Game results - Tell us how your 1 player game ended

[hei1]

Vistula to Berlin

Axis: intermediate
Soviet: AI (100 normal)
Version 1.02.19
Axis Minor Victory

Losses:
Men: Axis 1748k / Soviet 3220k
Guns: 36k / 40k
AVS: 10500 / 15500
Air: 5500 / 19600

Axis released Budapest and kept it. Pocketed large Soviet formations. River Oder was held and a final counter attack to release Breslau with the rest of 6th SS-Pz Army was a last small victory. Most work was done to reorganize the frontline after T1... Great Game!

[horza66]

1941 GC
Axis Challenging AI
Soviet Experienced (WITE, WITE2)
1.02.18Beta
HWM 574
T169 Soviet resignation as unable to break German lines
Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 4018k/11101k
AFV 24720/67831
Aircraft 15522/36071

[WingedIncubus]

Road to Leningrad
Axis Player WingedIncubus; Advanced Beginner
Soviet Player Normal AI, 100 everywhere
1.02.21 Beta/1.02.21 Beta
Soviet Advantage 1.8 to 1
Ended T17 / Soviet Minor Victory
Axis Losses 67,275 men / 793 Guns / 350 AFV / 765 Aircrafts
Soviet Losses 498,408 men / 7,155 Guns / 2,579 AFV / 2,957 Aircrafts

4th Panzer Group took Pskov on T6, then got bogged down there. Soviet AI quickly formed defensive lines to box me inside the Pskov area and along the Lovat river. By the end, I stll managed to take Dno, Staraya Russa, Velikye Luki, and Andreapol.

Soviet Flak absolutely savaged my bombers. The vast majority of my air losses are from anti-artillery. Soviet had a very heavy concentration of flak around Pskov, to the point I started to wonder if the AI assigned AA brigades to all units!

Easily took Tallinn only with L Corps, because Estonia at first was rather empty of Soviet troops. However, I had no troops to spare to capture Saaremaa, so it became heavily contested with my rearlines getting cut. Sent two Corps from 18th Army to assist, forcing me to thin my line in front of Pskov.

That said, despite this tenuous situation, the Soviet AI made zero attempts to attack me. No ground counterattack, neither on land or air. No attempt to wrestle AS back, no GS, no GA waves, nothing. It would just send air transfers to other airbases during his turn, then reshuffle back its lines all the way to turn 17.

[WingedIncubus]

Operation Typhoon
Axis Player WingedIncubus; Advanced Beginner
Soviet Player AI Easy settings
1.02.21 Beta/1.02.21 Release
Axis Advantage 1.17 to 1
Ended T15 / Axis Minor Victory
Axis Losses 391,965 men / 2,218 Guns / 783 AFV / 337 Aircrafts
Soviet Losses 1,435,306 men / 13,826 Guns / 3,380 AFV / 1,192 Aircrafts

Won by holding every VP except Kalinin, Moscow, and North Moscow. Barely managed to take W Moscow on Turn 13, to bite and hold with the neighboring hexes to reduce frontage. Had I not been able to hold there it would have been a Draw. 16th Army was next to Kalinin too but the blizzard made it impossible for me to capture it.

Failed Soviet localized counterattacks throughout the whole front but most concentrated in front of Tula, where my line the most overextended. In a full GC scenario I would have been forced to stop my moscow offensive to create a continguous defensive line.

[rationabile]

Road to Leningrad
Axis: rationabile/Advanced Beginner
SU: AI/Normal
1.02.21
VP ratio 4110/1658
Reporting on the latest game. I finally was pleased with my performace after over a dozen poor showings. This time, Hell bent for leather to Syasstroy harbor, then hook west to Leningrad and took it on T16. Ignored all victory hexes as such but it turns out all Axis victory hexes but Osinovets and Valdai fell into my lap anyway. I was one hex away from Leningrad on T3. I was beginning to think the AI was unbeatable.
Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 64k/568k
AFV 826/2366
Aircraft 206/16540

After a couple of tries, fighting my way to Leningrad was easy. But after that, and for the next dozen tries, taking it was consistently beyond my reach. Finally decided on a strategy of going north as quickly as possible, with as much fresh infantry as possible, to isolate the city. It was close since fighting through to Tikvin and Syasstroy was slow going. I was pretty elated when Leningrad fell to the second wave of infantry on T16.

[Iam5not8]

GC 41 playing as SOV against AI - mix of Challenging - Hard settings according to my mood and the period of the war.
version 1.02.02_Beta (Nov 2021) to 1.02.25_Beta

Soviet "Sudden victory" in T172, 879 VP Oct 1st 1944
Axis HWM 499 VP

Losses - Axis / Soviet
Manpower : 6,747 k /10,050 k
Guns : 136k / 178k
AFV : 37k / 68k
Air : 23k / 82K
Pilots : 8,1K / 47,3K

[Mehring]

1941 Campaign
Axis Mehring/WitE2 6th solo experiment
Difficulty level: Challenging
Patches: current at late August 2021- late October 2021
HWM 647
This was the first game I abandoned any attempt to replicate historical German advances and instead prepared for winter. The AI deploys Russian armies with 1 hex gaps in the front, but with units behind in the second line. These could sometimes work as traps. By spring 1942, however, given a net loss of Russian units to corps creation, these just became gaps. From then on, I was able to easily surround and destroy the Russians army by army and by Jan 44 this became too boring and I stopped playing. The game had been too predictable for too long and Axis victory was assured.
Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 3,722,000/14,426,000
AFV 14,700/75,300
Aircraft 20,000/56,000

[thedoctorking]

I played a solo 41GC - No Early End. I played the USSR. The settings were Axis morale 120, otherwise normal. I switched to Axis morale 110 in late winter when I wanted to get rid of the effect of 'teleportation' of Axis units on defense. I wanted to try strategic choices to put pressure on sectors to distract the Axis from the sector I was actually going to attack, but found that the same units were fighting me in the south on one turn and up by Leningrad in the next. I continued playing until turn 60, when I decided to start over with a newer patch and escape an annoying bug. Final on-map forces were 6,679,624 men, 86,525 guns, and 9.477 AFVs for the USSR, 3,159,519 men, 33,020 guns, 3,864 AFVs, and 2,921 aircraft for the Germans, 1,034,223 men, 8,330 guns, 341 AFVs, and 475 aircraft for the Axis Allies (the USSR had all its aircraft in the reserve, they amounted to 10,314).

I tried a variety of approaches with the USSR air force, but was consistently unable to achieve any useful results. Over and over, my ground attack or ground support missions would cost a hundred or more aircraft shot down for only a few dozen Axis casualties (even, when looking at detailed battle results, disrupted formations were few in number - generally less than the number of aircraft destroyed if the attack was intercepted by Axis fighters, and even when not intercepted, much lower than what artillery was accomplishing). Aircraft also use a lot of supplies that could be more effective when deployed by my ground troops. So, in a completely unhistorical way, I abandoned the air to the Axis. I noticed that their air force, though somewhat more effective than mine, was not really having much impact on the battles either. This is a huge weakness in the game, and I very strongly encourage the devs to find some way to make air forces more effective. They don't have to live up to the "bombs away" effect of the WitE1 air forces, but there needs to be some game impact for the billions of roubles the USSR and its allies spent on the VVS during the conflict.

The Axis AI was OK after the mid-game switch. There were occasional holes in the Axis line, which I took advantage of when I detected them (one place where aircraft are really useful - but the Soviets have very few recon planes). The frequency of these line keeping errors was lower than in earlier versions; however, I was able to break through and disrupt supplies, even cutting off major Axis penetrations on a couple of occasions, even during summer 1942. The Axis summer 1942 offensive went essentially nowhere - they were able to recapture Orel, but were unable to cut off Leningrad or make much progress towards Moscow. I established a defensive line of fortification units in front of Moscow at great expense, expecting a big push there, and none of them were ever even attacked. On turn 60, I was counterattacking in the Leningrad region and had recaptured Novgorod and Plyussa, cutting the main rail line to the Axis forces, which nonetheless continued attacking towards the Volkhov and Mga rather than effectively defending the Lake Ilmen region. I don't think the Axis AI is very good at defending, though it is better than it used to be. They don't seem to pay a lot of attention to logistical issues, on either side of the line. So at one point, they got adjacent to Kursk, cutting the rail line that runs to the south and putting my troops between Kursk and Kharkov in supply difficulties. I hurriedly brought my armor down and launched a counterattack, clearing the two hexes in front of Kursk. My defenses were quite weak for the first couple of turns, but the Axis didn't make it a priority and just stiffened its lines in front of me with extra (Italian) divisions. Similarly, my cutting the rail line at Plyussa didn't provoke an Axis counterattack to reopen the rail line. Opening the game up as the Axis reveals that they had some stockpiles of supplies in depots in the region, so maybe they just aren't feeling the pain.

Anyway, it was an interesting game, the air stuff aside. The newest beta patch has a modification to a2a combat that might fix the problem of excessive casualties, so I am going to shoot once again for a managed Soviet air war in the game I just started. More on that later.

[Iam5not8]

After the great AAR by Xhoel "The Oder must hold! VtB: xhoel (Axis) vs Gunnulf (Soviet)", I ran a Vistula To Berlin Campaing playing as SOV against Challenging AI GER
From 1.02.25Beta (April2nd 2022) to 1.02.26Beta (April 13th)

Soviet Minor Victory on T14 taking Berlin - VP 936
I should have wait one turn to score Prague and a few others to bump up the score before storming Berlin.

Heavy Mud helped Axis, from T7 to the end of the game.

Losses - Axis / Soviet
Manpower : 2,349 k /2,394 k
Guns : 40.2k / 17.2k
AFV : 12.3k / 9.3k
Air : 4.8k / 12.9K
Flak : 118 / 1,467
Pilots : 4.8K / 8.6K

Playing the same campaign versus H, Kurland makes a huge difference between the 2 experiences.

[OctopusEV]

1941 Campaign

OctopusEV/ Semi-Experienced with WITE2, no minor execution of Air war (Auto)
AI/Custom (all 100 except Soviet set to 95 throughout/Intend as test campaign only)
Continuously patched (incl. most Beta), last 01.02.25Beta

HWM801
Axis Decisive Victory @Turn 94 or 04 April 1943 (!) by 801 VP

Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 2,550k/10,582k
Guns 33,354/172,665
AFV 7,361/50,098
Aircraft 12,969/41,856

Comments:
In early patch versions the Panzer divisions seem from the get go to suffer too much in direct tank combat. Even infantry divisions caused more tank losses to the Russian oppositions. Was better balanced with later patches. Now the Luftwaffe was ruling the sky, when in winter 42/43 the Red Airforce lost 33 fighters and 90 bombers in ground support of a single attack in the plain against hardly any German losses, maybe 13, not only once.

Biggest disbelief to me was the frequent transport performance of the Russian rail. All those divisions brought east, west, north and south all the time and everywhere. I saw one post discussing this already. To me in those chaotic early weeks of the campaign in 41 I would not expect it and would suggest to check, if penalties shouldn’t be applied.

Overall, great fun, although swetting a bit with all those thin lines in mind, held by weak trupps, when hitting F12.

Thanks.

[ElizabethWizard]

1941 Grand Campaign
AI, default
ElizabethWizard, Advanced Beginner
1.2.24/1.2.25
Axis 452
Dec21/
Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 1,082k/2,161k
Guns 12,021/31,809
AFV 3,596/11,753
Aircraft 2,611/10,079

Comments:

Fun. Uh, a little bit underwhelming though? They got through my first set of defenses on the Dnepr but that just turned into a fighting retreat across marshes that they simply could not handle while their infantry had to slowly trudge up 30 to 40 miles a turn. They also committed a serious blunder around turn 9 that let me catch an entire panzer group. 500 captured tanks at the end of that one and it kinda felt like the game was over.

I have no idea why Leningrad didn't fall. It feels like it was isolated for like, a dozen turns in the dead of winter. Which raises some interesting questions.

Other thing I did that might be silly vs AI exploit, since I imagine that's what the comments are designed to attract, was mobilized ALL of my cavalry MULTIPLE times, and just flooded my lines with them, and then if they let me break through I'd dash through and capture a city or fuck up some depots or whatever. Sometime in late december they started falling back, and then maybe caught me napping by stopping their retreat? it literally can't matter at this point though because they lose in 2 turns and... with Leningrad they would have a brand new high water mark of 475. To capture any other victory points in the remaining time and heavy snow would require some kind of like, supersonic hovercraft. I'm fairly confident that the AI isn't hiding a secret division of those anywhere.

Oh, one last question: does the AI not see everything when I have reveal units? Sometimes it felt like it wasn't noticing that I had nearby armor that it could plainly see. Like when I captured the panzer group (though THAT was a cavalry screen for the ages... 16 cavalry divisions...)

[Joel Billings]

The attacking AI tends not to worry about it's flanks, which can be a real problem at times when it is stretched out, especially for the Axis since they have less units. We always suggest that the attacking side AI, especially if Axis, be given more help than you would give the defending side AI. The German AI in 41 really requires at least 110 morale help once you understand the basics of the game. Thanks for your report.

[ElizabethWizard]

Velikie Luki introductory scenario
AI, default
ElizabethWizard, Advanced Beginner
1.2.25
Soviet MAjor Victory
Dec21/
Losses Axis/Soviet
Men 19,244/15,027
Guns 297/216
AFV 3/195
Aircraft 41/151

Comments:

I'm still lost in the air command portion of the game more than half the time, but that's ok. I can just take the GC slowly. Also, I was able to take 3 rifle brigades and turn them into a rifle corps. Not sure that's how it's supposed to work, but I'm not complaining. Is there a way to adjust the number of escorts? Changing the numbers in the doctrines didn't seem to do anything either but I'm also not great at reading reports.

[Joel Billings]

Changing the mission percentage for escorts for the type of air directive should increase the desired number of escorts per bomber, if they are available. Is that not having an impact? If using manual air directives, for non-ground support you can set the requested number of escorts for a mission and the requested number of bombers.

[ElizabethWizard]

I thought I had set the escort percentage to 0. Idk.

[jasonbroomer]

Road to Leningrad
AI/Custom (all 100, no Air Assist)
beginner
1.02. 12

Game 1

1.3 to 1 Soviet Minor Victory
Men 54k/547k
Guns 605/ 8583
AFV 140/ 2536
Aircraft 538/ 1960

Second attempt hit supply problems as I tried to manually work depot system

Third time used some air commands with AI Air assist

AI/Custom (all 100,)
1.02. 13

1 to 1.6
German Minor Victory
Men 61k/630k
Guns 866/ 9794
AFV 184/ 2646
Aircraft 532/ 2512

[Balou]

GC 1941
1.02.29 Beta
No early end
Axis: Balou - advanced, Allies: AI
Difficulty normal, all set to 100
no air assist
Axis auto victory by first week of 1945

Poor/slow beginning in 41 (no Leningrad, no Moscow), however 1st winter without disaster (stopped early digging in) and since everywhere close to big depots (Pskov, Smolensk, Kharkiv, D-Town).Crimea taken, Kerch occupied) no winter disaster. 1942 big offensive mainly S. In 1943 still on the move, In 1944 Moscow and Leningrad, from then on only piecemeal Sov attacks mainly due to manpower shortage on sov side (OOBs in January 44: Ax 3,600k vs Sov 2,300k). By Dec 44 frontline running from Tichvin east to Kazan, south to Kuybychev-Saratov-Stalingrad- Astrakhan. On normal difficulty no real hardships for an advanced player, next time will play on difficult.

[OberstVonWitz]

Air Area (Planning/ Restriction on transfer/Ease of combat planning)

If you got this far and stayed sane a gold star to you.

Due to the difficulty of all of the above with the ground effects (read separation of air phase such that you can't easily even see which HQ you need to GS) for example..... it's unlikely that you will achieve even 50% of your plan.

It's not necessary to go on...

I'm not even going to get into auto AI air control ...

[aMaschina]

Grand Campaign

Axis: intermediate
Soviet: AI (100 normal)
Version whatever applies from april to november 2022
Movement Fog of War, no locked HQ, no locked theaters
Axis Decisive Victory

Losses:
Men: Axis 1689k / Soviet 8487k
Guns: 22k / 126k
AVS: 3060 / 30048
Air: 11326 / 29519

I took Leningrad pretty fast, then I prioritised isolating soviet divisions and never reached a point where the soviets could stop me from penetrating lines and creating new pockets. Only time I was under pressure was the winter 1941/42 period. Spring 1942 gave me enough power to storm Moscow, and from there only a few cities needed to be taken to reach the October 1942 sudden death threshold.

Things Id like to change..:

more tooltips
more love for the air war:

why is there target priority interdiction when I give a recon air directive and then there is the same option for ground attack? why is logistic bombing not a thing? I feel like going ground support 100% of the time was the right thing to do, especially with the huge operational losses...

why does oil play no role?

I dont get why some priority 1 or 2 depots in the rear stockpile supplies when there is a depot with prio 3 or 4 further forward. also why do i need to change the prio of depots one by one? why no multi select via rectangle? it is tedious.

why no customizable loadable filters in the commander screen?

I used

- find FBD's
- show me divisions with TOE% below value X
- show me divisions with TOE% above value X
- show me all divisions sorted by range to their HQ
- show me depleted AOG's
- show HQs above their command limit
...

and i have to input those criteria filters once each and every week.

I have a general understanding of the logistics, I played without AI depot management but the relevant values are hidden way too deep in some screens, why no easy list that works with colors? I tried to bring this up in quick questions thread once:









Usually I am a friend of historical, realistic games, but in this game this leads to weird scenes. Germans lose morale while winning, Soviets win moral while losing. Germans invent heavy tanks although they are blitzing, you get the idea.

[MarkShot]

Usually I am a friend of historical, realistic games, but in this game this leads to weird scenes. Germans lose morale while winning, Soviets win moral while losing. Germans invent heavy tanks although they are blitzing, you get the idea.

I think you have found a reoccurring paradox in serious war games. History and martial science do not necessarily line up. However, I do think GG has struck a fairly good balance.