Several Moscow 42 Questions

[ComradeP]

I'm getting more worried about German losses and their chance to recover from them the more I play the game.

The problem I see is for the following situation:

-The Soviets move a stack next to your unit.
1)You can decide to stand and resist the assault, which will generally result in 30-50 losses from the assault alone, excluding artillery fire.
2) You move 1 hex back, you avoid the assault but do take artillery/air strike losses, usually 5-10 or so per turn (sometimes more but 5-10 is a reasonable average to account for Soviet artillery moving up or being unavailable) when the Soviets spot you again.
-The situation continues for several turns. As you can generally move back only 1 or 2 hexes, you're always in (vision) range of the nearest Soviet unit. If you take 30-50 losses per turn, your battalion dies in 1-2 days. If you retreat, and take average losses of ~5-10 men per turn, it dies in 4-10 days or so.

The main problem is not having any time to recover/stop. If a unit replaces the battalion you're concentrating on in the line, the situation just starts over and the battalion that was replaced will still have to retreat with the rest of the line and won't have a chance of taking replacements unless it stops for a turn outside of the range of the enemy. The German replacement rate is such that even an A quality unit isn't likely to attract more than 7-9 replacements per turn, or about 1 good artillery barrage. As you can only replace losses through the replacement % mechanic when you haven't moved and haven't been attacked, all it takes is for some Soviet unit to either assault or take some potshots at you during the night to make sure you can't take replacements.

The low protection % offered by the terrain, the slow movement rate of units in most terrain types, the low per turn replacement rate and the lack of reserves that can realistically hold the Soviets back for a while makes it possible for German units to get into a downward spiral many of them can't seem to recover from.

If I'm missing something, do tell, because the situation of the German player looks quite grim from the perspective of sustainability.

[JDR Dragoon]

Well, the standard answer to give here would be to commit some kind of mobile (preferably armored) reserve to stop or delay the soviets, while your leg infantry slinks away, either back to another defensive line prepared by engineers or behind such a line in order to recover. If you don´t have such a mobile reserve or another line of friendly leg infantry units to fall back behind, then yes, your leg infantry will be attrited and then wiped out.

[ComradeP]

The problem is that you can't dig in, so there's no prepared line to fall back to, and as stated: the secondary line of infantry will soon face the same problems as the units at the initial frontline. The only "good" counter I can think of is retreating mixed with making a stand from time to time and trying to outrun Soviet artillery units and the regular Soviet units.

[raizer]

so what you are trying to say is that a fighting withdrawal, conducted at the operational level, is proving to be terribly difficult under the best of circumstances, not to mention having to perform one in the coldest winter of the 20th century?

[76mm]

ComradeP, I hear what you're saying, but I think you might be underestimating the ability of the Germans to disrupt Sov attacks. I would guess that in most places the Germans would only have to face a large Sov force for a turn or two before your artillery and direct fire could disrupt enough Sov units to render them unable to assault. In any event, as you identify the Sov blobs advancing on your lines, you could concentrate artillery in those sectors and create a real bloodbath.

I've never actually played the Germans but from playing them as Sov against the AI, I've seen what even the German AI can do. And no one says you'll be able to stop the Sovs everywhere--you won't--but to win the Sovs needs some really serious advances.

[Al]

FWIW ComradeP I have always thought that one of the most difficult decisions to make in this game is "how long do I hold on to this position and still have time to withdraw my defending units and keep them in some sort of order?"

Enjoy!

[76mm]

While I admire your enthusiasm, may I respectfully suggest that this is like trying to run a marathon before being able to complete a 10k run? ...You're seeing a number of points where you lack clarity regarding the game mechanics...

And by all means, once you have mastered the mechanics you should play humans...

um, but that is exactly what I was proposing?

[Liebchen]

While I admire your enthusiasm, may I respectfully suggest that this is like trying to run a marathon before being able to complete a 10k run? ...You're seeing a number of points where you lack clarity regarding the game mechanics...

And by all means, once you have mastered the mechanics you should play humans...

um, but that is exactly what I was proposing?

Concentrating on playing only full-blown (500+ turn!) campaigns, before having played the game enough times to understand the mechanics well.

I don't mean it as criticism, mind you, just some friendly advice. But as long as you're enjoying the game, that's all that really matters.

[ComradeP]

so what you are trying to say is that a fighting withdrawal, conducted at the operational level, is proving to be terribly difficult under the best of circumstances, not to mention having to perform one in the coldest winter of the 20th century?

No, what I'm saying is that there's a chance units are destroyed at an ahistorically high rate, with the resulting high casualties (I guess this applies to both sides).

A full campaign test will have to show whether it really is the case, but I fear that casualties might be substantially higher than they were historically.

For example: AGC (the entire Army Group, all armies in it combined) reported losses of, on average 463 KIA, 1674 WIA and 208 MIA per day in the period of January 1st to January 10th 1942. That's about 2345 men per day at one of the peak times of the 1941-1942 winter offensive, or about 390 men per daylight turn. In game terms, you can achieve that with between 8 and 16 assaults with 3 battalions vs. 1 German battalion, without any artillery fire.

[76mm]

I don't mean it as criticism, mind you, just some friendly advice. But as long as you're enjoying the game, that's all that really matters.

Understood, but against the AI I don't have to play the campaign to its conclusion if I don't want, and if I don't understand the mechanics aftere 500+ turns, I guess I never will. And so far I'm having fun!