Holy Smokes, November! I'm still in August

Actually this is good as maybe any reports you make will give me insight for what I might expect. How's your progress? You must be enjoying the game to have gone so far in.

Now mid December snow is heavy and while units can move fairly freely they have some 25% CV from normal so I'm mostly chasing partisan units popping up every.frigging.week and working hard on the rail conversion.
One or two fine-adjustments to airforce locations too.

I've had full strength wintertime but maybe the game gives a random penalty based on how cold it actually is the given week?

Leningrad: 1 hex left to city walls but with my units current CV I will just stay foot.
Moscow: I can see it but it feels so far away
Stalingrad: haha yeah right, I got stuck trying to enter Crimea and still hanging outside the two doors allowing entrance - I blame snow and mud (actually I arrived way too late due to my uselessness at encirclement warfare)

I had a good opportunity for another pocket but I noticed the AI understands the situation and they bloody moved out of there before I could have my panzers push through to close it.
Whoever wrote the AI for this should have a medal.


Edit:
And now on 1st January 1942 I have Blizzard and Ice 10 on the weather map
Previous turn, 25th Dec 41, the Soviets hit me along the whole front line pushing me back a hex or 3 and they bombed everywhere - took quite some time to finish all their actions.
We will see what's left of my Axis forces come spring time.

The enemy looks strong. That's something I am fearing, that even though the enemy is off balance still they will recover at some point. How many casualties have you caused? Do you have any screens of the situation at Leningrad before your assault?

About the AI, quite right, although I see the opposite too. When I first came to Smolensk and was nearing Leningrad, the enemy had gathered in the center of these moves, just east of Pskov.. This mass could have been pocketed easily in their position. But as soon as the first arms of the pincers were started, that entire mass of enemy pulled back and prevented it. Cancelling the operation, I moved further on and those crafty bastages reoccupied the former positions, but now I hadn't the strength there to do anything about it as I'd moved down the road.

What I mean by I have seen the opposite is that it seems the AI fails to properly guard it's cities in some cases. Perhaps there are good reasons for it, and really they are still quite disorganzied south of Moscow, so perhaps they just don't have the forces there to build a proper defense.

As to the Crimea, it's a source of constant consideration and concern. I don't know what it will take to capture and I am of two minds about how to approach it, how many, and which, troops I should commit. To remove that rock from my wave would be really good, and any forces there can be put in the main line.

How are you using your satellites? Do they hold a continuous line anywhere? Or do you have them spread out among German forces in the line? I'm reluctant to give them any length of the line, but in the south there is so much to cover.

Ooops, posted the report in the wrong thread But the attachments are here, so not deleted.

Hey Oden, another question to go with those above.... I noticed in the withdrawal schedule that many of the Finnish units are set to depart on October 23. Did that happen in your game? I wasn't expecting that, as I am counting on them to hold my left wing.

The Leningrad situation is heating up, and I'll show what happened in my next report.

The Rumanians are pretty good so I actually have them as base force down south with Hungarians and Italians "supporting" them and a handful divisions of Germans where needed.
Slovakians are swift and pretty good so I have them mixed up around Dnepropetrovsk with the main force of Germans.

But, I haven't really struck any luck and had to make a "tactical move" back from Crimea halvway to Odessa and the Blizzard level 10 just give me any room to improve the situation.

I had a few Finns withrawn but they still cover the front very well and with the massive defensive CV they show I'm not worried at all (for the moment)

I've lost the control around north AGS and all AGC with AGN pretty well dug in.
Situation doesn't look good and I can only hope for spring time and a load of 1942 reinforcements.

I really think I am now suffering from my initial failures at encirclements and/or the fact I haven't pushed far enough removing Soviet resources.
Hopefully, with your current results, you will fare better

Now I need to go read your latest AAR!

Thanks Oden. How many Russian casualties were there in '41? I'm on course to hit that 4 million figure I mentioned somewhere, and hoping it causes the Russian to have difficulty mounting an effective counter offensive.

I have some 4 million Soviets but also just over 1 million Axis which I not sure the Axis can survive.

What do you mean 1 million Axis? That the size of your army? You must mean something else. Allies?

Oh maybe that's what's left after the winter?

Is the 4 million Soviets their current strength or the number of '41 casualties?

Dead.
They're all dead, poor souls.
Thats for putting me in command, silly Germans

I see that's 1 million Axis casualties. Actually that might not be so bad, all things considered. That test is coming for me shortly (now in mid-September). Did you build any fortifications in preparation?

Sorry, I have a million questions and I am only asking a small fraction. If and when Leningrad falls I will have reached all of my 1941 goals and my attention is swiftly turning to how to deal with mud and snow.

No fortifications in aplanned mode but as I made my way through seriously heavy fighting up north from Novgorod towards southern beaches of Ladoga I started to cram out fortifications in each hex slong that river as I noticed how the Red Army grew stronger and stronger - I had 500 admin points so I could spam all I needed.
Guess I should learn more how to use the admin points, feels like I should feel short of them when doing it right.

Oh and Siberians!

I've been spending them quite liberally, some on leaders, some on unit transfers but the vast majority on HQBUs. I figure the cost to my motorpool is offset somewhat by the fact these encirclement battles net a good number of trucks to replace them. Not sure if it's actually true, but that's how I reconcile the cost. I'd reckon you'd always want to keep a bit of a surplus of admin points on hand for HQBUs so they can be used right when you need them. So maybe around 90 as a reserve so you could do two panzer corps in a pinch.

Someone put up a War in the West AAR. KThxBye

Please?

Seriously. That would be great.

I will once I receive the boxed version. The game is too large for my slow internet. and I will also need a bit to learn the GUI.

Isn't it only like 850 MB?

And an AAR would be great, I'd love to see how a game of WitW plays out. I havven't purchased it yet, but will before the sale is out. I'm actually playing a second run of WitE's grand campaign, I want to see if I can do better with all I've learned.

If you do an AAR Aldo, that would be awesome and I didn't expect anyone to actually say they'd do it

AARs on this site are a dying breed but nothing shows the nuts and bolts quite as well.

I have not seen more then 20K download speeds since I told Comcast to kissoff and switched to the only alternative I have other then satellite. I am at the end of a dead end street. We are the only block that that does not have ATT U verse.

If I want to watch something on Youtube, I have to start buffering twice as long as the video in hopes it will play. I also have and XP operating system that I have ripped the guts from it as viruses have attacked it over the years. If I could find where I hid my VS6 disk #1 then I would do a reinstall of the OS, but I am not willing to loose my legal version of VS6 Enterprise edition to have a stable OS.

I doubt I can do as nice of an AAR as you do, but I will try. I am a total knob to the W(it), so I will srate with a basic GUI impression.

You've mentioned your situation before, but 20k! That's like 2001 speed

No worries, I'd just be happy to see how a campaign plays out. If you do it that's great. I suspect I will be playing WitW before the year is out. I am replaying the WitE grand campaign 'cause I want another shot at it lol. Then I'll try the West. Too bad it doesn't start in '39, that would be seriously epic.

Hi DBond like the AAR’s (if I haven’t already mentioned). Thanks for the effort you put in them.

Curious how long it takes you to do on typical round and do you know if PBEM used much?