No, it is about who loses more badly, Red Army or Wehrmacht.
Whatever happens, you will be victorious.
It is a long road to Rome...
No, it is about who loses more badly, Red Army or Wehrmacht.
Whatever happens, you will be victorious.
It is a long road to Rome...
It's a long way back to the Alps. :P
Brilliant update, as always!
I'm actually surprised by the low number of Soviet divisions fighting in Poland and the Baltic States. Judging from the screenshots you posted there doesn't seem to be much more formations than 20 or so. Hopefully you'll be able to reach the German frontline in eastern Germany and close a pocket which will further reduce the number of enemy divisions facing Il Duce and Der Fuhrer. Seems strange the Germans are unable to hold a front so weakly held by Soviet troops, but than again, the German AI is known to behave in very strange ways in your game!
Just wondering why you used a reserve army in the Ukraine, instead of bolstering the spearhead aiming for the German front? Seems to me the army with it's 3 corps could be of more use there than as a distraction in the Ukraine.
haha, I bet this felt good right?Originally Posted by Myth
"Now theatres are a very special animal..."
I applaud your efforts to save the war for the Germans...
But I think you will ultimately fail, and the Soviet hordes will own Europe
"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice. Where are all of the Soviet divisions? What's with their AI commands (and "commanders")? Methinks the last two offensives against the Red Army had a more dramatic effect then I previously suspected. Definitely staying tuned to see how all of this plays out.
Be a craftsman in speech, thou mayest be strong, the tongue is a sword to a man, and speech is more valorous than any fighting.... Instruction for King Merikare of ancient Egypt
Awarded 2 Bronze Stars by Kanitatlan and 1 Silver Star
How's the manpower doing?
I'd like to see a northern corps of the italian army racing to the baltic and cutting off the entire soviet front from supplies but i think that's a little unrealistic.
Maybe i'd go for building some forts along the alps and the shortest line in yugoslavia. but that's take a century to make them worthwhile.
If the italian people are up to it then to go back and forth trading space and blood for pockets and encirclements ...
Well, I can just wait for the next update. Indeed, the jury is out.
Fan of the Week: 08/02/08
Please go HERE, and help us develop new TT's for AoD!
Awarded a Cookie by Remble, for spotting the Austrian Interceptor Squadron.
Approved AAR's:
China's AARight to be Hostile - A different way for the Guomindang By Porkman
The Setting Sun - Gotterdammerung, Japan 1944 By Remble
Red Star over Blue Seas - a Soviet Navy AAR By th3freakie
Explorations in Strategy - Italy at War By Myth
sAARawakian history I By guy_montag
honestly, I'm impressed, this already became one of the most comical AARs ever. With an exceptionally gifted writer like you it reads almost like a historically study - which let us really wondering about the real character of some famous studies... :-)))))))
Its wonderful! It's the biggist AAR i have ever seen.
İ just have a cute question. How is marine units aganist infantries in the land area? (not seaside.)
walnutr113: We'll see how it goes?
Stuyvesant: No. The English Channel is a gauntlet and the damn Germans don't deserve support from my carriers!
Axe27: How interesting.
Enewald: Interesting way to look at it. Could be true.
Lamahorse: It certainly is.
timkoningskelp: Well those screenshots are at the height where it compresses stacks into single tokens (or two if some are standing and others moving) so 20 or so divisions is deception rather than anything else. I used my reserve army at the Dnepr to stabilize that front and prevent any Soviet predations in my rear, basically. I have faith in my three attacking armies.
Juan_de_Marco:
Leviathan07: We'll see.
WhisperingDeath: Hehe, I did manage to hit them somewhat hard although obviously not hard enough yet.
NERFGEN: Maybe back and forth is over now. Instead, just forth!
Maj. von Mauser: Yep.
wuffer: Well, even historians are human.
ERTURKHAN: I think broadly the same, maybe a bit stronger, but I've not looked at the stats in a rather long time so I can't say for sure.
Next update Sunday! I'll be gone today and tomorrow, going up to see my sister in Amherst.
Found this AAR this week and lost myself read it from the beggining. The quest for sealing the mediterranean, the problems in Spain, the huge encirclement in the Balkans, all the strategic theory... can say it's being an enriching and pleasant reading!
Is Britain sleeping? What of that fleet in palestine, still there?
"Guys who are not famous, rich, powerfull, well known or influent can also make phrases." - Leumatiello
AARs:
* Finished the succesfull attempt to rebuild the Serenissima Roman Republic with Venice in The Winged Lyons of Mediterranean, my first AAR.
EU2, completed.
* Trial to acquire fame as Nadir Shah in the Military campaigns of some of the finnest warriors in the world, volume 2, the ultimate multiplayer EU2 AAR.
EU2. Had to abandon my part in the middle of history, unfortunately...
We are waiting...
So, A mighty advance in a rearward direction? ("bagudrettet frontforskydning/frontudretning" in danish, a quote from the danish translation of a "Wochenshau" from -44..It was not allowed to say retreat...NERFGEN: Maybe back and forth is over now. Instead, just forth!
..although this might not really be a retreat, even though you are headed for the allied capitol! ..
Reminds of a rather different quote: "We're not retreating, we're just retreating into a different direction."
Peter Ebbesen was rather fond of the 'Advancing in retrograde' expression.
I had forgotten that Britain still has its fleet - they just can't send the non-interned portions of it into the Med. Oh well, I guess your carriers can still do valuable service for you in the Black Sea - perhaps evacuating all those wounded Italians back home?
Although the numbers of Soviet casualties reported have not been that large, he has been destroying brigade and division size units continuously, and the casualties never reflect the true extent of the death and destruction Myth has wrought on the Red Army.
hmm.. I wonder if there is still that function in the game, whereby you have a chance to capture a ship if you overrun the port it is in? ..it is/was a rather small chance, but I have (in HOI1..)captured both a french battleship (italians overrunning port before Vichy) and danish/dutch ships, as germany..not in the same game, though..Peter Ebbesen was rather fond of the 'Advancing in retrograde' expression.
I had forgotten that Britain still has its fleet - they just can't send the non-interned portions of it into the Med. Oh well, I guess your carriers can still do valuable service for you in the Black Sea - perhaps evacuating all those wounded Italians back home?
Leumatiello: Britain isn't just sleeping, it's positively comatose!
ERTURKHAN: The wait will soon be over!
BlitzMartinDK: They may be allies, but they're almost as bad as my enemies!
Baltasar: Rather, "we're not retreating, we're advancing in another direction."And although that sounds very tongue-in-cheek and denial-prone today, the context in which it was used it really did make sense. When the Marine Corps was withdrawing in the winter of '50 back south, the ChiComs were infiltrating around all sides and so they really did have to retake land they had already conquered before.
Stuyvesant:
Forster: That's true.
BlitzMartinDK: No idea.
Update coming up!
The Year of Ruin
Part 12: Operation Save-Ze-Germans III, June 28 – July 3, 1945
The endgame of any campaign is always difficult to foretell with any great accuracy by those involved in its planning and execution. In part, this because of the uncertainty and danger that permeate the strategic world; one can rarely know with certainty what was over the next hill, to take a minor tactical example. Of course, in war the enemy always has a vote too. They always have a significant input into the conduct of any operation, as well as the processes of war termination and the ultimate end state of any war. After oneself, the enemy is the most important factor in any war and that is to view war through an ethnocentric lens, for really the enemy is exactly as important as oneself. The lesson is necessarily that both proclamations of victory and of defeat are always premature and that either end result will arrive when it arrives and not before.
Yet Mussolini was hoping to push the war against the Soviet Union into endgame. He could not be sure where the majority of Soviet formations were, but he hoped to smash those in Poland at the very least. Simultaneously, he hoped to dominate the eastern front territorially, thus forcing the Germans to fight behind his Italians. This would have the salutary result of the Germans probably advancing to hold the territory that the Italians took, thus getting at least some use out of them. Of course, to achieve this, the Italians would need to accomplish stunning success in Poland. Mussolini planned to do so by sending Bastico striking toward Warsaw. In fact, Bastico’s push toward Warsaw would have many parallels with his push on Moscow. Both were undertaken without his full force and, indeed, his advance to Warsaw was even weaker than toward Moscow! He could only deploy a single full corps against Warsaw, as distractions behind him required the deployment of other forces in that direction. Pintor was fortunately to his south and could lend support, but this support was academic as long as he had not broken through the concentration of Soviet and Polish formations before him. All the while, the Germans were being punished.
Bastico, marching on Warsaw with a single corps.
The result of this confluence of factors meant that Bastico had to resort to maneuver to achieve his goal. Fortunately, past experience showed him to be a master of maneuver, as the Illyrian campaigns indicated. Even with one corps, he could be dangerous. Thus, while Pintor forged through Soviet formations to try to protect Bastico’s southern flank, Bastico’s solitary corps threw itself in three different directions to try to take Warsaw. Here was yet another parallel with Moscow, where his vanguard corps undertook exactly the same sort of operation. Even the details of approaches were parallel, for Bastico’s forces approached both cities from the south, east and northeast—or tried to. Further like at Moscow, Bastico’s vanguard corps was very exposed, with extremely long and unprotected flanks on both sides. And, finally, the Soviets were beginning to react as stubborn defense bought them time. If Bastico had been a lesser man, he would have been cowed by such an alignment of factors for the second time in half a year. Yet he was not, instead he completely threw himself into the conduct of this important push.
Bastico’s lone corps closing on Warsaw, slowly.
Meanwhile, on the Dnepr, Soviet pressure also intensified. The Soviets were much more numerous than the formations of the two Italian armies deployed to distract and hold them, those of Graziani and Guzzoni. The Germans too were worthless, either unwilling to actively engage unless under direct Italian operational control or were deploying back and forth like entire formations of thousands of men were headless chickens. As before Warsaw, frequently the Italians were dedicating single corps to operations which required armies. So it was around Kharkov, where three divisions aimed to occupy the city, save their corps headquarters from the assault of Soviet marines and generally push the Soviets back across the Dnepr River. This sort of scene was replaying itself across the front as superior Soviet numbers began to make their presence felt, particularly as German units abandoned the front and left gaps vulnerable to exploitation.
Desperate measures in the east.
By the beginning of July, the state of the Polish theater had improved recognizably. Although there was a significant mass of Soviet formations in southwestern Poland, they thinned out in the north. They had achieved a sort of frontline against the Italians in the east, but it was a weak one. Bastico’s solitary vanguard corps retained some momentum and was pushing forward toward Warsaw. It had linked up with Pintor’s army, so that the Italians nearly formed a coherent frontline of their own in Poland against the Soviets. The Germans, however, were of course being beaten although even this process was slowing down as the Soviets directed more and more attention and assets eastwards.
The Polish theater on July 3.
And so the question had to be posed. Endgame? Warsaw was being threatened with conquest, the Soviet forces in Poland were increasingly finding themselves between a rock and a place that should have been hard but was not quite so. If success were achieved in Poland, what then would be the next course of action? How much longer could the Soviet Union cope with the losses it was sustaining? During this period of time it had lost another fifteen thousand two hundred and fifty men, as opposed to eight thousand two hundred Italians. The next few weeks were sure to be decisive.
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