Unity of Command Forums

Hi,

attached is my work in progress for a Ostfront map from Kurland to Hungary. OOB is mostly done, main objectives and depots set. Still working on reinforcement balance and IA behaviour.

The map show the situation around the 10th of January 45, with the germans trapped in Kurland, the soviet armies ready to strike in central poland and east prussia, and german panzer divisions in force in hungary (operation Konrad I, II, III).

Impressive ! a big test for the engine of UOC.
i am also working in a full Ostfront scenario (july 1943) but the AI turns are very very slow (10-15 minutes).
Perhaps from Leningrad to Sevastopol is too big.

Leningrad-Sebastopol may be a little bit to much indeed, but interesting to test out. IA in my Januar 45 scenario actually works quite well, its a of course another pace than small scenarios but once the first big turns are done it is fluide.

Very impressive indeed - I'm working on a full Barbarossa - but its gonna take a while. Plus as Nik mentions the AI turns are monstrously long .

Improved scenario updated in first post.

IA does now defend more in depth making it more difficult to penetrate deep fast. Objectives adapted to new situation. German reserves mobilize in Schlesien to defend it.

If some players would try to see how they perform in taking objectives and how IA behaves it would be appreciated.

Scenario crashed twice

T.

Tsimagas wrote:Scenario crashed twice

Please send me a crash log if the game left any on your machine, thx!

EDIT: this crash is probably the same as the one experienced by LaLose with 1st Kharkov. Ante fixed (it was an AI issue) and it will be released with 1.05.

Hey, nice scenario. I just finished a play through.

First turn I focused on destroying as much German infantry as I could, while buffering my armoured units against the inevitable German panzer counterattacks. My infantry suffered horribly, but my armour was largely intact at the start of turn two, during which I smashed up or encircled most of the German panzers in Poland and East Prussia. Things were a bit tougher down south, where the Operation Konrad panzers took a steady toll on my guys for several turns.

By turn 4, there was basically nothing left of the German northern and central forces, just a few surrounded remnants and isolated garrisons. At this point, the Germans should have pulled back all their forces from Hungary, where it still had some powerful panzer units and lots of infantry. By the withdrawal didn't start until turn seven, by which time it was too late for them to help defend Breslau etc. Is there any way to make them pull back earlier?

I managed to hit all the objectives right on schedule for a brilliant victory. A few I managed to nab ahead of schedule – got Memel on turn 6, and got the final 2 objectives on turn 9 instead of 10. Also besieged Koenigsberg a turn early – and even managed to take the city itself on the last turn (though it's not an objective).

By the end of the game I had taken all territory and eliminated all German units, except for an isolated panzer division in Hungary, the Pillau garrison, and Courland.

Some other thoughts:
- AI attacked out of Budapest on turn one, losing two steps and abandoning its entrenchment. This allowed me to capture the city on turn two, far more easily than I could have otherwise. I know this is a general failing of the AI, I wish units could be given orders to just sit tight no matter what! Ditto at Warsaw, and the Danzig garrison left town early to get killed outside, when it should have stayed put.
- I found that disbanding units was not working right, somehow. I couldn't figure out when I was disbanding things when, if ever, those steps would be available again, even though I wasn't yet at the scenario limit for disbands. I wish the game would inform you when you are disbanding when the steps will be available, or warn you if you're over the limit.
- The scenario pushes the game engine to its limits. Really some provision for rail transport is needed at this scale; the Germans especially could benefit from being able to rapidly deploy units out of Hungary and back into Germany and Poland when needed.
- I found some of the objectives and prestige values to be a bit curious. Why is Memel worth twice as much as any other objective? And why no objective in the south other than the strange one in the middle of the Carpathian mountains? I would have thought Vienna should be an objective, at least.
- Towards the end, the AI disbanded all the panzer units in Courland. I suppose it was trying to generate replacements to add to the main front, but actually I was far more worried that the strong German forces there would counterattack to try to seize Memel. Granted, that would have been ahistorical, but still…

All in all an enjoyable game!

I liked this scenario too. Lots going on and some tricky objectives - hardest is to capture the Carpathian objective on time and maintaining momentum in the Allenstein area - the Hermann Goering division is a tough nut. In general though it's fairly straightforward to defeat the AI.

It's quite interesting to play this as a turn based scenario, so you get to play the German side. If you reallocate and consolidate Panzer units (including some from Courland), move mobile forces north from Operation Conrad and execute a fighting retreat from the Vienna area, it's possible both to break out of Courland (thereby securing the northern part of the map) and smash the central thrust of the Russian offensive around Krakow and Katowice. Since the southern part of the map contains no Russian targets, this results in almost complete German victory.

Metatron wrote:Improved scenario updated in first post.

IA does now defend more in depth making it more difficult to penetrate deep fast. Objectives adapted to new situation. German reserves mobilize in Schlesien to defend it.

If some players would try to see how they perform in taking objectives and how IA behaves it would be appreciated.

Works great on my MAC. Question though; how is it that some Axis Units defending cities are not succeptable to being starved out?