Matrix Games Forums

German Side(#1 and feel free to add your own)

(historical, no Geneva Convention, normal difficulty, no cheating)

1. German Army runs out of steam right away. Panzers get choked up really fast. Best not to run them too hard to encircle everything in sight, that will likely not be possible. Take opportunities as they come and encircle as you go along. Sometimes the AI leaves cities undefended if you scout with a fast division you can get a freebie, Worth the Gas and I've taken Riga/Odessa/Polotsk and several other cities this way.

2. Fuel, when moving your FSB, you will need extra fuel already on hand during the down time if you plan an offensive and if you don't then rest your units. (regularly check the stats on the units if their in range of HQ, if your HQ is on a major Rail/Road Line and is green supplied...you need to keep readiness and supply up or on the attack your units get useless)

3. Regularly check through your reports for the level of trucks and trains available and opportunities arise from time to time to put more up at a PP cost.

4. Personally I find both Army Group Center and South the most difficult fronts and the biggest job is pushing your infantry as far forward as possible. They're really the work horses and when you start to run into bad terrain/cities/fortifications/or require cheap defense.. You will need them forward FAST. Biggest mistake I have made is leaving infantry way far behind.

5. Encircle cities with garrisons and forget waiting for Siege Artillery unless it's easy. Choke holds like that will slow your whole forward motion.

6. After you kill off 100-125 or more Red Divisions they will start pumping out conscripts and they will have an endless sea of them. You only have your blitzkrieg and attack bonuses on hyperdrive early, so you really need to sneak in and zap the backbone of the Red Army. It's not as important killing Red Units or Encircling them as it is cutting them or damaging them. You can also bait them into pockets if you back up and don't let them see you and then ambush them with your Panzers. Far better as the fronts are not quite large enough especially in AGC to actually encircle. Not once the Reds Mobilize. (the AI loves the play in the Pripets and this is an ideal location for a counter attack with infantry from the South and Panzers from the North)

7. Decisions are tough, I run continually in Rail/Supply/Fuel issues. I tend to lean too hard onto fuel and not enough onto truck/train issues. Your armies can have a ton of fuel but no way to get things forward. This will choke up your army for turn up on turn upon turn. I have spent 1/2 of a game waiting for the fuel to come up from the rear and you have to learn to ignore some things and focus on others. I would really love some person's input here? To help this along...

8. As for relationships with subordinates, I find it hard to keep all of my relationships good. Usually I try to bring them into line at some point to get the focus on my Panzers but that doesn't always work out. At least it doesn't always matter after the initial shock is over as your Infantry are the work horses and the Panzers will be slightly less important. It is always nice to have all Three Generals on your side early to get a bonus AP ... this is nice to encircle.

9. Upper Echelon leadership, what a headache along with supply. You can never please them all. I am learning that a bad decision can often be better than no decision. At least you can keep things poor to neutral and work things back if you're doing well. W

10. PPs, Killing HQs, taking cities in the objective Theater and having the right relationships with your Leadership really key. Tough to balance all decisions. I am learning this balancing act it's really tedious and makes me really feel like I'm actually dealing with real life in that ... One of the major reasons I bought the game, you can see why the Germans got their rear handed to them by the Russians Western Allies. They fought each other more than the enemy XP

(always put your focus on for your armies, and then click on the card you want to play for that particular Army, also make sure to put your artillery on where you want to crush cities/forts/rough spots) each forest/marsh/mountain/low mountain/city/etc... really matters! for bonuses hover over to see with your mouse.

11. I have gotten pretty deep into the game, I am learning a lot as I go along. So much to learn and will post up more and want to hear more and not just from the manual. Which gives great info on say terrain or the price of various actions you would never guess. So add stuff please and educate, correct and most of all add a Soviet perspective. I look forward to seeing how well they are played after I destroy the game on some the hardest settings on the German Side.

My tips for Russia, after first game:

1) Embrace the paranoia! Really, it's no big deal. Army commanders come and go, because armies come and go. Even if you have a top-notch army commander, sooner or later his army will get chewed up, and there's no possibility of getting that general to another intact army. So it's a bit annoying when Stalin shoots a good general or three, but it doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
2) In the first few turns, attack. Sounds counterintuitive, but look at it this way: all your frontier armies are dead, and they're all on an offensive stance. And the German all have a defensive penalty. So the best way to inflict some casualties is to have any frontier guys gang up on exposed panzer spearheads. You can inflict some surprisingly heavy losses this way. The exceptions are any frontier armies (eg Baltic MD, 12th, maybe some in Bessarabia or 26th) that you want to try to pull back for later.
3) Later in the game, especially in the Centre, have a defensive or neutral posture army at the front, and an offensive posture army right behind it. That way, the Germans attack, but you have an offensive posture army sitting right there to counterattack wherever there is a breach. The Germans will have reduced readiness because of the fighting they've just been involved with, plus a defensive penalty, and you'll have an offensive bonus and probably at least 3 hexsides on them. Magic.
4) Consider saving up PP for the decision that gets you a permanent +5PP per turn immediately. The additional PP really multiplies out over the whole game, so the earlier the better. One good strategy is to use first turn PP to replace a single marshal and shift 2 armies to neutral posture (eg, Western and Southwestern), then immediately save up the 30PP needed to play the "demand more authority" card.
5) Zhukov's usefulness is obvious; he is needed everywhere. I find it harder to work out what to do with Khrushchev. He's good to have for shooting a marshal or two for the paranoia reduction. Otherwise, I tend to leave him passively on "intimidation" mode at a front HQ, either Central or South where there are more armies.
6) Hit the panzers whenever you can! Even failed attacks can inflict losses on panzers that get too far ahead of the infantry. They are powerful but ultimately brittle, with few replacements. Six conscript divisions ganging up on a panzer division, say from three or four sides, can do a world of hurt. Without strong panzer divisions, no Blitzkrieg. No Blitzkrieg, no large-scale encirclements. No encirclements, and the Red Army wins.
7) Launch counterattacks along the army group boundary lines. For instance, a couple of armies attacking along the AGN/AGC boundary, after most of AGN has gone north to attack Narva/Luga/Leningrad. Attacking along the boundary makes it much harder for the German player to respond effectively without losing lots of PP for overstepping the boundaries. You get penalized as well, but much less.
8) I like having two strong Tsarist marshals, and one other marshal with a really good negative paranoia score. You can use front focus and Zhukov to ensure the incompetent marshal still gets good army activation, without having your paranoia go through the roof by having 3 Tsarist marshals.
9) Don't be afraid to trade space for time. A lot of space, even. Once you lose Tallinn/Minsk/Kiev/Odessa, there really aren't any cities that matter except Kharkov and the final 3 objectives. Heck, you can lose Saratov and it doesn't really matter. So feel free to pull your whole front back 5 or 10 hexes if you need to buy time, shift the whole front on to a defensive posture, etc.
10) A bit gamey, but you can use fortifications offensively to support a breakthrough, when you're on the counterattack. Fortifications can go pretty much anywhere, including on hexes you just captured during the current turn. So attack, and put the fortification on your "breakthrough" hex. It will make it that much harder for the Germans to counterattack.

Chuckberger, I find number 4 impossible in practice. I do eventually find the opportunity sometime in autumn to take the extra 5 PPs and it is nice to have that, but in the first 3 turns there's far too many important things to do to sit tight on the PP pool. I want to set my focus ASAP, that's 10 PPs right there. And I want to fire at least one Marsall and possibly 2 depending on luck of the draw, so that's another 5-10 PPs. These steps immediately and rather dramatically increase activation possibility across the whole front. Too important to put that off.

And more and more I find myself spending 5 PPs early on to divert one army (the first such diversion is free.) This is the only way to quickly reinforce both the north and south and having an extra army or two in either place makes a big difference. These guys are regulars and come in already set in neutral posture.

Your other points are on the money, though.

I find that my usage of Axis divisions is quite different than expected. I feel that the best divisions are the motorized infanrty. I find that the Panzer divisions are very fragile and after the beginning turns I use them in attacks when I have to, mostly to get the concentric bonus as high as possible. No matter how great the odds favor the Axis, if a Panzer division is involved it'll usually take losses first and the replacements are scarce. Usually, in most games the Panzer divisions really outshine the other types but for me in DC3, the infantry gets the nod.

I didn't play for that long, but yeah Panzers are really fragile.

I think the main problem with panzers are their high chance of having an accident and die each time they hit an enemy. And since they hit so many things they will have a high chance of dying even against very disorganized and weak soviets. Better just use them for tough fights counter-intuitively enough.

I think there is a reason why it is balanced like this, but it isn't much fun though.

Hi,

There are two things that affect the Panzers. Combat losses and mechanical breakdowns (based on mileage). You can recover most of your breakdown losses by ordering Rest & Refits.

Panzer Div's are the most powerful units the Germans have, especially with Air support. On Blitzkrieg posture they have 140 AP compared to 100 AP normally.

But, yes, they are fragile and a lot of the game play for the Germans is in conserving their strength and knowing when to use them.

By the time the Germans got within reach of Moscow they had entire Panzer Divisions with less than a dozen tanks remaining. They weren't magic bullets.

Cheers,
Cameron