How can Soviets escape pocket with only 2 hex opening

[rtb1017]

I trapped a massive Russian Force in the South. My Panzers reached Zhitmor in the east. The Germn-Rumanians/Hungarians and southern pincer was two hexes away from Zhitomir. I was salivating at the prospect of 500,000 ++ surrender next turn. Even though I had a two hex opening. I figure the ZOC of the panzer in the North and the units linking up in the south would prevent an exodus.

On the next turn, the bag was almost empty except for a bunch of HQ's and fortified units and some Air units.

Has anyone experienced this?

[Sheytan]

Was a discussion about this if I recall correctly in antother thread.

ORIGINAL: rtb1017

I trapped a massive Russian Force in the South. My Panzers reached Zhitmor in the east. The Germn-Rumanians/Hungarians and southern pincer was two hexes away from Zhitomir. I was salivating at the prospect of 500,000 ++ surrender next turn. Even though I had a two hex opening. I figure the ZOC of the panzer in the North and the units linking up in the south would prevent an exodus.

On the next turn, the bag was almost empty except for a bunch of HQ's and fortified units and some Air units.

Has anyone experienced this?

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: rtb1017

I trapped a massive Russian Force in the South. My Panzers reached Zhitmor in the east. The Germn-Rumanians/Hungarians and southern pincer was two hexes away from Zhitomir. I was salivating at the prospect of 500,000 ++ surrender next turn. Even though I had a two hex opening. I figure the ZOC of the panzer in the North and the units linking up in the south would prevent an exodus.

On the next turn, the bag was almost empty except for a bunch of HQ's and fortified units and some Air units.

Has anyone experienced this?

Is this the CG in 1941? It turns out that the AI is sensitive to units with the word "Panzer" in their designations, at least in 1941. After that, all bets are off. Anyway, if you change the designations of your armored divisions to "Armored Division" (note the US spelling), you will
be able to form pockets a lot easier.

[rtb1017]

How do you rename units

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: rtb1017

How do you rename units

Sorry. I'm just kidding. The AI does know exactly where your armored/Panzer forces are, though.

[Redmarkus5]

Do you have a screen shot of the pocket before and after the Soviet units vanished? You can get this by loading up a saved game.

[bairdlander2]

My understanding from the manuel is the ZOC doesn't come into affect untill the start of next turn.I think the hexes you saw are pending Axis control.Sorry for my poor English.

[rtb1017]

THE ZOC may not come into effect until the next turn, however you have units all the way in Ldow escaping all the way to Zhitomir in one turn. Even Panzers dont have enough MPs to make that sort of trip. The one thing I can think of is the the AI disbanded the units and returned them to the pool instead of having them surrender.

[Redmarkus5]

The AI's units can often displace further and faster than the panzers can move. I see this as a flaw in the design, but the testers and devs don't agree.

[bairdlander2]

The manuel says displaced units will displace to their HQ's,if thier HQ is more than 10 hexes away they will displace to nearest town,city,SU units will go east Axis will go west.The units are displaced have no combat value and suffer severe attrition penalties,so in a nutshell its a few soldiers escaping,though on map it appears to be entire division/unit.Perhaps to lessen the confusion,the unit icon could be removed from map and whatever percentage escapes gets put back in eneamy replacment pool.[&:]

[PyleDriver]

Keep in mind the AI gets 100% of it MP's, no die roll needed (another cheat). So an infantry unit gets 16, and with no present ZOC's can move along way...

[mmarquo]

Also, if you are using broken down units they not convert the adjacent hexes, only the hexes they are in...

[joey]

Doesn't all of this make the game a bit ahistorical?

[bairdlander2]

As I said the routed units are not fully functional,they have no cv are basically shell units,they represent the remains of a division/unit.It is plausible that some troops would escape.

[Joel Billings]

Ok, just to set things straight, there is some warping of AI units in normal movement, but we try to restrict it to cases where the units are near rails and are not moving through ZOCs. We already have one case of some units seemingly getting out of a pocket when they should have fallen a few hexes short of getting out (although no zoc to zoc moves were needed, they did need to move adacent to an enemy unit to get out of the pocket). We have saves for that and I hope Gary can improve the AI without weakening the needed warp moving in clear situations. If you have a before and after save for the reported situation, please send them to 2by3@2by3games.com (even if you only have after, I'd be interested in looking at it if you could tell me where some of the Soviets were at the start of the turn).

We are not ok with this kind of movement and would like to improve the AI if possible. We are ok with the extra movement in situations where the units are not in pockets and near rail, and we intentionally designed (and like) the rout/surrender mechanism that require units to be isolated to surrender and which can sometimes rout units a long way.

Hope this clears things up.

[jimkehn]

Joel....I particularly like the warp route of units. I think it is realistic even in a pocket situation when u consider that the pocket would generally be closed on day 7 of the turn...but the first thing the player does..but the when the player goes back to start attacking those units, thinking he has closed the pocket, those units are actually attacking presumably on day one of the turn. To me this makes sense. But the wholesale escape of so many Russian units mentioned in this thread and another, is stretching my imagination a bit. I'm glad you are working on a reasoned fix for those situations. Thanks for all your hard work on this very fine representation of the Eastrn Front.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

The manuel says displaced units will displace to their HQ's,if thier HQ is more than 10 hexes away they will displace to nearest town,city,SU units will go east Axis will go west.The units are displaced have no combat value and suffer severe attrition penalties,so in a nutshell its a few soldiers escaping,though on map it appears to be entire division/unit.Perhaps to lessen the confusion,the unit icon could be removed from map and whatever percentage escapes gets put back in eneamy replacment pool.[&:]

+1

The problem with the existing design is that those 'few men' take up a space on the map that uses one stacking point. I suspect that displacing them again also costs something in move points for the attacker, but I'm not sure...?

If nothing else, they clutter up the map unnecessarily. Put them in the pool.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

The manuel says displaced units will displace to their HQ's,if thier HQ is more than 10 hexes away they will displace to nearest town,city,SU units will go east Axis will go west.The units are displaced have no combat value and suffer severe attrition penalties,so in a nutshell its a few soldiers escaping,though on map it appears to be entire division/unit.Perhaps to lessen the confusion,the unit icon could be removed from map and whatever percentage escapes gets put back in eneamy replacment pool.[&:]

+1

The problem with the existing design is that those 'few men' take up a space on the map that uses one stacking point. I suspect that displacing them again also costs something in move points for the attacker, but I'm not sure...?

If nothing else, they clutter up the map unnecessarily. Put them in the pool.

+1 - I would agree, it may be the mass of visible units which is puzzling people, when really there has been significant losses. If units do become merely shells they should not be on the map, they would not be big enough to 'see', in a military sense, and they would have not any stacking value. [:)]

[FredSanford3]

Or maybe adjust the stacking rules to a maximum 'X' number of soldiers in a hex. X = manpower of 3 full strength SU corps + an allowance for support units (Soviet Union). X = 3 full strength Axis division manpower + allowance for support units.

[bairdlander2]

Is the op of this thread talking about zoc's or pending zoc's[&:],I can see how there could be confusion,I first thought pending zoc's were zoc's