GC44 on the move again

[PanzerTum]

Finally got the time and interest back to start the GC44 campaign.

I must say that the levels i did thus far were fairly easy (playing on general)

For the Korsun pocket I over strengthened to the gills so to speak and credit went down to 40k.
Maybe as a result of that the pocket scenario was fairly easy, I could have done with less armour and strength to maybe get a higher cost cap.
I did lose 3 core units in the Korsun breakout scenario which was a bit painful, but not painful enough to start over again.
It was a slow move southwards with armour protection on all sides avoiding fighting for objectives that I did not need. I also did not try to conquer that hill 239 or so. Therefore I did not need that many infantry units. That also meant that I could not get the free tank in the northwest

I chose to go to Romania after that so the Jassy Kishinev scenario . Fighting was pretty intense in the north west but I was able to hold my line and also here, with enough patience, a relative easy victory.

So on to Poltava. Another easy one.."I you don't bother me I won't bother you" seemed to be the motto of the Russians. There were plenty of times they could see me but most of the times they did nothing about it.. One of the times they did do something about it I lost an experienced infantry unit (ouch..).
Could have taken less air defense units but then again I had enough armour, the four infantry units (eventually 3) and the two bridging units were enough as well and the BF17's didn't stand a chance against some 10 AD units.

So on to Mogilev I think. Haven't looked at it yet but I suspect that this will be the first tough one..

[rubyjuno]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You're at the same place as me, but instead of just finishing a break, I'm having one. Perhaps reading about your progress will inspire me to return to the battle.

[PanzerTum]

Well, Mogilev didn't turn out to be the tough level I thought it was going to be. A concentrated defense around Mogilev with Elefants in the forts supported by more armour.
I fielded only 2 Tiger II's and left most of my core armour at home so the soft cap was pretty high. With 300 per turn this level turned out to be a nice earner.
46k at the end of the scenario, 38k after repairs.

Now I am at turn 14 of Babruysk. This is something else.
Big wave after big wave. I'm holding on but taking a lot of damage.
The difference between a DV and a MV is only 500 so a MV it will be.
The repair bill will be a lot higher than at Mogilev though.

[PanzerTum]

Just finished Minsk 44 with a DV in the last turn.
I really had no clue on what tactic I should follow. Whether or not to do a forward defense or sit tight in Minsk and do some city defending against the suspected waves of Russian units before launching counterattacks.

In the end it was a bit of a mishmash that sort of worked but probably can be optimized.
At any rate I'm doing the gc44 scenarios more blind than before letting myself be surprised and also accepting core losses more than before.
That said I only lost 1 88m AA unit this time and I have enough of those after Poltava.

Two main battlegroups, Minsk north and center and Minsk south.
I also deployed some units in the north-west and south-west but in hindsight that was largely unnecessary.

The southern group rushed to defend the sw airfield across the river. Easy to defend when you have 3 Tiger 2's inside the riverbend. I did not push further just defended the whole time and finishing of anything that was forced to retreat on the river. Because of this I did not get the 85 tank.

North and center had the task of clearing all units there before regrouping and launching a counter offensive
For the offensive the northern group was split in two to advance on the victory hexes.
There was quite a large spawning of T34-43 and 85 tanks along with some guard units. I was able to eliminate most of them and pushing them north so the infantry could take the prize.

Russian airforce was relatively light. Only killed 12 fighters, 4 tac and 4 level bombers.
Also Russian armour wasn't the best they could field. I think I counted only 2 IS-2.
All in all not as difficult as I expected. The Russian attack waves were a bit fragmented and not as massive as in Babruysk.

I am starting to worry about prestige though. It is going down quite fast.
After repair and OS up to max 12 for most units I am left with 33k prestige at the start of turn one of the Vilna scenario. This one is 30 turns so I expect a big repair bill there as well.
If I am lucky I will have 20K at the start of GC45 and I doubt that that will be enough..I do not wish to start over though this late in the campaign.
I guess I shouldn't have overstrengthened so much for the Korsun Pocket scenario. That was not really needed.

[rubyjuno]

I took a break after Jassy Kishinev and am enjoying reading about your progression through GC44E. When I get back to playing, I will refer to your notes to see how we compare. I'm playing on FM and have more prestige, but I rarely over strengthen and try not to repair in scenario unless I need to (although there have been times when my units have been so depleted that I've had to). I took a break because I was finding it a bit of a grind, not sure when I'll return but reading your notes is making me think about it.

[PanzerTum]

The bit of a grind remark sounds familiar.
There are a lot of Russian units and battles like Mogilev, Babruysk and Minsk44 are more or less the same. Weather the Russian onslaught and counterattack afterwards.
Vilna looks to be the same on a much larger map.
Patience is a virtue here and until now I have not really been strapped for time with only one MV for tactical reasons.

Having said that I am definitely thinking of starting GC44E over again. Reasons being that I was much too liberal with overstrength at the Korsun scenarios and lost too many experienced units until now.
I am afraid that my prestige won't last until the end.
Whether or not I can do better with the rerun remains to be seen of course but until now the scenarios were not too hard.
The positive side of only being allowed to field some 35 units is that the levels are a bit quicker removing some of that grind.

Anyway come August it will be a year that I play the GC what with starting over, breaks and trying other DLC's.
It would be nice if I could finish the GC within 1 year..

[rubyjuno]

As you say, patience is a virtue - I think it was the similarity of the scenarios that caused me to need a break.

Starting over definitely makes things easier, with lessons learned. I played the first 3 or so GCs on Colonel then started the whole thing over on FM because I had learned so much about gaining prestige, looking after core units, best use of combined arms and more. Of course I'm still learning but my aim now is to continue until the end of GC East before going back to the other (GC West) branch. I'm never sure about overstrength - I can see the advantages, but the disadvantages (soft cap, prestige cost and the horror when all the overstrength is lost in one attack) seem too great to me. I tend to over strengthen artillery and AA if anything, units that are less likely to be attacked, and maybe strategic bombers. Maybe one or two units that have really good heroes and experience that I don't want to lose. Like everything else, it's a balancing act.

Just to put things in perspective, I've been playing the GC on and off for over 5 years! I've taken a few breaks - I had to work long shifts during Covid, I've retired from work, moved to a completely different area, had a grandson, played quite a few mods and had many other distractions. Finishing it in a year would be a great achievement.

Let us know how you get on, whatever you choose.

[LevV]

do you really learn lessons or you just learn the patterns of how, when and where enemy attacks? there is no such lesson to learn on how to win 3 tanks with 1 tank (thats roughly the proportion of enemy force in single, i believe) as its not possible mathematically. no offence at all, but even sometimes its fun to be winning in single player, i honestly see no other challenge in it, except to train memory and remember when new enemy comes striking out of nowhere. and at later stages every mistake is just too costly and too depressing, something i dont have time and place for in my life.

[rubyjuno]

do you really learn lessons or you just learn the patterns of how, when and where enemy attacks?

No offence taken. I appreciate you joining the discussion and expressing your thoughts.

I understand your point, but I played the first 3 DLCs (39, 40 and 41) on Colonel before restarting the whole thing back at 39 on Field Marshall, so I couldn't remember where the enemy attacked on individual scenarios. When I say I learned, that's what I meant. As I said in my previous post, I learned how to manage prestige, how important it is look after core units and improve them, more effective use of combined arms, and how air superiority is everything. This is why I raised the difficulty to FM when I restarted - I realised that as I was better educated about PzC strategy I would need a greater challenge.

On my first playthrough, I would send units off on their own to finish a retreating unit off and risk losing it. I used elite reinforcements during a scenario unnecessarily. I wasted prestige by over strengthening units. I suffered losses because I didn't protect vulnerable units from air attack. I was impatient to conquer and suffered losses by assaulting without enough suppression. I let armour get caught in cities and infantry in the open. I used up artillery ammo attacking instead of leaving it available for defensive fire. And more.

Restarting an individual scenario would certainly help when it comes to learning AI patterns, but I rarely do this, if at all. I play the scenario out and accept the result. From this I have also learned that sometimes it's okay to take a loss. Not desirable, but sometimes it makes sense to save your core to fight another day. It would be a pointless exercise for me to keep playing the same scenario to learn all the AI attacks to achieve an easier win. In the early days of playing the base game, I had to restart sometimes as a beginner (the first time I played Bagration I got spanked), rethink my strategy and go again, but it's not something I do now. Cheers.

[LevV]

When I say I learned, that's what I meant.

i have to re-write my comment 3 rd time for various reasons so now its going to be extra short, sorry. I agree in campaign you can kind of learn basic mechanics but only to the extent its use is required in campaign. single campaign is limited by scripted enemy and all the things made to balance out the lack of real intellect on opponents side. in other words the bar is quite low but you have to make it on average three times on any scenario (quantity = quality?) and to make it sweet you are given some perks (heroes, save/load, attachment to core, post-knowledge from previous runs).
for me playing real opponent is indefinitely better and entertaining, shows you the real depth of game. i think its ok to start from single player and practice it for a while, but the end goal should be getting into playing with people (thanks God it is possible). and when you get to that point sadly most of what you learned in campaign will be almost useless.
i wish to encourage people to shift to MP rather then try AI again and again if he is going to fall for that air trap (spoiler: he will )

[PanzerTum]

Interesting discussion of course.
A lot of it is patterns, but not just patterns of the enemy deployment and attack patterns but also order of battle, patterns of combined arms, more knowledge of the relevant worth of the individual units and how to use them. Being able to read the maps and deploy accordingly.

Also if you start a scenario for the first time are you starting at the level of when you first started playing PC or did you in fact learn something that can be applied to this unknown scenario?
I think the latter. Sure you can be surprised but you are better able to handle these situations.

I did some MP back in the heyday of PG and yes tactics can be a lot more sneaky and can have more of a wow factor.
For now I am happy with the campaigns and core building which probably does not feature much in multiplayer.

In the Korsun breakout scenario I used another tactic compared to the first time.
First time around I just bunched up all my units protected by panzers all around and frogmarshed this slowly in a straight line to the breakout zone capturing nothing that was not absolutely necessary:
My "tactic":


Second time around I still ignored capturing the hill but went west to capture the KV-85 and then south.
Nearing the breakout zone I got severely squeezed between three Russian battlegroups which was hard to defend and made me doubt a successful end of scenario. Also because I did not deploy all my best units because of the softcap it was touch and go.
Turn 16:



Jassy-Kishinev was relatively easy the first time round but the second time my forces were not positioned correctly to fend off the Russian counterattack starting in turn 11. A number of units managed to bypass my front line and advance on Kishinev. Especially the mounted Guards units with movement 8 are very slippy and once they bypass your defenses are a pain to control.
Having to react to this as well as protect all the river crossings was just not possible so it got messy in the last few turns leading to a lot of damage and again doubting if I could pull it off.
So I could have learned something the first time but I just was not aware of it…
The fact that I did not deploy all my units because of the soft cap made the problem a little bit worse.
Thinking about it now I could have used this to deploy my remaining units to contain the Russian breakthrough and thereby limiting the damage. I just did not think of it at the time…

Counter attack developing:

[rubyjuno]

Also if you start a scenario for the first time are you starting at the level of when you first started playing PC or did you in fact learn something that can be applied to this unknown scenario?
I think the latter. Sure you can be surprised but you are better able to handle these situations.

For now I am happy with the campaigns and core building which probably does not feature much in multiplayer.

I agree on both counts. There are so many campaigns and mods to get through, and I can play when I like for as long as I like. MP is more of a challenge, but not always convenient.

When I played Jassy-Kishinev, I organised a decent defence then sent a small party up the West side in an attempt to bypass the Russians and capture the final objective (Rauseni, I think). I triggered a counter-attack and had to retreat and settle for a MV, which meant I missed out on Poltava, but a victory is a victory. In Mogilev, I looked at the East bank of the Dnieper and thought that if I tried to defend that marshland with the river at my back it would be a graveyard for my armour. Instead, I positioned my defences on the West bank and let the Russians attack over the bridges. A tank by each bridge, backed up by artillery, AA and air cover. Many surrenders! At the North and South crossings, I defended the bridges with small forces that soon wiped out resistance. In both cases, in crossed the bridge to capture objectives. Big mistake... I triggered counter attacks and had to withdraw my battered units to save them. Another MV. On to Babruysk.

As I start Babruysk, with all units repaired, I have 81664 prestige. My core consists of 21 Infantry, 6 Tanks, 7 SE Tanks, 4 Recon, 3 AT, 14 Artillery, 6 AA, 8 Fighters, 5 Tactical Bombers and 6 Strategic Bombers - 79 units in total. Within each class I generally have a mixture to provide some flexibility (although all my fighters are FW190As).

[PanzerTum]

Originally i wanted to try and get the JagdTiger at Mogilev but I decided at the end to just do a plain defense, no counterattacks and stock up on some prestige.
Maybe minor vicories are too easy using an experienced core.

Now I am also at the start Babruysk with 58k prestige after repairs & overstrength which is 24k more than the previous time so that looks a whole lot better.

My core now has 74 units: 14 infantry, 20 tanks of which 7 SE, 3 AT Elefants, 11 Artillery, 10 AA (thanks to Poltava), 8 fighters, mainly FW190-D9, 5 Tac bombers and 3 level bombers.
The tank force has some outdated models in there which I haven't sold yet because of the built up prestige, so i may upgrade later when losses get too high.

Haven't used the level bombers so far in 44. My deployed airforce usually consists of 5 FW 190-D9, Rudel and sometimes Lent. I deploy a lot of AA, between 6 and 8 so it all balances out.

My deployment at Babruysk was sub optimal last time so will make a few changes there.

[rubyjuno]

Originally i wanted to try and get the JagdTiger at Mogilev but I decided at the end to just do a plain defense, no counterattacks and stock up on some prestige.
Maybe minor vicories are too easy using an experienced core.

Now I am also at the start Babruysk with 58k prestige after repairs & overstrength which is 24k more than the previous time so that looks a whole lot better.

My core now has 74 units: 14 infantry, 20 tanks of which 7 SE, 3 AT Elefants, 11 Artillery, 10 AA (thanks to Poltava), 8 fighters, mainly FW190-D9, 5 Tac bombers and 3 level bombers.
The tank force has some outdated models in there which I haven't sold yet because of the built up prestige, so i may upgrade later when losses get too high.

Haven't used the level bombers so far in 44. My deployed airforce usually consists of 5 FW 190-D9, Rudel and sometimes Lent. I deploy a lot of AA, between 6 and 8 so it all balances out.

My deployment at Babruysk was sub optimal last time so will make a few changes there.

I think perhaps you are right about minor victories, but as the EF wears on, I've found that often when I go for the decisive victories I get battered.

With that in mind, I took a good look at Babruysk and decided that the expected onslaught would mean defending the entire territory would be too costly and doomed to failure. I set up a defensive line from Babruysk northwards through Klicau which meant that with the 4 victory hexes in the NW behind me and one in Babruysk itself I had the requisite 5 victory hexes for an MV. I upgraded some of my armour with movement heroes to Tiger IIs (ouch). If things went well, I would push out, but I was satisfied that it was a good defensive line. The Russians sent plenty of units to test my defences, but I've found that if you set up a good defence in the right place with the right units, the AI sometimes lacks the approach to break it. Perhaps with a few turn to go, I could have pushed out and gone for a DV, but I stayed in my comfort zone and collected my prestige.

[PanzerTum]

Vilna still has me stumped. Just do not know which strategy to use. As a result of which I do not really like this scenario.
In the end I just deployed a partial core of mainly panzer, artillery and anti-air and hid away in a corner of the map accepting the loss that went along with it.

Still had to fight a bit but indeed a well placed defense has the Soviet units milling around not knowing what to do.
This kept the softcap at 100 as well so with 100 a turn for 30 turns it was easy on the prestige as well.
But if I really had to fight this as the Germans did, I just wouldn't know where to begin.
Probably key is to keep parts of the railway lines clear so you can move fast.

On to the Warsaw Uprising, a city fight for which I will probably use my level bombers again which have been gathering dust so far in '44.

[PanzerTum]

Two battles on and the final battle of 1944 looms, Budapest.

For Warsaw Uprising I had to scrape the barrel clean to gather enough infantry units.
Just as in the Moscow cityfight I made the initial mistake to attack across too wide front causing my troops to be too dispersed.
Once I organized a concentrated North to South attack things started to go according to plan.

Return to Jassi Kishinev was relatively easy. The Russian attach pretty quickly ground to a halt and remained static for the duration. Also the Romanians didn't put up much of a fight. DV at 17.

Here's me guessing Budapest won't be so easy...

[rubyjuno]

Congratulations on your victories! After reading about your experiences, I'm thinking that I need to be more adventurous...

I have been waiting to reply until I had completed GC44E, which I did yesterday. Looking back, at Vilna I just defended the area around Vilna and managed a MV. I hate scenarios that are all city hexes, so didn't enjoy Warsaw Uprising. This probably made me too negative and I failed to capture sufficient objectives and took a loss. I thought about trying again as I could see that if I pushed a bit harder I could at least get a MV, but I don't like playing scenarios twice unless I have to in order to proceed. At Return to Jassi Kishinev, I again found an area between rivers that looked easily defensible and took a MV. Budapest 44 was tricky as all the rivers were frozen so there were no natural defences. Here I did have to restart after trying to defend too a too wide area and getting overrun and outflanked. I could have persevered and lost several good units but I decided to do the dishonourable thing and restart. I did as you did at Vilna; deployed a partial core in the corner and accepted a loss. There was still some fighting to do once the Russians had found me, but I slogged it out and took the prestige.

I moved onto GC45E and Goldap and saved without starting. I was awarded my 8th SE unit, a Panzer IV, and have 90455 prestige. I should thank you for starting and continuing this thread, as it inspired me to keep going. Enjoy Budapest

[rubyjuno]

After starting GC45E, I thought back to the last few scenarios of GC44E and how they turned into a struggle to survive whilst gaining enough objectives to continue, and decided that GC45E would be pretty miserable if I continued the same. I looked at my 90455 prestige and came to a decision to be more adventurous. I noticed that the AI is reluctant to attack the strongest units, so that these units could pick their battles. I upgraded my new SE Panzer IV to a Tiger II and my 4 best Fw190As to Me262As at a cost of 3842 prestige. I didn't deploy my full allocation of units, but those I did deploy I over-strengthened to their maximum. With repairs (Elite Replacements), upgrades and this over-strengthening, I spent 14161 prestige, and the starting soft cap was 29%. Crazy? Well, we'll see.

I split my units into 5 groups, each with tanks, infantry, artillery and AA. I also deployed my 4 Me262As and a tactical bomber. My objective for all groups was to push to the river to block off further advance whilst destroying units that had crossed. I won't say too much for fear of spoilers, but the toughest scrap was around Goldap itself. My over-strength units made a big difference, although some took quite a bit of damage. It was a different case with my air units - not a single one was attacked. The 4 Me262As were far more effective than the 8 Fw190As I deployed previously, although AA was still essential. I achieved a DV with a few turns to spare. I ended Goldap with just under 80000 prestige, and a captured KV tank.

Is this high spending sustainable? I'll have to see how much my repairs and over-strength cost to continue, although a net spend of 10000 a scenario may be too much. Maybe a smaller, stronger force is the way to go? I now how a choice of Insterberg or Pelleninkin, so I'll have a good look at the overhead map and objectives before deciding what to do.

[faos333]

......
Is this high spending sustainable? I'll have to see how much my repairs and over-strength cost to continue, although a net spend of 10000 a scenario may be too much.

Yes, but it depends on your rate of over strength losses on each scenario.

[rubyjuno]

Yes, but it depends on your rate of over strength losses on each scenario.

That's correct, and that's why I've generally avoided over strengthening units so far; because when those extra strength points get blown away, it feels like a lot of prestige down the drain. However, I've found that having over strength units makes the AI more wary of them, meaning I can pick when to attack. This usually results in less damage to that precious strength... although not always.