raffo80 wrote:Well, as i said i like the mod. I play almost half of my PBEM in BJR mod. and half vanilla game.
Don't know what you mean with russian player can't afford any general before '42...In the 4 barbarossa i started (2 in april, 2 in june) against 4 different players of different strengh, i always see the same:
- germans attack but can't kill any valuable russian unit (armor out of range in the BJR mod)
- russian fall back to leningrad-moscow-voronetz-rostov line
- germans get to that line almost unopposed (around late september)
- russian already has generals, double line defence and 7 armor units at least (as many as the germans)
For the tech, i don't build any unit for france and keep adding a lab every turn. Usually by september '40 i have 10-11 labs split in all areas. Still i don't see all this advantage for germany in tech in '41.
I understand that you gave russia more units to have units similar to historical (russia had much more tanks than germans at start of barbarossa) but these tanks were within range of german attack. same for airpower. in PBEM, russian player just fall back and it's impossible to engage any russian unit till september '41.
I play with random research on btw.
Some Russian armor and motorized units are within range. The Russian airforce is too low tech wise to challenge the Germans in 1941 so they better stay out of the war pending better dogfight techs.
How do you afford to build generals and corps units for a double defense line along the line you describe if you also try to build as many labs as you can. You barely manage to get a double defense line if you withdraw all units you have from the front and place armor in the second line. I usually use tac bombers agains the Russian armor even when they can't be killed by land attacks. Before the Russians get better survivability then the tac bombers can inflict 3-4 step losses per attack. So in our game we have to withdraw the armor out of sight so they can be used late 1942 for a counter offensive.
We usually play like you do in 1941 and meet a strong Russian double defense line by the Spring of 1942. But this line won't hold for long because the Germans can easily kill 4-5 front line corps units per turn and after a few turns of softening up the line then you just release your armor and blow a big hole in the Russian line. Then you ooze through this line and force a general retreat in the area. You're not strong enough to do this along the entire front line, but you can do it against Leningrad, Moscow or the south. I think that the Germans will capture one of these targets for sure and will have a pretty good chance of taking the second as well. But if you try to go for all 3 then you will end up not taking any of them.
Airpower is the key to German success in 1942. You soften up all your attacks with fighters and bombers and then you can kill the corps units with 2 German infantry and not suffer a lot of step losses at all. The Russian economy is not powerful enough to replace all those losses.
I actually think that it's a big challenge trying to survive with your army intact in 1942. 1941 is the easy year. 1942 is the year you will be so hard pressed you wonder if the line will collapse. If we hadn't given Russia enough air and armor units then there would be no way the Russians could launch a counter offensive early in 1943. The Germans would be able to stall the offensive till late 1943 and then the Russian winter of 1943-1944 will save the German army from harassment for quite some turns. You just have to stay on the 1939 Russia territory and the Russians will suffer movement penalty. So you can withdraw a bit without being attacked at all.
I never play with random tech. It's too unpredictable. Nobody I play against like the random tech either.
It's, of course, possible to buy lousy generals with Russia in 1941, but you have to wait to the winter in order to afford Zhukov, Koniev and Rokossovsky. You can definitely not afford new air and armor units or you won't be able to have the double defense line. The Luftwaffe won't be idle during the winter when the land attack odds are horrible. The bombers will try to bombard Russian armor and motorized units since these units are needed in the second line in order to form the double defense line.
How do you attack Russian on the first turn? I wait for as long as I can before I attack and when I strike I usually manage to kill all of the front line units or block their retreat so they can't be railed to safety or moved out of range. So you can't expect to have any of the front line units in the double defense line further east. You can withdraw the city garrisons to the main defense line, but then the Germans won't suffer any losses at all moving eastwards and can move really fast eastwards and reach the double defense line too soon. So you need some speedbumps for the Germans to fight.
I've seen Russian armor counter attacking the Germans in 1941 and also in 1942. But if you keep your armor in the second line then you won't lose your own armor. When the Russian armor is exposed then you can soften up the armor with 2 air attacks and finish it off with your own armor. After softening up you get odds like 14:2 etc. The Russian armor simply doesn't have a chance when they're counter attacked. I've seen the Russian player killing 3 of my corps units and then losing 4 of his armor the following turn in addition to having several bombers and fighters depleted from the Luftwaffe interceptions. Then Germany can launch a major offensive in this area and
wreak havoc. So the Russians do best by keeping their offensive units out of combat until they gain the initiative.
What's interesting is how the Russians can start pushing the Germans back to Berlin. I've seen that the Axis can hold the line for quite awhile. It's only when the war of attrition means he must take a lot of units from the double defense line to plug holes you can force the Germans to retreat. If you release the Russian armor too soon then they will be killed. So the Russian will only start rolling once the Germans are on the run.
The biggest enemy to Germany is the lack of oil. Without oil you can't use your fighters, bombers and armor to counter attack against the Russians and Allies. Then their technological advantage won't help them much. So a good Allied strategy is to bleed the German oil reserve every turn by forcing the Germans to intercept everywhere. This might force the Germans to withdraw their fighters and then you have air superiority instead. Patience is the key to Allied success. Use war of attrition against Germany until the Germans have to throw in the towel and withdraw their best units from the battle area to save oil. Strat bombing is also very very important because it keeps the German production quite low.
I think Germany is doomed and will lose Berlin in 1944 unless they manage to maul the Russians quite a bit in 1942. You have to be quite aggressive and weaken the Russians so much so they can't launch a counter offensive early in 1943. THEN you have a chance to hold on till the end of the war.
It might be the mod is slightly balanced in the favour of the Allies. Play reports from different people will show us if that seems to be true. If it's so then we might do a LITTLE to try to balance things even more. There isn't much to gain tech wise, but it's possible to e. g. let the Russians start with 1-2 armor units less and maybe 1 fighter less. But each change can have a bigger consequence that you think so it's important to make small changes each time. If not you just move the pendulum to the other side and you have a game balanced in favour of the Axis.
You described a very good Russian defense strategy, maybe the optimal one. I've seen Russian players trying to defend along the Dnepr / Dvina line only to be annihilated in 1942 because too many good units were lost in 1941. Remember that we use hindsight when we make our strategy. In CeaW you can decide to not repeat the mistakes made by the real Germans or Russians. E. g. Russian would have been much stronger if they had withdrawn like you do instead of trying to keep as much territory as possible. Then we would have avoided seeing the huge German encirclements like the one near Kiev. Russian lost millions of soldiers to encirclements. How do you think the Germans would have done in 1942 if these units had been withdrawn to safety.
If you read about the Russian war production of armor and air units you would see that they easily outproduced the Germans. So it didn't matter that most of the Russian airforce was annihilated at their airbases in June 1941 and the Russian armor were wiped out in 1941. The Russians easily replaced those losses with newer and better equipment. So Russian was definitely as strong in 1942 in the real war as they usually are in CeaW. Think about Operation Uranus (the Stalingrad encirclement). Russia had a lot of heavy equipment to slice through the Axis lines and cut off the 6th Army.
So I'm instinctively sceptical to weakening the Russians too much. It can have side effects we don't like. Remember that the Germans have better units both in tech and efficiency in 1941-1942 and 1943. It's only in 1944 the Russians can even hope to have almost as good units as the Germans. So the odds are usually in the favour of the Germans. The main reason Germany collapses in the east is because of sheer numbers. Russia can afford heavy losses. The key is to deplete the Germans more than they can repair. In 1943 they start getting problems with manpower and first quality drops and then survivability drops. Then you will get more and more problems.
If you look at the history books then you see that one of the areas the Russians were truly great at was the use of artillery. Just ask the German soldiers about the horrors of being bombarded by the Katyushas (Stalin organs). The Germans rightfully feared the Russian artillery. We don't have artillery units in CeaW. It's incorporated into the artillery tech and it will increase the shock value for infantry and motorized units. You won't see the shock effects from the artillery units until the war is almost over if you let the Russians start with artillery tech 0. You need some tech levels before the artillery bonuses start having a big impact. Most wargames let the Russians have shock armies as reinforcements coming from Siberia just before the winter of 1941.
Russia also had another great strategy of forming guard units. So you got guard infantry, guard mech and guard armor. These units were elite and could take on German SS units. So there is no doubt in my mind that later in the war the Russian units were among the most powerful of them all. Russian armor units were very good in the later stages of the war and could take on the Tigers and Panthers. How do you accomplish this if you let the Russians start with too low tech levels? There is no way you can catch another side who got a tech advantage until you reach tech level 6.
I propose you play with normal research instead of random research. I think random research can be quite problematic for the Germans because they need a steady increase in the important techs. If they become unlucky they will lose an important advantage.
