What a battle!
My operational plan was to withdraw as much troops from the Odincov village as possible and move them towards the east to meet up with tank reinforcements.
The major battle took place in 3-6 to 4-7 (2x2 square) and man... it was bloody!!! I had one medium tank platoon with three T-34 tanks, three+ infantry platoons and one ATG (ZIS-3) platoon plus one company command platoon (or reg.cmd.) with arty spotter (full ammo).
I deployed most of my troops (and all tanks) on a slope in high vegetation, facing a slope from which the enemy were supposed to come. Another platoon was covering the flank at SE.
And the enemy came... mostly from the slope, but some from the direct east (where a young forest is located, I think). Oh man, there were hundreds of them, Jerries. Supported by AT LEAST two 5cm PAKs and one leIG.
Luckily, my arty spotter had perfect LOS over all battlefield, so I could quickly change artillery targets with only minor penalties. I was not only able to quickly switch fire to suppress enemy infantry, but also there were two times when I managed to knock out both enemy 5cm PAKs with rapid (~40s) and very accurate artillery fire. Too bad the spotting team was eventually wiped out by enemy HE arty shells, but I'm not sure it's because the arty spotters were in close vicinity to one of my tanks (pure chance) or the enemy spotted my... spotters.
The battle was very intense. German troops somehow managed to crawl very close to trenches occupied by my infantry so there was a lot of point-blank combat going on.
Both sides took VERY heavy casualties. And while my squads and lightly damaged tanks managed to pull back to safer positions (they could barely be named "squads" as at that time they all were only one, up to four men teams...), the enemy was almost completely eliminated.
Oh, and by the end of the battle, every single squad on my side was completely out of ammunition. Tanks included (DT ammo too!)!
(The battle was 1hr long).
What struck me at this point is the suicidal doctrine of the enemy AI. The attack reminded me of human waves of Chinese infantry in the Korean War. I've read quite a lot of WW2 books and (unless I'm wrong) from what I remember, I'm fairly sure that if an attacker sustained more than 30% casualties, the attack was called a failure and troops were pulled back. Yet here I see the attacker taking 90%+ casualties and still attacking like a fanatic. Have you noticed this guys? Single soldiers from decimated squads assaulting nearby trenches? Things like that happening are weird. I mean, I quickly browsed the statistics after the battle, and more than 90% of the enemy was gone. GONE.
The battle ended up with a draw.
P.S. I lost the operation. Next time I'll follow the "Not a single step backwards" doctrine.
