Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

And here is an epic picture from turn 30 when the southern and eastern prongs meet south of Zaporozhye, liberating large tracts of the southern Ukraine at a stroke!

quote:

ORIGINAL: loki100

re the fronts.

Remember the load comes from CPs not armies - realise this sounds trite but it took me a while to get my head around it.

I find that to the end of the first winter I don't have enough combat ready divisions to really overload the fronts, but then I do spend CPs on taking low morale and low strength divisions back into Stavka reserve, so I have a sort of conveyor belt set up. Equally, with an eye on the drop of army capacity in early 42, I tend to only load my armies up to 18.

By the time the at start fronts are at risk of overloading due to the returning formations, you tend to get the Volkhov and Caucasus Fronts. Which relieves the problem for some time. The conversion of cavalry divs to corps lowers the CP load, which tends to allow me to absorb the winter arrivals (but remember I'm still spending a lot of AP on rotation).

The next safety nets are the SE Front in spring 42 and the rifle corps. Again that seems to create a bit of headroom.

My final choice is to heavily overload one front and give it to a total numpty. There are a few available . Let this overload, as it does no harm. In most games, whichever Front you have up north is a good choice for this. Equally the Volga MD is another get out clause in 42 when its likely to be close to the front. Again try and give it a quiet sector and overload.

So, on balance, I find I have about -10 on the CPs for most fronts, and yes I do think you are meant by design to have a problem. Its not a good simulation in my opinion, in that the Soviet doctrine was a front was a single axis of advance or strategic defense region. What I think the game sort of simulates is that overall the Soviets lacked for a command infrastructure, but the reality was they allocated what they had to key commands - hence the infrastructure of Stavka representatives etc. So what you should really have is a pool of front CPs and the ability to package them up - so you could have the late war 1st Ukrainian/1st Bielorussian monsters.

In practice, the only time that formations attached to Stavka were engaged was the Tikhvin battles in late 41. Proved to be a total disaster as army commanders were sending low level requests to Stavka.

After that, Soviet histories frequently refer to armies being pulled into 'Stavka reserve', which to me means detached from the Front structure, but to refit or be redeployed such as Chuikov's 8GA being moved from the Korsun sector to take part in Bagration. The in-game problem is the AP cost is too high to operate on that model, but that leads to the problem that the APs are trying to model too much.

sorry for the thread hi-jack

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Note also that marxist dialectic can even triumph over the laws of mathematics (1:1 > 2:1).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
Losses are roughly 1:3 and I think this will wear down the Germans in the long run. The empty hexes make it difficult for me to attack though, as I often don't have the MP:s to move in and then do a prepared attack.

quote:

ORIGINAL: loki100

does seem as if the mild blizzard rules are producing far better (& more realistic) winter campaigns and front lines - no longer just a straight line down the map but now much more reflecting the balance of forces and where the terrain favours the attack or defense?