Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

I think this may have resulted in me becoming more than a little over-cautious. I know that historically by the end of '41 both sides had pretty much bled themselves white; the Germans to get as far as they did, the Soviets to prevent the Germans from getting any further. I find myself reluctant to do that, when my units drop below 60% I pull them back to refit. And I find myself hesitant to even put my panzers into battle as even when the odds are good they tend to get the hell kicked out of them, and it takes FOR-FREAKING-EVER for them to receive replacement panzers (German panzer production was never great).

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In my current game it is Turn 14 and I still haven't taken Odessa. It is surrounded, I am bombing it (not that it seems to accomplish much, the number of casualties it reports is minuscule), I have naval patrols trying to take out the resupply, but the CV is reporting absurd. I tried a little experiment recently, hit it with everything (a corps of Germans and a bunch of Rumanians) and basically got my ass kicked. I have now put a pioneer with every unit, and damn near every 210mm gun I could find in the hands of the German corps, and am going to give it another kick, but I am not expecting much.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

This is my assessment after playing a few scenarios.
I suck at this game.

Leningrad, Minsk, South-West, result is always the same: Soviet Minor Victory.

Conclusion: I suck.

Well, more broadly I suck at most strategy games like this. I like them, but the honest truth is I am not very good at them.

I think part of the problem is that I often overlook something - which in past board gaming my opponent would seem to always spot and exploit - and that frankly my luck sucks (again, from board gaming, if there was a bad result on the table, no matter how low odds, I learned to assume that I had an even chance of rolling it - I freaked a guy out once by being able to call my dice before I rolled them, solely based on how poorly my luck was going that night).

I think this may have resulted in me becoming more than a little over-cautious. I know that historically by the end of '41 both sides had pretty much bled themselves white; the Germans to get as far as they did, the Soviets to prevent the Germans from getting any further. I find myself reluctant to do that, when my units drop below 60% I pull them back to refit. And I find myself hesitant to even put my panzers into battle as even when the odds are good they tend to get the hell kicked out of them, and it takes FOR-FREAKING-EVER for them to receive replacement panzers (German panzer production was never great).

I also don't want to commit to an attack with anything less than a 2 to 1 odds, which is fine a lot of the time but anybody who has forted up gets reported as really high CV ratings (and sometimes they don't until after I tried to attack them). This give me pause quite often... I have occasionally gone for it anyway and found that they didn't put up as good a fight as was suggested. And other times I get my teeth kicked in.

In my current game it is Turn 14 and I still haven't taken Odessa. It is surrounded, I am bombing it (not that it seems to accomplish much, the number of casualties it reports is minuscule), I have naval patrols trying to take out the resupply, but the CV is reporting absurd. I tried a little experiment recently, hit it with everything (a corps of Germans and a bunch of Rumanians) and basically got my ass kicked. I have now put a pioneer with every unit, and damn near every 210mm gun I could find in the hands of the German corps, and am going to give it another kick, but I am not expecting much.

And I keep overlooking things still. Forgot to tell the computer to not fly 500 recon missions so I lost 50 recon planes to operational losses (and yes, that is with manual air control, you still have to really restrict how many missions it flies and the planes it sends or you take crazy ops losses). Forget to turn the GS button on, so didn't have air support. Forget to turn it off, suffer a bunch of air losses. Didn't bring up the corps HQ so the units were attacking without artillery support. Did bring up the HQ, but I couldn't completely seal the front so a unit snuck through and chased it off. And does this corps even HAVE any artillery? That corps over there has an entire army's worth of artillery, but these guys have none - what idiot was in charge of assigning artillery assets anyway? Did they think that only that corps would be doing any fighting so these guys over here didn't need artillery?

Sigh.

Anyway. Just wanted to vent.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled forum.

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ORIGINAL: Bamilus
The AI is definitely trickier in this version, which I think is a good thing.

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One last suggestion: definitely don't feel bad in restarting, or reloading a save. A good way I learned is by saving, then trying a bunch of different things. I'd then reload the save and try something different. This allows you to test different attacks and movements. Granted, there's dice rolls in the background that can cause variability, but it gives you some valuable data IMO.

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ORIGINAL: Sammy5IsAlive
you've identified one of the fundamental aspects of playing the Axis in the early scenarios which is that you have to avoid being intimidated by the Soviet displayed CV. Unfortunately (or fortunately in terms of the game being interesting to play) the flip side of that coin is that if you automatically assume that every highish CV Soviet unit is going to collapse you will run into some very bloody noses. What comes with practice is a 'feel' for the kinds of situations where you can bully the Soviets and the situations where you have to be more circumspect and respect the displayed CV.

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So you have to manage the way you use them to try and minimise the kinds of situations where that can happen (eg leaving too many single regiments to be picked off, using them in 'speculative' attacks against high CV stacks, letting them get really low on CPPs).

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Or if you feel up to dealing with the bad weather the Typhoon scenario?

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ORIGINAL: Karri
The thing is, you need to play a few games where you go the completely opposite route. Take every risk you can and so on, which how you get the proper feel for the game.

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This btw. seems a bit opposite to how things worked out in history...The losses are always very lopsided to whoever ends up losing.

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ORIGINAL: btd64
I don't know if you are familiar with War in the Pacific, Admirals Addition. Well when I started that game I started using a notebook to keep track of things. It helped me a lot especially after my concussion. I suggest that you try it. It helps keep track of things that you have to do. With this game I will be using a notebook as well....GP

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ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse
It’s worth remembering there’s really two ways to win a battle. Out CV them, or smash them flat. The latter is particularly important to think about when hitting good defenses. Often getting 1:1 CV against a defender relying on terrain and forts can stomp the defender flat just by virtue of them having no elements left standing. Which makes sense...when you see a regiment get hit with 60k Soviets, you don’t really expect them to stand up no matter what their supposed CV is. And Russian divisions in all but the best terrain usually can’t hang with a two division German attack.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

...

I was also looking at the CPP rules last night and realized that I was making a significant mistake. I had my units right next to Odessa, but you accumulate CPP very slowly when next to the enemy (probably to represent skirmishes, and having to spend a lot of effort watching the enemy instead of getting ready for an attack). So I should have had them all back one hex, still isolate the city, but not right next to them, that you can prepare, and you should only spend a few CPP making the one hex move to the city (especially if the hex was previously captured). If the enemy comes out to play, well, good for you because those units are no longer dug in and also lose CPP. If absolutely necessary leave a few units next to the city to keep the hexes next to it captured, but they will fall back to be replaced by the troops that had prepared for the assault.

When I realized that was when I realized my assault on Odessa was doomed and I pretty much gave up the scenario at that point.

So, live and learn, and keep practicing.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

In my current game it is Turn 14 and I still haven't taken Odessa.

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ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse
Re: kitchen sinks and such. In so far as it can be modeled in player actions, the paired German principles of the main effort (schwerpunkt) and “surfaces and gaps” (Flaechen un Leuken) actually play out pretty well for the Germans. So long as you aren’t extravagant on making too many gaps, you should generally be able to create the holes you need at a few key places for low losses, creating the gap you need to unlock the tactical picture on the whole for substantially cheaper than it might look. It’s not a brutal battle of attrition, it’s a hammering blow at the key point that lets you regain mobility.

The Soviets are more brutalist, but the practical application of deep battle often pays off for them (which makes sense really). It might cost you 1500 men to 500 enemy losses to unseat a division, but your next attack on the now disorganized enemy with fresh follow up units will often see the Germans in a painful position while yours is cheap.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

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ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse
Re: kitchen sinks and such. In so far as it can be modeled in player actions, the paired German principles of the main effort (schwerpunkt) and “surfaces and gaps” (Flaechen un Leuken) actually play out pretty well for the Germans. So long as you aren’t extravagant on making too many gaps, you should generally be able to create the holes you need at a few key places for low losses, creating the gap you need to unlock the tactical picture on the whole for substantially cheaper than it might look. It’s not a brutal battle of attrition, it’s a hammering blow at the key point that lets you regain mobility.

The Soviets are more brutalist, but the practical application of deep battle often pays off for them (which makes sense really). It might cost you 1500 men to 500 enemy losses to unseat a division, but your next attack on the now disorganized enemy with fresh follow up units will often see the Germans in a painful position while yours is cheap.

Now this is an interesting point. I often attack where I can with my infantry all along the front - the brutalistic effort you mention - because the weak spots where you'd like to send the panzers through may be a long way away from where they actually are, or you already have them committed to something, so the infantry still has to carry the offensive many times. BUT, with that said, I could still be concentrating infantry corps to create those gaps that unhinge the Soviet line, if I can send some infantry through said gap - even without any real ability to cause encirclement - the Soviets will most likely pack up and fall back to reform their line and I can gain some territory on the cheap. And like you said before, 3 divisions on 1 dug in division with even CV may still dislodge them at acceptable cost.

Hm, come to think of it, I actually did this a few times without even realizing I was doing it. Will have to give that more thought. Hammering vulnerable units is good in that it causes a lot of casualties to the Soviets, but routing the odd random unit often doesn't actually get me anywhere unless I can dislodge several.

One thing I've been noticing with CPP - now that I found where it is displayed - is that it is REALLY hard to keep it up with your infantry. Although, as Loki suggested, perhaps the units that attacked don't advance, instead someone else moves in to exploit the gap?

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer
Of course you don't have enough units to do all this where you want, although I've been trying breaking down divisions to regiments in the quiet parts of the front (the east flank in Road to Leningrad for example) to just garrison the line and free up some full divisions for attacking.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

...
Edit: Just saw a note that drop tanks may significantly increase Ops Losses on fighters. I had been putting them on to increase range, but if that is causing them to fall out of the sky, then it certainly isn't worth it!

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

Figured I'd drop another update in here, in case there may actually be one person in the universe (other than me) that gives a damn,