Soviet Turn 1 (partial)
In Latvia, STAVKA ordered immediate counterattacks to repulse the invaders back across the Dvina river. Orders were to gather troops along the Dvina and secure the river, retake Daugavpils and Riga, and then after no more than a month or so of preparation time, the Red Army would surely be ready to launch the war-winning offensive to drive the invaders back into East Prussia.
Ivan Bezugly's 9th Airborne Brigade led the charge to liberate Daugavipls. Although the initial assault ran into tough resistance (250,000 combat value on the 3rd Motorized division, to be precise) and this attack changed the airborne brigade from being "ready" to "depleted," in a few days another offensive will be launched which will surely succeed.
Meanwhile at Riga, the 10th Rifle Division launched its own counteroffensive, and reached the outskirts of Riga. Somewhat surprisingly, the Germans had left Riga undefended, with seemingly only the 1st Panzer division to the north (those are the 3 regiments up there). Thus, in total, only two German mobile divisions had made it across the Dvina, the 1st Panzer and 3rd Motorized. And surely no additional units would ever make it across again. The lack of any more German divisions across the Dvina demonstrates that the German War Machine is already collapsing, unable to sustain its initial surprise offensive.
Riga would already have been liberated, but reports from the field commander of the 10th Rifle division claimed lack of a "zone of control" to "flip the hex," which puzzled Zhukov and will naturally prompt an NKVD investigation. So Riga is expected to also be liberated within another day or two, once the 10th can summon some "movement points."
Meanwhile in the south, efforts were underway to secure the rescue of troops south of the Lvov-Proskurov rail line from potential encirclement. A front line first must be stabilized, but then a counteroffensive must be launched to re-take Lvov, a counteroffensive which will surely prove a resounding success.
However, this brings us to some game mechanics issues. The new patch made it so that you can't send troops to reserve or disband them unless they are more than 8 hexes from the enemy. This is a good change, since it definitely seems more realistic, and the ability to rescue troops from potential pockets ought to be limited by rail capacity. This does also raise the old WITE1 issue of a large ahistorical Lvov pocket being (maybe) too easy to do now. Historically Proskurov was taken on July 8 and Rovno, whereas jubjub took it on the first turn. However, the issue I want to highlight is more a matter of the mechanics and UI.
This is problematic because the UI does not indicate to the player how rail capacity will change if the player moves units, until the player actually moves the units - and once a unit is moved by rail, the moves cannot be undone unless you reload a previous save.
STAVKA identified the following units as ones that we would like to evacuate by rail:
First, the division circled in blue has already been moved by rail.
Second, there are two other mountain divisions circled in black, which, although they could potentially get out simply by walking, might not, so it would be preferable to rail them away.
Third, there is the NKVD security unit highlighted in yellow.
Fourth, there is the NKVD security unit circled in red.
All the other units in the potential pocket either are mech units with enough MP to retreat to (relative) safety, or else are units that are unable to board rails in the first place and lack anything like the MP to get out (e.g. the two mountain units in the far west which are ZOC locked), as well as that 1=1 infantry division just to the right of them which is unready and lacks the ability to get on a train at all, even though it is on a rail track (I think due to its unready state).
Now, here is the issue with UI/mechanics. For example, this NKVD border guard unit can move to this hex, at which point it can board a train:
And once it does that, it the following movement by rail available to it. Actually this turns out to not be the very best example, but I will proceed with it anyway because I reloaded already to take screenshots and show and explain:
So I went back and moved these 3 mountain units by rail to here:
The problem is that then changes the SMP cost to move other units, within the middle of the turn, in a very non-transparent way. The game does some hidden calculation regarding the rail use and railyard capacity in the area to determine the SMP cost of moving along a given track, but the player has no way from the UI to predict how much the SMP cost of moving along a given rail track will change after you move other units. Whereas without having moved the 3 mountain units already by rail the NKVD unit could get to the hex north-east of Yarmolnitsy, now it can't get there due to the SMP costs changing
(if I did not have one of the mountain divisions already moved, it could probably get a bit further, but I had already saved that so can't show it without it):
In this case, apparently the effect is actually pretty small (the NKVD unit can get only 1-2 hexes less far, I had incorrectly assumed it could get another 10-20 hexes or so further at least), and for that reason it was not the best example, but I have seen lots of other cases where the effect is a lot larger.
I will try to find a better example to illustrate... I don't actually want to move this tank division to Vinnitsa, but suppose I did. Currently I would have 67 SMP left if I moved it by rail to Vinnitsa, and it costs 55 SMP to unload it, so I could unload it there:
Now I will move the other two mountain divisions again. After doing that, actually to my surprise the SMP cost of the tank to Vinnytsia was unchanged (lol) - that just goes to show how it is not really possible for the player to predict in any transparent way. I think the reason why it was unchanged is I didn't move the mountain divisions very far by rail yet, and in particular did not move them past the part where the northern and southern rail lines merge north of Brichany. Up until Brichany there are two different rail lines the units can take. So what if I move the mountain units to Kiev? In this case the rail movement cost for the tank does change, now the tank would only have 53 SMP left by the time it gets to Vinnitsa, which is no longer enough to unload:
This is meant to represent the fact that rail capacity is limited, which is definitely better than being able to simply send everything to reserve and avoid anything being pocketed, but the way it works is unrealistic and non-transparent, because the units here are moving sequentially, whereas in reality they would be moving simultaneously. In the game, whichever unit you move last will end up having a higher rail movement cost, and ALL of the effects will fall upon that last division, but you have no idea what that rail cost will be until you move the other units, because the UI gives no indication anywhere. In reality, with divisions moving simultaneously, the effects would be more spread out across multiple divisions trying to evacuate from the salient by rail.
It is also problematic because the cut-off for things like being able to unload a unit (55 MP in this case) is arbitrary, but having 53 MP and not unloading can mean a rout in the next turn, whereas with 57 MP and unloading might mean that Germany is delayed in taking Vinnitsa. And the difference between that would only be moving the mountain divisions a few hexes less by rail. And those mountain divisions don't actually need to move all the way to Kiev, they just need to go far enough that they won't be overrun the very next turn. Again, I don't actually want to move the tank division to Vinnitsa, but there are other similar situations that arise, so I hope this explains the problem understandably.
Most of the time this is a small issue since you are not normally needing to rail units all around the map and unload them at the right railyards efficiently (making sure you have enough SMP to be able to unload them in the same turn), but it is a major part of the first few Soviet turns. I could finish my first turn here a lot faster, the only thing stopping me is basically the fact that I can't see which units can actually move where, in particular for the rail movement costs which change mid turn with no way for the player to see or calculate in the UI. The same issues apply, in particular, for trying to figure out how many divisions can get unloaded at important railyards such as Smolensk.
Can also shatter if attacked correctly or the Soviets don't husband their units properly later. 
