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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:I imagine Allied landings in Europe are being drawn up immediately with this German debacle. Can't let the Reds take France. In no way were the British capable of invading in 41, and the Americans aren't even in the war yet and would probably need a year or two to build up their own strength to be capable of taking on the Germans in Western Europe. Then there's getting all the necessary shipping available, training and developing equipment for the amphibious invasion. 1944 really was about the earliest possible time that any invasion could be launched with any possibility of success (it should also be noted that the Luftwaffe also wasn't really full and duly crippled until late 1943), unless the Germans withdraw all their garrisons to reinforce the east, and that would only hasten defeat by leaving the vital Western flank open to invasion. If they were going to pull troops from somewhere it would have to be by basically abandoning Norway where 400,000 Germans were stuck doing pretty much nothing of use, only getting a couple of good operating bases for uboats in return really. And the British might have been capable of attacking and occupying Norway if the Germans reduced their commitment there. Italy too might fall faster if the Germans come to abandon North Africa faster, as that too did them little good in either the long or short run. The idea of the invasion of France being seen as imperative to save Europe from communism is largely a cold war idea anyway. The second front in France (nothing else would do) was from the start a Soviet request/demand, and the British throughout much of the war until they actually launched the invasion were both reluctant to commit to it and doubtful about its importance for various reasons (senior figures in the RAF for instance believed it was unnecessary because they argued that Germany could be defeated through strategic bombing). There doesn't really seem to have been much fear of a Red takeover of Western Europe really, not in a way that drove the policy at least. Even Churchill, perhaps one of the most adamant anti-Bolsheviks at the time had argued for an alliance with Russia against Germany since before the war even started (the MR pact kind of put a stop to that for a while though). Also there's the factor that Stalin while ruthless and ambitious, was actually fairly cautious in foreign policy issues and rarely gambled or demanded more than he knew his allies would allow him to have (due to the vast sacrifice of the Red Army and the Soviet Union he could also virtually demand whatever he wanted), he allowed the British to crush the Communists in Greece and demanded the French communist resistance, and others in Western Europe, to put aside any work or demands towards revolution as part of liberation because he knew it would upset his relationship with the West and therefore likely the vital Lend-Lease supplies. Though with a victory in 42 or 43 before the Allies have made a decisive impact on the ground, perhaps that factor wouldn't weigh as heavily on him, still what he wanted were buffer states between the USSR and Germany, taking France does nothing towards that end and only really gains a hostile United States and Britain. e: Also the Germans may have failed dramatically, but the Soviets really aren't ready to make any big advances themselves yet or in the near future themselves. Things are simply a bit too disorganized and alot of vital equipment is in too short supply, been a while since I palyed this game and never really finished a game, but I can't remember how big a factor Lend-Lease equipment is, but historically Lend-Lease equipment such as trucks were pretty vital in enabling the large scale offensives you saw from 1943 and onwards. I think that only really began to pick up dramatically from mid-42 (the British and Russians invaded Iran to secure a better supply route) or so, so if the Germans could pull together they would have been able to stay on the defensive for a while, despite being doomed to defeat, while the Red Army marshals its strength and builds up its offensive capability. e2: If this goes really well, maybe it might be possible to knock out Romania way early? Randarkman fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 07:14
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:16 |
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I believe that they literally didn't have the landing boats ready until like 43 or something anyway(?) so there was no way they were invading before 44.
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Nov 2, 2018 09:31
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Grey Hunter posted:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
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Nov 2, 2018 14:09
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Soviet Greece and Denmark would go quite a ways toward achieving some long-standing Russian naval aims.
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Nov 2, 2018 14:30
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It's first half of July 1941 and Germans have lost an armoured division. 2 other and 1 mechanised one may end up severely depleted or even lost. Imagine some generals from OKW will be swiftly sent to the front line "to familiarise themselves with the enemy".
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Nov 2, 2018 15:47
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Well, Hitler was right about one thing: it will be a quick war.
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Nov 2, 2018 17:13
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 uPen's record?
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Nov 2, 2018 18:52
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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lol
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Nov 3, 2018 10:24
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People are getting a bit hasty here. Bagging a few overextended mobile divisions isn't gonna win the war by itself. Right now it's mostly good for slowing down the general german advance. Even if Grey can bog down the panzers, once the german infantry catches up he's gonna get rolled back. Similar with his attempt to fight the Finns. Up there in the forests, the Finns are going to just beat the poo poo out of anything he can throw at them right now and will keep doing it until they reach the no-attack line. The Soviets infantry (outside the '41 blizzard) can't really go on the offensive against substantial resistance until mid-1942 or so, and their mobile troops take even longer to get truly nasty. Also, those tank divisions he's trying to get out of the Pripyat marches are probably a liability, funnily enough. Right now they're full of old garbage like T-26s or T-35s that nobody will miss and he's gonna have to get rid of them anyway because they're way too big and unwieldy and hemmorhage tanks any time they just try to move a few miles. (And that's without Grey trying to have them roadmarch through the swamps.  ) That means either losing them (and getting a free replacement brigade counter) or manually converting them to brigades eventually.
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Nov 3, 2018 20:43
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Sure, there won't be Berlin by 1942 or something, but it looks like AGC starts with 10 Armoured Divisions. Destroying 3 and one Motorized one will be a major setback. I'm not sure if Grey will be able to bag those divisions though..
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Nov 3, 2018 21:21
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i've never actually played games this groggy, but it seems reasonable to me that if the AI is doing so much worse than history in like the first two months of barbarossa, it's going to poo poo the bed even worse in rasputitsa season and winter when the deck isn't stacked on its side
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Nov 3, 2018 21:43
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Nice job cutting off the head of that advance GH! I saw you finish off the panzer division you cut off last turn (and they didn't go easy) and you've pocketed at least one more. The game seems much more accessible than WiTP. I feel like I might almost be able to play it. It seems like it leans really hard on keyboard shortcuts though.
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Nov 3, 2018 22:08
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Reiterpallasch posted:i've never actually played games this groggy, but it seems reasonable to me that if the AI is doing so much worse than history in like the first two months of barbarossa, it's going to poo poo the bed even worse in rasputitsa season and winter when the deck isn't stacked on its side The AI can't really poo poo the bed in the mud season. Mud fucks over everybody equally and makes any kind of bigger attacks impossible. It's a time for reorganising and rebuilding, and that's what the AI will do unless you give it something really weak to attack. Early winter is still stacked in favour of the Germans and it's only when the blizzards start that the Soviets can really counterattack on a large scale. Even then, Soviet mobile formations in '41 are way too slow and fragile to really allow them to carry out large-scale maneuver offensives, so the winter offensive is mostly about slowly pushing along a wide front. Outside the blizzard, it's really only summer 1942 that the Soviets first get the tools needed to push against heavier german infantry concentrations (single-counter rifle corps and on-map artillery formations later on), and their tank forces remain rather fragile until IIRC spring or summer of 1943.
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Nov 3, 2018 22:17
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There's going to be a lot of christmas decorations in Berlin in '41 with lots of reversed Rs in this universe.
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Nov 3, 2018 22:31
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Randarkman posted:The idea of the invasion of France being seen as imperative to save Europe from communism is largely a cold war idea anyway. The second front in France (nothing else would do) was from the start a Soviet request/demand, and the British throughout much of the war until they actually launched the invasion were both reluctant to commit to it and doubtful about its importance for various reasons (senior figures in the RAF for instance believed it was unnecessary because they argued that Germany could be defeated through strategic bombing). There doesn't really seem to have been much fear of a Red takeover of Western Europe really, not in a way that drove the policy at least. Even Churchill, perhaps one of the most adamant anti-Bolsheviks at the time had argued for an alliance with Russia against Germany since before the war even started (the MR pact kind of put a stop to that for a while though).
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Nov 4, 2018 01:09
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LLSix posted:The game seems much more accessible than WiTP. I feel like I might almost be able to play it. It seems like it leans really hard on keyboard shortcuts though. It's an "I go, you go" game rather than WitP's "we go". Getting instant feedback on the orders you issue unit by unit instead of wondering if those orders will actually do what you expected definitely makes it easier to pick up than WitP, although it still has its layers of grognardiness to learn if you want to play optimally. Memorizing the keyboard shortcuts isn't so bad (most of the important ones are listed on their respective buttons), though a few very basic things like launching an attack from units in multiple hexes will have you consulting the instructions the first time you want to do it. I still enjoy playing/watching WitP a bit more despite its quirks, though. I find it easier to get invested in the fate of HMS Warspite than the 2851st Rifle Corps. That said, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the war plays out if Grey is able to knock out most of one of Germany's four Panzer Groups in July 1941.
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Nov 4, 2018 09:06
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    Now that's infuriating, but I've cut them off from supplies, so hopefully this will blunt their offensive power for a few turns!
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Nov 5, 2018 05:35
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Think you've hosed up the link again, just getting this? But it's also not available through your actual channel.
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Nov 5, 2018 06:05
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video is private
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Nov 5, 2018 06:06
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Can you game the AI as the Soviets ? I.e. purposefully leave a section of the front weakly defended and then close the pocket from the flanks ?
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Nov 5, 2018 06:33
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duuur should work now. need to hit publish....
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Nov 5, 2018 07:20
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Saint Celestine posted:Can you game the AI as the Soviets ? I.e. purposefully leave a section of the front weakly defended and then close the pocket from the flanks ? I'd assume that you can. Are you really sure you can pocket from the flanks though, especially during Barbarossa? Because if it doesn't work you just handed the panzers free reign.
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Nov 5, 2018 07:31
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Omobono posted:I'd assume that you can. Well maybe not in 41', but wondering if the AI is dumb enough to fall for it.
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Nov 5, 2018 08:29
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Saint Celestine posted:Can you game the AI as the Soviets ? I.e. purposefully leave a section of the front weakly defended and then close the pocket from the flanks ? The hardest part about this is the lack of mobile forces for the Soviets. As the game starts, the Soviets start with Tank and Mechanized Divisions, but those are quickly going to be destroyed, or perhaps you can use them as single-shot attackers against particularly vulnerable German units, but they're not combat-effective at all. They'll slowly be converted into Tank Brigades, which are much smaller and so cannot operate independently. You can convert them into Tank Corps in Spring of 1942, but this is also about the time that you want to build up your Rifle Corps, and those tend to be of higher priority as you're still playing defense. Alternatively, you can try using Cavalry Divisions, but it's not really wise to invest heavily in them because the Tank Corps are going to be so much better once they finally go online. Basically, the game tries to shape the development of your forces in such a way as to accurately capture how grand mobile offensives weren't really a thing for the Red Army until late '42.
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Nov 5, 2018 08:46
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It should be worth noting that generally speaking, at least after Barbarossa, that Soviet formations (when you are talking about brigade and up, and especially for divisions) were tiny, compared to German and Western equivalents and lacking in integral heavy support in the form of artillery and such, which often was formed into their own units and subordinated corps or army command. This came about from a number of different factors. One was that after the massive initital losses of Barbarossa, and the continued high losses, the Red Army had to be reorganized to get units back up to full strength and because Stalin did not like to lose divisions on paper, a solution then was to simply make the divisions smaller. I think perhaps this one ends up being somewhat overplayed depending on who's presenting the facts, a more significant cause seems to be a factor of lack of communication equipment and a chronic shortage of officers due to both the purges of the late 30s and a very high casualty rate for officers (paricularly junior officers). The first factor, the lack of communications equipment, necessitated small units at the platoon and company level (Soviet squads were roughly equal to Western or German squads, though trending towards smaller, but platoons frequently only had two or three squads, same with tanks with a platoon rarely having more than 3 tanks, with 5 being the norm in Western and German armies) to allow an officer to be somewhat better able to command their elements with only the use of voice, hand signals, whistles and flags. When radios were available they frequently only allowed platoon and/or company commanders to communicate with their superiors not with their subordinates. The lack of communications equipment also meant that it was difficult for Soviet units to call down artillery on command, Soviet artillery therefore tended to towards conducting massive pre-planned barrages instead, which were devastating but lacked flexibility and meant that advancing units could quickly find themselves without artillery support. The second factor, shortage and attrition of officers, combined with the vast size of the Red Army meant that command staffs were frequently reduced to mere skeleton crews as every officer (and NCO for squads, though Soviet NCOs did not receive much training or independence in any case) was needed in direct command of units, this meant that Soviet officers were frequently overworked because they had few if anyone to assist them (platoon and company commanders may often have had only a couple of runners) which may have contributed to a trend of small units even at higher levels of command. When combined with the lack of radios, commanders also oftne found it hard to get accurate information from their subordinates or even get in contact with them, especially on the offensive when field telephones and such weren't very useful.
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Nov 5, 2018 09:57
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LLSix posted:Nice job cutting off the head of that advance GH! I saw you finish off the panzer division you cut off last turn (and they didn't go easy) and you've pocketed at least one more. The game seems much more accessible than WiTP. I feel like I might almost be able to play it. It seems like it leans really hard on keyboard shortcuts though. Its more accessible, but also if you play against AI its "keep forming units into a continuously advancing line" simulator. Not much exciting is going to happen after the German offensives, and even those are pretty mechanical and predictable. Compared to the crazy flexibility and variety you get in WITP, it's much more drab, and there's none of the excitement of naval battles and praying for a lucky torpedo hit, even cleaning up an encirclement feels more like an adminstrative task than an exciting triumph. Its not be, just much more focused on dutiful admin than on creative solutions.
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Nov 5, 2018 10:13
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Watching these videos and reading an article about high street shopping recently made my brain spit out “Gary Grimsby’s War in the East Midlands”
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Nov 5, 2018 11:39
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That would be a grim war....
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Nov 5, 2018 11:50
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For us semi-grogs, can someone run down the numbers on the counters? Like, what does 9=26 mean on a division compared to 2-9? I know the former is stronger, but how much stronger?
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Nov 5, 2018 13:47
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The number to the left is the Offensive Combat Value (CV). The number to the right of the dash is the Movement Points. The number to the right of the equals sign is the Defensive CV. The current player can switch their display between the dash and the equals sign, but the enemy's side will always show the Defensive CV, since the enemy isn't moving during the current player's turn so there's no need to see their movement points. When combat occurs, the "devices", or individual squads, vehicles, and guns inside the units, are virtually placed some distance apart, and then devices who are in range for the current distance will shoot. The distance is reduced, and the process repeats, up until the distance is close enough for small arms fire. These shots and attacks will disrupt, damage, and destroy their targeted devices. At the end of the combat, the surviving devices are tallied up, a new CV is recalculated, and the CV is modified by things like leadership checks and terrain. If the attacker's final modified CV is 2.0x that of the defender's final modified CV, the attacker wins and the defender is forced out of the hex. Otherwise, the defender "holds", but damage inflicted during the combat will can of course influence the results of succeeding attacks. The Soviets have a special rule in that as long as they can manage more than 1.0x odds during attacks, then their odds are automatically elevated to 2.0x and they win the combat. This persists for the first year of the game. In general, you want to attack with twice as much Offensive CV as the enemy's Defensive CV. That is, if the enemy reads as "3=5", you want to hit it with at least a "10-25" unit, or more. Where this gets tricky is that Hasty Attacks only provide half as much CV, or attacking across a river cuts your Offensive CV in half, or Urban hexes will double a defender's CV, or leaders can drastically increase or decrease modified CVs, or artillery doesn't contribute to Offensive CV but destroys defender devices to reduce final Defensive CVs, or low recon/spotting levels will cause Defensice CV counts to be inaccurate, and so on and so forth.
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Nov 5, 2018 14:11
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habeasdorkus posted:For us semi-grogs, can someone run down the numbers on the counters? Like, what does 9=26 mean on a division compared to 2-9? I know the former is stronger, but how much stronger? This, from uPen's run of War in the East, might be of use.
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Nov 5, 2018 17:15
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 As hoped, the speed of their advance has slowed down - now to prevent breakthroughs! 
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Nov 6, 2018 06:26
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I have two questions. 1: what is the effect of which HQ a unit is attached to? Why is it worth the time to reassign. 2: Did you ever get Stavka back to Moscow after that misclik?
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Nov 6, 2018 15:49
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Arban posted:I have two questions. 1 - Hq's provide organization and backup in the form of support units. its very important to have them set up, but at this point, and overloaded HQ is better than no HQ. 2 - Yeah. Then drove it out again the next turn.....
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Nov 6, 2018 15:52
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Grey Hunter posted:
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Nov 6, 2018 15:59
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That's why they keep leaving, they're hoping Stalin can't hit a moving target!
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Nov 6, 2018 16:01
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They are so confident they keep going out to their Dacha's to see their mistresses!
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Nov 6, 2018 16:04
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Didn't they drive west? It must be the revolutionary zeal getting the best of them
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Nov 6, 2018 16:05
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Arban posted:I have two questions. Each HQ in the unit's hierarchy can contribute to skill checks in combat etc. However, HQs are only effective within a certain radius, with some exceptions, so it's useful to have relatively compact fronts where the HQ can reach its subordinates, also having too many units in an army / front is going to impact their ability to function. But in general the higher up you do, the lesser the effect the commanders have, seems to be the consensus, some players even refuse to attach their mobile spearhead armies to fronts because they think the political cost of reassigning them based on where they are staging an attack is greater than the potential gains from having proper front HQ support.
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Nov 6, 2018 19:39
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:16 |
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Arban posted:I have two questions. When units engage in combat, and when they go through their pre-turn logistics phase (which provides them with ammo, gas, and supplies), they have to pass a number of dice rolls to determine how well they perform and how many supplies they receive. Each level of HQ (Corps, Army, Front, STAVKA) provides another chance at passing the die roll: if the unit is in range of their Corps HQ (5 hexes), then the Corps commander rolls first. If he fails, then the Army commander will try (with a range of 20 hexes). If he fails, then the Front Commander will try (with a range of 75 hexes), and if he fails, then STAVKA will try. The better the leader, the more likely that they're going to pass the die roll. The Red Army is going to lose their Corps HQ structure very quickly, because they just didn't have the officers needed to maintain that level of control. Russian Corps units will eventually come back, but instead as single-chit units composed of three Rifle Divisions combined. HQ units also carry around "support units", which are things like engineers, dedicated artillery formations, specialized tank formations, and anything smaller than a division that doesn't warrant being placed on the map itself. Putting SUs on Corps and Army-level HQs will let these support units participate in combats that are in range and pass a leadership check.
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Nov 7, 2018 04:22
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