1941 Barbarossa - Will (Allies) vs Ash (Axis) - retroactive AAR

[Will95]

Ah, hello viewers Time for another update.

Turn 44

Well, the pocket was crushed as expected. We now have some 80 units to the Whermacht's 110, a polarity not seen since this time '41. Things appear to be going from bad to worse, although there are a couple of glimmers of sunshine:

In the north, the heavily entrenched German infantry is proving tough to crack. Even the tanks are failing to do much, although we did force one unit to break and retreat.

In the center, we have now been pushed way back, and lost Kursk. Next turn we will lose Kharkov, and wide swathes of steppe will be opened to the German Army. Fortunately there isn't much to find there- just more towns, until you get to Stalingrad. Still, a bad situation, and I can't do anything until September reinforcements arrive (some 10 tank divisions plus armies and HQs).

In the south we are strongest, and launched multiple counter-offensives across the front. The line isn't really moving one way or the other but fairly soon I may have to fall back to Dnepropetrovsk: the elite panzers from Kiev are now free to demolish my front line at will. Troops are digging in around the city as we prepare for yet another encirclement.

My strategy from hereon until the end of the year is thus;

- I anticipate Ash will turn south instead of continuing to press past Kharkov and try to encircle me at Dnepropetrovsk, possibly trying first to take Stalino. As Stalino remains the main rail link out of Dnepropetrovsk, I must defend it at all costs. If that's taken, Ash will have a strong supply point to flank me from and it could be game over.

- Therefore I will try to resist him at Stalino, and assuming that's successful, he will be forced to try and just attack Dnepropetrovsk from the rear without Stalino. I will delay this as long as possible while stockpiling my armour reserves which should arrive throughout August and September, then launch a massive counter attack at the thinnest point to relieve the city and do my best to encircle some of his troops.

Bit of a long shot possibly, but I feel just retreating from Dnepropetrovsk would be a bad move, as it would de-entrench all my troops who have been lying in wait there for some time. We shall see how it turns out.

[AshesFall]

Hello Everyone, I was Wills opponent in this game. Boy, it sure swung a lot, didn’t it?

These were the final positions of the game, after which will conceded after a hard and grueling fight through 42 (the screenshot is taken at the beginning of my next turn to show the final positions of my forces before the surrender).

My initial strategy was formed from experiences as the Soviets during our first game. Will made good progress in the south as the Germans, and took Leningrad in 42. After that he fought my forces across the swamps east of Leningrad and was ultimately stopped short of northern Moscow and Stalino in 42, with bitter stalemate fighting during 43, and a pushback and complete collapse in early 44. A big contributing factor to this was a quick catchup and then an early soviet tech advantage by 43, due to early investments in intelligence while the Germans did not invest in that at all. At lvl 3 int, the soviets advanced tech twice as fast.

The lesson I wanted to bring into this game was to preserve elite steps at any cost, building them to 12, and keeping them there even if it cost me time. Also, to invest in intelligence from turn 1, hoping to god that the Soviets didn’t get lucky and get a breakthrough in that area before me. Any advantage in intelligence in this game is devastating. Regarding the panzers, then deploying these in open terrain and clear weather en masse during 42 rather than in the swamps, the theory being that concentrating the armor on one “front” would allow rapid breakthroughs and ground. Initially, I also wanted to concentrate heavily on Leningrad in 41, take it and create a buffer zone, and then dig in for winter behind the swamp and the river in the north, and behind the Gomel, Mogilev and Smolensk line in the centre, with Deneprotovsk and Kiev just taken and digging in there. This would, in theory, leave the northern flank locked, give me some protection against the winter of 41 attacks, and allow me to operate my armor and aircraft to make a drive at Moscow during 42. My main objective then to drive as far as possible there, effectively “securing” the entire northern front from Leningrad down to Moscow and leaving me able to concentrate all my forces southwards at Stalino, Rostov and perhaps Stalingrad in 43. Any gains in the south was secondary during 42 according to the original plan, I would be happy to simply hold Dneprotovsk and Kiev while securing the north.

A picture showing the rough ideas of my goals in this game.

Of course, things went resoundingly wrong with this plan at a couple of points. I did succeed in building and maintaining elite steps on armor and aircraft, and I did take Leningrad, just, during 1941 due to massed concentrations of armor. Due to opportunity, I also advanced farther along the central axis than planned, ending around the town of Glukhov behind the river there, within spitting distance of Kiev. Unfortunately, insufficient armor support (a single armor group in the south, reinforced to two in late 41) and time consuming encirclements led to a failure to reach Dneptotovsk and Kiev during 41, leaving the Soviets with most of their important resources intact. This quickly turned into a –lot- of Soviet units, and a lot of damaged infantry with quite a few destroyed during the winter of 41 and early spring of 42. Will played this very well, strengthening his forces where I was weak, and pushing both the central Glukhov line and the southern lines relentlessly while general winter made German life a misery. I’d love to get some input on your success during the winter Will, it was probably better than mine in the game previous. Throughout this I managed to keep panzer and airforce veterancy intact by keeping them far away from the lines and near hq’s on towns. Another problem soon appeared though, as I began to realize just how insanely costly keeping a full offensive going is. I barely managed to build any new units at all during 41 and the early parts of 42, replacing some (but not all, notably not the minors) losses, and building a weak smattering of garrisons and divisions with the odd corps. With continued heavy pressure on my central and southern lines, I had to redeploy more armor to the south (where the first and only German armor unit of the game was destroyed shortly thereafter), and to the Centre. I also had to abandon my original plans, here are two screenshots explaining why. Note the amount of forces I could effectively spare after leaving an adequate defense near Leningrad (though I failed to reach my buffer zone goal here and drive the soviets to the river before winter, I was still in a lot of swamps) and the Centre-South lines.

The second picture shows how many units I would need to keep partisans contained.

At this point I was sure I was doomed. Deep soviet lines dominated Centre and south, and my plan was thwarted due to lacking unit numbers and income. The soviets were already outproducing me by around 100-150mpp’s per turn. I sat down and thought about my position a lot, counted units along the fronts, and came up with a new plan. The theory was that there would be no forces of note in the Moscow corridor, and that this area would not present a threat. With a single division per city on this front, I concentrated everything towards the centre south. I would try to take as many resources as possible along my axis of advance, up to and including Orel, Kursk, and Rostov in the furthest south of my 42 objective. The main goal was to outflank the soviet forces around Kiev, isolate them, and destroy them out of supply. Ultimately, if everything worked perfectly, I would then be able to isolate all the soviet forces around Dneprotovsk and southwards and put them as well in awful supply, allowing me to destroy them and effectively cripple the soviet army for 43, hinder rebuilds since they were destroyed in low supply and rob the soviets of 100mpp in income in the bargain.

Now, hindsight is 20/20, and none of this is meant as criticism, just reflection on possible alternatives. At this point in the game I feel it was Wills’ to lose more than mine to win. As I advanced with infantry towards shostka and Kanotop (southeast of Kiev) I realized that Wills lines were very thin here, and most of his units were concentrated around Kiev. In a turn of luck, opportunism, and surprise, I managed an almost complete encirclement. While the Leningrad front slowly bled but didn’t break and the south fought hard with Kiev falling in a timely fashion, ultimately 20 units went to their graves encircled and about 10 Air units were destroyed. I kept expecting to run into a rear buildup, but kept advancing and destroying single units or in pairs, and this led to victory by mid august. Getting caught in that pocket and then getting caught in the second pocket probably sealed it. I expected the soviets to escape from the Dnepr area at the least, and to built up around Rostov and beyond.

General Musings

A couple of thoughts regarding different things in the game. These are general musings and realizations that are probably basic to most of you. Perhaps they can be of some use to new players though, feel free to comment!

Unit awareness: It seems to be very important to keep tabs on how many units are where, roughly. That way you can anticipate weaknesses, and above all try to keep an eye on armor formations. These can really hurt. More on that later. An excellent idea then is to scout with divisions or cav, moving within 2 tiles of suspected enemy areas of concentration, and then moving up forearmed with knowledge. Using aircraft to scout is also excellent, as they reveal units on their flight path and around their target tile.

Defense: It’s very tempting to get stuck in and fight to the last man as the Soviets in 42, but it is also very dangerous. With this game in mind I think a mobile strategy is better, despite leaving entrenched positions. Give up ground for time. There are a few keys to this. Timing is critical, reacting before the situation becomes untenable and your withdrawing units just get run down and slaughtered, or before the pocket closes and there is no escape. A thing to remember; The enemy will always reach you a turn or two before you initially think. The second key is to leave a few well entrenched units in key locations as you withdraw the rest of your forces. This forces your opponent to eliminate those units, giving you valuable time to reach a new position. The third key is the new positions, trying to build new lines behind the first two turns or so before you actually need them, resulting in well entrenched positions that your moving units can move in behind. One or two units is never enough to defend a city of position, two lines deep and several tiles wide is the bare minimum to be at all effective. Cities are especially important to Garrison well ahead of the enemy advance, allowing them to reach the highest possible entrenchment. Avoid leaving large concentrations of units hanging at the end of thin lines that can easily be breached.

Air Force tactics: A well managed Airforce is key to both soviets and Germans, but in different ways. As the Germans, I think it is always in your interest to hunt and destroy as many soviet air units as at all possible. Keeping absolute control of the air war is one step on the road to victory. Combination strikes of armor and air is extremely powerful, and can destroy retreating units and hamper supply when utilized against HQ’s. How do you win an air war, tactically? Always keep your aircraft in maximum supply. Place a dedicated HQ on a town or city within reach of your operational front. Pay attention to the strike ranges and make sure your aircraft is covered by fighters when they fly missions. While in maximum supply and led by the dedicated HQ (doesn’t have to be more than a 6 unless your opponent is actively fighting the air war with a better leader and you notice your lack) find and strike your opponents airforce on the ground. When you fly a mission, you will see their interceptor. It’s rarely worth attacking full strength aircraft on the ground when they are in good readiness and morale. Wait until the opponent leaves himself vulnerable, perhaps having flown missions a few turns in a row with damages to the aircraft without pausing to reinforce, or perhaps just when you see that his fighters are low on readiness and morale while damaged. Focus strike such aircraft with your own. If you destroy even one or two fighters or bombers, you’re already way ahead in the air war in the area and can continue to attack with impunity. Also remember that entrenched units are almost immune to being struck this way, so lead any mass strike attack with de entrenchment from bomber wings.

On the flip side, to defend against aggressive air warfare, there are a few things to do. Reinforce the area with more fighters, preferably upgraded to near or at the opponents level (or higher!), and assign a hq to lead them as above. As an option and/or supplement to the attrition war with fighters, make sure your opponent can’t reach your bombers with his fighters. Redeploy them outside of his calculated range, run a mission, and then move them again if they’re tacs, or simply keep them beyond range with the longer strike distance if they’re medium or strategic bombers. It hurts more to focus strike fighters than bombers, due to better air defense.

A couple of more thoughts. Elite steps are king in air warfare. Baby them, keep them. Ground your aircraft to replenish a turn if you have to. Air warfare is also expensive. Bombers often take hits when making a run, even if they have elite steps. Fighters loose steps in interceptions and escorts. I’m pondering whether it’s useful at all to invest a lot into bombers as Soviets early. Even if you have them, it might be better to keep them somewhere far away from the action behind your lines until you have the economy to support the air war as well as building your huge army. Defensive ground units is probably better than air in 41 and 42. Fighters are a better idea, if you have lots of them and take care of them they might not cost too much, but evaluate from turn to turn! Use the AA tech rather than fighters to cost the Germans lots of precious MPP’s if needed.

Armor, and elite armor: One way to go as the Germans seems to be careful babying of elite armor. This is –not- as easy as it seems. One careless move will leave your armor damaged, and elite steps lost. Even if it only takes its’ two elite steps as losses, that is two turns it can’t be used. A 12 step elite brought to 5 steps or so will only have half a “star” left once reinforced. Always try to move up to flank a forward armor with other units, even shielding it if possible. Also always strike units that are de-entrenched and demoralized if possible, this is where airforce comes in. I think I was often very lucky in this game, plenty of times the “estimations” projected that I should loose steps on my armor, and about 75% of those times I still didn’t. Keep them led by the best leaders (Manstein, Guderian) and in good supply. Massed assaults are very strong. Still, there are ways to defend against them. Beware the soviet winter of 41, even if entrenched this will take steps off not only your armor but your HQ’s, preventing reinforcement in many cases. I find that if you can, operating your armor out of the winter “strike zone” will actually save MPP’s.

As the soviets, it can be very tempting to send newly acquired armor into the fray immediately when they arrive by event or lend-lease. With german bomber superiority, leader superiority and elite steps, these are just lost piecemeal. Instead, keep them behind the lines in good supply and led by a HQ so that they can build numbers, readiness and morale. Once you have many (five or six or more), strike hard with them all at a German spearhead, and keep a line of soviet armies behind them that they can retreat behind when the Germans strike back. This way, you should be able to whittle down their elite steps, and slowly take command through pure numbers when you can start actual production of your own. Another option is to strike at a weak point, forcing expensive operational redeployment of German armor away from the German players own goals. Remember to retreat your armor in time so it doesn’t get destroyed completely.

Another method is to keep well entrenched units in cities or non-clear terrain. Even if the enemy armor is elite striking at such a unit, even if it’s just a division, in good readiness with high entrenchment will usually damage the armor unit and not hurt your own unit much. Coordinated strikes with several air units and possibly several armor units will be needed to break such a position, which takes time and still causes losses that take time to rebuild. Spending 15 or so steps of army infantry to take a 12 step armor unit down to 6 or so is worth it, multiple attacks can accomplish this if enemy armor is exposed. 15 steps of soviet infantry cost 6mpp’s per step with lvl 1 inf tech (90 mpp’s), while armor steps cost 13-15 per step at lvl 1 or 2. Not only is the actual MPP amount lost roughly the same, the armor unit is also deprived of its’ elite status.

Demoralization is king: With both factions I find rocket launchers, artillery, and anything that lowers readiness, morale and entrenchment to be crucial. German infantry quickly becomes about equivalent of their soviet counterparts, and can only prosper when the enemy is demoralized and they are not. Armor can only truly affect breakthroughs without losses when the enemy is de-entrenched and low on readiness. When striking exposed armor units as soviets, precede the attack with artillery if possible.

Pockets: As the germans, creating pockets is a good way to take another step towards victory. Important to know here is that a soviet city with no rail connection to a secondary or primary supply source will fall to 5 supply, and one with no land connection at all (no soviet colored tiles in a consecutive chain from supplied territory into the pocket) will put the cities inside the pocket to supply 3. This still means soviet HQ's on the cities or around them will give off a base of 8 supply. A good way to deal with a pocket is to bomb the hq's with your airforce or prioritize destroying them with armor. Once the units inside are in low supply, you can either destroy them or leave a thin screen to contain them and then move in. I think that with small pockets destruction is better, and with large pockets simply moving on with most of your units while the enemy withers away in readiness and supply is the better option. A large amount of units encircled means the enemy will likely be weak ahead. The units inside loose readiness and morale very quickly, and can then be easily destroyed after a couple of turns. This is a great way to replenish veterancy on armored units and aircraft!

A pocket otherwise gives two benefits: Destroying enemy units in low supply grants you National Morale, and denies the enemy fast and cheap rebuilds of those units. This can be critical in 41 and 42 when you're trying to manage the ever growing Soviet army. The benefits of higher NM arent huge, but every little bit counts!

Lastly, a couple of thoughts on improvements for the AoC campaign.

Intelligence is too important, even more important than in previous games. With the rate of research down to 2% base, the 1% from intelligence advantage is huge. The game is balanced around inherently weaker German Corps (stats wise one point below soviet armies) keeping an edge due to higher tech (resulting in equal stats) with better commanders and experience. With the way the tech system works, the soviets will catch up to the Germans soon enough in infantry tech (the 1% gain from tech dif). While this basic equation works well, intelligence can throw it off entirely. Even if both players invest in intelligence on turn 1, a fortuitous breakthrough at 35-40% while the opponent struggles his way to 100% is a vast boon.

On the tech system in general I would say that it could use a small adjustment. There are many “musts”. Infantry and armor tech, advanced aircraft, intelligence, production tech. Industry tech for soviets (it’s almost useless for the Germans, giving about 18 mpp per turn per level). This means that there is little to no window to research other things. I think the campaign might be served by a higher research cap, allowing some interesting variety in researching anti tank tech, anti air tech, artillery, or other. One reason for this is also that with the current caps, it is absolutely impossible to reach “bagration” campaign tech levels with the factions by early 44. Some categories simply cannot be researched.

Another idea is, in addition to the above, to raise the cost of research along with a corresponding increase in cap. Meaning that tech becomes more of a choice. Even if you now have the –option- to research more categories over all, increased cost for all tech chits make it a choice between unit and tech.

Thanks for reading this huge mass of text! I’m already looking forward to the next game.

[Big Al]

Thanks for the input and review. AoC has a learning curve for both sides. Hopefully you will find that in every game you play you realize new strategies to employ. I put up a general strategy post a while back. Take a look at it.

[mvdh1@msn.com]

Thanks AshesFall for the excellent after action report and the in-depth analysis of general strategy and tactics in AoC. All of these games including Breakthrough and AoD are such fascinating and fun and challenging games to play.

Congratulations on a brilliant recovery that lead to such a quick victory. I didn't think is was possible. (it wouldn't have been for me that's for sure!)

[Ancient Demon]

Don't worry, I think you've already won.

It turns out this prediction was a little premature.

[Strategiclayabout]

Congratulations for your win Ashesfall ,

- That's what I call a stunning victory ! Things looked bad in early 1942 and lile Ancient Demon I believed you were in for a loss. But Stalin let all those troops near Kiev being encircled and it changed the game. You had a chance and seized it, well done !

Thanks to both of you for the thrilling AAR .

[AshesFall]

Thanks a lot guys, this one was down to luck as much as to planning.

Any thoughts about the strategy tips or the intelligence/tech thing?

Also, a few more for the "tactics, tips and post games reflections section";

Long term planning. This is really important in the SC games. Make the outline of a long term, game encompassing plan from the start, but keep the whole of it vague enough that you can keep it flexible. Then set about planning how to achieve that goal in smaller chunks, set the first year ultimate goals fairly detailed, and the part goal to that for the next two months in greater detail still. Then do the same when you can evaluate how each of these "steps" has worked. So - Overall game plan -> Yearly Plan -> short term part goals to achieve the yearly plan.

Most important of all; Be ready to reevaluate your goals as the game unfolds. Dont get stuck in one "mindset" or scheme, keep the big picture in mind, and adjust.