TriumphReich

Post descriptions of your brilliant victories and bitter defeats here.

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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

The southern bow is drawn by devisions under command of Stuelpnagel and von Kleist. Moving through the plain terrain north of the Carpathian mountains they attack 21th army under command of Kuznetsov.
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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Aug 1941
Baltic area

Army groups of Hoepner and Busch have passed by Sovjet 22th army under command of Ershalov. After both army groups joined east of Kaunas they attacked Vilnius successfuly and now swing south heading for Minsk, where the HQ of Timoshenko is expected. Sovjet 34th army, defending the area southwest of Riga, is completely destroyed.

North of the Pripjet swamps German forces break through the Sojvet lines and follow the railway line running from Brest to Minsk. Many divisions of 24th army Rakutin and 19th army Konev are in danger of being encircled while holding Bialistok and surrounding woods. There is only a small corridor open for their retreat. If German forces manage to close it, these divisions are cut off from their headquarters and the main frontline.


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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Aug 1941
Western France

In Biscay sea German forces launched a surprize attack on a Royal Navy group. The whole group was sunk, while German navy suffered only few losses.

It was the only victory of the German navy. In the following weeks very strong British forces appeared in the Biscay sea and sank nearly all German ships and subs.


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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Results of the battle of Biscay, showing the ships and subs involved in the battle.


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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Aug, Sep 1941
Back on eastern front, middle sector

Meanwhile Sovjet command has reacted on the German attempts to neutralize the Sovjet HQs. Air defence is enforced. German Luftwaffe suffers severe losses in some of their attacks.



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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Aug, Sep 1941
Eastern front, middle sector

Crossing the river Bug German forces advance in the wide plains between Pripyat swamps in the north and the Carpathian mountains in the south. Passing Lvov several Sovjet divisions are encircled and cut of from supply and reinforcements.



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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Aug, Sep 1941
Baltic Area

German force advancing on Minks have turned right to reach the railway line Bialistok - Minks and meet with forces approaching from the south. The corridor for evacuation of the Sovjet armies around Bialistok is nearly closed.

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RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Oct 1941
Baltic Area
After the fall of Minks German forces are heading for Smolensk. First recon units reached the river Dnjeper.
Further north German forces move on Riga.

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falco148
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by falco148 »

Its been a while since this epic was updated so I thought I'd better get one done. Alas, I was going to post screenshots but I don't appear to be able to do so on
this site so we'll just press on.

Feb'43, Western front: A combined British/Canadian invasion force has all but taken Norway. Oslo was taken in January after fierce resistance from a German battle
group that included heavy tank-destroyers. Narvick was also taken after strong German resistance. There is now only a German occupied port in the far north to
capture before the invasion will be complete. Hopefully it wont be too long before we will be able to wave to the Russians across the border advancing across
northern Finland! Some units were turned over to Norwegian control to guard strategic areas and cities. The remaining Allied units are being reorganized and
resupplied for the assault on the mainland. Free Norwegian units are returning from exile in the UK.

An American amphibious assault took place in Denmark two months ago. Initially battle groups under the commands of Patton & Deevers landed in northern
Denmark. Some supply problems have occurred but the landings have generally been successful. Expected strong pockets of German infantry have been curiously
absent. Aircraft and AA guns are in plentiful supply, though Allied fighters have coped well enough with this it seems. Aarhus & the Keil shipyard have been
taken by the Americans. Allied aircraft are regrouping in captured airfields. Vicious sea battles between Allied subs/destroyers and German subs/destroyers
have taken place off the Denmark coast. It appears that the Allies have the upper hand but this could be deceptive with perhaps some Nazi subs escaping into
the murky depths.

Last month a combined force of Guards Armoured British heavy tanks and paratroopers landed on the outskirts of Copenhagen. An initial assault was repulsed with
considerable losses. Hopefully heavy bombers and artillery can soften up Copenhagen in the coming months.

This month another British landing took place under the command of 1st Armour Lumsden west of the German shipyard of Wilhelmshaven. Fierce battles occurred
although the landing can be said to be successful albeit not without supply difficulties. Also combined Canadian armour/infantry and artillery landed this
month north of Amsterdam. The priority now will be to keep these units adequately supplied under battle conditions.

On other fronts, there has been a successful assault on Greece by Freyburg's elite New Zealanders with Australians in support. German resistance appears to be
light. However in N.Africa Rommel's Africa Corps have slowly but surely been pushing British and ANZAC troops back, although the situation is far from critical.
The priority now will be to reinforce Allied troops in N.Africa with heavier AT and armoured infantry.


Lastly there was a German landing in Plymouth, England two months ago. Happily, this has been solely confined to Plymouth with US artillery and armour pulverising
the attacking troops. It appears the numbers of US troops opposing them was a complete surprise to the Germans.












LJBurstyn
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by LJBurstyn »

The Russian supply problem has become so critical that we have had to shut down factories and produce only supplies from ALL my locations that can produce supplies. But I still fall way short of the supplies I need.
icym
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by icym »

Rather than use manpower (of which I am not particularly enamoured) to limit each Regime’s military, the intention was to use raw to limit how much Regimes could build in a turn, oil to limit how many armour/air/naval forces could be active in a turn, and supply to ultimately restrict the sustainable size of a nation’s military.

At the start of the game the major powers already have substantial forces at their command and allowing unlimited builds would make the game unmanageable and so I had hoped that supply would provide a natural brake on overproduction. That limit should apply to all regimes. In most of the games I have played it has been Germany that started to become stretched first, with Russia not too far behind. Of course the current game situation is important. Have the Axis managed to capture a lot of Russian territory/cities in your game?

If you feel the current supply limit is both unrealistic and significantly detracts from playing enjoyment, I would consider making changes. Ideally, if you were able to send me a save made during your turn I could get a better appreciation of the situation. Please PM me if you would like me to investigate.
falco148
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by falco148 »

Others may disagree but just speaking for myself Icym, I think the raw/oil/supply model you have used is quite realistic. In the game we are currently playing I (US/British) have been
shipping supply to the Russians via convoys to Murmansk. Since the Western allies have gone into invasion mode in the past few turns however this has tapered off somewhat and I think
that is what LJBurstyn may be referring to.
falco148
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by falco148 »

Anybody know whats happened to Larry? His turns up and its been well over a week.
RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

ORIGINAL: falco
Anybody know whats happened to Larry? His turns up and its been well over a week.

Sorry for the delay. Its me who has to play his turns. Had been away for some days. I am back now and have already played the German turn. But it takes a while. There are a lot of uninvited guests on my territory.
RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

ORIGINAL: falco
Others may disagree but just speaking for myself Icym, I think the raw/oil/supply model you have used is quite realistic.

You are right, it is realistic. And that is what ICYM intended. But I agree with Larry that it is not really satisfying.

I had reported earlier that Axis easily runs out of oil and cannt use all the motorized units that it can build. Meanwhile some research breakthrough improved the oil supply. But this effect is very low with regards to the requests. I transferred oil plants from other nations. Now Germany has enough oil, SS had enough all the time and Axis minors have few but can handle it more or less. But now Italy nearly has run out of oil and has become unable to fight. So for Axis it is too few in sum.

I had already reduced my factory outputs. It looks like Larry has kept the production high and now runs into supply shortness like I had run into oil shortness. Reducing the factory or recruitment center output is a way to handle this. But it feels strange to lower production and leave a lot of capacity unused. For some turns I had put a lot of tanks and infantry into two big containers and set them to 50 percent supply. So I had some reserve but had not too high requests of supply.

Increasing supply or oil is not a good solution. Germany and SU have deployed too much units already. Along the river that runs from Riga to Smolensk we are sitting each one on his side of the river unable to cross it due to immense amounts of infantry and other stuff on the other side. It is a kind of WW I situation where frontlines are frozen and noone is able to move. It lasts for more than ten turns now.

Less production would force each player to look where to concentrate his forces. We would no longer be able to build walls of infantry and support units and keep each other from any advance. Less units with some concentration on some parts of the front and weak defences on other parts would make it far more dynamic.
RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

For example, here is a screenshot of the result of my artillery bombardment of Riga at turn 21. There are hundreds of infantry. Thats why our fronts are blocked. At eastern front there is only some movement in the south (will write an AAR later, too few time at the moment, but save some screenshots already).


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icym
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by icym »

Ouch, the game situation as described above is horrible. I can see that it would be unsatisfying.

If I understand the situation correctly, the Russian front has been bogged down between Riga and Smolensk from late 41 to early 43.

Being obsessive, I have kept saves from all my previous games. There have been minor changes to the scenario since the first playtest, but the actual forces on the map were the same in all cases.

I have 5 saved games in which I played the Russians, vs. either one or two opponents (three different opponents in all).

Below is shown the month in which Riga was captured by the Germans, the other column shows the number of infantry casualties the Russians had suffered by the start of the December 1941 Russian turn.

[font="Courier New"]
Game Number.............Riga Captured...........Russian infantry casualties, Dec 1941
1.......................April 1942..............3,307
2.......................November 1941...........6,338
3.......................September 1941..........6,641
4.......................August 1941.............8,945
5.......................October 1941............7,395
[font="Courier New"][/font]
[font="Verdana"]
Game 1 was against a very experienced but somewhat cautious German player, which allowed Russia to keep its losses down and yield territory grudgingly.

Games 2 and 3 were against a very experienced player and were, I thought at the time, fairly representative of how the game would probably play. They also were similar in progress to the four or five solo games I had played.

Games 4 and 5 were against an inexperienced but very aggressive player who didn’t mind taking risks. His casualties were higher, but so were mine.

As the table shows there can be a lot of variation between game results and the current game does not conform to expectations.

In previous games, the forces lost by Russia and the territory captured by the Axis tended to mitigate the resources and supply imbalances. Russian production mostly was devoted to trying to replace losses.

The other possibility of course is that my Russian play in all 5 games was lousy and that Larry is a defensive genius. If so, I tip my cap to him.[&o]

falco148
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by falco148 »

Along the river that runs from Riga to Smolensk we are sitting each one on his side of the river unable to cross it due to immense amounts of infantry and other stuff on the other side. It is a kind of WW I situation where frontlines are frozen and noone is able to move. It lasts for more than ten turns now.

Surely this is a situation that requires a bit of lateral thinking? Just sayin......
LJBurstyn
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by LJBurstyn »

ICYM has sent me a revised new version of his manual about supply. I have placed in the Dropbox.

He also sent me an analysis of the situation which at this time I choose not to disclose. Part of his analysis was that my (Russian) losses were much less than in some of his test games while my production was much higher. This was part of the problem of my production above my supply system capabilities.
RufusTFirefly
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RE: TriumphReich

Post by RufusTFirefly »

Time to continue the AAR from view of Axis. It looks like the game has come to a turning point and Axis is now pressed into a defensive role. Axis might loose the game now. This is due to the very good performance of my opponents, Falco and Larry, and due to an important mistake I made.

Sovjets (Larry) have successfully stopped the Axis advance in the east. Western allies (Falco) have successfully returned to the continent. Scandinavia is lost completely. The campaign in Africa turns from a successful advance to a halt.

Beside this I made a serious mistake not to use my scientists in a proper way which had caused some drastic effects. Too late I started to use a scientist to improve my oil production. Running short in oil I could not launch all air and ground attacks. Therefore the advance in the east was slower than it could be. As oil was short I reduced production of armor and air units. Having not used my scientists to improve the PP production I could not develop the tech levels fast enough.

Due to the mistake of using scientists properly my forces in the east now have too few armor and the armor is too low in tech level. Guys, read the manual. It is written excellently and would keep you from making the same mistake I made.

The last reports showed the situation in the east somewhen around turn 6, the game is now at turn 22. What happened during the last turns?

The screenshots show the situation in December 41 and 42. The German advance on Riga was stopped along the line Riga – Smolensk. Before the armies Busch (green), Hoth (yellow) and von Kuechler (blue), supported by SS division Eicke, could cross the Daugava river (the German forces were slow in movement due to lack of fuel) the Red Army managed to bring enough forces to the river and dig in. Both sides sending more and more forces to this part of the front, this way making it impossible for both to cross the river. Heavy artillery bombardment from both sides costs several losses. But no decisive weakening of any part of the frontline could be achieved to enable either German or Sovjet forces to attack across the river.

(to be continued)



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