Smolensk Operation 41 Max Difficulty

[prestidigitation]

Playing through the Soviet campaign again at max difficulty, figured I'd cover the interesting fights and any changes to my opinions about units over the course of this campaign.

Turn 0 Starting Picture



The goal of the mission is to hold out to turn 18, not forever. Therefore our overall goal is to delay and disrupt the enemy through battlefield preparation while trading ground for time as necessary.

However, this can only go so far. The southern side of Smolensk must be held as the city is intensely vulnerable to attack from this sector. Therefore armored forces in the south must achieve their objective of defeating the enemy in that region quickly, then move to protect the city.

Planned Order of Battle for this campaign

I will have two rifle corps and a single mechanized corps. If necessary I will put on the field additional infantry supported by artillery.

Rifle Corps:
3x Rifle
1x Engineer
1x B4
1x Assault Gun with indirect switch
1x ATG/dual purpose gun
1x 37mm AA

Mechanized Corps:
2x T-34
1x AT/SPAT
1x AA/SPAA
1x SPART
2x Heavy Infantry (mot) (better at fighting in the open against armor/enemy infantry than any other type of infantry)
1x Engineer (mot)

Unit Thoughts

In my initial play through of the trilogy at difficulty 4 I dismissed the BT-7A as a poor option. My experience with the ISU has taught me to value the advantage brought by mobile armored indirect fire that can double as a tank so I've acquired two and both served well through much of the early campaign.

Similarly I had used the KV-1 previously, thinking the high cost and weak flanks of the KV-2 were an issue. This go round I've ditched the KV-1 due to the immense penalty of the Unreliable trait while a single KV-2 has been acting as a decisive element in support of my current rifle corps. I'm not sure what, exactly the penalty is from Weak Flanks but it certainly doesn't seem particularly noticeable. One KV-2 backed by heavy AA is single handedly holding back a large portion of the German offensive. A KV-1 would not be capable of that!

Previously I largely dismissed the value of rifle infantry, although I did include 4 in my core. I've since learned a great deal about exactly how to use rifle infantry thanks to the master class in tank fighting provided in the later missions of the Soviet trilogy and see they are probably the best unit available in the game when used to their strengths. tldr: terrain is all important, never put them in the open, don't attack so much, support with artillery, anti tank guns and AA. Throughout this campaign I've used my rifle infantry to completely destroy enemy armor.

Tanks have been a much smaller part of my roster, and I have three deployed total (2x T-34, 1x KV-2). I also have a T-26 in reserve that I plan to turn into a T-60.

[prestidigitation]

Turn 6. Thus far my income has been doing great and I have a reserve of 800 CP despite repairs after the first mission against Germany. I had 2k CP in reserve and could fully modernize my forces while still having an enormous 1k reserve for that battle!

https://imgur.com/a/di6hy05

[prestidigitation]

Turn 14 Report:

https://imgur.com/a/0poZBYn

Enemy have been decisively defeated at this point, although they did manage to bring our reserve down to a mere 500cp.

[prestidigitation]

And completed, not too much to it honestly.

https://imgur.com/a/9ABrcu9

[GabeKnight]

If I may offer some advice: You should defend the river crossings more and never fortify yourself inside a river hex. As far as I know, the river penalties are worse than any gain you'll receive from terrain-cover (and terrain-modifiers).

[prestidigitation]

If I may offer some advice: You should defend the river crossings more and never fortify yourself inside a river hex. As far as I know, the river penalties are worse than any gain you'll receive from terrain-cover (and terrain-modifiers).

From my experience in this mission, the city terrain with fortified heavy infantry in the turn 6 picture’s impact on enemy armor’s infantry attack value plus the boost to mech attack for heavy infantry in high cover terrain plus the ATG providing supporting fire plus the modifier for defender vs attacker damage substantially offsets the river. It also appears to me to be better than open field terrain in terms of combat outcomes.

The entrenchment on top of the rest makes it very durable.

The end result was apparently so extreme that the AI didn’t bother to attack and just tried to cross the river instead. I personally expect that unit to win most combats and hold out for quite some time.

But really that unit was just there to die in place if necessary so long as it buffered the artillery. It’s an aux unit on an objective node. It didn’t have to because I had a larger plan in place that resulted in those units being cut off and mopped up in short order.

Up at Smolensk as you can see in every picture the only units in the city tiles on the river are aux or AA (which move around as needed to shoot at planes obviously) and most of the time they’re empty. I know they will take slightly more losses than in ideal terrain, but the alternative was 0% cover which is basically a death sentence for infantry fighting against armor. They were there primarily to create a path of least resistance for the AI to guide tanks into open terrain in a gap between the city and the forest infantry and away from the artillery park. Until that buffering was needed, those units were defending forward.

As far as river crossings, I haven’t seen as good combat results from those as I’d have liked so I generally don’t when better terrain exists. It leaves infantry and support weapons far too exposed to artillery and air attack for my liking as they don’t get the hiding effect of forest or cities.

I specifically didn’t do that for my armor in the south as I wanted to bait the AI tank attackers in the south into attacking my tank and eating reaction fire by hiding my ATG in the city. If I defended on the river line they simply wouldn’t have attacked and I would have had more trouble cutting them off.

[GabeKnight]

Thankfully many approaches lead to the same goal. And yeah, probably I'm more the aggressive player and not much for simply defending.
I just saw one of your screenshots and wondered about the strange (or rather: unfavourable) placement of your units. There have been combat-tests made and even open terrain should be usually better than a river. For me it's the #1-rule when defending and choosing placement.

W2cV1io.jpg (355.77 KiB) Viewed 2161 times

Sure, best is a tank on open terrain and inf. in a forest, both backed by AT, ideally on a river bank with a road and bridge...

PS: And BTW, the AI cheats. Concealment sometimes works, but usually doesn't.

[prestidigitation]

I felt defending in those spots might give me better combat odds, but might also allow the recon and tank to escape. Instead I trapped them by hooking around behind with my armor and cleaned up all three with zero losses. The AI lacks the forces to safely bypass that point so it’s not like it can actually go anywhere further East.

I modulate my aggression depending on the mission I’ve assigned the units and on the objectives of the scenario. Since I start the scenario holding all the objectives and just need to kill 7 armor I focused on doing that efficiently while minimizing my points spend. This resulted in a lot of entrenched sitting followed by violent counterattacks against a battered foe.

Those units were in a tactical delay to allow the armor to envelop the enemy. The armor was on an attacking mission and cleaned up numerous units en route to Smolensk.

On attacking missions I tend to go in for indirect attacks that allow me to dislodge the AI through maneuver or hit them from unexpected directions so that I can knock out their artillery and any rear supply dumps. My Seelowe AAR where I sent my mech force on a long circular loop around the enemy that knocked out their supply and a good whack of their artillery before the infantry even crossed demonstrates my preferences pretty well.

I also just don’t like wasting resources, and attacking aggressively when it isn’t necessary costs a lot of CP. In Raisenai I was doing well at controlling costs until I got a little frisky and aggressive chasing down enemy units. I got some kills, but I also lost some strength to artillery on my KV-2 doing something not part of the mission.

Losing 3 points off a KV-2 at mines level of experience is 60-70CP elite reinforce, as much as a new HW infantry. I wouldn’t just throw one away, so it behooves me to show similar restraint when using my other units.

[GabeKnight]

Personally, I have no ambition of saving RPs to be honest, but I've read/talked to players who consider it - kind of - a "success indicator" (don't know how else to put it).

The only thing I can export at the end of the campaign is experience; all the units I have to buy back. And no experience without battle...

After I bought my core "back" after a few scens in a campaign, from then on the rest of the RPs is only considered "luxury". And sure I'm following orders to complete my objectives, but that doesn't mean that - on the side - I can not roam the map killing everything that moves...

I did not read the RedStorm AAR's because I didn't play the DLC yet. But it's nice to compare playstyles. I just wish I hadn't deleted my RedStar savegames and could post some of my own screenshots.