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).
ORIGINAL: Farfarer
and then it's not a game. Enjoy the AI.
Ooops, I keep forgetting, it is not fun for German players unless they can abuse the logistics model so that they can take Kharkov on Turn 4 or whatever. Nothing, including those pesky partisans, should be allowed to interfere with their progress. My mistake...
No, we are not saying that we should be able to take Kharkov on turn 4. Quit using a "straw man". The partisans aspect just isn't a fun part of the game.
Partisan activity could be better modeled and in a more enjoyable way. No one is saying to not include them.
76mm, partisans are the wrong way to deal with the game's logistics issues. They need to be considered in their own right, don't conflate the two issues. This is a classic case of two wrongs don't make a right.
First time posting and relatively new to the game. First real PBEM to turn 45 ongoing and am playing Axis. Flavius I can't agree with you more. I had two separate occasions where a partisan unit of 200 men virtually cutoff all supplies to 500K men on a front. That is just not realistic. In 1941 if the Russian gets lucky with them they can make a big difference. From 1942 on they aren't that big of a factor. Being a student of history I know that Partisans didn't have that kind of effect as many of you have affirmed above.
I agree about the realism aspect. In the game, if you want to make sure, you can put combat units or forts every 3 hexes on the really important stretches of railway. That's what I do.
ORIGINAL: csarebel
Quit using a "straw man". The partisans aspect just isn't a fun part of the game.
Partisan activity could be better modeled and in a more enjoyable way. No one is saying to not include them.
ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
76mm, partisans are the wrong way to deal with the game's logistics issues. They need to be considered in their own right, don't conflate the two issues. This is a classic case of two wrongs don't make a right.
Well, I was only responding to a poster's complaint that the partisans in this game impose some kind of "unrealistic" burden on German logistics, which I find a bit ridiculous. I am not suggesting that partisans should be used to fix the game's logistic system, or that the partisan part of the game works well, is realistic, or is any fun.
I would be fine if the whole system were more abstracted; while I don't know if that would be more enjoyable, it would be less irritating, which I guess is a plus. But however the system works, if the Germans are foolish enough to base their entire supply sistem on a single rail line (which hopefully will be impossible in future), that rail line should be vulnerable to partisan attack.
Tarhunnas - thanks for the advice - I hadn't thought of that.
76mm - I never suggested abusing the logistics model. My comments on realism are based on the idea of WITE creating a game based on realistic capabilities to recreate the Axis/Soviet conflict. I personally will not mule HQs as the Axis. I don't think that is realistic either.
My comments about partisans focus on that they should not be able to completely cutoff supplies to major portion of the front. Flavius came up with the best way I have seen to model their realistic capabilities in the game. The major effect they had overall was to reduce the locomotives that the Germans could use to transport supplies. In 1941, they were not very well organized and their attacks were uncoordinated and few in number.
Here is an excerpt from Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde (one of many sources) that will give you a flavor of how effective partisans were (notice two things ... they did not completely cutoff supplies and the Germans were able at times to very quickly restore the rail lines):
The Belarusian partisans are mainly known for blowing up railway installations and trains. But also in this field their successes where in certain respects limited. They managed to distinctly reduce the capacity of many lines, but not to cut off or decisively reduce German supplies for the front. [Footnote: See Pottgießer, pages 90f. und 100f. (in the week between 20 and 26.7.1943 partisans reduced the time during which the main lines could be used by 16 to 46%). Similarly for instance General des Transportwesens Mitte, Transportlage Nr. 9 v. 11.1.1944, BA-MA WF-03/5388, Bl. 643. The information in Kalinin, page 341, about a reduction of railway traffic by two thirds from 1942 to 1943 is incorrect. Bonwetsch's assessment (page 112) is correct in this respect.] This also applies regarding bridge blastings and the heydays of the »rail war« in August 1943 and June 1944 with up to 10,500 explosion spots in one day. [Footnote: See Pottgießer, pages 85 and 88; AWiFü beim AOK 4, Lagebericht 16.6.-15.7. v. 28.7.1944, BA-MA (BArchP)F 18039, Bl. 303. The number of attacks in the area of General Traffic Direction East exceeded 100 for the first time in May 1942, 500 for the first time in August, 750 in September 1942, 400 in January 1943 and 1,050 in May. Most of these occurred in the area of RVD Minsk. See for instance Kühnrich, pages 287 ff.; Wilenchik, page 285. Blasts in a row were counted by the Germans as only one, thus the difference in numbers.] Only few secondary lines the Germans had to temporarily give up completely. The high number of railway blasts is undisputed, but the Germans gradually got used to a kind of partisan war normality and especially managed to remove most damages on rails within the shortest time. [Footnote: Characteristic is the verdict of Linkow (page 448), who considered the German line security and mine clearing to have been very bad: »In one area, however, the Fascists achieved something extraordinary. They managed to thoroughly remove the consequences of a train disaster within the shortest time. Eight to ten hours, in difficult cases fifteen hours, were sufficient for them to make a line operational again.« See Pottgießer, pages 84-101. In the area of RVD Minsk there were 510 blasts in December 1943 and 598 blasts in January 1944, but of these only 43 respectively 48 led to line closures of more than 12 hours. Mineis (L) beim Transportchef, Auswirkung der Bandenanschläge v. 11.2.1944, BA-MA H 12/244). One must however point out the materially most important effect of the Belarusian partisans struggle, which was felt throughout Europe: according to German sources they destroyed as many locomotives each month as the whole of German-dominated Europe could produce in the same period - and the Soviets knew this. Given the lack of rolling stock which had occurred anyway throughout the German area of influence by shifting locomotives and wagons to the occupied Soviet territories, this had an effect on the outcome of the war in general that should not be underestimated.
A benefit of the logistics and air system changes made in WitW has meant that we've already implemented a system for western front partisans where their impact is to in effect add usage to rail lines (just as air interdiction attacks do), reducing the amount of supplies and troops that can be carried by the rail line. We can do this because we track the use of the rail lines. No doubt this will be the way WitE 2.0 deals with partisans. I realize it doesn't help you in WitE, but I wanted you to know that we have listed to all the comments on WitE and are trying to react to them with improvements in WitW which we hope will eventually show up in a WitE 2.0.
All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
ORIGINAL: TFXO
76mm - I never suggested abusing the logistics model. My comments on realism are based on the idea of WITE creating a game based on realistic capabilities to recreate the Axis/Soviet conflict. I personally will not mule HQs as the Axis. I don't think that is realistic either.
TFXO, sorry, I did not mean to imply that you personally abuse the logistics system, but the fact is that most German players focus their rail conversion on one or two lines, with no lateral spurs, so if one line is put out of commission by partisans, they are out of luck.
I note that your source (interesting, BTW) states that "They managed to distinctly reduce the capacity of many lines, but not to cut off or decisively reduce German supplies for the front." I guess we can draw our own conclusions about what they would have done if there was in fact only one line.
I note that your source (interesting, BTW) states that "They managed to distinctly reduce the capacity of many lines, but not to cut off or decisively reduce German supplies for the front." I guess we can draw our own conclusions about what they would have done if there was in fact only one line.
Uh, equating the WitE mechanism for repairing rail lines with the real capabilities of the German Army and making conclusions from that is questionable.
A benefit of the logistics and air system changes made in WitW has meant that we've already implemented a system for western front partisans where their impact is to in effect add usage to rail lines (just as air interdiction attacks do), reducing the amount of supplies and troops that can be carried by the rail line. We can do this because we track the use of the rail lines. No doubt this will be the way WitE 2.0 deals with partisans. I realize it doesn't help you in WitE, but I wanted you to know that we have listed to all the comments on WitE and are trying to react to them with improvements in WitW which we hope will eventually show up in a WitE 2.0.
Excellent news. Joel, note the number of alt games being taken up lately [:)]
The partisan side of this game doesn't work very well.I think it's a by-product of the rail network being too abstracted.
Ideally they would cause supply to be reduced, not cut altogether.
Garrisoning cities to 100% doesn't make a noticeable difference in my experience.
I think partisan activity should be proportionally related on their distance to the nearest enemy unit, whether in cities or not.Axis security units would have a bonus in this regard.
I like the idea of partisans being able to do recon on Axis units behind the lines.
I agree with Flavius - more abstraction is actually the solution here.
The game attempts to model too many different things in great detail. This complexity leads to a situation in which every new 'fix' has unintended consequences.
The partisans are a historical fact and it's unlikely that any decision we can take in game terms would have made much difference to this in real life. So, just abstract the conversion of the rail net along historical lines (so many hexes get repaired per turn) build in a supply reduction factor that increases over time and is linked to the proximity of Soviet forces, take the police and auxiliary units out of the game and focus on Divisional and Corps-level combat operations.
Actually I think that partisan units should be made more 'solid'. What I'm trying to say is that partisan units in the east tended to be relatively organised formations, with HQ and all. They were not a real guerilla force in the strictest of sense but something intermediate between guerilla and regulars. So they should be made into 'proper' units that require clearing, but if they get hit by military units, they should be destroyable like any other line unit and not bounce off somewhere else. Only then would anti partisan sweeps make sense and have the Germans detach frontline formations in order to deal with them (as happened in real life).
I would also be in favour of having more anti partisan units in the form of all those units of up to regimental strength, that the Germans used. It should be noted that the Germans and their allies expended quite some resources in dealing with this problem and that most of the Ukranian formations etc which were quite numerous, ended up fighting this part of the war.
The Partisan units often engaged in coordinated operations with Red Army units, not only just as railroad track and bridge destroyers. This historical fact presents an interesting dilemma to discussion: in a game where players can micromanage individual units at times down to the company level, and assign the deployment of squadrons of 4 aircraft, why oversimplify an aspect of the war which had a significant impact on the outcome of logistics and strategic planning? To be fair and consistent, there are ample opportunites to simplify and automate many things in this game, but to cherry pick would be inconsistent.
Personally, I vote for simplification but it would also be very nice to also have an option for directing partisan activity even more if a player wanted more control. An interesting idea would be to attach security units to higher level HQs as SUs, and given them an operational antipartisan radius. The same could be done for the Soviets: attach partisan SUs to Soviet HQs with an operational radius; the further away the unit from it's HQ the less likely the action would carried out. There could be logistical actions which decrease supply disbursement and combat actions which add a few CVs to an attack.
And what about antiSoviet partisan activity after 1943 in the reconquored Ukraine........? [;)]
