Sorry to be so late to the thread but I just found this AAR a few days ago and have read it to completion. I read it because I had already decided to finally start a pbem game now that the game is patched to an acceptable level and now seems solid. I bought the game over a year ago but the early bugs really deterred me from even stating a game so I just waited. I wanted to get some insight and hints on gameplay from this AAR and boy what a treasure trove. It was very enjoyable and enlightening to read the gameplay between two masters. The Swedish trap and the use of Bateux to attempt to escape it were both brilliant. The one thing that troubles me is the way that the Russian efforts against Koenigsburg played out. It just doesn't sit well with me and doesn't seem very plausible. It also essentially nullified Russia for the entire game and was simply a large source of NM for Prussia. I hope that scenario is something that is a very rare event. Aside from that the gameplay was very enjoyable to follow. I now feel that I am somewhat competent to play my first pbem game.
Thank you. You are not late. Even someone reading this in 2 years won't be late
As for Koenigsberg, it worked against Baris because he did not know that a determined defense would win even with a 1 : 10 ratio. Also, the AI never does. This strategy stop any Russian attack 100% of the times (or almost).
But in my new game against Loki100, I made the mistake to use the same strategy (actually, the same strategy with technical improvements), but the difference was that Loki100 knew that an head-on attack was useless and found a - very smart - and I should add unspectacular so far, to get around the issue and make my strategy a losing one. My conclusion now is that against a player that read the "Learning from Prussia" AAR or know the rules of terrain and frontage, the best move is to pull back to Kolberg as the Prussians.
...so far...