Morris vs Joe Rock

richardsd · Post by **richardsd** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:54 pm

so far I don't think you have seen any of Joe's 'new' units that he will have built, are you using your STR to see where they are?

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:31 am

richardsd wrote:so far I don't think you have seen any of Joe's 'new' units that he will have built, are you using your STR to see where they are?

He built some INFs , seems no tank . I did not use Str to find them , I have to save fuel .

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:43 am

Sept 10 1941

Babarosa continue. We got Maikop back . Next will be Grozny. In the North we stand for winter . We also take Voronezh & Kursk . Next turn Vetebsk . Although we lost Finland , but we still have opportunity to victory .

Crazygunner1 · Post by **Crazygunner1** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:50 am

Good progress Morris, for a Barbarossa 41 campaign i would say well done...if you hadn´t lost Finland this might have been a real good start to a winning campaign.

Also very long since i have seen any player go for the oilfields and Stalingrad, think you will find it hard to keep em during winter...

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:14 am

Crazygunner1 wrote:Good progress Morris, for a Barbarossa 41 campaign i would say well done...if you hadn´t lost Finland this might have been a real good start to a winning campaign.

Also very long since i have seen any player go for the oilfields and Stalingrad, think you will find it hard to keep em during winter...

Yes, you are quite right . It would be perfect if I did not lose Finland .

Cybvep · Post by **Cybvep** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 12:27 pm

1942 will be crucial. If you manage to capture the Soviet oil fields, you will be able to build larger panzer armies

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:06 pm

Cybvep wrote:1942 will be crucial. If you manage to capture the Soviet oil fields, you will be able to build larger panzer armies

Yes, I need to capture it & hold , also have less lose in the severe winter ,meanwhile allies won't launch any attack in the west . But I believe Joe won't let it happened . His UK had lost nothing in the France Compaign , Allies will soon be ready to attack in the west .

Diplomaticus · Post by **Diplomaticus** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:03 pm

Crazygunner1 wrote:Good progress Morris, for a Barbarossa 41 campaign i would say well done...if you hadn´t lost Finland this might have been a real good start to a winning campaign.

Also very long since i have seen any player go for the oilfields and Stalingrad, think you will find it hard to keep em during winter...

I agree. Being now in the final stages of a game where I took Stalingrad and the oilfields, I will definitely say that holding them--especially Stalingrad!--all winter is a big challenge. My biggest mistake, which will probably lose me the game, was to allow myself to be distracted by all the action in the East, which left me under-prepared for Operation Overlord. So Moriss, beware!

Crazygunner1 · Post by **Crazygunner1** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:12 pm

Diplomaticus wrote:
Crazygunner1 wrote:Good progress Morris, for a Barbarossa 41 campaign i would say well done...if you hadn´t lost Finland this might have been a real good start to a winning campaign.

Also very long since i have seen any player go for the oilfields and Stalingrad, think you will find it hard to keep em during winter...
I agree. Being now in the final stages of a game where I took Stalingrad and the oilfields, I will definitely say that holding them--especially Stalingrad!--all winter is a big challenge. My biggest mistake, which will probably lose me the game, was to allow myself to be distracted by all the action in the East, which left me under-prepared for Operation Overlord. So Moriss, beware!

They have played about 35-40 turns, less than half. Think we will see Stalingrad change hands a couple of more times during this game. It´s of great strategic importance for both sides at this stage.

From what it seems the russians are pretty weak and i think they can probably only strike from 2 directions. South and from Moscow during winter. However defending in a 3 supply zone like in the Caucasus and beyond Rostov with max severe winter penalty, is a real challange...think you will have to prepare for heavy
casualties.

Joe is a resourceful player, so who knows what he has got up his sleave....but and invasion of France in 42 seems very unlikely.
Only Morris is brave enough to attempts something like that

Crazyg

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 3:11 pm

Crazygunner1 wrote:
Diplomaticus wrote:
Crazygunner1 wrote:Good progress Morris, for a Barbarossa 41 campaign i would say well done...if you hadn´t lost Finland this might have been a real good start to a winning campaign.

Also very long since i have seen any player go for the oilfields and Stalingrad, think you will find it hard to keep em during winter...
I agree. Being now in the final stages of a game where I took Stalingrad and the oilfields, I will definitely say that holding them--especially Stalingrad!--all winter is a big challenge. My biggest mistake, which will probably lose me the game, was to allow myself to be distracted by all the action in the East, which left me under-prepared for Operation Overlord. So Moriss, beware!
They have played about 35-40 turns, less than half. Think we will see Stalingrad change hands a couple of more times during this game. It´s of great strategic importance for both sides at this stage.

From what it seems the russians are pretty weak and i think they can probably only strike from 2 directions. South and from Moscow during winter. However defending in a 3 supply zone like in the Caucasus and beyond Rostov with max severe winter penalty, is a real challange...think you will have to prepare for heavy
casualties.

Joe is a resourceful player, so who knows what he has got up his sleave....but and invasion of France in 42 seems very unlikely.
Only Morris is brave enough to attempts something like that

Crazyg

I am preparing for the severe winter , but I still have onr more fair turn . I will try to take more cities .

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:21 pm

Sept 30 1941

Maybe the last fair turn in 1941 in Russia . We take the Grozny's oilfield & a no production new Russian city Ulrsk .

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 5:08 pm

Doesn't a game like this prove that we should consider getting back to a more limited supply range in 1939-1941. Seeing the Germans get to the Urals by the end of September 1941 against an elite player like Joerock tells me that this is something we should look into.

I see more and more games where the Axis start in May 1941 to get a headstart in Russia and then they can push deep into Russia.

Remember that the argument for the lower supply range was that you need to convert the rail gauge in Russia and the Germans didn't have the capacity to keep up with the speed the real Germans had and they were stopped near Moscow and Rostov. Here we see the Germans get all the way to Urals because they could run with full supply (4 or 5) all the way to Moscow and Rostov instead of being in supply range 3 further west.

We were afraid to let the Germans stay at supply range 3 because then the Soviet counter offensive meant they had problems retreating. We actually made some changes where the Soviet Siberian reserves arrive a bit later. That means the main offensive would come in January instead of November / December. Then Germany would have got the normal supply range.

Some players suggested that maybe we could let the supply range increase to normal in November 1941. That would give the Germans a normal chance to defend in the historical area and at the same time we wouldn't see Germans storm across all of Russia in 1941 as if they didn't have to convert rail gauge at all.

The lines we see in this game would be what we could have by September 1942 and not September 1941.

Cybvep · Post by **Cybvep** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 7:59 pm

The supply rules have HUGE consequences for the Axis, so I think that we should be careful here. However, you could represent the problems with rail gauge by introducing dynamic supply rules, i.e. they would be changed X turns after the German invasion of the USSR, not on a set date.

gerones · Post by **gerones** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:42 pm

Stauffenberg wrote:Some players suggested that maybe we could let the supply range increase to normal in November 1941. That would give the Germans a normal chance to defend in the historical area and at the same time we wouldn't see Germans storm across all of Russia in 1941 as if they didn't have to convert rail gauge at all.

The lines we see in this game would be what we could have by September 1942 and not September 1941.

May be we should come back to this poll: viewtopic.php?t=29008. It seems like option 1b of this poll would allow to fix this problem that certainly could unbalance Eastern front scenario in case of an early and strong Barbarossa.

Cybvep · Post by **Cybvep** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:57 pm

Fixed dates make no sense here. If there is no invasion, then the rules shouldn't be changed. If the player invades in July, then rules shouldn't be changed as quickly as in case of an invasion in June etc.

gerones · Post by **gerones** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 9:15 pm

1b option of this poll was commented as an intermediate (and IMO balanced) option. It will allow the soviets to take a breath in case of a strong Barbarossa (german excessively quick advance would lose momentum when entering zoom level 3) but at the same time it will remove the unrealistic "run to safety" strategy used before in which the germans were normally retreated back to supply level 4 zone just before SW hits, gamey strategy that justified to come back to vanilla game supply level 4 rules.

Diplomaticus · Post by **Diplomaticus** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 9:36 pm

This conversation is rather ironic, I find. It was just very recently that people were saying that "everybody" was just playing defense with Axis because there was no point in doing an aggressive Barbarossa--after all, the Russians just go into full retreat mode to fight another day. So people were thinking "why bother sending a big army to fight nothing?" Now, it seems we're having the opposite problem? What changed so quickly? I know it wasn't the supply thing, since that change was implemented some time ago.

As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong), current rules have it that Axis goes from supply '4' to '3' a couple hexes west of Dnepropetrovsk. Assuming that's true, Morris has managed to run his effective offensive mostly in '3' supply. It isn't until 1942 that the supply stretches past Rostov, right? If I've got this right, it doesn't seem like the supply is unreasonable, since '4' supply peters out not terribly far east of the Polish/East Europe borders.

Stauffenberg is raising a legitimate concern--is there something broken here that can explain Morris' success? I'm just not convinced that what's wrong is the supply rule. And, after all, we should be careful before jumping to conclusions. Maybe part of the success is due to sheer recklessness--and in that case it may be self-correcting. Look what happened in Finland, for example. And Morris has not put himself in a very good position to prepare for the winter offensive. I think most of us would have stopped sooner to dig in for winter. Let's see if Morris pays a price for his daring.

gchristie · Post by **gchristie** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 9:48 pm

I'd say two things:

1, let's see how this game ends before considering any changes.

2, one game is hardly a representative sample. And besides, most of us aren't elite players and I for one really struggle with playing Axis and never get this far into Russia. I suspect I'm not alone, and so if changes are made based on one or two elite players the rest of us will likely see an impact on our enjoyment of the game.

So far I have experienced that the game has gotten better over time and now I at least have a fighting chance with the Axis. Please don't make what is already quite difficult for many of us even more difficult so that a handful of "elite" players get more satisfaction.

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:03 am

Hi everyone :

I think there is 3 reasons cause my Babarosa like this :

1 full concentrate on the Babarosa
2 one early fair turn Apr 23 1941
3 I launched a landing in Maikop . He used 5 corp & Mech & whole USSR air force to eliminate it . It cost his pp & rail & effectiveness .then he had difficult to make a effective defence line around Rostov & Stalingrad .

Since I have concluded from the AAR with Zechi & Sean that , the defence strategy is hopeless , so I try this agreesive strategy in this game . I made a terrible mistake of Finland . otherwise I would get better situation in the north . But However it is too early to say whether my strategy is a win strategy or not , we have to see how it will be going in winter & 1942 .

Please do not do any change at present . This is not a normal Babarosa & the present balance is almost perfect ! If change , it will means that we walk backward .

richardsd · Post by **richardsd** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:16 am

I would say that it is way to early to think about change.

Max (an elite player) in thecurrent game against me (an average player) did an early Barbarossa but didn't make anywhere near this amount of ground. I think the Russians have made a few mistakes (probably due to not expecting the Morris assault) so there is some fault there.

I also wouldn't count against there being a nasty suprise brewing somewhere!

In short, way to early to think about change.