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With 80 Manpower in the greater Leningrad area, would it be best to isolate and starve the area to 100% Manpower damage ( 4 turns) then cause permanent manpower loss after that. Once the permanent loss is 100% then take the area? If you have the luxury, wouldn't this be a good tactic as well for other urban concentrations? Reading 20.5.1 it appears that you can permananetly eliminate manpower factories this way and avoid manpower migration. Do I have this right?

Maybe that was what Adolf tried to pull off when he put off the capture of Leningrad? Just the man to try an evil technique I would say. [;)]

ORIGINAL: Farfarer
Reading 20.5.1 it appears that you can permananetly eliminate manpower factories this way and avoid manpower migration. Do I have this right?

Umm......I thought that the game engine sort of took care of the manpower migration as a specific area or areas were threatened. Like towns and cities that Axis units overrun there's a pop-up that says something about population migrating. So um.....to eliminate the manpower migration I'm guessing that you'd have to have isolated the manpower source ( town, city, etc. ) before you overrun the place. But I'm not at all sure that the game engine knows to look for the isolated condition. I hope so.

My thought is that you need to Isolate the manpower factory for at least four turns, maybe more, to get it to 100% damage, at which point the manpower source begins taking permanent (non-migratory). You can't attack or overun the hex until the manpower factory is 100% ( can still migrate) + 100% ( permanent loss) which I guess is 8 turns of full isolation. I was watching the "Blood in the Snow" episode about Stalin's forced migrations of his own peoples after their 'liberation' from the Axis and thought on this. Separate note the episide mentioned how crippling it was to lose all this transport to the forced migration plans in the middle of 1944 offensives.

Evil for sure, but I would not dare call it gamey after reading about Leningrad´s siege

I don't think it's gamey, though for Leningrad, you may want the Finns a little quicker than 8+ turns. They can't attack until you clear Leningrad.

A better place to do that might be Lvov pocket, where the Soviets aren't going anywhere (though that will cost you untis to contain the pocket)

ORIGINAL: Farfarer

With 80 Manpower in the greater Leningrad area, would it be best to isolate and starve the area to 100% Manpower damage ( 4 turns) then cause permanent manpower loss after that. Once the permanent loss is 100% then take the area? If you have the luxury, wouldn't this be a good tactic as well for other urban concentrations? Reading 20.5.1 it appears that you can permananetly eliminate manpower factories this way and avoid manpower migration. Do I have this right?

I had such situation in a game against somkindave34. I managed to completely isolate Leningrad area on turn 22. Because of blizzard Germans hadn't enough strength to take it and Soviets were unable to break the siege. Siege and complete isolation went for 11 turns (almost three months). On turn 35 Leningrad was finally cleared of Red Army.

Here is statistics about what happened with manpower inside pocket during that period:



It seems strange that NW Leningrad and Pavlovo didn't suffer manpower damage. Also it took more then 8 turns before manpower damage in Leningrad itself reached 100% damage.

It looks like NW Leningrad and Pavlovo were not adjacent to enemy unit.  I do not believe that a city suffers damage to its production until an enemy unit is adjacent (and possibly attacking?).  This has been my experience, at least.

Interesting statistics. Not the results one expects after reading the manual. The supply stock in leneingrad doesn't change much.