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Stuyvesant

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loki100 said:
As to what Stalin really was after before the German invasion, I don't think anyone really knows. From what I know of internal Soviet politics in the era I think he and his immediate group just wanted to be left alone. Stalin hated the international element of the Comintern (the people who could speak 8 languages and had been in jail to learn each of them) and post-45 was intensely suspicious not just of the new Communist leaderships installed in Eastern Europe but any Russians in contact with them.

Ah well, it was a nice thought to entertain. :) Anyway, I still like how you declared war on Vichy, only for the Allies to really suffer the consequences. :)

Your offensive is off to a good start, with just the infantry committed. I have high hopes for the future, now that the Tank Armies are getting involved as well!
 

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How, what an enjoyable AAR! Thanks for the efforts you put in it!!!
 

loki100

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Not only was it an HArm division, it was an understrength one which stopped you.

even though I now have decent results against those HArm, they can still badly disrupt my offensives or drive me back. I think a problem for the German AI from now on is the intensity of combat means they are often in action, and they are slow to recover strength, so I gradually grind them down, or trap them in pockets.

According to the Soviet deep operations doctrine, the first attack should be head on, not at the corners of the pocket. It is supposed to draw in and exhaust enemy troops before encirclement. Did the incorrect approach still work? ;)

The simple answer is yes.

The more complex answer is the Soviets were never unhappy to use hinges in the front to angle their attacks. So think of this as a sort of Stalingrad on the Dniepr with my Odessa bulge as the Soviet threat to the Axis flank along the Don. The earlier offensive (Saturn) was a straight copy of the basic doctrine - hit them hard and when you have a breakthrough disrupt the front to as great a depth as you can.

In this case angling the two prongs in behind their advanced units gave me a pocket with no natural borders (such as the sea), something that is otherwise quite hard to achieve in HOI.

Great stuff your writing here, Things will start to get really intresting when you start to push into Eastern Europe. Who will fight on and who will throw in the towel when the Red Army storms through? to Annex or to Puppet State?

Glad you're enjoying it. Welcome the forum and your very first post too ... ;)

If they offer to surrender I puppet them. It saves on garrison units for occupation and at least in the short term they are useful at dealing with the axis units in their own country ... then become as useless as allies usually are in HOI.

I demand that you will make my homeland an ally before you march to Berlin !

I do, I can't leave the borders ungarrisoned and it tied up too many troops.

5th and 4th Armies to create a gap, 2nd and 3rd Tank Armies to create a pocket, 12th and 26th Armies to liquidate those pockets. Looks a solid plan, and unless the Germans have brought up a lot of reserves from elsewhere, they're pretty short of anything to fight back with in the Ukraine. Even if you don't bag two whole armies, you'll get some of them.

I get 3 in the end, 2 German and a raft of Yugoslavs and Italians. The only flaw to my plan is after a point the tanks are stuck on the front lines well spread out while the Rifle Divisions deal with the pockets - which takes quite a while to reduce.

its may 9 1943, only 2 years remaining to the complete soviet victory, i expect you get much bigger chunk of europe(and everywhere else) until then
remember it was not untill in 1944 and Operation Bagraiton that the east front left the soviet union and entered eastern europe (except soviet union), so if this goes historically, he should experiance a massive breakthourgh next year

The key difference to history is the front line is already on the Dniepr and I've started the 1943 offensives in May not August. So that accelerates the process of clearing the Germans out of the Rodina by about 6-9 months. I still launch Bagration to schedule (ie 3 years after the original Nazi invasion) but with a different target than liberating Bielorussia.

That is a nice opportunity for an encirclement.

I am currently playing DI:G. I've defeated the Western powers, the British Isles are occupied. And now Barbarossa beckons. I played a couple of months, and decided to revise my plan to get better encirclement opportunities. I wish it included the units from the Common Weapons Mod though, I would prefer to fight guards divisions.

One good think about the DI concept is they can really boost the AI to give a particular set of challenges. Since there is no chance for a human player to take the Soviets you're not worried about how to balance it so the AI has a chance and a human player has a challenge - which in game play terms is the fundamental challenge Paradox set themselves when they went down the route of a non-cheating AI.

Ah well, it was a nice thought to entertain. :) Anyway, I still like how you declared war on Vichy, only for the Allies to really suffer the consequences. :)

Your offensive is off to a good start, with just the infantry committed. I have high hopes for the future, now that the Tank Armies are getting involved as well!

Well I'm sure that Stalin had no complaints at the British and Germans wailing on each other ... not least it kept them (he seemed to think) from dreaming up schemes to attack the USSR. He was always suspicious of Churchill - not helped by Churchill pushing for British intervention in the winter war and drawing up plans to bomb Baku in 1940.

Armour en-masse and in echelon is very powerful, its also good, if frustrating to watch your armoured fist fragment into individual elements as an offensive progresses - and thats before supply and fuel problems stop the whole thing.

HARM'd. Just when you least expect it too. Also means you can't stay behind the Dneiper anymore - HARM is really good at river crossing.

The Germans had 10 HArm divs at the start of 1943, I've pocketed & destroyed 3 and the rest are in a bit of a mess (I think they are slow to reinforce in both IC and manpower terms), but they remain a threat. All my HArm brigades are attached to rifle divisions (I sometimes shift them about a bit) as additional heft for breakthroughs and where their speed is of no problem.

But I'm now entering the phase where the river lines I so loved on the defense become major obstacles to my offensives - I try to ensure each offensive ends with at least one bridgehead over a river so the next step isn't too hard, but can't always manage that.

How, what an enjoyable AAR! Thanks for the efforts you put in it!!!

Glad you're enjoying it. It is timeconsuming but usually its ok when I know how to cut up and package the material. The worst posts are when I'm trying to cram too much in and end up rewriting it 2-3 times.
 

loki100

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"And all the dead, Lie down" Pobeda 9 May - 23 May 1943

The two weeks of operations from 9 to 22 May 1943 saw the near completion of the encirclement of 150-180,000 Axis troops on the central reaches of the Dniepr.



From the north, 1 Tank Corps and 3 Mechanized Corps attacked the Rumanian lines at Pereyaslav Khmelntskyy and Ivankiv on 9 May.


(T-34 of 1 Tank Corp in action near the Dniepr)

By 12 May both had broken clean through and were looking to exploit their gains. The Germans were struggling to cope with the speed of the Soviet advance but 8 Heavy Armour counterattacked at Ivankiv stalling 3 Mech till the 15th.



By picking the wrong target, and continuing to contest the Dniepr crossings with 12 Army at Yahotyn and Domantove, the German 19 Army effectively sealed its fate. Using paratroops to seize control of vital bridges and road junctions at Kaharlyk


(76 Airborne preparing for its first combat drop since the Syrian campaign in 1942)


(Soviet 76 Abn at Kaharhlyk, created the space for 1 Tank Corps to sweep around German strongpoints)

and Bila Tserkva, 1 Tank Corps was able to sweep west of the German resistance cutting quickly through scattered HQ and reinforcing divisions. By the 23rd, lead elements were racing towards Tarascha less than 15km north of the spearheads of 3 Tank Army.



In the meantime 2 Tank Corps was pushing south west of Kiev and towards Vinnytsa. Here the goal was to interdict the German effort to redeploy troops from Army Group Centre to reinforce the shattered front of Army Group South.


(a rare moment of calm for the motorised infantry attached to 2 Tank Corps)

In combination 5 Army commenced a series of holding attacks at Kozelets and Brovary.



Unusually for Pobeda, these attacks saw intense infantry style battles as the rifle divisions tried to force the Dniepr to the north of Kiev.


(Soviet bridgehead near Brovary)

The effect was to pin substantial German forces at the time when OKH was desparate to redeploy them to seal off the massive breach in their front at Vinnytsa.

To the south, 3 Tank Army had made slower gains. The Germans had heavily reinforced the north flank of the Odessa bulge at the end of Saturn.


(To add to the problems facing the Germans, the bulk of the Sturmovik squadrons had been re-allocated to the Ukraine, given near complete air-superiority they were able to hunt for targets almost at will)

Even so the German defense was ill prepared to hold the weight of 5 Tank Corps that broke their lines and reached Korsun by the 21st.


(elements of 5 Tank Corps near Korsun)

To the west, 6 Tank Corps was held up by the desparate German counterattacks at Valutine, but to the east 8 Mechanized Corps created the first, and largest of the Pobeda pockets when it took Kaniv early on the 23rd.



At this, the German 19 Army and Yugoslav 1 Army were trapped in a massive pocket centred on Cherkasy with their southern sector already buckling under the weight of 4 Army's offensive at Tsvitkove.

In the meantime Stavka had reached a decision as to the proper use of 1 Tank Army. 2 Tank was unable to spare the forces to actually capture Kiev or to drive into the huge gap ripped into the German lines in the North Ukraine. By 20 May, 1 Tank Army had detrained at Nizhyn and was redeploying.


(1 Tank Army OOB, its addition to the offensive meant that 30 brigades of T-34s were in action in the Ukraine)

3 Tank Corps was to operate with 5 Army and retake Kiev, 4 Tank and 13 Mechanized Corps were ordered to drive west so as to exploit the collapse in German resistance.


(1 Tank Army moving out of the rail yards at Nizhyn)

OKH was following the same logic. Partisans were ordered to blow the rail lines at Pinsk and around Brest-Litovsk,


(results of a partisan operation at Pinsk)

as it became increasingly clear OKH was reacting to the emerging disaster in the South by stripping Army Groups Centre and North of their reserves


(German redeployments from Army Group Centre)

as well as removing all the mobile forces from France and the UK.

 

Darth Moose

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One good think about the DI concept is they can really boost the AI to give a particular set of challenges. Since there is no chance for a human player to take the Soviets you're not worried about how to balance it so the AI has a chance and a human player has a challenge - which in game play terms is the fundamental challenge Paradox set themselves when they went down the route of a non-cheating AI.
...
Armour en-masse and in echelon is very powerful, its also good, if frustrating to watch your armoured fist fragment into individual elements as an offensive progresses - and thats before supply and fuel problems stop the whole thing.
...
But I'm now entering the phase where the river lines I so loved on the defense become major obstacles to my offensives - I try to ensure each offensive ends with at least one bridgehead over a river so the next step isn't too hard, but can't always manage that.

We'll see what DI:G will do. Dispersal of the spearheads always happens, in game and in real life. You always need more mobile units on the battle field.

You seem to be emulating real life - the RKKA habitually ended their offensives by securing at least a couple of bridgehead over the next river obstacle. Sometimes those were not much more than swampy ground, but they made good use of that. It was either Kravchenko's or Katukov's tankists who did the first submerged river crossing into such a bridgehead, and surprise the Germans.
 

loki100

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I am afraid I have joined this AAR rather late.

Has the UK been occupied?

If so what page is this detailed on?

I have only been following for the last few updates

:/

Hi, its buried in 2 sentences in post 12: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...riotic-War&p=11495676&viewfull=1#post11495676, I sort of took the view that I wanted this to be very USSR-centric so minor stuff like the German occupation of the UK was relegated to a throw away line.

In general the index at: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...riotic-War&p=11477370&viewfull=1#post11477370 might be useful if you want to dip back into previous 43 pages (which taken as a go is a pretty daunting mass I must admit)

R
 

oberstbrooksy

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Hi, its buried in 2 sentences in post 12: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...riotic-War&p=11495676&viewfull=1#post11495676, I sort of took the view that I wanted this to be very USSR-centric so minor stuff like the German occupation of the UK was relegated to a throw away line.

In general the index at: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...riotic-War&p=11477370&viewfull=1#post11477370 might be useful if you want to dip back into previous 43 pages (which taken as a go is a pretty daunting mass I must admit)

R

Ah thanks, and I approve of this ''native'' approach to the AAR, please, do keep posting!
 

Stuyvesant

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That really seems to have gutted the German defense. I see lots of undefended provinces in the last in-game screenshot (not to mention a frankly unhealthy amount of German allies milling about - not the kind of people who are going to halt the Red Army).

If it weren't for your need to rest and refit (and let the supply network settle down a bit), you'd probably be tearing into Germany proper in no time. Good for the AAR, then, that you do have to do all those things. :)

It seems a given that you're going to cull Axis forces in large numbers here. That being the case, I'm now actually more interested in seeing if the German AI can respond at all and create some semblance of a defensive line, while you're going through the aforementioned rest and refit.

PS: All this is not to dismiss your results - job well done!
 

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Wow. Stalingrad got 6th Army, parts of 4th Panzer Army, and took 3rd and 4th Rumanian Armies out in the process. This looks to be on the same sort of scale.

Although I'm very cautious about suggesting it is likely to mean the end of the war. Logistics makes that unlikely. And the Germans have to have units elsewhere they can draw on. They will reform their defensive lines, weaker and with less reserves than before, but the fighting to break them down will still be hard.
 

timkoningskelp

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Very well executed offensive. Seems you've made good use of the paratroopers too, seeing them at the tip of the buldge you've made in the German lines.
Hope you'll succeed in closing the pocket before too many German division can escape. Especially the escape of the armored and motorised divsions facing 12 Army and 3 Mechanised Corps would be too bad! Perhaps you've got one more paradivision to close the pocket with?
 

loki100

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You really got the germans this time it seems, heck they only has 1 divison or square in soem provinces on the border where u have 3+ good lcuk witht he steamrollin :D

at this stage yes, I think the AI was too focussed on holding the river lines in the south, I never again manage such a pocket in open terrain (it always seems to slip away at the last moment). But for now, really for the next year of gameplay, the German AI has remarkable powers of recovery (in part drawing on that mass of units cluttering up France and the UK)

We'll see what DI:G will do. Dispersal of the spearheads always happens, in game and in real life. You always need more mobile units on the battle field.

You seem to be emulating real life - the RKKA habitually ended their offensives by securing at least a couple of bridgehead over the next river obstacle. Sometimes those were not much more than swampy ground, but they made good use of that. It was either Kravchenko's or Katukov's tankists who did the first submerged river crossing into such a bridgehead, and surprise the Germans.

I've got some brilliant pictures of T-34s looking more like submarines (it must have been terrifying for the crews), which I'll wheel out when appropriate. The one time I fail to secure a bridgehead, the Germans were able to hold my offensive for 6 months till I finally worked a way in behind them.

Ah thanks, and I approve of this ''native'' approach to the AAR, please, do keep posting!

It helps keep the focus, as there is more than enough detail as it is ... & I wiil

I've even, for the first time in 6 weeks, managed some gameplay yesterday. The war in Latin America is very interesting ...

Should add, feel free to raise any questions, this AAR is probably now far too long for anyone to start at the beginning or even remember everything that has happened

If you encircle them, it will become too easy. But that looks damn delicious. :p

aye, having pulled this off I wasn't going to let them go ... but compared to other similar situations, the AI didn't really try to escape till it was too late, hence the size of their losses.

That really seems to have gutted the German defense. I see lots of undefended provinces in the last in-game screenshot (not to mention a frankly unhealthy amount of German allies milling about - not the kind of people who are going to halt the Red Army).

If it weren't for your need to rest and refit (and let the supply network settle down a bit), you'd probably be tearing into Germany proper in no time. Good for the AAR, then, that you do have to do all those things. :)

It seems a given that you're going to cull Axis forces in large numbers here. That being the case, I'm now actually more interested in seeing if the German AI can respond at all and create some semblance of a defensive line, while you're going through the aforementioned rest and refit.

PS: All this is not to dismiss your results - job well done!

Its the supply problem, plus the armour is so far in advance of the infantry that halts Pobeda more or less on that line. By the time I've sorted out the supplies and freed up the rifle divisions, the Germans are back in force ... but have weakened their lines up around Leningrad ...

Nice work!

Of all the operations I put together in this game, this is the one I was most pleased with. A dash of deception, massed armour, a threat to an already weakened flank and setting the goal as encirclement rather than capturing ground, all meant it all worked out rather welll ... :cool:

Encirclement of the Germans in the South, followed up a massive offensive along the entire front could mean the end of the war very quickly, unless the Germans begin pulling anything they have left in Army Group West to send eastward.

They do, looking at the battle reports (I kept a note of Pz/PzGr divs I encountered), I start tangling with a lot of new units, and pretty fresh too. In this respect, the AI's recovery is pretty impressive.

Wow. Stalingrad got 6th Army, parts of 4th Panzer Army, and took 3rd and 4th Rumanian Armies out in the process. This looks to be on the same sort of scale.

Although I'm very cautious about suggesting it is likely to mean the end of the war. Logistics makes that unlikely. And the Germans have to have units elsewhere they can draw on. They will reform their defensive lines, weaker and with less reserves than before, but the fighting to break them down will still be hard.

which more or less sums it up. Some of my offensives end up stalling due to resistance but often I just outrun my supplies & by the time I can restart, the Germans have, yet again, conjured up a front line.

Its a bit like at the end of Bagration when the whole of NE Poland/E Prussia lay open but the Soviets couldn't take advantage as their armies were scattered across Bielorussia and their logistic system had collapsed.

Very well executed offensive. Seems you've made good use of the paratroopers too, seeing them at the tip of the buldge you've made in the German lines.
Hope you'll succeed in closing the pocket before too many German division can escape. Especially the escape of the armored and motorised divsions facing 12 Army and 3 Mechanised Corps would be too bad! Perhaps you've got one more paradivision to close the pocket with?

No, those 2 are all I have (at the moment - I convert another rifle division later on). What they did was to force the German units trying to move from N of Kiev to go further west, thus delaying the moment when they could start to attack into the pockets. I don't often use them, not least the transport planes are often ferrying supplies, but for reasons of history this did seem an appropriate region to use paras to try and speed the offensive.
Nice work on the encirclement.
Afte you eliminatzed this, you should be able to do quite some steamrolling along the entire front...

not quite yet, but what I can do know is to keep the Germans mostly off balance ... if they reinforce in the Ukraine, attack in Bielorussia and so on, I can almost always find a weak spot to exploit.
 
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loki100

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"Who took the Flag Today?": Pobeda 21 May 1943 - 9 June 1943

By 20 May, OKH realised it was facing disaster in the Ukraine. The equivalent of 3 armies were in danger of being cut off along the Dniepr and their entire front from Vinnytsa to Zhitomir was held by nothing but HQ formations and units recovering from earlier battles.



However, they knew that the Soviet armour spearheads were running short of fuel and gambled that holding their positions around Berezan and at Kiev might allow them to attack into the base of the bulge.

However, they acknowledged that the area around Cherkasy currently held by their 19 Army and a collection of Italian and Yugoslav units (under the notional command of the 1 Yugoslav Army) was lost. 19 Army was authorised to break out northwards and finally broke the Soviet lines separating them from 14 Army at Kaniv on 1 June.

Stavka's main problem was the sheer scale of the encirclement.


(Soviet tanks recapture Kiev)

The new units of 1 Tank Army allowed some further gains westwards and recaptured Kiev by 1 June.



To the south, 2 and 3 Tank Armies had been halted, in part due to lack of supply and in part fending off the constant German attacks designed to hold open the communication lines to 14 Army.

However, the Soviet trap snapped shut when elements of 2 and 3 Tank armies met at the small town of Lysianka on 29 May. Here, and at nearby Tarascha, 9 and 11 Panzer Divisions launched attack after attack trying to break in.


(elements of 2 Tank Army)

Briefly they dislodged the Soviet defense lines at Tarascha on 1 June, but it was too late. The Soviet 12, 26 and elements of 5 Armies had fragmented the German pocket again into two elements.


(The SU-85s attached to 12 and 26 Army were invaluable in dealing with the attempts of the Panzers to break out)


At the same time 3 Tank Army had deepened the ring of encirclement by driving the Germans eastwards.


(street fighting at Cherkasy, using an adapted bicycle?)

With the failure of the relief effort, the German troops fell back into a smaller and smaller areas. Driven in from Baryshivka, the pocket splintered again.


The final act was the surrender of 140,000 Axis soldiers at Berezin

and Charkasy

on 8 June 1943.


(destroyed Soviet gunboat near Cherkasy)

Pobeda had been stunningly successful. For the first time, even just in terms of combat casualties, the Germans lost more than the Red Army. In total 3 Axis armies had been destroyed. The final casualty lists read as 58,980 Soviet, 69,353 German and 17,496 Axis-Allied dead and 143,046 prisoners taken. In addition Kiev was back in Soviet hands.



However, as a warning of what was to come. The Germans managed to recover enough to avoid a strategic disaster. The Soviet armoured units were short of fuel and dispersed along the front forced temporarily on the defense. Equally the rifle divisions first had to secure the pockets and then redeploy to the front lines. At the same time the German reserves were drawn off from Army Group Centre, from France and Britain. By the time the Vinnytsa battles opened in mid-June, the Germans were able to contest the Soviet offensive village by village as they fell back towards Lvov and the Dniestr.

For several weeks, the sector remained quiet as both sides hastily re-organised.


prisoner liberated

Among spoils, 26A recaptured 4A's camel that had been lost in the August 1942 retreat from Bessarabia.
 

Darth Moose

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Hurrah for liberating the camels - but there are many other POWs that need to be rescued. Onwards! That was a very nice encirclement.

DI:G has proven very interesting compared to vanilla. I started Barbarossa on May 1st, 1941, after capturing the British Isles & conducting Operation Marita (Yugoslavia & Greece). I managed some very impressive encirclements and killed/ captured well over 1.5 million men in many encirclement battles over five-six months. But the RKKA keeps coming back. Moscow and Leningrad were captured during the winter battles. Now (April'42) Stalingrad beckons, but rearranging my armies to extract my armor is proving difficult, due to the sheer scale of the front, and the AI's unhealthy appetite for building HARM divisions. So far, more suspenseful than any other HoI3 game I've played on Normal - even than ICE.

As an aside, the only Allied nations still standing are Canada and South Africa. The USA is at war with Japan, and could join the Allies if Canada invited it, which hasn't happened so far, thankfully. I have several ports unguarded on the western front, and a sum total of 5 infantry divisions as a mobile reserve in that theater. On the other hand, less than a dozen divisions captured Iraq, India, Malaysia, and now Dutch Indonesia. Spread out over such a vast theater, they wouldn't be any challenge to the USA...