I see in your screenshots that you already have a Balkans Front - a little bit of hubris, perchance?
What you're seeing at the moment is the result of that block of supplies I gave them in June. They've now shifted IC to replacements but obv in doing so are draining their manpower. They have 720 at the start of August and just under 100 by the start of Sept. The result is all those weak formations I've been bullying in June-July are all of a sudden a lot tougher, but of course they are then reliant on their monthly recruitment to keep their divisions up to strength.
The economic model is a huge simplification, esp for the Soviet Union. They tended to group similar factories together in regional centres and shift stuff somewhere else to finish. For example about 50% of their tank steel came from the factories at Cherepovets and was then shifted off to the Urals to build the T-34s. Also the IC around Moscow and Leningrad was essential to knit together all the rest.
Yes you are right that IC works regardless of physical link to resources. So my isolated IC at Leningrad is still gleefully pumping out fuel etc.
Sorting out both & adding discrete rails would really start to give certain locations a real strategic value.
I see in your screenshots that you already have a Balkans Front - a little bit of hubris, perchance?
Ah, right. I do now remember you having said that about the AI frantically trying to produce supplies to the exclusion of everything else. So it's not currently a case of the Germans being on their last legs (which does seem a bit early in 1942), but having dropped their manpower to the extent you have it suggests that 1943 will be a different story. I wouldn't want to be a recently drafted German soldier when next year's counterattack gets up to speed.
It would also make strategic bombing a lot more important, with the proviso that you'd have to make factories a lot more difficult to hit, or a lot quicker to repair, or both. Similarly, you could task bombers to attack rail junctions and bridges. Of course, designing an AI that can deal with the added complexity in a sensible way is part of the challenge - at the moment I tend to the think of it as a competent but pedestrian staff officer, capable of building and maintaining a front and probing for weaknesses, but out of its depth when asked do something more complex than a broad-fronted advance.
How much of a difference do you find a skill 5 commander makes to the units under their control? In my current game as Italy I managed to muddle along with whatever leaders I had, but did feel that I was missing a trick.
Not enough logistic wizards. Put them everywhere at the top of the OOB.
I think it says something about the amount of effort that the Germans are putting in to breaking Eight Army that Chuikov has three times as much experience accumulated as any other general on that Front. Keep holding them, Vasily Ivanovich. You'll be a Marshal yet. Although I doubt if they'll bury you on Mamayev Kurgan.
Very good updates. Excellent stuff having pocketed quite a number of Axis troops in the Artic theatre, long may the successes continue. The introduction of guard divisions/units seems useful and it is good to see that promotions are now being made based upon merit rather than for non-military reasons (rather seems an oddity for a communist army!). Everything seems to be going rather well.
Impressive stuff as ever.
If I were the Germans I would be sending a lot of peace envoys at this point.
Good stuff, slow but steady progress, grinding down Axis resistance. Although as alluded to at the end of the update, as winter is coming that certainly has to be a worry.
But you've made major gains in the Arctic, so a winter breather doesn't seem such a bad thing: rest your forces, let your troops in Leningrad get up to strength again, gather supplies... So that come next spring, you can comprehensively wreck those poor non-German Axis units 'vacationing' on the Kola Peninsula.
The Red Army now unstoppable? A new line between Cherepovets and Lake Lagoda would drastically shorten your front and permit an even higher force concentration to be bought to bear?
Yay, winter! Northern pocket, 300k axis troops? Close enough to Stalingrad?