Grogheads AAR - Kiev '43

Started by Jarhead0331, May 31, 2021, 10:53:35 AM

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Jarhead0331

Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


JasonPratt

Thanks for the AAR Boggit!

Out of curiosity, what would you try as the Germans in this scenario? Do you think the AI did anything wrong, or is their situation just hopeless if the Soviets keep pushing with overwhelming numbers? Did weather make the difference for you?
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!

Boggit

#2
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 31, 2021, 11:33:24 AM
Thanks for the AAR Boggit!
My pleasure. I hope you enjoyed it. O0

Quote from: JasonPratt on May 31, 2021, 11:33:24 AM
Out of curiosity, what would you try as the Germans in this scenario?
I'd broadly keep to their historical strategy which was to counterattack with their armoured reinforcements. The Russian infantry units have negligible AT weapons, but are dangerous to disrupted tanks in the assault. Target any AT guns in travel mode with artillery and airstrikes, and don't allow yourself to get trapped in an attrition battle with flanking Russian units. Your armour is mobile and although you also suffer from the soft ground, you don't have the problem of the big traffic jams the Russians have. Oh, and don't forget to target the over stacked Russian forces for extra kills.

Quote from: JasonPratt on May 31, 2021, 11:33:24 AM
Do you think the AI did anything wrong, or is their situation just hopeless if the Soviets keep pushing with overwhelming numbers?
The AI did put infantry in the front line in travel mode a few times, which got punished by my artillery and aviation. They would have been better to tactically withdraw before taking that risk. Also the attack of 2SS Das Reich was a little too late to make a difference. They got side tracked and at one point were close to wiping out the bridgehead on my far left. They did frustrate the advance to the left on my main push, but like I say were really too late against the main push to make the difference as happened in real life.

The situation is not hopeless though if the Russians can be contained in the bridgehead for most of the game. Keeping a mobile reserve is vital, but you need to make sure it doesn't get bogged down too long and get isolated. It needs to stay relatively mobile as a fire brigade. Had I not got a flanking break through with enough time to exploit, I think I'd have struggled to get the necessary VP's. I also noted that after the Germans were pushed back from their initial positions, they started digging in again on the hills behind their start lines and these were hard to push back until I managed to isolate them.

Quote from: JasonPratt on May 31, 2021, 11:33:24 AM
Did weather make the difference for you?
Yes. It's a pain as apart from tanks, most units couldn't manage more than one or two hexes a turn. They also tended to bunch up and make wonderful targets for the German artillery.
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Foul Temptress! (Mirth replying to Gus) ;)

On a good day, our legislature has the prestige of a drunk urinating on a wall at 4am and getting most of it on his shoe. On a good day  ::) Steelgrave

It's kind of silly to investigate whether or not a Clinton is lying. That's sort of like investigating why the sky is blue. Banzai_Cat

JasonPratt

Thanks for the extra notes!  :bd:
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

Yes, that was a great AAR.  O0
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

DesignGuyBill

I was the Scenario Designer along with David Freer for this title. I enjoyed your AAR.

Can you tell me if you based your victory score off of the Solo Victory Conditions PDF or from the victory conditions found in the scenario?

Some background: Many times it easier to get a victory as a Solo player so I added in victory levels that are harder for the Solo gamer. These are found in the document Kiev-43_Solo-Vic-Cond.pdf. There you will find the victory levels for all solo scenarios for K43.

If you based it off of the victory conditions found in the scenario then check out the levels in the PDF for that particular scenario. If, on the other hand, you based it off of the ones found in the PDF ... a huge congrats to you. You scored far more than any of us did that playtested it!

Note: some folks were a bit miffed that I have the solo conditions in a separate document .... for the next titles I work on I will flip that and put the Solo Victory levels in the scenario file and put the Head To Head (HTH) levels in their own document. The results are so different from the two different formats of play I felt that something needed to be done to give both groups their due.

Boggit

#6
Firstly, thanks to all for the positive feedback. I am glad you liked what I did.

@Bill
Quote from: DesignGuyBill on July 03, 2021, 12:44:39 AM
I was the Scenario Designer along with David Freer for this title. I enjoyed your AAR.
Bill, we already know each other. We have been opponents playing Field of Glory on a number of occasions when you were having a break whilst you were designing the Napoleonic games like Marengo IIRC correctly? Yes, I am that Boggit! I am glad you enjoyed the AAR. I am a great fan of your work.

Quote from: DesignGuyBill on July 03, 2021, 12:44:39 AM
Can you tell me if you based your victory score off of the Solo Victory Conditions PDF or from the victory conditions found in the scenario?

Some background: Many times it easier to get a victory as a Solo player so I added in victory levels that are harder for the Solo gamer. These are found in the document Kiev-43_Solo-Vic-Cond.pdf. There you will find the victory levels for all solo scenarios for K43.

If you based it off of the victory conditions found in the scenario then check out the levels in the PDF for that particular scenario. If, on the other hand, you based it off of the ones found in the PDF ... a huge congrats to you. You scored far more than any of us did that playtested it!
It was off the in game conditions. I wasn't aware of the pdf condition until now to be frank. I will have a look at them now as I am playing the November Operations campaign and at turn 90 (actually the score was broadly similar back at turn 80) my current score for a Russian major victory is 25,567 well over the 12,000 required and I seem to be spending most of my time moving towards the last couple of objectives, with little action other than randomly bumping into the odd unit or part of a German division - although the 1LAH SS have had a couple of units arrive in the vicinity of Berdichev to skirmish with forward elements of 9th Mech Corps. At the outset of the scenario it was very busy, and quite tense but generally I have been able to isolate and destroy German forces without too much trouble. The main concern I have is that the AI is not particularly sensitive to flanking movement, and given that once the Liutezh bridgehead is broken out of to the north and west of Kiev the Germans fight a fairly static battle, not trying to extricate themselves much from Kiev as they did in the historical battle. I don't know how far you can influence behaviour with scripts, but I do think if you can get the Germans to fight a delaying action trading land to stay out of encirclement then that will be a major improvement. To a lesser extent this was also my experience with the AAR. Don't take this as anything but constructive criticism, as I love the game.

I draw the conclusion this is not likely to be a huge problem playing pbem, but it is an issue for a longer scenario single player. It seems possible to annihilate a lot of the German forces within the first 50/60 turns. For example, now at turn 90 with 15,350 objective points I have taken losses of 35,435 men, 384 guns 185 vehicles and 18 aircraft to the Germans 91,395 men, 1109 guns, 933 vehicles and 4 aircraft. I have been constantly on the attack and frankly expected to be paying a higher price for my advance, which now controls all but 6 of the remaining objectives! I still have 144 turns to go to reach the end of the scenario and for the last 20 turns or so am just mopping up isolated units and marching to objectives now suffering most losses in travel mode to air interdiction. Like I say anything you can do with the scripting to encourage the Germans to make a more proactive fighting retreat to buy time will be much appreciated for the longer scenario like this. In the AAR scenario, it wasn't too bad as there was a tactical withdrawal to new prepared lines, which was more in keeping with the reality.

Anyway, like I say I love the game and appreciate your work. If you can address the issue of the Germans being isolated and destroyed in early mid game for single player that would be really sweet. I do appreciate that pbem is better and it may not be possible to do this with the scripting tools available. I like what you have done with the periodic removal of victory objectives per the command report, and wonder if developing this further could help in creating a solution to the issues mentioned?

Quote from: DesignGuyBill on July 03, 2021, 12:44:39 AM
Note: some folks were a bit miffed that I have the solo conditions in a separate document .... for the next titles I work on I will flip that and put the Solo Victory levels in the scenario file and put the Head To Head (HTH) levels in their own document. The results are so different from the two different formats of play I felt that something needed to be done to give both groups their due.
Yes, it's a difficult choice trying to satisfy everyone, but I think you're right to change it for future titles.
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Foul Temptress! (Mirth replying to Gus) ;)

On a good day, our legislature has the prestige of a drunk urinating on a wall at 4am and getting most of it on his shoe. On a good day  ::) Steelgrave

It's kind of silly to investigate whether or not a Clinton is lying. That's sort of like investigating why the sky is blue. Banzai_Cat