Feedback-Soviet Production 1.03 Beta 5

[Cad908]

Here is some raw game data under for the forum to consider.

Playing the 1941 Campaign as Soviets v Axis AI under 1.03 Beta 5. I started a new game with the latest patch yesterday, meaning I DID NOT add to the Soviet total armaments. To date, I have only created construction support units. I am only allocating the beginning ones in the game from Stavka to my armies in the field. Some do not have their full TOE's at start, and there has been some armaments production to fill them out. Other than that, no SU's and no fortified zones have been created. I disbanded all the fortified zones that started the game, as the Axis approached and I was not going to defend. None have fallen to date.

Running a pretty normal game versus the Axis AI, getting slapped around in the center some, maintaining a coherent northern front, and it has been somewhat lax in approaching the Donets Basin, or I am getting better? Thus, I am getting around 150k of population a turn and slightly north of 71k armaments production per turn. This is pretty high, and I am not railing any factories until the Axis approaches them. I am currently on Soviet turn 12 (September 4, 1941)

Armaments stock were exhausted on turn 9.

On turn 9, for the first time in the game, I started to build the population pool:
Turn 9 16k
Turn 10 58k
Turn 11 140k
Turn 12 231k

As I produced 150k of population last turn, we can extrapolate that the as the pool went up 91k, only 59k were put in "service". Disabled returned to the pool were 29k. Thus, we get net 88k actually returned to the army. At the current rate, the Red Army will no longer be building as it will be unable to replace attrition and combat losses.

Currently, the Red Army totals 4.9 million. I have lost 1.5 million (501k Killed 582K Captured and 409k disabled) - this is against the AI so you should not expect much more than that. My hunch, the Red Army should be larger. There are 5 turns to mud and 16 through the end of 1941. Starting in 1942, armaments output will double, correcting the problem.

In 16 turns if I average a 85k increase in population per turn, I would expect around 1.6 million in the population pool. In games under 1.02, I would not see any population building up until late 1942 early 1943. I posted a query to the forum about that way back when.

I will neuter some units until the end of the year. I will not put any of the tank brigades in refit mode. I will leave them along the rail lines and see if they build up. There will be no refit for all the infantry brigades that arrive, though I will leave all front line units on refit and all the infantry and cavalry divisions will remain on 100 TOE and refit, as is my usual practice this early in the game with no "quiet" fronts.

I will update this thread on turns 15, 20 and the end of the year. I should be through 1941 by Sunday afternoon. With no "american" football to watch and the "other" very busy, all of a sudden I have lots of free time.

Thanks

[Joel Billings]

Good info, thanks. I do expect some Soviet manpower pool to develop in 1941. I think we were still seeing too many active Soviet troops at the front at the end of 41, even when historical casualties were being taken and historical ground captured. So to some extent this is a good thing and expected with beta 5, however it is possible it is too much. Even with the added arms points in beta 5, the Soviet player is getting about 1.5 million less arms points than what they would have gotten in previous versions so arms points will be an issue after the first few months.

[von altair]

Soviets were lacking arms historically as well! Early months of -42 many new soviets troops had only a handful of bullets OR a rifle, not both Other one was
supposed to take supplies/rifle from another when hes dead! This was the case until early days of the battle of stalingrad.

[Cad908]

Turn 15 (September 25, 1941)

Population in Pool:

Turn 13 302k
Turn 14 424k
Turn 15 535k

Buildup last three turns = 233k

Red Army Losses:

Killed: 634k Captured: 593k Disabled: 530k TOTAL = 1,757k

Last three turns: Killed: 133k Captured: 11k Disabled: 121k TOTAL = 265k

Red Army Size: 4,882k Change a few thousand down from last posting (will be more precise in record keeping as I go)

Manpower centers are now producing just below 150k per turn as a few population centers were lost.

Armaments production is still just over 71k, a few losses but nothing major.

Mud is a couple of turns away, so lets see what happens to the size of the Red Army over the next five turns. The AI is being held at Narva in the north, has not attacked in two turns, one of which was mud. It is still plugging away at Moscow, though I have been counter attacking at every opportunity. It has made a small breakthrough toward Bryansk, though it would have been better served going toward Vyzama. The mud turn has created a problem, in that it cannot really supply the hexes it has taken and I have had a turn to reposition for counter attacks next turn. In the south, it is grinding toward Kiev, though it is still three hexes away and I have level 3 -4 forts in its path. The Dnestr line has finally been outflanked, and I have been building along the Bug. I will try to keep it well away from the Dnepr as winter approaches.

Will update turn 20 later tonight/tomorrow morning.

Thanks

[Helpless]

Soviets were lacking arms historically as well! Early months of -42 many new soviets troops had only a handful of bullets OR a rifle, not both Other one was
supposed to take supplies/rifle from another when hes dead! This was the case until early days of the battle of stalingrad.

Not true. Amount or armament (small arms) was more than enough. Ammo was a problem, especially mid-heavy rounds.

[Cad908]

Turn 20 (October 30, 1941)

Population in Pool:

Turn 16 604k
Turn 17 660k
Turn 18 729k
Turn 19 781k
Turn 20 842k

Buildup last five turns 307k

Red Army Losses: Killed 813k Captured 603k Disabled 686k Total = 2,103k

Last five turns: Killed 179k Captured 10k Disabled 156k Total = 345k

Red Army Size: 5,122k Increase 240k last five turns

Manpower is now down to 148k per turn and armament production has held steady just north of 71k.

There was something of an outlier with the weather on turn 19 (Oct 23, 1941) All three Soviet weather zones were snow, instead of the expected mud. The odds of this occurrence: North Soviet 2 chances in 11, Central Soviet 2 chances in 11 and South Soviet 1 chance in 11. Multiplying together, gets you around one in 333 that all three would be snow during turn 19. These things do happen, and turn 20 was mud all across the board. Other observations, as the front has been rather static. First, the Naval Brigades are filling up while the regular Infantry Brigades have not, while both are not set to refit. This makes me think that the Soviet player, and the Axis for that matter, should be given a "no refit" option that will prevent units from getting any replacements. If the production system limits these resources, I tend to think the player should be given the option to direct his limited stock as he sees fit. Some micromanagement, but I can already hear Soviet players howling about this until they reach 1942. Will continue through the mud tonight, then start the winter/blizzard Saturday.

The next post will conclude this thread and be the final turn before 1942 starts. We will have several mud buildups, and blizzard counter attacks. I will make some screens of the front and post final observations.

Thanks

[Joel Billings]

You can set your TOE down to as low as 50% for any unit, so you can control to some extent their build up. Using the CR screen you can probably do this with groups of units fairly quickly.

[Cad908]

Turn 28 (December 25, 1941)

Population in Pool:

Turn 21 670k
Turn 22 746k
Turn 23 825k
Turn 24 886k
Turn 25 814k
Turn 26 869k
Turn 27 921k
Turn 28 974k

Buildup last 8 turns 132k

(Armament pools have been at 0 since turn 9, as noted above)

Red Army Losses: Killed 1,072k Captured 612k Disabled 886k TOTAL = 2,570k
Losses last 8 turns: Killed 259k Captured 9k Disabled 200k TOTAL = 468k

Red Army size: 6,061k Increase 939k over the last 8 turns

Manpower has held steady around 147k per turn, while armaments are slowly growing as the moved factories are starting to some back online, and are now over 73k per turn.

There was another weather outlier. This time, turn 25, December 4, was snow across all Russia, instead of the expected blizzard. The odds of this are around 150- 1 (6.76 in 1,000). This is the second extreme outcome in 28 turns, and both occurred at the start of a new month. Earlier it was snow instead of mud, which gave the Axis an extra attack turn, now it was snow instead of blizzard, which cost me an attack opportunity and gave the Axis one fewer bad December weeks. Following this it has been blizzard across all Russia, as it will be until the end of January. The interesting thing about random weather, is that once you get "outlier", ie mud from June 19 through September 30, you will not get it again. It kind of cuts both ways, in that you prefer to get it over early, knowing you will not see it again.

I held up my non-build support unit strategy through the end of December. I tried to save all my armament points for my infantry and cavalry divisions, and left the tank and artillery heavy SU alone. Just based the the slowing buildup in the population pool, I conclude to some extent this worked. I will post a TOE screen below.

The Red Army still seems "small" to me. The historical losses through this stage in the campaign, without igniting a massive debate, were somewhere around 2 million killed and 2.5 million captured, depending on which source one uses. So lets say 4 to 4.5 million, and mine have been 1.9 million, or 2 to 2.5 million less that historical. Is the Red Army 2 million stronger at the end of December than it was in 1941?

This is also predicated on the Axis AI's performance in the south. It never threatened the armaments plants in the Dnepr bend or Donets basin so I never moved the plants out. Against a human, this is not possible, or very unlikely. Missing those huge armaments plants during their move, would have cut into their output and slowed the Red Army's buildup. Soviet players who read this thread should take one big thing from it, I think you have to fight like hell in the south. Any Sir Robinovich that surrenders the big armament factories is going to really cut into your army's buildup for all 1941. This may require some tweeking still, but I think this is very historical and is one step closer toward that elusive prize.

This is certainly subjective on my part. It will be interesting to see where two good human players are at in their games as measured against this baseline.

A couple of screens to follow, then I think this is concluded.

Thanks

[Cad908]

Here is an infantry shot from the CR. Note the TOE's and this is pretty representative of the Red Army's infantry. If you look deeper, the big shortfalls are not really in squads, though they are down a little, it is the artillery and mortar's that are really scarce. My reading of the history tells me this makes some sense.

I did not build any artillery SU during the entire game. I put Stavka on 9 and locked everything else down. I manually allocated to my field armies just those SU available from the start. This forced me to really allocate my Army HQ's efficiently. Each Front gets 3 armies that are close to or right at their command level. I deleted all the corps HQ's in the first few turns and currently have 12 empty army commands I will need a few more, but most of them will be deleted for their vehicles. I have just filled up the 2nd Shock army, and am now out of SU. Worked out pretty well, for the most part. The real benefit is a streamline command structure that minimized each turns' processing.

[Cad908]

Front around Leningrad

[Cad908]

In the center

[Cad908]

And the South

[Helpless]

Thanks for the info! Can you post your production screens?

[Joel Billings]

Thanks for all the data.

One source I have says that Soviet front line strength was 4.2 million in December 41. Of course, how this number relates to the game is unknown. What is front line strength? Does it include all the HQ's and airbases, and does it include all the units on the map? I think Pavel has targeted a figure between 4.5 and 5.5 million, but don't want to speak for him. Based on Pavel's sources we have calculated that the in game permanent losses for 41 should be around 4 million (3 million killed/captured and 1 million disabled). This number of 3 million killed and captured sounds quite a bit lower than your number of 4-4.5 million.

[Cad908]

Helpless,

Here is the production screen, the save will follow. (I should have posted this at after my overview)

Joel,

Yes sources. I have read all kinds of numbers, but what are they counting? If pushed to the wall, I would support some of the new Russian sources. As they continue opening up Soviet era files, those original sources would be best, probably?! Much of my reading is from older Western sources, and I suspect those were highly dependent of German documents. Taking Pavel's numbers, then game ends up in the middle, a million fewer casualties and Red Army strength of 6 million right between 5.5 to 6.5. Interesting, and I am sure you will be having this conversation over and over again, have fun. [:'(]

Thanks

[Cad908]

Save, turn 28.

And as an aside, the lend lease items not appearing the the logistic report had four occurrences from the first August turn.

Vehicle did not appear on turns 14, 20 & 21
Supplies did not appear on turn 15.

Thanks