Freddie erupts: October 1759
With no progress at Kolberg, I'm becoming increasingly worried about losing the entire Russian army. Supply is just about ok, but once winter hits, it'll evaporate along with this lot.
On the Austrian front, the Prussian corps I bounced from Prag has split in two. Since the main Bavarian army snoozes after its earlier efforts, I decide to deal with the one nearer Prag first. Hopefully Pilsen will survive (in particular as I have a new depot battalion forming up there).
on the main front, spent a bit of time thinking about pulling back, but decide to hold the line one more turn and then hopefully winter will secure the route in any case
useful, it finishes off part of that Prussian corps
ok, that was bad news (must be the size of the NM gap), but I can cope with this (just about)
but I keep on getting hit and losing more and more, both manpower and NM
at the end I've lost 50,000. As you can see, by the final rounds, my losses were leading to masses of lost units as well as manpower.
So here's the bad news condensed. No progress at Kolberg, I've lost the beer supply at Pilsen and eveyone of those defeats at Dippoldiswalde cost 4-6 NM points.
which more or less summarises the disaster, especially as my goal this year was to rebuild my NM (& its going to get worse in late October). Actual combat losses are not too bad, but that ignores all my losses to attrition.
So, I'll retake Pilsen (hopefully), Fred's main army has some damage (But not a lot), only thing to do is retreat promptly. The force of already wrecked battalions can go straight to Prag. The rest to fall back behind the river at Lobositz.
Ok this was bad but expected as I broke contact. Again for so few losses I lost a mass of units.
a bright spot, as my French campaign develops far more than I ever expected
as I fell back at Lobositz, I got hit by an advancing Prussian corps.
At this stage, unfortunately, it gets rather silly, & for once its the system not me to blame. Daun et al now retreat to Dippoldiswalde where of course Freddie awaits and then back to Lobositz etc etc
again nice, but not really critical any more
so some nice things happened
but not many, this just fills line after line
and there goes the Russian army
and most of the Austrian as it'll now wander between the two Prussian forces till wiped out, taking my NM with it
At a guess by the end of 1759, I'll have no Russian army left (at best it'll take 2 turns to take Kolberg and the supply won't last), and the Austrians will be down to 2 effective corps, plus a number of badly battered battalions. One good thing is I'll have lots of replacements (you get back 1/3 combat and 2/3 attrition losses).
I can adopt the 'army in being' model and let Freddie take what he wants before Wien, trying to catch isolated forces and hope a series of fortresses will keep him amused.
On the French front, I think I can reorganise into two forces, one to screen/fight Cumberland and another to take some more fortresses. This will be badly hampered by the NM problem.
So I'm not sure if this is worth carrying on with. If the Russians had taken Kolberg then it would as I could use whats left of the Austrian army to harass Freddie and carry on my offensive on the Rhine and in the North East. With no Russians (& they'll be gone by end November as all their supply will be consumed coping with winter attrition), then no matter what I do on the Rhine, sooner or later Fred will take out Austria.
