Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Cripes A Mighty

Very entertaining AAR. Your progress is incredible. You have taken a huge amount of territory and mauled your enemy.

That being said, I think you are in grave trouble. Your momentum was a key factor in keeping him off balance, but your front along the Volga hasn't moved much in a while, and now you are running out of steam. You are on the verge of mud season with vast thinly-defended flanks. He will have time to recover, regroup, and strike. You simply don't have the manpower to defend your entire perimeter. If he can attack south from Penza and break through, he threatens to roll up your entire Volga front while the lions share of your mobile units that could best contain the damage are in the far-away Caucasus.

I would love to see a screenshot of your entire front, from the Baltic to the Caspian.

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ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

Do you think anyone even knows where Baku is? The entire world doesn't care if we capture Baku or not.

- Heinz Guderian -

well he would have said it in these circumstances

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ORIGINAL: rbrockman2

The primary goal of the Germans is to isolate and kill groups of Russian units. What makes this doable is that for a long time there are always some Russians that are off by themselves and vulnerable: the Germans simply rail their mobile units to wherever the "victim" units are, surround them, and toast them. Killing Russian units thin the Russian lines, leading to more groups of vulnerable Russians that can be toasted next, etc.

From this perspective, the recent Crimean operation in this AAR was great because it toasted a bunch of Russian divisions while freeing up a bunch of Axis units to go rampage elsewhere.

Usually (historically), Axis advance into the Caucasus is a bad idea because it extends the Axis forces over a wide area capturing territory without allowing the capture of Russian units. The situation in this AAR is different: the Axis forces in the Eastern Caucasus have been allowed to outflank the Russians and drive down the Caspian. Am I correct in assuming that all the Russian units in the Caucasus depend on Baku for supply? If so, when the Axis reaches the southern map edge then a stack of Russian divisions are toast, regardless of how the defense of Baku itself goes. Note that the situation in the Caucasus has inexplicably lured a bunch of Guards units into tangling with the SS, in clear terrain, far away from anything the Russians need to defend, near a big body of water with no nearby ports. This doesn't seem very healthy for the Russians.

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ORIGINAL: loki100

will be a pity if this ends

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that powerful force of Gds on the Caspian Front is very vulnerable and would be better hitting you somewhere else (???? - at least that is what I'd try) - you've really set the tempo of the campaign across this period

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ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Yes, this is very interesting, hope they can fix the problem!

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BTW it would be interesting to see Soviet production, do you know what the Soviet Arm and HI numbers are?

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ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

Maybe they'll find frogmarcs current game file corrupted and he'll have to replay a turn. Whatever it is, you should be able to continue the game from some point.

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ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

The last save was indeed corrupted (the file was only 1k) so I reverted the game to the prior player turn. Hopefully this was just a fluke and it won't happen again.

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ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

The Slitherine tech people are going to take a look at this now that they are aware of it. I was told there was another game experiencing similar issues so it appears to be a server wide issue. I have a lot of confidence in their technical people to make things better. As for the 1k file upload, I really think this was some kind of fluke event.

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ORIGINAL: loki100

you've done an incredible amount of damage. The Soviets at 6m and the Germans alone at 4m, be interesting to see if you can manage the final gains in 1943 or if you have reached the limits of your advance.

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ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

In case people were wondering, I've seen no evidence that losing Baku and the fuel/oil that goes with it will have any significant impact on the Red Army. The Axis player will take out about 35-40% of that production, but there will still be some excess production capacity on the Soviet side even with the loss.

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ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex

Reading through this AAR is just another confirmation for why the Russian should not fight forward or counterattack in 41 blizzard. Doing so is suicidal because of the multiple "over the top" Russian penalties during 41-42. To whit:

1) Extreme morale differential
2) Unrealistic binary isolation rules
3) Fantasy Lvov pocketing
4) Historically inaccurate and low reinforcement rates
5) Combat resolution routines that result in too few losses to the attacker

Nevertheless, the game is playable and interesting once HRs and intial optional settings are put in place to balance the game. Even then, though, you can forget fighting forward or the blizzard attack as the Russian. The best the Russian can do is try to survive until 43, when the rebuilt Russian Army 2.0 can be assembled to actually play the game.

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ORIGINAL: STEF78

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ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex

Reading through this AAR is just another confirmation for why the Russian should not fight forward or counterattack in 41 blizzard. Doing so is suicidal because of the multiple "over the top" Russian penalties during 41-42. To whit:

1) Extreme morale differential
2) Unrealistic binary isolation rules
3) Fantasy Lvov pocketing
4) Historically inaccurate and low reinforcement rates
5) Combat resolution routines that result in too few losses to the attacker

Nevertheless, the game is playable and interesting once HRs and intial optional settings are put in place to balance the game. Even then, though, you can forget fighting forward or the blizzard attack as the Russian. The best the Russian can do is try to survive until 43, when the rebuilt Russian Army 2.0 can be assembled to actually play the game.

Your analysis is only focused on russians problems.

Even if most of your points are correct, german players also have their own difficulties:
- russian airborne and amphibian capacity
- partisan efficiency in the early months of the game if well managed
- impossibility to take Moscow and often Leningrad against good players in 1941
- the fact that the russian commander doesn't make the same errors than Stalin
and I forgot surely others points

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ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

Your inexperienced opponent didn't leave a sufficient garrison at Baku. So go ahead and finish him off there, but I'd suggest you not linger too long.