Matrix Games Forums

I'm a long time War in Russia and before that Second Front player, and let me start by saying "wow". This game is amazing. Once the balance issues get sorted out it will be a winner on my shelf -- and even the AI isn't completely brain dead. I've played the start of a few 1943-45 campaigns to slowly get the hang of things and I'm going to start launching some serious games soon.

Does anyone have tips for players of this game who are familiar with the older games?

My examples (and some questions) below:

* The entire movement/combat system is different -- no more plotting and running the turn. Now of course you can mix up the order in which you do air actions with ground actions. e.g. in WIR you had to do all of your bombing first, then transfers, then plot your movement and finally let everything run. You can now bomb units in the middle of movement.

* How important is bombing ground units?

* Air recon is new, and appears to be important. One useful tip I saw elsewhere in the forums was to do air recon aimed at distant units first.

* I have seen, on the odd occasion, axis bombing of my (Russian) ground units as they move through a hex. WTF?

* The leader and chain of command system is quite new. How important is it to have a good leader (e.g. Zhukov) at Stavka? If I have an important thrust going on in one area, should I beef up the leaders at the army/front level in that area as a priority?

* Reinforcements and replacements are really different. e.g. in WIR I'm used to having new divisions, etc, appear at RGVK and then railing those to front line HQs, letting them sit in refit mode until they have some actual troop strength, then committing them forwards from there. In this game, especially the later campaigns, it appears that I create new units myself. What about new armour/mech corps and brigades? Will those start appearing at some time or do I start making brigades, wait for them to fill with tanks and then combine them into corps?

Anything else?

Welcome. And yes it looks daunting, but actually is pretty easy on the surface, it is when you start digging under the hood to understand it that it gets complicated.

1. I have not noticed much use in bombing ground units directly. I allow the computer to assign ground support to my troops

2. Recon, Recon, Recon.....cannot say it enough. Far and then close is the best method

3. That would be computer controlled interdiction strikes.

4. Leaders are very important. Watch them closely ( I play German so no advice on who where for Russian)

5. Yes, armor corps will have to be built by you mostly. As above, not a lot of advice for Russians

Mainly, moral (just for you) is very important. Watch it closely. Losing battles hurts bad. Combat trains up your troops, if they win. That is about it for now.

The 1941 campaign begins with tank divisions for the Sovs, then they are withdrawn and turned into brigades automatically.  In the middle of 1942 you can combine the brigades into corps ( basically division sized units ).

The Soviet reinforcement schedule pours units onto the battlefield to the end of 1942, then there are dribbles n' bits the rest of the war.  You also have the option of ordering up units, which will take some time to fill out to be combat ready.

Being attacked while you move is the form of interdiction in the game.

You may have to unlearn a lot of what you learned in those games.  Make the time investment to read this one's manual.  ( There may be a quiz after you finish ) [:D]

Give Zhukov a front. Transfer Konev out of the backwater he starts in. (I trade him for Budenny. That guy can't do much harm there.)

Rokossovsky, I give him an army in Zhukov's front.

Vatutin and Yeremenko I'll probably give them fronts.

The reason for recommending far and then close for recon is that recon has a possibility of detecting units in ALL hexes along the route flown to the desination hex (or, actually all hexes within possible visibility range of the route of flight).

Probably easiest to see this if you manually select the recon sorties rather than letting the computer handle it. If you're watching the screen closely, you can sometimes see units appear in what had previously appeared to be empty hexes. If your delay set for long enough, you can notice these "pop up units" appear close to the red line depicting the flight path.

ORIGINAL: randallw

The 1941 campaign begins with tank divisions for the Sovs, then they are withdrawn and turned into brigades automatically.  In the middle of 1942 you can combine the brigades into corps ( basically division sized units ).

The Soviet reinforcement schedule pours units onto the battlefield to the end of 1942, then there are dribbles n' bits the rest of the war.  You also have the option of ordering up units, which will take some time to fill out to be combat ready.

Where do these units appear, in the absence of an RGVK HQ?

Yes, I'm learning a lot of new stuff and unlearning things from WIR, but there are a lot of similarities too.

Some reinforcements appear around various cities, and others come in from way east, arriving on the map edge.

Mech/Tank corps do not arrive on their own; tank brigades arrive but you have to merge them together.  Mech/motor brigades have to be manually ordered up then you merge them.

The I key shows expected ground and air reinforcements.

One question I have has to do with the production pool and replacements.

In WIR I had a pool of some number of each type of unit (e.g. squads, T-34 tanks, IL-2 bombers, etc) that would trickle out to units depending on the commander status, etc. So if I had many squads in my pool it was OK to start creating divisions because they would eventually fill up with squads. During Barbarossa, when Russian losses were high, the squad pool was often empty and new divisions wouldn't fill up with squads.

Is there a system in WITE where I can see what squads or guns or armour units there are to distribute so that I know when it's a good idea to start making more divisions & brigades? I haven't seen it referenced in the manual anywhere.

The production key ( P ) shows what you have in pools, along with weekly production rates.

in the production data you will see number and types of tanks built
for INF and ART it is in part from what you need and your manpower & armement centers