Is WiTE Balanced?

[Flaviusx]

Hex flip has always been there. (You can tell by looking at the Lvov pocket, hex control within it flips over.) But this is a pretty extreme example of it.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: Mehring

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I'm doing it now and it's working just fine, Mehring.

Admittedly I'm playing a GC with random weather and just got crushingly generous gift: mud in South and Central Soviet on turn 5.

I always play random weather, but the gods haven't smiled on me yet. I trust your opponent is grade 1 material, but let's see how it goes. meantime my objections stand.

Sorry, but I don't think they do. Your screenshots show a complete failure on your part to occupy a wide swath from the Pripyet Marshes, to the eastern borders of the Ukraine, and from Gomel to Kiev. Just what do you think should have the precedence for control? The fact that the Axis have taken advantage of your poor dispositions to rampage at will through your rear and cut off your lines of communications to this huge, unprotected area, or the little red flags that your men left planted on the roadsides in your haste to evacuate?

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

ORIGINAL: Mehring

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I'm doing it now and it's working just fine, Mehring.

Admittedly I'm playing a GC with random weather and just got crushingly generous gift: mud in South and Central Soviet on turn 5.

I always play random weather, but the gods haven't smiled on me yet. I trust your opponent is grade 1 material, but let's see how it goes. meantime my objections stand.

Sorry, but I don't think they do. Your screenshots show a complete failure on your part to occupy a wide swath from the Pripyet Marshes, to the eastern borders of the Ukraine, and from Gomel to Kiev. Just what do you think should have the precedence for control? The fact that the Axis have taken advantage of your poor dispositions to rampage at will through your rear and cut off your lines of communications to this huge, unprotected area, or the little red flags that your men left planted on the roadsides in your haste to evacuate?

What is control and what is the meaning of converting hexes to your own control? Owning territory is having an area secured. Securing an area takes time and petrol and wares down vehicles and requires boots on the ground.

What appears to you to be my opponent rampaging at will in my rear area is really a couple of divisions making a long distance raid. That is precisely my point, and these units are nowhere near most of the territory they have have captured but my ground combat units are near it, considerably more near it and in greater quantity than the raiders.

[Flaviusx]

This raiding strategy can be managed. But you have to picket the Axis line and keep the landsers separated from the panzers. Panzers alone operating without support in deep and narrow penetrations are at the precipice of a disaster if you deal with them correctly. The key (in 1941 at least) is to always, always maintain contact with the Axis along the entire line. Use expendable units for this, low morale divisions, NKVD, paras, etc. One unit per every three hexes to minimize your liability. This will seriously extend the Axis line and complicate his logistics and if he slips up, it is you who will get in his rear.

It also provides a screen for the bulk of your army.

Check out the game I did with Pelton a while back for an example. He eventually got wise to the tactic and cleaned up the picket line, but it did the job.

[Mehring]

I was looking for an AAR by you but couldn't find one, it must be very old or under someone else's name? I suspect it's old as you refer to NKVD units, most of which are now disbanded in my game. The line is too long to maintain contact. I lost so many units from the T1 encirclements I've been struggling to build lines where I need to defend. I've lost 1.3 milion men, mostly from T1 yet I don't have any expendable units, that's why the line was so thin or absent. This has never been so acute as in 1.06. What are your pickets supposed to accomplish, anyway?

Russian movement capability through enemy hexes seems to have been curbed since the early days, too, maybe a function of reduced experience. Ask anyone who's played me before, I'm a very aggressive defender, but this game I just don't have the units and the new combat loss ratios (6 germans dead, 1500 Russians) don't help either.
In previous games you could easily surround armoured spearheads and often kill the units later. Done it, I was good at it, and I had it done to me too from time to time, but the game's different.

Let's see if you manage to get into the Germans rear in your game. I doubt it very much if they're any good.

[Flaviusx]

I probably won't. That's not the point. The point is to make him worry about it and have to deal with the possibility. If he screws up and lets me, that's just gravy.

[Blubel]

It will also cost him alot of MPs...

[Mehring]

Ahhhhhhhhh. Trust me, this guy I'm playing doesn't suffer from headaches. A very cool customer, he just won't be distracted by little side shows. He didn't last game we played either. He's improved and the 1941 game's changed to help him.

I tell you what, Flavius, when this one's over, how about we test our respective theories against eachother, you Russian, me Axis?

[Flaviusx]

Sure, why not.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: Mehring

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

ORIGINAL: Mehring




I always play random weather, but the gods haven't smiled on me yet. I trust your opponent is grade 1 material, but let's see how it goes. meantime my objections stand.

Sorry, but I don't think they do. Your screenshots show a complete failure on your part to occupy a wide swath from the Pripyet Marshes, to the eastern borders of the Ukraine, and from Gomel to Kiev. Just what do you think should have the precedence for control? The fact that the Axis have taken advantage of your poor dispositions to rampage at will through your rear and cut off your lines of communications to this huge, unprotected area, or the little red flags that your men left planted on the roadsides in your haste to evacuate?

What is control and what is the meaning of converting hexes to your own control? Owning territory is having an area secured. Securing an area takes time and petrol and wares down vehicles and requires boots on the ground.

What appears to you to be my opponent rampaging at will in my rear area is really a couple of divisions making a long distance raid. That is precisely my point, and these units are nowhere near most of the territory they have have captured but my ground combat units are near it, considerably more near it and in greater quantity than the raiders.

If one really comes down to it the concept of "control" outside of the ZOC of a unit doesn't make that much sense. Whether you are happily bumbling along a field track or not has nothing to do whether that field track is behind an imaginary line or not and everything to do with how close the nearest BG is. How about increasing the ZOC cost while reducing the "control" cost...

[Mehring]

You're on.

[wadortch]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Sure, why not.

It would be great if you or Mehring did an AAR for this great upcoming contest![:)]

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: Mehring

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Mehring, you gotta picket the whole Axis line, man, and make them think twice about those narrow penetrations. ZOC the whole thing, one unit every 3 hexes, keep in contact with the enemy at all times. Yes it's expensive and you'll lose the units more often than not, but there it is. If they ignore your picket line you can cause them a ton of headaches.

I don't see it in 1.06 Flavius. Sure, a picket would have slowed the southward drive a bit, a division or two actually did, but that 40+ MP division he's saved for the final drive will usually get through, just like the turn before, it got through my main line and countless pickets in front of Kharkov, as well as the garrison, to take the city. That's always been the case, and it's good play. But I'm highlighting a shift in play balance which makes the Russians phenomenally weak in 1941 in stead of making them stronger, which when playing German, I thought they needed.

The Russians can barely move and attack and they can barely move through enemy controlled ground, let alone through ZOC. You need 5 or 6 Russian divisions to hit one German regiment, and that's starting to look like an army, not a picket. So unless the Axis railnet is within a hex or two of the front, what headaches can the Russians cause these days? A smart Axis player will ignore a Russian picket and be thankful for the handfull less divisions between him and the Russian industry.

I agree that the fighting power but not the MP of at least the beginning Russian units should be higher. Maybe keep the NM and morale the same (movement is tied to morale I thing) but increase the Experience? That should make them tougher but fragile.

[LiquidSky]

What exactly does 'control' of a hex mean?

Well...it allows your infantry to move twice as fast. The reason being they 'know' they will not be shot at.

It is not material that the terrain is 'empty' of enemy units. As an attacker, you just dont know. And in not knowing, you will be careful..otherwise you will lost a lot of men to minefields, ambushes and other nasty defender suprises.

But because we have god like powers of observation in a game, you say 'hey! he has no enemy units there, why shouldnt I just run through at full speed?'

While I accept that the current method is an abstraction, that does have some control from the defender (ie picket lines) the whole idea of 'control' of an empty hex does seem rather silly.....unless it was taken in context of a front line.

I would have to say that the rule, as it stands is probably the best compromise, but perhaps control of hexes shouldnt flip at the beginning of your turn, but at the end?

[Mehring]

A compromise between what? You outline perfectly, the reason for not flipping hexes but I can't see any argument in its favour, but here is one for changing their status at least.

Rumours of enemy units in your rear might well cause extra caution in moving behind your lines, caution mitigated where absence of enemy units might be verified, as much by civilian authorities as military. But that is no argument for giving 'own control' movement rates for enemy units. Perhaps a solution, pending hex conversion in the normal way, would be a new 'uncontrolled' hex status, with a MP premium for both sides, nominally higher for the encircler/raider but modified as usual by experience and morale etc.

[Farfarer61]

The Reds need zero help via game changes with anything ever, and forever, henceforward.