DC1: Warsaw to Paris - Jason vs Barthheart

Started by Barthheart, March 20, 2017, 06:25:53 PM

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Barthheart

It was a fun game. I decided early on to go balls out and try to cause as much trouble as I could.... so much so that at one point I thought I'd screwed up and cost myself the game. You can probably see the change in tempo/direction in my playing. I was basically hoping I'd spooked you enough that I'd have time to cover my ass....

Also there's a harsh event that fires on the Poles from time to time. The commander of the Army group around Lodz periodically refuses to move any troops! Of course during our game this happened right as you parked your army right up against them... and I couldn't get away... for 2 turns!!!
I was sure you were just going to plow through there and straight into Warsaw. I madly scrambled to get troops in that open space... then I saw your other moves making for the back field stuff to avoid having to take Warsaw and scrambled to shift troops the cover those spots...

Very nerve wracking last few turns...

JasonPratt

It occurs to me that playing the turn won't really reveal why I calculated I had no chance of getting through. Basically air recon won you the game.  :D -- once I got a good look at what you had around to slow me down going north along the river road, I realized I had no chance of punching through in my two remaining turns after this one (even though you only had 1 remaining turn after this one).

Nor did I have any chance of getting to Bialystock or some other far-east orange dot city in two turns, much less doing anything there. Without all the other orange dots, I needed Warsaw to win -- which I wasn't going to get.

Another five turns, and I'd give myself 75% odds of taking Warsaw by then.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Quote from: Barthheart on December 07, 2017, 01:13:12 PM
I was sure you were just going to plow through there and straight into Warsaw.

Not unless I could either remove or block off all your pieces to prevent you snapping my supply. And having even one ring of long-dug-in-defense around Warsaw would slow me down considerably, giving you ample opportunity to throttle me off.

Thus my attempts toward the end, to swing around and hit you from behind across the river. But again even if you didn't send forces across the river to speedbump me on the road, I'd have to have enough divisions to garrison the river road AND ALSO to punch over a large river into a long-dug-in-city that I was never going to be able to unsupply.

Doable, but not in two turns of play remaining.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Barthheart

Watched all yer AAR films tonight. Good Job! Way better than my half-assed written one.

I can tell you that you were too worried about the pockets. Once you hade then set all you needed was a few infantry units to sit near to starve them.. about 2 turns. After that they can't move at all.

Oh, and Ploand gets a card that can be used to turn any city into 5000 point supply source. I used that on Krakow which is why let it be cut off from Warsaw.

Again a great game thanks for playing it over such a long period.


Now... since we can't continue the campaign... would you like to play the France scenario, either side, or maybe play Poland again with me as Germans?


Sir Slash

Sounds a lot like what happens to me when I played this scenario, I get to Warsaw about 2 turns shy of winning it. Usually the weather screws me up at some point as well. Great match to both of you.  O0
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

JasonPratt

The random weather was a little bit of a problem, but not nearly as much as in DC:3 when the mud essentially doomed me. (I mean, other things doomed me, too, but had one of them gone right instead I'd have lasted longer or even maybe won. The mud kept me from a couple of significant counter-blitzes, of the sort Barth successfully pulled off here, and also contributed to preventing my escape from several pockets.)

Quote from: Barthheart on December 07, 2017, 11:34:34 PM
I can tell you that you were too worried about the pockets. Once you hade then set all you needed was a few infantry units to sit near to starve them.. about 2 turns. After that they can't move at all.

Yeah, I really, really, reaaaaalllllyyy didn't trust that. Especially for large pockets. A lack of experience on this particular (version of this) game system.

Quote from: Barthheart on December 07, 2017, 11:34:34 PM
Oh, and Ploand gets a card that can be used to turn any city into 5000 point supply source. I used that on Krakow which is why let it be cut off from Warsaw.

I figured you had cached up there, but I wasn't worried. I'm pretty confident I would have pushed through in my last two turns.

Incidentally, you were asking above why I hadn't started assaulting Krakov yet. I'd have to double check my turns, but basically I recall three factors:

1.) the divisions pulled up at the 'front' of the city weren't strong or numerous enough to kick in the front door through your defensive ring without being shattered themselves (or so it seemed to me). I had only cut you off from supply pretty late, so since I didn't know for sure you had supply cached there I wanted to create and give the pocket time to work (if it could).

2.) the back door to the city, north of the river, relied on tenuous road supply situation that wasn't secured yet and I sure didn't need those troops pocketed, too! Also I still needed to get enough troops around back there to be of any use. In fact, I did try setting up a provisional hit from the north, off the road, in the middle of the forests, and I got those troops stuck out of supply for my efforts. This was however partly due to needing to rush some fast-moving units back to clean up and secure my bridges and roads from counter-blitzes that I had let get too far behind me, and at the time the HQ for the units I had sent around back was one of the only feasible choices for the fast security mob I threw back there. Naturally this hampered my supply line, but even when I could get it back around, that HQ had to sit on the road quite a bit north of the city in order to funnel supplies back around in two directions.

3.) Relatedly, your counterblitzing REAAAAALLLLLYYYYY violated that corps (and some related divisions) pushing up from the southeast sector. The survivors were in no position until the last few turns to try to even harass the defenders across your southern river border.


Ditto on: "again a great game thanks for playing it over such a long period."  O0


Quote from: Barthheart on December 07, 2017, 11:34:34 PMNow... since we can't continue the campaign... would you like to play the France scenario, either side, or maybe play Poland again with me as Germans?

Technically I do want to try France, but I need to spend some time working on other mp games first (especially Ysk's Red Thunder mission) before I start a new mp anywhere. I'll get back in touch once my schedule has cleared out some more!

(Perhaps relatedly, the Crisis Grogs are looking into doing a game of Successor or maybe Pericles on Vassal, which I haven't been in position to try to help set up yet -- but which I'll have a little more free time with now.  :coolsmiley: You're in that group so you'd be invited to join of course!)

(Also, and definitely relatedly, now I can focus more time on getting the FIRE IN THE GROGS 2 game AAR up and running.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Barthheart

Yeah this game is all about supply.

One thing about supply that I'm not sure if you knew but all German supply originates from the OKH HQ chit. So your moving t forward early while I was "counter-blitzing" made your supply lines really long... you actually helped me out there.  O0

Supply flows from the OKH to the Army HQ then the Div. HQ and finally to the unit. Or it's supposed to work that way. If you select a unit and the click on the supply icon, Gerry can, then select the OKH HQ you can see the supply route take to the unit. Full supply reaches out for the first 250(maybe 200?) mechanized movement points worth of hexes. So the more of those first 250 MP are on rail and road hexes the farther out it stretches.
Then it's down to 75% supply for the next 25 MP, then 50% for 25MP, then 25% for 25MP. (Numbers might not be quite correct, I'm a bit foggy.. but I use the overlay a lot to help with this)
So the both sides really need to keep all their HQ's on rail/road hexes for maximum supply distribution.

Supply movement takes a big hit crossing a river without a bridge which is why I spent so much time blowing bridges. Watching your replays I saw a lot of your forward units operating below full supply. The little square in the upper Left corner is supply status. Green good, down to red = empty.
Damaged engineers take longer to gain construction points to fix bridges. That's why I took a shot at any engineer that presented itself.

DOH! I thought up something else to tell you while typing all this but now it's gone... stupid 50yr old brain....

JasonPratt

Quote from: Barthheart on December 08, 2017, 09:42:01 AM
Yeah this game is all about supply.

One thing about supply that I'm not sure if you knew but all German supply originates from the OKH HQ chit. So your moving t forward early while I was "counter-blitzing" made your supply lines really long... you actually helped me out there.  O0

This is of course why I also gave OKH some divisions and let him run forward early, too. OKH is always on rails, and (despite some efforts from you) he was never in danger of being cut off from Frankfurt. On that point I was trying to balance moving him closer into range of the Army Group HQs, with moving him off major rail junctions sometimes. (Plus giving a bit of extra punch in the middle of the western sector.)

What would have hurt more was moving my other HQs around like light mech/motor infantry to help with initial assaults. This naturally got them off the road networks sometimes, much moreso away from major junctions. But usually, aside from some emergency actions (like racing back to secure my supply line against a couple of successful blitz-sneaks), I kept them near their divisions and near some road network -- which was pretty easy to do in the first half of the game. So I never had supply problems to amount to anything, except for the times that my HQs got caught along with their corps in pockets. In which case my moving them along wasn't a factor. Case in point, keeping my corps HQs for the southwestern sector way behind the push, wouldn't have helped anything for them to be outside the pocket you created with the zakopane marcher. At best I might have blocked him from getting quite as far -- using the HQ as the blocker! (Eventually I had to do this anyway with another HQ and some fast movers.) The Army HQ supplying the whole southern front was cut off from supplying them by other factors, similarly: blown bridges, effective counter-blitzing onto the supply lines. This is where I did suffer from not pulling my engineers back sooner, from helping create surround-attacks to fixing the bridges.

On the other hand I never did figure out how to properly trace supply on the supply layer from a unit to its supply source. "If you select a unit and the click on the supply icon, Gerry can, then select [any] HQ you can see the supply route take to the unit." That was super-dumb of me.  :crazy2:

In the second half of the game, I kept my HQs back on supply lines a lot more; also I had to work in two or maybe three areas at defragmenting my divisions back to their corps.

Incidentally, while I nominally understood the rail-movement rules in relation to OKH, I could not make my brain accept how totally dumb it would be for this rule to apply against the East Prussian rail movement -- and yet, in the game, they need to rely on overland OKH rail. So I kept being confused about why I couldn't rail anything there at first. After all, it wasn't like my East Prussian crews were cut off from supply despite being functionally unable for the same reasons (i.e. as the Polish coastal salient and any bridges blown in that area) to trace their supply line overland back to OKH!


Quote from: Barthheart on December 08, 2017, 09:42:01 AMDamaged engineers take longer to gain construction points to fix bridges. That's why I took a shot at any engineer that presented itself.

I never had any problem with this, except once that I recall (having to wait an extra turn for more points -- and then I think the rain on a larger river was also a factor). Maybe twice, I don't recall for sure. Otherwise it was roll up to a bridge, end turn to collect my points (which has to be done in any case so far as I could ever tell), then go over.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Sir Slash

I think that's why in DC: Case Blue, the top-most HQ's ( Stavka % OKH) can't move... to keep you from really screwing up your supply lines. You may have a Decision Card that can move them but otherwise they stay put. When I played Case White, I tried to find a way to cut the Poles supply by air strikes on they're bridges but it didn't seem to be anywhere that they couldn't re-route it to.

I think this scenario is all about taking Warsaw. Take it and it's pretty much a win, don't take it and you really have to struggle to come up with enough VP's elsewhere. Like I've already said, I have lost this one as The Germans more times than I have won it.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Barthheart

If you want to hamper the Polish supply, bomb the bridges right in Warsaw, then go after bridges on the west side of the river. Those two bridges in Warsaw supply all of the south and north east side of the map.
;)

Sir Slash

But the Poles ALWAYS have Air and AA units there to defend them don't they? I thought it would be too costly. And, if you bomb Warsaw often enough, is it possible to completely destroy it's supply status?
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Barthheart

The German air force is more than a match for the Polish one. A few turns of constant bombing and the Poles won't have any planes left.

No you can't destroy or lessen the supply by bombing.


mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

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"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

JasonPratt

That's a bet I totally missed even trying: cutting off supply coming from Warsaw by bombing the bridges (once I got close enough to do it).

I don't think it even once occurred to me as an option. I can't even say I chose not to in order to focus on recon (where I focused my air 95% of the time) or because I thought early German air power in this game was ineffective on ground targets (where I focused my air the other 5% of the time). I just didn't think about it at all.  L:-)

I'm provisionally willing to add that to my list of failure reasons.


On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised at how effective my mostly-panzer-1-and-2 armored groups were. I guess if you throw enough tracked golf-carts with machine guns and microcannons at a problem, there will soon be fewer problems.  :coolsmiley:

I really thought, looking at the compositions and remembering this isn't Panzer General, that I'd have to be a lot more clever about how carefully I teamed my armored brigades (or regiments rather, I suppose -- in the German OOB they use regiments instead as the formal unit under divisions, right?) with my infantry. But no, it didn't seem to matter much. Or maybe it did, but I wasn't cognizant enough to realize.  :crazy2:
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Crossroads

Thanks again guys, this was a most intriguing DAR to watch! As a DC newb, I picked a good few tips and tricks for my own struggles vs the AI, too.

Please, please continue to invasion of France next  O:-)
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