Operation Barbarossa: The Guderian Plan
PERSPECTIVE: This AAR will play Germany against the AI Soviet Union.
TITLE: Operation Barbarossa: The Guderian Plan
SCENERIO: Initially Germany, 1936 "The Road to War," but actual AAR does not begin until August of 1941.
LINK TO AAR:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=441838
MODS: None
STYLE: This is an alternative history gameplay AAR
VERSION: HOI3 v1.2
PLAYERS: Single player, single country AAR
LEVEL: HARD
OBJECTIVE: To explore Guderian's tactics in a recreation of Operation Barbarossa.
DATE: Start date is Nov 9, 2009, but it will likely take up to a week to get through all the necessary preliminaries.
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debrief DEBRIEF debrief
Most unfortunate this game ended in a tie. Goes to show how important Romaina was to the Axis. With a narrow front, the Soviets simply use unlimited manpower and defence-in-depth. The AI did a reasonable job of moving its reserves from one end of the battlefield to the other, and Guderian never had adequate reserves to exploit the breaks.
Tactically, the strategy boils down to combined-arms attacks with massive artillery barrages and building the most effective front-line and break-through units. Given air superiority over the entire battlefield, and considering the innumerable tactical bombing raids and dive-bomber attacks, the Germans should have slaughtered the opposition--but they didn't. Version 1.4. is now out, and it claims to have changed the balance more in favor of the air war, which is good.
This was quite a learning experience. I like to run the game at-speed and make decisions on the fly (as in MP), so diplomacy is something to watch more closely in future. Also learned to build a proper game chronology, along with certain mapmaking shortcuts, and that should enhance the experience more for everyone the next time around.
Cheers,
Valentinian