Road to War Mk. IX

[Riaelyn]

After scrambling up the multiplayer teams, it's that time again. We are several sessions in but only one session of true action. Major features in our group are the using of historical dates for most events and the enforcing of historical wargoals through house rules. For the core of this group, I believe this is either the 5th or 6th game in the series that we are playing together. Each game has been characterized by new people picking up different countries almost every time. As for group composition, it's roughly 1/3 German with the rest being Anglophones of some sort.

The current date in game is late April of 1940.

Far East:
To this point, Japan seized the coast from Nat China (AI) according to house rules.

Africa: Italy seized Ethiopia in '36. Italy has withdrawn from the Italian Libya and British Gurkhas have seized the major ports. There has been surprisingly no conflict in East Africa with both the Italians and Brits focusing on other fronts.

In Poland: Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1, 1939 and Poland (human controlled) put up a fight. At the same time, France had an armored assault upon the Saarland. Germany and France would continue to joust with each other over the Saarland with a few attempts to breach the Maginot. This forced Germany to commit the vast majority of its armor to the defense against France leaving only a handful for Poland. Poland held out until about middle October and captured 1 division of German armor, and one infantry before it was captured. In Poland, British multi-roles were flying various air missions to aid the Poles on the ground.

In the low countries: Germany invaded the low countries on Jan 1, 1940 (almost a guaranteed in this group due to houserules), and easily swept through the Netherlands with infantry. The bulk of the German armor was stationed on the border with Belgium. German paratroopers dropped behind Belgian lines into Hasselt. British Gurkhas paradropped in just south of Hasselt. Overall, the lowlands were overrun rather quickly with a few key river crossing battles being fought.

This game, the UK opted for 10 infantry divisions in the lowlands (houserules give the UK the choice of 5 armored divisions or 10 infantry divisions for the attack on the west). France's buildup consisted heavily of extra armor and artillery. While the UK did not have absolute air dominance, it certainly controlled the skies far more than the Germans did. However, British and French logistical bombing was unable to slow the German advance through the low countries.

In France: France lost only 1-2 divisions in the lowlands. It was able to regroup and form a battle line in France to try to defend Paris from the German forces sweeping through Belgium. However, German armor units were able to form a huge encirclement of the entire French army and capture it. After that, the German tanks raced across France to seize the remaining victory points needed for a French surrender.

From the south, Italians went through the Alps and into France during the French retreat to defend Paris. Germany opted to bring Italy into the war very early.

In the English channel: The German navy clashed with the British navy in what appeared to be a British attempt to exfiltrate their troops from France. It later turned out that it was actually a French transport fleet instead of a British one. The German navy won the battle sinking 3 CA, 3 DD, 4 CL in exchange for one German CA and one German CL. Five French transports were sunk (likely empty).

In the Mediterranean: It seems that were two large engagements in the Mediterranean. One betewen the Italians and Brits, the other between the French and Italians. The British battle resulted in two British BBs and two British DDs being sunk for the UK, while the the Italians lost 19 CL and 7 DD between the French and British battle. The French lost what seems like every capital ship in their navy to the Italians with the exception of its carrier. All of the Italian battleships remain alive. Also, a sizeable portion of Italian subs have been lost to the French and British.

Analysis: Except for a slight mishap in Poland, German ground forces are definitely the best in the war right now. With the event, tons of multi-roles, and now the addition of hordes of Australian medium bombers, the UK easily owns the skies over Europe. Naval dominance has not yet been established for either side with the Germans winning the only fight in the English Channel and the Italian battleships still at large in the Mediterranean despite losing hordes of smaller ships.

Upcoming is arguably the most critical strategic session until Barbarossa for the European theater. The Axis must decide what it is going to do to fill the time until Barbarossa which is over one year away. It could sit back and simply build up for Barbarossa or continue to try to stay on the offensive to keep the Allies off balance by going after areas like Norway and North Africa. Without a doubt, Germany must retake its air space from the UK and minimize the amount of strategic bombing. Further, Canada is at war but has failed to make its presence known yet.

As always, I welcome my groupmates to add their thoughts on the game.

 

[joethepro36]

Perhaps another post is in order?

A summary would be that the Axis did fairly well in the period up to Barbarossa with some victories in the air and sea. Now we wait with baited breath as Barbarossa is two weeks away. Should be fun.

 

[Riaelyn]

Sorry for the interlude but here we go again with some more entries. Two sessions have passed since I have last updated. The two sessions have featured the same basic events happening: 1. German interceptors clashing with Aussie medium bombers and UK multiroles and fighters, 2. naval battles between the Axis and British., and 3. landings and subsequent invasions by UK and Italy.

The current date in game is June 9, 1941. Houserules enforce Barbarossa beginning on June 22, 1941.

Naval Battles between the UK and Germany:

Up until these sessions, Germany had won all engagements easily against the British. The cream of the British fleet is a few SHBB that they had built and had not been encountered yet. As expected, all of the ships being killed up until this point were mostly older ships of all sorts, and a few of the new DD but the SHBB remained at large.

The next engagement between the Germans and UK materialized after Germany realized that 3 fleets of various older ships were shifting to the Med from the home isles to deal with the Italians. Also of note, a group of Canadian transports was in transport to the Med. Germany made the decision to send in its cruiser fleet and did take out the Canadian transports. It was hoped that they would be full of Canadian armored divisions but I believe they were completely empty. The German fleet then engaged an older heavy cruiser UK fleet and traded well. However, a second British fleet was neraby and the German fleet ran to port in Brest on the Brittany coast moderately damaged. Australian naval bombers and British multiroles then began port striking and German interceptors were attempting to intercept. If this was all that had happened, it would have been very unlikely that any ships would have been sunk in port.

The UK however, was rotating its fleets that were guarding the port of Brest. It appeared to Germany that the UK had withdrawn its fleet from Brittany and the coast was clear. This was far from the truth however, as a British fleet was there (I believe it was one of the SHBB fleets, but I could be wrong). Either way, a moderately damaged German cruiser fleet got heavily damaged by this fresh UK fleet and was forced to flee into Brest again. The air war continued over Brest and the combination of UK multiroles and Aussie nav bombers now managed to pick off several of the severely damaged cruisers. Eventually, the UK gave up on bombing Brest and withdrew its fleet. This roughly coincided with the ending of the "their finest hour" modifier which greatly buffs the UK's air capabilities. The German cruiser fleet then made a dash around the home isles and were able to return to fleets in Germany, albeit reduced in size.

Air battles in France:
Aside from the air wars noted above, air dominance in this game was in the British corner for most of it. Once France fell and the British received the "their finest hour" modifier, British multiroles were quite hard for the Axis to deal with. Germany went on a massive building spree of interceptors to counteract this. The British continue to use their starting strat bombers and tac bombers to bomb industry when the opportunity presents itself. Germany had its own air raid from its close air support stationed in France and conducted a series of strikes on Portsmouth while the battle for Sardinia was raging. However, only one old CVL was sunk as the UK saved this small fleet in time.

Now with the "their finest hour" modifier finally ending, German and British air power seems roughly comparable with logistics of air fields deciding the recent engagements.

Italian invasions:
Italy's first invasion was of Greece on roughly the historical date starting from Albania. The invasion went rather smoothly with Italian troops seizing all of Greece. The Allies oped not to land reinforcements in Greece.

Italy's second invasion was retaking Libya (which the Brits had taken), and then driving into Egypt. The momentum was initially in Italy's favor. It had just come off the successful invasion of Greece and come out ahead on a pair of naval engagements off the coast of Greece. Italy then went for a an amphibious invasion on the East side of the Suez hoping to pincer the British forces in Egypt and surround them. However, British air support and a crucial naval battle off of the coast of Alexandria reversed this. This British then began a drive into Italian Libya after clearing up the amphibious forces east of the Suez and the German paratrooper division that was helped them.

The British then began pushing into Italian Libya. Italy doubled down and reinforced Italian Libya with more infantry divisions. I believe another German paratrooper division was sent to help also. However, with no naval support and little air support, the Italians were pushed back and encircled. These battles also marked the first time that Canadian armored divisions were used in combat.

Invasion of Sardinia:
The UK was coming just off of its recent victory in North Africa and invaded Sardinia with about a corp of marines and a Gurkha division. They took Cagliari as it was undefended and then began driving north to seize the port of Olbia. Italy, undeterred by losses in North Africa, managed to slip about two corp of infantry into this port. A massive air battle erupted over Cagliari with both sides straining to fresh planes to throw into the battle. Axis air power came on top allowing Axis ground forces to retake Sardinia. Perhaps the most clutch moment during the battle of Cagliari was British fighter planes turning back two of three German paratrooper transport planes that were dropping on Cagliari. Instead of three paratrooper divisions, only one was able to successfully land on Cagliari and begin fighting for the port. This division lost its fight and was captured just hours before the Italians managed to breakthrough to the border of Cagliari. The British lost a few marine divisions on Sardinia.

Invasion of Yugoslavia:
In 1941, the Axis attacked Yugoslavia (human). (Yes, someone wanted to play Yugoslavia after he had played Poland). Yugoslavia concentrated the bulk of its defenses against Bulgaria, Romanian, and Hungary (all human controlled). German armor was able to come on Yugoslavia's relatively undefended western flank and end the war quickly. Yugoslavia had not been under human control since the start of the game and it showed greatly.

Calm before the storm:
Like most of the large declarations of war, activity went into a lull with the Axis getting its final preparations in place for Barbarossa.

Current naval outlook:
As it stands, Germany still has a functional cruiser fleet but it was greatly reduced due to the fighting in and around the port of Brest. It is unknown how well this fleet would stand up to the British. The UK still retains all of its SHBB which is what the majority of their naval investment went into. The rest of its ships consist of what is left of its starter fleet and some newer destroyers. It still has all of its starting carriers except for one CVL. As far as Italy stands, it is relying mostly on light cruisers in its fleet. While it certainly will still be able to fight the British, it will likely incur great losses to do so.

Preview of Barbarossa:
As with all HOI games, all eyes now turn eastwards. The Soviets have focused heavily on the construction of infantry divisions. These infantry divisions are manning what appears to be a completed Stalin line (houserules limit fort construction to level 5 in a province). Behind this line, in a few locations are the Soviet armored reserves which will certainly be used to try to plug any holes in the line or counterattack if the opportunity presents itself. This has given them a larger army by brigade count but at the cost of armored divisions. The Soviets will need to hold their fortified line or they will lose their investment in those defenses. It remains to be seen what the Soviets will build with the "Rodina" modifier active.

Germany has lined up its land army along empty Soviet border provinces. Germany will need to overcome the fact that it did not go for an IC build and has given its navy far more focus than most other games. Of course the German strategy will be to move quickly and try to overrun everything while the "Destiny" modifier still lasts in 1941. Germany's main strategic considerations will be how to divide the armor and infantry between the fronts pushing eastward and where to try to cause breakthroughs. Germany will not need to worry about a second front in fortress Europe until the middle of 1942 (houserules). If the Germans have not done critical damage to the Soviets by then, they will likely be outproduced and suffer a war of attrition. Also, the British and Americans will certainly be looking for a location to make landfall in Europe as soon as they can. The Axis will need to figure out where to deploy the Axis minors to use them to their best effect.

And with that, we go into Barbarossa this week.

 

[joethepro36]

I would like to add, since I am subbing Romania, that Romanian infantry quickly and effectively overran the Yugoslav positions. Romania has the best infantry of the Axis minors, having been built from the ground up by myself. I seem to have acquired a talent for building up armies brigade by brigade that seems to give me an edge over other players. Adding to my ability to control air combat, I believe these two factors distinguish myself in the group as either the best or among the best of the group at these two aspects of the game.

The air war over Brest was very difficult to the point where the micro was so heavy I had to beg my comrades to help share in the micromanagement. I came to a crisis point before the first cruisers were sunk in port, declaring that "I just can't do it, we don't have enough". (INTs) Even so I managed to rearrange air wings on the fly and transport them back and forth to Paris and Germany. Paris and Hasselt in Germany were the two top airbases I kept using to reorg and refit air wings damaged by successive combat sorties. Over time our numbers were brought to bear and my extensive logistical backing of the luftwaffe paid off with Brest's airspace firmly under our control. Once air parity had been achieved, it was easy to control the skies of south west England. Plymouth became a turkey shoot for the Jagdgeschwader wings over the weakened RAF.

Many months after the painful victory in the skies over Brest, the fleet we had moved around the UK back to home base on a very carefully planned and well executed mission back home. We have linked up our forces now with our navy highly experienced and well fitted out. The UK player however is fairly savvy and has prepared his navy accordingly.

Over Sardinia, the air war was initially difficult but the UK did not have the air infrastructure to hold the area. We quickly and effectively won control of the skies and began bombing missions using medium bombers on the enemy positions. Unfortunately microing the air out of Rome was still difficult and a temporary lapse in the air control allowed the RAF to intercept paratroopers coming in. A shame but the operation was still a success.

Barbarossa will be fun. That's all I'm saying about it.

 

[Riaelyn]

June 9, 1941- December 1, 1941

The session consisted of two main fights: the Allied invasion of Italy and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.

Soviet defense
Houserules mandate the war begins on June 22, 1941. The Soviet Union held what looked like the Stalin line (or close enough). The Soviet Union had built up some forts in key areas and manned the line with lots of infantry. It seemed to have 3-4 mobile armor corps as reserved behind the line with some spare infantry. The Soviet Union had also spent some IC on a bit of interceptors, but the vast bulk of their lineup with infantry with AT.

German offense
The German build was centered around medium armor tank divisions and infantry with a mix of art and AT. The Germans only allocated 1 corps of medium armor to the north, 1 corps of medium armor to the center, and 6 corps of medium armor to the south. The north consisted mostly of infantry and the center only had a small amount of infantry. The south received all elite troops as well as the aid of paratroopers and transport aircraft for supplies. Overall, the Germans overloaded the south and purposefully left the north and center sectors weak.

Initial moves
Germany moved its infantry in the North to meet the Soviet defensive line near Leningrad. Being outnumbered, the German infantry couldn't press into the Soviet lines. The South was where the real action was happening. The Germans had so much armor in the south that they were having supply issues before contact was even made, but breached the Soviet defensive line near Kiev. The Germans initially went for a massive encirclement in the south but when the supply situation was looking too unstable, switched to 4-5 smaller pockets which it successfully achieved. Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Romanian troops followed up the German armored thrust. The German armor surrounded the vast majority of Soviet units in the south and then turned northwards towards the center sector. Hungarian and Bulgarian infantry then began to race for Stalingrad with no defenses in front of them.

Center sector
The German armor continued succeeding in getting encirclements and pushed directly towards Moscow. The first attack on Moscow failed but achieved a high number of Soviet casualties. The second armored attack on Moscow succeeded in capturing it.

Northern sector
After Moscow fell and the German armor began shifting North, the remaining Soviet forces in Leningrad retreated deep into the Soviet Union. Germany and Hungary picked up the remaining VPs necessary to force a surrender and enforced the "Drang" wargoal per houserules. I believe the Soviets surrendered in late October.

Analysis:
The Germans (while smaller in force than a typical game due to a naval build) were able to bring the vast majority of their armor to battle with each other in each sector at a time. Further, the Soviets were never able to begin offensive operations in the sectors in which there was very little German armor (north and center) and punish the Germans for committing the majority of its armor in a single sector. What little Soviet tanks there were could were outclassed in armor piercing and armor by the German armor which greatly outnumbered it. The Soviets had banked on a static line defense to hold which did not. While this may have worked if Germany had equally split its forces between the three sectors, it overloaded each sector and defeated them in turn. The North sector and half of the center sector fled to avoid capture.

The greatest Soviet victories were in the skies. German fighters were stretched thin between this theater and Italy and it showed for quite some time. Several German transports got heavily damaged some of the supplies that they were dropping were getting log bombed as soon as they were dropped off. Even with the trouble in the skies, the Germans were able to continually push and encircle led by their armored corps.

With the Rodina modifier, the Soviet Union began spamming a lot of heavy armor brigades which it presumably would add to its infantry divisions for extra firepower. Very few of them were produced before Soviet Union capitulated.

Invasion of Italy:
Only a few days after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the UK invaded Vichy North Africa and Sicily (houserules mandate that Vichy Africa was be attacked at the same time as an attack on Italy). D-Day is forbidden until middle of 1942 per houserules. Canadian armor, British ground forces, and Aussie bombers with British air forces were all present in Italy. Germany committed a panzer corps and fresh recruits to hold key positions in Italy. The British held control of the skies for the vast majority of the time and despite pounding the Italians hard with bombers, could not advance between Southern Italy. When the UK realized that Soviet collapse was imminent, they withdrew all allied forces into Sicily.

Overall Analysis:
Germany seems to have survived and prospered greatly despite its gamble with a naval build. Britain stands alone again but only for a short time as the USA and Japan will enter the war on Dec 7, 1941. In 1942, the Axis is allowed to declare war on any nation (except Switzerland). It seems likely that the game will again return to the UK vs. Ger and Ita in the west and USA vs. Jap in the east. The Soviet Union is allowed to start a continuation war one year after their defeat.

To the future:
Japan has been involved in a few small wars with Chinese minors. The U.S. has been sitting back building up its forces. It is unknown has much lend lease the U.S. has been sending out. The great carrier battles of the Pacific and island hopping campaigns are about to begin.

 

[Maestor]

I'd like to make a comment on your analysis. The Soviet defense was destined to fail for the simple reason that even with a lvl 5 fort (max lvl as per houserules) 5 infantry divisions consisting of 3INF1AT are weaker than an attacking armored corps consisting of 1ARM1MOT1SPART1TD1AC.

If you do the math, the numbers 'll tell you the Soviets cannot hold. Based on dec 1941 techs of Germany in this game:

1 Soviet division has 16 soft attack and 13 hard attack 27 defensiveness 27 toughness + 5% combined arms.
1 German division has 19 hard attack, 20 soft attack 29 defensiveness 30 toughness 43% softness +30% combined arms bonus, but a 50% forts penalty.

Roughly equal defensiveness (hit evasion) and toughness (critical hits) means we can pretty much ignore them.

Now in the case of the veteran German armored corps we are talking 30~40% experience whereas the Soviets have 10% or none. The Soviets will have dug in giving them a 10% bonus. German generals in these veteran corps are all at least level 5, though some are level 7 or 8, and it's battlemasters and offensive leaders all the way down in the command structure, so we can add another 20~30% there.

The higher lvl generals also means extra bonuses thanks to them picking better tactics.

In terms of org the Soviets were way behind in both techs and the officer ratio. So we have German corps with 80 org fighting soviets with 50ish org.

When combat starts and we attack a fort on plains (no terrain penalties) the German corps will use its 20 soft attack against the soviet divisions whereas the soviet divisions will be using their 13 hard attack due to the German division's low softness (less than 50%). Not only can the Germans pack more divisions on the same frontage (2 front width vs the soviet 3 front width), each division can easily beat its soviet counterpart. This is because the Germans will be fighting at a much higher efficiency (basically a soft attack multiplier based on all the % bonuses above) and the Soviets will run out of org much much faster than they manage to de-org our Germans.

So a rough calculation (using conservative estimates for the Germans) would be for 10 frontage:

5 German armored divisions (20 frontage) with 100 soft attack with a 30+30+20+25-50 = 65% bonus = 165 soft attack

against

4 soviet divisions (12 frontage) with 52 hard attack with a 10+10+30= 50% bonus = 78 hard attack

And that's ignoring doctrines (another 10% there for armor) tech differences, the destiny event and probably lots of other stuff. The idea is that there is no way the Soviets are going to hold and therefore the fortresses are a bad strategy. A properly constructed Soviet infantry corps (2INF2ART1AT - 2 front width as per house rules, 1 would be better) would've done more to stop the German attack than the current setup in a lvl 5 fort.

Edit: the forts are a 50% penalty to the Germans, not a 50% bonus to the soviets.

Addition: Now if you go playing around with reinforcing and breaking off supporting attacks from neighboring provinces you can strengthen the German attack even further.

 

[Riaelyn]

Yeah, and I noticed from the tech spying screen that the Soviets didn't have superior firepower. And all that tech they spent on heavy armor was basically wasted because they didn't have a chance to get any of them out. And I think our infantry may have been a level higher overall. And we were fielding a good amount of artillery while they had none. There's a whole multitude of reasons that the German army performed as well as it did. I still think the critical factor was the fact that the Soviets had no real offensive potential which let us get away with completely overloading the south with armored corps like we did. While the armored corps would likely still have overrun Soviet divisions if they were spread out, I don't think it would have been quite as dominant if they were forced to spread out amongst the three sectors of the line evenly.

Candidly, we were having supply issues long before we should have and it wasn't really mattering. That was one of my big indicators. Another, was the fact that I thought the Soviets had close to a continuous line of forts. In reality, they had only beefed up a few certain locations. I'll go into a big number crunch and analysis of the German army vs. Soviet army once I look at the saves after the game is over. Until then, I think people get the basic idea of what happened last session.