Best overall Axis strategy

[spinecruncher]

Wow, thank you. Finally some really good help here.
Re Leningrad, AGN appears rather small for the task. Just seems to me in general too much land given limited nuber of Axis units. Another question about supply: what % of supply does a unit need? You know how you click on a unit's info and it tells you at the top % a unit has vs. what it can have at full supply ( I think that is what it's referring to). a lot of times I see mine at the 81% level.

Anoter thing, AGS is going for Kiev, and the Axis allies re going for Rostov on the Don and past that.. Who is supposed to get the Caucasus?

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: ballyhoo

Another thing, AGS is going for Kiev, and the Axis allies re going for Rostov on the Don and past that.. Who is supposed to get the Caucasus?

Well, that is exactly the problem. If your front line follows the historical front in 1942, a serious Axis drive into the Caucasus will leave long, dangerously exposed flanks somewhere. Realistically, the Axis cannot afford such an operation unless they have totally mauled the Red Army first, and/or they have taken Leningrad and Moscow and moved the Northern front line much further to the East, so have a shorter front line in total.

[cmunson]

Wow, thank you. Finally some really good help here. Re Leningrad, AGN appears rather small for the task. Just seems to me in general too much land given limited nuber of Axis units. Another question about supply: what % of supply does a unit need? You know how you click on a unit's info and it tells you at the top % a unit has vs. what it can have at full supply ( I think that is what it's referring to). a lot of times I see mine at the 81% level. Anoter thing, AGS is going for Kiev, and the Axis allies re going for Rostov on the Don and past that.. Who is supposed to get the Caucasus?

As far as getting to Leningrad I give AGN the bulk of my reinforcements. I use 2nd Army to fill gap between AGN and AGC.

If your Germans units are at 81% supply you probably aren't advancing fast enough. You can let supply get lower than that. Land is free and easy for the taking, you won't see that again after summer 1941 so keep moving and pocketing.

Once you take Rostov and environs AGS splits into two army groups (A & B). You can use one for the Caucasus. I wouldn't get ahead of myself, the Caucasus is a 1942 objective. You don't have enough men to defend the entire front in 1941 if your line is longer than Leningrad to Rostov. You want a short front for winter with cities and sizable towns incorporated to keep attrition down. I pull all my best divisions back to Poland or put on garrison duty to keep them healthy until summer.

[spinecruncher]

So is all lost for the fuehrer?
It is first week in Aug and my forces are slowing down as much of the supply along the entire front is down to 65% and lower in some cases. Not sure how to supply the forces as the rail gauge has not been nearly adequate in keeping pace with advancing units. Also the air transports are not effective and in many cases "not enough transports" is the message received when ordering supply drops. How are the objectives to be met by winter when its early August and there is no way to adequately supply the AG's from Leningrad down to Kiev?


Also as of August 1, there have only been a handful of reinforcements, no "bulk" to give to AGN.

[Commanderski]

The situation you described is exactly what the Germans actually faced. You need to prioritize your objectives and not try to take everything at once. Plan your attacks and pay attention to as many details of your units as you can (supply, support units , morale, distance to HQ...etc.)as for the most part this game rewards a detailed player. In the war Room in the Topic section, download and read through A collection of the Best Great War in the East Posts V3 as that has a lot of useful tips.

Also new tips and strategies will probably come out after the new update which should be out very soon.

[PhilThomas]

The Germans should never be able to win against a reasonably competent Soviet player. The fact that the Germans appeared to come so close in '41 was solely due to the fact that the actual Soviet government managed everything so badly. Unless the game is programmed to compel the Soviet player to do the same stupid things that the Soviet commanders did historically (e.g., compel pieces to counterattack if they're adjacent to German units, make moving east cost more than moving west, sudden death loss if Soviets keep too many troops in the rear, etc.), the Germans should lose.

[timmyab]

I couldn't disagree more. Where two equally matched players face each other ideally 50% of games would be draws and 25% Axis wins and 25% Soviet wins. How many people would play chess if the white side always won?
I also believe it's essential that some handicap is placed on the Soviet command structure for the first year of the war. Otherwise again the Axis player is going to decide that this game isn't for him. Even with their command deficiencies the SU still won the war, without them it wouldn't have even been a contest and therefore boring.

[PhilThomas]

I think you're missing my point. To be a representation of reality the game should not allow the Germans to win except against a completely incompetent Soviet opponent. That might not make for an ideal game, but we're not dealing with an abstract world a la chess.

[spinecruncher]

I disagree with the above. Also in the first year the Germans made several serious mistakes, and likely could have taken Moscow:

Delaying Barbarossa by going into the Balkans.
splitting AGC (huge)
alienating a population willing to cooperate with the invasion (huge).
Not taking Leningrad but deciding to starve it (huge).
declaring war on the USA and therefore opening up a war on two fronts (huge)
Failure of the Chancellor to leave operations to the professionals (huge)

later on there were other mistakes like going for Stalingrad, and depending on German allies to hold the line.
faulty intelligent in the battle of Kursk

Any other German mistakes?

[PhilThomas]

But...
1. Delaying Barbarossa is outside the scope of the game as currently constructed. Hopefully we will see an option for this.
2. Splitting AGC--Kiev Pocket? Sure, a decision a player can make.
3. Alienating a population willing to cooperate? In some cases maybe--witness the popularity of Stepan Bandera and other 1940s fascists in today's Ukraine. But for the most part the entire point of invading the USSR was to exterminate the population--there's really no way to avoid alienating people when you're trying to kill all of them off. Barrels of ink were spilled arguing the alienating-the-population theory during the cold war, often by former nazi generals looking to polish up their image, but the reality is the Soviet population was no more likely to turn on Stalin than the German population was to turn on Hitler. If it was up to me, any Eastern Front game would require the German player to actively exterminate civilians with a sudden-death loss for failure to meet quotas.
4. Leningrad strategy is within the scope of the game.
5. Declaring war on the USA raises interesting issues, but is outside the scope of the game.
6. Hitler's meddling in front line decisions, as with Stalin's, could be made a component of the game--this would be an interesting option if someone could design it. There was an SPI Eastern Front game decades ago that had a "Hitler table"--the German player had to roll dice every turn to see what the victory conditions would be.
7,8 42 & afterward decisions got worse and worse. But my original point, that any game that allows the Germans to win decisively in 1941 against anything other than an incompetent Soviet player has serious realism problems, stands.

[spinecruncher]

I think the point of this all then is that a defeated Germany is hardly a foregone conclusion from Day 1.
And you are wrong about the sole motivation for attacking USSR was to exterminate its people. I am sure Franz Halder would not have agreed with that motivation. There was the motivation of a -preemptive war above all else. And f cpirse the desire for more resources and living space. no doubt Hitler wanted to reduce the Slavs to an existence one step away from extinction, the German people themselves had to have a motivation to fight -- and they were not being told that motivation was to exterminate the Soviet citizens.

[PhilThomas]

A preemptive war to liberate people from their own dictator, where have I heard that before?

[Stelteck]

In "war in the pacific" japan is doomed from day one and it is a very enjoyable game to play japan whatever the result.

[spinecruncher]

enjoyable is all that matters, after all we cant really take over the world on our laptop -- unless you are an extraordinary gifted hacker.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: ballyhoo

enjoyable is all that matters, after all we cant really take over the world on our laptop -- unless you are an extraordinary gifted hacker.

So I have been not been taking over the world for the last 40 yrs?

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: ballyhoo

Can anyone sum up the most successful overall strategy? Should the Army Groups move along a broader front, or punch together and leave swathes of land un-occupied? Should the Alied units at the beginning be attacked head on, or bypassed and there rail and communications cut off? IS AGS large enough to gain the valuable oil in the south, or
should it join with AGC for the taking of Moscow? Also should we cot move up the airbases to keep up with Axis advances?
William Shirer wrote that there were very poor conditions to move the airbases forward and at the beginning at least the advance units lost contact with their air units. But in this game it appears we are able to willy-nilly move our air bases wherever we want.

1. Pocket as many SHC units as possible.
2. Over run as many manpower centers as possible.
3. Morale is of the Battle Field
4. Reserve reaction is big buys months.
5. Trade space for turns.
6. Do not let SHC pocket your units.

[caliJP]

Ballyhoo, re: supply:
no matter what, if you are making good progress as German in 1941, you will suffer some fuel shortages. It takes some good planning to limit the impact:
- ensure best possible progress of RR units. That means look for shortest paths from initial border to key objectives and make sure those get cleared in time for RR units. In North, try to use the Baltic zone which only costs 1 MP per hex as much as possible.
- HQBUs are your friend... But you have to plan them a couple of turns in advance: place HQ within 20MP of end of railroad for next turn. Make sure to not move them next turn. You can have your mobile units fight during the turn, then retreat back to within HQ range for an HQBU.
- use transports for refueling by air. By T10ish, you may not need them anymore in North and center as your rail should be pretty far along. I then move them to the south where usually that is not the case.

Some experienced players have more / better tricks I think