Korut Zelva vs Taxman66: Battle of the newbie

[johanssb]

Well it is definitely not normal to have tanks at level 3 prior to Barbarossa.

[KorutZelva]

I belatedly realised that with your USSR income, troops tech and tech spending you had to have been pretty heavy in production tech. Tech that can be double chitted can be rushed later, it's those single chit one that make you pay for delaying them...

July 19, 1942

A German Level 4 tank, one-shots an level 0 anti-tank (take 1 damage in return). German conquer the western half of Moskov, Stalin places an order for kool aid for everybody in the bunker.
2 Uk destroyers sunk by combined the Italian-German fleet
Finland pierce the outer perimeter and close in the Leningrad HQ. Leningrad army shaved off its entranchment.
Greek diplohit by the allies.



Good question about conceeding? Is it just a matter of clicking the red x next to the game in the pbem menu?

[Taxman66]

Allied Turn: July 26, 2942

The Soviets manage to do 4? dmg to a Panzer unit near Moscow, costing 8 dmg to an Anti-Tank unit and 4 dmg to a Shock Army.
Still no Tech help for the Soviets.

The UK sub Salmon finds and damages the Spanish CL Galicia (2 dmg).
The UK abandon Lisbon, and garrison Maderia.

The US launch operation 'Coal Mine' and seize Santa Cruz and Puerto del Roserio.

Other than the Salmon, the German and Italian Fleets are left alone in the Atlantic.
Devastator and Dauntless carrier planes are replaced with Avengers and Hell Divers.
Swordfish and Albacores are replaced by Barracudas and Skuas.
Other elements of the US and UK navies start undergoing refits.

[KorutZelva]

Aug 2, 1942

Moskow and Leningrad falls. Ribbentrop offers harsh peace terms.
Franco's troop enter Lisboa, Portugal sues for peace.
Western allies, having no confidence in the Russian figthing ability, cut their arctic life line to focus on their own military production.

[Taxman66]

I cut the US->UK line since it will take me 1-3 turns to deal with your fleet to make it safe again.
I cut the UK->USSR line, because the UK can't afford to send her own MPP only pass along the US. Besides USSR still
makes a goodly amount. Not that it matters.


I would like to yield at this point.

I don't believe a Fall '42 Sea Lion is viable. (Units would ship mid August and wouldn't be able to invade until August 30/early Sept turn - Tempting Weather RNG).

I don't see Russia surviving past summer of '43. Unless all the big equipment leaves for a '43 Sea Lion. In which case all Russia could hope for is a hard nut without even minimal comeback potential until '44, if ever.

I don't believe Axis fleet will survive 'in being' to Spring/early Summer of '43.
- Italians (IIRC from what I saw when they attacked the DDs) are still at lvl 0, the Germans have lost 6 subs, and most of their lighter ships. They do have 4 BB (2 + 2 from Algeria), but they are still at lvl:1 The USN & RN are or soon will be at lvl 2 and it won't be too hard to find the Axis between Intelligence, CVLs and DD/CL scouting.

The Wallies can't stand up to the German hi-tech units, but aren't as hopelessly outclassed as the Russians. I've herd arguments that navy can't stop Sea Lion, but it can hit & run shell ports to keep supply down. Maybe a '43 Sea Lion would work, maybe it wouldn't. It would be a long slog at best.

The Wallies aren't strong enough, and if Germany goes for taking Russia out in '43 never will be, to come onto the continent. The best I think they could do is fight for the Atlantic coast of Algeria and Tangiers. Even then, once some Panzers and air cover show up they'll get halted. I suppose they could try and backdoor Egypt or Kuwait ports, but without air bases that is going to make coming ashore vs. defending corps very difficult at best. Multiple hits by level 5 amphibs, maybe? Would take a while to get both US & UK up to that level. I know even high level CVs don't do much vs. in supply land forces.

[KorutZelva]

You should do the 'DE 417 – USSR: Offer to Surrender?' that you should get following the three USSR cities being taken.

That would allow to remove the removal of the fog of war for a couple of concluding screen caps for the people watching at home. I'm interested in taking a peek at the hardware in the UK. I can only account for half of the USSR army so I'm curious where they are stashed too. :0)

====

With this I relinquish my Newbie championship belt to Taxman. It is now your duty to christen a new newbie (or activate the rematch clause in your contract!).

[Taxman66]

The hardware in the UK thinned a bit with units that went to Portugal and the loss of the Eng (and just proportionally over time). I had originally built counter attack stuff (Armor, Special Forces) to push you off and at one point had all the beaches covered with land units so you couldn't land and then pound a port with air to take it in one turn. I'm curious if you spent any research on Amphibious Assault. If not coming ashore would be really hard.

[KorutZelva]

I bought my first chit of amphibious tech last turn. Actually I bought two but then had to sell one back because I forgot to save enough MPP to operate my three new heavy tanks to the front line. [:o]

My initial game plan called for the patented BPINisBACK lithuanian pincer and faking a sealion but then realized by not sub raiding I was missing out on free exp when the UK is low on destroyer in the beginning. Also this allows the UK income pretty much par with germany until france falls. So it's good that the sealion bluff worked because it would have been a net loss otherwise.

[Taxman66]

Turn done.
Surrender decision offered.

Most of what is left of the Soviet forces are making a line in the Caucuses. There are also large number of Soviet units on the build table as well.

Looks like the US troops in the Canary isles would have to wait a few turns before upgrading to INF Weapons 2.

[Taxman66]

I've already gone over my big mistakes.

I'm still shocked by the use of Greenland for German supply/repair of subs. That is so unhistorical I never considered it.
I think early UK sub defense is better to hunt with small packs of destroyers instead of trying to cover everything.
With the new rules, I'm not even sure it is worth doing that until ASW 1 comes on line.

[KorutZelva]

Question to the board:

=Are units in the build queue counting towards the Land unit count graph?

=If a unit is killed in supply how much is counted in the 'MPP lost' for that round? Full cost or half cost?

[KorutZelva]

Aug 16, 1942



Interestingly the event for surrender pops-up at the end of my turn not at the beginning. So I got a turn worth of fighting before the photo finish. If You see a bunch of battleship sitting in port at 10. Well I just repaired them for the victory celebration. I didn't refit them after the naval battle vs the USSR.

Right after the allied capitulation I got the pop-up of Brazil declaring war on Germany. Well good luck on that one, guys. [:'(]



Looking at the tech tableau I'm surprised to see the allies had not researched any ground attack. Their airforce was purely defensive. The edge of Germany in spying tech probably help it follow the coattails of the USA industrial and production tech. Command and Control was also a surprising absence as it has a big impact on troop performance.



The allies went all out on its navy. The royal navy is magnificent but probably account for the shortage of land troops. D-Day wasn't happening before 1944.



Losing access to a supply the Russian Caucasus town and ressource drops to 5, hitting Russian income even before the oil field switch sides.



The road to Perm and Samara lies wide open. Towns gets sparse east of Moskov. Probably better to approach Samara from the South via the Stalingrad route...

Any final thoughts taxman?

[Taxman66]

Looking at the tech tableau I'm surprised to see the allies had not researched any ground attack. Their airforce was purely defensive. The edge of Germany in spying tech probably help it follow the coattails of the USA industrial and production tech. Command and Control was also a surprising absence as it has a big impact on troop performance.

That table doesn't tell the whole story. I've included the research of each of the 3 allies.

However, as I addressed earlier I over researched economics for the USSR.
The UK was so drastically hurt by poor sub warfare play, unpreparedness for the Iraq coup, and then by the Iraq no-surrender bug that
research was the primary penalty she took.

Secondly I got nearly all the wrong types of breakthroughs. I did get an early US Industrial breakthrough and one USSR Infantry Weapon breakthrough when already at 70ish%. Every other breakthrough I had was in something that didn't matter that much about getting it early. Things like the 1 lvl warfare tech for the USSR, when it would've hit
100% by Barbarossa (or shortly after) anyway. There may have been a Soviet Industrial breakthrough too at some point.

As for the Command and Control... yeah, I learned the hard way this game how important HQs are (all the way from not upgrading the French HQs, not having a 2nd HQ in Egypt etc...)

The allies went all out on its navy. The royal navy is magnificent but probably account for the shortage of land troops. D-Day wasn't happening before 1944.

Not really from my perspective. I don't recall building any ships for the UK other than 2 cheap Motor Torpedo boats. Maybe a replacement Destroyer, but I don't think so.
I did spend a lot of UK MPP on repairing and upgrading the fleet.
a)I learned that contrary to advice I read (pre-10.01 patch) that you still have to buy some ASW or the subs will eat
the Destroyers. There's a lot MPP wrapped up in repairing them and fixing up the partials you get from the DD for bases event.
b)With how poorly I was doing in the beginning of the sub war (once it started), I built the American CVLs (which led to the discovery of the other bug) to help out.
c)Then with the fall of Gibraltar immanent when Spain went over, I laid down 2 American Heavy Cruisers to help with the forthcoming fight between the combined axis navies. I had no idea Italy didn't invest in improving their navy
so I built them as something that could scout/screen and beat up on lighter ships. 1 just arrived in the map and the other due out on my next turn.


Other points:
There's a bunch of cheap Garrisons and a couple of Corps in Persia, just to slow down those forces. Didn't see a big push from German from that direction.
I only wish I had gotten to successfully pull off the sucker punch of the UK ambushing some weak Italians sent to clean up Kuwait and then taken Iraq back while Rommel was driving through Persia, and cut him off.
I actually had the Canadian Armor on Transports ready to land the turn he ran into the Kuwait forces with the German Panzers (who backed off to upgrade to lvl 4). So that plan was shot to hell.

I can't look at the game anymore to count how many USSR units that will be showing up in the next 2 months.


Anyway here are the detailed tech tables.

Apparently I'm getting a message saying I can only upload 1 picture per post.

[Taxman66]

USSR table

[Taxman66]

US table

[KorutZelva]

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

I can't look at the game anymore to count how many USSR units that will be showing up in the next 2 months.

I counted 27.

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

I did spend a lot of UK MPP on repairing and upgrading the fleet.

That's what I meant. I upgraded my subs once, my two French battleships and that's about it myself. Also didn't repair any capital ship.

[Taxman66]

Well, like I said I had no idea that the Italian fleet was still a paper tiger, and I knew I had to face it and the Germans and the extra from Algeria. Once I saw the lvl 0 IT BBs hit my 2 DDs, I knew I wouldn't need to spend much more on my fleets and that I was going clean the Atlantic in a few turns.

[KorutZelva]

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

Well, like I said I had no idea that the Italian fleet was still a paper tiger, and I knew I had to face it and the Germans and the extra from Algeria. Once I saw the lvl 0 IT BBs hit my 2 DDs, I knew I wouldn't need to spend much more on my fleets and that I was going clean the Atlantic in a few turns.

The UK has so much hardware (and the Carrier edge) that even trading at a 1:1 ratio you can outlast the Axis by a comfortable margin. Even if Germany and Italy go heavy naval, they might approach parity... until the USA joins.

[Taxman66]

At the time I invested in Naval Weapons Spain was on the edge of going over, and (as before) I didn't know that Italy hadn't invested in her navy nor that Germany wasn't herself keeping her navy in repair. I was looking at facing the German, Italian, Algerian bonus BBs and Spanish all with the UK itself. Trading 1:1 would leave me more but less able to cover areas allowing for more damage potential by a few lone
units. Of course I hadn't yet lost the Egypt and Iraq convoy lines by then either.

So I wanted to ensure that what was left would continue to be in an advantageous situation.

[KorutZelva]

Well I know a way to assess the viability of an axis Naval first strategy....