Good game but...

[Mehring]

In my opinion, there is a strong bias in the game.

The Germans are too strong in '41, but in the winter of '41-42 they become too weak,

My guess is that the designers are trying to find a solution to the problem that a player who isn't as pig headedly stupid as Stalin will end up with a much larger army than historically. The clear weather '41 Germans attack as supermen. There's little need for encirclements, if you can catch up with the retreating Soviet front line a frontal deliberate attack or two will destroy a Soviet division just as effectively for negligible losses to the Germans. This is ridiculous, attractive to Lost Cause mythologists and insulting to Russians.

For those wanting a game capable of delivering an historical outcome, German combat ability needs tweaking down and losses tweaking up. The victory point system, on the other hand, needs to be put to work, to force the Russians to defend forward. What happens in summer/autumn 41 sets the stage for what follows and the balance decisions that weaken the Germans later.

Otherwise, we probably just have to accept that the system is unable to replicate history and enjoy it for what it is.
[/quote]

[cain012]

This discussion is fascinating, in how it parallels the sorts of discussions on similarly-scoped games with directly opposing philosophies - I speak here of every serious wargamer's favorite casual time sink, Hearts of Iron IV. When their "No Step Back" DLC (focused around the Soviet Union and the new Tank Designer) was released, an enormous thread cropped up on their user forums complaining about how France had nowhere near enough tanks in the 1936 start date as was historically the case, and that France's military weakness generally was ahistorical. Inevitably, the tens of thousands of tanks the Soviets had by 1941 also became a topic of conversation (apparently the Soviet player could not accumulate nearly this many, which in turn led to all the usual rabbit holes--poor tank maintenance, logistics, the purge, and so on).

In most respects, the "inaccuracy" of the tank production in Hoi4 is due to game design decisions, and the intention of the developers in providing a "balanced" and in all likelihood ahistorical experience since that is what the vast majority of players want and enjoy ("techs" which release tank models are fixed at the same level regardless of nation, so the unique capabilities of a historical tank can't be approximated except via this new "tank designer", but on the other hand, Hoi4 players are obsessed with whatever the "meta" is, and min-maxing accordingly, so the tanks created with the designer don't usually resemble anything historical anyway).

This game is very different, obviously - it purports to model everything down to the individual bullets fired by each squad. What seems consistent across the board is that historical accuracy focused players are wanting to have it both ways. To use the example of the Germany-focused player, which nearly all WWII wargaming communities have (more on that in a minute): to produce an ahistorical result (like Germany winning the war), they demand game systems to reflect initial German "superiority" past the point where this was historically possible to sustain. They want to avoid the "mistakes" that popular history claims the German army made which stopped them from winning. They want to go for Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. They don't want to stop the Panzers just short of Dunkirk. So on and so forth.

And yet - they also want these games to be meticulous in their rendering of what they believe DID happen historically, at least in the case where Germany was successful historically. Hence the complaints in this thread about low casualty figures inflicted in 1941 against the Soviets. But the same is true of the opposite side, it seems. One user is complaining about the denigration of Soviet soldiers and their fighting ability implied by a supposed "German superman" capability in 1941, which they blame the game designers for as an attempt to counteract the ability of both the Soviet AI and a competent Soviet player to avoid the tactical disasters which befell the Red Army in Operation Barbarossa. Now I think I agree with this user on where they are coming from, but hopefully we can see why this is an interesting perspective in a moment.

So in short, everyone wants "historical accuracy," but nobody is playing these games to replicate history. And yet, to faithfully represent history and not create some wehraboo or tankie fantasy in game form, game systems must account for the hindsight of the player and tweak conditions so that in spite of this hindsight the player can face historical levels of difficulty in achieving their strategic or operational aims.

Historical accuracy is therefore in some ways a mirage. In this game, and in most World War II games (and for good reason), the political conditions and ideologies of the warring societies are not represented, nor are the personalities and preoccupations of their leaders. This is itself proof that no game, not even this one, could possibly be "historically accurate," and that anyone expecting such accuracy is being almost totally unreasonable and biased themselves. The Holocaust or Einsatzgruppen reigns of terror aren't represented (aside from abstractions like the garrison theater box and partisan interdiction). The purges aren't represented (aside from abstractions like initially poor Soviet leader skill). The nationalist aspirations of oppressed Soviet peoples are not represented. The effect on Soviet fighting ability of the Nazis murdering and starving most POWs and civilians in their path, and the ability of Soviet propaganda (finely honed under the Stalinist system of government) to invoke socialist and nationalist themes consistent with the total war experience, is not represented.

And it can't be, because otherwise your gaming community is composed of neo-Nazis who dream of completing the Holocaust in a video game, or else it is composed of neo-Stalinists who dream of making Russia great again. At that point the modern political biases of the player would openly influence their perception of the game's aim and design, and influence the designer in how the game is designed--this too is not evidence of historical inaccuracy in the game, but of the historical inaccuracy (to say nothing of the morality) of the set of current ideas the modern player wishes to see represented in the game. No game developer wants to cater to those folks if they want to reach anything like a mainstream audience.

But to point out the implicitly obvious, it's clear that these sorts of people do play these games, and fantasize about precisely these things. The apolitical presentation of World War II in a game like this both facilitates apolitical (and thus ahistorial) interpretations of WWII's fighting conditions and the fighting qualities of its soldiers and equipment, but it also is a necessary feature of such games so they avoid seeming to endorse the appalling genocidal or repressive policies and ideologies of the war's participant nations.

But again, such a game cannot POSSIBLY ever be "historically accurate." And a game striving for "historical accuracy," in turn, can never be "balanced" in the sense that both sides of similar skill have an equal chance of winning. It strikes me that so many of the complaints I read here are missing that fundamental paradox: the fact that we do not live then but live today, and that a game design attempting to reflect the conditions of "then" must deal with the 20/20 hindsight of the player (to say nothing of whatever questionable or biased interpretations of history they've absorbed over the years).

To sum up: history was not balanced and the conditions faced by participants were not neutral, so a game attempting to reflect those conditions CANNOT be neutral or balanced. And the decisions (and successes and failures resulting) made in the War in the East were direct outgrowths of aims, strategies, and ideologies that were political/national in nature and studiously not represented by any game system except in the most abstract way, so replicating historical conditions without that representation will seem to modify otherwise "neutral" conditions to be biased in one way or another way. It's part of the logic of the whole thing, it seems to me. But yes, this might mean that a German player will find it hard to win WWII even if they are a much better general than Hitler.

[ShaggyHiK]

cain012

I want to make it clear right away that some of the language you use is completely Cold War, completely biased against the state structure of the USSR.

That in itself can cause controversy, insults, and this is a path to getting away from the essence of the discussion.

I more than disagree with what you are guided by when discussing the topic of historicism and balance.

There is such an important aspect of the game as "atmosphere". In the game one way or another, the atmosphere is important. Feel yourself in the shoes of a participant in events. Many players do not have the mental resilience to fail.

Many of your words and reasonings are absolute, but only the Sith raise everything to an absolute.

Your reasoning is so laconic and not correct in its essence that it is easy for them to succumb and decide that: "Well, now you can stop."

This is the most important fundamental error in your reasoning.

Players playing against players use the possibilities of the game to the maximum, not obvious mechanics and ways to achieve goals that simply will not be in demand in the game against AI.

The fact that the German side cannot "win". This is a rather controversial statement because rarely are players able to play the game from 1 turn to 250 moves and check.

The players have problems with how they interpret the short results of their games, their representations are, in the vast majority of cases, completely incompetent.
For all that, players have time to notice problems arising from inaccuracies or mechanics with which they do not agree, often not adapting to them, but simply rejecting them as incorrect.

Your reasoning takes us aside, instead of answering the question of how to achieve an even greater atmosphere, how to do better, what to pay attention to, your reasoning leads everyone to think that this should not be done and that it should stagnate.

[Great_Ajax]

Beautiful post, cain012. Well done. Every Eastern Front game has struggled with these exact issues. You just can’t replicate the personalities, egos, ulterior motives, the fog of war, friction and emotions felt by all of the soldiers and leaders in any game. These games are intellectual operational exercises bereft of any realistic risks and if you could make a game to capture all of this, no one would want to play it.

This discussion is fascinating, in how it parallels the sorts of discussions on similarly-scoped games with directly opposing philosophies - I speak here of every serious wargamer's favorite casual time sink, Hearts of Iron IV. When their "No Step Back" DLC (focused around the Soviet Union and the new Tank Designer) was released, an enormous thread cropped up on their user forums complaining about how France had nowhere near enough tanks in the 1936 start date as was historically the case, and that France's military weakness generally was ahistorical. Inevitably, the tens of thousands of tanks the Soviets had by 1941 also became a topic of conversation (apparently the Soviet player could not accumulate nearly this many, which in turn led to all the usual rabbit holes--poor tank maintenance, logistics, the purge, and so on).

In most respects, the "inaccuracy" of the tank production in Hoi4 is due to game design decisions, and the intention of the developers in providing a "balanced" and in all likelihood ahistorical experience since that is what the vast majority of players want and enjoy ("techs" which release tank models are fixed at the same level regardless of nation, so the unique capabilities of a historical tank can't be approximated except via this new "tank designer", but on the other hand, Hoi4 players are obsessed with whatever the "meta" is, and min-maxing accordingly, so the tanks created with the designer don't usually resemble anything historical anyway).

This game is very different, obviously - it purports to model everything down to the individual bullets fired by each squad. What seems consistent across the board is that historical accuracy focused players are wanting to have it both ways. To use the example of the Germany-focused player, which nearly all WWII wargaming communities have (more on that in a minute): to produce an ahistorical result (like Germany winning the war), they demand game systems to reflect initial German "superiority" past the point where this was historically possible to sustain. They want to avoid the "mistakes" that popular history claims the German army made which stopped them from winning. They want to go for Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. They don't want to stop the Panzers just short of Dunkirk. So on and so forth.

And yet - they also want these games to be meticulous in their rendering of what they believe DID happen historically, at least in the case where Germany was successful historically. Hence the complaints in this thread about low casualty figures inflicted in 1941 against the Soviets. But the same is true of the opposite side, it seems. One user is complaining about the denigration of Soviet soldiers and their fighting ability implied by a supposed "German superman" capability in 1941, which they blame the game designers for as an attempt to counteract the ability of both the Soviet AI and a competent Soviet player to avoid the tactical disasters which befell the Red Army in Operation Barbarossa. Now I think I agree with this user on where they are coming from, but hopefully we can see why this is an interesting perspective in a moment.

So in short, everyone wants "historical accuracy," but nobody is playing these games to replicate history. And yet, to faithfully represent history and not create some wehraboo or tankie fantasy in game form, game systems must account for the hindsight of the player and tweak conditions so that in spite of this hindsight the player can face historical levels of difficulty in achieving their strategic or operational aims.

Historical accuracy is therefore in some ways a mirage. In this game, and in most World War II games (and for good reason), the political conditions and ideologies of the warring societies are not represented, nor are the personalities and preoccupations of their leaders. This is itself proof that no game, not even this one, could possibly be "historically accurate," and that anyone expecting such accuracy is being almost totally unreasonable and biased themselves. The Holocaust or Einsatzgruppen reigns of terror aren't represented (aside from abstractions like the garrison theater box and partisan interdiction). The purges aren't represented (aside from abstractions like initially poor Soviet leader skill). The nationalist aspirations of oppressed Soviet peoples are not represented. The effect on Soviet fighting ability of the Nazis murdering and starving most POWs and civilians in their path, and the ability of Soviet propaganda (finely honed under the Stalinist system of government) to invoke socialist and nationalist themes consistent with the total war experience, is not represented.

And it can't be, because otherwise your gaming community is composed of neo-Nazis who dream of completing the Holocaust in a video game, or else it is composed of neo-Stalinists who dream of making Russia great again. At that point the modern political biases of the player would openly influence their perception of the game's aim and design, and influence the designer in how the game is designed--this too is not evidence of historical inaccuracy in the game, but of the historical inaccuracy (to say nothing of the morality) of the set of current ideas the modern player wishes to see represented in the game. No game developer wants to cater to those folks if they want to reach anything like a mainstream audience.

But to point out the implicitly obvious, it's clear that these sorts of people do play these games, and fantasize about precisely these things. The apolitical presentation of World War II in a game like this both facilitates apolitical (and thus ahistorial) interpretations of WWII's fighting conditions and the fighting qualities of its soldiers and equipment, but it also is a necessary feature of such games so they avoid seeming to endorse the appalling genocidal or repressive policies and ideologies of the war's participant nations.

But again, such a game cannot POSSIBLY ever be "historically accurate." And a game striving for "historical accuracy," in turn, can never be "balanced" in the sense that both sides of similar skill have an equal chance of winning. It strikes me that so many of the complaints I read here are missing that fundamental paradox: the fact that we do not live then but live today, and that a game design attempting to reflect the conditions of "then" must deal with the 20/20 hindsight of the player (to say nothing of whatever questionable or biased interpretations of history they've absorbed over the years).

To sum up: history was not balanced and the conditions faced by participants were not neutral, so a game attempting to reflect those conditions CANNOT be neutral or balanced. And the decisions (and successes and failures resulting) made in the War in the East were direct outgrowths of aims, strategies, and ideologies that were political/national in nature and studiously not represented by any game system except in the most abstract way, so replicating historical conditions without that representation will seem to modify otherwise "neutral" conditions to be biased in one way or another way. It's part of the logic of the whole thing, it seems to me. But yes, this might mean that a German player will find it hard to win WWII even if they are a much better general than Hitler.

[cain012]

The players have problems with how they interpret the short results of their games, their representations are, in the vast majority of cases, completely incompetent.
For all that, players have time to notice problems arising from inaccuracies or mechanics with which they do not agree, often not adapting to them, but simply rejecting them as incorrect.

Your reasoning takes us aside, instead of answering the question of how to achieve an even greater atmosphere, how to do better, what to pay attention to, your reasoning leads everyone to think that this should not be done and that it should stagnate.

I quote this section of the post mainly because I totally agree with the first half (though I'm not sure, based on the earlier statements you made, you are aware that I believe we're making this same point), and to explain that my aim is actually not to argue that there is "no point" to trying to make a wargame more accurate or more immersive. Quite the contrary, I've been working on an Hoi3 mod for probably two years now as kind of a pet project with the specific intention of using some of the game mechanics to make a more immersive and historically-accurate game for me to enjoy.

And I particularly like this game because the focus on operational detail is both educational and also immersive and so on. I like the accurate OOBs, I like the mechanics, I like the minutiae and control I have, even when I don't know how to exert it correctly or optimally. It's exactly as you describe: immersive, and full of atmosphere.

But I'm also saying that, I read a LOT of these forum posts as a lurker, and they seem to revolve around the same ironic patterns. A player, based on whatever historical understanding/bias they are bringing to the table, gets a result they don't expect. They blame, in turn, "imbalance" (which I don't think one could ever expect from a game attempting to faithfully represent the historical conditions of the Nazi-Soviet War), or, conversely, "inaccuracy," because in the course of their play they cannot reproduce what they believe was achieved historically (even though true historical accuracy would require some modeling of the political, grand strategic, and leadership personality dimensions which influenced the generals' decision-making, the fighting quality of the troops, the economic priorities, and so on).

If something isn't working as intended that's one thing. But it's wearisome on forum after forum for game after game to see the same bellyaching about "inaccuracy" or "imbalance," when the problem is simply that the player isn't "winning" and they feel like they should be able to, and don't fully understand why they are not. From a UI perspective I can very much get behind critiques of this game on that front, but not on the front of the historical accuracy thing. Even accusing a game of imbalance or inaccurate "bias" implies that the developers deliberately structured their game to favor one side over the other, not for historical reasons but for reasons of values or opinion. Ironically, the player's OWN values and biases are usually what leads them to make the charge.

So, my references to Nazi Germany and the USSR (and specifically their political systems, war aims, conduct and so on) are not meant to stir up controversy, derail the thread, or insult anyone, but more to "keep it real": many players of wargames do have, let's say, emotional investments in their perceptions of historical truth, and if they feel strongly about those opinions they likely want them to be validated in their gameplay, especially if the game is marketing itself as "the most accurate simulation of the War in the East." And one of the challenges, maybe an insurmountably paradoxical one, of a wargame's design seems to me to be the necessity of striving for historical accuracy while apolitically representing a conflict that was not in any way apolitical, in order to make people actually want to play the game and have fun playing it.

So, again, I'm not trying to argue for stagnation. I'm only saying:

--"historical accuracy" is a worthy goal and is always something to strive for, but probably not *ultimately* achievable due to the structural realities of the wargame market and due to the fact that the whole concept is a moving target depending on the awareness or ignorance of the player or even the developer.

--"balance" (described by someone else here as "a relatively even chance for players of equivalent skill level to win the game") is something I do not, and in my opinion should not, expect from a game that is striving to be accurate in its depiction of the relative resources of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

[OberstVonWitz]

The CPP and combat delay mechanisms are great ideas but I think we all acknowledge they are a work in progress. The trick, I believe, is to keep things simple.

So one suggestion: a successful attacker loses a % of the defenders initial CP. So with the current 50%, a 90% CPP Panzer driving over a shell infantry division at 10% loses just 5% (not 45%), but at 50 V 50 CPP the attacker will lose 50% of 50 to end up at 25 (as now). An attacker with a lot less CPP than the defender will probably have their CP wiped out, even if they win. Quite right too. The loser loses 100% every time.

And for Combat Delay there could be a process where very high CD spills over into neighbouring hexes, so say a CD of 4 causes CD of 1 in adjacent hexes, 5 causes +2 etc. In theory it could chain down the line as other attacks are pushed over 4 by the adjacent modifier, making timing crucial (a good nerf for late war Soviets benefiting from CPP gains).

Attacking is far too disadvantageous thus the CP are wayyy too severe. In some operations the German's lost 4 tanks etc.. THUS CP should be largely UNAFFECTED... .. This way "rolling operations" could be achieved as in REAL LIFE ....

[Stamb]

cain012

seems you missed a point that players where talking about winning the game, but not winning the war
its a big difference

if Axis player would be able to win the war it would be another problem

[DesertedFox]

Attacking is far too disadvantageous thus the CP are wayyy too severe. In some operations the German's lost 4 tanks etc.. THUS CP should be largely UNAFFECTED... .. This way "rolling operations" could be achieved as in REAL LIFE ....

I am not disagreeing that CPPs needs to be looked at, but first people need to understand what CPP is and it has nothing to do with losing ONLY 4 tanks.

23.2. CoMBAt PREPARAtIoN
PoINtS AND CoMBAt
Combat preparation points (CPP) reflect the advantage of
allowing units to rest and plan before they enter combat.
While the obvious advantages apply to the attacking side,
units with a high preparation value also gain defensive
advantages.

rest and plan

All that artillery prep, scouting, and another intelligence gathering etc are gone to a degree after first contact. Once they move on to the next objective, these factors listed above are lessened to a degree.

Whats at issue is the degree it gets lessened by the amount of resistance it met initially.

[Zovs]

I speak here of every serious wargamer's favorite casual time sink, Hearts of Iron IV.

Sorry but I had to a) clean up the mess of coffee I spit up after laughing so hard and b) I had to stop reading when I saw "serious wargamer's" and "Hearts of Iron" in the same sentence.

Sorry but Hearts of Iron is not any kind of serious war game, WarPlan, WarPlan Pacific I get, but a serious war game would be War in the East, War in the East 2, War in the West, War in the Pacific - Admirals Edition, Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich, Steel Panthers, and every single Wargame Design Studio war game would be consider a serious war game, but not HOI.

I played HOI I, II and III each for less then 30 minutes and was so disappointed with them, that I chalked them down to a joke of a game.

Granted I started playing war games in 1978, and of course back then computer war games did not exist, we had manual war games, and one of the greatest on the Eastern Front was by GDW/GRD called Fire in the East/Scorched Earth/The Urals and that is the gold standard of all monster war games. HOI is a strategy game based on ww2 and that is it. WITE2 is a complicated detailed IGOUGO historical game on the Eastern Front, but it has some issues and is not perfect.

I have been playing WITE2 since 2018, and it is pretty great and awesome in most aspects, but not perfect and the loss of an attacking sides CPP of 50% no matter if its a HA or DA with 1 division against a regiment or 3 divisions or corps against 1 brigade or regiment and loosing 50% CPP is not the correct proportion. A Soviet Tank Army (2 Tank Corps and 1 Mech Corps) or a German Panzer Corps (either 1 Panzer Division and two Motorized Divisions or 2 Panzers Divisions and 1 Motorized Division) stacked in a hex doing a HA or a DA against a regiment or brigade should not incur a 50% CPP loss.

In some of the old board war games they had a concept of Overrun, usually at high odds like 10:1 or 11 to 1 and it would cost MP and the elimination of the overrun unit. I am sure some idea or concept like that could be implemented.

Presenting this idea makes me neither Pro-German or Pro-Russian, but Pro-Historically Possible.

[AlbertN]

This discussion is fascinating, in how it parallels the sorts of discussions on similarly-scoped games with directly opposing philosophies - I speak here of every serious wargamer's favorite casual time sink, Hearts of Iron IV. When their "No Step Back" DLC (focused around the Soviet Union and the new Tank Designer) was released, an enormous thread cropped up on their user forums complaining about how France had nowhere near enough tanks in the 1936 start date as was historically the case, and that France's military weakness generally was ahistorical. Inevitably, the tens of thousands of tanks the Soviets had by 1941 also became a topic of conversation (apparently the Soviet player could not accumulate nearly this many, which in turn led to all the usual rabbit holes--poor tank maintenance, logistics, the purge, and so on).

In most respects, the "inaccuracy" of the tank production in Hoi4 is due to game design decisions, and the intention of the developers in providing a "balanced" and in all likelihood ahistorical experience since that is what the vast majority of players want and enjoy ("techs" which release tank models are fixed at the same level regardless of nation, so the unique capabilities of a historical tank can't be approximated except via this new "tank designer", but on the other hand, Hoi4 players are obsessed with whatever the "meta" is, and min-maxing accordingly, so the tanks created with the designer don't usually resemble anything historical anyway).

This game is very different, obviously - it purports to model everything down to the individual bullets fired by each squad. What seems consistent across the board is that historical accuracy focused players are wanting to have it both ways. To use the example of the Germany-focused player, which nearly all WWII wargaming communities have (more on that in a minute): to produce an ahistorical result (like Germany winning the war), they demand game systems to reflect initial German "superiority" past the point where this was historically possible to sustain. They want to avoid the "mistakes" that popular history claims the German army made which stopped them from winning. They want to go for Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. They don't want to stop the Panzers just short of Dunkirk. So on and so forth.

And yet - they also want these games to be meticulous in their rendering of what they believe DID happen historically, at least in the case where Germany was successful historically. Hence the complaints in this thread about low casualty figures inflicted in 1941 against the Soviets. But the same is true of the opposite side, it seems. One user is complaining about the denigration of Soviet soldiers and their fighting ability implied by a supposed "German superman" capability in 1941, which they blame the game designers for as an attempt to counteract the ability of both the Soviet AI and a competent Soviet player to avoid the tactical disasters which befell the Red Army in Operation Barbarossa. Now I think I agree with this user on where they are coming from, but hopefully we can see why this is an interesting perspective in a moment.

So in short, everyone wants "historical accuracy," but nobody is playing these games to replicate history. And yet, to faithfully represent history and not create some wehraboo or tankie fantasy in game form, game systems must account for the hindsight of the player and tweak conditions so that in spite of this hindsight the player can face historical levels of difficulty in achieving their strategic or operational aims.

Historical accuracy is therefore in some ways a mirage. In this game, and in most World War II games (and for good reason), the political conditions and ideologies of the warring societies are not represented, nor are the personalities and preoccupations of their leaders. This is itself proof that no game, not even this one, could possibly be "historically accurate," and that anyone expecting such accuracy is being almost totally unreasonable and biased themselves. The Holocaust or Einsatzgruppen reigns of terror aren't represented (aside from abstractions like the garrison theater box and partisan interdiction). The purges aren't represented (aside from abstractions like initially poor Soviet leader skill). The nationalist aspirations of oppressed Soviet peoples are not represented. The effect on Soviet fighting ability of the Nazis murdering and starving most POWs and civilians in their path, and the ability of Soviet propaganda (finely honed under the Stalinist system of government) to invoke socialist and nationalist themes consistent with the total war experience, is not represented.

And it can't be, because otherwise your gaming community is composed of neo-Nazis who dream of completing the Holocaust in a video game, or else it is composed of neo-Stalinists who dream of making Russia great again. At that point the modern political biases of the player would openly influence their perception of the game's aim and design, and influence the designer in how the game is designed--this too is not evidence of historical inaccuracy in the game, but of the historical inaccuracy (to say nothing of the morality) of the set of current ideas the modern player wishes to see represented in the game. No game developer wants to cater to those folks if they want to reach anything like a mainstream audience.

But to point out the implicitly obvious, it's clear that these sorts of people do play these games, and fantasize about precisely these things. The apolitical presentation of World War II in a game like this both facilitates apolitical (and thus ahistorial) interpretations of WWII's fighting conditions and the fighting qualities of its soldiers and equipment, but it also is a necessary feature of such games so they avoid seeming to endorse the appalling genocidal or repressive policies and ideologies of the war's participant nations.

But again, such a game cannot POSSIBLY ever be "historically accurate." And a game striving for "historical accuracy," in turn, can never be "balanced" in the sense that both sides of similar skill have an equal chance of winning. It strikes me that so many of the complaints I read here are missing that fundamental paradox: the fact that we do not live then but live today, and that a game design attempting to reflect the conditions of "then" must deal with the 20/20 hindsight of the player (to say nothing of whatever questionable or biased interpretations of history they've absorbed over the years).

To sum up: history was not balanced and the conditions faced by participants were not neutral, so a game attempting to reflect those conditions CANNOT be neutral or balanced. And the decisions (and successes and failures resulting) made in the War in the East were direct outgrowths of aims, strategies, and ideologies that were political/national in nature and studiously not represented by any game system except in the most abstract way, so replicating historical conditions without that representation will seem to modify otherwise "neutral" conditions to be biased in one way or another way. It's part of the logic of the whole thing, it seems to me. But yes, this might mean that a German player will find it hard to win WWII even if they are a much better general than Hitler.

I believe you have gone well overboard.

I do not think any player in general seeks to enact the varied forms of 'terror' that took place.

But I've played an amount of tabletop WW2 games and there are plenty of ways to 'abstractly' (as any game is abstracted) represent 'historical personalities'.
There are games with 'No Retreat' type of orders (LItterally if your units in a zone are in enemy ZoC they cannot abandon said ZoC), morale / efficiency / penalties there if too much land is lost in a turn.
There is an excellent operational game on Bagration where the German player has a 'chain' of leaders that will get replaced and if said chain ends it's automatic game over - and leaders get replaced if they take excess of freedom to retreat and surrender ground without fighting.
There are games that mandate attacks or counterattacks regularly to appease the higher spheres.
Yes I am talking of tabletop games where the design -should- be functional and elegant, because the 'processor' is the human mind, and not a computer.

Here we play something with the benefit of that type of calculus power (try to play an OCS Serie game and go nuts with their tabletop 'detailed' logistic system which is what I believe can come closer to any computer simulation I've seen).

Historically 'accurate' is something any game that puts a historical vest of time and scope should aim to.
But a game should be enjoyable - and something players do. Because we're players. We're not in a real war, and no one prescibes us to fight a hopeless war.
That is the point that comes across.
A '41 Campaign German player should not feel to be playing a 'hopeless war'. Can they score autovictory? They should be able to. The Soviet player should immolate troops and do sacrifices instead of running away to prevent the Axis to score the auto-victory in '41. That pictures a good scope of '41. (Not flour of my own bag, litterally the design of Barbarossa to Berlin, a game from GMT) -- That is a simple tabletop game (Factually not even among the best designs of that game designer...) and here it could have been mirrored with a more granular distribution of VPs.
Right now we tend to see the opposite in most matches.

I could write an essay - but in the end of the day sure players have hindsight, I do not think anyone disputes that.
Game mechanics can be put in place to reduce the benefits this hindsight. Without the need to go 'political'.
Because a lot of decisions were 'economical' more so than political. From the '41 Kiev pocket (Which also well served to net in German hands the Russian 'breadbasket' of Ukraine - yes alas there is the future hindsight that US will enter the war and supply Russia with lend lease in abundance, food included) and the '42 Race for Caucasus.

Right now the game boils down to -1- thing. The destruction of the enemy armed forces. The VP themselves are simply changing hand in virtue of the success or failure of the latter; in fact VP themselves rarely are a good meter.
If to keep 1 City 1 extra turn for 1 extra VP X divisions are immolated, any player will prefer the saving of the Divisions, that will waterfall on all subsequent fights, accelerating or deceleating the future VPs.

So it's not a matter of politics, non politics, but yes it's a matter of 'Balance'. No player wants to be pungiball or punching sack for the other for 200 turns out of 220 of the game either. And by that it does not mean some players covet some neoNazi fantasies or things like that.

Guilty as charged to want to have an enjoyable game whichever side I may decide to play. Not of else.

Edit: @ZoVs, Hearts of Iron 2 is an excellent wargame. With some house rules to prevent the loopholes the system allowed it was quite ace to play it in 6-8 players online together, when I was younger! I agree the 4 is crap.
'Overrun' is there in the guise of a hasty attack, from my perspective. The real problem right now is that Hasty attacks enable Reserve activation, which is what can make them bogus. Reserve activation should only be checked and triggered on Deliberate attacks.

[cain012]

I speak here of every serious wargamer's favorite casual time sink, Hearts of Iron IV.

Sorry but I had to a) clean up the mess of coffee I spit up after laughing so hard and b) I had to stop reading when I saw "serious wargamer's" and "Hearts of Iron" in the same sentence.

That was the joke I was trying to make, but I guess it didn't translate. I'm well aware that "serious wargamers" absolutely despise Hoi4.

[cain012]

I want to be clear: I am not trying to imply that people who have issues with the balance OR historical accuracy automatically harbor neo-Nazi or Stalinist fantasies. I was only trying to say that such players do exist, and that this (plus the primary need for the human costs of war in general to be abstracted so a wargame can remain stimulating and fun without becoming depressing) leads most wargames to studiously avoid any controversial representation of WWII's political conditions.

And this presents a paradox for a game striving for historical accuracy: it is reaching for something that is essentially unobtainable because too many elements of the historical experience have already been shorn away or abstracted, precisely because the game is supposed to be fun and not depressing. But this in turn creates conflict between the players who want less unforgiving "accuracy" in other respects, so they don't feel like winning the game is Sisyphean, and the players who want MORE accuracy because they feel the game has become too biased towards "balance" and is producing ahistorical results or conditions of play. Sometimes these people are the same player, because going too far in either direction creates the perception of "bias" or whatever. I don't think this is an inaccurate assessment of how it goes.

Apologies if I came in here with my big paragraphs firing on all cylinders seeming to negatively brand anyone who raises a critique of the game. My main interest here was to say that, as I see it, this game isn't intended to be "balanced" as such, because it is striving to accurately represent the conditions of the war in the east, and that almost by definition means that at one time or another, either side is going to be a "punching bag" for an extended period of time at some point (and in the case of the Germans, it means they'll be the punching bag MOST of the time, aka for a majority of turns. Is this not what's expected?).

Other elements (how players tend to prioritize things like saving their armies instead "defending forward", etc) that produce ahistorical results or play is not only a function of game design but also the elements which the game purposefully lacks (the political incentives which guided the priorities of military operations), plus player hindsight. Ultimately, this is still the crux of the issue for me: one can't demand that a Soviet player reenact the Kiev pocket, and it seems unreasonable to demand that the game railroad players into reenacting such a disaster. "Balance" in this case strikes me as meaning a balance between accurate historical conditions and freedom of player initiative. This will produce ahistorical results, and will also frustrate players who are trying to take advantage of historical advantages their "side" possessed at a particular point in time (i.e. the Soviets didn't abandon stuff, they didn't preserve their armies, etc). Isn't that "all in the game?"

[Stamb]

if game is not trying to be balanced then who a hell would agree to play as an Axis?
are there any players that would like to play as a side that is designed to lose (once again, have to mention it otherwise people will jump on me, i am not talking about winning the war as an Axis) ?

[StratmanWITX]

So in short, everyone wants "historical accuracy," but nobody is playing these games to replicate history.

+1 Agree!
Each player wants "historical accuracy," and wants to perform better than it was in real history.

I think WITE2 would be well balanced if it was as difficult for Germans to take Leningrad AND Moscow AND Stalingrad as it was for Soviets to push Germans back to USSR` border already in the end of 1942.

I hope my poor English has allowed me to be understood.

[StratmanWITX]

...in other words: give me a setting with perfect historical accuracy and let me try to perform better than Germans/Russians did.

[ElizabethWizard]

if game is not trying to be balanced then who a hell would agree to play as an Axis?

1- someone who enjoys Sisyphean tasks
2- someone who enjoys a historical game and doesn't really care about "winning"
3- someone who knows how the difficulty settings works and either gives the Axis a boost from those settings or the SU a nerf from those settings
4- someone who wants to explore the game and see what can and can't be done inside the engine
5- someone who derives satisfaction from the game and has a play partner they swap sides with regularly

[Stamb]

if game is not trying to be balanced then who a hell would agree to play as an Axis?

1- someone who enjoys Sisyphean tasks
2- someone who enjoys a historical game and doesn't really care about "winning"
3- someone who knows how the difficulty settings works and either gives the Axis a boost from those settings or the SU a nerf from those settings
4- someone who wants to explore the game and see what can and can't be done inside the engine
5- someone who derives satisfaction from the game and has a play partner they swap sides with regularly

why did you delete your post with a lot of CAPS that you posted?
i had a great answer for you and i was ready to explain who is the average player of the majority of a player base and how do they play

as for your current post it is a case only for a new players
what happens after a couple of games, or already during this games, is that players stars to see what is more OP and what is not
then they start to use it and find balance issues that can not be fixed with changing game settings, or maybe you can share magic silver numbers (bullets) that players can enter to get more balanced game?
i am sure that developers will happily make them as a default one

[Jeff_Ahl]

Other elements (how players tend to prioritize things like saving their armies instead "defending forward", etc) that produce ahistorical results or play is not only a function of game design but also the elements which the game purposefully lacks (the political incentives which guided the priorities of military operations), plus player hindsight. Ultimately, this is still the crux of the issue for me: one can't demand that a Soviet player reenact the Kiev pocket, and it seems unreasonable to demand that the game railroad players into reenacting such a disaster. "Balance" in this case strikes me as meaning a balance between accurate historical conditions and freedom of player initiative. This will produce ahistorical results, and will also frustrate players who are trying to take advantage of historical advantages their "side" possessed at a particular point in time (i.e. the Soviets didn't abandon stuff, they didn't preserve their armies, etc). Isn't that "all in the game?"

A panzer or guards division facing a almost depleted NKVD regiment or rumanian division and sustaining the same amount of CPP drain as facing a well dugin and high CPP defending unit, is not about expecting the opponent to reenact the Kiev pocket or the destruction of AGC during Operation Bagration.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Other elements (how players tend to prioritize things like saving their armies instead "defending forward", etc) that produce ahistorical results or play is not only a function of game design but also the elements which the game purposefully lacks (the political incentives which guided the priorities of military operations), plus player hindsight. Ultimately, this is still the crux of the issue for me: one can't demand that a Soviet player reenact the Kiev pocket, and it seems unreasonable to demand that the game railroad players into reenacting such a disaster. "Balance" in this case strikes me as meaning a balance between accurate historical conditions and freedom of player initiative. This will produce ahistorical results, and will also frustrate players who are trying to take advantage of historical advantages their "side" possessed at a particular point in time (i.e. the Soviets didn't abandon stuff, they didn't preserve their armies, etc). Isn't that "all in the game?"

A panzer or guards division facing a almost depleted NKVD regiment or rumanian division and sustaining the same amount of CPP drain as facing a well dugin and high CPP defending unit, is not about expecting the opponent to reenact the Kiev pocket or the destruction of AGC during Operation Bagration.

Deal with the NKVD regiment and Airborne appropriately. Or you can waste your time and continue doing what you have been doing. I do feel that the CPP drain for a division attacking a Regiment or Brigade should be lower.

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[Jeff_Ahl]

Other elements (how players tend to prioritize things like saving their armies instead "defending forward", etc) that produce ahistorical results or play is not only a function of game design but also the elements which the game purposefully lacks (the political incentives which guided the priorities of military operations), plus player hindsight. Ultimately, this is still the crux of the issue for me: one can't demand that a Soviet player reenact the Kiev pocket, and it seems unreasonable to demand that the game railroad players into reenacting such a disaster. "Balance" in this case strikes me as meaning a balance between accurate historical conditions and freedom of player initiative. This will produce ahistorical results, and will also frustrate players who are trying to take advantage of historical advantages their "side" possessed at a particular point in time (i.e. the Soviets didn't abandon stuff, they didn't preserve their armies, etc). Isn't that "all in the game?"

A panzer or guards division facing a almost depleted NKVD regiment or rumanian division and sustaining the same amount of CPP drain as facing a well dugin and high CPP defending unit, is not about expecting the opponent to reenact the Kiev pocket or the destruction of AGC during Operation Bagration.

Deal with the NKVD regiment and Airborne appropriately. Or you can waste your time and continue doing what you have been doing. I do feel that the CPP drain for a division attacking a Regiment or Brigade should be lower.

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Me and others have already been over exactly that earlier in the thread. So wont repeat all that over again.