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Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Pegasus Plucked (7/25/2018 7:10:31 PM)
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Turns 22 to 37 Operation Pegasus Plucked: A Retrosective on our 1941/42 Winter - Chain of Command and Leadership
With points spend no longer going on HQ buildups we started to look at how we could spend to shore up our defences for the winter. We had budgetted for a large number of forts - but in the end we only built 14 for our defences in the winter. So we looked next to our chain of command and leadership
Chain of Command
All systematic command penalties were removed from our chain of command.
-A large number of German units as well as some German HQs were placed into Finnish armies. This meant the command capacity of Finnish leaders, who are good, was fully utilised and more space was left for more units in German HQs further south. The forces within Finland's High Command extended to well to the south of its no move line. To their cost the Soviet team found our Finnish forces could still directly attack the hexes immediately to the south of the line from its north side. But in addiition Finnish units on reserve and Finnish SUs did commit to battles many hexes to its south. Thus the area of influence by Finland's blizzard penalty immune troops was usefully extended - see https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4826110 for a further discussion of this
-A whole German army (9th) was reassigned from AGC to AGN leaving each with four armies. Four armies can have their command capacities fully used without giving the army group they are in a command penalty, five cannot.
-Corps HQs were transfered out of 9th and 4th armies to other places where needed. Armies with three corps can give all of their units at least both corps and army levels of command whose command capacities are fully used but not exceeded, four makes it easier. Five or more though usually means a corps command inside an army is being underutilised.
-103RHG was assigned cavalry units, independent infantry brigades and regiments (some of which became divisions but remained in 103 RHG) as well as security units including the Slovak security unit that continued to have a ToE of a combat unit. This meant in effect we got an extra combat corps/army HQ for the frontlines.
-Panzer armies that had many of their motorised units reassigned to OKH and in winter garrisons took on command of frontline infantry. Panzer corps commanders also have some of the best infantry combat ratings.
-In addition some corps HQs were kept independent of army and army group command meaning the units that could not fit into the army groups and armies when their command capacity was reached still had an HQ to go to which itself did not have a command penalty.
-Finally southern allied HQs also took on some German units that could not be found a home elsewhere. Even bad southern leaders have better ratings checks than the best German whose command is overloaded.
In terms of bangs per buck, spending points to get rid of command penalties did far more to improve the combat value of our frontline troops than anything else we could have spent points on. Unless ground commanders chose otherwise, and usually then only on a temporary basis, no HQ would have a command penalty from having too many units assigned. But with this job done we turned to systematically changing our leadership.
Leaders: The Plan
Leaders were chosen in the priority of
i) Panzer corps (best average of morale, initiative, admin and mechanised ratings unless their infantry rating was higher than their mechanised rating)
ii) Infantry corps (best average of morale, initiative, admin and infantry ratings)
iii) OKH (best morale with other ratings as a tie breaker)
iv) Army groups (best morale with other ratings as a tie breaker)
v) Panzer armies/groups (best morale with other ratings as a tie breaker)
vi) Infantry armies (best morale with other ratings as a tie breaker)
No points were spent on changing leaders of air commands or of allies
As a result of this order of priority some of our best leaders who were then in charge of armies found themselves demoted to commanding corps!
We tried to do this systematically using the leaders spreadsheet found in the library of WitE resources. Minimum thresholds were set for each level of command (e.g. the average of their four combat ratings) to match those we had in the pool or expected to be in the near future given the scenario data. Some who fell just below this for one level we found automatically through our spreadsheets could nevertheless automatically qualify for the next level.
We also replaced leaders in a sequence which minimised cost. As the cost of replacing a leader decreases the higher the political rating of their superior, we only replaced leaders before their superior was replaced with a leader with a lower political, or after if replaced with a leader with higher political. And similarly carrying on up the chain we had to consider in which sequence to change their superior commanders by any changes in the political ratings of their superiors and so on. In the case of some armies it was even cheaper to first appoint a leader we did not want but who had high political and replace them after we had replaced their corps leaders.
Finally when we were confident we had the quota of leaders meeting our thresholds from the pool, we started replacing leaders with other leaders who already had other positions. The AI then selects a leader automatically to replace them - in effect we get two replacements for the price of one. Many leaders which would have been too expensive to appoint without a promotion were appointed for free. Some however did get ratings reductions. However the few that did were more than compensated for by the better leaders we got overall. Having already selected the leaders we banked on, any new promotions without reductions was a plus, any that had reductions were not a loss.
Leaders: The Results
[image]local://upfiles/53894/513F15D6A121482AB4F82ADC064C35E4.jpg[/image]
i) Panzer corps are now lead by our first choice team from those leaders available all of whom have an average combat rating of 7 or above. This includes early auto promotions for leaders like Balck. Thus we were able to follow the advice of one of our earliest posters in this thread at zero points cost.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Northern Star
And don't forget to put the best [...] generals there, Model for the 1st Infantry and Balck!
ii) All but three infantry corps commanders have an average combat rating of 6.25 or above, almost half have 6.75 or above. Again this includes a number who ordinarily would only achieve General Leutnant rank much later but for whom we got an auto promotion and appointment for free. According to scenario data indeed Friedrich Mueller would never have achieved the rank in this game at all! Indeed we had so many surprise early promotions of future good corps leaders that we had to raise the threshold for who could be a corps leader. Many of our early appointments, especially in the North, went from being our first team line up to ones we wanted to replace. If we had known this at the start many points could have been saved from redundant appointments.
iii) and iv)
High Command - vKluge remained at OKH
AGN - with the withdrawal of Luftlotte 2, Kesselring was unemployed (in WitE at least) so his high high morale rating was used in AGN
AGC - Reichenau with his high morale ratings went to AGC, which since it was down to 4 armies also meant all his ratings became effective particularly as AGC was more geographically concentrated than other army groups
AGB - unchanged with Jodl - who although not appreciated as a leader does have high morale and high political to make changing army commanders cheaper
AGA - the leader was not changed and left as vRunstedt - although he had much lower morale than the other army group leaders, with corps leadership prioritised ahead of army groups there was no one better to replace him (typically he gets sacked in the blizzard anyway, but amazingly in this game he got just enough victories to cling on to the end)
Finnish High Command - with almost half the troops under their command being German army, including some German HQs, Mannerheim has become de facto leader of a fifth army group of the German army
v) and vi) Being our lowest priority, and with many of their best moved to corps or higher commands, army level leadership is now much weaker. And we have yet to appoint all of our first choices there anyway so we will have to work on this still after blizzard. In particular some armies, such as 3rd Panzer army which has only two corps at the moment, were used effectively as corps HQs themselves having units directly assigned to them. If we had know this in advance it would have been more sensible to leave them with better leaders.
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