GC 41 2ndAcr (G) vs Kelblau (S) No Kelblau

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: miller41

He will not have to sit in his forts once he can make infantry and mech corps, then all those troops will stack up and start attacking, in the numbers he will have I think you will just get overrun. Just an opinion of course and you will have to see how it goes. In my contest with Haudrauf my corps are just starting to come online and I expect to really start pushing him back towards the end of summer

Mech corps aren't available until September, and freshly made mech corps are very weak. They aren't really going to be up to speed for several weeks before that.

He can make tank corps now, but those are also fragile early on. The concern is the rifle corps. But the 42 rifle corps is weak on weapons and not terribly economical in terms of defense. A typical line rifle corps in mid 42 is going to be around 7-8 CV. (The guards rifle corps are more dangerous in this regard, however.)

We are raising the AP costs on these in the next patch for 1942, btw.

[2ndACR]

Nice thing about old school PBEM, I can go back and look at saves.[:D] I have them all the way back to turn 1. I can recon my backside off and watch for his habits. LOL

[2ndACR]

Okay, I cheated and ran some tests using the turn 54 save. I can crack his line at Smolensk 3 out of 5 times. But they retreat into level 4 forts. I used 6 Infantry Div to deliberate attack first, pulled them back and then threw 6 Panzer Div at them. Once they retreat, the next 3 Panzer Div move into the breach and get stopped cold. So basically, I don't know if it is worth it. I have to use a minimum of 6 panzer div to have a chance of breaking a hex open.
I don't see any way to so it.

I cannot break his line. He has dug forts for at least 40 miles from his current front. So my units are only good for 1 hex per turn. He just uses the Russian super bullet trains to rail all the troops he needs and they go right into level 3+ forts. Cracking his line up there cost me another 180 tanks. I just cannot keep up that kind of grind. And my infantry are useless.

The speed at which they can shift troops by rail is crazy.

[CavLancer]

The Civilization games have made the same mistake through the years. Unlimited moves on rail in II and III!

The point I think the designer is trying to make is control the rail or fail. Maybe they're trying too hard?

2ACR, how many rail moves per unit per turn, and how many units can rail move?

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

If the German just digs in and returns the favor with a bunch of fort lines...this game is going to become very dull, lol.

Soviet won't be able to do anything until he gets artillery divisions, and even then, the German could slow the pace to a crawl unless the Soviet busts past the fort line.

I agree with you that it would be very boring, but with conditions the way they are right now, It sounds like he is not going to be able to crack that line to get the big encirclement he needs to get things rolling and at any rate, is burning through a lot of troops and equipment. On top of that, he is fixing one of the downsides of the Soviet strategy in that they did not have that much in the way of guards units. They are getting them now, which makes them more dangerous in the long run. In addition, the Germans are grinding themselves down on Russian terms; attacking heavily fortified hexes and taking heavy losses doing it.

While the game has some fixes on the way that will help the Germans in several areas, this is still a Russian strat that is going to be looked at hard and until it is known that the easy counter is the Germans sit and dig in as well. This will (hopefully from a German perspective) lead to an eventual German victory since the Russians can only advance very, very slowly. It makes for dull games, but if the community generally knows that it will almost always lead to a German victory, then people will stop using it as a viable strat imo.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

More players really need to start doing their games with the fort display enabled. You are missing a lot of information with that turned off. It's every bit as important as permanent terrain features, if not more. If I had know he had this weak of a fort defense up north, I would have suggested going there in the first place.

+1

[Flaviusx]

I'm going to be bringing up this fort spam business in the private forums. It may need to be nerfed. We've discussed the issue from time to time, but it never seemed to be a deal breaker. (And it shouldn't be in any game were the Soviet actually does a real winter counteroffensive. It takes a long, long, long time to build up level 4 forts in mud and snow. If you're moving forward during the blizzard, you won't see this. We indeed changed up the fort rules to slow down the construction of forts in poor weather to prevent fort spam and breaking the 42 campaign. Nobody ever anticipated a Russian just turtling.)

This is getting close to it.

Myself, I wouldn't do this as a Soviet. It's boring. It would inevitably lead to German counter fort spam. Welcome to WWI with tanks. Yay? Not only is this boring, but it ultimately would slow the Sovs down. If both sides turtle, the front won't get moving until 1943 when Soviet mass and concentration can start moving fort lines. And it won't move the front very quickly even then. Bob's done fort spam on me in 43 with the linebacker strategy and the only reason it didn't work was due to his weakness in the south.

I try to create conditions in 42 where there is mobile fighting in the south and I can suck the Germans into overextending themselves and launch many counterattacks with reserves, mobile and otherwise, and keep my guards count maxed out. This I feel is not only far more fun, but in the final analysis quicker since it gives you a chance to destroy and even pocket the Germans in the open. If both sides turtle, that goes out the window.

Edit: this fort spam problem may, and I say may, have been indirectly resolved already by other changes in the next big patch. In the sense that the Soviet Union will be weaker, have less manpower, and likely be pushed back further east and have to defend a longer line than now. A Soviet player in game going into December 41 with the kind of front line they had historically might turtle...but the incentive to do so and the chances of this working quite so well will be much less.

I also think this game is instructive in showing why the German needs to push as far east as possible and defend as far east as possible instead of preemptively running away before the blizzard hits. The German runaway invited the Soviet turtle. Which in turn invites the German turtle. And thus WWI version 2.0 Yawn.

[raizer]

acr talks of bullet trains to forts-I agree this is a big problem because it turns out that the turtle has an incredible mobility

[Flaviusx]

Raizer, man, everything for you is about the trains. You really are stuck on this idee fixe.

Without belaboring the point, I do not see this as either the problem nor the solution to the problems this game is turning up.

We just need to get the German moving further east and forcing the Soviet to do everything he can to push back west. Here the German didn't move far enough east, gave up a huge zone before the blizzard, creating an enormous no man's land which the Sov refused to march into and leading into a Soviet turtle...and eventually into a German counter turtle.

There's a lot of stuff going into this, it's not any single issue, and certainly not the rails.

[raizer]

hehe well one thing I dont like about the trains, is being able to take an UNREADY unit, that just got it butt kicked, and rail it back to say lenningrad and sit it on a fort, detrain it.  It prevents the fort from degrading and will probably continue to build up the fort, then I take the fat and rested unit that was on that fort and rail it back to where the unready unit just got beat up.  Its crazy.  I can pull all my unready units and just rail them out and camp them on forts, building them up or at least preventing them from degrading, while repairing their TOE and getting back to a ready status.

So how bout preventing unready units from railing OR at least paying a huge price to rail, maybe just allowed to train or detrain but not both in 1 turn....AND unready units cannot build forts and have no effect on preventing them from degrading [:)] 

[Zonso]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

There's a lot of stuff going into this, it's not any single issue, and certainly not the rails.

I agree it is not one single issue, but imo the rail capacity for the Russians is a definite part of the problem no? I'm no expert and correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't think any Nation at that time was able to strategically move forces like the Russian can currently, and this is in addition to supplies being railed or industry being evacuated on top!

[Flaviusx]

Soviet factory relocation costs are going to be doubled.

Having said that, I consider that utterly irrelevant to addressing this turtle problem. The real cause of this problem is the immobility of the front lines. They need to be kept moving. The Soviet only created this fort spam because he turtled up in the winter and flatly refused to advance forward into the no man's land. It takes a lot of turns and construction points to build up level 4 forts in poor weather.

He could comfortably do this because he was already well to the west of historical start lines. I seriously doubt a Soviet player will turtle up if the German is knocking on Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov. He's going to throw everything he's got into pushing the German back and get some breathing space.

I also consider the hits to German morale/experience a real problem. We've done some stuff about this. I hope it is enough.

[MrLongleg]

ORIGINAL: Zonso

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

There's a lot of stuff going into this, it's not any single issue, and certainly not the rails.

I agree it is not one single issue, but imo the rail capacity for the Russians is a definite part of the problem no? I'm no expert and correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't think any Nation at that time was able to strategically move forces like the Russian can currently, and this is in addition to supplies being railed or industry being evacuated on top!

Not to mention the free evacuation of millions of people to Sibiria...

[Klydon]

The rail issue is part of it. The Russians get a very generous rail allowance to move a lot of troops around easily while evacuating anything they want in comfort and well ahead of any Axis advance.

As far as rotating routed units with fresh ones, I do this now with movement. I try not to put routed/just rallied troops right back into the line and instead send them back a bit to dig while moving new/fresher units up. To me, this makes sensible use of units. Dig while recovering and go spend some time in the front line getting bashed on before coming back to dig some more. Just because I don't use the rail line doesn't mean this doesn't happen. Not sure what you would expect a Russian defender to do other than this TBH. Tossing units that just got broken back into the fray when you don't have to means they just break that much faster and easier. Using fresher troops causes more German casualties (to a point) and are harder to move out.

[raizer]

well maybe a big rail penalty for railing unready units-let them rail up and move or move and detrain but not both in one turn.  I think of unready as disrupted-unorganized-  Forming them up for rail should be harder imho

[Flaviusx]

My own solution to this would be to impose a serious decay on fort levels to fortifications beyond a certain distance from the front line.

But I'm also holding off to see how the game evolves after the next big patch. We've got a lot of tweaks going into this next patch. Preliminary results look good. But we will need more data.

[2ndACR]

Good discussion. Okay, I did everything I could to get closer to the historical lines. Was not happening. So I did pull back to what I considered a defensible line. No way I could defend the actual front line. Been there and done that. The buffer was created to try and force him to waste a turn or 2 of the blizzard coming into contact with my line.

I did not see the turtle coming though. No one did. But have to admit, it works. Too well.

This is what I see as needed to balance the game some more.

1. Rail capacity. Right now, every unit across the map has all the trains it needs assigned at all times. That is why we can pick up and shift 5-6 div at the drop of a dime and move them hundreds of miles. Never happen in real life. But to simulate it, I would like to see this, turn 1 you load and move, turn 2 you can unload and will have 1/2 combat power no movement, turn 3 you are at full power full movement. That would simulate the need to gather the trains, load the unit, move them, unload and get them ready etc.

2. Swamps have been fixed

3. TOE upgrade bug has been fixed

4. The experience loss has got to be fixed

There are a lot of others, and I know I have been hit with all the little issues that have been addressed in beta 3 (or hope they have been). The big one I see is the rail issue. It is just too easy to do a rapid shift of troops across the map. Even for me the German. I can pick up a Panzer Corp in Germany, have them in Lvov in 1 turn, next turn they are east of Kiev and ready for combat via rail.

A delay using rail would be the best solution.

I made my mistakes, sure did. I pause sometimes to allow rail to catch up. That slows me down. I pause to allow infantry to catch up to save my armor.

[2ndACR]

Turn 56.

Grind continues. Another small advance at heavy cost. I may have to withdraw 3 Panzer units to rebuild. They are at 80 tanks and below.

Current map with forts

[2ndACR]

And here is a shot of 2 of my once mighty Panzer Div. The other one not pictured is the weakest with 43 tanks left. And I have sucked my pools dry.

[Flaviusx]

For whatever it is worth, we are now monitoring this issue. I've raised some red flags. Keep the data coming, this game is yielding some interesting (albeit not very happy) results.

[ComradeP]

This is what some testers (including myself) feared for, but initial warnings were shot down as the impression with some was that level 4 forts would be easy to breach.