Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.
The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).
So longer term balancing takes time. Just so you know the blizzard effects were tested, just not what I would call extensive. We had several games in progress, only one made it thru the blizzard several days ago using 1.04, data was looked at and adjusted. As more games get there post 1.04 release, more tweaking might be needed since the latest adjustments themselves have yet to be retested.
Totally understand, I certainly didn't expect you to have played a 100 GCs from Turn 1 through Turn 37, although I was thinking that you might have pulled a bunch of Turn 24 games off the server to get a variety of pre-blizzard start points (Axis winning, Sovs winning, etc.) and then played through the blizzard to see how things end up...
Like everyone else I appreciate the effort you guys are putting in, and understand that further tweaking with be necessary, looking forward to seeing the results.
So longer term balancing takes time. Just so you know the blizzard effects were tested, just not what I would call extensive. We had several games in progress, only one made it thru the blizzard several days ago using 1.04, data was looked at and adjusted. As more games get there post 1.04 release, more tweaking might be needed since the latest adjustments themselves have yet to be retested.
Totally understand, I certainly didn't expect you to have played a 100 GCs from Turn 1 through Turn 37, although I was thinking that you might have pulled a bunch of Turn 24 games off the server to get a variety of pre-blizzard start points (Axis winning, Sovs winning, etc.) and then played through the blizzard to see how things end up...
Like everyone else I appreciate the effort you guys are putting in, and understand that further tweaking with be necessary, looking forward to seeing the results.
I considered that, I even have several earlier savegames myself. The problem is that some of the changes require a fresh start since they have a cumulative effect. The increase in armament points is a case in point. This will allow for more troops to get into the line that accumulate in the pool, more arty, more anti-tank guns, etc.
I'm going to post a request in the aar section about putting up certain screenshots from the game that will help monitor game balance.
We came to believe that the frostbite percentage was too high, especially combined with the German supply difficulties during the first winter, and the combined effect was sending too many Germans to the disabled pool. On the other hand, the number of troops sent to the disabled pool was not high enough in general in the game. As we looked at issues of casualties and how many were evacuated from the area and how long they were out of service, we began to think that the amount of troops disabled was not high enough. We were relying on the damage system to keep a lot of troops unavailable to represent casualties, but this wasn't doing the job. So we came up with two ideas. One was the transit pool that causes some of the rotated damaged elements to remain unavailable for a longer period of time. The second was increasing the percentage disabled from damaged elements sent back to the pool (from 20% to 40%). All of these factors have to be taken together. As Andy indicated, test resources are limited for a game this big. Taking games midway and continuing on was possible, but part of what we were trying to do was change the dynamic so that the Germans would not be as well off going into the first winter (of course neither are the Soviets in some ways). Andy managed to solo hotseat a game through winter, which gave us some good info while other testers continued on in their games and found issues that Pavel was able to fix. A lot of AI vs AI tests were run, and I'd say it's likely that without the first winter nightmare, a good player may want to bump up his play level a bit against the Soviet AI in the long campaign. From a balancing point of view, we'll really be looking for new games started with 1.04, although everyone is welcome to upgrade mid-game and help us find other issues with the game. Exactly what the impact will be of switching mid-game is impossible to say given all the variables, but you will be playing with a set of rules that we think more accurately simulates the War in the East and will be able to take advantage of a myriad of bug fixes and new features. For any tournament or very competitive games in-progress, I'd suggest you stick with your current version.
All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
[:)] Not at all. The Germans will be facing more Soviets in 41 (due to armament changes), and should find themselves more ground down during the summer/fall campaign (due to disabled changes and increased movement attrition).
All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
... but you will be playing with a set of rules that we think more accurately simulates the War in the East and will be able to take advantage of a myriad of bug fixes and new features. For any tournament or very competitive games in-progress, I'd suggest you stick with your current version.
Now that seems to give me an answer to my earlier question. But what to do now?? We're at GT 8 in GC41. Getting there took us at least six weeks and the situation is very interesting. No way we're going to start all over. To patch or not to patch, that is the question. What a dilemma... [&:]
[:)] Not at all. The Germans will be facing more Soviets in 41 (due to armament changes), and should find themselves more ground down during the summer/fall campaign (due to disabled changes and increased movement attrition).
Yeah, movement attrition change is probably one of the biggest changes I can identify for the overall game, that combined with changes to interdiction by fighter planes (unless I invented that in my mind only). Mobile reserves behind the lines will no longer be an effective tool to counter breakthroughs anywere on a large section of front line and has to be planned more meticulously. Changes to applying of command bonuses/penalties will also lessen the effectiveness of mobile reserves on the defence.
Thanks for the effort, most of the changes look great. A couple of questions:
2) Re partisan supply: I saw this fix, but have asked several times whether partisan supply is working correctly--there seem to be very very few partisan supply flights?
I can verify this is a lot better now. As Pav mentioned Recon can get invovled in Partisan re-supply (which they shouldn't) but now you'll find many re-supply missions occur with between 5-15 planes delivering vital supplies, NKVD Squads etc (these are VITAL to getting the Partisan's going, moving and causing chaos).
Let me know what you think now but my testing on this says it looks pretty good now.
...changes to interdiction by fighter planes (unless I invented that in my mind only). Mobile reserves behind the lines will no longer be an effective tool to counter breakthroughs anywere on a large section of front line and has to be planned more meticulously.
You only quoted the part about interdiction. I meant the combination of increased movement attrition and adding of interdiction effects by fighters (I see a lot of harmless interdiction by fighters in v1.03) will seriously hamper the use of mobile reserves on the defence and force more use of railroads, which is a 2 turn process.
Well, I guess we'll see, but I don't think that the changes will make mobile reserves ineffective, just marginally less effective. In any event, I doubt that interdiction would slow you down more than training and detraining would.
I think interdiction effects in 1.03 were overpowered, and it sounds like they are being tweaked to reduce casualties but increase lost MP, which makes sense in general, although we'll have to see how it is implemented.
Pavel, could I ask for a little clarification on the effects of this rule:
"Rule Change - Introduced the concept of a commanding HQ for each side for each combat. Generally this commanding HQ is selected because it has the most CVs directly reporting to it in the battle. Units not reporting directly to the commanding HQ will suffer command battle modifiers that will reduce their CV for the battle. The battle report now lists the units in the battle grouped under the name of the HQ they report to. If an HQ’s units are suffering a command battle modifier, the amount of the CV reduction is shown next to the name of the HQ (for example XXIV Panzer Corps -36% indicates that each unit listed in this corps has had its CV reduced by 36%). The greater the number of HQ’s that the unit must trace through to reach the commanding HQ, the greater the modifier. In addition, units that report directly to a high command HQ suffer an additional 20% modifier, and those that report directly to an Army Group or Front suffer an additional 10% modifier (these are shown as part of the total modifier percentage displayed)."
Imagining an attack by the combined forces of two Soviet armies connected to the same front command in 1941, where for example six divisions of CV2 from each army are attacking, do you expect the influence of this rule to make such an attack more or less effective than under the current rule set?
Without going into math details, in most cases new rules would result in less reduction. Especially in case of reserve commitment. Also reserve commitment depends on the new command modifier and since it is much lower for Axis Corps/Army structures than Army/Front, they will have higher chance to join the attack without chance of spoiling it as it was before.
I see you can't resign when it is not your turn. So do we still send requests to end the game as before?
You can contact your opponent via their login name on the Slitherine forum and either have them resign or have them send the turn back to you so you can resign. If you can't reach them and thus can't resign, you can post a request to have the game taken off the server.
All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
I can verify this is a lot better now. As Pav mentioned Recon can get invovled in Partisan re-supply (which they shouldn't) but now you'll find many re-supply missions occur with between 5-15 planes delivering vital supplies, NKVD Squads etc (these are VITAL to getting the Partisan's going, moving and causing chaos).
Let me know what you think now but my testing on this says it looks pretty good now.
I suppose that depends on which side of the fence you're on. As Speedy's opponent, I'd say that things look rather dismal...[;)]
