Please Forgive a Grognard Trying to Understand WitE2

[redboot]

Hi all.

At the risk of running into a buzzsaw.....

I’ve seen a number of posts from people asking about estimating combat odds pre-battle, and I understand that the answer is basically “you can’t”. I can accept that (sort of…see below) and the FoW aspect of that, although it’s sometimes difficult to discard the instincts of a 45-year veteran of board wargames. (But that’s another topic for us old-ass grognards.)

But here’s what I don’t get.

As I understand it, when I look at a post-battle report and see that my target infantry division had its CV adjusted from 68 to 24, while my two divisions were adjusted from 189 to 111, resulting in “odds” of 4.6:1, I have no way of knowing how or why those adjustments were made. As I suffer through a level 7 battle display to get a feel for what’s going on under the hood, I see that the AI is not “rolling” in the traditional sense. It’s playing the battle out element by element, “rolling” many times in effect. I think that’s pretty cool, and I understand that it’s not possible to figure out exactly what happened, like you can when you roll dice against a CRT. Authentic battle simulation…using the power of a computer…and all that.

However …. (there’s always a “however”)

Shouldn’t the battle report give me some notion of how the “odds” adjustment occurred? For example, my target started at 68, was in a level 3 fortified hex, had a morale of 73 (not great), a TOE of 66/69 (so fairly depleted), excellent supply, a reasonable commander, etc. (BTW, I could only get this information by reloading the game as the otherside.)
And it’s CV for this combat was cut to 24. In a level 3 fort? Why? I haven’t the foggiest notion, and I think the software just isn’t giving me a basis to figure it out.

That doesn’t strike me as Fog of War. It’s just Fog, isn’t it? A commander should be able to infer something useful from the results he got. If I can’t get any insight from a battle report as to why I succeeded or failed, then how can I adjust my play to improve? I’m reduced to just using the rough odds on the pre-battle pop-up and hoping it works. I’m sorry to those of you who admire this software, but I’m having struggling to find a game here.

All that said, I would love you to convince me I’m wrong. The number of dials and buttons here is too tempting to just throw my hands up. So, I’m posting this to start a discussion. Am I missing something fundamental? Or am I putting my finger on a substantive design flaw? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[chaos45]

Even after playing this game for years between WITE 1 and WITE 2.....I could be wrong but here you go:

Here is my take on how combat estimates work-

The CV you see on screen is the base estimate of your forces capability and your recon estimates of the enemy capability based on all known information. I think your CV is considered what it should be given all things work well/average an such.

Once you go into combat there is a firing sequence between all of the units involved....this firing sequence can heavily modify CVs as units are destroyed/damaged/disrupted by firing from both sides---this is often one reason of a large drop in CV for a side is it takes a ton of destroyed/disrupted/damaged elements----keep in mind base CV also doesnt count Support units that then sent into the battle by the various HQ elements involved nor any possible air support.

So after all the random additional of SUs/Airpower are factored in plus all the shooting CVs can change drastically.

Next the commanders of each side need to make command and initiative checks----initiative affects amount of shooting each side gets as well.....Command checks based on the units involved---infantry for infantry units mech for motorized/armored units is my understanding. Making all the various skill checks can add more CV to your units....failing a bunch of the checks will reduce your CV.

Supplies/Fuel/Ammo can also affect this but if your recon is good should already be factored in---if one side is low on ammo they wont shoot as much and thus dont do as much damage in the shooting phase.

Thats a basic overview of combat I think lol. Hope it helps---playing and see battle results will start to give u an idea of if you might succeed at a risky attack or not.

If the enemy is low experience/morale and poorly led you can open attacks at less than 2:1 initial odds and easily win alot of the time so in 1941 Germany can carry alot of attacks at lower starting odds.

[redboot]

Thanks for taking the time to post that! It's very helpful. Although, it's a little worrisome that it took "years" to piece all that together.

[chaos45]

Doesnt really take years to learn but getting the fine tuned thoughts on if attacks can work or not at lower initial odds takes some finesse to learn.

The end result is almost anything can happen in an attack...if you have a large initial CV edge you should win easily.....but the closer it gets odds wise the more chance for odds swings one way or the other...

Commander rolls play a big part in this as the command can miss all the rolls and drop the unit to like 0 CV or make every single one and get a massive CV boost.

[Wiedrock]

Shouldn’t the battle report give me some notion of how the “odds” adjustment occurred? For example, my target started at 68, was in a level 3 fortified hex, had a morale of 73 (not great), a TOE of 66/69 (so fairly depleted), excellent supply, a reasonable commander, etc. (BTW, I could only get this information by reloading the game as the otherside.)
And it’s CV for this combat was cut to 24. In a level 3 fort? Why? I haven’t the foggiest notion, and I think the software just isn’t giving me a basis to figure it out.

Yes it should. It should list positive/negative modifiers and give some numbers for rolls done ...and if it's too many rolls, since with computer you can roll as often as you want to one could simply use percentages in the first place.

The final CV of the defender is/should be determined by the Fort level at the end of all combat. During combat elements get DEStroyed, DAMaged and DISrupted. Each Element has a different CV value, so exact getting the numbers takes lots of effort. So in your example we could guesstimate that you have DES/DAM/DIS about (1-24CV/68CV=0.647) 65% of the enemy Ground Elements (at least that's how I'd want it to be and everyone could understand it).

But be aware that there then may be/are additional rolls on top of all which we can not see which also effect the final CV and make it rather impossible to rly be sure about what happened and why and how the exact numbers came to be. Example for this are battles where final CV ends up being higher than initially despite losing men during the combat, so yea....noone has any actual idea what is going on.

[CanisVasily]

The odds may vary greatly due to random factors like fire accuracy and dice check. With the same controlling conditions it may be 1:2 and 4:!. Hard to say about accurate analysis of adjustment of CV (since the random factors are thousands even in one battle).

My experience is to look HPE (hit per element) in combat details. One hit will cause an enemy element to be destroyed, damaged, disrupted, that is, out of battle. It can be used to measure the efficiency of a certain type of element. German 105mm leFH18 is usually with a HPE around 1.5 in 1941. Panzer IV may have 7-15. This may help you to allocate your resources to launch your operation.

[M60A3TTS]

Artillery support units can have a significant part in the battle while their CV is not displayed in any particular way. Rule of thumb is a defender in a more fortified position will get better results with artillery than a unit in the open with no fort value. The idea is if you've had a chance to dig in for a while you have also had time to pre-register your artillery fires to maximum effect. Also, leaders with higher initiative ratings land more hits than a leader with a lower rating and this can have a significant effect on how effective the artillery fire is. It is not uncommon for even modest numbers of some German artillery units to disrupt hundreds of Soviet ground elements at a time if the German is defending.

[MarkShot]

Engineers and arty are very important for dealing with fort level. Raw CV is not enough when dealing with forts.

Also, for many things rolls escalated up the chain of command where their stats are misleading, since the chance of a good roll is reduce at each level, but the point is that OKH and the "butterfly effect" are real in this game.

Edit: I haven't played in while so I am not sure if Engineers and Arty numbers are displayed, but if you see their NATO icons in the summary, then they were present and played a role. Too busy playing MIUS in the weeds of the East to get back to the entire war.