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Beekmans said:
The easiest encirclements to do are as Germany against the Soviet Union. The basic premise is to put their units out of supply. Thus, the pocket you create has to separate them from their capital.
The method to do this has two parts: (a) ability to break through their lines at least once; (b) rapid capture and defense of rear areas that are generally unprotected.
Regarding numbers. Sun-tzu said that you should only split your force if you outnumber your opponent. Blitzkrieg doctrine is about the opposite: splitting your force up into highly mobile, fast units with concentrated firepower creates considerable force magnification.
A simple example as Germany. The front starts at the Polish border, and you both have stacks in every province. You, however, have a stretch of say 3 provinces with infantry only. In the province north and south of that 3 province line, you have provinces with tanks & HQs, in addition to your infantry. You use your tanks as spearheads, and the moment they break through, you drive them around the rear of entrenched Soviet divisions. Once the panzers from the North are in an adjacent rear province to the panzers of the South you can collapse the pocket and annihilate all those troops.
Now, there is a bit more too it. For example, aggressive players encircle and neglect collapse! Why? Because units out of supply, especially in bad territory, can't hardly move at all -- the moment they do they loose org and make themselves even more vulnerable. Barbarossa is a classic use of this tactic, because you can create multiple pockets, sweep up Moscow in a stroke, and fire the Bitter Peace without ever having had hardly *any* pitched battles.
Encirclement = pwnage, and in vanilla, it can be a bit gamey as the AI is pretty bad at defending against it. DAIM is better.
bbasgen said:
Thank you for this clear reply. I tried it against USSR in the balkan, and it worked. I trapped 40+ divisions (see screenie below). Later I tried another one, more to the east, trapped some 60+ divisions. USSR now have 147 divs left, I have 240. My next encirclement will get rid of another 50, after which I will move straight to Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad.
After 3 years of barely holding on, I can finally advance into their territory. Thank you!
Gen. Skobelev said:I suppose you play as USSR often, then?
Surprisingly rarely, actually. My favorite is actually Nationalist China, since you start with decent sliders (the combined cost of planned economy and drafted army to upgrade units as the USSR is unbearable, at least to me). And besides the initial Soviet army in '36 is a pain in the butt to reorganize.
And when I do, Germany never attacks so I have to.
Boy, can you bet I lose a lot of men that way.
@Beekmans: I'm impressed you pulled that off. Isn't Yugoslavia some pretty unfriendly terrain to tanks?
Lame Bums said:Surprisingly rarely, actually. My favorite is actually Nationalist China, since you start with decent sliders (the combined cost of planned economy and drafted army to upgrade units as the USSR is unbearable, at least to me). And besides the initial Soviet army in '36 is a pain in the butt to reorganize.
And when I do, Germany never attacks so I have to.
Boy, can you bet I lose a lot of men that way.
@Beekmans: I'm impressed you pulled that off. Isn't Yugoslavia some pretty unfriendly terrain to tanks?
Yes it is. To the right of my encirclement are mountains, where I went there are still hills. Our front runs from the balkan all the way to Memel and Japan is in the axis, so the USSR forces were spread thin.
The trick was to get to Nis, because I had to cross rivers from all directions, and it was the only province that was pretty heavily defended. I first took craiova to get another direction, and then I attacked from four directions with full force. Once Craiova fell, it was easier. My Armors are slow, but their inf is even slower, so they can't retreat in time.
In my game as a Fascist France, I encircled 62 Russian divisions after conquering most of Europe including Poland, but not Romania in 1941. I was gearing to invade the U.S.S.R. when Romania and their allies got into a war with them about a month before the invasion. I waited 30 days and inaveded. The advance was rapid and I captured Odessa encircling the massive formations moving into Tulcea after about two weeks.
Due to the terrain and manpower issues it was a long drawn out slaughterhouse. A Stalingrad type battle. It took me 4 months to finally clear it out. They were supplied from the Crimea, so I could not starve them into submission. Romania was of little help. The Battle of Tulcea was my greatest battle ever.
Due to the terrain and manpower issues it was a long drawn out slaughterhouse. A Stalingrad type battle. It took me 4 months to finally clear it out. They were supplied from the Crimea, so I could not starve them into submission. Romania was of little help. The Battle of Tulcea was my greatest battle ever.
In my recent WiF game I have finally managed to pull of a proper Barbarossa, first striking in the northern part of the front, creating small pockets and destroying around 60 divisions that way. Now in 1942, after Moscow has fallen, I concentrated my forces in the southern part of the front, started a big offensive with every mobile unit I had and managed to pocket around 140 soviet divisions near Kiev. Now I give them some time to think about there situation until the winter is over.
When this pocket is cleared, then there are just a little more than 80 soviet divisions left, so the rest should be a cakewalk.
When this pocket is cleared, then there are just a little more than 80 soviet divisions left, so the rest should be a cakewalk.
In EWW2, I encicle 120 germans divisions in Kerch (It was all the right flank of the Ostheer)
The_Carbonater said:Try everything in TRP
Well, try it in WiF, it ain't that easy to breakthrough and encircle.
But anyways, after I have played a successful game through in WiF for GER and SOV, I'll give TRP a try.
Beekmans said:
Outstanding! Glad I could help.
We could probably make an entire section on the Wiki about Tactics....
bbasgen said:Outstanding! Glad I could help.
We could probably make an entire section on the Wiki about Tactics....
You should. Makes life easier for the rest of us
unfortuanatly no screenshot, but i made my not greatest but my most usefull encirclement, which safed my front from completly collaps.
playing as ussr (first time with 1.2 and daim) i made the mistake to underestimate the german ai.
i build no ic, and instead of mass producing infantry, i wanted to go with a smaller more mobile army and started building a decent baltic navy too. when war started early may 1941, i was able to hold a line behind the dnepre river.
but even with mud and snow, the germans broke my line in the baltics, and in smolensk.i was pushed back to moscow an leningrad, with the south front in great danger too.
but to my luck, winter stopped the german offensive as it did historically. very impressiv, never seen the ai doing something like this before.
by this time i deployed all of my mobile forces to the baltics. doing this and attacking north i was able to cut 20 german divisions in estland.
after this the germans stopped too attack for two months until febr. 1942.
with 24 mountain divisions coming from the cleand norway and all mobile forces deployed south i started my attack east during march. i pushed hard and fast (as winter allowed) to the ex-polish territories. but in the north i slowly gave up ground. the germans were only one province in front of moscow. but then i started to attack north belong the ex soviet-german border. in the east i had clear ground, with the bulk of the wehrmacht still in winter weather.
i cut about 170 divisions. it took me 4 month to clear this great "pocket". the last 80 divisions were destroyed in riga.
by end of 1942 germany surrendered. my forces are slowly deployed to the far east, to counter the japanese aggression and later to take my new colonies in india
playing as ussr (first time with 1.2 and daim) i made the mistake to underestimate the german ai.
i build no ic, and instead of mass producing infantry, i wanted to go with a smaller more mobile army and started building a decent baltic navy too. when war started early may 1941, i was able to hold a line behind the dnepre river.
but even with mud and snow, the germans broke my line in the baltics, and in smolensk.i was pushed back to moscow an leningrad, with the south front in great danger too.
but to my luck, winter stopped the german offensive as it did historically. very impressiv, never seen the ai doing something like this before.
by this time i deployed all of my mobile forces to the baltics. doing this and attacking north i was able to cut 20 german divisions in estland.
after this the germans stopped too attack for two months until febr. 1942.
with 24 mountain divisions coming from the cleand norway and all mobile forces deployed south i started my attack east during march. i pushed hard and fast (as winter allowed) to the ex-polish territories. but in the north i slowly gave up ground. the germans were only one province in front of moscow. but then i started to attack north belong the ex soviet-german border. in the east i had clear ground, with the bulk of the wehrmacht still in winter weather.
i cut about 170 divisions. it took me 4 month to clear this great "pocket". the last 80 divisions were destroyed in riga.
by end of 1942 germany surrendered. my forces are slowly deployed to the far east, to counter the japanese aggression and later to take my new colonies in india
This is probably the biggest encirclement, looking per the number of provinces. The Draka forces are cut of their capital, and with this they are out of supplies. But it still took the Allies and Axis 1 year to kill the pocket.
theissi said:
He he he. I had *exactly* the same problem my first time with DAIM. I was trying to role play, taking it easy, building CVs and STRAT just for fun, and was absolutely devastated when the Nazi's completely collapsed my defensive lines.
o theissi said:
Nice!
Although nothing on the scale that ya'll have shown here, my latest favorite was the destruction of 40+ British and commonwealth divisions in Gibralter and southern Spain. Nat spain had allied with me, and during the invasion of france, the Brits attacked them from the South. I was wondering where the BEF went to......... suffice to say, after some German help, those Brits went away. Now, the only brit units anywhere are in England. India, Egypt, even singapore, are completely empty, and I guess that the UK AI doesn't seem to want to build more.
I don't encircle. I just bomb them back to the stone age, and after the SU annexation I am too powerfull to need encirclements in my way to WC.
my biggest encirclement so far
about 90 US divisions (Patton was there too:rofl
it was really hard to do this encirclement, lots of US counterattacks, Urban New York,...,
the div. number was pretty much even in that sector
(ca. 120 GER vs ca.100 US divs)
i had about other 30 divs on the Canadian front, it was really a good game...until this encirclement, later it was a walkover