisions over the entirety of the game. With no Soviet air force to oppose them, and little effective ground support/bombing possible in a static north, it seemed to be something to keep them busy. The hope was by the end of summer 42 the damage levels would be built up to where virtually no manpower replacements would come out of the area they could fly in - and their remaining operations would be occasional damage top up bombing raids.

[Telemecus]

Village Bombing - The Next Air War Exploit

And yet barely half a dozen turns into the Finnish strategic bombing campaign we started to notice something very curious about the experience and morale levels of the Finnish bomber force. They were tending to max out at 99 experience and 99 morale. Were it not for the lack of Finnish SB2 bombers in the pool and the need to swap one group to another model of bomber, I would have expected all Finnish bomber groups to have reached maximum experience and morale levels soon.



While the Finnish bombers have had the luxury of unintercepted daylight bombing, that has also been true of the Luftwaffe and other allied air forces. What has been unusual about the Finnish village bombing campaign has been the number of successful bombing raids a turn. Rather than having to bomb an aircraft factory far behind enemy lines, they have been bombing villages a few hexes away. Hence every turn they have conducted many times the number of successful bombing raids as any other type of mission would have allowed them to. Hence why I believe they had this amazing spurt in statistics.

For reasons I will post in a separate post, small village bombing will be more effective than bombing large cities when it comes to reducing Soviet manpower. But it seems to me there is a greater possible exploit. In future Axis air commanders will be able to send their bombers up to a quiet part of the front to spend half a dozen turns training them through village bombing to super high levels of experience and morale before turning them on the front. So I soon expect to see several AARs of other players to use this exploit before Morvael nerfs it in a future version change. Or alternatively Morvael may nerf it in V11.04 if he reads this post.

Will Village Bombing be the next "thing" - after all Spam Recon is now so 2018! [:D]

[Telemecus]

Rumanian Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54

Similarly the Rumanians bombers have been used for strategic bombing in the Caucasus in the last few turns. The bomber groups with the least experience and morale where given the shortest range bombers - and attacked manpower targets from out of Crimea. The bomber groups with better stats were given the long range bomber models such as the PZL, and targeted railyards in the Eastern Caucasus and on the Volga.

A surprise, now that we are experimenting with railyard bombing, is how flaky they have been. Unlike other strategic bombing targets they seem to take enormous damage with very little bombing at all.

[Telemecus]

Rumanian Level Bombers Training Up: Up To Turn 54
Again the short range bombers, who have been conducting more successful bombing raids per turn through village bombing, are now climbing up the experience table to overtake the others. Soon we will have to manually swap them to again have our best bomber groups with the longest range bombers.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

I am confused, who is the third?
Nr.1, Generaloberst/Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist
Nr. 2, General-Armii/Marshal of the Soviet Union Ewald von Kleist

Who is the third one? Is there a Western Allies EvK? An Italian one? An admiral for the Japanese Navy?

Because you are many.

[Telemecus]

Turn 49 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 49.

[Telemecus]

Turn 50 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 50.

[Telemecus]

Turn 51 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 51.

[Telemecus]

Turn 52 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 52.

[Telemecus]

Turn 53 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 53.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 54.

[Telemecus]

Turn 55 DRAFT Allocations
For information only - DRAFT team allocations for turn 55.

[Telemecus]

T52 - Lessons on Team Boundaries

For those who do actually read those detailed allocations, quite a radical change will have become apparent on turn 52. The boundary between South and Centre changed!

From the start of the game it became natural for units in Army Group South to belong to the South commander, units in Army Group Centre belong to the Centre commander and so on. With the split of Army Group South the south commander carried on in charge of its successor army groups A and B. Allocations would occasionally make some exceptions, but the rule by and large was correct.



In recent turns this was becoming increasingly cumbersome. The two hotspots of action are marked by the red stars. The old boundary in effect meant that centre had to co-ordinate much of their action in an area which was secondary to the interests in the south. And the more co-ordination that was needed, the more opportunities there were for errors. A large amount of inefficiency, from lost rail cap to admin points resulted. By turn 52 as supreme commander I decided to split Army Group B between South and Centre. In effect Centre then became solely in charge of one hotspot and South could concentrate on their main interest. However commands no longer normally followed army group boundaries.

I wish I had done this sooner. The amount of time needed for co-ordination reduced drastically. Inefficiencies in resource use also shrank. The lesson I would give for future allocators in these situations is first allocate the jobs to be done to the commanders in question, and then allocate the forces each one has to do it with rather than start of with the reverse.

[Telemecus]

The Allocations Process

Allocations for all turns of the team game have been uploaded to this AAR. They are not meant to be part of the narrative for the casual reader, but will be of interest to the nerdier types, such as myself, interested in the nuts and bolts of how the game worked. I hope it can be a useful resource for those who seek to emulate it.

The allocations process was first described in post 11 of this AAR. Together with the team protocol for every turn, the allocations for each turn were meant to be the SINGLE, TRUSTED source for everything a team member needed to know to do their turn. If done well a team player could get on with their turn without having to constantly refer back for decisions, guidance or committee meetings. Where teams were distributed around the world it was important that they could do this to keep the time to do a turn to a manageable period. If you wanted to spend points, use units, expend rail cap or anything else, the allocations were the place to see if you could. If you did it and it was not in allocations, it was your fault. If it was not described in allocations, it was the Supreme Commanders fault. Whatever else was written down in any emails or scattered documents anywhere, if it was not in allocations it was not confirmed. As such the job of Supreme Commander almost boiled down to being the guy who wrote the team allocations each turn.

As such allocations was meant to help the team work. At first some found it too cumbersome and some work went in to making it simpler and less detailed. But over time if anything the requests for team players has come to want more not less. Allocations became the bible every turn that they looked at to see what their boundaries where in every facet for the team. As such this has come to be a success

The first allocations each turn were draft - the first draft was usually written by me as soon as the previous turn was ended and sent off. As such you can see the first draft allocations for turn 55. This was meant to give a chance for team members to challenge or request alterations as part of the planning while the turn was with the other team. In this respect the allocations process was not such a success. I do not think I ever received a request to alter the details of allocations while it was in draft. In time use of other communications tools, which we did not have when this team game began, replaced this aspect of team decision making anyway.

[Telemecus]

For information only - attached was the final version of the team protocol used by the 8MP Axis team. As first described in post 11 of this AAR.

[Telemecus]

Comrade Stalin - having become aware of M60A3TTS' previous fat finger mistakes with the U2VS factories - has ordered that M60A3TTS be placed on a special exercise regime.