That's a beautiful first-turn encirlement between Bialystok-Belorussia, now it's just a case of liquidating it fast and keeping the forward momentum going!
The Air war get a bit underrated, you will need those planes in future especially in the winter month, I think about strategic bombing on Railways to disrupt fright for the soviets and let the get ready for a counter offensive later. This could help with Moscow and Rostov etc. You can see the flak intensity on the map let them fly over 15000-20000 ft. You will see some opportunities to play like this may for Pripyat marshes [Gomel]. See ya like to start again
@@NightPhoenixnp why not try no airfield bombing turn 1? If you leave them alone, their air to air losses against the luftwaffe are horrendous and you kill pilots along with airframes. Also, german pilots get insanely experienced by shooting down soviets in the air, so you kill off all soviet pilots, permanently impacting soviet xp levels in air units and the german air units all buff to close to 99... worth testing to see if its a superior strategy!
Just discovered this play-through. Looking forward to seeing how you handle Barbarossa. Playing my second campaign. Thought I was doing ok as the Axis, but am now getting throttled by the Soviets come winter in what I thought were quiet sectors.
The devs also stated that it takes a campaign or two to get the gist of it. I started a new 4 times before I personally could play a campaign without getting stuck in areas likes Smolensk until turn 6-7.
wait wait 2h video NICE! turn 1 bah doesn't matter more fun in the future that even greater when you learning the game by trying and see what goes wrong! That a good reference IMO. Keep up and see ya in Moscow or Berlin! ;)
And we got a bonus Dutch lesson. Don’t you hate when when you’re about to embark on a world conquest and outside world calls you. Don’t they understand how difficult Barbarossa is? The life of a general in 2021…
Yes, life is full of interruptions like that, and sometimes it's hard to get them all XD Especially if you have an episode that took me quite a few hours to make...It's terrible, no respect these days.
Is there any way to change the disposition of units before the game starts, like Decisive Campaigns? It might be fun for a later playthrough to put all the panzers in Sud or have every soviet unit in the front
Is there a better way to get more captured equipment? It seems like it almost always all get destroyed. Sometimes the enemy loses more equipment than they even had in the first place.
Lost - also often means surrendered if they were encircled. But most of it is unusable for the Germans - Don't see them driving around the USSR with a bunch of BT-5's any time soon.
At what elevation are you running your bombers? I am finding my flak losses are quite low when I select a target then run the elevation up until the number of bombers available is less than the number I want then rolling it back 1000 ft. I do not know if this increases the number of operational losses but it just makes sense to run your bombers at or close to the ceiling for each type of aircraft. Thanks for restarting and bring your experience back to the beginning of the game.
Also, I did not catch did you focus only on Soviet fighter bases your first turn, you mentioned that they lost bombers as well. Air superiority is key at the start of the game. In my experience it is only worthwhile to attack airbases on day 1, the rest of the week could be devoted to interdiction especially important southeast of Chertkov if you are going east of Lvov although I was never able to keep the soviet southwest front frozen.
Way i gather is that the higher you fly at, the less accurate your bombers will be. Flak losses are quite low regardless i feel like, with most being operational losses. Since the first turn takes very very long already - i don't feel it's a good time investment to fiddle with altitude till you get it just right.. At least for me, i just don't have the time for it.
I focus on all airfields in range that i can properly escort - you tend to get most of them at that point - the rest can be gotten with regular air missions during the remainder of the week. I believe it only remains frozen if you don't go East or South of Lvov - the manual is a bit unclear as it suggests you barely move at all with the AGS. (or even the Center)
@@NightPhoenixnp I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that the height set for the bomber is only their travel altitude, it does not affect their drop altitude. Different bomber types have different ceilings by design. If you run large 4 engine bombers in formation at the altitude Stukas are supposed to operate they are going to fall out of the sky at an alarming rate. I am not suggesting you "spend hours" trying to get your runs at the right elevation I am just trying to share my observation about how the game appears to work. I set up my deepest runs first, since these are not going to be able to be escorted they need to be as high as possible as this limits the type of soviet fighters that are going to be able to get to the elevation where these bombers are running and it avoids a lot of flak. Then I lock these planes into the mission by selecting the AOGs that are available to select instead of allowing them to be auto-selected by the AI. Later in the game I will often want to bomb the same hex or set of hexes with missions from an entire week. So I run different AOGs on alternative days instead of sending 1 AOG for the entire week. If you do not assign missions by AOG then you will have the same planes flying these missions all week not solving the problem of pilot fatigue. This whole process takes a few seconds per air mission and seems to greatly reduce my losses when I need to operate beyond the range of fighter cover. What does take actual time setting up is the flight path which is hugely important in avoiding flak concentrations and can be used to some effect to stay away from air bases with fighters that can reach the higher elevations. Remember many of these soviet fighters are biplanes that have low ceilings but are capable of doing great damage at the 9k feet that is the default for bombing missions but can not get above 20k feet. First priority should be given to bases with MiG-3, Yak-1 and LaGG-3 fighters as they were the best soviet fighter at the start of the war, yet the Yak 1 did not want to fly above 13k ft and while the MiG-3 and the LaGG-3 could reach the high-level bombers slow rates of climb and limited fuel and ammo capacities limit their effectiveness at intercepting the highest altitude bombing runs.
@@NightPhoenixnp On the first day of the first turn I only focus on airbases with fighters and try to focus on the most modern ones. Unescorted Soviet bombers either do not fly or fall out of the sky like rain once the Germans have air superiority, which does not last forever. I never attack an airfield after day 1 as the losses for doing so in my experience out weight any gains. For the rest of that week it seems best to me to focus on interdiction and prep bombing along road corridors you are going to take to hopefully lower the combat delays along these routes. Thanks for the videos I have learned a lot from watching you and other people play.
Off screen use the 1st LP to get a feel of Game 2's 1st Winter and the German Spring recovery...There is a big difference between how the 1st Winter plays out in Game 2, You want level 3 forts(and in depth) to hold a line during the Winter(even then you're going to get pushed backed) level 2 forts are ok in a pinch, but the AI easily knocks 'em down to 1.
I created corps defenses of three divisions/forts in line with the 4th in reserve touching all 3 but behind, so I have one redundant fallback position and can rotate the weakest division in a corps back. I leave a one space gap between corps which lets me occasionally surround soviets when they try and sneak through my lines. I also vigorously deliberate attack from my defenses all winter that I can to keep soviets from causing attrition losses if they aren't touching my lines. The losses they suffer are huge from the deliberate, multi-division attacks. I also rotated all fresh divisions from all other theater boxes and put my beat up/exhausted units into western europe etc to rest up for the winter. I also sent almost all mobile troops to theaters for the winter. Overstacking north africa and western europe was super effective. North Africa in particular benefits from going above 200% in air, naval, land as it keeps delaying the allied victory there which I view as a potent late game strategy to avoid the fall of Italy as long as possible and the opening of a new front. Then in March I start railing mobile troops back up to railheads to set up my May offensives once mud is done.
I have no clue how to do that. I checked the manual, and it's outright confusing as they claim you can't go East or South of Lvov - which means you can just as well skip almost that entire turn with the AGS.
@@NightPhoenixnp 11.2.5. Unlocking the Soviet Southern Front If a Soviet national hex south or east of 187,187 (just southeast of Lvov) is Axis controlled then all of Southern Front and related airbases will be unfrozen.
@@NightPhoenixnp Ok. I'm only playing War in the West at the moment and in that game I'm using Air Superiority to kill Axis planes and escorts to protect my bombers. Not sure if Air Superiority is relevant in WitE
It might've been if i had any planes in the air myself - but i'm advancing so fast i'm having a hard time finding airfields with decent supply from which to operate my fighters even.
That's a beautiful first-turn encirlement between Bialystok-Belorussia, now it's just a case of liquidating it fast and keeping the forward momentum going!
A much more satisfying start than the previous game! Riga is often more formidable. Good fortune there. GL!
The Air war get a bit underrated, you will need those planes in future especially in the winter month, I think about strategic bombing on Railways to disrupt fright for the soviets and let the get ready for a counter offensive later. This could help with Moscow and Rostov etc. You can see the flak intensity on the map let them fly over 15000-20000 ft. You will see some opportunities to play like this may for Pripyat marshes [Gomel]. See ya like to start again
Good ideas right there.
@@NightPhoenixnp why not try no airfield bombing turn 1? If you leave them alone, their air to air losses against the luftwaffe are horrendous and you kill pilots along with airframes. Also, german pilots get insanely experienced by shooting down soviets in the air, so you kill off all soviet pilots, permanently impacting soviet xp levels in air units and the german air units all buff to close to 99... worth testing to see if its a superior strategy!
Just discovered this play-through. Looking forward to seeing how you handle Barbarossa.
Playing my second campaign. Thought I was doing ok as the Axis, but am now getting throttled by the Soviets come winter in what I thought were quiet sectors.
cool. first time watching Grigsby 2. really nice.
glad you're starting a new campaing too, especially after I hear the reasoning behind it.
The devs also stated that it takes a campaign or two to get the gist of it. I started a new 4 times before I personally could play a campaign without getting stuck in areas likes Smolensk until turn 6-7.
if lucky, I can get into Smolensk on turn 2, but then infantry are too far behind as well as logistics
wait wait 2h video NICE! turn 1 bah doesn't matter more fun in the future that even greater when you learning the game by trying and see what goes wrong! That a good reference IMO. Keep up and see ya in Moscow or Berlin! ;)
Leuk om te horen dat je uit Nederland komt. Groeten uit Noordrijn-Westfalen Duitsland🤗🤗🤗🤗
It seems like some interruption was unnoticed by me XD. Ah well. Yes, the Netherlands it is. Greetings back. ;)
And we got a bonus Dutch lesson. Don’t you hate when when you’re about to embark on a world conquest and outside world calls you. Don’t they understand how difficult Barbarossa is? The life of a general in 2021…
Yes, life is full of interruptions like that, and sometimes it's hard to get them all XD Especially if you have an episode that took me quite a few hours to make...It's terrible, no respect these days.
No ZOC penalties on the first turn? Surprise attack effect?
Is there any way to change the disposition of units before the game starts, like Decisive Campaigns? It might be fun for a later playthrough to put all the panzers in Sud or have every soviet unit in the front
I'm not sure actually - i don't think so at this point in time.
Do you guys understand the second word on Phoenix introduction: "Hello .... and welcome back". Its driving me mad, sound like "fernand" or something.
Everyone. ;)
Is there a better way to get more captured equipment? It seems like it almost always all get destroyed. Sometimes the enemy loses more equipment than they even had in the first place.
Lost - also often means surrendered if they were encircled. But most of it is unusable for the Germans - Don't see them driving around the USSR with a bunch of BT-5's any time soon.
Best news of the week. Now vorwarts towards Moscow and the Volga!!
If you move next to a routed unit, and they disappear, does that mean they're gone from the game? Or do they regroup elsewhere for the enemy?
They regroup elsewhere.
@@NightPhoenixnp Does the routed unit take further damage?
At what elevation are you running your bombers? I am finding my flak losses are quite low when I select a target then run the elevation up until the number of bombers available is less than the number I want then rolling it back 1000 ft. I do not know if this increases the number of operational losses but it just makes sense to run your bombers at or close to the ceiling for each type of aircraft.
Thanks for restarting and bring your experience back to the beginning of the game.
Also, I did not catch did you focus only on Soviet fighter bases your first turn, you mentioned that they lost bombers as well. Air superiority is key at the start of the game. In my experience it is only worthwhile to attack airbases on day 1, the rest of the week could be devoted to interdiction especially important southeast of Chertkov if you are going east of Lvov although I was never able to keep the soviet southwest front frozen.
Way i gather is that the higher you fly at, the less accurate your bombers will be. Flak losses are quite low regardless i feel like, with most being operational losses. Since the first turn takes very very long already - i don't feel it's a good time investment to fiddle with altitude till you get it just right.. At least for me, i just don't have the time for it.
I focus on all airfields in range that i can properly escort - you tend to get most of them at that point - the rest can be gotten with regular air missions during the remainder of the week. I believe it only remains frozen if you don't go East or South of Lvov - the manual is a bit unclear as it suggests you barely move at all with the AGS. (or even the Center)
@@NightPhoenixnp I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that the height set for the bomber is only their travel altitude, it does not affect their drop altitude. Different bomber types have different ceilings by design. If you run large 4 engine bombers in formation at the altitude Stukas are supposed to operate they are going to fall out of the sky at an alarming rate. I am not suggesting you "spend hours" trying to get your runs at the right elevation I am just trying to share my observation about how the game appears to work.
I set up my deepest runs first, since these are not going to be able to be escorted they need to be as high as possible as this limits the type of soviet fighters that are going to be able to get to the elevation where these bombers are running and it avoids a lot of flak. Then I lock these planes into the mission by selecting the AOGs that are available to select instead of allowing them to be auto-selected by the AI.
Later in the game I will often want to bomb the same hex or set of hexes with missions from an entire week. So I run different AOGs on alternative days instead of sending 1 AOG for the entire week. If you do not assign missions by AOG then you will have the same planes flying these missions all week not solving the problem of pilot fatigue.
This whole process takes a few seconds per air mission and seems to greatly reduce my losses when I need to operate beyond the range of fighter cover. What does take actual time setting up is the flight path which is hugely important in avoiding flak concentrations and can be used to some effect to stay away from air bases with fighters that can reach the higher elevations. Remember many of these soviet fighters are biplanes that have low ceilings but are capable of doing great damage at the 9k feet that is the default for bombing missions but can not get above 20k feet.
First priority should be given to bases with MiG-3, Yak-1 and LaGG-3 fighters as they were the best soviet fighter at the start of the war, yet the Yak 1 did not want to fly above 13k ft and while the MiG-3 and the LaGG-3 could reach the high-level bombers slow rates of climb and limited fuel and ammo capacities limit their effectiveness at intercepting the highest altitude bombing runs.
@@NightPhoenixnp On the first day of the first turn I only focus on airbases with fighters and try to focus on the most modern ones. Unescorted Soviet bombers either do not fly or fall out of the sky like rain once the Germans have air superiority, which does not last forever. I never attack an airfield after day 1 as the losses for doing so in my experience out weight any gains. For the rest of that week it seems best to me to focus on interdiction and prep bombing along road corridors you are going to take to hopefully lower the combat delays along these routes.
Thanks for the videos I have learned a lot from watching you and other people play.
Off screen use the 1st LP to get a feel of Game 2's 1st Winter and the German Spring recovery...There is a big difference between how the 1st Winter plays out in Game 2,
You want level 3 forts(and in depth) to hold a line during the Winter(even then you're going to get pushed backed) level 2 forts are ok in a pinch, but the AI easily knocks 'em down to 1.
I created corps defenses of three divisions/forts in line with the 4th in reserve touching all 3 but behind, so I have one redundant fallback position and can rotate the weakest division in a corps back. I leave a one space gap between corps which lets me occasionally surround soviets when they try and sneak through my lines. I also vigorously deliberate attack from my defenses all winter that I can to keep soviets from causing attrition losses if they aren't touching my lines. The losses they suffer are huge from the deliberate, multi-division attacks.
I also rotated all fresh divisions from all other theater boxes and put my beat up/exhausted units into western europe etc to rest up for the winter. I also sent almost all mobile troops to theaters for the winter. Overstacking north africa and western europe was super effective. North Africa in particular benefits from going above 200% in air, naval, land as it keeps delaying the allied victory there which I view as a potent late game strategy to avoid the fall of Italy as long as possible and the opening of a new front. Then in March I start railing mobile troops back up to railheads to set up my May offensives once mud is done.
Not triggering the russians to move by not going beyond Lvov would be better. Allows you to trap more on turn 2.
I have no clue how to do that. I checked the manual, and it's outright confusing as they claim you can't go East or South of Lvov - which means you can just as well skip almost that entire turn with the AGS.
@@NightPhoenixnp 11.2.5. Unlocking the Soviet Southern
Front
If a Soviet national hex south or east of 187,187 (just
southeast of Lvov) is Axis controlled then all of Southern
Front and related airbases will be unfrozen.
how did you set up the air groups to only fly with escorts?
You can select that in the fly mission box - I would suggest reading that up in the manual though. It's hard to explain. ;)
@@NightPhoenixnp Ok. I'm only playing War in the West at the moment and in that game I'm using Air Superiority to kill Axis planes and escorts to protect my bombers.
Not sure if Air Superiority is relevant in WitE
It might've been if i had any planes in the air myself - but i'm advancing so fast i'm having a hard time finding airfields with decent supply from which to operate my fighters even.
@@NightPhoenixnp how do you figure out which airfields have good supply
what level are you playing at?
Regular/normal
Where are the Finns?
They aren't in this game anymore like before. Now it's a theather box - so you don't have that much influence over what happens there anymore either.
In Finland
anyone else watch these videos at 1.5x speed?
This game is so complex... I mean... even micromanging moustache man wasn't that micromanaging ... Drop tanks management? Come on...
Yea.....i ain't touching that!