Astrakhan (BETA 5) (moved from Beta test forum)

[willard]

Thanks Tomislav - no, the game is certainly not too easy for me, which is good. It is just difficult enough to keep trying, knowing each scenario is winnable, it is just a matter of figuring out the best strategy. If worse vomes to worse, one can always download a saved game of a more successful player!

[Tomislav Uzelac]

If the game could be made to remember why AP was locked, the case you mention would not be a problem because the game would first note that the unit crossed a river, which locked its AP, and in the process also moved into ZOC, which is irrelevant in terms of AP as it's already locked. A unit having a chance to use extended movement after an overrun after moving into ZOC would be something else than a unit moving across a non-bridged river, which ZOC or not automatically uses up all MP's. It might just be too difficult to code such a memory into the system a fairly short while before release, though.

It would be medium-to-very problematic... it would require breaking all existing savegames for instance.

[ComradeP]

Well, with the new rules for recon steps, it should be possible to do this in 3 turns. I have been trying for the last hour, and I'm pretty close in most tries, but there's always something that fails in the end, mostly with the attack on the unit in Astrakhan. I'm convinced it's possible to do it in 3 turns, though.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

The recon rule was easier to do than the general change we discussed. It also makes the recon steps a bit more useful, so I decided to go for it.

If you do manage to get it in 3 turns, please post the usg. I suspect you'll need a fair bit of luck though

[ComradeP]

Finally did it.

I was about to restart because one of the Panzer divisions had a lot of suppressed steps, but I decided to try anyway. In the end, the NKVD-equipped unit had a, I believe, 10% retreat chance and was bumped out of the hex. I think that otherwise, I could still have killed the unit, but there are several things that make it tricky:

1) The terrain.
2) The possibility of a wall of units.
3) Depending on how the attacks/overruns went in previous turns, units might be understrength.

Although I was lucky in this case, it is possible to kill the division in Astrakhan normally with proper positioning and with rolls as indicated in the prediction, so without too much luck. The main problem in previous runs was that I didn't have a unit left to move into Astrakhan after destroying the defenders.

[ComradeP]

Start of turn 2.

[ComradeP]

Start of turn 3, note the Panzer division that needs an air drop, which prevents me from making the motorized division combat capable.

[ComradeP]

The end.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Impressive! You could do that though, because it's possible to effectively abandon the Stalingrad position, and not pay any sort of a penalty. Your mobile units are still in supply at the start of turn 2 and that's all you need.

I'm going to move the supply source to Stalingrad. This will make it necessary to hold that line with Romanians, and also make the bridge to the south an interesting chokepoint.

Hopefully noone will notice that it's kind of silly for supplies to come from Stalingrad, when in the scanario before they came towards Stalingrad from the current location of the supply source (the Rostov railway).

[ComradeP]

Well, you can hold on to most of the initial positions or at least the rail line until turn 2, I just pulled back to make sure none of the Romanian units died. If you're willing to lose some units/use clever unit placement, the Soviets shouldn't be able to cut the rail line.

Winning as early as possible in this scenario is a good idea because logistics won't keep up, so if it would've taken me until turn 4 to win, half the mobile units would not be combat capable.

As you can see, even after completely abandoning the initial frontline near Stalingrad, the railline hasn't been cut on turn 1.