Another AAR

[henri51]

This picture is a closeup of my tank trying to destroy the German infantry gun, which is themost dangerous German threat since a lot of my infantry is in the open.



Despite machinegunning this gun and shooting everything my tank has, the German gun stands fast, so I assume that it may not be visible from the tank and I keep moving closer until a minute after thispicture, the gun crew has had enough and run away. Unfortunately my tanks has become immobilized; it has either thrown a track or gotten stuck or has run out of gas, and I can find no indication of what is the problem. Although it does not respond to amy move orders, it keeps firing at the Germans on the right out of the picture, so it is not totally useless.

Henri

[henri51]

This overall view shows that indeed the Germans in the North have divided their force and a number of them are assaulting my infantry platoon, while the rest are attempting to flank them to the North.




My infantry cannot move to intercept the flankers since they are under fire, and the machineguns need to generally stay where they are to hit the German attackers in the flank; besides, it would not be a good idea for the machinegun platoon to run between the infantry and the attacking Germans.

In the meantime my forces in the South have neutralized (to use a military euphemism - neutered might be a better word...) the Germans in the south, and are now moving up the road to help in the North. The ideal unit I need would be that damn tank, but it is stuck in the woods with no line of sight to the North, so it is shooting at the Germans to the East, which is not completely useless as we will see later.If the tnk could move, I would quickly route it to the Granite 4 objective from where it could dominate the German flankers who don't seem to have any AT guns.

Henri

[henri51]

The Germans attacking in the North succeed in pinning my infantry and machinegun platoons, but at a heavy cost, and soon all the German attackers have given their lives for the Fatherland.

[henri51]

Now I carry out a nice plan that is successful but that may have been a mistake. The forces from the South have reached the Northern road below the forest, and I order them to go for the crossroads objective.The immobilized tank and the other tank as well as the recon unit have depleted the Germans in the vicinity, and their morale must be pretty low and they are certainly disorganized. At first I had considered sending the recon platoon there, but the flanking situation requires fast-moving units, so the recon platoon is sent along the road to the granite 4 objective, which I hope to reach before the Germans. The machineguns, the mobile tank and the remaining infantry are ordered to attack the German column to slow them down.

The objective changes hands twice, first it goes German as the vanguard of the column approach, then it reverts to Russian control when my recon platoon reaches it. As planned, the recon platoon then moves NE to join the fray against the German column, which is about to be annihilated when the scenario time runs out.



I gain a victory and everything looks fine: I have about 40 casualties to the German's over 80, and all of the German units on the map were either destroyed or crippled. So why do I say that my late-game strategy might be a mistake? If this were the end of the whole battle, it would be great, but it is not! I have lost one of my two tanks and the other one is out of gas. All the recon vehicles are out of gas, two of the squads were wiped out and one infantry platoon is broken (there are tables containing detailed information on each platoon and squad). Broken platoons cannot fight. If the Germans attack on the next move at the wrong place, I could find myself fighting with tanks that are out of gas and with squads that have half or less of their normal complement. In addition, my reserves are to the South, and it is unclear to me whether or not my units are too far from the supply trucks to be replenished.

If instead I would have let the German flanking column go, at that time I had practically no losses and although I did not check, I had probably inflicted losses of 5:1 or more.

So I am a bit worried, but the next move will show whether or not my worries are justified. In the meantime, I still have a battle to fight during this turn (this battle apparently joined the two rightmost battle locations). And the bad nes is that this battle involves German forces attacking from the West, and therefore probably contains some of the strongest German units armed to the teeth with heavy weapons and tanks.[X(]

Henri

[henri51]

Here we go for the next battle, which is an attack by the Germans from the left. The next picture shows the situation after we have placed our units and movement begins.




I have an infantry platoon in good shape, a MG platoon in fairly good shape that may be a bit short on ammo, and two tanks that are out of gas. The tanks won't get very far with 6% of fuel, so I try to place them where I hope they can fight without moving much - no maneuvering all over the map in this battle.[:'(]

I didn't have much choice on where to place the other two platoons, so I tried to place them in cover in defensive positions roughly along a line protecting the Soviet objectives. I could be in big trouble if the Germans attack en masse along my right flank.

Since I am outnumbered I request a ceasefire, but so far the enemy has not accepted.The Grmans also have tanks, and they are probably full of gas. I think I see an enemy mortar.

Henri

[henri51]

The enemy seems in no hurry to attack. As usual he breaks his forces into 3 or 4 groups, and one of them runs off in the wrong direction. Oh Ok, it is a smart move, there is a neutral objective to the NW and his column goes to grab it.




But now I am surprised by his next move: he sends one platoon directly East right toward my infantry platoon.

Henri

[henri51]

A firefight breaks out.




My infantry fires t the advancing Germans, but do not cause many casualties. I note that my tank is in a gully and I orde it to attack the flank of the advancing Germans, and I also order the Southernmost squad of the infantry platoon to attack the flank. Just as the Germans reach my line, they are wiped out probably due in great part to being caught in the open in a crossfire and my units being mostly in defensive positions.

However from the previous picture, there are indications that the enemy may be preparing another assault, so I had better straighten out my line and get ready.

Henri

[princep01]

Henri, thanks for the very useful tutorial. Maybe I'll try this game afterall.

[CaptBeefheart]

Just wanted to say thanks for the AAR. This looks like a game I might give a try--at least the demo.

Perhaps you could show us a few representative detailed screens (such as for your platoons or squads?). Also, do your units take up positions in buildings at all? Those would seem to be good defensive positions.

Thanks,
CC

[Shadrach]

This is very interesting Henri, thanks for making this. Inspiring, so maybe I can make one myself soon

Pretty nice you have FOW turned off, it helps to show what the German AI are thinking, if they are thinking at all. At least you get no nasty surprises - of which there is a lot in this game, believe me

[henri51]

Cody, some of the above pictures seem to show Germans in buildings, so I think the answer is yes. However it is unclear what cover such buildings give. For example, if the building is a wooden shed, machinegun bullets would go right through the walls, and I don't know how well this is modeled.

I haven't taken many pictures of closeups - one has to really zoom in, but I will take you request into account if and when I post more pictures.BTW there are a lot of Youtube videos that show closeup pictures of battles.

Henri

[henri51]

I just screwed up my saved game and would have to restart the previous two battles if I wanted to continue this AAR, so I guess I will stop this AAR here (see the thread I started on saved games). Anyway the idea was to give a feeling for how the game worked, and I hope I succeeded in doing that. Thanks for reading.

Henri

[henri51]

And BTW, the reason I had few closeup images is that I had not realized how easy it was to zoom on a unit using the Q command that I just saw in the threads by Redmarcus. Without this command, it is really difficult to focus on any specific point of the map, using the method described in the manual (which I have forgotten by now).

So in case you are not aware of this most important command in the game, you press the Q key to zoom in on a unit selected on the top left or by clicking on it on the map, and press Q twice to zoom to another one (once to deselect and once to select the newly selected one).

Henri