Summary of frustrating issues

[molchomor]

Hi matrix, well I have stopped playing my frustrating game vs. the AI again, I'll bring up a summary of issues here as I remember them. I have brought up most of them before but have seen nothing mentioned in the release notes regarding fixes.

Game was started around march - so yes with old data files but I bet alot of issues are still in the latest data files. In fact some issues I get frustrated over were already mentioned in Pyledriver's alpha AAR from 1.5 yrs ago.

The attached save is from around 1/1 1945, and some "crazy" moves were made with mobile axis forces to inspect CVs of opposing Soviet forces. More on that later.

Issues:

1) Romanian airgroups are mostly empty with zero planes. Root cause: Bug, they never get exports so they stay empty forever. Check it out for yourselves in the attached save.

2) Hetzer production is glitched. Open production screen and look at Hetzer production figures, then scroll up and down. Sometimes when opening production the figures are wrong, e.g. zero production / week. Possibly a graphical glitch on my computer only, in any case it is annoying.

3) Soviet AI has no problem conducting offensives ~50+ MP from their closest railhead in blizzard conditions, while retaining strong CVs. Check the save and the areas E. of Leningrad and between Stalingrad and Astrakhan.

4) Every round there are some german factories not producing, although I should be up to my neck with oil, fuel and resources. If this is WAD then we need some info texts somewhere on why production is hampered.

5) Soviet losses are not felt by the AI. Please nerf the Soviet AI ability to produce units, losses of hundreds and hundreds of corps and still fielding a strong army as in the save is just silly. Soviet leader and command structure capability should have crumbled away a long time ago. Not that it was good at the start of the war mind you.

6) Why has the Soviet production capability not collapsed yet? By now they should not have enough oil, supply, or resources with that many centers captured (Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Tula, Caucasus). I see no signs of collapse here at all, nor any severe shortages in raw materials, supply etc. in their pools.

7) No warning when your SEC units convert to regular army units, causing lots of garrisons to go from 100% to 45% in one turn in blizzard. Cheap and annoying trick of the game to backstab you. In blizzard of course.

8) Allied air units mostly refuse to fly, and I have PTF set to 5%.

9) Will there be someone that uses all those exported Hetzers to Hungary ?

10) Exports to Finland are lacking (no planes for the Finns). If the reason for this is historical (yadayada), why not just teleport axis units around after each end of turn to comply with historical front lines as well.

11) Why is the Italian manpower figure etc. still visible in the total figure long after they are gone. Confusing.

12) Some elite (sic) units are hell-bent on using obsolete junk as e.g. flammpanzers and SP-inf guns years after production of these museum items have long ceased. So these "elite" units are impossible to get up to max. strength, which is a tad unhistorical as they should have priority to get the "elite" stuff. If you really want to follow history here, at least inject more flammpanzers, SP-Inf vehicles etc. in the pool as needed. E.g. if Grossdeutchland div. really had 20 flammpanzers at say 1/1 1945, I want to have that as well.

13) I have hundreds of tigers, kingtigers, jagdtigers, jagdpanthers in my pool collecting dust but some panzerdivs. are really starved of equipment, several fighting over the few T34s, Valentines etc. captured. Root cause: more historical yada yada here but the current situation is even more ahistorical and in fact a tragic fail by game developers. The Wehrmacht was known to adapt to survive so this is just plain silly.

14) The overall feeling of the game is that the Soviets are much too strong in 1943 and onwards and also are capable of offensives over too much distance and across too much of the front line. Axis counterattacked successfully all the time in the real war, well good luck in counterattacking those riflecorps of death harassing you all along the front. Ant units (including isolated ones) also causes unacceptably high losses against panzers in open terrain. Hell they should just shatter, but instead I bet they could retreat to the pacific in good order if you let them.

[molchomor]

15) Every man, woman or dog in the red army is counted as a soldier in the game, and with a mill of armament points all have rifles (dogs have explosive charges). On the axis side though, HiWis, all those strange anti-partisan units, and also the strong anti-Soviet partisans as the Kossacks and Ukranians are of course totally missing from the game. Especially this is noticeable as front units (even PzDdivs) have to be used for partisan hunting, and that fort building is hampered on the axis side (fort building seems based on headcount, and with no hiwis...well.).

[RocketMan]

ORIGINAL: molchomor

9) Will there be someone that uses all those exported Hetzers to Hungary ?

No unit in the game uses Hungarian Hetzers [Hetzer(H)], so the answer to that question is no.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: RocketMan

ORIGINAL: molchomor

9) Will there be someone that uses all those exported Hetzers to Hungary ?

No unit in the game uses Hungarian Hetzers [Hetzer(H)], so the answer to that question is no.

And exactly why do the Hetzers get exported to someplace they are not used. [:D]

[randallw]

5) Soviet losses are not felt by the AI. Please nerf the Soviet AI ability to produce units, losses of hundreds and hundreds of corps and still fielding a strong army as in the save is just silly. Soviet leader and command structure capability should have crumbled away a long time ago. Not that it was good at the start of the war mind you.

==================================
 
Not sure what you mean about the leader and command structure.  Are you saying they should run short of decent leaders?

[jaw]

ORIGINAL: molchomor

Hi matrix, well I have stopped playing my frustrating game vs. the AI again, I'll bring up a summary of issues here as I remember them. I have brought up most of them before but have seen nothing mentioned in the release notes regarding fixes.

Game was started around march - so yes with old data files but I bet alot of issues are still in the latest data files. In fact some issues I get frustrated over were already mentioned in Pyledriver's alpha AAR from 1.5 yrs ago.

The attached save is from around 1/1 1945, and some "crazy" moves were made with mobile axis forces to inspect CVs of opposing Soviet forces. More on that later.

Issues:

1) Romanian airgroups are mostly empty with zero planes. Root cause: Bug, they never get exports so they stay empty forever. Check it out for yourselves in the attached save.

2) Hetzer production is glitched. Open production screen and look at Hetzer production figures, then scroll up and down. Sometimes when opening production the figures are wrong, e.g. zero production / week. Possibly a graphical glitch on my computer only, in any case it is annoying.

3) Soviet AI has no problem conducting offensives ~50+ MP from their closest railhead in blizzard conditions, while retaining strong CVs. Check the save and the areas E. of Leningrad and between Stalingrad and Astrakhan.

4) Every round there are some german factories not producing, although I should be up to my neck with oil, fuel and resources. If this is WAD then we need some info texts somewhere on why production is hampered.

5) Soviet losses are not felt by the AI. Please nerf the Soviet AI ability to produce units, losses of hundreds and hundreds of corps and still fielding a strong army as in the save is just silly. Soviet leader and command structure capability should have crumbled away a long time ago. Not that it was good at the start of the war mind you.

6) Why has the Soviet production capability not collapsed yet? By now they should not have enough oil, supply, or resources with that many centers captured (Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Tula, Caucasus). I see no signs of collapse here at all, nor any severe shortages in raw materials, supply etc. in their pools.

7) No warning when your SEC units convert to regular army units, causing lots of garrisons to go from 100% to 45% in one turn in blizzard. Cheap and annoying trick of the game to backstab you. In blizzard of course.

8) Allied air units mostly refuse to fly, and I have PTF set to 5%.

9) Will there be someone that uses all those exported Hetzers to Hungary ?

10) Exports to Finland are lacking (no planes for the Finns). If the reason for this is historical (yadayada), why not just teleport axis units around after each end of turn to comply with historical front lines as well.

11) Why is the Italian manpower figure etc. still visible in the total figure long after they are gone. Confusing.

12) Some elite (sic) units are hell-bent on using obsolete junk as e.g. flammpanzers and SP-inf guns years after production of these museum items have long ceased. So these "elite" units are impossible to get up to max. strength, which is a tad unhistorical as they should have priority to get the "elite" stuff. If you really want to follow history here, at least inject more flammpanzers, SP-Inf vehicles etc. in the pool as needed. E.g. if Grossdeutchland div. really had 20 flammpanzers at say 1/1 1945, I want to have that as well.

13) I have hundreds of tigers, kingtigers, jagdtigers, jagdpanthers in my pool collecting dust but some panzerdivs. are really starved of equipment, several fighting over the few T34s, Valentines etc. captured. Root cause: more historical yada yada here but the current situation is even more ahistorical and in fact a tragic fail by game developers. The Wehrmacht was known to adapt to survive so this is just plain silly.

14) The overall feeling of the game is that the Soviets are much too strong in 1943 and onwards and also are capable of offensives over too much distance and across too much of the front line. Axis counterattacked successfully all the time in the real war, well good luck in counterattacking those riflecorps of death harassing you all along the front. Ant units (including isolated ones) also causes unacceptably high losses against panzers in open terrain. Hell they should just shatter, but instead I bet they could retreat to the pacific in good order if you let them.

I can't respond to your first 8 issues as they all involve programming which is Gary & Pavel. Here's what I can answer of the remaining:

9) Hopefully they will now. I changed the Hungarian Hetzer from a tank destroyer to an assault gun. Theoretically if you run short of the assault guns (Stug-IIIs & Zyrinyi IIs) defined in the Hungarian TOEs the program should substitute Hetzers.

10) Yes, this is an historical limitation caused by the fact that Leningrad never fell and the Finnish front was then largely inactive until mid-1944.

11) Haven't a clue, another issue for Gary & Pavel.

12) The Flamm Panzers were put into Grossdeutschland's TOE for use in 1943 and not removed until the 1945 TOE in 12/44. I could remove them from the 1944 TOE but that will probably leave a lot unused in the pool which seems to irritate people equally. Historically the sIG33 type self-propelled infantry guns were amazingly survivable; there were even original sIG33s built on the Panzer I chassis in 1940 still in service in 1944. Unfortunately they are not nearly so survivable in the game. Perhaps they should be re-defined as SPAs but that might create other issues.

13) By the spring of 1944 the only division still using the Tiger/King Tiger organically is Grossdeutschland. All the other Tigers/King Tigers were in independent battalions, same for Jagdpanther. The Jagdtiger was never used on the Eastern front so it is not organic to any unit. If you have hundreds of these vehicles available in 1944 you've probably won the game and should start a new one.

14) I can't address play balance issues but there seems to be a contridiction between you saying the Soviets are too strong while building up a reserve of "hundreds" of Tigers. What am I missing here?

[davetheroad]

how many Jagdpanther battalions are in the game?
I can find only one (560th) in the 44 campaign game
Some sources suggest 7 panzer divisions on the east front were issued with them from feb 45
Duffy in Red Strom on the Reich quotes a panzer platoon commander in 4th panzer division complaining
about being given a jagdpanther rather than a tank in feb 45. he changed his mind after knocking out 15 russian tanks in one day.

[jaw]

ORIGINAL: davetheroad

how many Jagdpanther battalions are in the game?
I can find only one (560th) in the 44 campaign game
Some sources suggest 7 panzer divisions on the east front were issued with them from feb 45
Duffy in Red Strom on the Reich quotes a panzer platoon commander in 4th panzer division complaining
about being given a jagdpanther rather than a tank in feb 45. he changed his mind after knocking out 15 russian tanks in one day.

Sounds like some explanation is in order. There are three different issues involved here so bear with me as I explain them:

1. Every ground element (tank, rifle squad, etc.) in the game belongs to a ground element class. The purpose of these classes is to keep things in some kind of logical sense historically. The Jagdpanther belongs to the class - Heavy Tank Destroyer; also in this class are Elephants, Jagdtigers and Nashorns. One of the things these vehicles had in common was (your exception notwithstanding) that they tended to be used in independent battalions rather than organic to any divisional TOE. By defining these vehicles as Heavy Tank Destroyers we insure that the won't become intermingled with run-of-the-mill assault guns and tank destroyers (e.g. Stug-IIIs & Hetzers).

2. The TOEs are used to specify both the quantity and type of ground elements a particular formation can have. Not only does this mean that certain ground elements may only appear in certain formations but also that the ground element defined in the TOE tends to be the one the system perfers to provide even when a greater number of an equivalent (same class) ground element is available. For this reason you sometimes see obsolete AFVs building up in the pool even though you still need AFVs of that class at the front.

3. The game is built around what we call generic or "theoretical" TOEs that represent a typical formation for that time period. Actual historical formations would have varied from these generic TOEs in many specific details. Where we thought these variations were signifcant, such as with Grossdeutschland or the SS divisions, special TOEs were created. You could rationalize a specific TOE for almost every division in the German Army but such a course would be overwhelmingly complicated and ultimately yield precious little at the scale of WitE. With the hundreds of TOEs that are in the game, we think we set a good balance between historical accuracy and needless precision. Some of you may disagree and that is why we provided an editor.

I would be the last to imply that our decisions were perfect or even the best ways to deal with these issues but I think if you consider the points I've made above you will at least understand where we were coming from.

[molchomor]

ORIGINAL: jaw

ORIGINAL: molchomor

Hi matrix, well I have stopped playing my frustrating game vs. the AI again, I'll bring up a summary of issues here as I remember them. I have brought up most of them before but have seen nothing mentioned in the release notes regarding fixes.

Game was started around march - so yes with old data files but I bet alot of issues are still in the latest data files. In fact some issues I get frustrated over were already mentioned in Pyledriver's alpha AAR from 1.5 yrs ago.

The attached save is from around 1/1 1945, and some "crazy" moves were made with mobile axis forces to inspect CVs of opposing Soviet forces. More on that later.

Issues:

1) Romanian airgroups are mostly empty with zero planes. Root cause: Bug, they never get exports so they stay empty forever. Check it out for yourselves in the attached save.

2) Hetzer production is glitched. Open production screen and look at Hetzer production figures, then scroll up and down. Sometimes when opening production the figures are wrong, e.g. zero production / week. Possibly a graphical glitch on my computer only, in any case it is annoying.

3) Soviet AI has no problem conducting offensives ~50+ MP from their closest railhead in blizzard conditions, while retaining strong CVs. Check the save and the areas E. of Leningrad and between Stalingrad and Astrakhan.

4) Every round there are some german factories not producing, although I should be up to my neck with oil, fuel and resources. If this is WAD then we need some info texts somewhere on why production is hampered.

5) Soviet losses are not felt by the AI. Please nerf the Soviet AI ability to produce units, losses of hundreds and hundreds of corps and still fielding a strong army as in the save is just silly. Soviet leader and command structure capability should have crumbled away a long time ago. Not that it was good at the start of the war mind you.

6) Why has the Soviet production capability not collapsed yet? By now they should not have enough oil, supply, or resources with that many centers captured (Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Tula, Caucasus). I see no signs of collapse here at all, nor any severe shortages in raw materials, supply etc. in their pools.

7) No warning when your SEC units convert to regular army units, causing lots of garrisons to go from 100% to 45% in one turn in blizzard. Cheap and annoying trick of the game to backstab you. In blizzard of course.

8) Allied air units mostly refuse to fly, and I have PTF set to 5%.

9) Will there be someone that uses all those exported Hetzers to Hungary ?

10) Exports to Finland are lacking (no planes for the Finns). If the reason for this is historical (yadayada), why not just teleport axis units around after each end of turn to comply with historical front lines as well.

11) Why is the Italian manpower figure etc. still visible in the total figure long after they are gone. Confusing.

12) Some elite (sic) units are hell-bent on using obsolete junk as e.g. flammpanzers and SP-inf guns years after production of these museum items have long ceased. So these "elite" units are impossible to get up to max. strength, which is a tad unhistorical as they should have priority to get the "elite" stuff. If you really want to follow history here, at least inject more flammpanzers, SP-Inf vehicles etc. in the pool as needed. E.g. if Grossdeutchland div. really had 20 flammpanzers at say 1/1 1945, I want to have that as well.

13) I have hundreds of tigers, kingtigers, jagdtigers, jagdpanthers in my pool collecting dust but some panzerdivs. are really starved of equipment, several fighting over the few T34s, Valentines etc. captured. Root cause: more historical yada yada here but the current situation is even more ahistorical and in fact a tragic fail by game developers. The Wehrmacht was known to adapt to survive so this is just plain silly.

14) The overall feeling of the game is that the Soviets are much too strong in 1943 and onwards and also are capable of offensives over too much distance and across too much of the front line. Axis counterattacked successfully all the time in the real war, well good luck in counterattacking those riflecorps of death harassing you all along the front. Ant units (including isolated ones) also causes unacceptably high losses against panzers in open terrain. Hell they should just shatter, but instead I bet they could retreat to the pacific in good order if you let them.

I can't respond to your first 8 issues as they all involve programming which is Gary & Pavel. Here's what I can answer of the remaining:

9) Hopefully they will now. I changed the Hungarian Hetzer from a tank destroyer to an assault gun. Theoretically if you run short of the assault guns (Stug-IIIs & Zyrinyi IIs) defined in the Hungarian TOEs the program should substitute Hetzers.

10) Yes, this is an historical limitation caused by the fact that Leningrad never fell and the Finnish front was then largely inactive until mid-1944.

11) Haven't a clue, another issue for Gary & Pavel.

12) The Flamm Panzers were put into Grossdeutschland's TOE for use in 1943 and not removed until the 1945 TOE in 12/44. I could remove them from the 1944 TOE but that will probably leave a lot unused in the pool which seems to irritate people equally. Historically the sIG33 type self-propelled infantry guns were amazingly survivable; there were even original sIG33s built on the Panzer I chassis in 1940 still in service in 1944. Unfortunately they are not nearly so survivable in the game. Perhaps they should be re-defined as SPAs but that might create other issues.

13) By the spring of 1944 the only division still using the Tiger/King Tiger organically is Grossdeutschland. All the other Tigers/King Tigers were in independent battalions, same for Jagdpanther. The Jagdtiger was never used on the Eastern front so it is not organic to any unit. If you have hundreds of these vehicles available in 1944 you've probably won the game and should start a new one.

14) I can't address play balance issues but there seems to be a contridiction between you saying the Soviets are too strong while building up a reserve of "hundreds" of Tigers. What am I missing here?

Thanks for the fix and answers!

13/14) I think what "you are missing" is obvious if you open the attached save, the Soviet army is in good shape with (from memory) ~13k afvs, ~90k arty, ~5.2M men. And they are of course pushing hard to recap their lost cities. Yes according to the game the war is "won" by axis (on points), but I doubt anybody elese would define that game as "won" after having a look at that save.

[marty_01]

ORIGINAL: molchomor


Issues:

1) Romanian airgroups are mostly empty with zero planes. Root cause: Bug, they never get exports so they stay empty forever. Check it out for yourselves in the attached save.

I have noticed the same issue. However in the two PBEMs I have played as the Axis -- both of which are now into the early summer of 42 -- all the cupboards are just about bare in my Rumanian Air Groups, Italian Air Groups, Hungarian Air Groups, and the Slovakian Air Groups. I'd guesstimate that there are perhaps 10 or 12 aircraft combined (including damaged) in all these Axis allied Air Groups I have cluttering the map. WAD? Or is something broke? Is this in keeping with historical OoBs of the period? Did the Rumanian, Slovak, Hungarian and Italian air forces all pretty much disappear from the Eastern Front in 1942.

I’ve placed pretty much all the zero count aircraft squadrons into reserve for my Axis Allies. There they have remained with zero aircraft counts for numerous turns. I keep checking -- but squadron aircraft counts stay at zero. I am wondering if I should just disband the air base elements? But then wasting precious AP points on disbanding worthless units is always painful. I suppose it would release their support elements into the gene pool (or does it?) Or is there some remote possibility that these things will eventually start seeing some aircraft again?

My Finish Air Force in both PBEMs musters about 20 to 30 aircraft in 1942. Considerably down from their numbers at the start of the game -- but a little better off than all the other Axis Allied Air Groups.

Axis Allied Air power isn’t a game breaker by any means. Just one more thing piled onto an Axis side that is hard pressed to keep up with the sheer mass of the Soviets by 1942. One of my PBEMS I've killed 6.5-million as of the 1st turn of July 1942 and the Russian Army and Air Force is still humongous. I keep encircling and killing stuff only to see 30-more divisions pop up in front of me.

It seems like the surplus of equipment and manpower related code errors – more often than not – are coming out in favor of the Soviet side of the coin and disfavor the Axis side of the coin. And the monstrous gluts of manpower & equipment that the Soviets accumulate make me want every piece of Axis Allied equipment I can get my hands on. If it's historical that the Axis Allied Air Forces disappear by 1942, than job well done. However, if this is ahistorical and something is broke with Axis Allied Air unit replacements and repair, can it be fixed?

[Joel Billings]

I'm not sure if it as much that the Axis Allied air forces disappeared as that they were never committed to combat in large numbers due to their fragile nature. It would be interested to get some info on these forces. IIRC some of the testers are pretty knowledgable about some of the Axis Allies, and this inability of the AA air to sustain any kind of intense combat activity has been in the game for a long time and I haven't heard any complaints (other than that the Finnish air force wasn't doing as well as it should, but I thought we did improve it somewhat during development).

[molchomor]

Well it is kinda hard to "sustain any kind of intense combat activity" as they are either more or less grounded and rarely fly (Hungarians) or have zero planes (Rumanians).

This seems incredible if it was like this historically, did the Rumanians really have all those squadrons for years without planes and were the Hungarians refusing to climb into their machines ?

Open the save for yourselves and have a look.

If you want to ensure historically correctness, then cap the Soviet A/F to historical levels, and only allow the Soviets to evac plane factories on a historical scale. Btw it is just silly now when you have thousands of good axis surplus fighters/bombers that cannot be exported to your allies that are totally starved of planes. The bottom line: Soviets can alter history, axis cannot. Fair ? No. Realistic that the highly competent German warmachine and its leaders would be less able to adapt to circumstances then the Soviet half-purged leadership ? No.

[Joel Billings]

I assume you are saying the planes were lost, and no replacements were available to fill them, correct? Or did the scenario start with no aircraft. In the latest version of the 41 campaign I'm looking at (not yet out to the public), the Rumanians start with 394 AC and have about 200 in the replacement pool. In a PBEM game I have a save for from the summer of 42, the Rumanians have 627 aircraft.

[Farfarer61]

How about allowing the Axis to create these independent battalions (using APs) when the raw material exists in the Pool? It is judt too galling to have the stock languishing in Langenheim when you are getting your arse handed to you. Better yet if you could accept/refuse a limited number to TOE changes.

[76mm]

I have a hard time understanding how you say the Soviets are too strong and yet you say that you hold Moscow, Lgrad, Stalingrad, Caucauses in Jan 1945? Sounds like you're doing OK to me?

[Karri]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I have a hard time understanding how you say the Soviets are too strong and yet you say that you hold Moscow, Lgrad, Stalingrad, Caucauses in Jan 1945? Sounds like you're doing OK to me?

He is saying that considering these, the Soviet army is too strong.

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I have a hard time understanding how you say the Soviets are too strong and yet you say that you hold Moscow, Lgrad, Stalingrad, Caucauses in Jan 1945? Sounds like you're doing OK to me?

I don't think the fact that someone is doing well should disqualify them from having an opinion on play balance.

I am doing rather well in my game "The Wolf and the Bear", but nevertheless I feel that the Soviet army is somewhat overpowered in WITE. That coupled with the lack of a good VP system makes the GC for both sides something of an endless grind with no clear purpose to strive for, except in the very long term.

In most other East Front games, German possession of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and perhaps Sevastopol would render a German win. I am not saying they are right, but I am saying that in game terms they have definable victory conditions and clear objectives that make the games more exciting and tense.

Edit: Typo.

[molchomor]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I assume you are saying the planes were lost, and no replacements were available to fill them, correct? Or did the scenario start with no aircraft. In the latest version of the 41 campaign I'm looking at (not yet out to the public), the Rumanians start with 394 AC and have about 200 in the replacement pool. In a PBEM game I have a save for from the summer of 42, the Rumanians have 627 aircraft.

1) Romanian airgroups are mostly empty with zero planes. Root cause: Bug, they never get exports so they stay empty forever. Check it out for yourselves in the attached save.

Hi Joel I think I described the issue clearly enough ? OK a step-by-step then:

1) Open the attached save
2) Inspect the Romanian squadrons (many/most have 0 planes, this is a symptom of the suspected fault.)
3) Toggle "manual" selection of types for the squadrons with zero planes (most want types that are NEVER exported to Romania, at least not until the date of the save ~1/1 '45). This is the suspected fault.

I guess as they never get any exports except for a few fighters, and have a net production of maybe five (5) planes/week after attrition, accidents etc., their numbers dwindle towards zero.

[molchomor]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I have a hard time understanding how you say the Soviets are too strong and yet you say that you hold Moscow, Lgrad, Stalingrad, Caucauses in Jan 1945? Sounds like you're doing OK to me?

I don't think the fact that someone is doing well should disqualify them from having an opinion on play balance.

I am doing rather well in my game "The Wolf and the Bear", but nevertheless I feel that the Soviet army is somewhat overpowered in WITE. That coupled with the lack of a good VP system makes the GC for both sides something of an endless grind with no clear purpose to strive for, except in the very long term.

In most other East Front games, German possession of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and perhaps Sevastopol would render a German win. I am not saying they are right, but I am saying that in game terms they have definable victory conditions and clear objectives that make the games more exciting and tense.

Edit: Typo.

Tarhunnas hit the nail. Feel free to open the save to have a look at Soviet strength and the casualty figures of men, corps, equipment. Then tell me you don't think the Soviets still look unrealistically strong&healthy after those enormous losses. Mind you this save is from the '42 campaign against the Soviet AI so alot of pre-june'42 losses inflicted on the Soviets are not visible of course. In addition the Soviet AI more or less has no limit in the number of units it can create (and block your advances with) which of course is the root cause for them still being on the map. Basically if you put the Red army at say 5 million and about that number was lost for them up to the start of the campaign, the Red Army must have been wiped out about three times now as I recall I am responsible for them losing 10+ million soldiers. That and the loss of so many production centers would cause something to break you might think ? Well I think so. Problem is that against the AI there seems no "throat" to slice as against a human opponent (here the axis throat would be manpower, Soviet throat would be the AP cost to build units).

[molchomor]

I just want to say I enjoyed my first long campaign immensely against the AI, at least up to 1/1 '45 when the game decided to effectively start ungarrison captured Soviet cities in out of the blue (well not really, in blizzard) with its TOE changes. Ouch, stabbed in the back.

I have tried to collect the issues that annoyed me most (= time lost due to necessary reload and replays), here they are, it took some time to compile it all, take it or leave it, who cares it is just a game anyway.

To conclude: well worth its money, you will get hundreds of hours of gameplay out of this game for sure. However, the game could be polished further and as has been discussed for more than a year now, balance and replayability issues still exist and as a player there is not much you can do about it (other than resorting to using the editor).

Will post an AAR of my trek against the Ai some day!