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MagooNZ

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May 17, 2012
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Overview: an historical AoD1.08 single Russian player (SOV), 1936 campaign. SOV will be kept militarily weak pre-war. Role play limited to non-existent. My first AAR.

Inspired by Marshall18’s stirring efforts with his first AAR (GER). Having to disband the navy to reinforce the army following significant losses on the eastern front was a highlight (perhaps one to be forgotten).
Motivation from Mr_B0narpte, he suggested tackling an AAR.

The Setup:
Game Settings
Normal AI aggressiveness
Full IC Takeover OFF
Tech Team Takeover OFF
Historical Leaders Death OFF
Historical Events Outcome ON
Democracies can start war OFF
Customised VH difficulty: Blue Emu tradition, only a few variables are changed.
All AI nations:
Industry (IC) +60%
Resources +50%
Manpower +120%
No additional benefits for the human player apart from normal flat difficulty settings and one’s advance knowledge of history. Difficulty is probably close to, but still less than, a normal hard setting.
The AI wastes its manpower, so needs a lot. Industry & Resources will enable the AI to do more. I wanted to create a slight resource shortage hence the lower resource percentage. This will benefit the USA, the only major nation with across the board resource surpluses.

Other Customisation:
Added two events
GER DOW USA if JAP at war with both ENG & USA
USA joins allies if USA & ENG both at war with either JAP or GER
Modified USA gearing up events 56, 57, 58 to give AI USA +3 standing army slider moves per event. Default settings are –1 move to drafted army, plus two –1’s commented out (ie does not move). I want the USA military to have the higher organisation & lower upgrade costs provided by full standing army.



Jan 1936:
+1 slider move towards full hawk
no minister changes
All eight research slots assigned and an attempt will be made to fully fund these.

1936techs1.jpg


The 8 interceptors are disbanded. This could be a mistake, but earlier in the forum I proposed that SOV only needs fighters, so I’m being true to my word.
The ageing navy is disbanded, Russia’s survival will determined on land, not at sea.
The 5 cavalry are disbanded, the rest of the army is retained.
The Pang Bingxun doctrine of infrastructure will be strictly adhered to. Major infrastructure builds in many key provinces (qty 19), the rest on IC builds (qty 10), with one round of garrisons started. Infrastructure for a couple of provinces start at 2x, these will drop back to 1x once fully geared.

1936build1paint.jpg


This is about double the difficulty that I have tried previously. The garrison line is also new. So I will be interested to see how things go.

Plan is to reduce the 15% dissent, then change Culture to conformist work ethic to obtain +5% IC even though this comes with –5% manpower. Defensive world view has +10% manpower so offsets this. Propose two slider moves (or a little more) per year to move towards standing army.


Dialog:
After five years of lobbying Stalin to trust me, he has agreed to take extended leave. I will be in charge, and under orders to keep the Soviet army as weak as possible. It took a great deal of persuasion to convince Stalin to allow a small expansion of the army. Once I said that the primary purpose of these new units is too suppress the Soviet people and to spy on the army from within, Stalin gave a wry smile and said “excellent, carry on”. Stalin's train on its way to who knows where.

trainredflags.jpg
 
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Good to see you're going to make an AAR :)

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot see the screenshots you have posted.
 
Yes, you are correct. I thought they were there when I first post posted, but now they are gone. There is a recent note at the start of the Forum from Paradox about possible Posting problems. Althouigh its more likely that I'm doing something wrong here (first attempt). However, I can now see my photos this morning,and I havent attempted to reload them. Also saw them come back into view from another internet connection yesterday. What I need to do is to access this site from a PC that doesnt have an association with me, & see if that makes a difference. Fixed.
 
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Thankyou for fixing it. I wonder how the war will go, especially because of the big benefits you've given all the AI nations.
 
Great thanks Mr_B. I hope to update soon, & get to the interesting part. I havent tried this level of difficulty before so I have no idea how well the AI GER will do. Just an impression that I have, AI GER seems to be more aggressive in summer 42. I have made some mistakes but wont be restarting.
 
AoD1.08 SP SOV Red Star Rising: Part 2 The Early Years

Diversion: that’s a wide gauge railway. Russia’s rail 1.52m (4’11 5/6”), compare with the rest of Europe 1.435m (4’8 1/2”). So Russia is wider, the only places with a wider gauge are Argentina, Spain and India / Pakistan.

The Russian summer comes and goes:
housesummer.jpg


housewinter2.jpg


The first Rocket test site completes near the end of 1936.

rocketsite19361002.jpg


More province infrastructure & factory production is added as more IC becomes available. Guarantee’s of independence given to Albania and Denmark so no forced interventionism slider moves are required.
Events provide 3 Hawk Lobby and 3 Interventionism moves. Including Jan 36, the first 3 slider moves are all towards Hawk Lobby. After that, all slider moves are towards Standing Army.

The 10th tech research slot completes end Aug 37. This is late, estimate about 5 base IC down. Too much infrastructure, not enough factories.

19371001techslots10.jpg


1 Jan 1938: The Spanish civil war is about to end (victory to the Nationalists), and Japan appears to have made two amphibious invasions of mainland China.

380101overviewaar.jpg
 
AoD1.08 SP SOV Red Star Rising: Part 3 The Purge and the last years of peace

The purge (2 March 38) is declined. Always seem to loose either Zhukov or Konev (as well as other good leaders) when the purge proceeds, and the game seems to kill off one leader (usually a good one) early on in a countries first war. Also, the loss of tech teams when the purge proceeds seem to limit one’s choices. Declining the purge gives two slider moves to Dove Lobby, two remaining pre-war events return the defense_lobby slider back to full Hawk Lobby.

With 4.5% dissent pre purge, post purge dissent is greater than 54%. National dissent is high across the country, really only around Moscow is there any green.

purgedeclined3.jpg


It is a long way back to zero dissent. I failed to do the tech research properly so loose time getting started on assembly line (25 March 1939).

Japan looses border skirmishes with Russia.

japsovborderskirmish.jpg


After Germany annexes Poland, Russia invades the Baltic States (late). These are not completed before the winter war starts.

winterforest.jpg


Poorly equipped Russian troops take significant casualties and only overwhelm their opposition with sheer weight of numbers. Somewhat historical. Commander666 would not be pleased, however the main aim was to give the army & fighter leaders some badly needed experience.

losseswinterwar.jpg


Germany invades Russia, 3 June 1941. The Russian army is ill-prepared.

19410603gerdowaar.jpg
 
You advanced quickly, getting to the most interesting part which is good :D Let's see if you can hold of this über Germany :happy:
 
Why did you decide to build brigades seperatly?
Is the low salaries slider intended to simultate a stronger surprise effect or just a mistake?
Can you use PNG instead of JPEG? Some of those fugures are hard to read.
 
Building Brigades separately: techs for divisions & brigades completed at different times (in these examples my brigade techs finished after the division techs, and I needed to get the longer time divisions in the build queue as soon as available). Provides greater flexibility? I can upgrade a division line and limit the gearing loss, since I dont have to upgrade the brigade component as well for the extra gearing loss. This is what appears that the game does, but I havent really taken a detailed look. I did the garison divs with MP attached. I dont know how the ICd costs compare for separate divisions & brigades versus integrated. I got the impression that there isnt much in it.
If I want more advanced ship models, as opposed to quantity, I will upgrade the prodn line in mid production. But if I want quantity, I will delay upgrading until immediately after a ship completes, thus incrementing the gearing bonus before it is halved? by the upgrade. Not having an integrated division/brigade simplifies the "when to upgrade a production line?" decision.

I had simply forgotten that I had lowered the salaries slider, and even if the DOW came later in June, I was so focused on upgrading the inf divisions that I still would have been caught out. I dont intend to go back to a previous save & redo this. Hopefully I wont get any divisions shattering. I had that happen once. A SOV infantry army, 12 brigaded divisions, hard up on the German polish border, was loosing the battle. I was rushing in a small motorised army to help. It arrived just in time to prevent the infantry army retreating when it lost its organisation. All 12 divisions disappeared from the map. I kept playing that one, but was shocked by that outcome, it was a severe loss. I dont think it was related to salaries (fully funded that time), probably due to low ESE. Hence my plan this time to defend a little further back.

I'll try PNG, I also have the option of saving a larger JPG file size. Will probably be after the next update because I already have most of these in JPG.
 
If I want more advanced ship models, as opposed to quantity, I will upgrade the prodn line in mid production.

This will cut progress by 50%, making you put twice the icd into it. It is cheaper to use triple acceleration instead. This increases the icd only by sqrt(3).
 
Thanks Pang. I got the impression that it is very costly to upgrade a ship in mid production. What if one was very close to finishing the ship when the upgrade is made? Your comment suggests that %complete makes no difference to the new ICd cost. A new ship model virtually means a complete rebuild so makes sense.

I am surprised that no one has commented on my starting researching improved motorised (41 tech) on 1 Jan 36. Perhaps, as you have said, my jpg image quality is a bit poor. I dont normally research this far in advance, but I did it deliberately here. In fact, I was committed to doing this before I read that 1.09 will have an earlier date for the first mech inf tech.
 
Thanks Pang. I got the impression that it is very costly to upgrade a ship in mid production. What if one was very close to finishing the ship when the upgrade is made? Your comment suggests that %complete makes no difference to the new ICd cost. A new ship model virtually means a complete rebuild so makes sense.

The progress is cut by 50%. So if you were at 98% it will be 49% after the upgrade.
PS: Upgrading brigade will cut progress by 25%.

I am surprised that no one has commented on my starting researching improved motorised (41 tech) on 1 Jan 36. Perhaps, as you have said, my jpg image quality is a bit poor. I dont normally research this far in advance, but I did it deliberately here. In fact, I was committed to doing this before I read that 1.09 will have an earlier date for the first mech inf tech.

In 1.09 Mech would like not need 1941 Mot. Do you intend to build many Mechs? Rushing Mot1941 makes sence. Mot is a very good choice as soviet union. Mot is the cheapest fast unit and the oil usage is relativly low. If soviet union had an armoured spearhead minister before 1943, than Mech would be a killer unit. :cool:
 
German troops crossed the border and encountered minimal resistance.

germansinvade3.jpg


Stalin is still shell shocked over Germany’s betrayal. The last Soviet oil supply train was delivered to Germany a few hours before the attack began. The reciprocal German coal train did not arrive.

oilsupplytrain.jpg


After many crisis meetings at the Kremlin and RGVK HQ, a picture of the situation emerges.

Trade with Germany was extensive:
141.3 oil and 24.5 rare metals were traded to Germany in exchange for 8.4 metal, 94 energy and 34 money. Add in trade with Italy:
10 oil and 3.4 money were traded to Italy in exchange for 10.1 metal, and 20 energy.

The only other external trade Russia has is with Sweden:
14.3 money is traded to Sweden in exchange for 69.6 metal.

The Axis will miss such a large quantity of oil. Russia has a metal & energy shortage, but currently has good stockpiles of these. Supplies of metal will be adequate provided the Swedes continue to supply.

At the beginning of June 41, the economic size of the world’s major countries were:

Code:
[COLOR="#000000"]	Base IC	Available IC
Germany	346	723 (May, lower in June)
USA	376	428
USSR	335	502
UK	158	300
Japan	125	263
Italy	87	182[/COLOR]

Current positions of the SOV diplomatic sliders:
1 democratic Fully Authoritarian
2 political_left Fully Political Left
3 freedom Fully Closed Society
4 free_market Fully Central Planning
5 professional_army position 9, one move from fully Standing Army
6 defense_lobby Fully Hawk Lobby
7 interventionism Fully Interventionism
Pre-war slider moves focused on obtaining full Hawk Lobby and full Standing Army (almost achieved).

The ministers in cabinet provides 35% manpower and -15% supply consumption.

ministers19410603.jpg


Today’s good news, small arms assembly line has just completed. The only new army divisions that will come available in June will be 3 mountain divisions.

research19410603.jpg


Germany has many allies; notably Finland and Romania. This means a separate northern front and an extended southern front.

The navy is too small to mention. The primary objective of the soviet navy is to supply any troops cut off near Murmansk for as long as possible. An evacuation by sea is currently beyond the navy’s capabilities.

The red air force has 18 modern fighter squadrons and 4 obsolete tactical bomber squadrons. The primary objective of the soviet air force is to contest Luftwaffe air superiority.

The nation’s survival depends on the red army; whose disposition is as follows:

aodaar19410603militaryf.jpg


The yellow line denotes the position of modern motorised and mechanised infantry. A total of 93 divisions, 2/3rds of these are brigaded. Konev leads the northern group, Zhukov leads the southern group. Their role is to delay the German advance as long as possible, so that the refit of the infantry divisions can be completed. .

The red line is the river defensive line of the Dvina - Dneiper. The foot infantry are located here. Because there is no hilly or mountainous terrain near these rivers, the specialist mountain divisions have been deployed to the cities of Smolensk and Kiev. Smolensk has 6 well equipped, fully brigaded mountain divisions. Kiev has 9 well equipped, fully brigaded mountain divisions.

12 divisions of the mobile reserve, currently located around Moscow, will relocate to the southwest of Smolensk to fill in the gap in the yellow line. This reserve includes 4 obsolete, light tank divisions. They are unsuitable for front line service, but there is nothing else available and their refitting is unlikely to be undertaken this summer. The refit priority is the infantry divisions.

A small motorized army from the south will move north to fill in the gap in the line at the Pripet marshes.

Infantry divisions on the Finnish front and near Riga are well equipped and fully brigaded. They form a thin line in the north, but are more heavily concentrated on the southern front. Recon suggests that the Fins out number our troops by as much as three to one. Stalin has agreed that extra munitions & supplies will be made available to the Finnish front. We must avoid any encirclement near Murmansk. The navy has no capability to evacuate cut off troops, but may be able to supply them for a short period of time out of Archangelsk.

Russia’s most ellite infantry divisions are located south of Kiev. They are soon to be fully brigaded, and have the most modern equipment. These 24 divisions are heavily concentrated along this section of the front.

The weakest, least experienced infantry divisions are located on the Dneiper river, from Smolensk to south of Kiev. They have few brigades, and need to be protected from combat until their refitting can be commenced. Refitting of most of the infantry divisions west of Smolensk and on the Finnish front is currently underway.

The primary objectives of the soviet army are: in the north, to hold the line against the Fins and in the west, to delay the German advance (yellow line) long enough to refit the infantry divisions on the line of the Dvina - Dneiper rivers, where the German advance will ultimately be halted.

Tasks for immediate action including paying all military personnel full salary, relocation of the mobile reserve, plugging the gap in the yellow defensive line, and commencing refitting of all infantry divisions west of Smolensk.
 
Great :D A Soviet AAR. Will definately follow this :)
Good luck :cool:

Thanks Marshall18, your GER AAR & Mr_B0narpte's TRM AAR certainly received an enormous number of views. Your chance to see the view from the other side of the fence (or at least, my version of it).

I have been using Imageshack for uploading images. My assess to their web site crashed last night as I was attempting to complete my latest update. It doesnt seem to have an easy way to organise files. Is photobucket any better ?
 
Thanks Marshall18, your GER AAR & Mr_B0narpte's TRM AAR certainly received an enormous number of views. Your chance to see the view from the other side of the fence (or at least, my version of it).
Indeed, I really should continue it sometime but multi-player is so much more fun!
 
AoD1.08 SP SOV Red Star Rising: Part 5 Early War

The Germans are fanatical; unleashing many attacks, some are repulsed but many end in defeat. The yellow line is buckling, and may not buy enough time for the red line infantry to be refitted with more modern equipment.

General Volskiy’s 6th mechanised army is first into combat. Note the much higher German organisation.
6a1558d1-7a19-4ac5-bad4-86e3bf673f31_zpsf77b0948.jpg


Two German probing attacks are repulsed before a more substantial attack overwhelms the 6th mechanised army and retreats into Riga. Soon into action again, Germany attacks across the Dvina river. The 6 infantry divisions, with boosted supply, perform well.

f824205a-2afa-4c07-a967-406ad7e6bd67_zps64625b4b.jpg


The 6th mechanized army stays in the first battle for Riga but needs time away from combat to recover.

19410611_HeldRigaJust_zpsc4781494.jpg


The first air battle with the Luftwaffe results in defeat for the red air force.

19410606_FirstAirBattle_zps1c825b14.jpg


The new mechanised infantry divisions, that Russia invested so much to obtain, are proving to be a disappointment. Zhukov’s first battle ends in defeat. A front on, 3:2 German attack succeeds.



The only real success along the yellow line is against the Romanians. However at the next attack they will need to retreat towards Odessa to avoid being cut off.

Although technically at war with Finland, it is all quiet on that front. Stafka is happy to keep it this way, allowing more time for refitting the infantry divisions here and allowing more resources to go to the ailing German front.

The front line, 11 June 1941
19410611_GermanFront_zps4229b50c.jpg
 
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The first air battle with the Luftwaffe results in defeat for the red air force.

Will that change soon? MRF are substancially inferior to Int when USSR needs them most.

The new mechanised infantry divisions, that Russia invested so much to obtain, are proving to be a disappointment. Zhukov’s first battle ends in defeat. A front on, 3:2 German attack succeeds.

Will that change soon? Without using the armoured spearhead minister mechanized divisions(or even armoured divisions) are very expensive. Therefore i conclude that they are only a rational choice if using this Chief of Army both for building and for use in battle. Currently you can build 1.4-1.6 Mots per Mech, therefore Mot are the better choice. But given the up to 25% Discount of the soviet doctrine tree on Inf infantry hordes are the prefered choice of weapons. Using far superior numbers this allows eventuelly to fully counter the german org advantage and beat them with superior firepower.


This person has moved or deleted this image. :(
 
Thanks Marshall18, your GER AAR & Mr_B0narpte's TRM AAR certainly received an enormous number of views. Your chance to see the view from the other side of the fence (or at least, my version of it).

I have been using Imageshack for uploading images. My assess to their web site crashed last night as I was attempting to complete my latest update. It doesnt seem to have an easy way to organise files. Is photobucket any better ?

I use photobucket. Just be careful with the bandwidth limit. I've just made a 2nd account in order to avoid exceeding this limit (which is understandable considering the amount of pictures in my 2 AARs).

Do you do Scorched earth when you retreat? :)