loki100 -> RE: T79 17 23 December 1942 (2/4/2015 10:45:26 AM)
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ORIGINAL: jwolf The Lend Lease aid in 43 really does help. The bad news is that your opponent is following a strategy more like Manstein than Hitler. So cracking that defense without a Stalingrad or even Kursk type German defeat will be that much tougher. I'm interested to see how much you can grind him down during the next year or so. This sits at the heart of my problem with the game at the moment. Should stress it is continuing to be a lot of fun and SigUp is genuinely a great opponent to play. Equally I'm not fussed about 'winning', pragmatically if SigUp holds Berlin in June 1945 he has won, whatever the notional situation. Now if I cannot find any relief to the supply problem, I'm going to have to carry on attacking on a very narrow range, I suspect as 1943 goes on, I'll have more dominance over the German infantry but will be even more vulnerable to those German armoured units that turn up in Spring 1943. So I fear all we'll see is me take a hex (after lots of diversionary attacks) and then lose it again, or if I dare advance face being swept back across the front. At the moment, in my turns I am making 6-8 attacks and win 2-3 (sometimes I win a diversionary attack if no reserve reaction occurs, sometimes I lose an important attack if the reserves are still active). SigUp then wins 4-6 counterattacks. So I'm losing a net of 9 battles per turn (the impact in terms of morale is a net transfer of 20/25 due to multiple units being involved). All this is really doing is lowering my morale (and here the supply problem hurts double as they are not even recovering to their NM value) and raising the morale of German units. Now I can't see any alternative. Due to the 95%, I think a typical stack of rifle division is at least 2cv lower than the notional 45 morale would imply and I think I'm losing another cv due to setting the TOEs so low. So a typical stack is about 4-5 compared to 7-8. So my choices are to sit and do nothing, at a period when the rivers are no barrier or try what I can. In the situation, if I just did the attacks that matter, they would be smothered by reserve reaction, at least this way I have the illusion of progress. There is an older AAR by terje43 Disaster in the Making that is both a good read and very informative of where this might end up going to. His 1941 was roughly similar to mine, his 1942 was worse, not least in that the Germans were able to still attack in the winter 42/43 (I think they played under versions of 1.05 and 1.06). Even so by 1944 he was able to make a lot of progress as the German army fell apart (I guess this was the infamous 'swapping bug'?) and the game ended more or less with the Red Army on the 1939 Soviet borders. But, the swapping bug is long gone, so while the German army will weaken, it won't collapse to 1-1 ant status. This is good in that it makes even the late game more fun for both, but it means I won't be sweeping from the Volga to the Vistula in a single final campaign season. The depressing interpretation is this is heading for a monumental struggle for Rzhev in the Summer of 1945. In part as WiTE has too many rich get richer mechanisms and the combination of the 95% morale setting and the fall out of the 1.08 changes has really damaged my chances. The better interpretation is that SigUp is very competent, as you saying is playing as Manstein not Hitler, so what we are now seeing is that stalemate phase when the Red Army is no longer vulnerable on a strategic scale but at the operational level lacks the training, equipment and doctrine to offset the quality deficit. I have 3 angles of attack now, and two have drawn in the bulk of his very best infantry divisions and the equivalent of 2/3 of this Panzer Armies. These are now stalled, it maybe that the attacks on the southern end of the Khopper gain as if he weakens the strangleholds around Kalinin and Tambov, I can make progress. Equally, I have built up the capacity to create a fourth pressure point, just maybe that is enough, not to make serious progress but at least redraw the focus of the operational maps? At the moment SW/Bryansk Fronts are getting no fresh supply, even that far from the notional core of my supply network is enough to mean no delivery. They have a fair amount they brought with them, so its not critical yet. I now have only 1 non-fighter/tac bomber squadron deployed (a single transport unit), and as long as the fronts remain stable I can cope with relying on Il-2s. 1943 brings some hope, 20% more supply takes my domestic production up to about 96,000 domestic production (+16,000) and +2000 more lend lease. If I am more or less stable at the moment, that should set in train some sort of recovery. 1.08.2 will bring a few new tools as well as some additional help. I don't think this will undo the consequences of the period June-December 1942 but it should ease going forward. So being optimistic, I reckon I'll clear the borders of the Rodina by 1945, I think there has been too much damage to my long term chances for much more than that. Sorry long answer, but seemed a good chance to indicate what I think is likely to happen. quote:
ORIGINAL: jwolf The "sandbox" approach as you put it is still fun, it's just a completely different type of game (though I never played HOI, I did play a lot of EU and enjoyed it very much). I quite like it, but prefer it in more distant time periods. So if CK/EU allows all sorts of odd things to happen that is great and fun. Indeed it was one reason why the older CK1 was such a superb vehicle for comedy AARs, you had so many points of not quite totally unrealistic events, that it really lent itself to that style of AAR. I mean, meet Harry, the most incompetent Satan to be found in any known AAR? Its just that in their more modern games, it becomes less about allowing flexibility and more about a fundamental lack of realism. The fundamental reason that Pride of Nations is so much better than Victoria is the simple game design decision that a major European power cannot lose core territory to another major European power. This is fundamental to any simulation of Hobsbawn's 'Long Nineteenth Century' and creates an environment in which even the very late game scripted events make sense. I like do what you what like games, I'm having a blast at the moment with Endless Legend.
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