Deviations from historical strategy

[Hippothing]

I'm just wondering if there are any big deviations from historical strategy that are successful. I usually play the Army Group Centre scenario as the Germans, and sending the panzers in a pincer around Minsk and then Smolensk is about the only thing you can do. The initial set up of the units, the speed of the panzers and the road network means there isn't really another approach. The only real choice I find is how far to send the panzers ahead of supply.

Has anyone noticed, in any scenario, any large deviations from historical strategy that work well?

[loki1006]

The game does a good job at modelling the core flaw in the German strategy - that they couldn't really supply their army long enough to actually destroy the Red Army - so that tends to frame the options.

Your real choices come from AGC, you can shed a Pzr Corps into AGN and another into AGS. This will almost guarantee that AGC will stall just east of Smolensk but may give you a decent shot at Leningrad and ahead of time in the Ukraine.

I'm trying a variant of this in an AAR - https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10182&t=381998

The prize is Leningrad, not just the VP and the inevitable Soviet losses but you can release the best part of a complete army to use elsewhere in 1942. But if this doesn't deliver then you have weakened your overall position - so there is quite the gamble.

To me, the game is most likely to be won by the Axis player late in 1942 (an auto win) or in Dec 44 (if the Soviets fail to meet the HWM). Its worth reading the VP rules and working out the implications of those tests. To force the Soviets to have to be further west in December 44 you need to take 630 city points (my assumption is both sides end up trading time and off-map bonuses). This total dips if the German player can do better than historically in the Ukraine in 1941 (where there are a lot of early captures possible)

Even better, from 2 games that have gone into 1944, I've found the axis can defend the Ukraine effectively if they keep their Pzrs intact, the scope for counter-blows forces the Soviets to be slow and cautious ... and in the end they need to speed up the tempo (or miss out vs the HWM test)

[[TFM]bobcat]

Based on Loki's answer, I guess it depends on whether you are planning to win according to the game rules and go out of your way to focus on objectives before all else, or whether you're actually looking at the battlefield and trying to win the war.

Personally, I like playing on the bitter end scenario, since that seems the closest to the historical reality (imo of course, play however you prefer). This setting has taught me that the dots on the map mean comparatively little, and instead, it's the Red Army that should be the focus.

And this leads me to my preferred strategy. Apart from the opening turn, where I attempt to surround as many Soviet forces as i can, I take a slower overall approach, but one which sees me actually reach further than the Germans did historically by the time winter arrives. After the opening turn, I don't let my mobile corps get too far ahead, keeping a modest pace while they wait for the infantry to catch up once more with maybe the most I will do with them being seizing crossings over the Dvina and Dnieper. From there, I focus on using shallow encirclements, steadily destroying dozens of Soviet divisions each turn until the Soviets, even with their prodigious replacement waves, start to simply run out of divisions. Any objectives I take are purely coincidental, usually because the Soviet AI will try to focus troops around them, making them tantalizing targets. This also means that I pretty much at no point in 1941 ever outrun my supply lines and I can keep up the same rate of advance and the same rate of attrition turn by turn. It also helps to preserve the strength of my armored and mobile forces, since it allows me to keep my infantry in close support to do most of the breaking through, clearing pockets and holding the line, while my mobile forces focus on their biggest strength: movement.

This approach usually means that, by about late August, my troops will be advancing virtually unopposed across most of the front, with the AI choosing to concentrate most heavily on defending Leningrad and Moscow, leaving them as essentially lonely islands of resistance for me to surround and destroy. The Soviets do start to recover during the fall and early winter, but they will still be greatly weakened, to the point where, in my game, they could barely mount effective attacks against me until late winter. The one major mistake I really made was not stopping to dig in before winter proper, and instead I tried to keep advancing to have more of a buffer once the Soviets did start attacking and to try to keep destroying as many Soviet divisions as I could right up till the end.

Also, I agree with Loki and would go further and argue that the most important objective out of all of them is Leningrad. It creates a dangerous balcony over the rest of the front if you don't take it, but if you do, there's not really much worth taking or for the Soviets to defend up north, certainly nothing that's within easy reach, which means you can concentrate more of your forces in the center and south.