Morale loss if Moscow falls?

[Muzrub]

ORIGINAL: Panama

ORIGINAL: Muzrub

If Moscow was not that important to morale why didn't Stalin just leave then? Why march the troops past the Kremlin while deceiving the troops that Lenin's body was still there?

Stalin didn't willingly give up an inch of Soviet land.

With the issue at hand you chose that quote?

The fact is- the Soviet player loses nothing with the fall of Moscow, which should be the jewel in the crown.

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: Muzrub
The fact is- the Soviet player loses nothing with the fall of Moscow

Only for 19th century thinkers who believed "the Capital" was the center of the oppositions morale. Believe Napoleon found that out, as already stated.

Fact is, you lose lots of population and a central rail hub. In this game that hurts the Soviets a lot.

ORIGINAL: Muzrub
Moscow, which should be the jewel in the crown.

The jewel in the crown is the destruction of the Soviet Army. As long as the Soviets have the means to resist, they will... as in all wars.

Fact of the matter is, the game system is based on strategic points. Those strategic points relate directly to the Soviets ability to resist. Take enough of them and you win.

Seems like a pretty good and authentic model to me; in keeping with modern day operational thought. Why fok with it?

[Angelo]

ORIGINAL: RCH

If I was Romanian, I would be insulted playing this game as they are all modeled very low. In the game game they are only good for carrying water and cutting wood. In the campaign game that I am presently playing, for the first blizzard I trained them all back to Romania and didn't bring them back until mud season the next spring. I was amazed that they still took attrition loses. Didn't the Romanians have any respected units? Their big problem was their equipment and mostly in the form of the lack of anti tank weapons.

The Hungarians do fight okay. When I put them on the line they can hold.

The Italians are worse than the Romanians and I would be insulted if I was Italian.

I have read some German accounts that stated that the individual Italian soldier fought well. It was their junk equipment and poor officers that caused their disgrace on the battle field.

For what my opinion is worth, Moscow was definitely a prize and is just another city on the map for the game. I would like to see some benefit for the Axis if it falls.

Unfortunately war games do foster stereotypes, since they use numerical values to represent the effectiveness of the troops. I'm not sure that this game is any worse than any other war game in using numerical values. It does show the Germans are super men (in the summer anyway) The Russians have endless masses and somehow become super men in the first winter etc... But I don't believe this was ment as a slight the any nation.

Personally, I took no offence.

One of the problems I have with the GC is that the victory condition is based only on the number of cities held. While this is a simple rule to impliment it does an injustice to the very real or imagined objectives that were fought for in the war.

So I would welcome having additional (or even optional) effects from the taking or holding historical objectives.

The GC is very much lacking in options and what if's. [:-]

I suspect that the freeing of the Finn's was looked at as a means of getting them more involved on the war and not as a reward for the Axis taking Leningrad.

[G Felzien]

ORIGINAL: Mehring

What do the Russians actually lose along with the Moscow hexes?

Apart from the variable of movable factories, do they not lose rail capacity? And the rail hub is lost, making communication along the entire front considerably more difficult for the Russians. Also a large amount of manpower along with victory points. That's several straws on Stalin's back.

This. Review what Moscow has as of the start of the game. THAT is what makes Moscow a valuable target. Beyond that who cares? The Soviets didn't. Lets ask the peasants on the steppes how they felt about what life would be like if Moscow was fall. In game terms, the loss of Moscow is already significant. Very significant. In reality, German SS and Gestapo ensured Soviet fighting incentives and NKVD ensured everyone was in the fight regardless.

[Panama]

I think someone already mentioned Moscow's prime importance was a transportation hub. That is proabably the best reason to attempt to occupy. We are talking about rail lines of military significance. The map has rail lines all over the place. Many of them couldn't carry enough traffic to be of military significance. Many authors mention this including Glantz whom everyone seems to consider the top authority.

Read this for information on the state of the Soviet rail system: 'The Soviet Economy and the Red Army', 1930-1945 Walter S. Dunn, Jr.

There's a good deal of information in there about a lot of things that would relate to this game.

[squatter]

All this stuff about a transport hub - in reality, look at the rail networks on the game map. In what way would the loss of this 'transport hub' impact the Soviet player's war effort? The Soviet player will still be able to rail his troops anywhere he needs to.
 
For all those who think Moscow is a sufficiently attractive prize to make it their #1 priority in the 41/42 campaigning seasons I'll say this - good luck. You're misreading the where the most important strategic location is in the game as it stands.   

[Angelo]

ORIGINAL: squatter

All this stuff about a transport hub - in reality, look at the rail networks on the game map. In what way would the loss of this 'transport hub' impact the Soviet player's war effort? The Soviet player will still be able to rail his troops anywhere he needs to.

For all those who think Moscow is a sufficiently attractive prize to make it their #1 priority in the 41/42 campaigning seasons I'll say this - good luck. You're misreading the where the most important strategic location is in the game as it stands.   

The loss of Moscow would have caused strategic movement delayes for sure. Unfortunately the strategic movement is very generous in WitE, for both sides, and the loss of Moscow does not effect rail movement in the game as much as it would have if the Axis did take Moscow. Of course there are other speculative effects to the loss of Moscow which the game could have modeled as well.

I would agree that Moscow is not the prime objective in 41 but would make it an objective for 42. Industrial and popularion centers are always good to take, eh!

[Klydon]

That is just it though. Moscow could be a industrial center (except a lot of its industry does not upgrade and there is no need to move it and anything else would be long gone in most cases given good Russian play) and sure it is a population center, except a ton of the Russian population will escape to other locations, even if encircled. Russian rail cap would take a big hit, but by the time Moscow might be captured, most of the campaign season for the Germans is done and a lot of the Russian industry that needs to be moved would have been moved already (or run over by the Axis). So while the hit on the Russian rail cap would be somewhat tough, they would still would not suffer a big enough drop to likely cause them major issues in terms of either troop movements or evacuating any remaining industry before bad weather set in.

So no, Moscow does not hold much of a goal in this game to either defend or take as the game currently sits.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: squatter

All this stuff about a transport hub - in reality, look at the rail networks on the game map. In what way would the loss of this 'transport hub' impact the Soviet player's war effort? The Soviet player will still be able to rail his troops anywhere he needs to.

For all those who think Moscow is a sufficiently attractive prize to make it their #1 priority in the 41/42 campaigning seasons I'll say this - good luck. You're misreading the where the most important strategic location is in the game as it stands.   

[:D] All those rail lines you see are not worth a crap. Most are single line with dirt or sand as ballast. Throw too much traffic on it and you end up with a pile of tinder and twisted metal where you once had a train. I love it.

Just leave the game exactly as it is. I really see nothing wrong with it. As a game it works just fine. [:D]

[Panama]

BTW, that rail that crosses the Volga from the east and goes into Stalingrad. It didn't exist. It stopped about two hexes east of Stalingrad at best.

[FM WarB]

This is an interesting discussion.

Would Napoleon have won in 1812 if taking Moscow occurred with the destruction of Kutuzov's army?

Would the Germans have won in 1941 if they destroyed the Soviet army taking Moscow?

Neither did, but either might have if they did.

I suspect that with the rail net there and the industry, Moscow is valuable enough. The take Moscow and get an automatic victory dream is something for a 1941 scenario, not a Grand Campaign scenario. And if Guderian does not head south to put those Russians in the bag in Kiev, what about that army on his flank, heading for Moscow?

[pad152]

The rail hub argument is meaningless because rail was needed to get stuff to/from the factories and to the front, if Moscow isn't the front anymore then it's useless as a rail hub. Moscow was the communications hub of Russia, everything when through Moscow, all orders for the Russia front, orders to factories in the east, orders for the entire country went through Moscow, communications to/from rest of the world came and went through Moscow. One has to remember in 1941 there was still vast areas of Russia that didn't even have electricity or phones in 1941. The phone and telegraph system even in 1941 was centralized, it started in Moscow and expanded there to the rest of Russia. If Moscow fell how long would it have been to re-establish that network of central command, control, & communications weeks, months? What happens to a central command and control government when the orders stop coming? Who would have given the orders if Stalin couldn't be reached. How would have the allies reacted if Moscow fell, would they still send aid or now see Russia as another lost cause? I believe the loss of Moscow would have had a major impact.

I think the loss of Command Points for a few turns and delays to reinforcements, production and delays to lend lease aid that's two to four weeks out should happen if Moscow falls, to simulate the time for the Russia Government to re-establish itself.

 

[LiquidSky]

Except, as somebody has already pointed out, the Russian government had already relocated East. With no loss of effect.

[Klydon]

Part of the government relocated, but the war was being run from Moscow. Big difference. 

[76mm]

The 1812 analogies are getting kind of old...as others have pointed out, Moscow was not the capital on Russia in 1812. The loss of St. Petersburg might have been much more signficant.

I would suggest that Moscow in 1812 compares in importance to Leningrad in 1941--important, but not the capital.

[mussey]

Wow, I didn't realize I opened up a can of worms on this. I often defer my opinion to others in these forums since I've only begun playing WiTE last month. So now we reached a point in this discussion that we must use some conjecture about what the loss of Moscow could have meant.

I think loss of unit morale as suggested previously appears to be the most logical, and I would suggest a small tweak to something like this: If Moscow falls, all Soviet units lose ____ % morale, but each turn it gradually increases by _____% up to but not to exceed its original morale level. My thinking is that Moscow's loss would be huge immediately at the beginning, but every turn the Soviets remain in the game (and its army remains in the field) without Moscow its morale would slightly improve, until it reaches its original morale level. Loss of Admin Pts as suggested earlier too. Possible reimergence of a civil war?

Also, we must look to the possibility that other nations might want to take advantage of an 'appearant' crippled USSR and begin to settle old scores:
1) Japan into Vladivostok?
2) Turkey into Soviet Georgia, etc.?

These are just a few plausible ideas. But one thing needs to be mentioned. NOTHING good can happen for the USSR with the loss of Moscow, for it is more than just another city. It's the cultural hearth (along with Lenningrad) of communist Russia. It just seems logical that there would be some downside.

[Skanvak]

I think that some people consider that a rail road is enough to carry troops. They just forget that the train are needed too. That partly the reason why Moscow is a hub. This is where the train came from and can get most maintenance.

Nevertheless, there are very few rail road east of the Moscow/Stalingrad. There are always way to mitigate the loss, but not that much. I really believe that researching the impact of the loss of Moscow on the war effort is the best way to acheive a good result (though adittional VP for taking Moscow in 1941 is nice too).

As for the Finnish, it is really a question of "what if", we could as well play without them as the game is, as "the what if" that say they wouldn't have move more if leningrad felt is as good as anything else (they could even have negociate a separate peace, wining of course). This is defenitely not intended to make Leningrad worst more than Moscow, more of a side effect.

[pad152]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



Except, as somebody has already pointed out, the Russian government had already relocated East. With no loss of effect.

In 1812, not 1941!

[Uxbridge]

I followed this thread some week ago, but never had time to post. Finding myself with nothing in particular to do for a short while, I thought I just through in my two cents.

Although the views of what would have happened if Moscow was taken seems to stretch from nothing at all to possible surrender, what we can agree upon is that the fall of the Soviet capital would at least have a negative effect on the Russians (i.e. no one suggested that the Russians would actually gain from it).

Personally, I don’t very much like when there’s a definite effect for an event such as the one discussed. This is so much more true as this time there’s no exact precedent in history. That the fall of France leads to Vichy France is easy to accept because it happened. When it comes to Moscow, we have nothing to compare with and it is, in my world, therefore better if the effect is also one that neither player will know of, or can calculate with, beforehand.

If I were to design such an effect, I would have done something on the following lines: To begin with there has to be an absolute condition for the effect to trigger. I think I would opt for all hexes of Moscow taken and held for at least 4 turns. That way the Germans have to hold it in force for a while and the Soviet player gets a chance to recapture the capital.

Once the above condition has been met, and Moscow have in fact fallen, I would have the system create a random value between 30 and 70 (for example) to establish whether the loss of Moscow hits the Soviets mildly of more harshly. Once this value was established, it would be used for determining the final outcome of the effect. Just for the argument, let’s say that this random number was ”53”, placing it roughly in the middle between ”mild” and ”harsh”.

Moving on, there will now be a number of checks, each to establish whether any one of a number of concequences occur. Below is a suggestive list of possible concequences, all of them cumulative. The system now rolls a d100 for each of these concequences. If the roll is above 53, the system will pass the check and nothing happens. If it is below 52, the check fails and the concequence is triggered.

The Soviet ADM-level takes a -200 point hit (can turn into negative value).
The Soviet ADM-allocation is lowered by 25 % the next 12 turns.
The Soviet ADM-allocation is lowered by 10 % the next 50 turns.
The Soviet partisan recruitment rate is lowered by 15 % for the duration of the game.
The Soviet partisan recruitment rate is lowered by 60 % for the next year.
The Soviet rail capacity is reduced by 20 % for duration of game.
All Soviet ground units suffers an immediate 30 % increase in FAT.
In the turmoil of this Soviet catastrophy, a number of high-ranking Soviet leaders is permanently removed from the game.
The Western Allies stop all Lend Lease deliveries for 30 turns.
The Germans receive a one-time manpower boost from occupied Baltic and Russian cities.
The German rail capacity is raised by 5 %.

If we now assume that the first check passed, the second failed, the third passed and so on, the net effect of the fall of Moscow would thus be: ADM-allocation lowered by 25 % for 12 turns, partisan recruitment down 15 %, rail capacity down 20 %, some officers kicked and the Germans get a manpower boost. I’m sure that you can come up with many more plausible concequences to check.

The nice thing with a system like this, would be that neither the German nor the Russian player will have any knowledge what the actual outcome will be. They will both be looking at the Soviet capital with different eyes than they are with the present solution, however, and the game will be rather more interesting and exciting. At least I think it would.

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: squatter

In fact, given that it is currently impossible to force an automatic victory in 41 for the germans on account of the extreme amount of victory points that need to be accumulated, I'd suggest these house rules:

Game ends in German automatic victory if:

1 in 1941 anytime Leningrad AND Moscow are in German hands.
Or
2 End of Feb 1942 Moscow is in German hands.
3 Any time 1942 three out of Moscow, Leningrad, Baku and Stalingrad in German hands.

Even though I am a Soviet fanboy I would absolutely support these rules.

In fact I did surrender my game to Emir because he took LG and Moscow. I felt whatever game says is moot, I simply feel he deserves a victory there (besides, my forces were in tatters anyway).