Actually, Veda, I bow in homage to your Red Front exploits. You are a far superior player to get to Berlin by August of 1944. I was on a relatively easy level b/c 1.3 just scared the hell out of me - but never would have gotten there without your advice on this forum. I stand in wondrance! It is an honor to be chatting about Red Front with you.
Come to think if it, I could have done a better job at building cities and industry more efficiently, but live and learn. Building industry is just the coolest! Thanks to advice on this forum, Kirov had like a 7 population and a 131 production. Some rural locations near the Urals make good aircraft factory points, as they're just to damned far from everything to make roads worth it. Tula, Perekop, Kerch, somewhere up north, and that city near Stalingrad were all destroyed.
Other scattered thoughts: Operation Blau was just a catastrophe for the Germans as I defended Vorenzh heavily and they lost about 13 Tigers. I slaughtered the "Caucasus Invasion" as well after rush-building some tank hunters (they look bad-ass in winter whites!). I transferred the bunkers into Leningrad and it did wonders for defense.
Per your counsel, in winter '41 I didn't fight back to retake cities, but just to kill Germans. I developed the T-34/85 by that time, so I had lots of x-mas gifts for the invaders. The first liberated city was Kaluga in August '42. In the "clean-up" after Stalingrad, I killed like 47 units in one stack. There were deadly fights between Siberian infantry and the SS in the woods around Moscow in the winter months. Even lost Sevastopol in late '41... but recaptured it via freigher from the Caucasus in '44. I build airfields in the Caucasus and far north to get the convoys south in a hurry.
I didn't kill the Karls and they crept deep into my territory. The Leningrad one actually captured Yakutsk! But I retook it later with air power and the leftover partisans. The event was actually a blessing in disguise as it forced me to build up my air force. The other Karl got into the Caucacus, but by the time I built bombers to kill it, there was no longer a unit space so it turned into a Panzerfaust. Same with the one up north. Talk about a prince into a frog!
Nice trick about rush-building feeble Red Army units first, then rush-buying your Katyushas!
In winter of 44-45, I failed in February to take Berlin but redoubled my efforts in May and succeeded. Tons of speed-built Katyushas did the trick. That winter, except for the ATV Red Guards, I had a beast of a time getting over the Carpathians, but broke through in May.
Actually, I was into Lodz -- sans Kiev -- by like June '44, just a stone's throw away from the Fuhrer's bunker. However, I decided to liberate the Soviet Union first before moving onto Germany itself. I decided Stalin would have done it that way --liberation of the treasured Rodina before occupying the soil of the "Hitlerites."
It resulted that September '44 saw a massive "noose" operations against the Germans in the Ukraine from all four directions. Took like five cities that turn -- really threw down the hammer. After I took back the Wheatfields wonder, I made tons of money selling off all grain elevators.
On the ruins: That's a great explanation -- however, there should be a note to that extent in the ReadMe file. Then I wouldn't make "ridiculous" statements...
Loading: I seem to have trouble with this. When I run the "batch" program, I have to do it twice. After the first time, it says "events file not found." So I try again, and this time it says "events header not found." This time, the events generally work. Hmm. The mysteries of MS DOS.
[*]Also, another suggestion. Some units are listed in the civclopedia as "zero" movement in winter, but still seem to move. Hmmm... is this just me or is there something wrong here?
Really, you were a big help. Can I join your army?
[This message has been edited by Sortub (edited May 14, 2000).]
I have sent it to Lubyanka Prison to be re-educated.
