Matrix Games Forums

How much it helps in encirclement if one side of the ring is a major river? What kind of penalties the enemy gets? In supply and when forced to retreat over it?

Retreat over it unless you own the other side too. If you do not completely surround on all 6 sides, a small portion of the surrendering unit will escape and be added to your opponent pool. Or yours if you are the trapped one.

Retreating units suffer double attrition penalties if it's a minor river and triple if it's a major river as per 15.11 of the manual.

as 2ndACR says, if you don't control the territory, they are not actually encircled.

But assuming you have complete encirclement, but enemy units control hexes they can retreat to (within that full encirclement) across a river, they can retreat, and they can take significant damage. "Significant" is usually never enough for the Axis against the Soviet, though

It's good to have pocketed units on the other side of the river looking towards your front, that makes scaping out of the pocket for them virtually imposible due to the big MP cost for crossing even a minor river from EZOC to EZOC. I currently practicing that in my game.