"Henri H. Arsenault" wrote in message news:<3bb75dff.109538748@news.videotron.ca>... Due to the shortage of AARs for Russo-German War, I will swallow my pride and post another one despite the poor result, since my previous one here seems to be the only one available anywhere on the net. Having played scenario 8 (the tutorial dealing with the Crimea breakthrough by the Germans), I decided to try #9, the Rostov counter-attack, a small scenario where the Germans try to take Rostov, blissfully unaware of a large Russian army fifty miles away. Historically the Germans succeeded in taking Rostov, only to be pushed back to the Muis River by the Soviet counter-attack. Anyone who succeeds in taking Rostov with the Germans in this scenario (not to mention holding it) deserves to be given a field marshall's baton and a couple of Iron crosses with swords. Not only did I never get close to Rostov, but after three moves, I didn't have a single German unit within forty miles of Rostov, all of my powerful units in the Southern half including three Panzer divisions being completely wiped out. If this game were in three dimensions, my forces would have been kicked back all the way to Berlin without even touching the ground. Well, I thought, the scenario must be unbalanced, so this morning after getting up bright and early I decided to coast to an easy victory by playing the Soviets. This is where I discovered that the AI is very good at getting attack odds of 5:1, and my units were melting away faster than the butter in the frying pan by the time I discovered more than halfway through the five-move scenario that I had forgotten to use any reserves (that's what can happen when you play wargames at 6:30 AM on Sunday mornings... Since the strongest German concentration is in the South trying to take Rostov, I decided to send all of my arriving units to that area using RR movement (bad idea). I also infiltrated some cavalry units with the purpose of cutting off railroad supply lines (good idea). However I soon noticed that my ass-whomping was taking place not only in the South, but that my lines were getting dangerously thin up North, somewhat akin to be beating off an angry dog facing one only to discover that another dog has bitten off half of one's leg from behind. So while I counter-attacked with the armor and arriving infantry in the South, I turned aroundt some units (mostly cavalry) back up the railroad to bolster my line up North. (Wasting four moves for unit movement in a five-move scenario is not the pinnacle of efficiency... "Comrade General, why are we turning around? The Germans are in front!"..."Errrr...Stalin's orders!..."). I was having difficulty getting good odds against the big Grman stacks in the South, and I didn't dare attack a n 8-point stack at 1:1 odds, since a single bad dice throw could wipe out my counter-attack for good.The good news was that the Germans were putting most of their units in big stacks which left holes in their line, through which my cavalry units rapidly infiltrated and cut off RR supply. However the Germans concentrated on the cavalry units on nearby RR hexes, and I had to infiltrate some more Cavalry to attempt to cut off supplies. One cavalry in the South made it to a RR behind the Germans, then swept West then North taking one city after another, including the 5-point Stalino, then raced West all the way to face OKH, which it could not attack for some reason. Other cavalry finally managed to help cut off supplies to most German units, and the tables began to turn. A sure sign was when the big German stacks began to retreat instead of initiating combat. The Germans had advanced their air unit to a city too close to the Front near Rostov, and it was wiped out as the Soviet counter-attack advanced. Now that I was using reserves, the German line was disintegrating, but the heavy losses that I suffered earlier prevented advancing much beyond the original starting positions (except for cavalry rampaging behind German lines). The scenario ended with the Germans in disarray and in immediate danger of annihilation unless they retreated behind a river line further back, but my forces had taken extremely heavy losses. Only my capture of most of the important cities with cavalry saved me from a humiliating defeat. I got a C-, which means less than what the Soviets achieved historically. I found that the computer AI is VERY good at organizing its forces in a manner to get 5:1 and 3:1 odds, and to stack up units to make it difficult to get good odds against it, especially when the computer has the initiative. Conversely, the AI does not seem too good at protecting itself from infiltration by cavalry units (they don't need supply lines). Of course there is a tradeoff between the two: keeping a continuous line means leaving a string of units vulnerable to a concentrated attack at favorable odds for the attacker, and stacking up units usually means leaving holes in the lines , which can be fatal when a lot of enemy cavalry units are nearby. I haven't figured out yet how to optimize this, so one should probably not ask too much of the computer. As a general rule, it is fairly obvious that one should avoid leaving such holes when enemy cavalry is nearby and when there are no friendly forces coming up behind to deal with infiltration. On the othr hand, in the absence of enemy cavalry, it is probably best to stack up most units to make them difficult to attack. Enemy infantry and tanks, unless they can be supplied by air, would be foolhardy to run arund for extended periods behind enemy lines without a supply line. This scenario shows that as it should be, supplies are at the heart of strategy in this game. It is clear that keeping one's units in supply is going to be just as important in this game as beating up on the enemy with high-odd stacks. A slight quibble: I find it difficult to figure out in advance what the combat odds are going to be. Since many decisions are going to involve probabilities involving success of an attack versus risk of leaving one's suply line vulnerable, it is of paramount importance to know what the odds are. It would be nice to have a window showing an estimate of what the odds are a la TOAW. Henri