Road to Leningrad

[xavinwonderland]

Good morning/evening everyone,

I bought the game recently and I am trying to learn as much as possible. For the moment I am trying to secure decisive victories in the introduction scenarios to get a better understanding of the game.

I read several AAR where it is mentioned to take Riga on turn one. I can do that on easy difficulty but when playing on normal I find it impossible. There is a fort level 2 in the city right away and a unit with 16 Def. The only unit of mine that could reach the city would be the 2 pz div of the XXXXI corps. Even with the HQ within 5 hex corps + Army HQ and everything I could attach to the unit I never ever manage to take it with the only hasty attack I can make.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks a lot for your help

[richter53]

I used to be obsessed with taking Riga and even Pskov within my first four turns. Now I ignore them and push the fight east of Pskov. They will eventually fall if you push the main attack. remember the objective is Lemingrad not Riga or Pskov. The key to capturing leningrad is to cutoff its supply routes not thru combat. Lets play Road to Leningrad. I'll be Germans and show you my tactics.

[xavinwonderland]

thanks very much for the reply it would be a pleasure to play against you, I have never been playing the soviets so I might end up putting even less of a fight than the IA

As you mentionned Riga was no big deal it will fall on turn 2 without slowing the advance much. I took Novgorod by turn 6 which is decent I think (Im sure some people might be able to do it faster). The problems started after.

This is the situation at the start of turn 7. I know that for Leningrad to fall you have to complete the encirclement and take the 3 ports, but this was a nightmare. I had no clue what to do with my Panzers I would have prefered more infantry any day. To reach the Svir line it was just a very very long grind with infantry and artillery. I used my admin point to put the best possible leaders in my infantry corps and cleaned one hex at a time. The russian kept sending reinforcement I though I was never going to manage.

Finally Leningrad fell by turn 16. So Im reasonably happy of my performance up to turn 6 but there must be a way to finish this off faster. At least I hope

Ps: the colors of some of my corps are different than the base game because I find it too confusing otherwise.

[xavinwonderland]

On a side note I do not understand anything to bombing and air supply. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt and I never know why. The airfield have not moved, they are supplied, the distance is unchanged it a mystery to me.
Here for instance I couldnt launch any mission. Any idea why?

[xavinwonderland]

A few more pictures of the progression

[xavinwonderland]

for some reason I cant post more pictures (Im not allowed to post links or phone numbers?!)

[budd]

I can get Riga on turn 1 and Pskov on turn 2 most times, are you converting hexes before moving your mobile units? Best i have been able to do is a marginal victory, earliest i've taken the ports is turn 13 then i couldn't take all of the Leningrad VP's. Looking at your screen shots i usually have more Soviet units opposing me. Your turn 8 looks better than anything i've done. The supply pause on turn 3,4 cost me time even with fuel drops i can't maintain momentum, i can see the opening closing while i wait for fuel.I'm not sure i managing it right, i drop 40-65 tons of fuel to my lead formations and don't get much movement points out of it. Do you drop beginning or end of turn? Just feels like i'm missing some detail to keep those panzers rolling. Having fun learning the game but i think i'm getting obsessed with doing better on the Road to Leningrad scenario[:)]

[heliodorus04]

Bombing and Transport

When air units attack a ground hex independent of a land combat it is a "Ground Attack Mission"

When air units are supporting land combats, it is called "Ground Support."

I don't mean to be pedantic, but it often gets confused.

Ground Attack Missions can only be performed by air groups that have 0% miles flown. Thus, they need to be completed early in the turn before they support any ground support missions.

Transport:
Any unit that wants to conduct a transport mission must be within 5 hexes of a supplied rail hex (supplied at start of turn), and within 20 movement points of said rail hex (that's not a big restriction given the first one).

So you cannot move your transport airbases far at all. In fact, on the way to Leningrad, you probably won't be able to do much supplying at all until the rail net gets a little past Riga.

Bomber air groups can also conduct transport missions, but these also must be conducted while the air group is 0% miles flown again. And bombers can only fly Supply, not Fuel. Be sure you are using Shift-Click for your ground attack and transport missions so you have maximum control. Sometimes if you click on a different airbase, you get different air groups that can fly missions. Where the bomber transport of supply is concerned, when you Shift-Click while preparing a Transport mission, the pop-up window has a toggle button in the bottom right corner for Fuel/Supply. Often it starts on the Fuel setting, so you won't see any bombers available to fly supply.

Note that there's not much point flying Supply to panzer corps. However, flying supply to key infantry corps can help a lot in the drive on Leningrad.

[xavinwonderland]

I am glad to see that I am not the only one being dedicated to road to Leningrad. Thanks to all for all the comments so far.
Here is the pic for turn 15 when I finally linked up with the Finns. From my limited experience once you complete the blocade, the city will fall very quickly. Im not even trying to attack it before.

[richter53]

I tried sending you a personal message but, supposedly, you're settings don't permit it. So I'll set up a challenge and the password is my signature.

[xavinwonderland]

Here is the final outcome.

If I had to do it again I would try to use my Pz division south of Novgorod to try to secure the objectives I missed as I kinda wasted them here either as a screen (usefull but it could have been done with infantry) or in meaningless fights against entrenched russian troops.

For the heavy fighting I used the II corps with Walter Model as a commander with an extra Hvy Nebelwerfer bat and pionner bat (on top of what they had from the start) so they had 4 or 5 pionners and 2 Hvy Nebelwerfer I think.

It it possible to flank the russians by going east of Lake Ilmen? I never managed to do it.

Despite the decisive victory I am not happy at all about my kill/loss ratio, Im sure one can do much better

[xavinwonderland]

Ok that was much better this time. All the infantry went up and the panzers went east to capture the objective and then flank the russian by going east the the Ilmen lake. Worked like a charm but I still only managed to take Leningrad on turn 16. When I have time I'll try to take it faster. Maybe I'll even post a full AAR, but after playing this scenario 5 times in a row I need a change