thedoctorking
Posts: 2297
Joined: 4/29/2017
Status: offline
|
Just did my turn 4. Here's as best as I can recall, what I did the first turns.
My general approach has been to conserve my forces and fall back towards a main line of resistance along the Dnepr, the Smolensk-Vitebsk area, and then north through the swamps and hills to Lake Ladoga and down the Luga to the Gulf of Bothnia. The first turn I used most of my rail cap to get my Southwestern Front guys out of the big bulge south of Lvov. I made a few localized counterattacks on turn 1 to open a pocket in that area, which allowed me to save at least ten divisions. My guys around Lvov and the usual pocket in Belarus were completely cut off and destroyed. I did figure out how to evacuate isolated HQ's, which was a good thing since one of those HQ's in the pocket had gotten Zhukov as a leader - I tried to get one of the decent generals out of the pocket by assigning him to a new army, and the game automatically assigned Zhukov as his replacement. Oops! That's when I noticed the redeploy button. Two presses later, 3rd Army was out in the Pinsk marshes, sans most of its support units. My principal goal is to avoid having my units cut off in big pockets. Wherever the German armor is, I make sure to have at least a double line of defenders with a scattering of guys behind the line to slow any penetration, and I fall back, leaving a buffer of empty hexes for attackers to move through, if I detect that the Germans may have done an HQBU.
I am using my air force as often as possible. Twigster's first turn air strke took out about 4000 airframes. I transferred all the empty squadrons plus everybody who had morale of less than 40 back to National Reserve, moved the bases to safe locations, and then bombed every Axis unit that looked vulnerable. My goal is to bomb all armored spearheads and anybody else who looks far from an Axis airbase. I have three goals: one is to draw the Axis fighters into long-range interceptions, using up their miles and imposing fatigue levels that will reduce their combat effectiveness. Two is to get experience for my guys. Right now, the average USSR air unit has an experience of about 50, while the average German is up in the 80's. I'd like to have a selection of air units, especially fighters, with 80+ experience myself by the end of the summer. The third goal is to reduce the movement points of armored units. I believe that disrupting units by bombing then converts into fatigue levels that will cut the MP's of the target units down. I don't know what the actual results are but I have noticed that Twigster's tanks aren't moving as fast as they might have. I'm not too concerned about losses - I've got huge numbers of planes in my pools. Many of them are older aircraft, SB-2's and I-153's and the like, but better an old plane than no plane at all. Each turn, I move units that have morales of below 40 back into reserve, move my bases to safe locations (leaving one nearly empty base a few hexes behind the line) and then redeploy refreshed squadrons back into the rearward bases to permit me to keep up steady pressure.
On turn two, I began to slip away from the Romanian front. The Germans hadn't taken Minsk at that point, and I realized that the few infantry units dug in to the city were a powerful roadblock to advancing German infantry. In fact, in Minsk, Twigster actually had to use some armored divisions in the assault, slowing his arrival in front of the land bridge by one turn. I left similar outposts in Tarnopol, Kishniev, Proskurov, and Rovno to slow things down in the south. Turn two saw a small German pocket around Tarnopol, and turn 3 he cut off and destroyed the Proskurov defenses. I consider it a good exchange, two divisions and a few support units in a corps HQ I was going to lose anyway for a turn's delay of an entire German army. His armor moved south of Proskurov on turn 4, heading for Vinnitsa.
In the north, he committed to a major attack south of Pskov, breaking across the Velikaya. I was able to rail reinforcements in to hold the river line to the east of there, and Pskov is still held by a rifle corps and a mech corps. He wasn't able to cut them off - I learned from my experience in the multi-player game and blocked the crossing south of Lake Peipus with a real unit. He has not gone north of Peipus at all, in fact, with the exception of a division sent up to Talinn.
His major thrust is obviously developing in the center, between Vitebsk and Smolensk. I detect something like ten armored and three motorized divisions in there. I suspect he transferred some of his guys from the northern armored army to the central front. I have deployed strong forces in front of him and am building several defensive lines behind my front, as well as a good army to the south in case he veers across the Dnepr to pass Smolensk to the south. I also spent a good bit of my AP allocation that I got when the Reserve Front was created to assign good leaders to the armies that are going to be doing most of the fighting. This is risky, since if we suffer too many defeats the glorious NKVD might shoot my good generals. My goal is simply to slow the German offensive down and wait for mud, of course. And if the German armor fatigues itself too much and runs itself out of gas, then we will strike.
Ourrah! On to Berlin!
< Message edited by thedoctorking -- 11/16/2017 7:55:07 PM >
|
Printable Version
Twig's War (Twigster Axis, thedoctorking Soviet) - 
). I'll be putting my write-up through my end of Turn 7 shortly.
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread