Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: bigbaba

1. yes. the little territory&POW's you captured.

2. one important advice for the blizzard:

just run.

seriously:

don't let him get too many attacks and guards divisions. walk away and keep your unit's moral while preventing him to get easy "moral building" victories. retreat until end of january 2-3 hexes per turn. you must keep your men&moral together when you want to have a chance in 42.

3. try to grind a little bit when you can not form more pockets. just attack at the whole front (no hasty attacks) and try to cause his units to rout and lose men&moral.

good luck meatball.

edit:

against gids (i play OKH) i had a average summer 41. then i tried to attack in 42 and got few pockets but the costs were too high. in summer 42 i decided to go into defensive modus and now we are at the end of 43 and loses are 3.000.000 to 11.000.000 and i am still east ofleningrad kiev and smolensk.

what i tried to say:

4. you must not burn out your troops in 42. if you get the feeling that attacking is too expensive just dig. dig multiple lines and use all natural defensive CV boost (woods, rivers...). then let him come with most of your tanks in reserve modus and let him bleed. you will have more then enough AP in 42 to get a good army organization (better CV) and enough fort units.

too many german players try everything to stay in the offense and lose their army in 42-43 in fight against high soviet defensive CV.

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And right now the CV display is starting to make me hate this game, sorry but when I see a COMBAT VALUE ratio of 11 : 1, I expect a walk in the park, not 4 successive attacks to move the defender.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Walloc

Hi Terje,

I know its not really inline with ur personallity if i read u right. Non the less. This will be a replay of the last game. If this is a game where u should do better learning from past mistakes. Well, i think as u strongly hint at, thats not going to happen. So why continue. U might consider, here is the part where i expect "objections", to restart. U will hafta practice ur first turns tho. Problem is u really lose 1-2 turn on turn 1 and so on. U simply very early on gets way behind the curve.
If so before starting again i would look at Saper/Speedy new AAR. While Sapers start is near prefect u will need to get some where near that at leased make both a bullit profe Lvov pocket considering the forces involved and doing AGN with AGN only forces that gets both Rige and crosss the Daugana in first turn. U really should be near Pskov on turn 2, not turn 11 ;-). That will require some pratice tho. Prolly playing ur "self" head to head.

Some hints from looking at this AARs first turn. It seems to me u use in the inf way to little on turn one.(try and look where sapers inf are at end turn 1 and where urs are). In order to create big pockets u try to achieve that by not attacking much keeping enemy units where they are. The problem is to achieve the deep penetrations and making pockets hard/impossible not to open u really need the inf to create some holes for pz/mot and have them help in screening of pockets/RR lines. Leaving Pz with full mp to exploit/pocket making/securing.
The price is that a few units migth escape through routs yes, but if ur overall goal on turn 1 is met by maybe 4-6 units routing away instead of the first turn goals being met at turn 2-3. Well its the price u hafta pay. Btw and u can ask Ketza for advice. When u routs where they go have a mechanic to it. That mean to some extend to can shape "pockets" if u have a feeling for where u units will and wont route too. 2ndly u didnt advance any of u RR units on turn 1. This is bad. Use the inf to make the holes where u can get RR repairing starts off the bat plus secure those lines u want to use, so u can repair full or near alrdy on turn 2. Use inf to make this happen.

Kind regards, always cheery

Rasmus

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ORIGINAL: Seminole

quote:

And right now the CV display is starting to make me hate this game, sorry but when I see a COMBAT VALUE ratio of 11 : 1, I expect a walk in the park, not 4 successive attacks to move the defender.

Are their possible issues with your command and control (keeping HQs close to their fighting units, and in turn within range of their parent HQs) that is killing your combat rolls?

What do the combat screens look like?

quote:

ORIGINAL: terje439

@All you experienced Axis players

So, heeding Rasmus' advice, I've played through some T1s, focusing only on AGN. Any comments to the screenie below?
Any feedback is appreciated.

Terje

quote:

ORIGINAL: Schmart

Terje,

Which brings me to ask how often you are using hasty vs deliberate attack? I don't usually use hasties unless the enemy has already been worn down and pushed back at least once, no fortifications, no terrain modifiers, etc. or an obviously weak unit like SEC or vulnerable Brigade.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Walloc
Im prolly a contrarian in that area. Its a question of knowing. As u can see in pic below. 30 battles battles only 7 are deliberate and 23 are hasty. Nada helds. 2 of the hasty is 2 or 3 inf divs attacking a russian inf div in fort 2. As long as u GS and have HQs correctly placed for maximum CV modification and there are no other modifiers like across river or fort + terrain, u can get away with much.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Schmart

quote:

ORIGINAL: Walloc
Im prolly a contrarian in that area. Its a question of knowing. As u can see in pic below. 30 battles battles only 7 are deliberate and 23 are hasty. Nada helds. 2 of the hasty is 2 or 3 inf divs attacking a russian inf div in fort 2. As long as u GS and have HQs correctly placed for maximum CV modification and there are no other modifiers like across river or fort + terrain, u can get away with much.

I was speaking more generally. Turn 1 is totally different, and even the first 5-10 turns can be more suitable to infantry hasties. But it's still situation dependent, as when the Russians start being able to re-form the front line hasties are much more risky.

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ORIGINAL: Walloc
1a. Terje note how my HQs are moved up so they can assist in rolls when attacking for example Riga. Do u move ur HQs during the turns so they always are in range to supprt rolls?
1b. The pic u gave going from unmodified 41 CV to modified 16 CV seems to suggest u dont. If it had been a pbem i would have moved PzG HQ too. So it be in supporting range on rolls.

2. Note how the RR are clear and how inf makes it impossible to move and ZoC convert any of the hexes ill use next turn.

3. When moving the mot/pz units up to Rige and across Daugava im very carefull about moving the units Terje. If u let the "auto" move long dsitances they will many times move adjcent to routred units. Routing them once again. I dont want that to happen as the 2nd rout would rout them out side the intended pockets.

4. Havent broken down any of the divs = Good to go next turn no MPs lost due to that.

5. Compare the inf positions to ur north turn 1 pic. Mine far more advance and i secured RR and no more units than on urs escape. This is what i meant about use of inf on turn 1. I dont mind attacking the Russian first line. I know where they will rout. Just shape pockets after that,. Then they as trapped as in ur version.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Schmart

Terje,

1. I noted that in this game you didn't get Brest-Litovsk on T1. I find that this is critical in getting a good T1 sweep going for 2nd PzGrp. I've found that it's not that hard to capture on T1 with the right deliberate attack. On a bad roll, it may take 2 or even 3 attacks, but it is one of those MUST wins for T1.

2. Which brings me to ask how often you are using hasty vs deliberate attack? I don't usually use hasties unless the enemy has already been worn down and pushed back at least once, no fortifications, no terrain modifiers, etc. or an obviously weak unit like SEC or vulnerable Brigade.

3. You may already be doing this, but just in case you're not:

I think it's generally best to blast a hole with deliberate infantry attacks to let the panzer run through, rather than using the panzers to blast the hole themselves at the same time as using the infantry to blast and exploit their own holes. Use infantry in more of a stop and go fashion (deliberate attacks one turn, then catch up with panzers the next turn), rather than trying to squeeze more MPs out of them using hasty attacks. Infantry can fight or march, but very rarely can/should they do both in the same turn. Better to have an almost guarranteed win (deliberate attack) and cause more enemy losses through retreat and routing, than trying to keep up with the panzers by risking hasty attacks. Use some infantry to blast away then different infantry to run into the gap, but the same units generally shouldn't be doing both tasks.

quote:

ORIGINAL: randallw

One division on a hasty attack has a decent chance to fail, even if the target's CV or manpower seem comparatively lower.

quote:

ORIGINAL: terje439

My impression that it is a good thing not moving them to and from all the time, and rather move them no more than is required (which for me is only figured out AFTER all my moves are made as I never am able to figure out which attacks will hold and which will not).

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1b. That one had it's HQ sitting 2 hexes to the rear...

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2. Yup, also why I made so many attacks on my version, but guess there is no need to attack outside the rail.

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3. I use both ways to move really, but I tend to use the shorter moves only when I want to make sure they do not go into some unneccessary ZoC.

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5. To be very picky , some (3 of your inf) are further north than mine, while the bulk of y inf is further north than yours . But I know what you mean, the reason ofc is that I made alot more attacks with my inf to get rid of units.

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Ok, so basically I "over"-attacked in my screenie it seems

quote:

ORIGINAL: Walloc

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1b. That one had it's HQ sitting 2 hexes to the rear...

Ok bad luck on rolls then. My next question would be ofc be where is the HQs up in the chain located?
As per above having the Army HQ/Army group HQ closest possible makes the difference if rolls are failed at corps HQ.