Matrix Games

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National morale also reflects the morale of the replacements. The German army in the summer of '41 was at its pinnacle in proficiency, etc. Historically it went downhill, while the Red Army, recovering experience lost to the purges, and united in patriotism against the barbarity of Nazi aggression and occupation, improved from its sorry state in '41.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

1 sapper regiment per corps (any type) is my standard and ought to be enough to get good engineering bonuses. But on top of that your armies should have some sapper SUs, too. 1-2 per army. (And 1 tank regiment and 3-4 artillery SUs. That's a nice mix.)

Most Soviet players imo seriously underestimate the power of artillery divisions and don't build enough of them. (And wait too long to build them, considering they become available as of Oct of 42.) Artillery is the God of War, my friends. It is to the Red Army what the panzer divisions are to the Germans.

I try to follow the historical OB here: roughly two dozen tube artillery divisions, and 6 rocket. If armament points and APs allow, I'd consider building even more than that.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

He can only stack 3 corps per hex. Artillery is a force multiplier that will allow him to bust forts and get around the stacking limitations. This isn't an either/or proposition, it's both. Instead of making attacks with 200k men and 3k guns, he could be making attacks with 200k men and 5k+ guns. The extra firepower makes a difference. Every 3 artillery divisions is an extra 1k guns (more with rocket artillery.)

I note that tube artillery divisions have lots and lots of mortars -- with all that implies in terms of ROF.

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Again this is your peronal strawman and nothing more.

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The German army was at it pinnacle in 1943 not 1941 hehehe what are you smoking?

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They won battle after battle form 1939 to 1942

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Another Red fanboy that is still beleiving all the Stalin myth's.

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ORIGINAL: Seminole

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Again this is your peronal strawman and nothing more.

You keep using that word, strawman, but it does not mean what you think it means.
I notice you completely ignored the reasons I presented to you for falling German morale and ้lan.

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The German army was at it pinnacle in 1943 not 1941 hehehe what are you smoking?

That smoke you see is German cities under increasing allied bombardment. The smell is tens of thousands consumed in deliberate firestorms from '43 onward. None of which were particularly good for morale or ้lan.
Yes, German equipment improved, as did Allied, and I wouldn't argue that in '43 Germany had its best equipment relative to what the Allies fielded, but this is non-germane to the questions of overall morale and battlefield proficiency.
Do you really think there wasn't a steady degradation consequent to the losses Germany began suffering in '42? Do you think a switch was suddenly flipped in '45 from nazi superman to surrendering hordes?

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They won battle after battle form 1939 to 1942

How many of those same men were convalescing in Germany, laying dead on the Russian steppe, marching to Siberia from Stalingrad, or enjoying Allied POW camps after losing in Africa, Sicily, and Italy by 1943? '44? '45?
Do you think the boys that replaced them were truly as proficient?

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Another Red fanboy that is still beleiving all the Stalin myth's.

That, my friend, is a strawman.

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Sure it made a nice bonfire, but its effects were simply over rated as everyone knows now.

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Again were know from personall accounts of what German morale was, your option is counter to fact, silly little man.

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ORIGINAL: glvaca

I think a point often overlooked is that the Germans got their best exchange rates while conducting mobile operations. The so called elastic defence.
The Germans recognized they could not win the war of attrition as being played out in this game.
IT would be interesting to see whether a serious retreat, followed by a pincer attack could achieve success.

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ORIGINAL: Kamil

General remarks about my strategy:

Current shape of Soviet forces isn't consequence of careful planing, but effect of day-to-day necessities of grind at all cost doctrine. It started during winter of 42/43 when Inf Corps still cost 20 AP, and to be able to advance at all I needed to spawn them in areas where Pelton has weak defences. As soon as they got strengthened I focused my activities on different location. To maintain high level of "conversion" while still being able to build at least 2 divisions each turn I put practically all my mobile forces in static mode.

It was effective policy during winter, but I paid price for overspending during next summer - recreation of armoured forces was painful (mech corps activation was around 65 AP!). Even more time required adjustments in C&C.

At the moment I do not have to be too careful with choosing area where I conduct my offensive - Inf Corps are beasts now, their CV is in mid-teens, some are even over 20. Thanks to good C&C my best fronts can even risk attacking stacks with defensive value of 70 to 80 CV from 2 hexes only.


Now biggest issue are high AFV losses - 500 to 600 a turn. It is not sustainable and there is not much left in pool (under 1k now), so I need to lower number of tank regiments in Inf Corps from 2 to 1.

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Flaviusx


But you really should try to build up a good artillery park. Rifle corps backed by lots of artillery divisions are far more formidable than just rifle corps alone.

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ORIGINAL: cavalry

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ORIGINAL: glvaca

I think a point often overlooked is that the Germans got their best exchange rates while conducting mobile operations. The so called elastic defence.
The Germans recognized they could not win the war of attrition as being played out in this game.
IT would be interesting to see whether a serious retreat, followed by a pincer attack could achieve success.

Spot on!

Sounds good but in this game by 44 I will be interested to see it happen.

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ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

You have to build Artillery Divisions now, though, if you want to use them in 1944. It takes almost 6 months to attain a decent level of training to where they hit anything.

RE: The Wehrmacht, I don't think there is any doubt that the Wehrmacht's strength was it's institutional memory, specifically the quality of it's officer corps up through the staff level. They ran circles around everyone else depite sub-par equipment in the early war, because they were far ahead in this area.

But as the war continued, overall proficiency in the Wehrmacht dropped, because of attrition to the officer cadres, plus the expansion of the Wehrmacht and subsequent dilution of quality. Quality was concentrated in a few formations like the SS and some Panzers; these formations maintained very high proficiency to the end of the war. The Infantry, though, was on a slow decline throughout the war, as the officer corps died-off, and the Wehrmacht scraped the bottom of the manpower barrell.

"Morale" is so misleading, it's really "Military Proficiency". And in this area, the Werhmacht experienced a slow, but steady decline after 1941.

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ORIGINAL: Fishbed

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Sure it made a nice bonfire, but its effects were simply over rated as everyone knows now.

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Again were know from personall accounts of what German morale was, your option is counter to fact, silly little man.

Pelton, my pleasure of watching you playing on so many topics is constantly ruined by your obvious need to sound so offensive & look so contemptuous either toward the devs or here your fellow players. I really wonder how someone who believes the game to be so broken can actually still have interest into playing it as much as you do (cf. your signature). Is that because you believe it's the only way you may sound legitimate to bash it, or is it because beyond your anger and all the filth, you actually ENJOY the silly wargame it is?

And by the way, apart from my very curiosity about seeing how your "morale" endures a violent bombing firestorm someday, you may also take as a factor in your "facts" the very thing that made fire bombing in Germany and everything else somehow a little different from the Blitz or Leningrad, as these are the very examples you picked up: enduring a firestorm as the victim on the brink of losing everything, and enduring a firestorm as the aggressor witnessing the tide turning don't exactly have the same impact on the minds.
Btw, you sound like someone who has had a lot of contacts and experience with former Hamburg, Koln or Dresden inhabitants, maybe they'll be able to clarify better with you what you believe to be a "nice bonfire", you unbelievable unseen senseless piece of crap. You know, back in those days Adolf Galland would say the night looked like the day. When they tell you how they couldn't tell which carbonized kid under the rubble was whose or when Feldgrau Fritz reads about his family vanishing overnight while he's in garrison somewhere in France, yes, sure, morale +1, all the way man. And thanks the glorious Leader!

It's not because people don't care that they try to pretend that things shall go back to normal, and get back to their lives, or work harder at the factory and please Mr.Speer (what is even easier when you've lost everybody in a "nice bonfire" and Gunther is fighting somewhere in Belorussia, hey!). It's because trying to pretend everything is alright is the only thing that is keeping them from turning insane.

What you call higher morale, is more exactly desperation. And if Leningrad or London inhabitants had hope to somehow cure them from this trait - from late 1943 onwards, what exactly was the Germans' one? So, well, sorry, yeah. Except if you're some SS freak, I do not believe you could actually describe Germany's morale, especially on the frontline, to be noticeably rising from the previous years levels, strangely enough... If desperation for the reds shall count as low morale in 1941, than the opposite is applicable true.