Slitherine

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This game over?

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There are a pretty significant stretches of the front where the German defenses look fairly weak (just regiments in various places) where you have made no attempts to attack the entire game. Just wondering what is your thinking behind that? Germany is able to field those stacks of 3 divisions on one hex in areas like Orel etc only because you are letting him get by with so few troops in other parts of the front. Of course, if you wanted Of course, you would have a bit fewer troops there as well if you tried to do more attacks elsewhere, but I don't think it would take many more troops to put a bit more pressure elsewhere (e.g. Rzhev etc). When you are attacking, you have the luxury of being able to concentrate your attacking troops on whichever hex you want. Whereas the defender has to guess which hex you are going to attack and can't concentrate their forces everywhere you might attack. When you are attacking, you only have to be strong on whichever hex you want to attack, whereas when you are defending you have to be strong on ALL hexes that you think the enemy might attack, so I think it takes fewer additional troops to create a threat of some attacks that Germany will have to respond to than it takes Germany to really stop those attacks. Is it that you think the losses from those additional attacks would just not be worth it? Are you waiting for summer maybe (perhaps losses would be more favorable then)?

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ORIGINAL: tyronec

The only area where I see this applies is around the Rzhev bulge. If I attack here it could force him back and then he will have a shorter line and won't need to have single regiments any more. He will have to pull back here eventually without my attacking from the north, so I don't see much benefit in starting an offensive. Maybe if the casualty ration was favorable it would be worth it.

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ORIGINAL: tyronec

The only area where I see this applies is around the Rzhev bulge. If I attack here it could force him back and then he will have a shorter line and won't need to have single regiments any more. He will have to pull back here eventually without my attacking from the north, so I don't see much benefit in starting an offensive. Maybe if the casualty ration was favorable it would be worth it.


It is true about the line getting shorter if you attack in some places, but I don't think that applies everywhere, even in the Rzhev salient. In the southern part of it for example, if you attack there towards Yelyna, it would make the line longer. If you had even a small number of AFVs (maybe 2-3 mech/tank divisions) lurking around, you could also pick off units to encircle and destroy, and he would not break them out if all he had around was a minimal number of regiments. It wouldn't take much to break through those regiments with 5 or 6 defensive CVs and form some small pockets, I don't think.

If nothing else, I bet you could get a favorable casualty ratio attacking that 2=11 Luftwaffe unit that is 4-5 hexes southeast of Vyazma for example, and if you attacked around there it would make the line longer. In general you seem to get pretty good casualty ratios attacking Wehrmacht regiments also from what I have seen.

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Do you know why Axis retreated so much in the center suddenly, after not having retreated much earlier? Supply? Or were you doing something that put stronger pressure than before?

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Good progress around Odessa where the Axis front line had a couple of gaps.