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| # ? May 25, 2013 23:24 |
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So, before we start let's take a look at the map and get an idea of how our army is deployed. Click for HUGE The Soviet army at the outbreak of war looks great on paper but it is going to become rapidly apparent that it is completely ineffective in combat for several reasons. High command of the army falls to STAVKA, or Main Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR, we're just gonna call it STAVKA. From there command is split into Fronts or Military Districts. Fronts are huge commands that are in theory capable of organising and commanding several armies and their supporting forces. Military Districts are smaller commands that generally only command a few corps, if that. As the front moves STAVKA will create more Fronts and upgrade existing Military Districs to Fronts as needed. Under the Fronts are Armies which are made up of several Corps, which consist of several divisions. Let's let the Germans do their thing and see if this structure holds up in combat.   Well that's certainly a mess, who's responsible for this?  Oh, well then. I'm sure we'll track down a few more cowards and traitors in the coming weeks.  Before we go to the front we've got try to fix our airforce. The airforce is getting absolutely mauled by the Luftwaffe, so we're going to pull the entire airforce back to be reorganized in the coming turns. As it stands they're not going to be much help in a general route and the Luftwaffe rules the skies anyways. The only thing our air force can accomplish right now is losing more planes so we're going to pull them all back to reserve so we can spend an eternity rebuilding it in a turn or two.    The Northern Front is a complete mess. There are very few troops here relative to the other fronts, and they're going to be tasked with defending Leningrad and Novgorod from 2 German armies and a Panzer army. The only way we're going to accomplish this is by falling back faster than the Germans can advance and digging deep into the extremely defensible marshes and forests of the North.   Most these encircled units are dead. Attempting to rescue them would just get more soldiers encircled and captured. For the forseeable future any soldier that becomes encircled is going to spend the rest of the war in a German PoW camp. The bright side is these units (but not the men) will come back, any counters we lose in these first few months will be reformed for free in the far east as an empty shell.  Only this unit, the 22nd NKVD Rifle Division is able to break free. It'll probably just be instantly re-encircled next turn but it's the thought that counts.  For the rest of the Northern front it's retreat. Non-essential units (HQ's and airbases) retreat on their own. They're fast enough that they can keep ahead of even the most aggressive of Panzer units. Any units that routed in the initial German assault are also going to retreat on foot. They can't be encircled because they'll just displace past the German lines, so they're in no danger of being forced to surrender.  Infantry divisions and other valuable units are evacuating on rail. I need these units to start digging fortifications now so that when the Germans show up we might be able to put up some kind of fight. We have a limited rail capacity but right now getting these units out of danger is more important than evacuating factories.  The beginning of a defensive line, perhaps this one will show a bit more resistance than the one formed on the German border.  In the far North the majority of the Northern Front stares accross the border at the Finns. The Finns have not declared war on us yet, but it's only a matter of time.     The Center is an unmitigated disaster. Nearly the entire front has been encircled in a pincer formed by the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups who have advanced nearly 150 miles to the gates of Minsk. Perhaps they've overextended themselves?  Outrunning their support, the 7th Panzer and 20th Motorized divisions are easily cut off. There's no way we can actually attack them (28=28!) but this will prevent them from being resupplied next turn, slowing the rate of their advance. Unfortunately the 2 divisions that cut the supply line (the 161st Rifle and 26th Tank Divisions) will almost certainly be encircled and captured themselves. Godspeed brave counters.  All the units in this pocket are doomed save one, the 10th Army HQ has been encircled. HQs have the ability to relocate themselves to a random space far away. You don't really know where it'll end up, just that it'll go somewhere else and it will probably go East. This is because HQ units can't surrender, since if an enemy unit walks up to them they'll just relocate as if they had routed so being able to do it manually prevents another human from gamily keeping your HQ units in tiny pockets but never actually touching them. It does come with... risks however, let's give it a shot.  Phew, normally when I do that the commanding officer gets killed, nothing personal guy, I just wanted that chit back now. I could technically do this for the encircled Corps HQs as well, but I just can't bring myself to care about them.   The rest of the Front retreats to the landbridge between the Dvina and Dnepr rivers. If we can hold the landbridge against the Germans they'll be forced to cross the massive river, where we'll hopefully be able to cause appalling casualties.  This mad dash for the rivers is going to have consequences though. We've left Minsk virtualy defenseless and we don't have the time to rail the industry out, so it's all going to be lost when the Germans take the city next turn.  I also throw up a few fortified zones in the urban hexes of Moscow. I desperately need the admin points but I'm also pretty keen on Moscow being an impenetrable fortress come October.  On the southern border of the front we've got the Pripyat Marshes. A huge expanse of nearly impenetrable terrain that would take months to wade through. So the Germans are going to drive around it and any units left in here are going to starve to death. Everyone worth saving is going to hop on a train and get out pronto.   The Southern Front contains most of our best and most experienced divisions and it shows. There's something resembling a front line and there are only 6 encircled divisions. This is pretty typical vs the AI, against a human there's a bunch of more efficient openings that result in ~1/3-1/2 of the southwestern front being encircled on turn 1. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so everyone get on those trains before the rest of 1st Panzer Group wakes up and finishes the job.  And partway through the evacuation we run out of trains, everyone from here on out is walking.  The fortress in and around Kiev are the rock on which we're going to build our defenses down here. If we can hold and fortify the east bank of the Dnieper we may be able to do some damage to the invader, and it won't hurt that our units down here are actually worth a drat.  On the southern edge of the theater the Southern Front is engaged in a staring contest with a combination of Romanian forces and their German overlords, who have yet to cross the border. When will they invade?    In the North the Axis forces blast unopposed accross the Daugava and take Pskov. On the plus side they have far outrun any hope of supply and are running low on fuel, they're going to have to slow down, I hope.  The massive pocket in the Center begins to be reduced.  Minsk burns as the panzer spearheads of Army Group Center drive towards the landbridge.  In the south the Panzers prioritize driving towards Kiev over pocketing the retreating masses of the Southwestern Front.  A disastrous week for the Red Army. We're going to have to slow down the Axis rate of advance or they're going to be in Moscow by Christmas.   
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 05:01 |
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 So yeah, this is a pretty complicated game and there's no way I'll be able to explain everything in one go. What I am going to try to do is cover the basics, and maybe we can get into the minutae of the game later. The on-map armies and divisions are represented by counters or chits, which display all sorts of very important information about the unit if you know how to read them. The two most important bits are the type of unit, and the nation of the unit. The type of unit is denoted by the NATO symbol, which look like this if you're not familiar with them.  While the nation of the unit is displayed by the color of the counter, like so.  At the bottom of the counter is a pair of numbers seperated by a symbol. The first number is always attack value, and the second number changes depending on the symbol. If there is a - then the second symbol is the movement points of the unit, so a 9-18 would mean the counter had 9 attack value and 18 movement points. If there is an = sign then the second value is defensive combat value, so a 1=3 means the unit has one attack value and 3 defensive value. Normally all enemy units will disply X=Y, with the values being filled in for whatever our recon thinks of the unit. If we don't know anything it might just say ?-?. Our units will usually be displaying movement value, but I might switch over if I want to see how our defensive positions are shaping up. Finally at the top of the counter is a series of characters that denotes the rank of the unit. II = Battalion III = Regiment X = Brigade XX = Division XXX = Corps XXXX = Army XXXXX = Front, Military District, STAVKA Also if you're wondering why our troops are garbage and the Axis units can actually fight let's compare our tank divisions to the German ones. Beyond the fact that they have actual combat experience and have skyhigh morale, lets just look at what we're bringing into combat.  On paper the Soviet division is way stronger! We've got a few less men but we've got over twice as many tanks, infact we've got more tanks than any other nation in the world. How could we possibly lose?  Oh, oh my. It seems the Germans actually brought all the things on their table of equipment to fight with, and our table of equipment is a pipe dream. Atleast we've got 200 of these.  I'll probably do some more of these as we encounter game mechanics more involved than catching a train over the nearest river.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 05:01 |
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I'm looking forward to this. I read Grey Hunter's German one and the Soviet one (can't remember who did it) that had been done at the same time, but I haven't read anything about the changes since then. With the expansion and all the patches since, I understand it's a lot harder for the Russians and therefore more interesting for them singleplayer. It's sad to see you resort to retreat so early, I want to see a more historical completely-insane charge into the face of the overwhelming German superiority. edit: Grey Hunter's is preserved here: http://lparchive.org/War-in-the-East/ I can't find the Soviet one on a search, or maybe I'm just bad at searching. fermun fucked around with this message at Feb 25, 2013 around 06:05 |
| # ? Feb 25, 2013 05:33 |
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fermun posted:I can't find the Soviet one on a search, or maybe I'm just bad at searching. AFAIK it petered out even before the end of 1941, so it didn't get very far. It's probably in the archives at best.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 06:08 |
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Good start! Not to be the third poster to mention GH's WitE LP, but it's really nice to see an LP of the Soviet side after reading GH's WitE from the German side. I'd like to take this opportunity to reaffirm my dedication to International Socialism. 
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 06:24 |
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I have to say, I am not much for non-video lets plays however, this is interesting!
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 06:47 |
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fermun posted:I'm looking forward to this. I read Grey Hunter's German one and the Soviet one (can't remember who did it) that had been done at the same time, but I haven't read anything about the changes since then. With the expansion and all the patches since, I understand it's a lot harder for the Russians and therefore more interesting for them singleplayer. It's sad to see you resort to retreat so early, I want to see a more historical completely-insane charge into the face of the overwhelming German superiority. I've tried doing this with a fighting defense where you slowly fall back while striking at targets of opportunity. The problem is the model this game operates on really breaks down during the extreme swings of the fighting, namely Barbarossa and the winter of '41. During Barbarossa the Soviets are ahistorically combat-ineffective, to the point where it's almost impossible to attack anything but the Axis allies (if the Romanians can advance fast enough to keep up with the pace of my retreat.) That said I'm probably retreating too quickly, leaving pockets of (doomed) resistance along areas where the Panzers want to advance would probably serve me better than my current strategy of  During the blizzard it's going to break in a different way, namely most of the penalties leveled at the Axis are global. This works fine since the blizzard is everywhere, but what happens is the frontline tends to form huge salients or push as a solid mass west, where historically the Soviets should rule the areas with poor supply with weird salients forming everywhere the Germans hold a town or railhead and the Soviets are unable to dislodge them.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 07:13 |
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uPen posted:During Barbarossa the Soviets are ahistorically combat-ineffective Yeah but to be fair a human player is going to be ahistorically sane compared to Soviet high command at this time.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 12:05 |
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With all those units around, wouldn't it take days to play a single turn? Could you record a turn on video to show us the gameplay more directly?
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 17:22 |
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tonberrytoby posted:With all those units around, wouldn't it take days to play a single turn? It would be a ~45 minute video. In the full campaign, a turn takes quite a long while to run through.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 17:32 |
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tonberrytoby posted:With all those units around, wouldn't it take days to play a single turn? When I'm playing normally a full turn can take about ~45-90 minutes, some go much faster though especially once the game gets going. I could probably record a video at some point, but it would want to wait until '42 I imagine so I could actually launch some attacks.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 18:41 |
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Not to steal from Upen, but if you want to see the game in action, then I did a video turn here - that may give you an idea of whats going on. Looking good so far! maybe once your done we can do a MP LP.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 19:08 |
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Oh cool, this one looks interesting. The Soviets in the other LP of this didn't really seem to get "up to speed"; Grey just walked right over them, it seemed. Let's see what happens when Zu Rodina! is in full effect.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 19:28 |
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  There are two types of movement in War in the East, strategic and regular. Regular movement involves the unit walking or riding it's attached vehicles to wherever you've told it to go. Moving like this consumes Movement Points, which the unit gets a set number of every turn. The amount any unit gets varies based on several factors including the type of unit, the commander and the supply level.  As you can see walking through different types of terrain costs more MP than just walking across clear fields. You also rack up penalties for walking into enemy controlled hexes, or hexes that were enemy controlled at the start of the turn.  Units that don't move on vehicles also have the option to temporarily motorize for the remainder of the turn. This is incredibly expensive in both trucks and admin points, things the Soviets desperately need so you'll be seeing me do this approximately never. The other downside to moving like this, as you can see on the units counter is the unit is labeled as MOTORIZED NO ATTACK. This means that the unit is riding trucks in lines and is not in formation to engage an enemy. So they'll be unable to start attacks, enter enemy controlled hexes or hexes that were enemy controlled at the start of turn. The upside is that the unit can really haul rear end, in this particular case it's doubled the units MP from 16 to 32.  Getting on a train is by far the most efficient method of movement in the game. The unit pays a small amount of MP in exchange for having their MP increased to 100 and being able to move any number of hexes for 1 point per hex. This has a few limitations, namely the number of trains you have per turn is limited and the unit can obviously only move where you control a rail network. Also units on a train cannot fight at all, so you'll need to get off the train (which costs MP) before you reach the front lines. The final two forms of movement are on boats. You can transport from a friendly port to a friendly port, which can be useful but it's very situational. You can also perform an amphibious landing, but I've never found a use for this and I doubt I'll be launching any amphibious attacks in this game.  Fighting! Since we're not going to be launching any real attacks for quite some time I'll sadly have to explain how combat in this game works here. For this demonstration we've loaded up the Don to the Danube's 'Red Army Resurgent' scenario which covers the encirclement and mass surrender of the German 6th army at Stalingrad.  The first type of attack is called hasty, symbolized by this arrow over an explosion. It's a disorganized attack launched from 1 hex at an enemy hex. You rack up a ton of penalties for launching a hasty attack and they'll rarely work vs an equal enemy, the only upside is they're much cheaper MP wise. They're best used for harrying a retreating enemy, or clearing weak units like German regiments or Italian divisions out of the way.  Deliberate attacks are the meat of an offense. A deliberate attack is a planned attack that can be launched from all ajacent hexes and has a much better chance of working than hasty. The downside is it's much more expensive to launch, meaning you won't be able to do as many or move as far after attacking.  When you actually launch an attack this is the screen you get. Axis forces are always on the left, Soviets are always on the right. The sheet lists the formations involved in the fight and lists the number of men and weapons lost during the fight. Along the bottom you can see the combat values for the to sides as well as the final result of the engagement. This is the lowest level of detail and is the one I'm going to be using most of the time. There are 8 levels of detail above this, each one breaking the fight down more and more until you're seeing individual shots fired by rifle squads.  Here you're able to see a visual representation of where a series of battles took place, the end result being a hole blasted in the Romanian line which has allowed 3 Tank corps to roll out and cut the rail line leading into Stalingrad. I could click on those symbols to see a recap of any battles that took place in that hex this turn if I was interested in the details. If we wanted we could follow this up by blasting through the Romanians to the south of Stalingrad and completing the encirclement, but I think this is enough to show off the basics of combat. I'll probably throw turn 2 up tonight after work. Grey Hunter posted:Not to steal from Upen, but if you want to see the game in action, then I did a video turn here - that may give you an idea of whats going on. Ah that's perfect, doing a video of this game would be awful because I'd have to actually be efficient in taking my turn. Normally I sit around drinking tea and watching videos on youtube for an hour while panning around the map. Once I'm done with this maybe I'll understand the game enough to actually put up a fight in MP.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 20:39 |
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loving crazy undertaking but looking forward to this. I did a Soviet campaign but you get so wrecked I always felt I was scrambling to organize poo poo and I never had enough Front HQs. Quick question, how did you select all aircraft to reserve instead of having to go in and do it one at a time?
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 23:11 |
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Great start to the LP, looking forward to the eventual steamroller!Jakse posted:loving crazy undertaking but looking forward to this. That's kind of the idea. The Soviets are supposed to have a bottleneck when it comes to Front HQs and you need to shift entire armies in and out of them. Armies still in fighting shape get assigned to a Front, while smashed / rebuilding / newly-built armies get assigned to STAVKA and hang out in the back.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 23:27 |
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fermun posted:Grey Hunter's is preserved here: I think the problem with this archive is that it omits the forum post shortly after Grey went to a wedding (was it his? I can't remember.) and a poster made a mock-up update of the wedding events complete with a SOVIET RESPONSE section at the end. I've never laughed so hard.
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 23:31 |
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uPen posted:
I'm pretty certain thats how everyone plays turn-based games. On the subject of the game, I'm enjoying how you are taking the time to help us understand what you are doing and why. I gotta wonder though; How much help are those 200 light "tanks" going to be? The Germans were fielding the Panzer 4 by this point, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say "not much."
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| # ? Feb 25, 2013 23:59 |
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Jakse posted:loving crazy undertaking but looking forward to this. You use the commander's report aka Microsoft Excel. Just turn all the filters off in the air tab so you get every squadron selected.  gradenko_2000 posted:That's kind of the idea. The Soviets are supposed to have a bottleneck when it comes to Front HQs and you need to shift entire armies in and out of them. Armies still in fighting shape get assigned to a Front, while smashed / rebuilding / newly-built armies get assigned to STAVKA and hang out in the back. God I wish I had the admin points to do this, moving armies around can get expensive. The Mighty Biscuit posted:I gotta wonder though; How much help are those 200 light "tanks" going to be? The Germans were fielding the Panzer 4 by this point, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say "not much." They're useless, the vast majority of them are 1937 T-26's aka garbage that's 4 year out of date. Some lucky divisions have up to ~40 of the 1931 model.  The Soviet doctrine at the time was to field huge combined arms corps with hundreds of tanks. The problem is they didn't have enough of the T-34's and KV-1s that would make this work so they buffed up the numbers by using light tanks instead. Also many Soviet commanders, especially infantry commanders were uPen fucked around with this message at Feb 26, 2013 around 00:17 |
| # ? Feb 26, 2013 00:05 |
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  Well another turn and more fires to put out, before we get to it though we've got some new friends.  As the Axis forces take more and more territory these partisan squads are going to start springing up behind enemy lines. They're not directly under our control, but if we airdrop supplies for them then they'll start blowing up German rail lines and be a huge pain in the rear end for the Axis in general. One of our priorities when we reform the airforce will be to dedicate a few squadrons to helping these guys out.  And here's all the new and freshly unlocked counters we've got to play with for this turn. Basically every Soviet unit on the map is unlocked now except for the Northern Front, which is locked to the Finnish border and the Transcaucas Military District, which is guarding the Caucasus. Over the coming weeks we're going to have reinforcements flooding in from the eastern edge of the map, and new units forming in cities and towns across our territory. Most of these units will be empty shells that take a few weeks to get into fighting shape but for now all we want is bodies to throw in the way, winning battles can come later.  In the north we continue to pull back to our lines around Novgorod. The panzers up here have to be running out of fuel which will hopefully give us time to entrench into the forests and swamps along the approaches to Leningrad.  The goal here over the next 2 weeks will be to begin forming a carpet defense, a solid block of soldiers so deep that the Panzers are unable to penetrate all the way through. Although each individual formation won't offer much resistence they will slow the Panzers down through sheer numbers.  South of lake Ilmen we deploy the recently unfrozen 51st Rifle Corps. Their job is to slow down the panzers if they try to swing a right hook around the southern bank of the lake and bypass our defensive lines to the southwest of Leningrad  The industry of Minsk goes up in flames as the 2nd and 3rd panzer groups drive for Smolensk and the landbridge. There is no way we'll be able to prevent them from crossing, but after driving nearly 300 miles through hostile territory in the last week they might be tired enough that we can slow them down.  We add some depth to our wall of men at the landbridge, hopefully the panzers will be low enough on fuel and supplies they will be unable to penetrate this in a single turn.  Further south we fortify the east bank of the Dnepr, with luck this will slow the Germans down for a turn or two. We also leave several divisions in Mogilev in the hope that we'll still hold it next turn. It's got some factories I'd love to evacuate and I don't think I'll be able to get them all out this turn.  The 24th Army on the outskirts of Moscow gets railed north to help in the defence of Leningrad, which is dangerously undermanned. We need more troops everywhere, so these will likely be the last troops allocated to this front for the forseeable future.  Outside Moscow a huge construction project is beginning. Most of the troops we're going to be getting over the next few turns are going to be directed to this area to begin building fortifications in concert with the civilian population of Moscow.  The evactuation of the marshes continues. I'm not going to take anymore pictures of this unless something interesting happens (nothing interesting will happen.)  The Southwest and Southern fronts continue to be the rays of hope in this war. Their withdrawl is orderly, and we're not losing 10's of thousands of troops daily to Panzers or pockets.  The western edge of the theatre is a controlled retreat made up of all the units that were unable to catch a train last turn. The motorized, armored, HQ and anti-tank units here are going to continue walking/riding east while the infantry hops on trains accross the river.  On the approaches to Kiev we deploy a light hedgehog defence. By staggering individual units like this we are able to force the enemy units to move through as many Soviet-controlled hexes as possible. Moving through enemy controlled hexes is more expensive than friendly or pending-friendly hexes so this will slow the Germans down. It's not much, but it might buy us a single turn to dig into Kiev.  The defenses in and around Kiev are shaping up nicely. With any luck the Panzers will be too worn out by the time they get here to mount an effective attack, and will either be stalled out or driven south along the western bank of the river.  The Southern Front begins a controlled retreat from their fortified positions along the Romanian border. Although the Romanians aren't really a threat, there are several elite German units in their ranks that we simply cannot contend with. So we're going to slowly pull back and eventually join up with the Southwestern Front south of Kiev.  Now that we've finished up moving our armies around for the turn, lets take a look at our rail capacity. For these first 2 turns we're operating under a special ruleset known as the Surprise Attack, which basically means the Germans kick even more rear end than normal and the Soviets are scrambling. One effect of this is our rail cap, which is what determines how much stuff we can move via rail, is set to a measely 50,000. This simulates the general disorganization of the Red Army during the outbreak of the war, and also the needs of the general mobilization that's going on in the background. The big problem for us is that not only do we need to rail our troops all over the place but we also need to start evacuating factories before the Germans overrun them.  Mogilev is on the wrong side of the Dnepr and is going to be lost next turn barring some kind of miracle. I've left some divisions in the city in the hope that the exausted Panzer divisions will forgoe attacking the city and instead spend the turn resting, but we can't count on that. So what we're gonna do is use our 20k remaining rail cap to get the 3 armament factories out of the city and somewhere safe.  Well, that is what were planning on doing, but I accidentally right clicked on Mogilev after selecting the factories and spent 18k rail points moving the 3 factories from Mogilev to Mogilev. I would have snagged a screenshot of it but I was too pissed at myself to react in time. Not a huge deal and I'm certainly not going to replay the turn for 3 armaments factories. Live and learn I guess, this isn't the first and it certainly won't be the last time that the interface design in this game defeats me. Maybe the Germans will be nice and let us hang onto the city for a turn?  In the North the panzers drive up to our line and beat it up a little before stopping.  In the center the Panzers drive across both rivers in force, with only a few divisions probing at the landbridge. The industry in Mogilev goes up in smoke.   In the south the panzers scatter our hedgehog formation at the cost of progress. We've succeeded in holding them an impressive 60 miles from Kiev, we've got another turn to dig in.  Buoyed by German success (or my incompetence?) the Romanian army invades. Well I'm less than thrilled. The southwestern front is exceeding my expectations but the other fronts are disastrous. If you're wondering where all the Germans besides the Panzers are the answer is I've got no real idea. When I re-organize the Soviet airforce next turn we'll get some recon planes up in the air and get a better idea of where the German troops are moving, for now all we can see are the spearheads driving out in front. Will the Panzers ever run out of gas? Will I ever figure out the interface? Find out next time.   
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| # ? Feb 26, 2013 00:34 |
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Please, please, please launch an amphibious invasion of something before war's end. You'll have the industry and troops to spare! Preferably Finland.
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| # ? Feb 26, 2013 00:54 |
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uPen posted:In short our tanks are going to spontaneously combust any time they even see a German division. Seems about right. I doubt thats going to change very much when we start throwing T-34's out in serious numbers. It's just gonna mean more German tanks are going to get caught when ours explode! 
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| # ? Feb 26, 2013 01:00 |
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I haven't seen it come up yet but you say you are always short on administration points so it would be great if you detail how you use them. In my current game I have more units than my HQ's can possibly support so I am sitting on 500 and only use them to transfer units back and forth between HQ's in vain.
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| # ? Feb 26, 2013 01:15 |
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Jakse posted:I haven't seen it come up yet but you say you are always short on administration points so it would be great if you detail how you use them. In my current game I have more units than my HQ's can possibly support so I am sitting on 500 and only use them to transfer units back and forth between HQ's in vain. If you've already reshuffled your leaders to One idea I've been trying out is putting an emphasis on leaders with high Initiative/Admin rather than combat stats, to get as many reserve activations as possible while on the defensive, then switching to better Infantry/Mechanized leaders when I'm on the attack.
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| # ? Feb 26, 2013 02:22 |
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   A new month! Tons of new troops being formed this turn, with a handful of already built divisions appearing on the Eastern edge of the map. These units will all be catching trains and railing to the front, the far eastern divisions will take 2 turns to accomplish this. You can't cross Russia in a week no matter how hard the Germans are trying.   Stalin sacks the commander of the Southwestern front for no good reason and sticks this guy in his place. He's not awful so we'll leave him be for now. Commanders have 8 stats, 4 non-combat and 4 combat. All of these values range from 1-9, meaning that this guys standout trait is his high political score. Commanders with political clout are less likely to get sacked and/or executed, so it's a useful skill to have. Shame that 9 isn't in admin.  Turn 3 is our first 'full' turn, meaning the surprise attack is over and our rail cap snaps back to whatever passes for full at the moment. This also means turns are 7 days long instead of the 4 day turns of the initial 2 turns. We're going to begin factory evacuation in earnest this turn and I'm gonna save before doing it this time.  I also really need to get the airforce flying again so it's time to rebuild that whole mess one squadron at a time. About half of the squadrons in the national reserve (~150) get marked to fly out to airbases. Unfortunately you can't see if the squadrons will overload an airbase until the planes land there (next turn) so it's better to send out a smaller wave now and then top off the airbases that can handle more next turn. We also earmark 1-2 squadrons of transport planes and level bombers per front to run night flights to airdrop supplies to partisans.  Well thats a weird looking salient, I wonder if that Panzer corps left support back in that neck to prevent me chopping their supply off? If I had recon planes up I'd just do some flyovers and find out. As it stands we've got to recon in force.  It looks like they just kept driving and didn't leave anything behind to protect their supply lines. Now an entire Panzer corps is cut off, including the elite SS Motorized Totenkopf Division. The AI will almost certainly get them back into supply next turn, but this means they will not be getting any fuel for the next axis turn so they'll likely be unable to do anything but launch 1-2 attacks at ajacent Soviet divisions. If that corps commander was in the Red Army he'd probably be executed, I wonder if Hitler will forgive and forget?  The rest of the units in this front reform themselves into deeper defensive lines. I abandon the fortifications along the Narva river, with the panzers driving up the front so aggressively I cann't risk having the front cut in two if they drive straight for Leningrad. Holding the Narva would prevent forces coming up through the Baltic states from joining the siege but there are so many panzer divisions visible directly south of the city I can't imagine there's anything but infantry coming up through the Baltic region. Infantry march slowly enough that they wouldn't reach the Narva for another 2 turns or so and at that point I would have already fallen back to defend from the Panzer corps, so I'll just remove the risk of getting split in two completely and fall back now.  Nope not invading yet.   My factories...  With German bridgeheads across the rivers and no hope of throwing them back across it's time to start slowly retreating east. You can also see here that the Axis divisions that crossed at Mogilev are in bad supply, indicated by their yellow borders. Just another sign that they're right at the edge of what their logistics can support. Not great, but it will have to do for now. The Germans are gonna drive up to this and punch through, but not breakthrough to the rear. Then I'll just fall back a few miles and do this again, and again. Most of these troops aren't in great shape, the average TOE is probably at about ~70% of theoretical strength. Some of these formations are as low as 50% and they're all fatigued, poorly supplied and have bad morale.  Yeah, not great. Unfortunately there's not much I can do for them. Divisions that are as beat up as this one are going to try to get put in the rear of the formation, but sometimes that's not really an option. Everyone's gonna be in worse shape by the end of the month.  Newly formed divisions dig in on the outskirts of Moscow. Most of these would be even less effective in combat than our frontline troops in this region, so they're going to spend the next few weeks equipping, training and digging. Lots of digging.   My favorite front, this is the only place on the map right now where I don't feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff.  Well first things first, we cut off the overconfident 9th Panzer and 25th Motorized divisions. I also spend about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to cut off the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, but I was always a hex short.  Most of the Southwestern front is now across the river or on it, barring a few stragglers. The time we've managed to buy is really paying off here, look at those defensive values, 7=87 in Kiev proper! This isn't invulnerable, the Panzers can definitely kick me out of the city. What this will do is buy us more precious time, the panzers will have to waste weeks reducing the defenders or they'll have to swing south. Either way I'm ecstatic.  The Southern Front continues to pull back from the Romanians, they'll link up with the tail end of the Southwestern front in a few turns to form a continuous line from the Pripyat Marshes to the Black Sea.   Alright factory time, we've got plenty of rail cap and a freshly saved game, let's do this. Right now only two cities with factories are in imminent danger. Kiev has 4 armaments and 4 Heavy industry factories, and Gomel to its north has 2 of each. To start with I'm going to grab all 6 armament factories and ship them out to the Urals. The heavy industry factories are less important and also take way more trains to rail them out. I've got higher priorities right now so we'll come back for this heavy industry if it's still around next turn.    Here's the big prize the Axis is gunning for right now. That KV-1 factory is absolutely essential to the war effort and cannot be allowed to burn. Vehicle factories work a little differently than armaments/heavy industry. Armaments and heavy industry can be moved piecemeal, if the city has 4 armaments and I move 2 of them there will be 2 in the city and 2 in the target destination. Vehicle factories have to be moved all in one go, anything left behind is destroyed. The new factory off in Siberia or wherever will eventually regrow back to full size, but it takes months and we'll be suffering reduced production throughout that period. The manual suggests to maintain historical production levels you need to get atleast half of the vehicle factory when you ship it.  To further complicate matters some vehicle factories upgrade themselves at certain times and others don't. This KV-1 M1941 factory in Leningrad is going to turn into a KV-1 M1942 factory come January, which is great. It makes it doubly important to get this factory out because it's going to be useful for the entire war.  Other factories are useless for the opposite reason. 72 MiG-3 factory points in Moscow that are simply going to cease to exist in December of '41, they don't upgrade into anything so they're just going to shut down. If you didn't check this page you could spend something like 120,000 rail cap 'saving' these things, that's basically an entire turns rail allotment wasted. Also you cannot get into these upgrade paths screens from the 'move factory mode' screen, you must close that screen, change tabs to the info tab, open the production screen then track down the particular model of thing you want from a list containing every vehicle produced in the Soviet Union.  Not pictured: the bigass scrollbar. Did I mention this games interface is really good?   So let's get back to what we were doing and ship most of Leningrads factories out to Nizhny Tagil, where they'll show up in 20 turns. I also grab the U2VS factory from Moscow because it's tiny and it's all I had railcap for.  Finland declares war and attacks, but does not actually cross the border.  In the north the cut off Panzer corps pulls back from the line to deal with the divisions in its rear, it was so far ahead of its support that it had to free itself. The Totenkopf SS division attempted to do this on it's own but lost to a Soviet infantry division and had to call in help from a Panzer division to re-open the supply route. With luck I may be able to cut them off again this turn. This hubris is costing the Axis dearly and some of their most elite units are being run ragged attempting to win this war on their own.    In the center the twin Panzer armies of Army Group Center shred our line and push for Smolensk. I'm going to have to reform the lines a bit deeper next turn so Smolensk is going to fall.  On the Southern front the Panzers swing south, attempting to link up with the forward elements of the armies invading from Hungary and Romania. Will they turn back towards Kiev once their infantry support catches up with them or will they continue southeast towards the Crimea and Stalino?  With the Soviet airforce back in the skies tons of supplies and materiel are dropped behind enemy lines to equip partisans forming all across occupied territory. Partisan squads properly equiped with rifles, machine guns, mortars and grenades are going to become a larger and larger problem for German security forces.  If I can find a way to cut those overconfident Panzers off for another week it'll take ages for them to recover. The Western Front is a goddamn disaster and if they don't get a break soon that whole line is going to shatter. The Southwestern front is incredible, Kiev is an impenetrable fortress and there's no way the Germans can ruin my day, no sir. With the airforce back in action air losses should begin to climb more rapidly, hopefully not as badly as the first turn. We'll have to keep an eye on them and adjust as necessary to keep things under control. That was a long turn, I can't wait for the rain to start. Only 3 months away now.   
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 02:42 |
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Are you not able to completely abandon the Finnish front and move those units South? I was under the impression Finland won't pass a certain line before Germany manages to take Leningrad.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 02:49 |
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The units of the Northern Front (that orange one on the border) are locked in place until Finland declares war.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 02:59 |
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Cutting off that Panzer corps again would be great to give you time to dig in around Leningrad, but it looks like some infantry has caught up now so even if you manage it again, you won't be able to do it a third time. Still any time you can buy would be nice.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 03:36 |
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At this rate we might see Stalingrad besieged before its time.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 03:51 |
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Hyord posted:Are you not able to completely abandon the Finnish front and move those units South? I was under the impression Finland won't pass a certain line before Germany manages to take Leningrad.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 03:53 |
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Gideon020 posted:At this rate we might see Stalingrad besieged before its time. Stalingrad is something like 700 miles from the Easternmost German unit at the end of turn 3, so that would be quite the drive.  Russia is loving huge.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 04:03 |
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  New units form and all our planes land at their airbases in time for the axis turn. Some airbases are overloaded, some aren't even at half capacity. I'm probably going to have to spend a half an hour at some point and fix all them all but not right now.  Of special note this turn is we get our first new front with the Reserve Front showing up in front of Moscow. Getting a new front is a pretty big deal because not only does it let us effectively command a lot more troops but we get a huge one time infusion of admin points. Right now the Red Army is a mess, divisions are wherever they ended up during the retreat with no real rhyme or reason. The Reserve Front showing up with its extra admin points is going to allow us to reorganize the Red Army into something that makes sense.  With our planes back in the air we're able to get a better idea of the disposition of the German forces. It looks like an infantry army is pushing slowly up through the Baltic states which is great. It's slow going there and they're going to be reaching the frontlines after weeks of marching on foot. In the center around Pskov another army or a corps is moving up to support the overextended panzer corps that's pushing for Leningrad and just to their south another infantry corps is pushing for the southern bank of lake Ilmen. As much as I hate to I might have to split some troops off from somewhere to reinforce the garrison at the lake. Those 3 infantry divisions won't slow down the Germans much.  The panzer corps attached to Army Group North is cut off again. Thanks to our recon planes we're able to spot the motorized division south of the SS Totenkopf division. This division prevents us from being able to cut off the elite division for a second turn, but I'll gladly take the 5 divisions still in my pocket.  The reformed and reinforced 27th Army, highlighted in blue. The closer units are in the oob the better they fight together and we get higher chances of reserve activations. Reserve activations are when units in reserve mode join in a defensive or offensive battle taking place nearby. This will allow us to make punching through our lines harder while also maintaining depth. These units now also have access to the army HQ's attached support units which will get sent out if the leader of the army passes a check during combat. Finally this gives us a chance to look at every unit and evaluate them. The units in worst shape get rotated to the rear and set to refit. If I had the space and time these units would get pulled off the line entirely and sent 100 miles or so behind the lines to refit and retrain, but we don't have that luxury right now.  A problem we're going to run into very rapidly is that we simply don't have enough command points (CP) in our front HQs to go around. Command points represent the number of units a front can handle before it gets overloaded and starts racking up penalties. A normal division takes 2 CP, so you can see that there's not much left to go around. The southwestern front in particular already criminally overloaded at nearly double capacity. Honestly there's not much we can do about it. Most of our fronts are going to end up overloaded this year and I'm going to compensate for it by trying to assign quality commanders to the armies themselves and mostly ignore the higherups in the fronts unless someone really awful sneaks in.  The reformed armies of the Northwestern and Northern front. I don't mess with the commanders just yet, none of them are unbearably bad so they keep their commands until I've got some AP to spare on getting my best commanders to the right fronts. Other than making these armies and shifting a few units around our lines stay basically the same, the Panzers are too busy trying to secure their supply lines to threaten me so we can just dig in.  We pull back from the Finnish border, retreating to the Finnish no attack line.  The 90th rifle division, cut off from supply since June 22nd begins to march on Riga.  Well this isn't pretty. Time to fall back!  Better, we also take this opportunity to reform into armies as you can see.  Outside Moscow the refitting divisions are formed into armies and assigned to the Reserve Front  Outside Orel the 28th army is built from scratch, slapped together from empty shells of units that formed in the area. These units are going to spend the next several turns building up to full strength and training after which they're going to be the emergency reserve. If the Panzers punch a hole in a line I can't patch these guys are going to scream in on a train to prevent a breakthrough.  I'm curious as to what the Germans are planning down here, until they decide there's not much we can do besides dig in.  The forces around Kiev reorganize themselves into armies, at this point I run out of Admin points so the Southern front will have to wait a turn or two before they can join the rest of the army in making sense.  North of Kiev the 21st Army forms. This force's job will be to bridge the line between the tail end of the Western Front and the Southwestern front. If the Germans send any armored units to this area I will almost certainly rail in 1-2 more armies to reinforce it. Until then they can refit and prepare to become part of the front line.  The Southern Front abandons Odessa and pulls back across the Yuzhny Bug river, leaving only a token force to defend the city. There's now a continuous line of troops stretching from Kiev to the Black Sea.  First up is Odessa, the city is doomed to fall in a turn or two so everyone . I could fight for this city, devoting a few cavalry divisions would force the Germans to bring a few of the German divisions attached to the Romanian army down but I don't really care much. I'd rather fall back to the major rivers in the area and force the Romanians to try to cross opposed by entrenched, rested divisions. We use our remaining rail cap to grab the Heavy Industry we left behind in Gomel and Kiev last turn. The only other factories under threat of being taken or cut off are Leningrad in the North and Nikolaev to the east of Odessa. Nikolaev won't be in range of the slow Romanian troops for another turn or so and with the Panzer corps in the north cut off for a second turn running I would be very surprised if they managed to punch all the way through my defences to Leningrad in a single turn.  Army Group North re-establishes supply and protects it this time, we won't be cutting off entire panzer corps up here anymore.  Army Group Center's panzer armies split again, one blasting a hole near Smolensk and the other pushing to the gap between the Western Front and the 21st Army. We're going to have to do something about this but I'm not sure what yet.  The panzers swing back north and the battle for Kiev begins with a 2 stage attack on the outer fortifications requiring nearly all the troops that are this far east. With the defensive value of Kiev proper soaring over 100 will the Germans find a way to dislodge them?   I feel less rushed now, we've bought time and we're putting it to good use. Now I just need to find a new Panzer corps to torment    
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 01:20 |
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uPen posted:Russia is loving huge. And Russian roads are their worst weapon against pretty much any invader.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 01:45 |
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How well does this game represent the superiority of the russian tanks early in the war to the german tanks. Or do they attempt to compensate for their bad leadership?
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 18:26 |
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I swear to god Goon wargamers mix up rout and route with the specific intention of annoying the poo poo out of me personally.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 20:29 |
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Crowsbeak posted:How well does this game represent the superiority of the russian tanks early in the war to the german tanks. Or do they attempt to compensate for their bad leadership? This does make sense, in a way: Whatever the tactical strengths of a T-34 versus a Mark III or a short-barreled Mark IV doesn't really matter in the strategic level when you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of tanks and the T-34s are going to run into anti-tank guns or will get close-assaulted by infantry and the T-34s don't have radios and have bad doctrine. It might make a difference in a Brigade-level game or smaller, but not here.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 01:52 |
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Yeah, it would be a bit pointless to model the unit level poo poo since what this is really going to come down to is logistics. Strategy starts being less about how good your guns are at shooting things and more about how well you can get those guns to where they need to shoot things as the scope and scale gets bigger. Not to say that we don't have to worry about it. After all, we have those 200 light "tanks" that should probably just explode now and get it over with. On the subject of the game right now, I'm glad things have seemed to stabilize just slightly up north. It was looking to be a very ghastly situation back on the 3rd. Its still pretty bad, but I swear it was maybe 2 turns at best before going belly up.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 03:42 |
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I've been informed I should stick to my one a day schedule or else.   Less new troops this turn. Free reinforcements are going to slow down for a while, then pick back up in August and September.  There's a huge infantry army moving up through the Baltic states and the Panzers are pushing back towards Leningrad. We don't really do a whole lot on this front, the Germans haven't made any real progress for a turn or two now. Our front lines reorganize a bit and the Northern front continues to pull away from the Finns. We also ship an extra division to the southern bank of Lake Ilmen in case the Germans try to take it.  The Germans have beaten up our line but failed to punch through anywhere. We're still going to have to fall back several miles to get off these Panzer divisions though.  This is less than ideal but it's all I've got. The 21st army moves up to cover the southern flank of the front. I fully expect the Germans to punch a huge hole in this thing, the troops are exausted and close to shattering. If they can make it through this week I may rotate the reserve front in to give them a break, we shall see.  Two new armies form, the 31st and the 33rd. They're going to sit on the rail to refit and train until I need them on the front. I imagine they're both going to ship out to plug gaps that are going to form in the Western front's line next turn.  Well it appears the Germans have showed their hand, a direct assault on Kiev. With all their panzers outside the city they've got no real striking power anywhere.  We move the lines around a little and fly some recon flights. We unfortunately can't cut off this Panzer Army, the Germans have wisened up to the fact I'm willing to throw away entire divisions to slow these tanks down for a few days. I imagine they're going to be able to take out the forces flanking the city but there's no way they're going to take Kiev itself this turn or maybe even next.  The Southern front gets organized into armies. They don't have to move much because the only thing coming for them is slow rear end infantry.  The 16th army forms up at Kharkov. I'm not really sure about what I'm going to do with this army yet, in all likelyhood they're going to get sucked into the meatgrinder forming outside Moscow.  We move nearly all of the remaining factories out of Leningrad this turn leaving behind an armored car factory which we won't be evacuating ever and a single heavy industry factory.  Only 2 attacks this turn with the weakened Germans chipping the edges off my formation. An infantry force moves up on the southern bank of lake Ilmen but does not launch any attacks.  The pounding of the Western front continues. More and more divisions are routing rather than retreating every turn. With the German infantry arriving at the front this turn the pressure will continue to mount.  German infantry shows up in the south as well and a series of battles clears most of the Soviet forces off the western bank of the river. If the Germans get even a single division across the river I'm going to have to pull out of Kiev. That felt like a short turn, probably because the Germans weren't able to accomplish much during their last turn so I didn't have any scrambling to do. Air losses are begining to climb again.   
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 03:53 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 23:24 |
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Do the Soviets have the same railway upgrade requirements/problems that the Axis forces have? Will you have to reconvert railways once the Germans begin to retreat?
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 16:44 |
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