Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Great_Ajax

The siege of Odessa was a bloodbath and it took some help from German troops to crack it and it held out until mid October despite repeated attempts to assault it. Odessa was also a major Soviet Black Sea Fleet base. The Rumanian Navy was not up to task to taking on the Soviet Navy. The Soviets still managed to evacuate over 350k civilians and soldiers out of Odessa by sea to Sevastopol before it fell. In short, Odessa is a tough nut to crack and the Hungarians aren't going to cut it.

Your forces aren't operating in a vacuum in this scenario. Panzergruppe Guderian on your left flank is chasing remnants of Soviets units into your battlespace. Thats why they are showing up in your rear. You should be getting Panzergruppe Guderian as reinforcements in that same area. Use them to help complete the encirclement around Kiev.

Rails and logistics are going to be tough. No way around it.

Trey

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sauron_II

Not quite sure on your avenue of advance, not entirely certain what you are up against.

The following is what has worked for me...

1. The game is more about mastering logistics than anything else. With that in mind, prioritize the rail line you intend to convert and make sure that is clear. For maximum conversion rate, you need to plan this 1 turn in advance.

2. Next priority is encirclement and destruction of Soviet units. This is very important.

3. Try to keep your Panzer / Mot. Infantry together in close proximity. Very hard to do mass encirclements if your mobile forces are all scattered across the Ukraine.

4. Reassign the mobile Hungarian and Slovakian units to your German Motorized Infantry Korps. These units are quite good and very useful, if used in conjunction with German mobile formations.

5. Odessa can be taken, but it will require the bulk of the 11th Army for at least 2 turns. But once cleared, it frees up the 11th Army and bulk of Romanians for further advances.

6. I also xfer all of my big Mortar and Super Heavy Arty to 11th Army. This may not be critical, but I like to think it helps.

7. Once you have secured some of the Black Sea ports, you can then start using them for sources of supply. But you will need Constanta to be fully stocked. I usually set Constanta to Supply Level 3 and leave it at that. Then, i set the ports I want supplies shipped to Supply Level 4.

8. Around turn 12 or 16 (cannot remember...), the Romanian Rail Repair disbands. But you will get 4 Labor construction battalions in its place. I would suggest assigning them to a free Romanian Corps and strategically placing it such that the rail lines you intend to repair fall within 5 hexes. If you find that you are not using all 4 Labor construction battalions every turn, that means they don't have enough rail hexes to reach from the HQ unit. You may need to split them up to another HQ so they do not go to waste.

Hope this helps....