I am going off!

[borsook79]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

It's a good solution in terms of gameplay.

Look at this in the folowing way. he moment that you put a unit on the map is the moment it has been already trained and formed and equipped. All those happend when the PP were gathered.

But this takes away all the planning from the game, part of the fun is creating a versatile army, not waiting to see what your opponent is throwing at you and then buying something to counter it... Not to mention that you get less attached to your units if you know you can replace them in one turn... All the games of this kind - CEAW, SC2, HOI etc, etc, have building units delay and it seems to be working good for them...

[cpdeyoung]

Gary Gardner set up a production spreadsheet for himself and stuck to his builds no matter what, well, he tried, but allowed himself some emergency priority builds. This could be a house rule between two human players if they both see it that way. After you have played the game a long time you will realize the current system is not that far from where a good player is with the spreadsheet.

In the AAR I am posting about the USSR I know long before Barbarossa what I will be building. I could easily and enjoyably put the builds in a production spiral, but the game would change very little. The production needs of each nation are pretty predictable I think. Not much to be gained with a "required" spreadsheet, over the optional one we each could use.

Clever guy that Gary!

Chuck

[borsook79]

ORIGINAL: cpdeyoung

Gary Gardner set up a production spreadsheet for himself and stuck to his builds no matter what, well, he tried, but allowed himself some emergency priority builds. This could be a house rule between two human players if they both see it that way. After you have played the game a long time you will realize the current system is not that far from where a good player is with the spreadsheet.

In the AAR I am posting about the USSR I know long before Barbarossa what I will be building. I could easily and enjoyably put the builds in a production spiral, but the game would change very little. The production needs of each nation are pretty predictable I think. Not much to be gained with a "required" spreadsheet, over the optional one we each could use.

Clever guy that Gary!

Chuck

house rules... that's hardly a solution, taking this logic to the extreme, why make any rules at all?

[Fintilgin]

The current system of instant replacements does feel a bit off to me.  Right now I try to keep a cushion of a turn or twos worth of PP so that I can pump out a bunch of infantry or something when I need it in tight spots.  It does make a big difference, because if there is a delay on building new units and I take a few weeks in the spring spending all my PP on tech and upgrades then a few months down the line I won't have any fresh infantry arriving, and I might have to strip them from other places to protect objectives/patch holes.

Right now I can instantly summon exactly what I need when I need it, as long as I keep a strategic PP reserve.  This gives me a little too much flexibility and too much of a safety cushion.  Part of the strategy of a game like this is needing to anticipate my needs well in advance and make do with what I have on hand if I've made a mistake.  Right now I can realize the enemy is thin on the ground around Kursk, buy a pile of tank divisions instantly, drop them down on a Russian city I've captured nearby, and send them all rolling off the next turn.

But then again, I also think new production should only be able to be placed on home/friendly cities and then moved or transported by strategic transport to the front.  It's bloody weird to be able to 'build' new units at Moscow as the Germans.  But then again, I think strategic transport costs should vary by distance: maybe costing 1 point for every five hexes a division travels.  It should be hard for the Germans to get new troops way out into the Russian steppe.  The Russians lose the natural advantage of fighting on their home soil, and the invaders get to ignore thousand mile long supply lines, when the Germans can just deploy at any captured Russian city.

It does make the game play faster, but it makes things too easy for the attacker. It allows you to respond to circumstances much too rapidly. If the Russians launch a major offensive, the Germans can instantly start casually deploying as many new divisions in that area as they can afford. They should be freaking out because they didn't start training enough replacements in the spring and trying to rush what they do have to the area on a limited strategic transport budget. It's much more expensive in ST to ship the small reserve from Berlin, but then they don't have to strip other, closer, front-line sectors of troops...