C&C: REALLY important

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

Any chance of any evidence to back up these rather sweeping statements?

The evidence I have from the game I am playing is that I caused the Soviets 4m casualties and faced a 4m Red Army by the Blizzard. My opponent did not run away and made me fight for every single hex - the same tactics I would use. I would be surprised and disappointed if the reduced manpower multiplier and armaments multiplier allowed the Red army to increase in size by 75% in the next 24 turns.

No evidence that you would believe because you're an apologist who flat-out said Soviet command was more agile and better able to change plans in 1941 than German (who historically changed ARMY GROUP-level priorities successfully at Kiev, Leningrad, the Donbas/Rostov, and Moscow over the course of these 17 turns). We can't agree on what the facts are, so we can't have a discussion.

Case in point, don't cite your anecdotal data from one game in which you point out that your opponent is doing the non-exploitive (that's not a pejorative) strategy of fighting forward. It's when Soviets realize the advantage of the organized hedgehog "eastward shuffle" that you'll see what I'm talking about. If your opponent lets you get deliberate attacks on a majority scale (i.e., he can start breaking a Soviet line with infantry deliberate attacks and then has MPs available with infantry to conduct stack-hasty-attacks thereafter), then he's not doing the eastward creep, so it's not going to create the same downstream, Blizzard 5-million and Spring 7 million Soviet army.

The key to the eastward creep is setting up Soviet lines each turn so that the German infantry cannot hit you with deliberate attacks and stack-hasty-attacks in the same turn. Once you're doing that as the Soviet, you're playing to the unbeatable strategy for 1942's 7-8 million men army. By about turn 12, the Soviet has saved enough of everything (AP, guns, men, combat counters on the map) that he can re-organize around strongly lead armies, assigning rear-echelon units in reserve. The result is a German army that has to commit massive force to Deliberate attacks in order to avoid failure when the plethora of reserve units get committed. I'm seeing turns where 75% of my deliberate attacks are seeing Soviet reserve commitment, and in about half of those, the reserve commitment causes the Held result. This is the true advantage of eastward-creep: setting up the strongest lines a Soviet can make for turns 12-17 in the best defensible terrain around Moscow, and around the rivers, where ZOC movement penalty effects are amplified against the German (you either cross rivers or you pay ZOC costs, both of which gimp German movement).

IF I had enough time, I could overcome this massive layered, Kursk-1943 style defense with deliberate attacks on a massive scale, but since this doesn't happen until around turn 12, at the Valdai-Moscow-Voronezh-Rostov defensive line, there's not enough German supply to do enough attacking each turn to make it pay off. You need a penetration in depth which will take several turns to achieve (remember: the non-fighting eastward shuffle can result in major AP savings, allowing for more Soviet fortified regions, and thus, many more level 3 forts in this critical Turn12-Turn17 german operations zone, which is very likely to be at Rzhev/Tula/Kursk/Kharkov/Dnepopetrovsk), and will amplify your movement restrictions due to ZOC swarms. The key to beating it would be to finally start winning the deliberate attacks even when reserves are committed such that Soviet units route out of position and you get a penetration that prevents reserves.

The problem is you only have 5 turns do affect this, at the point on the map where your supply is most problematic, at a time when the Soviets are reaching their zenith of 1941 power. Remember that around turn 12-14 is when the free units from the early-game pockets start forming up in the hinterland, and they are in perfect position, can be freely assigned from Stavka wherever they are most appropriately slotted, with plenty of army HQs to choose from in terms of where the good rest spots are.

[karonagames]

No evidence that you would believe because you're an apologist who flat-out said Soviet command was more agile and better able to change plans in 1941 than German

Excuse me, but where did I say this????

I understand that you have a bee in your bonnet about something you feel may have happened in a game you are playing but this does not mean this is, or will be happening in every game as you stated in your post, while I stated something that has factually happened in a game. I avoid making sweeping statements based on my experience, as it is clear every single game is different and everyone's experience of the game is different. Yes in some games, the Red Army does get to 5 million + before the blizzard, especially in games where the Axis use the factory raiding strategy, rather than a "kill and capture" strategy that I have used to get the Red Army down to 4m. Like you I failed to captured many factories, but only time will tell if manpower or armaments factories are the key to Red Army success.

So you have fallen out of love with the game, so did I six months ago, but I am now falling back in love with it despite it's flaws. If making these kinds of unsupported statements makes you fell better than I will not argue with you - I was simply trying to establish how much detailed analysis you had made on which to base your statements. This information can then be fed back to the developers, as I still maintain informal links via the development forums.

[Flaviusx]

Helio, take a chill pill, man. The game right now, if anything, is leaning strongly in the German favor. Forward strategy? I don't think so. First class Axis players who know how to grind will welcome such a thing and proceed to wreck the Red Army.

A forward strategy could work very well in earlier versions of the game. Now, it's damn near suicidal.

BTW, if the German knows what he is doing, he can be attacking in good supply along the Valdai Hills and Moscow as of turn 12. Supply shouldn't be an issue at all in the northern part of the map. Voronezh and Rostov are another matter, but frankly, these are not important objectives in 1941 and should be regarded as a natural stop line for the Axis come winter. If you've gone this far, you have all the space you need to fall back down there and reduce the blizzard counteroffensive to a dull roar.

Now, in 1942, Voronezh is arguably the most important city on the map, but that's another rant.

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

One thing to keep in mind is that even though Soviet formations were historically often seriously understrength, that is not always or even often the case in the game. I have yet to see a Soviet player create so many units that he can only keep them at about 60-70% TOE like their historical counterparts.

Most players create an optimized Soviet army. No matter how you spin it or the historical justification, that is a big advantage. Not game breaking, but it is a big advantage.

I think this is an important point, and has more effect on the game than one might think. Players are not building enough Russian units, with the result being that units are far more often at full strength than they should be, allowing the Russian player to get significantly more strength into the front line. In other words, for the most part, Russian players are not playing with a very historical army, against the Axis who must play with a very strictly historical army. Thus the Russians are stronger than they should be, requiring the developers to strengthen the Axis to re-balance things (or use other artificial balancers), which then throws a number of other factors out of balance, etc.

A solution to this would be to start putting restrictions on the building of the Russian army, funneling players into a more historical (and realistic) direction. A very easy start would be to take the building of Rifle Divisions out of the palyers' hands. They should be re-building automatically when destroyed for the whole war, not just up to Nov 41. In addition, when a Rifle Div flips to Guards, a new replacement 'regular' division should appear. These two simple steps are precisely what the Russians did historically. It would also force the Russian player into the historical reality of having to maintain a very large army, and juggle the historical manpower crunch that it created.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

No evidence that you would believe because you're an apologist who flat-out said Soviet command was more agile and better able to change plans in 1941 than German

Excuse me, but where did I say this????

My bad: I thought I was responding to Flavius, who said that (if you allow my paraphrasing, and I do allow my paraphrasing). I apologize.

I understand that you have a bee in your bonnet about something you feel may have happened in a game you are playing but this does not mean this is, or will be happening in every game as you stated in your post, while I stated something that has factually happened in a game.

Data analysis is what I do for a living. I spot trends based on data patterns. If the Soviet wants to utterly destroy the German offensive into Russia, they have every game mechanic in their favor to do so starting on Turn 1. With proper planning on the critical time period of turns 10 through 18, the Soviet can husband his army into a tremendous juggernaut by simply running away faster than the German can practically catch him. There are no mechanics available to the German to counter this except massive abuse of HQ buildup.

(Aside: I don't like spamming HQ buildup as a game mechanic because I've realized the supply system is so borked that I can better supply my army by the exploding-rocket-truck-armada than by advancing railroads. So because I find this too gamey for my tastes, and because I expect buildup to be nerfed again, I don't use the sequential chain buildup right now.)

There are simply too many built-in mechanical advantages that, probably unintentionally, blunt the Soviet inefficiencies of command and control in 1941. This artificially enhanced Soviet efficiency is destroying any remote chance of 1942 sweeping (i.e. Vorenezh to the Caspian Sea) Axis offensives. Without sweeping Axis offensives in 1942 that shuffle the Soviet Army's deck of cards (hurting factories, enveloping again hundreds of thousands of Soviets and leaving their attacked Fronts hopelessly unable to regain command and control), the game is a dull husk of a representation of Eastern Front warfare.

Again, I'm not advocating the Germans should have it any easier on supply (where right now I would argue they have it too easy, but without it, there's no hope of a successful 1941 offensive knocking the Soviet off-balance before the blizzard). I'm arguing that the Soviets have it far too easy on Command and Control and as a result, the game mechanically forces Germany to sit relatively still in predictable patterns so it can take a beating from the juggernaut Red Army starting in 1942.

You will see it eventually, even if I have to trounce a few German guinea pigs to show that it's a strategem that can't be beaten.

I'm also not saying that this means Soviets will march into Berlin in June 44. I'm saying the game will be a dull husk of the representation of actual Eastern Front warfare, with the whole game reflecting only the kind of warfare fought around Leningrad from 1943 to 1945.

[carlkay58]

Helio - it seems to me that you are saying that the Soviet ability to control their troops are what should be hampered. You have phrased it in several different ways - including the army design/growth comments that I responded to earlier - but I think I see your point and actually agree with it. How to express that in game terms, however, is not easy - as shown by your attempts.

I am not really sure how the game could be changed to do what you want. Perhaps you feel that the Soviets should have less mp, less rail cap, AP, or something else?

[Flaviusx]

Um, I did not say that Helio. Keep looking for that straw man.

What I did say was that Soviet rifle divisions should not be treated the same as ordinary western divisions for command purposes. They are certainly not as combat capable as a western division. The design decision to discount the reassignment costs reflects the different army structures. The Red Army is getting what it pays for with these cheap reassignments: a rather bare bones unit with little combat support and limited staying power.

I don't see how anybody could actually prefer a Soviet rifle division to a German one, even taking into account the difference in reassignment costs.

[ComradeP]

I don't see how anybody could actually prefer a Soviet rifle division to a German one, even taking into account the difference in reassignment costs.

But that's mostly due to their morale, as if the divisions would be at the same morale level, the difference wouldn't be too great in terms of combat elements. The support is inadequate, though.

Currently, the biggest differences between the Soviets and the Germans are in their TOE's, force structure and morale/experience levels. With a good army leader, I'm not seeing significant differences in MP's (for example) between units attached to a Soviet army and those attached to a German corps. There is no C&C limitation to limit the size of a Soviet army to a roughly corps sized formation, as it can be an actual 12 division army without penalties. At some point, it would be nice if that was changed, preferably after changes to supply slow down the Axis a bit.

[Flaviusx]

Pieter, I've never gotten a rifle division past 7 cv or so. That's pretty good...until you consider that the Germans can nurse an infantry division into a 15 point monster with attachments included. That compares very favorably with a rifle corps. If rifle divisions could take attachments, then it'd be a different story.

The challenge is nursing those German infantry divisions past 1941. You've got to set aside some of the landsers before the blizzard hits as elite units for future campaigns.

German infantry in 1941 is pretty powerful stuff, though. I fear them more than the panzers in some ways. Properly organized and led, there is almost no line they cannot crack -- as seen with the ubiquitous fall of Leningrad.

[LiquidSky]

Perhaps the Russians should get a bonus to CV (perhaps double) if they are within a certain range of a Russian held city. Perhaps 3 hexes for a minor city and 5 hexes of a Major. Would clear up a lot of problems all at once...give the Russians some teeth in areas they actually had teeth, help prevent raiding so that a couple rifle divisions can stop a tired panzer division hundreds of km's from its supply line, give the Russians a reason to defend forward in areas such as Kiev, Smolensk, help Leningrad hold, and even maybe stop the Lvov opening....

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Um, I did not say that Helio. Keep looking for that straw man.

What I did say was that Soviet rifle divisions should not be treated the same as ordinary western divisions for command purposes. They are certainly not as combat capable as a western division. The design decision to discount the reassignment costs reflects the different army structures. The Red Army is getting what it pays for with these cheap reassignments: a rather bare bones unit with little combat support and limited staying power.

I don't see how anybody could actually prefer a Soviet rifle division to a German one, even taking into account the difference in reassignment costs.

And that's where WitE deviates from macro-level historical accuracy in a manner that provides the Soviet Union efficiencies of command that it did not have, in the name of an arbitrary equalizer that the Soviets do not need.

The Soviet command structure was proven ineffective in 1941, which is why they themselves changed it in 1942. Yet these inefficiencies of command are not at all reflected in the game. To the contrary, the assignment of all these divisions and armies (especially the armies) to Stavka enables the Soviet Union to make order out of chaos for no cost in APs.

What would you estimate as the number of armies that come in to STAVKA rather than their historic fronts? What are the number of divisions? How many APs do you think that saves the Soviet players? How realistic is it that the inefficiencies of divisional-level organizations and command structures are not only not reflected in the game, but that they are effectively improved by the game mechanic that enables Soviet divisions to transfer command more cost effectively than the German army of 1941.

Phrased another way, how realistic is it that the Soviet Union in 1941 gets the same level of admin points as Germany, given all that they will save from probably easily 40% of their 1941 Army coming in a la carte to Stavka?

Half the Soviet army of 1941 comes in attached to Stavka. THAT'S ENOUGH!

Let me phrase the debate somewhat differently:
Which side would benefit more from starting the game in a turn 0 mode with a blank slate allowing both sides to assign commands as they choose?

Why does the Soviet Union get all of this stuff FOR FREE? These kinds of handouts wouldn't be AS big a deal if the Soviet Union didn't also have so many other synergistic advantages that Germany cannot match. Take for example the Soviet players' ability to bypass (as you yourself advise players) the inefficient corps-level combat units of 41a Rifle and 41b Rifle (or maybe it's tank you advise against, you get my meaning) types... Combine this with the advantages of hindsight, which strongly favor the Soviet side in the macro game, and you're just pinning the German side into a barrel that you then shoot at him in.

I can go on and on about these synergistic advantages. The point is that game design decisions need to be questioned at this point, because what looked necessary when the game was in its infancy is now becoming anti-competitive. I wouldn't invoke historical realism because that's not my sticking point, but in this case, it's a reversed position from how it should be: Germany should have the advantage of leverage in how it can use Admin Points, not the Soviet Union (at least in 1941).

[mmarquo]

Heliodorus04,

The SU does not have the advantage AP wise --> initially the APs must be used to restructure the commander structure, shuffle leaders and build SUs whereas the Axis has a decent command structure and SUs are fixed. Later the SU has a choice: fine tune command or buy units - must find a good balance and this is hard.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Marquo

Heliodorus04,

The SU does not have the advantage AP wise --> initially the APs must be used to restructure the commander structure, shuffle leaders and build SUs whereas the Axis has a decent command structure and SUs are fixed. Later the SU has a choice: fine tune command or buy units - must find a good balance and this is hard.

Except that this creation of doodads is an ability Germany has nothing comparable to, and therefor, the only choke on the Soviet doing it is APs.

Otherwise you make a fair point in terms of the downstream consequence of the change I advocate and unintended consequence to game balance, but one of the easiest thing to balance in this game (I would think) is the amount of APs each side generates per turn. This 50 per side per turn is definitely not turning out to be equitable (guess who gets the advantage?), and APs should probably differ for each side in different periods of the war to reflect growth/shrinkage of flexibility per side.

I'm fine with opening the debate on how much things should cost for the Soviet Union to do, but I'm adamant that Germany should be able to switch divisions within an Army and Corps within the umbrella of the parent Army Group much more cheaply than is the case right now, and the Soviet divisional cost to change should definitely be increased considering half the 1941 army is getting allocated for free when it arrives. Further changes should be punished to reflect poor C2 flexibility by Soviet High command.

[Mehring]

I think that Heliodorus may be right on the corps/division question. It does seem skewed that more sophisticated C&C as the war goes on should be penalised with more AP expenditure to transfer corps. I often transfer divisions around in 1941 to maximise leader benefits, it's so cheap and easy, later, and in spite of the extra 10 AP, it's much more difficult.

[BletchleyGeek]

Devaluating AP's by increasing their influx isn't going to work in the long run.

Has anybody checked how much AP goes "wasted" because of the difference in the POL ratings between leaders? I think that might be a huge AP sink for the Germans, which is somewhat surprising to me. It's one of the few game mechanics in WitE that look to me as pure chrome (and perhaps a crutch).

[janh]

I don't see the problem as huge as Helio makes it sound, but on the other hand cheaper AP costs for changing German formations within the same HG/Army wouldn't do much harm either.  However, rather than asking to cut the Soviet potential (and force them back on poorer OOBs), I would ask for the German options to enhanced, for e.g. by allowing to build formations, manually changing ToEs etc.  It would be far better for the fun in the later part of the game if the weaker side would get the benefits of flexibility (such as the R&D and production in WiTP allow to generate what little hope Japan might have).

It was pretty clear from the beginning that the designers intended for the Soviets to be much more flexible in Army building, and given them the opportunity to form an idealized Red Army rather than to repeat the historical course, and thus necessarily mistakes, that the Soviets obviously have made.  This including the control of production (that will influence ToE), it includes the fixed withdrawal scheme (as opposed to picked more rearward, idle units with a certain CV threshold), the building of units etc.  The designers surely could have implemented a fixed schedule for the Soviet reinforcements as well, say by automatic rebuilding of destroyed units and otherwise creating them by historical dates.  Hopefully the production will in the future take a change towards the WiTP/AE model, as hopefully will also the air war, and hopefully the Germans will also be allowed flexibility in unit administration.

What I would like to see much more in term of C&C and leader would be some "FOW", because presently we can pick the leaders based on totally accurate leadership quality statistics. Numbercrunching -- put it on the cluster wait for the ideal solution to be computed. Like the ideal 1st turn, that logically leads to an ideal 1st turn defense, 2nd... It would be much more sensible if we could only see a crude assessment of the leader qualities, rated "excellent, good, mediocre, poor" in the respective categories. There could even be some misjudgments by the Chief of Wehrmacht Personal in the files, so we have to eye the performance of the leaders in fact a bit ourselves. Logically the next step the would be optional rules that either leave leader qualities historical (and allow hindsight), or have a control bar that allows to randomize the values in a certain range.

[BletchleyGeek]

As a footnote, I'd like to note that Soviet corps base cost for transferring is of about 15 AP's. Soviet corps-sized units are formations in the same league as German Divisions (Soviet divisions and brigades certainly aren't as has already been remarked by Flavio and Pieter).

Managing high-admin leaders properly is also a big time saver. On-map units can be transferred as many times as AP allows in one single turn, so AP can be saved by detaching units from the "source" command to OKH/STAVKA and then back to the "target" command, usually at half or so the cost of doing it directly.

[Rafo35]

It was pretty clear from the beginning that the designers intended for the Soviets to be much more flexible in Army building, and given them the opportunity to form an idealized Red Army rather than to repeat the historical course, and thus necessarily mistakes, that the Soviets obviously have made.

I disagree. The Soviets are forced to make all the mistakes (or all the learning) they made as far as TOE is concerned. They have to go through their hopeless TOE until mid-42 and then only slowy begin to improve things at great cost. Basically, it means the thousands of tanks they have and build are almost useless until late 42..

As far as German are concerned, the TOEs are basically right from the beginning and until very late in the war. The raw numbers of every thing are his true pb.

[ComradeP]

The last part of Bletchley Geek's post is important to note, and could also be seen as a problem: it's nearly always much cheaper to reassign something to OKH/STAVKA and then to the command you wanted to assigned it to than to reassign it directly. Soviet divisional reattachments are cheap, but when corps come into play, doing it through STAVKA is often the most cost effective unless you get lucky with the 1/2 AP reduction leader roll.

Pieter, I've never gotten a rifle division past 7 cv or so. That's pretty good...until you consider that the Germans can nurse an infantry division into a 15 point monster with attachments included.

But that has little to do with C&C and everything with morale. For example: 70 morale/experience infantry/Rifle divisions have the same CV's. The Germans get an edge with being able to attach support units, but they have no significant TOE advantage to the Soviets aside from more support squads.

That's also why I'm still worried about the increases in Soviet morale, because collections of 70 or even 75 morale Guards Rifle corps are close to unstoppable currently in 1944-1945. Even 65 morale Guards 42c and beyond Rifle corps are quite good.

[TulliusDetritus]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

Half the Soviet army of 1941 comes in attached to Stavka. THAT'S ENOUGH!

No, it's not enough. It was a basic principle of the Red Army, first said by Lenin himself... The militaries simply adopted those ideas. And what was this basic principle? Have abundant Strategic Reserves. They are obviously attached to the high command, Stavka that is. They are supposed to be attached to high command per definition. Most Soviet players ignore this simple fact (they have irrelevant reserves or none at all). I don't. Playing around with 100 rifle divisions in 1942 (reserves) is a joy...

Not the Soviets' fault if the Germans could not afford huge strategic reserves. But then why did they start a war a) without them and b) vs a industrialized state that had lots of them? [;)]