Winter Idea......Comment

[2ndACR]

Against a human, you can push as hard as you can and barely be able to inflict 3 million casualties against a good opponent.

But once blizzard arrives, you will watch your infantry div drop from 8CV to 4 CV on turn 26. If they are in the open, it will be even worse no matter what the fort level is. And it gets worse each turn. Much worse.

If they want to drop the automatic combat value reduction and just let attrition do the dirty work, I am all for that. It is better than it is now. I was offering it up as an idea. I prefer the "option" I suggested of course. It in no way hurts the Russian player, and rewards the German. Besides, the option gives me something to spend all those AP's on. By turn 13 or so I am at 500 and there it stays forever basically.

I know it is complicated and said that I don't even know if it could be done. But I prefer to have the "option" if it could be done. I am trying to avoid the "this happened in history so there" argument. That went out the window turn 1. People who want a historical game could home rule not to allow it.

We managed to get massive upgrade options in WITP after release with a toggle switch so anything is possible.

[Zort]

I agree with PeeDeeAitch.  Which in one way gets me to supply and it's effect.  What I would state as "attack" supply is way to available.  Both sides don't have to accumulate stores like they did before conducting major offensives.  So for me the points are:
1. Germans should be able to have a good chance of holding ground from around mid Jan.
2. Soviets should have a tougher time coordinating front wide attacks.
3. Both sides should not have easy access of supply to conduct front wide attacks for a continued periods of time.

[2ndACR]

Problem is, is that by mid January, you as the Germans are already toasted combat wise. You will see most of your infantry divisions with 8000 men or less, even if they sat still and never got attacked. They will be on par with the Romanians combat wise facing 4-5 CV infantry div. Mainly you will face 3 stack units with 13CV or so. And this is if you even halt all advances and dig from Sept 41 till blizzard.

I don't know what the answer is, but something has to be done. I am just searching for a way to reward the German who pulls short but also it cannot "hurt" the Russian. God knows they can pull units out of thin air basically.

[Angelo]

ORIGINAL: Zort

Both sides should not have easy access of supply to conduct front wide attacks for a continued periods of time.

Completely agree with this. The supply rules appear to be the main culprit at least from my games with human players. It will need major modifications to both simulate the eastern front logistics and make a balanced game for human players.

This does not mean I like the weather and blizzard rules. Both also need major upgrading! A more detailed and accurate weather system would help for the weather. The blizzard rules are too harsh mostly because attack supply is too lenient.

How to fix the problems? Without access to the game design documentation nearly impossible to offer any workable solution(s) as this game if quite complex and making any rule changes would require a good understanding of the game design and the programming. I suspect that testing changes would be time consuming and difficult. As it stands the v1.3 beta still needs a lot more testing.

For me, I'll wait for a new patch before wasting any additional time playing grand campaigns against human players that are imbalanced and ahistorical. Sorry if this sound too negative but that's how I see it. I do love this game and will still play, just wish the grand campaigns had been done better. [:(]

[PeeDeeAitch]

In my most recent examination, I have seen a couple of things from beta 5.
 
1 - the numbers for the Soviets have been impacted, perhaps a million less men in the lines.
 
2 - the TOE and returning experience for the germans have helped.  Spring 42 sees 5,6, and 7 strength German infantry divisions. (2nd ACR, I would think your units that did not face attack against Kelblau would have been far stronger yet - the "late arriving" OKH divs are far closer to starting strength)
 
2a - even in January and February, units in "quiet" sections (if there are any) can have 3 or even 4 CV showing - returning troops and lessoning effects of blizzard.  This was what the intent was before.  However, see point 4 below...
 
3 - the Soviets do not gain as many guards, but the Germans suffer as much or more because the "middle divisions" do not get above the 70s in morale.
 
4 - the Soviets can and still do attack on very large fronts, wearing down many units.  This does not allow the "January/February reduction of effects" to really be felt.  Only if the German can be ruthless in keeping units off the line can this happen - and when pressed on very wide fronts this become far harder.
 
This is the reason why I feel that a great part of the issue is the Russian ability to attack on wide fronts, with coordinated and sustained assaults.  There is not lulls, as actually happened, to give some small bit of recovery.  One reason for optimism on my part WAS seeing units outside of level 4 towns with a 3 CV in Feb...that was itself like a bolt from the blue. 

[color]

I would like to share some of my thoughts about the winter effects, especially the '41, since I have never shared them before. I will try to keep it short and rather elaborate by further comments if necessary.

1. Attrition. I think all sides should suffer attrition during winter turns, not only Germans. I read some writings of a Red Army surgeon claiming frostbites cases (no known numbers but unconfirmed 'substantially'), attributed mostly to soviet units attacking out in the open. Clue is in the open, which arguably can be translated to fort level 0 in the game. I would choose to interpret this that whatever troops, no matter their nationality, would suffer out in the open during blizzard.

2. German lack of winter clothing = Germany suffers much higher attrition than soviets during the 41 winter. That's already modelled. Gradually Germans gain winter clothing by helping themselves to clothing from (russian) dead and later when their own winter clothing arrived. Sounds like a gradually declining attrition effect with highest in 41. Seems mostly modelled like this in game.

3. Fort levels. Supposedly 2 Panzer Division had in the order of 800 frostbite casualties per day in january 42. The claim they make is that when they used TNT to blast holes, build shelters of wood and heat them, the frostbite casualties dropped to three a day. If this claim is correct it can be used to argue for the case that in the game fort levels should have an effect in lowering attrition, I won't try to open an argument as to how much.

4. Problems with weapons not functioning. Reason being lubrication could not stand the cold. This rings true in the beginning, but substitutes were found. Lubricating weapons with Kerosene the Germans found worked well, but they had to be lubricated regularly. Also sunflower oil were extensibly used, especially in the south. In game German CV is lowered during blizzard, but the effect is constant throughout winter. One could maybe argue that the penalty diminish after a period of time as substitutes are introduced.

5. Supply. German vehicles and their European horses could not stand the blizzards. Did not take long for Germans to commandeer and use the native Panje horse & sleds, by early 42 supposedly some panzer divisions had as many as two thousand of these horses, and hardly no serviceable motor vehicles. Can be interpreted as a brutal supply hit when blizzard arrives in '41, then gradually the situation improving. German supply lowered in blizzard in game, but I think it is constant?
I tend to believe that one of the most important factors to german disaster was lack of reinforcements and supplies (in terms of vehicles & ammo).

6. Russian organization, weapons and tactics better prepared for winter warfare. As well as Russian wider tracks/higher ground clearance tanks more effective in snow. Modelled in the game it seems. This tank disadvantage for the Germans was a problem mostly with tank models in/before '41. Later models incorporated wider tracks.

I completely agree with the developers about wanting to reproduce the Axis casualty levels of the 41/42 winter. I also think the best way to do it is to get the 'blizzard simulation' right, and then focus on obtaining the desired result by penalizing the historical strategy that lead to the disaster. I.e. among other things; exhausted & depleted units far out from supply trains (is it correct that the average fighting power of a division was down to 40% by december 41?), and lack of defensive positions/winter quarters.

If the soviet player is allowed to use ahistorical strategy, give ground to minimize casualties in beginning of barbarossa, then I would say it's only right that a German player should be allowed to use ahistorical strategies like in stopping and digging in to better survive winter (but at the cost of less ground gained).
I.e. it can be argued that more incentives can be made for the german player to drive deep early, and having to apply historical strategies to gain that and run the risk of disaster. Or he can choose to be safer, lessen losses, but be sorry later.

[IronDuke_slith]

The game is set up to replicate the German historical experience, but it's flawed because the player is free to create an unhistorical experience. Yet, If he does, he still suffers the historical experience.

Where the Germans were overextended, poorly supplied and in offensive deployments, the Soviets drove them back with heavy casualties. But where the Germans were ready, it was much tougher. The Germans did not lose all combat capability in December. Amidst the worst of it, Model was actually able to reorganise and re-establish 9th Army contact with neighbouring forces. The Panzer Armees pulled back a long way, but then they were in mid air with wide open flanks, so attempted a fighting withdrawal. That's not the same thing as being in headlong retreat, since if their flanks had been secure, they would have stayed put.

Ultimately, a Soviet player who successfully avoids debilitating losses in the run up to December 1941, gets a much stronger counteroffensive than historical. A German player who avoids overextending, who avoids heavy losses and prepares for winter.....still gets an overwhelming experience.

High level forts should provide some protection, with trenches and bunkers providing respite against the biting wind, and even the cold. The Germans surely suffered so badly because in the retreat, they found the ground was too hard to create good defensive positions from. If you have already dug in, then you have slit trenches to protect from the wind and bunkers (perhaps even with simple fires therein) to help with the cold.

There should be heavy attrition, and maybe even heavier attrition of equipment, but the Germans shouldn't have their CVs slashed. Most of the Russians facing them were poorly trained and favoured the frontal assault. Fighting in winter didn't make them better soldiers. As the cold takes it's toll, men and equipment become disabled, then German CV strength will fall naturally. Supply issues will also adversely affect them, but at the moment, all these things take their toll, and on top, CVs get abitrarily slashed too. They also get slashed up front, rather than slowy declining as the winter tales effect.

I like the idea of bringing forward winter equipment, but there should be a corresponding drop in supply reaching the front for every division kitted out. I'm not sure what is being modelled with the suggestion units not be in contact or be out of the front for several weeks, but I'd run it like the HQ build up. Click a button and the unit "winterises". It loses all MPs for that turn and can't have moved prior to the event. APs are expended and a set percentage of trucks are lost and there is a general reduction in the supply amounts being generated to reflect trains carrying food and ammo carrying winter kit instead.

Regards,
ID

[paullus99]

From a game-play perspective, who wants to play a game where - in human v. human games, 1941 is a waste because, no matter how far the German player gets, he knows he's going to be demolished in the blizzard (regardless of what he does to prepare).

We haven't seen a lot of 1942 combats yet - post blizzard, but I have my doubts that the German Army can be anyway near historically combat effective against a human Red Army - which leads to a very, very boring game.

[Pipewrench]

from what I have read if you want to balance the game vs a human you are going to have to eliminate the blizzard effects in 41 otherwise very few people will play pbem.
In my humble opinion it was the weather that doomed Germany in 41 and if you want to play that fine but it will get very old, very fast.

History goes out the window when Germany builds forts in september and knows the weather while Russia pulls back, husbands its strength because it also knows the weather. You have created a great historical simulation that satisfy's many and yes the russians win.


keep things as they are but immediatly get to work on an expansion.

rip out the blizzard and re-balance each side to where good play should evenly match both by late 42.

the game developers make $$ for the effort and speaking for myself , I get the pleasure of investing in a true human vs human 80 hour think-fest that does not have a scripted atomic bomb that goes off in 41.

[von Beanie]

I've primarily played the Soviet side, so I have a somewhat different perspective. Here are my suggestions:
 
Soviet units that move normally (not by train) or attack should suffer attrition unless they are fully winterized. The four Shock Armies should be automatically winterized, and perhaps any army arriving after the mud begins, but there should be an AP cost per Soviet army to winterize the others. The attrition should only affect Soviet units that move or attack. This would have a tendency to stagnate larger portions of the front. Soviet AP are very precious prior to the winter offensive, so this is not something the Soviet side could do lightly, except in the region where they want to launch their offensive. Perhaps the cost should be about 20 AP per army to prevent the attrition effects. This would slow down the full-length frontal assaults that occur now. I know that I would be disinclined to launch the full-line offensives with armies that suffer winter attrition in addition to the combat losses.
 
On the German side I believe the forts should be 50% effective. But more importantly, units defending in cities or able to trace a line of supply to a city should not see a substantial CV drop until surrounded for at least one turn, and then reduced by 33% every turn after that. This would help preserve some Soviet pockets in the summer of 1941, and also greatly aid the German hedgehog defense in the winter of 1941. Because of the extreme CV loss if a city is surrounded, German players sometimes are willing to expend large forces in the blizzards trying to keep them from being surrounded. In fact, the Soviet ski troops and paratroopers often controlled much of the territory around the German strongpoints, and yet they remained intact until the worst of the weather had passed. If it was more difficult for the Soviets to reduce a surrounded force in a city, that might lead to the more historical result of the hedgehogs being surrounded for extended amounts of time. Since the Soviet RR repair units cannot advance beyond an enemy controlled city, this will greatly diminish how far the Soviet forces can advance in supply unless the surrounded cities are reduced first.
 
(Incidentally, on this last point Brest-Litovsk was a major fortress that held out more than a week at the beginning of the war against a staggering German attack. By itself, if this was modeled correctly the AGC German RR repair unit wouldn't be able to advance as far as it does. I've yet to see it hold out beyond the first turn of the game, so it is time to put a fortress there).
 
On the other hand, the changes in Beta 5 have not been tested adequately yet. In my game versus QBall I was able to evacuate all of my factories except those at Minsk. That won't happen in a future game, which will substantially weaken the Soviet side going into the winter. So if changes are to be made, it might be wise to see what happens when the game is started with Beta 5.
 
 

[LiquidSky]

You shouldn't be able to build forts in Blizzard turns. And it should be damn hard to do it in Mud or Snow. Except in Urban hexes and maybe forest hexes. The earlier example of a Panzer unit using TNT to dig in failed to mention that it used up most of its supply of explosives to do so, and had to abandon the position when the Russians outflanked it by a mile or two away.

[color]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
You shouldn't be able to build forts in Blizzard turns. And it should be damn hard to do it in Mud or Snow. Except in Urban hexes and maybe forest hexes. The earlier example of a Panzer unit using TNT to dig in failed to mention that it used up most of its supply of explosives to do so, and had to abandon the position when the Russians outflanked it by a mile or two away.

That's absolutely right. That particular panzer division did have a sizeable surplus stock of TNT from Barbarossa which really helped their digging in efforts. It wasn't mentioned as the example was not intended as an argument in a digging-in capability discussion and I did not feel it added anything to what the example was meant to illustrate;
- what kind of protection prepared positions can give from the elements, no matter how/when they constructed.

Having said that I see the validity in the argument that digging in should be harder in SNOW/MUD and pretty tough in blizzard.

That they had to abandon the position later I my opinion does not add much to the discussion about what kind of protection forts can offer.

[karonagames]

One of the parameters I used in testing was to measure the number of successful attacks each turn to calculate the the average number of hexes the front line would move based on a 120 hex front line.

Against the AI, the AI would make 90+ attacks but over 50% would be "hold" results so they would net about 40-45 hexes per turn. So over 13 turns they would take 520-585 hexes, and I maybe had to retreat from 120-150 hexes that were outflanked, so the average movement of a 120 hex front line would be between 5 and 6 hexes, split between the Army Groups as noted in other threads.

Against a human, there were fewer attacks but a higher % of retreats, but the average number was pretty similar to the results against the AI (40-45 retreats per turn). The biggest difference was in the number of hexes that I voluntarily had to retreat from, due to the human being better able to co-ordinate attacks to produce outflanking and breakthroughs that required bigger retreats. It is this voluntary retreat that is the biggest variable in the AARs I have seen to date. Some of it is being forced by the SU, but some arepurely voluntary and doesn't always need to be.

The only evidence I have from my tests is that if the Axis can get to or beyond the historical front line as at 1st December 1941, the Axis can start 1942 in front of the historical 1942 front lines with higher manpower and equipment levels, except in AGS's sector. I have have made recommendations to Joel to fix this, but as yet we have not been given a version to test that incorporates these changes.

Prior to v5 there were problems with morale and experience levels that were not present in my tests, which was causing infantry division CVs to be 1.1 points lower than the 1942 campaign start benchmark. I have a test going with Speedy that is just about to enter the blizzard, and we are working as fast as we can to pull in data to see if the changes fix this.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: color


- what kind of protection prepared positions can give from the elements, no matter how/when they constructed.

Eskimos/Inuits seem to do quite well using igloos, but I don't suppose they would add much to a unit's DV

[color]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

ORIGINAL: color


- what kind of protection prepared positions can give from the elements, no matter how/when they constructed.

Eskimos/Inuits seem to do quite well using igloos, but I don't suppose they would add much to a unit's DV

Yeah, pretty hard to have a firefight from inside an igloo if you can't see anything outside the walls

It seem reasonable to assume that staying inside those igloos would help to lower the amount of frostbites the eskimos might have during winter, while allowing them to go out for limited periods of time avoiding prolonged exposure to elements that would eventually provoke frostbite injuries.

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



You shouldn't be able to build forts in Blizzard turns. And it should be damn hard to do it in Mud or Snow. Except in Urban hexes and maybe forest hexes. The earlier example of a Panzer unit using TNT to dig in failed to mention that it used up most of its supply of explosives to do so, and had to abandon the position when the Russians outflanked it by a mile or two away.

It IS harder to dig in in mud and snow, and even harder in Blizzard. See the manual.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: paullus99

From a game-play perspective, who wants to play a game where - in human v. human games, 1941 is a waste because, no matter how far the German player gets, he knows he's going to be demolished in the blizzard (regardless of what he does to prepare).

We haven't seen a lot of 1942 combats yet - post blizzard, but I have my doubts that the German Army can be anyway near historically combat effective against a human Red Army - which leads to a very, very boring game.

Quite true. 1942 may be the death of us all...

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

Quite true. 1942 may be the death of us all...

I started a 1942 campaign PBEM partly because I wanted to avoid the winter, but I think there are some balance issues even without the winter, see tm.asp?m=2732315&mpage=1� my last post.

BTW the 1942 GC is fun, both sides can do stuff, it is not as one-sided as 1941.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

ORIGINAL: color


- what kind of protection prepared positions can give from the elements, no matter how/when they constructed.

Eskimos/Inuits seem to do quite well using igloos, but I don't suppose they would add much to a unit's DV

Actually, 5 minutes in a good trench with a rain cape, a blanket and some warm bodies crammed up against you will answer that question for you. The wind chill just a foot away over over the parapet will be the difference between living and dying. Even better still is a bunker with a brazier!

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4
Actually, 5 minutes in a good trench with a rain cape, a blanket and some warm bodies crammed up against you will answer that question for you. The wind chill just a foot away over over the parapet will be the difference between living and dying. Even better still is a bunker with a brazier!

In my younger and more stupid days, I did some trench line work in Wyoming during winter. The problem was not that we didn't stay warm when working, but when we stopped, we had to be careful. Cooling down too fast (core either being not well reinsulated - new jacket - or sweating) meant that there could be troubles. We had a truck to go to to warm up, I do not wish to have tried it in a denim overall with light gloves and not woolen socks...

(edit: it was -10f/-20c actual temp)