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Are the whites allied or are do they have their separate agendas?
 
First of all, thanks for the comments, everyone. I'm happy folks are reading :)

Woohoo! An AAR for RUS! I might actually learn to play the game now! Now all I need is spare time to actually play, and everything will be just fine. ;)

Thanks for bringing this AAR over here. I've bought the game (essentially just for the topic), I have zero experience with AGEOD games, so anything that clarifies and/or reinforces that it's worth sinking some time into this scary big game, is a good thing. :)

For learning the ropes, would you say that it's easier playing as the Reds or the Whites?

If I was you, I'd start playing the Whites in the Finland scenario, then, if you really feel like digging into the grand campaign, starting as the Southern Whites. It's a more controlled experience, and you can really dig into the combat mechanics before having to worry about requisitions, supply, or building units too much.

this does look very interesting ... once I work out how to play RoP you've inspired me. So, just on reading, railways really matter (yippee!), the war on the rivers is well modelled. Does the game have the RoP trick that units without supply wagons simply die off?

anyway, really good read and a fascinating insight into the game

Yes, railways and rivers are hugely important, I love it! That's why I'm building those gunboats down at Tzaritsyn - control of the Volga really matters. Units don't necessarily need supply wagons as long as you're 'in supply' - ie, you can trace a line back to a depot or a supply-producing structure, or even another army that does have supply wagons.

Are the whites allied or are do they have their separate agendas

The Whites are indeed allies and probably scheming over email as I type this...
 
This game looks really interesting. That truly is a scenario I have never seen in a game (quite frankly, besides school history and the occasional instance of TV playing Dr. Shiwago, it seems pretty much forgotten in Western Europe for most part). I really want to try this now, although it looks incredibly more complex than the HoI warfare I'm used to. Im wondering if its possible to play the foreign intervention, it would be quite entertaining to raise the Union Jack in Moscow :)
 
This game looks really interesting. That truly is a scenario I have never seen in a game (quite frankly, besides school history and the occasional instance of TV playing Dr. Shiwago, it seems pretty much forgotten in Western Europe for most part). I really want to try this now, although it looks incredibly more complex than the HoI warfare I'm used to. Im wondering if its possible to play the foreign intervention, it would be quite entertaining to raise the Union Jack in Moscow :)

I highly recommend RUS! AGEOD does great stuff and seem to specialize in history not covered by others - they're the only studio I know of that has exhaustively covered the War of 1812, for instance :)

If you are interested, RUS has a demo, up here - try the tutorials, get a feel for the interface, and don't be intimidated! It gets easier ;)

I'm working on a big image-heavy post for my most recent turn right now!
 
This game looks really interesting. That truly is a scenario I have never seen in a game (quite frankly, besides school history and the occasional instance of TV playing Dr. Shiwago, it seems pretty much forgotten in Western Europe for most part). I really want to try this now, although it looks incredibly more complex than the HoI warfare I'm used to. Im wondering if its possible to play the foreign intervention, it would be quite entertaining to raise the Union Jack in Moscow :)

RUS is good, but severely lacks of polish, and since it is not really AGEOD who made it (AGEOD licenced its engine, another very small company made the game), I don't know if the lack of polish is going to be solved as it was for the other AGEOD games.

You cannot play the British directly. The Foreign Forces are played by the White Players, either Southern Whites for the interventions in the West, or the Siberian White. Some tricks are in the game to make sure the White Players don't use the foreign forces (or Czech Legion) as frontline canon fodders while the Russian Whites proper keep their forces intact.
 
Turn 14: Late December 1918

Merry Christmas from Russia! This is why there are so many Russians - Russian winters. Nothing to do but stay inside and drink and.. ;) Sorry.


The cold has led to a quiet Siberian front, but elsewhere, the Whites continue their advance. This turn, all my screenshots will have numbers in the top-left corner, which will correspond to the numbers on this map:

bigmapg.jpg



(Apologies, they're all jumbled and out of order.) I hope this will help show the context of the war, and explain why I feel a little hemmed in. It's war on every front! :eek:

Well, the most intriguing move so far on the part of the Whites is that their Northwestern Army, currently under Rodzianko, has left Pskov and is venturing north in the direction of Petrograd - aka St Petersburg. Observe:

petrograd.jpg


The arrow is, of course, a guess. I wouldn't be surprised if he detoured towards Novgorod - but at the same time, I expect him to go straight for the jugular. If I lose Petrograd, my national morale goes to the toilet and a Bolshevik victory becomes much less likely. He (correctly) presumes that the majority of my forces in the area are dedicated to holding back Miller. I'm going to have to bring in the new armies forming in the Moscow area to counter NW Army.

Speaking of Miller..

karelia.jpg


Pariah sent him south against my force at Petrozavodsk! The man's been repulsed, and fairly decently, too. I'm pleased - but he hasn't been destroyed, and Antonov-Ovseenko is too incompetent to lead a proper advance. So these forces are still locked down. Still, good to know that I've essentially 'dealt' with the White Northern Army.

Let's move south. Kharkov wasn't quite so easy as I expected:

kharkov.jpg


Shame, but it looks like I haven't lost MUCH time. The Whites are slow to advance as well (although they've already got the Crimea and they're moving northwards.. hmm). Meanwhile, my partisans are advancing around the flanks to chop up railroads, and S.S. Kamenev has arrived to command the newly-formed Ukraine Front. I have high hopes to take big chunks of northern Ukraine once everyone's nice and organized, but I might not have time. The Volunteer Army will soon be free to head north - Sorokin and his Don Front are not long for this world. Witness:

dongd.jpg


Denikin's drinking buddy, Mai-Mai, walloped Sorokin but good. The man has less than 10,000 troops remaining against some cold and bloodthirsty Whites. Bisherakov is blocking my escape. Novorossisyk is the Alamo.

I'm still pretty pleased with Sorokin - I hadn't expected the troops to last til winter, and they're still here.. what's left of them.

Just a little northeast, along the Tzaritsyn-Novorossisyk railroad, I've had Stalin inching forward with a load of armoured trains, menacing the Cossacks. Well, that backfired.

staling.jpg


I hope I can get him out of there! Kind of. Stalin's a bit of a crap commander - jumped up beyond his station if you ask me - and part of me likes to take risks with him. Maybe if I get him killed or disgraced, I can avert future genocides, eh?

Anyways, Voroshilov is sitting in Tzaritsyn with the 10th Army - recently reinforced by sailor's detachments from the Caspian and Black Seas - so I feel secure, on the whole.

Things are also looking good in Siberia.

siberia.jpg


The line is stable, with a full 100,000 troops manning the front from Kazan to Saratov. Kazan is a bit of a salient - but with only 2 crossings of the Volga under enemy control, I feel I can risk it. Flanking Kazan will be hard to do, and I can always pull out. Holding it is a bit of a bonus.

So, 1918 is over. I feel pretty good about it! I managed to delay in the South and hold in the East, after a few scary months. In the long run, though, this is just a preamble. New challenges are coming - foreign interventions, Yudenich on the march, and Denikin free to advance north towards Moscow. 1919 will be the year of the Whites.

To win, I'll need to make use of the interior lines and efficient railway network of central Russia - Sovdepia - to shuttle troops from one front to the next, countering crises as they arise. To this end, I've sunk a decent amount of cash into expanding my rail pool and infrastructure.

railpool.jpg


Fingers crossed for the new year!
 
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this does look very interesting ... once I work out how to play RoP you've inspired me. So, just on reading, railways really matter (yippee!), the war on the rivers is well modelled. Does the game have the RoP trick that units without supply wagons simply die off?

anyway, really good read and a fascinating insight into the game
Just notice this : units without supply wagons don't die off - they just can survive on their own for a couple turns only. Same in RUS.
Also, units destroyed for non-battle reasons (including lack or supply) come back to your manpower pool for 2/3 of what "disappeared". This is very important for Prussia, less so for Austria.
 
Nice comment about Uncle Joe. ;) Overall, it seems a case of 'so far, so good', but I do wonder what will happen to your position in the south once the Volunteer Army starts moving (i.e. when Sorokin et. al. are in shallow graves).

I feel like I'm getting a good overview of events, so thank you for that. And thanks for suggesting Finland: I'd forgotten about that scenario.
 
Thanks guys. :)

Turn 15: Early January 1919

New year, new opportunities and new threats. At the very least, greatly magnified older threats. Take a look.. Pariah's doing something clever with the Northwestern Army.. and I'm worried.

petrograd.jpg


Moscow may be the capital, but only recently. Petrograd is the true First City of the Soviet Republic. And fast-moving, dangerous White armies are on the march straight at it with nary a Bolshevik in sight.

Of course, I have the town's garrison - about 16,000 men all told, distributed throughout the area and in the Peter and Paul Fortress. They can't hold on their own against Yudenich's boys.

The force closest to Petrograd - the man at Luga with the merry hat - is a brigade of cavalry led by Bulak-Balakovich, an interesting fellow with a rather large Wikipedia page. The other forces are the heavy hitters - Rodzianko with a bunch of infantry and armoured trains, then I'm guessing Yudenich in the south (the portrait there is a generic one) with the army headquarters.

I've underestimated Pariah, this is going to be very hard to deal with. I can't knock out all three of his forces in one battle. Reinforcements are necessary, and they're incoming. North, Antonov-Ovseenko (1) is leaving just one division to man the lines (I hope Miller is still licking his wounds) and will rush down the railroad with 10,000 men to defend Petrograd itself. From Moscow, Bonch-Bruevich (2) will ride special trains fully loaded with his 15,000 men to try to pin down and destroy Rodzianko's mobile force. I need to gut it before it shoves A-O aside and threatens the grand city.

As I stated in the previous post, if I lose Petrograd, I lose the war. The Northwestern Army is a dagger aimed straight at the heart of Soviet power. This makes the capture of Kharkov this turn (hooray!) seem not so important. Ah well! I took Kharkov, take note!

Moving on to Siberia. I changed my mind about settling in.. while I have all this power concentrated here, I might as well at least give a winter attack a shot. Just one town, maybe. Watch me snowball this into a general offensive..

trotskytrot.jpg


It's a simple plan. Take Trotsky and 40,000 men and throw them at the relatively thin White line at Simbirsk. They've had a while to dig in, so it might not work, but I expect to inflict nearly-equal losses, and that's fine by my side.

A few other loose ends from this turn. The French and Greeks are coming:

greekfrench.jpg


I'm not too worried about these fellows themselves, but I am worried about the top-notch Volunteer Army soldiers they'll free up from garrison duty.

I'm getting my own foreign soldiers, though:

internationalx.jpg


International Volunteer Regiments, come to help further the world socialist revolution! I hope they're okay with being sent to snow-filled trenches to fight Ukrainian nationalists.
 
on your Siberia map, do those red blobs behind the Whites represent Soviet partisans? if so could they chop up the White Supply lines or are they too weak for that ... or indeed are they something else?

agree, you can't lose Petrograd .. well you can obviously but not by choice ;)
 
on your Siberia map, do those red blobs behind the Whites represent Soviet partisans? if so could they chop up the White Supply lines or are they too weak for that ... or indeed are they something else?

agree, you can't lose Petrograd .. well you can obviously but not by choice ;)

I think you're seeing the Soviet flags that represent Soviet control of provinces. Mostly in that shot the Whites control the cities and the railroads, but Soviet control still exists in the countryside :)
 
Now after playing the demo I have to respect you even more. The demo is only ten turns but i seriously got smashed head on, especially because of this activation thing which basically made one of my generals sit around singing songs (or what ever) while the rest of my army got slaughtered by the Czecks. In the end I was more inclined to make my troops purge this General than to actually keep fighting...

But, that wont stop me from trying again. Keep up the AAR, maybe I can learn something...
 
Turn 16: Late January 1919

I'm going to rely heavily on the screenshots this turn. First, the Petrograd front:

petroarea.jpg


A-O and B-B have reached their assigned positions (Tsarskoye Selo and Novgorod, respectively). With two large forces in the field, I feel like I can hold back Yudenich - or at least keep him busy. Now I have to worry about Miller breaking through the one infantry division I've left behind, though.

Next slide, please.

simbirskbattle.jpg


Ah yes, Trotsky and friends succeeded in their little push eastwards. Simbirsk is ours now, after a spirited defence by the Siberians and KOMUCH boys. I'm following the attack up with a strike at Syzran:

tosyzran.jpg


If all goes well, I'll have pressed the Siberians right up to the Volga all across the front.
 
well to enter into the spirit of things "Vtoraia Sovetskaia Revoliutsiia", that looks a lot more hopeful as long as the whites stay inactive north of Petrograd

Now after playing the demo I have to respect you even more. The demo is only ten turns but i seriously got smashed head on, especially because of this activation thing which basically made one of my generals sit around singing songs (or what ever) while the rest of my army got slaughtered by the Czecks. In the end I was more inclined to make my troops purge this General than to actually keep fighting...

if, like me, you're used to Paradox style mechanics this is one of the best (& most frustrating) aspects of the AGEOD engine. Been playing Rise of Prussia and as the Austrians you keep on seeing these opportunities to crush the Prussian upstart ... well you see them, your generals prefer just another waltz or bit of light hunting in the hills
 
This thread needs more revolutionary music!
[video=youtube;tntA_4IoxbE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tntA_4IoxbE[/video]
 
I don't know if it's because you're playing a human opponent, or if it's inherent to the game. but what strikes me particularly from the action around Petrograd, is that simple manoeuvre, the positioning of opposing armies relative to each other, plays a major part. You don't have to destroy an army to stop its offensive. That's a nice extra layer to the strategy required for this game. :)
 
Arilou: Thanks for that, that was great! :D

Stuyvesant: Yes, it's a big difference. Unlike a Paradox game, where you're supposed to form a coherent line, there's almost no way you can do that in this one, so it becomes more about holding key locations, zones of control, reaction times, the dance of maneuver.. fun stuff. Not to knock Paradox, they're fun too, just in a different way!
 
Turn 17: Early February 1919

This will be a quick update as I have a new turn sitting in my inbox that I will have a longer post for! Here's the sitch:

syzran.jpg


My attempt on Syzran was not a success, as you can see. I can't match those numbers yet without depleting the garrisons of Kazan and Simbirsk. I'll have to round up some more troops from elsewhere.. It'll have to wait for a while, though.

ukrainey.jpg


This is the Ukraine. I'd like to hold everything in the dotted-red-area: Kharkov, Kiev, and everything north of the Dnieper and west of Kharkov. Unfortunately, I am beginning to doubt if I'll have time to establish this perimeter before the Whites pierce it. Mai-Mai has left the job of harassing the remnants of the Don Front to a single division under Drozdovsky, which means he'll probably come north with a big army shortly.. reinforcements, including those internationalist regiments, are on their way to the Ukraine front under Timoshenko, but we'll see if they arrive in time. (They're intended to take Kiev.)

While Mai-Mai digs into the Ukraine, his master Denikin is on his way to Tzaritsyn:

denikintzar.jpg


This is a battle that will depend entirely on the number of troops Denikin has brought along. 10th Army, under Voroshilov and Stalin, is well dug-in, with naval support and good fortifications. We'll just have to see if that's enough.

Right, running the next turn now!
 
Turn 18: Late Feburary 1919

Things are going decently well, at least in the east.

tukhydefenz1.jpg


Tukhachevsky has done quite well holding Kazan against superior numbers. He's even managed to take out several enemy elements! This is better than I had expected. The man deserves a promotion - and the game agrees:

tukhydefenz.jpg


My boy Tukhy will be a corps commander next turn. This is great, as the Reds have very few talented corps commanders, and Kazan will need more troops later anyways.

Anyways, that's the good news. Now to the less good:

tzarominous.jpg


I was wrong about Mai-Mai going to Ukraine. That's Denikin, Mai-Mai and some jerk Cossack closing in on Tzaritsyn. Pariah is going all out for the prize. A wise move, I think, but bad for me. I have no reinforcements to give. What troops I do have available are at the other end of a very long and winding rail network.

I've decided to move the Iron Division south (it had been garrisoning Saratov - this move will leave it exposed, but what can you do). It's only one division, but perhaps it can at least keep the rail line north open. Losing Tzaritsyn is one thing, but having 10th Army - Stalin, Voroshilov and 17,000 troops - encircled and destroyed with it? Disastrous.

Other news: The Petrograd front is static. I've ordered the construction of a weapons factory in Moscow to beef up my war supply production. The Ukraine is going well with Mai-Mai and Denikin distracted by Tzaritsyn. Oh, one last thing:

donevacuation.jpg


Remember the Don Front? Once 40,000 men, the Whites have reduced them to 4200. I'm being sneaky again and attempting to evacuate the remnants under Drozdovsky's nose. Fingers crossed it works.. there's a big French fleet sitting in Novorossisyk right now.
 
Turn 19: Early March 1919

A very short update.

nicebigmap.jpg


Here's a nice big map for you. Check out the recent green uprisings in central Russia - a nasty rash on the Soviet Republic's pretty face. I'm going to have to divert reinforcements from other fronts to clean them out.

Also note the mess around Tzaritsyn. Let's zoom in on that, shall we..

thenoose.jpg


I'm rushing further reinforcements to the area - Blucher and Chapaev, with about 10,000 men each. God knows if it'll be enough. Pariah really is throwing everything at Tzaritsyn - my main hope is that I'll be able to keep 10th Army intact at this point...



Other notes: The Azov flotilla was intercepted by a bunch of French ships (including two dreadnoughts) and forced to retreat before picking up any troops. Consequently, the Don Front was finally and completely destroyed. :( Also bad news: The single division I left to hold the line against Miller was sieged and caved in this turn, surrendering en masse. I don't want Miller to break out from Karelia, so I've sent Antonov-Ovseenko and two divisions to hold him off again. Dunno how long we can manage, though...