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Hey all, bought this game 3 months ago and I think I have enough experience from playing the Road to Leningrad and the Destruction of the South-western front scenario about 20 - 25 times.

So I will try out the 1941 scenario for the first time where I play against the Soviet AI. I made this mostly so you guys can scream at me when I make a mistake or just needed to tell me some life hack or whatever. Feel free to comment anything.

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Latest patch

Sudden Death scenario

Normal Difficulty level

General plan is to probably fail to reach Moscow in 41 and try to launch some summer offensive to win the war.

Air phase, just copied a day one manual air guide I found on the forum with some minor adjustments getting around 3,500 kills. I have seen other people get way more but I'm too lazy to try to do that. I don't know if I should reset all the plane loadouts I changed to auto after I'm done the air turn.

The general plan for 1941, basically, attack everywhere.

Army Group North

Took Riga with a deliberate attack with the best support units attached(i had to reload the save due to not being able to take it before), I took out most of the units on the German border because zone of control, avoided everything that weren't plain hexes with my speedy divisions.

Hopefully I can link up with Pz3 to complete the encirclement.

Well, if you've given us the go-ahead...

I think using naval patrol to isolate Ventspils is a way, way better use of resources than sending a regiment/division on turn 1 to take it.

Jango32 wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 7:42 pm Well, if you've given us the go-ahead...

I think using naval patrol to isolate Ventspils is a way, way better use of resources than sending a regiment/division on turn 1 to take it.

I was planning to do that but I forgot in the air planning phase and accidentally overwritten my save when I remembered.

First great screen shots very detailed

I am no expert and unless the Soviet unit at Riga has suddenly grown some teeth, you can usually smash it and take the city with a SS Pz Gren Regiment, of course there are far better players than me that might think differently.

Good start in North, looking forward to seeing your Centre and South moves

cheers

tm1 wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:41 am First great screen shots very detailed

I am no expert and unless the Soviet unit at Riga has suddenly grown some teeth, you can usually smash it and take the city with a SS Pz Gren Regiment, of course there are far better players than me that might think differently.

Good start in North, looking forward to seeing your Centre and South moves

cheers

I think that's because I disabled ground support on turn 1 and ground support is useful against units with small ground elements.

Army Group Center

I did the usual Bialystok-Minsk pocket, turned out pretty good. Attacked the pocket itself on turn 1 so some units routed out, I probably shouldn't have did that but I was tempted to use the unused movement points. The pocket in the north is probably going to be broken by that one security regiment and the advance of PZ2 is not that good due to me being lazy and not looking at the terrain. Minsk was taken with a deliberate attack but it can probably just be taken with a hasty.

Also, the Soviets to be providing ground support to very weak units and my fighters are intercepting and destroying them.

Army Group South

There was a ton of Soviet armor and mech units here resulting in my unit's toe dropping 20 - 40%, At least 60 - 80 tanks were lost on my side with the Soviets losing like a thousand in total. I have noticed that my panzers/motorized units are doing way better than before since this new patch instead of being unable to defeat 1 anti-tank brigade. Soviets have a big chance of cutting off my panzers at Rovno and Tarnopol, hopefully the AI isn't smart enough to do that but with my luck they will still find a way to do that.

End of Turn 1

I only lost about 12,000 men while the Soviets lose over 300,000, I would say this is pretty good, surprised that I didn't lose over 100 AFVs and managed to destroy an additional 1,300 planes since they still had ground support on.

Turn 2 Air Phase

First of all, I deleted all the ground attack directives and now ground support is turned on. Planes were rebased(moving the entire Luftflotte until the capacity number is good) forward into Soviet territory for more range. The only directives that I will be doing is ground support and recon because I don't really think the other ones like bombing cities have a big effect.

I don't know what some of these options do in the recon air directive settings so I just leave them all on auto, and I don't want any escorts because I put it at a high altitude so enemy planes can't detect them.

I don't know what most of this is but it looks like it was pretty effective other than some flak losses

Army Group North

I cleared out some pockets causing about 10 divisions to surrender, continued repairing the Vilnius-Daugavpils-Pskov double rail and then moved the infantry and headquarters up to catch up with PZ4. For some reason the rail units attached to Army Group North are busy doing things in the center, maybe I should just attach it to the panzer army or whatever. I also messed up on supply priority or the AI did so Riga got no freight this turn.

Anyways, my plan for my speedy units are to go to the spot where I think is the weakest spot, break through and hopefully secure a bridgehead over the river there. Also divert some mobile units to quickly grab the Estonian ports and Velikie Luki but I have done no recon there so there is probably a massive force waiting for me.

Ports are ready to receive freight by sea only two turns after their capture turn. So if you take Riga on turn 1, it will become active only on turn 3.

The Triangle in the HEX means if you cross that HEX you will activate the South front facing the Romanians and they will slip away from the border, well most of them.

I don't bother trying to avoid it as I would rather trap the Soviets in the Lvov Pocket.

Jango32 wrote: Mon May 02, 2022 9:12 pm Ports are ready to receive freight by sea only two turns after their capture turn. So if you take Riga on turn 1, it will become active only on turn 3.

Thanks, I never knew.

tm1 wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 11:37 am The Triangle in the HEX means if you cross that HEX you will activate the South front facing the Romanians and they will slip away from the border, well most of them.

I don't bother trying to avoid it as I would rather trap the Soviets in the Lvov Pocket.

I guess it's a bad thing then.

Army Group North

I think I did ok here, I should have broke them down into regiments for the maximum breakthrough but oh well, in one of my practice games earlier in the Road to Leningrad scenario I took Pskov turn 2 so I know that it's possible. Soviets have a chance of cutting off my breakthroughs but hopefully the AI isn't smart enough to realize.

Army Group Center

Cleared some pockets, they will all be liquidated next turn. Also moved the infantry up to catch up. Not anything special, my next course of action is to send 2nd Panzer group to Mogilev and 3rd Panzer group to Smolensk and Vitebsk.