Battlefield Europe 2.0 - Sealion 44 with no fuel

[Duedman]

heyhey people!

I finally finished my first complete game of this truly amazing mod and want to share some of my experiences.
"Complete playthrough" because I started over several times (1st time didnt realize the minsk trigger and was therefore late to moscow; Then I was quick enough to moscow but my battleships lost all their fuel in the middle of the atlantic. The third time somehow kiev pocked got activated).
So this was 4th try. And what a ride it was

I savescummed occasionally since I felt that battleresults were WAY of the chart sometimes. And honestly it can make or break your entire campaign if your 3 star fighter gets hit for 5 instead of the predicted 6:1. And then destroyed in the next turn due to that. I dont have time for that.
Malta was the only thing I really loaded until I got the results I wanted (at least I ferried Rudel down there).

So how did it went?

1941
I threw everything to the east because I hate putting troops on squishy transports.
Spoiler: In hindsight, this was a mistake.
I had played the scenarios before and bought some Pioniere. Also a mistake.
Those guys are simply not what they used to be in Panzer General. They get mauled often, are slow as hell and -with trucks- are incredibly expensive to repair.
In exchange a third fighter wouldve been great. But the mod only lets u place 2 air units.

East
I got the Minsk and Kiev Pockets dissolved. Kiev seemed to activate really early and it was very close to disaster again.
I upgraded all experienced 37mm Pak to 50mm.
No Idea how Intenso managed to capture Rostov in his MP game in 1941. I set up a defense in the Stalino-Kharkov area utilizing the aforementioned Paks and the like 3 artillery that started down there.
I had a hard time so shuffle bridgeengineers to where I needed them. They always seemed to be at least one turn late.
Also I did not put enough emphasis on assembling the Gebirgsjägers/Alpini in the south for the later assault towards Baku.

Leningrad I encircled cuz I noticed, that the Swamp Hex right next to the city somehow does not get attacked. With like 3 big guns in the city and an strength 12 russian inf right next to it I thought my Inf would get pushed away easily. Just to be safe I gave the big guns another target with the finnish anti air since AI seems to prioritize those.

Moscow was tough as nails. I decided not to go for allout capture since u seem to need the eastern non victoryhex airfield to get the reward. And that seemed impossible to defend.
Since u get very low ammo back with resupplying / replenishing I was constantly refilling arty and was not able to attack on a big scale.
I used a game limitation for fighter interception. Putting the Luftwaffe near enemy airfields in bad weather. Once weather clears u can shoot and directly fly back. No need to stay on top of enemy anti air.
Although this method is not that neccessary in this mod, since Anti Air is very weak.

Picture of January 1942

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One way to protect pressured frontlines is to let weakened enemy unites alive. It can absolutely help if the real bad boys simply cant reach u cuz a strength 1 Inf blocks the hex.

West
Made the Channel Dash. Then sat in the baltics for years without fuel.
Upgraded 2 small Flaks to 2 sdkfz 7/1, Later a third one.
Spoiler: These are goood! Especially later on with XP. No better way to make holes in those pesky Mustangs and Tempests without return fire.

North Africa
Cheesed Malta as mentioned.
Ignored Tobruk at first and raced to Mersah Matruh. Defense there was hard but held.
Italian mobile AT was like german Panzerjäger AT in front of moscow. Fill a gap. Get hit in the face. Retreat. Regular reinforcements. Fill a gap. Get hit in the..... u get it
I flew/ferried several Inf to Tobruk. Someone wrote, that the bunkers kill themselves if u place inf next to them. That didnt come into my mind.
I waited until Italian Fleet arrived. Then supressed the arty and blunted my way through the north western infantry with like 4 divisions of my own.

[/b]

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So at the End of 1941 / Start of 1942 I was quite confident.
I knew the first really decent Panzer models where soon to be available. And then I would plow my way through russia.
And after that..... England cannot be too hard can it?

As this is surpirsingly time consuming I will have to make a break here.

If u want to know how it all turned out I will continue this.

Some decisive points will be:

Suez Crisis
Kasserine pass desaster
Overlord
Sacrifice of the Kriegsmarine
Racing Rommel
The Charge of the Light Brigade

[PeteMitchell]

Great idea for a new AAR!

I savescummed occasionally since I felt that battleresults were WAY of the chart sometimes. And honestly it can make or break your entire campaign if your 3 star fighter gets hit for 5 instead of the predicted 6:1. And then destroyed in the next turn due to that. I dont have time for that.

I agree, personally I prefer to use dice chess, less hassle...

If u want to know how it all turned out I will continue this.

That would be awesome!

[Duedman]

That would be awesome!

Thanks for the encouragement but I wouldve continued anyway.
This game wont leave my mind!

March 1942 - Leningrad starving! Moscow taken! Sevastopol taken! New Panzer III/J arriving!

Leningrad
As usual the finnish flak get pummeled. The useless Beute-Recon nearly blew it (okok - my fault)
The Beute-T34 also nearly got destroyed.

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Moscow
The enemy bled himself out by attacking artillery backed troops (whose he did not see in snowy weather)
So with the bitter cold beeing over, we can go into the offensive again.

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Rostov Area
The makeshift defense did well through the winter. A PzIII/J arrived in the south and another one will arrive next turn.
Its time to go into the offensive.
Btw as you can see I upgraded 2 of my Inf to Cav at the beginning. In real WWII they were completely obsolete but in PC they can come quite handy with their movement!
As you can also see, I got bridge engineers "in the vicinity"
And of course I will not get them to Rostov in time. Not even close. So I did lose valuable turns (Oil will come online later)

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Sevastopol
Sorry no Pic.
From my aborted tries I knew this was not going to be easy. So I made up a plan.
I surrounded the city in bad weather with infantry including 1 Pioniere (not mine from the campaign tho ) plus 1 arty.
I placed strat bombers above the flak and the arty.
As soon as weather permitted, I moved the arty in to hit the flak a little bit.
Then I levelbombed the flak with the bomber above and then with another one.
Same with the arty. Then I let an aux infantry suck the last shot from the already supressed arty (that still was unpleasant for the inf )
Then I took the last bomber I had in the area and attacked the fortress for a tiny bit of supression.
After that it was finally time for the Pioniere, who dished out a 5str hit with 1 loss in return.
Soon after Sevastopol fell.

El Alamein
As soon as the weather improves the navy will shell the enemy again. Until then its better to save ammo. Fuel has become a real issue. One Battlecruiser stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Gebirgsjägers wanted to snatch Alexandria but enemy Inf from the Airfield moved in and did 3(!!) dmg to the transport.
Fallschirmjägers and Brandenburgers are ready to jump behind the lines.
Honestly this was totally stupid. In my other tries I tried to use them in the Caucasus (Where was hardly a place without enemy Inf to even land!). And on Cyprus (where they stood no chance vs supression from enemy ships while Italian navy had no fuel)
So I grew impatient.

[Duedman]

Pic of El Alamein

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Btw how many Pics can I upload per Post?
And did anyone encounter problems with inserting uploaded Pics?
Yesterday and today again I uploaded, put them in the right spaces, hit Preview and all looked good.
Then continued just to realize that only 1 Pic remains.
Next time I hit "Preview" the other Pics are "no longer available".
So I upload them again. But only the one remaining Pic will show. And that on the wrong position,
Very weird.

[PeteMitchell]

Btw how many Pics can I upload per Post?
And did anyone encounter problems with inserting uploaded Pics?
Yesterday and today again I uploaded, put them in the right spaces, hit Preview and all looked good.
Then continued just to realize that only 1 Pic remains.
Next time I hit "Preview" the other Pics are "no longer available".
So I upload them again. But only the one remaining Pic will show. And that on the wrong position,
Very weird.

Preview seems broken (it eats the attachments/screenshots). My suggestion is to add your screenshots to your post (up to three if I recall correctly) and then just press submit (i.e. skip the preview entirely). In case you find issues in your post/text later, you can always go back and just edit your post (so no need for the preview).

The total file size limit used to be 1 MB but I think they increased this from what I can see on your previous post, so not sure...

[Duedman]

Ah that explains it, thanks.
Will continue when I‘m back home

[Duedman]

May 1942 Stalemate at Moscow broken, Huge enemy forces at Stalingrad, Wolfsrudel near Gibraltar, Victory at El Alamein

North
With good weather, halfway capable new tanks and Luftwaffe support Moscow got completely cleared.
Army headquarters was indecisive where to go next since where was nearly no data about the regions behind the russian capital.
Several Artillery was ordered to help Leningrad siege.
Knispels Division of outdated PzIVEs was in trouble.

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Center / South
Rostov was finally taken. Also, the Don was crossed at Voronezh and an unpleasant discovery was made.
There was a whole army of modern tanks. KVs and T34 both the 42 Variant. And British Mathilda II and Valentine Tanks.
The T34/42 were a direct match to our PzIII/J in antitank capability.
Only the just recently invented PzIVF/2 variant was better. But no tank was even near an upgrade facility.

Fortunately the Red Army seemed to be out of fuel. Probably due to the logistical mess produced by our capture of their capital.
However it was decided that this threat had to be dealt with. And fast. As long as the enemy was still immobile this might be possible with reasonable losses.
The Reich still badly needed oil.
But the threat behind the don prohibited the sending of a huge force.
Therefore the thrust into caucasus continued with only light forces.

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El Alamein
The 2 elite Fallschirmjäger Divisions made the jump behind the enemy lines.
Unfortunately the enemy had mobile reserves and the famed Brandenburgers were wiped out.
But with the help of the Italian Navy and Airforce the defence was crushed.

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[Duedman]

Atlantic
German Military intelligence had reported that the Americans might try a landing in North Africa.
The extent of these forces however, was completely unclear.
It was decided, to send a force to the Nothern Coast of Africa. It consisted of Uboats and smaller vessels still located in the Atlantic.

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[Duedman]

End of September 1942 Leningrad weakening, Gorky taken, North Africa & Caucasus campaigns going to plan!

Leningrad
In the North with the help of Karl Gerät a first hole has been blown in the Leningrad defensive perimeter.
The enemy battleship proves to be a nuisance and headquarters debate whether Luftwaffe assets should be assigned.
But since all fighters in the eastern theater are needed to stem the tide of the Red Airforce, no fighter cover would be available.
So it is decided not to attack it. Fortunately most of the long range guns still target the finnish decoy anti air.

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Moscow
Around Moscow Knispels Panzer Division was barely saved and finally sent back into the Reich to get some adequate tanks.
Headquarters still does not know, how to proceed. Gorky has been tanken and it seems to be an ok-ish defensible position for the time until forces from Leningrad are freed up.
Many Russian infantry divisions try to cross the Oka river running down from Gorky. But with the help of the Flammpanzer all are routed.

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Central Front
Just a gruesome slugfest all summer long. High casualties especially among infantry units. But only one romanian division got completely destroyed. The rest could be rotated out.
New PanzerIV/G models arrive. As of now those have an edge on everything the soviets have to offer. But they are still far to few.

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[Duedman]

Stalingrad / Don Area
The Soviet armored formation north east of the Don river remained a problem, although they still had no fuel.
Still -after some debate- it was decided, that the southern tank divisions were needed to screen the push into the Caucasus.
A concealed line of anti tank guns was placed south west of the Don to halt possible Soviet assaults - which did not come.
In the meantime combined Axis forces coming from the Voronezh crossing cleared the trapped formation one by one.
These operations were bloody and took the whole summer.

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Caucasus
The armored forces sent south to screen the advance towards the oilfields discovered yet another concentration of soviet armored forces that had no logistical capability left.
Headquarters decided that it was necessary to weaken these forces before they could mobilize again. Unfortunately the best Axis Tank divisions in that area were 2 PzIII/J which already struggled.
The push on the Soviet formation meant, that a huge gap south east of Rostov emerged.
A romanian anti tank gun was placed in concealment on the main road. It was no more than a token force but headquarters hoped, it would buy enough time in case of a Soviet attack.

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Africa / Middle East
All nice and dandy!! A matter of months untill the British possesions on the western mediterranean would be ours!

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[Duedman]

Atlantic
Not so nice...
After a brief encounter with the Royal Navy west of Gibraltar the already small force sent down to Africa was weakened even more.
Another detachment was on its way but intelligence reports indicated, that a) it might arrive to late and b) might be insufficient anyway.

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[Duedman]

Mid October 1942 - Suez Crisis

Middle East

What looked smooth and under controll 2 weeks ago, turned into a nasty surprise as suddenly armored British forces appeared from the west and as a total surprise, from the Suez area.
High Command is puzzled where these forces come from. Is Britain not occupied in Asia with Japan?
Or were these forces hiding to let the Afrika Korps pass and then start a pincer maneuver?
Since the only real anti tank units are Rommels recently upgraded PzIV/G and the 8.8 Flak, the Italien mobile "AT" is ordered to perform its tried and tested "Get Hit and Run" tactic.

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Headquarters were rather confident, that the newly emerged threat could be dealt with.
The problem was, that no Axis formations could be lost or the further advance would be nigh impossible.

After the naval contingent was intercepted near Gibraltar now this is the second time Axis forces ran into a trap.
High Command suspects, that the Enigma Code machine is no longer safely encypting and set up a task force led by Konrad Zuse to probe it.

Atlantic

To make matters a lot worse, the long suspected Allied landing in Vichy controlled North Africa started.
With the help of the immobile french battleship 2 or 3 transports could be sunk until the small naval force was overwhelmed.
Much to the surprise of the OKW there were even landings at Oran! The Allies must have turned the spies in Gibraltar as they did not report troops passing.

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Tunisia
Since the Allied landings in North Africa posed a Threat not only to the Afrika Korps but even more to the whole "Southern Belly" of Europe, OKW decided to scramble troops to defend Tunisa.
Unfortunately the Sea was already completely controlled by Allied ships so any transport was a daring endeavour.
Still it was decided to use the bad weather and send experienced tank forces.
OKW had hoped the first division of the new PzVI "Tiger" would be ready earlier to also be ferried to Tunisia but this was not the case.

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More forces were sent on a safer route through the partisan infested balkans and then loaded on ships.
But those would need to travel all the way from Lybia on their own. It might become a case of "Too little, too late"

[Duedman]

January 1943 Leningrad taken. Minor Setbacks at Gorky. First Oilfield taken! Suez Crisis still lingering

Northern Ostfront

Finally Leningrad is taken. Only the Kronstadt Fort remains.
Sailors scuttled the Battleship before it could be captured.
Soviet Forces captured the city north of Leningrad but OKW was confident that the many divisions of German Infantry in the area could mop them up sooner or later.
Archangelsk however seemed to be a tough nut to crack.

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Gorky
With the rivers freezing the "ok-ish" Perimeter at Gorky turned out to be rather nightmarish.
As can be seen there were no reinforcements in the direct vicinity.
To make matters worse, Moscow was foolishly left undefended.

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Luckily at least one the Soviet tank divisions seemed to be out of fuel.

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[Duedman]

The forum drives me mad.
Even without using preview option it screws up with the pictures. Is that so very hard to fix in 2019? >.<

[Duedman]

Much to the relief of the trapped forces at Gorky Luftwaffe was able to scramble Stuka Squadrons (including famed Rudel) and reach the enemy tanks.
The weather allowed attacks and it was possible, to significantly weaken the enemy.
He would most likely not be able to destroy a German formation.
Still a retreat would be necessary.

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Ostfront Center

The Wehrmacht was grinding its way towards the Volga an beyond.
Stalindgrad was in sight but probably heavily defended.

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Rostov area

As feared the Red Army tried to exploit the gap between Rostov and the Caucasus army.
Luckily in the meantime Knispel with his new PzIV/G tanks had arrived. He was quickly involved in heavy fighting supported by returning elements of the screening force.
To make things even better, a StuG IIIG had just arrived in Rostov by train and the weather was permitting air attacks.
High Command saw an opportunity of encirclement and maybe a push to Stalingrad from the south later on.

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[Duedman]

Caucasus

The first Oilfield could be captured. Engineers estimated that it will take them up to a year to return them operational again.
Even more so, the field would not be sufficient to completely offset the fuelshortages
Still OKW is pleased about the progress. Infantry was deliberately send to cross the river in bad weather.
Soviet entrenched Infantry took the bait and attacked the supposedly vulnerable crossing divisions.
But camouflaged German artillery (including a devastating Nebelwerfer) took a heavy toll on the attacking Soviets

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Tunisia

The Italian High Command managed to put together a few extra divisions. Including a 75mm Flak and some crack Sahara Infantry.
Problem was, that those troops also needed to cross to Tunisia. An Italian destroyer and a submarine desperately tried to cover the transfer.
The small Axis contingent took positions at the Kasserine Pass in hope of bottling up the advancing Americans.
The 3-star General of the PzIV/G division repeatedly requested permission to retreat to Libya as he thought Tunisia would be a death trap. He was denied. Tunis was to be held at all cost.

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Afrika Corps

Rommels Army had still not been able to contain the enemy Suez contingent. One enemy Crusader detachment was already at Fort Capuzzo. With only some Gebirgsjägers blocking the way to Tobruk.
To make matters worse, even more Crusaders were seen passing Mersah Matruh. Those must be out of view south west of Tobruk.
OKW debates whether to order Rommels division back.

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[Duedman]

Happy New Year to the few addicts following this and lets continue!

Spring 1943 Gorky situation stable, Major attack on Stalingrad, Increasing tank activity in Africa

Moscow / Gorky

The half strengh unit of T34 at Gorky shot at our Artillery and then raced on to Moscow.
High Command was veryvery worried about that as it was feared, the news of Moscow back in Soviet hands could stirr a major uprising and renewed fighting spirit.
The Beute-T34 gave chase and troops from Leningrad and security troops from the Pripyat Marshes area were sent by train.
Unfortunately the German T-34 ran out of fuel and thus were used to form a defensive to the north east as Gorky was taken.
The anti air valiantly covered the retreat but ultimately paid the price.

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German forces could only contain the T34s and drive them off.

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South east of Gorky things went better although slow.
Since the bridge engineers were halted and nearly destroyed at Gorky, OKW had no means of crossing the Volga River other that fighting directly through the Cities.

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[Duedman]

Stalingrad

Stalingrad was not only a supply hub for the nothern Soviet forces it also blocked the way for the German artillery units towards Baku where they would surely be needed soon.
Due to these reasons the matter had to be dealt with and quickly.
Using the last weeks of frozen rivers Stalingrad was aggressivly encircled.
High Command was a bit worried about the T-70 tank formation to the east.
Would there be even more Soviet reinforcements?

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Middle East

Sherman IIIs appeared!
Sending Rommels Panzers to Tobruk was out of the question now.
An infantry unit was loaded on Sea Transports and a Division of PzIV/G that was initially destined for Tunis was diverted although it would still take weeks to arrive.

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Tunisia

At Kasserine Pass the first enemy Infantry Division was wiped out.
Interestingly they managed to destroy several German Panzers with their newly anti tank weapons. "Bazookas" they called them.

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[PeteMitchell]

This is very exciting!

[Duedman]

Thank you
It seems, that there are not many people left on this section of the forum
So I might just write a wrapup