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Операция "Ой морозь морозь" - Maintain a high operational tempo through the winter, attacking weak points as able

6 (60%)

Операция "Не морозь меня" - Slow things down, making a few major and considered attacks without wasting strength

4 (40%)

Total Members Voted: 10

[Deadmeat1471]

<3 AoD, and USSR watching!

Looks like youve been a bit raped in west russia/poland, but the retreats look nice and safe for a new front line so itll be ok probably .

[Heron TSG]

Do you have a second line set up for if the Dnieper-Daugava line fails?

[Fishbreath]

I only chose the Dnieper-Daugava line because it was a convenient one-- I only had to fortify the one province to complete it. Otherwise it's just more terrain to fall back across, and behind it is more of the same, but with fewer rivers.

[Elfeater]

Pull my men back, and wait for reinforcements.

[Heron TSG]

At what point on the Western Front would you consider the Germans as having enough strength to overwhelm you, province-wise? The strategy tends to be 'wait them out', but if they take too much land...?

[EuchreJack]

Well, I think the strategy is more "Bleed them dry" instead of "Wait them out", in which case we can lose a lot of land.  Napoleon sacked Moscow, the Germans fought house-to-house in Stalingrad.  They both lost.

[Jopax]

I think it's more of a combination of both, let them push a bit into scorched provinces and wait for the winter, after they get frozen to death we push back before they can respond.

And a question, do you fortify your fallback lines?
I'm messing around in HoI 3 a bit and can't help myself but waste tons of IC on fortifications along big rivers and certain weakspots, this leaves me quite undermanned for some time and I usually can't muster enough manpower to hold the initial line long enough for a big fallback to the rivers.That and HoI3 has a rather annoying hierarchy system that I'm still having trouble figuring out.

[Fishbreath]

Not normally. Smolensk is fortified, partly because it's a major stop on the road to Moscow, and partly because it's the only spot on the Dnieper-Daugava line not behind a river, but other than that most of the IC I've spent on non-military stuff has been on more industrial capacity.

To expand on my plans a bit, I plan to defend Moscow to the last drop of blood. We could honestly stand to lose Baku--we have an utter ton of oil stockpiled--but Moscow represents too significant a portion of our IC (even after the industry-to-Siberia events) to lose. As much as I have a soft spot for Leningrad(/St. Petersburg), having lived there for a while, it's not critical to hold.

Jopax, I'm thinking I'll get HoI3 Complete the next time it's cheap on Steam. Honestly, the order of battle system is something I'm looking forward to the most.

Edit: Actually, it's all on sale for $12 on Steam as part of the autumn thing. Arsenal of Democracy is $6, and as I understand it, the consensus is that between the two, AoD is the better game. If you're looking to get into Paradox WW2 gaming, now is the right time.

[Jopax]

Yeah, I wanted to get it but my card needs some codes that I can only get from the bank, and I can't get to the bank untill I get home, which is in two weeks, but I guess there will be a Christmas sale too so all is not lost

[Fishbreath]

I'll probably play the next update later this weekend. For now, my played-an-hour impressions of Hearts of Iron 3:

• The order-of-battle system is fantastic, particularly since command bonuses propagate down the structure: a field marshal with the logistics wizard trait will decrease the supply consumption of everyone under his command.
• In hand with that, infrastructure and logistics seem more important-- in provinces with poor infrastructure, bonuses from leaders way up the command structure seem not to apply. I could be wrong, but the theater map mode seems to suggest that.
• Supply is handled fancier, too; supplies and fuel are delivered to supply dumps in each province.
• You can build your own divisions from brigades. Very nice.
• On the bad side, the interface seems like a step back. The Arsenal of Democracy auto-sliders are incredible, and the minimum-spending/maximum-spending sliders mean that I've basically not touched them since the start of the game, except to limit spending on consumer goods so I can use that IC to build more soldiers. HoI3 has nothing like that, and I really miss it already.
• On the same note, the research screen is kind of inscrutable.

[Jopax]

You can set most of those windows to AI control which does its best to keep them in check.
c
Research isn't that difficult to figure out but it is more convulted than it should be. Troops are pretty straightforward, you unlock one type and upgrade its certain charactheristics via the other sub upgrades.The doctrines are ok as far as land ones go, air and naval are a bit too scary for me to touch in any meaningful way yet.Theory is there just for supply upgraes (I see no reason for the other stuff) and industry is pretty straightforward.

The bonus theory stuff I tend not to look at and it's just there as something nice that I don't want to bother myself with too much since the returns aren't that big (except practical stuff which is awesome when mass producing stuff).

Combat I have figured out to a certain extent now but it still gives me headaches when I want to do something specific, it's also very misleading seeing that many markers on the map only to find out that 90% of them are HQ units that are pretty worthless in real combat.

[Elfeater]

Okay I bought this game since it was on sale.

[Fishbreath]

Things I find myself missing in HoI3: autosliders (again), all the fancy AoD production order options (lengthen or shorten runs, accelerate production at the cost of IC, leave a production line empty but in the list to keep the gearing bonus, like I'm doing for our air force), extra combat orders (support defense and reserves are the big one), AoD's Victory or Valhalla and Scorched Earth tactics (although low infra = no movement would make Scorched Earth kind of overpowered).

Things I like: the command structure and the way bonuses propagate down (with Australia in North Africa, I outran my command structure but encircled a hundred and ten thousand routing Italian troops with an armored division), division design (which is just fun), CAGs (being able to detach them and use them as land-based fighters is awesome, even if it's also a bit of a waste), decisive naval combat (thank you, Paradox!), supply system (done as well as in AoD, but in a slightly different way), more sensible combat modifiers (with percentages you can tell what you're getting), tech trees.

In the end, I think AoD is probably still the better game for grand, sweeping alternate histories like this one, if only due to the longer timeframe and technology from start to end. HoI3 is the better game for smaller alternate histories.

[Fishbreath]

Events take a surprising twist in the upcoming update, to be posted tonight or tomorrow.

[Fishbreath]

Spoiler: 8 June, 1943 (click to show/hide)

0700 15 May
Lida (near Smolensk) comes under attack. Retreating from here will give the Germans a bit of a bulge to attack the edges of.

0700 16 May
Attacked in Wilno (in the north, east of Jekapilis) and Tarnopol.

2000 16 May
Falling back from Lida.

1800 17 May
Counterattacking Lida. Malinin's corps and others fall back from Tarnopol.

2100 17 May
Counterattack on Lida meets heavy resistance and must fall back.

0000 18 May
Our first research in a while completes. We begin working on 1944-pattern motorized infantry, given that we have a good number of motorized divisions.

0500 19 May
Soviet forces pull out of Wilno.

0800 19 May
The Germans left fewer than three divisions in Baranowicze, so Soviet divisions under General Ptuhn mount an assault to attrit them down.

In the Far East, the Americans attack Khabarovsk. Again. This time it came with 42 divisions against our 41.

0400 20 May
Malinin's corps launches a counterattack at Tarnopol.

2300 20 May
That counterattack stops.

0100 21 May
The prettiest sight so far this campaign: rainstorms all across the Ukraine/Romania front.

1900 21 May
The Americans lose their attack on Khabarovsk, taking 18,000 losses to 6,000 losses on the Soviet side. A ton of tank divisions are still trapped here on defensive duty.

2200 22 May
The Germans attack Vinnitsa, but with the combination of mud, a significant Hungarian and Romanian component to the attacking force, and a good number of Soviet divisions able to reinforce the defense.

1100 23 May
The Italians now have 50 divisions committed to Turkey (although 30 are in the Dodecanese), but they're ineffectual enough that I'm not worried.

0700 24 May
We're engaged all across the front: Bobraisk in the north, Vinnitsa in the south, and in two places as we put out little Italian fires in Turkey.

1200 28 May
The defense of Bobraisk continues, with the Soviets slightly out front in progress toward victory. Swieciany is also being defended with the intent to hold it.

1400 28 May
Rokossovsky's corps, on the Black Sea bordering Romania, see their first action as they defend against a half-hearted Romanian attack.

1700 29 May
The Soviets win a huge victory in Bobraisk, defeating a determined German attack and tallying up a 3-1 advantage in losses.



2300 9 May
Three more victories in quick succession.



0200 1 June
Twenty Soviet divisions under General Sokolovskiy, positioned in Swiecieany, Orsha, and Minsk launch the first counterattack of the war to date with the goal of retaking ground lost.

0700 2 June
The attack is going well. Air support from Mogilev and Vitebsk is flying bombing missions.



1800 3 June
Italy is driven back from a province in Turkey again. You know, it strikes me that our army's actually pretty good, it's just spending most of its time fighting the Germans, who're better.

1200 4 June


Glory to the Red Army! The Germans fall back out of Molodeczno!


0500 8 June
12 Soviet divisions hold our gains in Molodeczno against repeated German counterattacks. Looks like we've secured it for good.

---

On that bombshell, I bring this update to an end. Is it possible that we've taken Germany's best punch so easily?

Spoiler: Unit updates (click to show/hide)

Taricus - 6-y Korpus (Zhukov): still redeploying. Arrival is scheduled in 14 days.
Zrk2 - 1-y Korpus (Bondarev): supporting the defense of the south in Zhitomir.
Barbarossa TSG - 16-y Korpus (Malinin): participated in the defense of Tarnopol, now rushing northward to fill a gap in the lines.
Elfeater - 48-y Korpus (Bulganin): holding behind the Daugava. A possible counterattack unit for Jekapilis.
EuchreJack - 15-y Korpus (Rokossovsky): saw action in defenses along the Romanian border. Might see offensive action in a few months once the Soviet industrial machine starts to turn IC into infantry divisions.
mcclay - IX Aviatsionniy Korpus (Falaleev): flew air cover during the defense of Bobraisk, keeping bombers off the troops.
LAAT501legion - 17-y Korpus (Volskiy): defending against Italian landings in Turkey. Currently outnumbered but not out-equipped.