German 6th Army Campaign

[tweber]

I just posted a 10 scenario, Panzer General style, campaign. It follows the 6th Army from the invasion of Belgium and France in 1940 through Barbarosa and Kiev in 1940 and finally to Stalingrad in 1942.

Scenarios are:

- Against the Belgians (Capture of Brussels)
- To the Sea (Dunkirk)
- Against Paris
- 1941 R&R
- Barbarosa
- Kiev
- Kharkov
- 1942 R&R
- 2nd Kharkov
- Case Blue
- Stalingrad
- Final Stand

This campaign was designed to play solitaire against the AI. After a scenario is done, all the units (and only the units) from the scenario are transferred to the next scenario. So, it is important to build up experience and conserve unit strength. You will need it in 1942 where you will be heavily out numbered and qualitatively inferior.

The 2 R&R scenarios are special scenarios. They allow you to re-organize you forces, buy replacement troops and upgrade with research (research is normally turned off)

I also included 2 save files that will allow you to start in 1941 and 1942 respectively. The 2nd Kharkov scenario (load the 1942 save game) is quite tough as you have to capture Izyum in the SE corner while protecting you supply line in the extreme NW corner vs 4 Soviet Armies.

For those interested in making campaigns, you should look at the 'end of scenario' event that has loads, unit transfers and R&D transfers.

I suspect there will be bugs so make sure you save each scenario before you go to the next one. Also, feel free to modify or improve the scenario. I balanced it for play against the AI and I think it should be reasonably challenging. It will require significant re-balancing for human vs human play.

I have been working on this campaign for over a year. Hope you enjoy.

[rickier65]

This is awesome Tweber, thanks and Merry Christmas!

Rick

[Vic]

Congrats Tom! for finally getting that one finished.

I am awaiting some test reports before giving it some extra attention on the community site.

merry xmas!
vic

[Jay Doubleyou]

Thanks for all the good work.
Started the first scenario.

[Josh]

That's awesome Tom, thanks!
That's been on my wishing list for a long time: take your core units with you to the next scenario/campaign

[&o]

[rjh1971]

Gonna download it straight away, a friend of mine mailed me this post, sounds awesome [8D]
Thanks tweber

[springer]

Nice work once again, Tom!

I've played the first four scenarios, and replayed the first one a couple of times.

You did catch the flavor of Panzer General.  I particularly appreciate the way you've designed the scenarios to emphasize forward movement.  I also like the way you've designed artillery into the game.  It has to be deployed really thoughtfully in order to successfully achieve some of the objectives.  Though the game remains standard AT, the tactical considerations give it a different feel than most scenarios.

If you're not totally tired of tinkering with the events programming, I've come across a bug.  Where should I report it?

[tweber]

Hi Springer,
 
Glad you like it.  You can send me a PM or post it here.
 
Best regards, Tom

[springer]

So far the scenarios are great.  My experience with the game has been that it is important to declare victory using the victory conditions hand card before the game ends.  For example, if I conquer Brussels, but don't play the card. The scenario will end, but I don't get the bonus points for capturing Brussels.

Here's some general comments.  I'll stay vague as I think part of the fun of these great scenarios is each player's encounter of the "surprises".

The scenarios really have a nice graded feel. They share a similar gestalt, but each one adds a new dimension of operational complexity that needs to be taken into account. For me, this gives the player within the campaign a sense of the kind of "on the fly" learning that makes for the creation of a seasoned force and command structure. 

I like the surprises in each of the scenarios.  "To the sea" gives a great sense of frustration.
"Kiev" was great because the  previous scenarios had trained the sixth army on how to keep the offense on the roll.  Without that training, the campaign would have been a lot uglier.

It's also great how you give the flavor of how some forces need to be deployed

Because I had messed up on using the victory hand cards, I played "Second Kharkov" using the '42 R & R set. The complex balancing of objectives, and the decision on how to deploy the forces for this decision are great.

I like the difference in feel between the Western campaign, the 41 campaign, and the 42 campaign.  I found that I had to constantly change my combined arms strategy to adapt to each of these very different situations.  One thing that didn't change, however: Artillery is absolutely critical.

The excellent design of the "Second Kharkov" scenario inspired me to also play it as a stand-alone scenario.
In this game, I intentionally avoided the campaign's offensive goal and just aimed to hold out with the more conservative goal of maintaining a frontline running north/south on the axis defined by Belgorod for the duration of the scenario. 
It worked as a great scenario for experimenting with concept of operational "elastic defense".  This was fun, since standard AT usually doesn't usually give the opportunity to implement this kind of a defense. (In standard AT, The combination of HQ, production and strategic movement usually allow material strategically shifted to block a breakthrough).

It's great to see how much flexibility can still be tapped from a WW II-based AT set.

[Vic]

Could somebody make a nice screenshot or 2 i can use as an illustration to put up a highlight of this campaign on the community website?

you can post here or email to vic@xs4all.nl

thanks,
Vic

[tweber]

The picture belows shows the maps across the 10 scenarios. Note that there is a 'campaign room' scenario between each season to allow for replacement, research and re-orginization.

[Vic]

I posted links to the scenario and this thread on the community site. Once again tom! enormous thanks for putting all the effort in. A lot of AT players will be really happy with this enormous ammount of extra content. 

[springer]

I think this campaign will definitely be a standard for future ones.
I haven't pushed into the '42 campaign.  I'm not looking forward to all the work of crafting the sixth army being reduced to a heap of oblivion on the Volga.

Some more observations as I continue to play (and I look forward to hearing others).
Though I'm now playing around with it a bit, I've been playing my reinforcements conservatively.  My replacements are focused on keeping the basic structure of the original OOB (with modifications due to attrition of course).  In playing the game this way, I think Tom did a great job of giving the feeling that first and foremost, the Sixth is an infantry army.

I like how the game continues to function as an implicit training tool. For example, it has helped me reconceptualize combined arms strategy more effectively, particularly the use of armor.

One thing for sure, the typical "Kursk" style tank vs. tank clobbering I use in most production oriented scenarios won't fly here. (Fortunately, I didn't have to learn this lesson from trial and error. A glance at the original OOB and the first site of French tanks made this lesson obvious without "on the ground" experience) 

In fact, it seems to me that attempting to use the 6th Army's armor as a mailed fist is a total misuse of them since there's not enough armor to go around. (Also, Tom has done a good job of capturing the sense that  Pz.Kpfw. IVFs and Pz.Kpfw IIIs have no business going near T-34s and KV-Is).    Ironically, I find myself avoiding combat with my armor unless the attack was essentially an overrun or the need to grab a vital position before the KV-I's showed up to fortify it. Yet the scenarios make it clear that the proper care and deployment of both armor and HQs are the key to each successful campaign.

[springer]

I just finished the '42 campaign.

Tom had mentioned that he designed the game to feel like Panzer General, which I enjoyed immensely. I think this goal was achieved: I think these scenarios match the best Panzer General has to offer and takes advantage of the more nuanced AT engine to add more dimension and complexities.

The '42 campaign is quite different from the previous '40 and '41 scenarios.

By the end of the '42 refit I had amassed enough production point to create a well-organized, well-balanced and somewhat modernized 6th Army that had excellent experience.  All this changes once the campaign gets underway. The second Kharkov scenario does a great job of balancing offense and defense. I think, however that even a quick, clean victory in the second Kharkov scenario will leave the army chewed up. 

The next scenario, case Blue is a kind of consolation.  It feels kind of like a the blitzkrieg scenarios from '41, but the schwerpunkt was never quite as decisive. As I was playing it, I felt myself wishing I could pull off a blitz like in '41. Because of the need to press forward, I could never organize my force quite the way I wanted it and the drive was broad. Also, pocketed units needed effort to mop up (concentric attacks with strong units were often needed to keep down infantry casualties). I managed to achieve the victory conditions on the first try, but my forces could have used a refit. My support weapons were in great shape, but the infantry was chewed up. To create enough troops to cover my guns, I had to strip infantry from the "support units". (In addition I also covered the manpower shortage by implementing one non-historical strategy: I quickly integrated highly experienced German support elements into axis minor units). By the way, I think the axis minors were well-done too.

And both Stalingrad scenarios feel truly desperate (one is desperate offensively as my forces feel exhausted as they fall across the "finish line"; the other is desperate defensively as my shattered troops with great support weapons and almost no infantry try to hang on to an airfield so that one soldier from each division can fly out to reconstitute a new sixth army).

The penultimate scenario, the drive to Stalingrad was challenging as well.  At first glance at the opposition, I didn't think I'd make it.  For me, the design of the scenario removed any thoughts of creating a schwerpunkt.  Rather, I just approached Stalingrad from three directions and captured the city's west bank.

The last scenario was fun.  For me, I could see that it was totally hopeless.  I'm looking forward to finding out who can actually pull off extricating the Sixth Army from it's grave yard.

To summarize my experience: The '40 and '41 campaigns have a somewhat similar feel. The '40 campaign feels like a series of scenarios that trained me in Blitzkrieg tactics. '41 feels like the application of that training with the Blitzkrieg strategies being used against a massive, well-armed if not well-prepared enemy.  The '42 scenario illustrates the limits of these lessons.  Lots of fun and highly recommended!

Next, I need to take a look at Lunaticus's space mod for random maps!

[tweber]

Thanks for all the comments Springer.

I thought it was interesting to look at the casualty rates the different sftypes.  My rifles typically and armor typically took about 20% casualties per scenario.  But armor is extremely limited so you feel the loss of every tank.  Also, one poorly played turn can result in 20% armor casualties per round so you have to be careful.  I found that my casualty rates for Scouts was above 50% per scenario.  The scouts were riding with the armor and fighting every round.

The back bench units do not take many casualties.  Mortars were under 10% each scenario. 

One type that is very easy to track is the paras.  You get 20 in the first scenario and that is it until the end of the campaign.  The first type I played, I merged the paras into a regular infantry unit and had 2 by the end of the game.  When I played a second time, I felt sorry for the paras when they got down to 7 troopers and put them with an artillery unit.

I was able to break out of the Stalingrad ring but it is very difficult. I think it would be very difficult for someone playing it fresh for the first time to do (I have the designers advantage).  You have to play very carefully throughout.  Every tank lost or divebomber lost in Belgium means you have one fewer, highly experienced unit in 1942.

[RufusTFirefly]

As someone who has played the old Panzer general series and is still playing it in pbems, I can only say: Great, that there is a campaign for AT. I have not yet played more than the first scenario (power unit of comp broke down yesterday, pity), but it is really great work that you did, tweber. Thanks for this campaign!

In a first attempt I used the tank units as spearheads to encircle the Belgian units in a wide range. Although this worked well, I was not careful enough. When my tank units reached Brussels, the counterattack wiped out a complete unit. Now I started again and send armoured cars from HQs to tank units. As therefore carry capacity is increased, I send five rifles to each tank unit too. They should protect the scouts in the tank units and avoid the heavy losses of that subunit. I do not yet have done enough turns to tell whether the losses of scouts can be lower this way.

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

This campaign sounds like a must play so looking forward to give this a try sometime soon.
If anybody who played through this (or played through this mostly) could give an estimate of how much playing time this is and on how many times they needed to try each scenario this would be very interesting to hear.
Looking forward to playing this.

[tweber]

Play length will vary based on your speed.  Scenarios are 10-20 rounds long and you have about 50-60 units.  I would guess it should take between 2-3 hours per scenario.  You will probably re-start a couple of scenarios but probably not too many.  So, I would guess the entire thing would be about 30 hours or so. 

[RufusTFirefly]

As mentioned above I transferred armoured cars and rifles to the tank units to avoid high losses of scouts.

The screen shows a tank unit after an attack. I spotted two artillery units in enemys second line. A small gap in the defence line was taken as a corridor to push through and attack the artillery. It was completely eliminated and is no longer seen on the screenshot. Two rifles and two scouts got lost (got ten of each before the attack). So loss of scouts are kept in an exeptable range and recon ability of the armoured unit is not decreased too much.

In case you do this, it is absolutely necessary to have an infantry unit available that can move to the same hex as the tank unit. Otherwise a counterattack during AI phase might cost you dearly by loosing tanks.

[RufusTFirefly]

Here is the summary of kills and losses after the first scenario.

Few scouts and no tanks got lost. But two fighters were lost at the beginning of the scenario. Paratroopers were reduced to half of their strength in the first turn, when they had to stand a counterattck on fort Eben Emael. But they managed to hold position.

Some units are lowered to less than half of their strength. They may be used to secure caputered cities or chase down small remains of enemy units behind the front.