Is the Combat resolution Engine realistic?

[Heinz Guderian]

One of the things I notice, is how much force and power seems to have be applied in....certain situations to acheive anything like a tangible result. In other instancees, I see results of battles that give me pause. Maybe I am not covering new ground here, if not....tuff [8D]. Naval battles fall into the 1st category of concern. The end result of most(not all Mind-just most) sea battles is....nothing. Watching the AI battle it out in the early game is revealing, notabley Jap. vs US. The AI Japan will marshal massive attacks once in while vs usually more or less equal forces. Sort of fill your screen sort-of-affairs you dont see with land-power Germany. Most results are either A) Draws or B) Usualluy one side takes maybe a unit or 2 damaged. Outright kills are very rare, even in huge battles, at least until the US brings is massive strength of numbers to bear, and desicive wins in massed battles at sea.....I dont think ive ever seen such a animal.

Now on Land, I sometimes wonder just how reasonable some of the things that happen truly are. Ill give (a) example, and I dont want any of you armchair General Disasters to whine about 'how its the rng what can you do'. [8|]

Eastern Front, Lennigrad. Garrison 8 millita, 9 reg infantry 8/8 3 Panzers 10/10 an AA and an Arty. Russians attacks and, I lose the city, fine, But here is the kicker. Even tho, I had what I would consider a decent force in a fortifed city, I manged to not 'Destroy a single Russian Unit.(yet my losses for in units destroyed were over 50%-thats fine-but...one would think they would managed to take a few of them with you-but no) There were the usual damaged, yes, But for all that I dont permantly destroy even one single attacking unit. Its not like they had a 10-1 advantaged over me. But I tend to see this sort of result its hardly unusual. . Now damaged units are of course, common. But that really, doenst reflect too poorly on an attacker, They go back in the que for refitting and basically there just 'free units' down the road. This tends to heavily favor the Americans and Russians in particular. Wheither it be high cost naval units and air Units for the WA or Armor and infantry for the Russians, even 'damageing' them means you are just going to see them again...real soon. However back to my Lennigrad battle.Even at a disadvantage you would (Hope) my Defence would present something of an obstacle or manage to wreck a few Russian units but...no. I often take huge losses to russian offensives yet manage to in most instances barely effect there numbers in any sort of meaningful way. The game seems to 'bias' towards few if any losses for an attacker. (Their) damaged units, will be back in action soon enough, yet your defenders, seems to rarely inflict much (real damge) towards an attacker, even with a moderatly decent force present. (All things being equal, faceing a defender that has more or less equal skill and gear, will be expensive to an attacker-even if your at an advantage)* Yet we take heavy losses (ie actual destruction) and damage to boot, yet rarely does it seem to cost the enemy much Most of the German Early victories have less to do with there tactical acumen than the fact there really isnt anything much on the ground to oppose them, once that changes, the pendulum swings very hard and fast. This really helps(adn attacker) them to keep that 'victory momentum going when losses are minimal and easily made up for. Defence...rarely seems up to the task in WaW even when we have decent sized force defending. Of course Ive already realized., macro-scale games like this...are somewhat abstracted, but Ive been playing this game long enough to sometimes wonder if the way combat results play out. is.....ideal.


I was going to blurb about Air battles and the 50+ bomber raids that always manange to kill every ..............single...........arty, AA I own along with my few fighters while seldom takeing more than totally trivial losses...but...Id rather not. Ill say this much, it also feels to me as if german\Japans airpower is easily reduced in this game to almost nothing and I think it can happen quite easily, not to mention quickly. This is historical yes, but again, it seems to me the WA can easily elimate Axis air very early, in addition to there other ...numerous advantages. I was wondering if AWD many changes will make combatl 'feel' somewhat more realistic. As enjoyable as the game is, in some respects I do, wonder if combat as it stands, could not be improved in some manner [;)] Ill finish off by saying, from my perspective, if the actually axis 'kill' ratio were upped even 50%, I hardly think allied production would notice in anything but a very modest way. The number of planes and ships the allies can crank out is staggering. Yet there....when it comes down to it...really hard to destroy in all but the most ideal situations(ie..never). Same goes for Russia and its land forces. However as a concession, I will freely admit if WaW real purpose was to show the futility of war, well for Germany at any rate Good Job [:D]





*On a historical note, even towards the end of the war in the east, with the german army more or less in ruins and in constant retreat. The russians still lost an average 3 men for every german KIA. It certainly does not feel anything like that in WaW. Basically you get hammered and realistically have few if any chances to inflict much in the way of losses to slow the enemy down.

[delatbabel]

This game has the most unrealistic combat engine ever. Period.

One thing that you're finding is that the game isn't unbalanced in favour of the Russians or the Americans, but it is unbalanced in favour of higher tech and/or larger forces. 3 tech 5/5 inf rarely cause a scratch on 6 or 9 tech 7/7 inf, and if you are losing infantry in large numbers without causing much damage, especially with a large force, then you might check the relative tech levels of the troops.

On a small scale this is how it works

3 x 5/5 inf 6 x 7/7 inf
fire, rolling 5 dice needing 21 (miss)
ditto (miss)
ditto (miss)
fire, rolling 7 dice needing 15 (miss)
ditto (miss -- being generous here)
ditto (hit)

now all 3 inf in the smaller force have been fired at, their evasion is at -1

fire, rolling 7 dice needing 12 (hit)
ditto (hit)
ditto (hit) -- all dead!

The problem is that all 3 inf in the smaller force pick a different target in the larger force, and all miss, all dying in the process. If you were the attacker what you'd actually do is send in all 3 inf one at a time. Then the 2nd or 3rd inf may find it firing on an inf that has already been fired at, therfore only needing an 18 to hit instead of a 21, so may find it actually scores a hit.

No, it's not realistic in any way shape or form.

[teutoburgiensi saltu]

I can only confirm what has been written above.  I mentioned this in the WAW world-devided sub-forum hoping that they would improve the combat system in the new version.  I have to admit that I have a penchant for playing the axis.  I'm not making a political statement ...yet I find the axis role strategically more challenging.  What Guderian mentioned above has happened to me sooo many times....on the eastern front with more ore less similar circumctances.  Just take Stalingrad for example...at least historically and symbolically Germany's biggest defeat.  The 6th army was more or less destroyed but the Red army suffered even more casualties.  The point is that the German economy had a lot more trouble replacing those losses than the SU had problems replacing theirs.  This fact is what made Stalingrad such a great defeat for the Wehrmacht and I think this should be better reflected in WAW.  When the German army surrendered something above 11,000,000 became POW's and the German casualties amounted to approx. 4,000,000..  Even though the SU really kicked *ss their losses amounted to over 13,000,000 soldiers KIA.  These numbers are not at all reflected by the combat system in WAW.  I wish that the designers of WAW would optimize the system to be historically more accurate.  I know they can do it because WAW is in every other aspect a great game.....

[Joel Billings]

At the level of this game there is a ton of abstraction going on. The whole idea of damaged units warping back to the rear for rebuilding is an abstraction. The game is a game and given the 3 month turns and IGOUGO nature certain abstractions in the system are necessary.

Now as for the tech level advantage, you are absolutely correct that WaW is very sensitive to tech level differences. We have said in many posts over the past 18 months that being 1 tech level behind your opponent is bad, being 2 tech levels behind is inviting destruction. It may be overly sensitive to this, and IIRC some things were done after release to react to player comments to minimize some of the super units, etc. However, part of the game is not getting yourself so far behind the tech curve. I realize there is an issue in that tech is not obvious on the map yet is one of the most important elements to the game. You have to spend time on the Unit Data screen to know what you have and what your opponent has. We think it simulates the changes that happened during WWII, but at a cost to the ease of play (and obvioulsy to some to the full enjoyment of the game).

AWD still favors the attacker and still favors tech, but not as much. Many things have changed in the combat system (bombardment suppression fire, arty/air/fleets, research limits, and critical hits being just three). It is somewhat more complex, but more realistic. We think it's better, but we're biased. [:)]

[Heinz Guderian]

Thanks for the feedback, I guess it is to be seen how combat in AWD plays out vis-avis WaW. Its just to hard to make a dent when the allies start to steamroll you. Damaged units barely slow them down and really, cost them nothing. Sometimes they have the effect of stallling an offensive (infrequently) or giveing you some breathing room, mostly not. As germany I simply cant keep air-defence or artillery alive-even when im on the offence. THe AI selectively targets these units, often leaveing me with only infantry or armor to carry thro attacks. While its un-deniabley true at a tactical level artillery is the most vulnerable type of unit, on the strategic level its very easy to elimate 100% (or close) of axis capibility. simply air raid them over and over-axis air units cant defend for sheer numbers and at worst the Allies make take ...you guessed it...a 'damaged' aircraft ...maybe 2 if your really lucky-destruction is again...a rare event. Only time is remotely safe to deploy these units is when you have the enemy on the ropes and by the time that happens...you dont really need them anymore[:'(] . Generally 2 things stop offensives, very high casulties, or lack of suppiles. WaW does a good job of protraying the logicstics angle of war quite well. You have to plan these things-(I always play advanced supply). Battles as I noted..different story. thou my modest lenningrad defeat was meant to illistrate what I ve come to think of as-the futility of defence, I had much larger battles. Huge affairs with (??) russions attacking regions with 50-60+ units in them-rarely manage to actually 'kill' many russions despite the vast scale such a battle respresents. In WaW damageing a unit can be ...somewhat useful, at least tactically and if you dont take advantage of it(imediately your SoL). Units actually destroyed however is the only way to really 'hurt' an enemy on the battlefield. A unit damaged is one youll see again real soon, a unit destroyed trully hurts the enemy, but is quite difficult to do for the most part in WaW.

teutoburgiensi saltu, if you dont mind me saying so, I have 2 problems with your comments. First, your numbers are completely wrong, second, they have little to do with my point. Im not argueing about the 'Historicty' of WaW combats results at all. Im talking about do they properly represent combat at land air and sea. In some respects they do, but there are shortcomeings, Joel himself says as much above. When I say my 50stack german force in x region fails to actually 'destroy' many allied attackers, im not concerned that it may 'represent' millions of men and mass casulties and that im somehow worried the results somehow dont jive with the real world. Im not, never was. Joel and the others understand quite well what I refer to, but its fairly clear, you missed the point. Your post is about.....something different altogther. If it helps you any German losses were ~250,000 at BoS, 90k taken prisoner, about 6000 lived to see germany Again. the loss was ~25% of German forces on the Eastern front. Or to put it in game terms, if you had 40 inf units in Russia and ..lets say for sake of argument 10 armors, a Defeat at BoS would be like loseing 10 inf (DEST-not damaged and 2 armor units). This would be the equivlent of 6-9 months of industrial production in germany, which by all acounts is quite close to what was quoted as costing germany in strictly production terms. To say nothing of the manpower loss which was by far, the most serious of the 2. As far as production goes, WaW tends to simulate industry and logistics of war management quite well, given its simplictly. Its the battlefield results that tend to skew-not so much the logistics side

[teutoburgiensi saltu]

 
Ehm, Guderian, actually I think I did get your point.  Maybe I was too vague and did not clarify clearly enough what I meant in my fist post.  I was unsure about whether to include numbers of casualties as this often leads to misunderstandings ... and obviously it did.  You're right, the numbers of casualties are probably completely incorrect as they only represent rough estimates I had at the back of my mind.  Yet the sources on WWII casualties show such a big deviation that I find it redundant to bother about accuracy in this case (sometimes the deviation amounts to millions and you will find that the numbers I listed fall into this wide rang of estimates - I know where some of the deviation comes from...but lets not delve into statistics).  Anyway it is not absolute numbers I'm concerned with, rather its relativ numbers of casualties on both sides. Ofcourse I agree with J.Billings that a level of abstraction is inevitable.  If I understand You, Guderian, correctly You are talking about how well combat results are represented.  The title of the thread reads "Is the combat resolution engine realistic".  To understand how realistic it is we need some sort of link to actual historical results.  There is no way of modelling or simulating a real world situation on a pc that can be done without at some point looking at real historic data.  As for our problem, a comparison with real historical casualties is helpful and I don't know any other way of how to design a realistic combat system.  Casualty figures of the whole WWII (..as the ones I listed are admittedly less helpful in this case.  But if we take the casualty number of single WWII battles I think we would soon come to the conclusion that real casualty numbers of WWII battles looked different from most typical WAW battle results (...again I'm talking about relativ numbers => number attacker/ number defender * attacker losses/defender losses).  Jan (a moderator) presented an interesting argument saying that in WAW combat results it's not only losses of actual combat during major engagements that are represented but also those losses occurring through constant attrition.  Another problem is that if the designer changes the overall combat system it may have an effect on overall loss ratio on both sides and therefore the supply system/production system will have to be adjusted accordingly in order to prevent oversupply or deficiency of units in the long run.  That's the only reason why I mentioned production aspects. With the current settings of the game the supply and logistics system is implemented quite well. 
In short ... my argument is that real WWII combat results should in some way represented in the WAW combat system (..again only in relativ terms).  On the other hand, I also think it's reasonable to assume that the level of abstraction in WAW in some way already takes this into account.

[Uncle_Joe]

The combat in AWD is significantly better. Its much much harder to get 'super units' and even if you do manage to tech units way up, Air and Artillery suppression can make them very killable. Having Combined Arms also grants a +3 modifier which is almost the equivalent of adding an extra die to every attacking units' fire.
 
It is possible to have relatively low casualty battles if you bring enough Artillery and Air. Those units can reduce the defenders' effectiveness quite a bit and lead to much lower casualties. But that would only be if the defender is lacking air and/or arty support of his own. If both sides have mixed force, losses WILL occur.
 
It should also be noted that it is much much harder to use air to kill off opposing arty before a battle too since air attacks are resolved as 'bombardment' attacks which can inflict a lot of suppression, but generally arent as fatal.
 
Finally, as Joel alluded to, its also much harder to try and get a runaway tech lead. Each nation's econ is on a shorter leash for much of the early war so units tend to stay relatively balanced.

[Heinz Guderian]

Yea, as it stands now, I have (mostly) written off Arty and AA as viable units. They are the first units lost in  let see...everything. Attack with them-lost, as in....... destroyed in most cases. defend with them.....destroyed. From a cost benifit PoV, there barely worth building they get destoyed..so...readily. Of course, the easy answers seems to be, tech them up. True *but*, your a lot better off (if axis) putting the resources into Subs, fighters Armor and Inf, and saveing  'discretionary' research points on AA and Arty when you can. Where I can see a noticable boost investing in subs tanks and men, trying to boost arty to the point is can hold its own seems points poorly spent indeed. Of course Arty has a double penalty to it. Its already ridiuculously easy to kill, so you have to boost its evasion, but if you dont boosts its land/air attack they really dont hit a lot...but if you dont boost its evasion, they get wiped before they do anything and so on. Well, actually its 3, AA have a hard time actually destroying aircraft except under ideal circumstances and usually they just damage stuff, which is almost like missing completely[:@].  However, since the ruskies and amerikkaners always seem to have 10 air units for every 1 AckAck arty or fighter germany has, its kind of a moot point how teched up they are, end result usually same. Its intereseing they way these units are handled in WaW, artillery is the by far the number casualty generator on the modern battlefield, as for Air defence, even with Allied air superiority as it was, strategic bombing over europe was no cake walk. Allies lost a lot of men and machines during the air war, and germany was on the defensive in a big way, and it still cost them. We can only imagine what it would have been like for the allies if the luftwafe had not been thrown away in the Battle-of-Britain*. Quite possible strategic bombing-night raids or no would have been a non-starter. Again you wouldnt know it the way waw battles play out. Most fights are draws or very light casulities taken on either side(refering mostly to air now). WA build up a huge force all out of proportion to what there faceing, and smash them to bits. Like useing a sledgehammer to break an egg. 
 
About the B-o-B, its interesting how the axis never seem to try to emulate that battle in WaW. Its partly tactics yes, in WaW planes are insanely hard to destroy-at least in the air, and damageing them, hardly worth the effort. Even with all Axis air massed in france its doubltful anything of value could be achieved even if you did manage to 'win'. Most likely  Germany would find itself w/o any aircraft at all for the Balkans North Africa and eventually Russia. Or put another way, a defeat in WaW in a B-o-B style campaign would be far more damageing to the axis than it was in real thing.

[Joel Billings]

Another subtle change in AWD is that Infantry, Airborne and Militia are all treated as one category for combat targeting, so flak and arty won't be targeted by Militia as easily as they were in WaW. They tend to live longer now, especially when part of the attacking force which usually outnumbers the defender enough to shield them from counter-fire except from other flak and arty.

Actually, in WaW, I found arty a tremendous killer of enemy units (especially when you consider the previously fired at bonus it would give to units on follow on shots).

[Uncle_Joe]

Its been a while since I played WaW, but the Allies will have a harder time mustering absolute superiority of units if the Axis are playing a competitive game in AWD.
 
As to the Battle of Britain, the goal for the Germans is to kill off enough WAllied airpower in one turn to be able to invade. If you can do that, it doesnt matter how quickly they can replace the losses. I have never had a problem with Germany being able to trade out Fighters with the Brits and from there, you invade England. This is not easy to do if they are prepared for it, but if they are piling up in Britain then Gibraltar and Cairo are likely weak.
 
But again, its hard for me to remember WaW at this point, so perhaps I'm mixing up experiences here. [;)]

[Uncle_Joe]

They tend to live longer now, especially when part of the attacking force which usually outnumbers the defender enough to shield them from counter-fire except from other flak and arty.

Which is also another encouragement for combined arms. You need arty to 'counter battery' enemy arty or else it can be hard to kill. Also, since arty tends to shoot arty with its first shot, your friendly arty can 'absorb' the shot to protect a friendly line unit from getting hit.

Combat in AWD works on the same principles as in WaW (ie, attack dice and EVxDur etc), but the results will be VERY different. Just the change to bombardment for air, AA, and arty is worth the price of admission alone IMO. It really changes the way the game plays out. Even if you COULD get a 'super unit', its still not going to dominate against a good combined force anymore.

[Heinz Guderian]

Actually, in WaW, I found arty a tremendous killer of enemy units (especially when you consider the previously fired at bonus it would give to units on follow on sho

Yes, that is true, they can be. Its most noticeble with the russians. Its not unusual to attack them in regions where they have as many as 4 or 5 arty (per)units stacked with a few infantry, militia. Unless hit with aircraft 1st, attacking them can cost fairly heavy casulties, even with a absolute advantage in manpower. The Americans and Russians can produce arty and AA units in vast numbers along with everything else, tho given the map, you only truely get a sense of what combat is really about in russia. For the axis, it all comes down to production. An Arty unit, like every other unit, takes up a slot in the production queue, despite artillery/aa from a production and manpower standpoint, being far less intensive than say, a infantry or armored formation. In short, you never can produce them in quantity(axis), subs air above all inf and armor have to take priority. If the axis gain the upper hand, then you can switch production to these, yes, but as I mentioned above, by the time your in that position as axis, you dont really need Arty anymore anyhow. This is course is all from the axis PoV, allies..completely different matter. They can produce arty in vast numbers, these units do not represent a 'production bottleneck' for the allies like they do the axis. In games where Ive secured Eruope and am prepareing for Attacking the USA directly for example, arty and aa production is *STILL* a bottleneck, unless you go 100% production(and even then) it takes foooorever to build up arty\aa units in quantity. Of course if you go 100% you cant build the additional tanks ...inf...and so on you also need. Fun times. IF your allied, this is a non-issue. Not to switch the topic in a differnt direction but the axis even when they secure all eruope\britain are Still limited to 5 primary production centers and a few minor ones. Of the 5 primary centers only 4 can produce artillery and of those 4 only 2 are really major centers. None of the caputured vast industrial potential you have in Russia, Britian and so on, can be coverted to war use, supplies sure, but nothing else. no doubt this is a balance issue, but it always struck me as odd that all that industry in russia cant be used to produce *some* combat units-Not amored formation or infantry, but at least war *Materials*, like....artillery or AA for example  [:)]. I mean come on, lets get all those russian PoW's doing something useful like polishing gun barrels, instead of produceing field rations or helping make German-American Phrase books. 

Not done any moding myself, wonder if captured production centers could at least be partially set up to do that[&:]