I Love Russian Artillery

[Zemke]

I have been playing my first ever human vs human PBEM game as the USSR. And frankly it has been the most fun I have had playing this game! We are playing the Bitter End Campaign and the settings are Realistic Blizzard and no +1/-1 anything and better CV math. We are now into the end of Summer 1943, I have lost Leningrad and Moscow, and it is a slow tough slog taking land back so far, but a lot of fun too. I may lose, but I don't care, I have learned so much so far.

I wanted to post this to players not sure about playing the Russians, as most seem to want to play the Germans, as I did, and just give them some insight into my experience and mistakes so far.

The first step is you have to find a German opponent that is really into the game for the long haul, or else you are wasting your time. I was lucky and found a solid opponent who, after the "good times" have pasted is now sticking with the game and giving me the opportunity to "strike back"!

I have made many many mistakes. The mistakes you make in 1941 will echo throughout the game. Best advice I have is save every Infantry Division possible. You can get land back, you cannot get experienced troops back.

AP points are life, be as careful spending them as possible, unless it is absolutely necessary. I have found I NEVER have enough AP.

Delay the fall of Leningrad, maybe hold it, but that will help greatly.

Get Organized and Stay organized. The most fun for me has been correcting my mess of an organization from the 41 campaign, and getting Armies and Fronts organized. DO NOT Overload the Command Structure, very easy to do. One of my worse mistakes was just attaching too many units under one command. Cost AP to fix, one that you can prevent if you just take the time to stay organized from the start.

Russian Arty/Rocket Divs have made offensive operations possible. My opponent has been very adapt at fortifying his lines. The only way I seem to break them is through lots of Arty!

Anyway, if you have never played the Russians, try them, they are a lot of fun if you can get through the first year and a half.

In summation:
1. Find a German who will play to the "bitter end", or else you are just there for his first year and a half of fun beating the hell out of you.
2. Save every Russian unit possible. I usually had plenty of units, but it was the quality of those units that mattered. Almost every Division the Russians have at the start is gold. Save as many as possible, you can get the land back, but not the men.
3. Get organized and Stay organized. Very important, and keeps you from wasting AP later.
4. Delay the fall of Leningrad as long as possible. That is the one fight worth fighting for, assuming the Germans are not about to take Moscow or something.
5. Build LOTS of Artillery Divisions to support your offenses. You need to them to break German defensive positions. Send a bullet the 300mm rocket and 152mm kind, not a man, save those Russian lives!

Good Luck

[xhoel]

Solid advice. It is hard to find an opponent who is willing to go all the way to 1945 though, but it seems that you and I got lucky!

[56ajax]

All the above sounds reasonable to me, though I question 'you can get the land back, but not the men'.

Land = manpower (recruits) and railway capacity.

Fundamental Soviet dilemma, if you stand and fight you lose your army, and if you retreat you lose your future army.

[Zemke]

ORIGINAL: 56ajax

All the above sounds reasonable to me, though I question 'you can get the land back, but not the men'.

Land = manpower (recruits) and railway capacity.

Fundamental Soviet dilemma, if you stand and fight you lose your army, and if you retreat you lose your future army.

I thought as you did, and I could be wrong, but upon looking closely at where the Russians were getting their manpower, it is mostly in the East of the line I held the German's maximum advance.I have lost rail capacity, but not so much that I really notice it that much. I almost never need all of it. If you are having to rail more than one Army often, you have much bigger problems anyway.

In chronological order the following major cities were lost: Leningrad in Nov 1941
Moscow in the Spring of 42
Kharkov, Stalino, Voroshilovgrad and Rostov in the Summer of 42

Tula, Kursk, Orel and Belgorod all were held. The creation of quality Infantry Corps, in Armies facing the main German 42 Offense, greatly slowed the 42 attacks.

As the Russians you have to be patient, and walk a tightrope balancing act of delaying and holding, and falling back.

I guess my last thing I have learned, is if you don't lose too badly in 42, and you have nurtured your Russian soldiers, trained them, protected them, a war machine that is hugely massive will arise from the ashes. That Russian Army will and has been retaking land. Where once I could not hope to push back a 3 stack of GD and 2 SS Divisions, now, I do it regularly, and there is just not enough elite German Divisions to go around.

[Arstavidios]

The German army in 1943 is still powerfull but you cannot be everywhere. At some point the soviets start punching holes in your front lines faster that you can patch them which becomes problematic. especially a your front line extends unless you're ready to give up valuable patches of real estate.

[chaos45]

Zemke interested in seeing how long it takes you to get to Berlin with losing both Leningrad and Moscow...losing both those is a huge hit to soviet manpower esp if you lose them in 1941 when you have the biggest manpower multiplier.

[helpmenow]

New username, still the same old charlie, ya know the charlie0311 of Wite infamy. Chuckle. Over two years now, easy, since I learned to play pretty well. Still can't find an appropriate opponent. Er, that would be don't cheat, quit, or use gamey tricks. Lots of characters.

Computer was broken again, browser hijacked, Matrix/Slitherine ugh. Was and have been a lurker for some time now. Then this came along, two guys playing in a sportsmanlike manner, pretty neat.

PM or email chat is welcome, so come on in.

Gonna post in opponents wanted.

[Crackaces]

Build LOTS of Artillery Divisions to support your offenses. You need to them to break German defensive positions. Send a bullet the 300mm rocket and 152mm kind, not a man, save those Russian lives!

I am not familiar with Soviet SU's as I am with the Germans. But firepower is the determiner of battle not CV .. well adjusted CV .. you have SU's with great firepower and the target hex does not .. and soon the units in the target hex are disrupted while the attackers are not .. adjusted CV goes "wacky" and a 1:1 starting contest becomes a rout ..

The most effective "SU" is the ground support attack aircraft from the standpoint it happens before any other combat takes place. You disrupt devices before they have a chance to do anything .. Stuka's are devastating from that standpoint ..

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: Zemke

ORIGINAL: 56ajax

All the above sounds reasonable to me, though I question 'you can get the land back, but not the men'.

Land = manpower (recruits) and railway capacity.

Fundamental Soviet dilemma, if you stand and fight you lose your army, and if you retreat you lose your future army.

I thought as you did, and I could be wrong, but upon looking closely at where the Russians were getting their manpower, it is mostly in the East of the line I held the German's maximum advance.I have lost rail capacity, but not so much that I really notice it that much. I almost never need all of it. If you are having to rail more than one Army often, you have much bigger problems anyway.

In chronological order the following major cities were lost: Leningrad in Nov 1941
Moscow in the Spring of 42
Kharkov, Stalino, Voroshilovgrad and Rostov in the Summer of 42

Tula, Kursk, Orel and Belgorod all were held. The creation of quality Infantry Corps, in Armies facing the main German 42 Offense, greatly slowed the 42 attacks.

As the Russians you have to be patient, and walk a tightrope balancing act of delaying and holding, and falling back.

I guess my last thing I have learned, is if you don't lose too badly in 42, and you have nurtured your Russian soldiers, trained them, protected them, a war machine that is hugely massive will arise from the ashes. That Russian Army will and has been retaking land. Where once I could not hope to push back a 3 stack of GD and 2 SS Divisions, now, I do it regularly, and there is just not enough elite German Divisions to go around.

I assume you are a master of the Soviet game or your opponent is inexperienced. (Or you have excellent house rules).

In my current game every town you mention above is in AXIS hands prior to the blizzard. From memory Leningrad by T8 and Moscow by T13? If I stand my armies get eaten and if I run I lose manpower, industry, rail etc.

In the game before that against ST, Axis forces were well past Pskov when I opened T2. The game is won or lost on T1.

Then again perhaps my game needs improvement.

[Saulust]

Yeah I recommend playing the Soviets in the GC, it is really quite fun, especially against the terrible German AI, which doesn't ever give up and you can learn a lot. IME however if you are good enough already you wont learn how to retreat against it though, it is not a good T1 player, let alone beyond![;)]

The good stuff is the more mailable management and being able to create pools of and assigning SUs almost to your liking and Air Rgmts from I think T8 at the restriction of eight news one per turn. Plenty of room for upgrading to better fighters and for an armada of ground attack Il-2s to assist your Soviet 2.0 or 1.5 Army... ha!

[Zemke]

I guess every game is different, depending on how each side is played. This is my first game as the Soviets against a human, like I said. I did not seek out some super experienced German player, I asked for equal experience level playing human opponents. We have no agreed upon house rules, other than nothing that was not historically done, but nothing in writing, a gentleman's game, if you will. But what you describe is off the charts to me, I cannot do anything close to that as the Germans against the Computer, much less a human. Looks like my German play needs work.

The entire purpose of this thread is to encourage people to try the Russians. But I think you need to play someone who has not played the Germans that much, equal skill levels if you will.

This last fall I have got back into this game. I bought it when it first came out, played the computer a few times, played one human opponent as Germans, and that is it. I am SURE if I had played someone who has been playing this game as Germans from day one, the Germans would be sitting in the Urals somewhere.

Maybe the game is not balanced, I have no idea honestly. If two equal opponents played the game based on what was done historically, and the results are not similar, then the game has issues, IMO. That should have been the bedrock test case during development. I do not know if that done or not. I do not know if the game has balance issues, as I have limited experience to date and have not kept up with all the discussions and patches over the years.

My entire point is if you like a challenge, try the Soviets, but against someone who is equally new to the Axis side.

[Zemke]

ORIGINAL: chaos45

Zemke interested in seeing how long it takes you to get to Berlin with losing both Leningrad and Moscow...losing both those is a huge hit to soviet manpower esp if you lose them in 1941 when you have the biggest manpower multiplier.

We are in the last turns of 43 clear weather, and frankly it is slow going (really slow). But, this last month, I have retaken significant chucks of territory. The Germans can dig in REALLY fast, faster than I can, which is why I lead with the "I love Russian Artillery", because without it, I would be going no where fast.

I have no base line of experience to draw upon here. It feels slow, hell it is slow. What land I have retaken has been the result primarily of large turning movements or salients pushed into his line, then he withdraws. Success slowly accelerated as the Summer went along. So yeah, I am interested to see how long it takes also, or if I even can get there. I still have not liberated any of my major occupied cites, other than Rostov. We will go into the Fall mud turns with my cities still under the boot heal of the enemy.

[Saulust]

Oh I should point out that you can play with much harder settings against the AI to make the results of the German AI much better at attacking your Soviets units, which might induce you to at least retreat here and there a bit more. It still manoeuvres like crap overall although it can still create quite a few pockets against you in the Centre and North, it just doesn't do the greater Lvov or Rovno-Shepetrovka pockets in the south. One thing I find is if you cut its supply lines off regularly enough and can even seal its forward elements off it pretty much stops advancing. It will try to rush into pockets more units especially those with high MP to re-connect pockets and it tries to pull back out its Infantry Divisions, but that ends up with the the German AI leaving its juicy Pz & Mot Divs cut off, ineffective without fuel and hung out dry and ultimately in the bag.

Cavalry Divisions are your Panzer equivalents as the Soviets to go deep with and to create great pockets, at least against the AI.

In regards to good German players getting Pz Divs to Pskov on T2, they are in all likelihood getting one or more Pz Divs across the Dvina River on T1, even capturing Riga with XLI Pz Korps. Check out some good AAR to see that if you don't know how to achieve such things German T1 yourself. Also start with units from the back first, even rail some forwards and remember always if IDs can reach it and attack or assault Soviet units in the way do so only with the Infantry, they open the way for the Pz & Mot Divs which are for going as far as 50 MP can get them deep on T1, with a few hasty attacks towards the end of their advances that create huge pockets. The Air stuff is another matter of mastery to finesse, look into to that topic heavily to achieve expert results... and let me know too if you do please. All I know is you need to know how to move airbases around a bit and transfer the right planes to newly advanced airbases on T1 so that your Stukas can wipe out most of the forward Soviet airframes. I'm not an expert at that yet myself unfortunately.

It shall be slow to advance back against a human controlled Axis side as expected.

[Zemke]

Yeah, I have no idea how to do any of that fancy air force stuff. I do recon, I bomb units, I bomb airfields, send air groups to National Reserve when they are low moral or high fatigue, (which does not seem to help much), and build new air units and send them out to fly and die, and build more. The whole air thing seems a bit like voodoo to me.