How am I doing?
My results are okay. Not great, but good . . . and I'm starting to wonder if "good" is "good enough" on the Russian Front!
So the front is so big, now, I needed to zoom out a tad more just to fit this in only five pictures. It would have been more like 7-8 without.
Army Group North
I've smashed a path to Leningrad. In the process, I'd trapped some units in Estonia, so I deployed two divisions and then a reinforcing corp to clean them up. They're mopping that up now, although it'll be a hard assault on the city itself. The Finns also pushed down to the "Finnish No Attack Line" - as far as they're willing to fight; basically, just short of where I really need them to fight. They're only interested in gaining back the territory they lost in the Winter War. They did manage to smash the garrison at Hanko, finally, but it declined in strength and numbers . . . I suspect the Soviets bled out some of the troops.
The rest of AGN isn't in bad shape, but not in great shape. I've cleared about half of the suburbs south of the Neva River, but the city itself is heavily fortified and garrisoned - a unit strength of "X" means 100+, and I can't even match that without the issues of forcing a major river crossing. My goal is to push East, but there are a LOT of troops, and the Soviets keep counterattacking hard to keep me from taking Novgorod and then pushing up to Lake Ladoga. I'd like to cut off Leningrad in the next month so they starve out. To do that I either need to take all of the lake ports, or cross the Neva River west of the city and take that port. Both are tough, and there is just a massive pile of Soviet troops. They don't break or shatter like they did on turns 1-4, either. Even 10 to 20:1 actual odds against tends to force a retreat in good order, not a rout. They counterattack any holes I break and force back my German divisions, costing them sometimes 50:1 losses but they can handle it.
So I'm pulling up more reinforcements to try and seize Novgorod, take the suburbs, and make a threatened end-run around Lake Ilmen to force the Soviets back. That might be too much, because I'm running low on men . . . but I do need to do all three.
A mistake was not pulling all of my heavy guns out of every front and moving them north - everything 203mm and larger - but I'm rectifying that now. It's making it hard to really smash dug-in troops but I'm doing what I can. (Also, unrelated, I made a mistake in pushing out construction units to front-line units. They're doing better work auto-assigned by OKH and the main HQs on rail work.)
Army Group Center, when we last left, had seized Smolensk. It basically stalled there, having to try and clear the waves of Soviet troops that poured into a big west-facing U shape. The Soviets even steadily pushed north toward Smolensk . . . I tried to stop them, then I just stalled until I could pincher them off. I did that last turn, and I'll annihilate the pockets troops ASAP. I punched a hole near Ryzhev toward Moscow, but I don't think I have the fuel and manpower to go through it.
I've got my rail lines getting very close to the front, finally. But I don't have enough units to do all the things I want, and the area west of Moscow is a tangle of rivers and forests. It's a slow slog, and I can't afford costly errors.
Still, it's shaping up. I'm hoping to seize Moscow before the snows fall, but I've read that a useful strategy is to seize a good defensive line instead to ride it out. We'll see.
In the south, I've managed to break a Soviet push toward Kiev and then connect with Army Group Center. I'm pushing to cut off Kursk and Kharkov, but fuel is an issue. Again, lack of fuel on my front-line units is slowing me down. But I've taken Odessa, and I'm pushing on Dnepropetrovsk. My goal is to cut off the cities and then capture the garrisons. I'll send some units to cut off the Crimea when I can. The South is so big that I'm throwing the Italians, Hungarians, and Rumanians all forward. They're vulnerable to Soviet armor, but I need to make weight here with any unit I can. Russia is so damn big.
I'm aiming at cities with important resources and armaments, because I can't afford to let the Russians keep them.
Overall, my best turn was a few turns back, on turn 9. I actually caused more than ~500,000 casualties in one turn, crushing two big pockets of Russian troops, and I wiped out 64 divisions and brigades that turn. The Russians can make more, but a destroyed unit loses more than a routed one, and it cost much more resources to make the replacements. Speaking of, I only captured ~65 T-34s, and way too many scrap-worthy T-26s and BT-7s. Guns, same - lots of captured 45mm AT guns and not enough 76.2mm AT guns. Come October some of my units might get captured T-34s and 76.2mm AT guns issued, and we'll need the mouse-eared machines and those solid AT guns.
At the moment, losses are:
Aircraft: 549 vs. 5,637
AFVs: 1,263 vs. 12,362
Guns: 3,020 vs. 28,304
Men: 224,182 vs. 2,317,526
Of those, ~56,000 dead and ~1,200 captured vs. ~272,000 dead and ~1,655,000 captured.
Fun game, but turns are starting to take 3 hours to complete. We'll see how I manage with this one. Like I said, I'm doing well . . . but is that good enough?
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