Another mountain corps overrun for Italy, it's that darn Allied shore bombardment. I'm convinced it's the one utterly unbalanced thing left in the game.
I don't see any other choice but to attack with the Italian Navy (despite 4 Allied CVs in the area). The results aren't too bad, the only large unit sunk is the BB Nelson.
I fully expect the Italian fleet to be obliterated on the next turn.
We send in some Luftwaffe reinforcements as the Italian air force is depleted and unable to hit any naval units at all.
It's a bad turn for the Allies. While we lose an infantry corps surrendered, and take heavy losses in our offensive,
we overrun two armies and two tank corps. Stalingrad is within our reach.
Bad news for the UK in Sicily. While our air units cannot seem to hit any enemy naval units, we take the surrender of two infantry corps.
The rest of the invasion force seems set to follow.
In view of the latest development I offered my surrender to Sveint and he accepted. Not sure how much it shows on the pics, but USSR is really crippled (and has been for about a year), and the Allies can not alone have a chance to do anything serious; just getting a hold on the continent would be quite an endeavor. Probably that Germany could pull out about half its troops in the East (at least a third for sure) and still easily contain the Red Army so the Allies would never have enough land troops to compensate and I am already really struggling just to have air parity.
And this is before I just learned that more armors/mech are on their way..[:(]
I congratulate him for a novel strategy and a nice, and well deserved, victory. Also, I never seen so many air battles, was refreshing.
For whatever it is worth, I would have resigned a long time before you did. The issue was decided in 1941 and from there on Sveint really could not lose with even moderately good play. Once he crippled the Soviets, it was over.
I think you could have done some things better here. You didn't take near as much advantage of the new garrison rule as you might have. I saw armor units in swamps. Etc. and so forth. But the patch may have come too late for you to really take advantage of it, I think it dropped well after Barbarossa began.
We've argued before about the worth of keeping that early mech. Your experience here confirms my doubts. Aside from maybe a handful to mess around with the Finns, it is better to trash them. Park them somewhere in the rear, wait until war is declared, and bank the lot of them for fresh rifle armies. You can pocket 1100 pps this way, or 5 rifle armies. 5 rifle armies will do you a whole lot more good especially when garrisoned than all that mech.
Prior to this latest patch the game was plainly tilted in favor of the Axis. Which is why Sveint could do this crazy infantry only thing. It wouldn't work now imo. Whether or not the new garrison rule is enough to even things out remains to be seen, but it should at least kill of some of these more outre strategies, 1940 Barbarossas, etc.
Well I did not consider the Soviet really crippled until mid 42, was semi-crippled until then (still a huge army holding itself until then) and the Allies where super rich. I knew I was in deadly trouble by early 42 of course, but I thought it was still worth a little try. So that is why I extended it a little while.
For the mechs, you could very well be right of course, but a single game can not show much as many variables are at play, such as the remainder of the strategy, mistakes, luck, level of play (of course)... For example, the two players I played to most (they will confirm it if they want), have never scrapped the mechs yet managed to easily keep the Soviet alive and strong every game even before the patch (of course, I also believe they might be two of the best players here). And with all the mistakes I made, not sure how the mech variable can be isolated from the rest? As I said, maybe you are right about the mechs, but not sure how than can be rigorously tested. It would be literally be needed to play the exact same game with only that thing changing. And even then, it will only show it for that exact game (or type of?) I think.
Also, my educated guess would be that in a game with so many variables, there are probably very little absolute strategies. Scrapping mechs might be good for some strategies but bad for others; hard for me to imagine a single answer always right to a problem with multiple moving variables.
If there is one think I have seen from all the AAR is how with so many different approaches and strategies, players can still potentially achieve the same results, more or less...
Did you send maximum lend lease to the Soviets, at least? I pretty much think you have to do this until 43 at the earliest and then you can start tapering it off.
This will literally increase Soviet production by up to 50%. Ends up being like 150 or more pps per turn.
He had you on the ropes at the end of 41 and had already pushed past most of the best defensive terrain in the map. The only really good defensive terrain you had left was the swamp belt running south of Leningrad, but he outflanked that.
It's just really hard for the Soviets to recover from this, especially since they don't even got proper mobile units until basically 1943. (I hate this rule change and wish Alvaro would revert it. You can't do a whole lot of counterattacks at infantry speed. In the old days the Soviets could at least strike back in 1942 with their mobile units, albeit at a speed of 7, but that is a lot better than 5.)
It doesn't really matter how rich the western Allies are if the Sovs are crippled, btw. (Except to the extent they are subsidizing the Soviets with that wealth.)
The allies can't get much going on the ground for a while. Maybe North Africa in 42 and perhaps Sicily. Landing in France in 1942 never works. The Allies don't have the mass to support it that early, as you found out. The earliest they can seriously think about doing this is in 43. I get why you went to France that early, it is a desperation move to help the Sovs, but if you are forced into that kind of situation you have basically already lost the game.
I guess I see things you don't because I have literally played this game close to 100 times, both solo and PBEM. After a while you get a feel for where things are going to go.
Did you send maximum lend lease to the Soviets, at least? I pretty much think you have to do this until 43 at the earliest and then you can start tapering it off.
Yes the max, but just until late 1942 (or very early 43 can't remember) because by then the Soviets could not repair units anymore due to serious lack of manpower. At least the Allies could still spend those PPs. Even after buying more trucks they would need, the Soviets still have 500+PPs left in reserve. PPs where never a serious problem, but the age and training time of recruits was (manpower centers losses added up..).
Helps stretch the Soviet manpower. I also think you can have to be pretty ruthless with disbands for this same reason. Poor units are just diverting manpower away needed elsewhere. Better to disband them and feed the troops into new units that are actually higher experience. And this is also the reason I believe in rifle corps spam over trash mech corps. That manpower is more efficiently used. You have to get past this tactical thinking about the mech units. The game is really about economics and resource management at the highest level, this tactical stuff is less important. Managing resources correctly is half the game.
Managing the Red Army means accepting a lot of churn. It's not the like this with the other countries. I don't do anything like this degree of recycling for anyone else, but Big Red plays differently.
If I may say so, because I don't think the AAR demonstrates it, but the combination of masses of infantry and excessive airpower feels really powerful.
I will for sure try a German game where I build a lot more airpower vs slightly fewer tanks.
Airpower is plenty fine and I don't agree with the complaints about it. It will work just as well with armor as infantry, although it is possibly more cost effective not to rely so much on armor. You don't really need 15 mobile corps to rampage through Russia and logistically speaking, infantry doesn't seem to lose its punch as much as armor. Some of that is due to less movement chewing through your efficiency, I suppose.
The secret weapon of Germany when you come down to it is the +20% experience modifier. A German infantry corps is as strong as anybody else' tank corps in raw CV terms. Germany doesn't even need the elite attachment (which has diminishing returns for high experience units.) You can pick up all the other ones without worry.
Parenthetically, I wish there was an AA attachment for ground units. I would seriously consider taking that one for the Soviets in particular, the Red Air force is kind of hopeless until very late in the war.
Germany doesn't even need the elite attachment (which has diminishing returns for high experience units.)
Hi,
Are you sure about that? I remember reading that gaining XP is harder the more experience you have. However, my understanding is that both XP and readiness are the only direct multipliers. So if you have a gun value of 6 and 80% readiness and 60% XP would should have a real gun value of 2.9 roughly. So all points bring an equal extra value.
Unless what you are saying is that (for example) a gun value going from 5.5 to 6 has less effect in combat than a gun value going from 3.5 to 4? Which could make sense of course (percentage wise anyway). Although that would also mean that each extra point of something (such as gun or tank) also eventually has a diminishing value.
It would be nice if Alvaro could confirm this mechanic (not the numbers, just the principle).
It's diminishing returns. When you are at 70% experience base already, 10% on top of that is a 15% gain in raw CV. (Approximately.)
Whereas a Soviet unit at 30% with the elite attachment becomes a full third stronger by going from that to 40%. So a 6 point Soviet unit with that attachment is now an 8 point unit. A 10 point German unit with that attachment might go up 1 point in CV.
As you approach 100% experience the marginal utility of the elite attachment goes down. Simple math.
The elite attachment is obviously best for the Soviets, pretty darn good for the Italians, and fine for anybody else who is at 50% base. The Germans are never going to need it because they have an enormous edge already here. Even with the elite attachment, point in fact, other nation will not even equal the base experience of ordinary German units, let alone those which have been lucky enough to gain combat experience and keep it without diluting it via replacements.
We will have to agree to disagree about the effectiveness of air units. As well as Sveint did in this game, I think he would have done much better if he had built more Armour and Mech and fewer air units. Especially since:
1. Built German Armour and Mech will have 70% experience as opposed to the air units only 50%;
2. Armour and Mech can be given specialties and air units can't;
3. Armour and Mech benefit from the HQ supply bonus and air units don't;
4. As you proceed through the Tech advancements the Armour and Mech become disproportionately more powerful than the the air units. A 45 tech heavy armour unit will be about 80% more powerful (26 to 16) as a 39 tech armour. While a 45 tech Ground Attack air unit will only be about 40% stronger than a 39 tech air unit (7 to 5).
If Sveint had used this strategy on me in our game I am confident that I would have won.
I agree with you Flavius that used properly air units can be very effective in an anti-ship role. I also agree that they have some usefulness in a ground support role; but far less than they did historically. I mean I don't know how you can say that shore bombardment is fine (even though it can have a devastating effect and inflict numerous strength losses on an enemy unit) while at the same time also saying that air units are fine (even though they are restricted to inflicting 1 strength hit and have far less effect on enemy effectiveness). Unlike air units, the effect of shore bombardment on an enemy units effectiveness is not reduced for each attack. Again, I am not asking for a major buffing, but a 20% increase in air units TAC would be historical.
Imo, if you want flying artillery, buy lots of ground support. Ground support is pretty powerful in this role.
A 20% bump in airpower effectiveness is just bringing tac and to a lesser degree fighter bombers within range of what actual ground support planes can do. They are strong. Their main shortcoming is their range, but for their particular role that is not a big issue. (Plus the allies get some compensation for this, their ground support has +2 range.)
It's probably true that as the war goes on airpower does relatively go down in its effectiveness. It doesn't increase in power at the same rate that ground units do. Arguably the tech tree could be jiggered here so they can keep better pace with the ground advancements. It also seems to me that air units have a harder time gaining and keeping experience than ground units. A veteran air unit is typically flying at base experience whereas a combat hardened ground unit, even after taking replacements, has an easier time climbing up over base experience. So you could play with that some.
I understand that math because it is very simple as you said (same point as posted above here exactly: Unless what you are saying is that (for example) a gun value going from 5.5 to 6 has less effect in combat than a gun value going from 3.5 to 4? Which could make sense of course (percentage wise anyway).)
But that was not my question. My question was how was the engine build for the battles? If it is based on relative CV, then of course yes. But we have no indication if it was build that way. Form the manual it seems that each weapons are firing (in turn). And the value of that weapon seems based directly on XP and readiness. Is the hit chance of each extra "point" the same or not?
Now, of course that going from 2 to 3 is +50% and going from 3 to 4 is only +33%. But what does this extra "1" does in combat? Does it add the same number of hits as the previous increment? If yes, each increment as the same value in absolute and the damage would be proportional (so a 8 will do 8 times more than a 1). Or does it add less than the previous 1? Then in that case yes, it would be diminishing (but in that case only).
Or to put it another way: % gain are always diminishing by definition. But they are just a way to count something else. What is "that something else" doing in reality? Best example is money. Look diminishing, yet each extra $ help me gain as much wealth as the previous.
Only Alvaro know if he build it that each "increment" will give same result (proportional) or not (diminishing). And that despite the obvious that extra each % gain will showing as lower % gain.
Not always easy with English (not 1st language but OK enough). But maybe with this simpler in game example I might better express what I mean.
Let’s say we have a bomber, and that bomber adds 2% to find a sub. (no idea where I took that).[:)] Some will point out that your extra chances to find the subs are much better if you are already at 10% than 50%. As in the first case you improve by 20% instead of 4%.
But that is not the most important stats. The +20% is on an already very bad % while the +4% is on an already very good one anyway. The most important stat here is that it makes… the same difference in both cases in absolute % of subs sunk (even if not in % wise). Assuming a die with 100 faces, the bonus will always (except at the top extreme) make an effective difference only for 2% of the rolls.
Now add another bomber. Will the difference affect 4% of the battles? It would depend on how the engine is programmed to count them together or not. We do not know how it was programmed to work (proportional increment or % increment).
But it would be nice to know. Players should have the right to know if they are wasting or not their elite advancement for example. Or in other words, I would like to know if improving an artillery from 3 to 4 will kill more enemies than improving one from 6 to 7?
My sense is the game engine mixes and matches. Raw CV is used to calculate odds against an old fashioned CRT. But the results can be skewed in ways not reflected by raw CV. Retreat possibility for example. There are a variety of purely percentage based modifiers to the chance of retreat that go outside the base CRT.
This is just guessing, though. Only Alvaro knows the formulas, but what he's doing is home brew. It seems to work more or less. You do get these weird results from time to time, low odds attacks that somehow manage to force a retreat (a common complaint.) Or a surrender.
