Are you serious???

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: kg_1007
...most of their successes came from capable strong units, not from divisions that, as noted, had already been hit and knocked backwards immediately before...

So no such thing as a "sure thing" except when the Germans are attacking the miserable Slav hordes, is that it? [8|]

While I will never defend this game's combat engine--I think it is over-engineered, opaque, and often just plain goofy--it cuts both ways, and I don't hear any Germans complaining about how easy it is to push Sov units out of fortified city hexes, for instance.

[kg_1007]

76..that is a good argument that I probably agree with you on, but it is not what THIS one is about..THIS one is about an incident that, according to the original poster, is happening more..while I would have no problem with it happening as a fluke(anything COULD happen in war) if he is correct about it happening very often, it is wrong. Not only that, but none of the given reasons for it happening, would make sense in this case, either..recon should not even play a factor, he states it was just involved in a battle which it lost, already..so most of its details should already be known to the Axis opponent..PLUS, it was less than half the strength, morale, experience, of its elite German opponent(the para division, which, as stated, was near perfect in both experience and morale, as well as full strength).. My statement was that if he is correct about this happening very often, he definitely has a valid issue.
As to the other part of your comment, I agree with you on the fortifications and urban hexes being too easy to root out. I do not agree with the implied meaning I read in it though. I see it mostly as the opposite..the Soviet players mostly want everything"realistic".."hey, we won in real life, so we should win here, and the Axis players should just shut up, your side never was going to win anyway, so why play"..HOWEVER, these same "historic" Soviet players, for the most part, attack any situation where it goes against them.

[notenome]

ORIGINAL: kg_1007

I think what glvaca is saying has merit. There is no such thing as a "sure win"..while many here always want the historic results to be a "sure thing" also..Setting that aside, he is saying that an already mauled division, low on everything, hard and "soft" factors such as morale, included, should not be able to beat a freshly arrived division on turn 16, for certain, as there were few examples even in history of the Soviets fighting well until winter that year, and most of their successes came from capable strong units, not from divisions that, as noted, had already been hit and knocked backwards immediately before, and thus, as well, recon should not play a factor, as the cavalry division in question, was already known, and defeated once, so would not likely become stronger, than it was when it had just lost a fight a few days before.

Soviets had plenty of successes before the winter. Germany's casualties in July where the highest for any month of the war until Stalingrad (63,000)[1].

Two things which are being ignored here: First it was a hasty attack, which means it was not a pre-planned and coordinated assault. Second a hold does not mean that the division was stopped. Just because an attack initially fails does not mean the defenders beat an attacker. It means they absorbed some mps, if 7th flieger makes a renewed attack and pushes the cavalry division out, then it was simply delayed by the cavalry division. The only thing this simulates is that 7th Flieger attempted to press the advantage and catch the cavalry division off guard, being initially unsuccessful.

The problem is that the game simply weans German players to believe they can trash any unfortified division on the clear or woods with a hasty attack (and indeed they can, for the most part). So when it doesn't happen it becomes a shock, when in reality a hasty attack (in WitE's theoretical game terms) should be a much dicier proposition then it is right now. An unplanned, uncoordinated attack into woods is almost always militarily a bad idea.

[1] Stahel, David Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East. 2012. "...in the following month no fewer than 63,000 German soldiers fell (with tens of thousands more wounded), making July the deadliest month of the war until the battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/1943."

[kg_1007]

In July 1941, the Germans assaulted and took several key cities..Minsk, Vitebsk,Riga, primarily, and reached the outskirts of Smolensk(it fell Aug 5). The higher casualties correspond to fighting in an urban environment, not to any "success" by the Red Army, who was still in general retreat all across the map at that time.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: kg_1007
My statement was that if he is correct about this happening very often, he definitely has a valid issue.

As a Sov player, I have less visibility on how the combat results play out, as I don't go back review every result after the fact; therefore, I can't really comment on how often this occurs, or if it occurs more often than it used to.

That said, the combat engine has been just plain weird since the very beginning, and if the devs say they haven't made any changes I don't see any reason to disbelieve them. If anything, I would say that German hasty attacks are generally too successful at the moment, as the Sovs could and did occasionally give the Germans a bloody nose and delay them by a few days (as represented by a failed hasty attack).

I won't argue about whether or not such a result is justified in this case--who knows? The vast abstractions and convoluted calculations involved in determining combat results makes such a debate rather futile in my view.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: kg_1007
The higher casualties correspond to fighting in an urban environment, not to any "success" by the Red Army, who was still in general retreat all across the map at that time.

We must be reading different books.

[kg_1007]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: kg_1007
My statement was that if he is correct about this happening very often, he definitely has a valid issue.

As a Sov player, I have less visibility on how the combat results play out, as I don't go back review every result after the fact; therefore, I can't really comment on how often this occurs, or if it occurs more often than it used to.

That said, the combat engine has been just plain weird since the very beginning, and if the devs say they haven't made any changes I don't see any reason to disbelieve them. If anything, I would say that German hasty attacks are generally too successful at the moment, as the Sovs could and did occasionally give the Germans a bloody nose and delay them by a few days (as represented by a failed hasty attack).

I won't argue about whether or not such a result is justified in this case--who knows? The vast abstractions and convoluted calculations involved in determining combat results makes such a debate rather futile in my view.

I agree very much with that analysis.

[kg_1007]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: kg_1007
The higher casualties correspond to fighting in an urban environment, not to any "success" by the Red Army, who was still in general retreat all across the map at that time.

We must be reading different books.

I don't think so, just I read behind the books..urban fighting ALWAYS is higher in casualties..the Axis took several major cities in July, and lost 63.000+ troops that month..those casualties DO "seem" high, until you relate them to the fighting that was going on..and the fact, that the Germans won those ongoing fights, for the cities mentioned. Even a win, in urban environment, results in heavy casualties, as even the modern American army in Iraq dealt with...just many of ours, were only wounded, when the same ones would have been KIAs in WW2.

[notenome]

So you attribute the highest losses of any month until Stalingrad to German successes? And the red army was most definitively not in general retreat all across the map. They had managed to stall the Germans at Kiev and stalled the southern pincer at Smolensk. Before the panzers had even begun to set off for Minsk the Soviets had begun strong counterattacks that stopped the German advance east of Smolensk and created several local crises for von Bock's AGC.

[kg_1007]

ORIGINAL: notenome

So you attribute the highest losses of any month until Stalingrad to German successes? And the red army was most definitively not in general retreat all across the map. They had managed to stall the Germans at Kiev and stalled the southern pincer at Smolensk. Before the panzers had even begun to set off for Minsk the Soviets had begun strong counterattacks that stopped the German advance east of Smolensk and created several local crises for von Bock's AGC.

I do not attribute them to "German successes" as casualties ALWAYS are bad..what I said, was that they were attributed to urban fighting that month, and, history shows, that the Germans DID succeed in those urban fights that month..so to be technical, yes, they were German successes, also. In game terms, Smolensk fell historically on turn 7, and the battle for it began on turn 3, so yes, they held there for quite long against really heavy odds, which lasted most of July, which cost many German casualties(the most in that month actually) BUT, you were the one who said it was a Red Army success..the fact they stood for a month, was..and in this game, it is much too difficult for the Soviet player to stand for a month in any city..but, in the end, it was a German success..which was, however, not my point..my point was that a few large urban battles in July resulted i n the heavier casualties referenced by Glantz, NOT "Soviet victories".

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: notenome

So you attribute the highest losses of any month until Stalingrad to German successes? And the red army was most definitively not in general retreat all across the map. They had managed to stall the Germans at Kiev and stalled the southern pincer at Smolensk. Before the panzers had even begun to set off for Minsk the Soviets had begun strong counterattacks that stopped the German advance east of Smolensk and created several local crises for von Bock's AGC.

+1 And the Soviets didn't need "victories" to "succeed". At this stage of the war, I would call a "loss" which resulted in slowing the Germans down for a month and inflicting heavy casualties a very real "success" (and one which is difficult to replicate in the game).

[Flaviusx]

Um, the July battles mostly occurred out in the open. They were certainly not Stalingrad type affairs with a lots of urban combat in a narrow space.

[kg_1007]

I can agree with that, especially on tactical level...where this game would seem to fit on a grand operational level, or even strategic perhaps.. in the real world, a Soviet armored brigade that can hold off a German unit for a few hours(happened a lot) was a success in 1941.
However, in this game, where a turn is a week, and where a cavalry division withstands a unit twice its ability, morale, and size, for a turn...that means a week, and THAT, happened very rarely at this stage of the war.
I also do think that to this issue, there is not an easy fix..you cannot make it happen less, really, without stopping it from ever happening, which would be just as unrealistic.
By the beginning of August 41, the Germans had already cut off Leningrad, taken Minsk, taken Smolensk,taken Orel, etc...in the game, this is also difficult as the Germans to pull off by its historical time of basically turn 7 or turn 8...so the difficulties go both ways, against the Sovs for not being able to withstand in some areas they historically did, and against the Germans for not being able to succeed in other areas as well as they historically did

[Flaviusx]

These dates are wildly off, Kg. Leningrad was cut off in September. And, of course, didn't fall.

Orel didn't fall until October. AGC was stalled just east of Smolensk and stayed put there until Typhoon. This of course never happens in the game.

[kg_1007]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

These dates are wildly off, Kg. Leningrad was cut off in September. And, of course, didn't fall.

Orel didn't fall until October. AGC was stalled just east of Smolensk and stayed put there until Typhoon. This of course never happens in the game.

You are correct, I thought this even as I wrote it.. Lesson of the day..wikipedia is horrible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... %281941%29
gives the date of Orel as Aug 5, and looking at a map it seemed quite unlikely as well. Also gives July 8 as the date Germans isolate Leningrad from the rest of USSR.

[Flaviusx]

Good lord, even for Wikipedia, that's horrible. They can do better than that, geeze.

[notenome]

For this point of the war there are two distinct 'professional' historiographies. The traditional school states that after lightning quick advances and a bitter but successful battle of encirclement at Smolensk, the Germans ran into supply trouble, paused and then shifted direction because Hitler is crazy. This is the narrative of most German generals, for example, and it has been widely accepted in the West.

On the other hand, there is a new school of historiography, whose main exponents are Stahel and Glantz, which takes the Soviet accounts of the war more seriously. This narrative states that after quick advances against surprising (but wildly uneven) Soviet resistance, suffering massive losses it could not sustain, the German advance stalled, failing to encircle the majority of Soviet forces at Smolensk or Kiev. In other words the pockets at Uman and Smolensk become 'consolation pockets', i.e. they were not the pockets the Germans wanted to form, but they were the pockets the Germans *could* form with the situation being as it was. The Germans, exhausted and with their striking power seriously reduced, now poorly supplied, began to suffer strong counterattacks by Western, SW and Reserve Fronts, ground to a halt, and the only viable alternative was to shift direction, which itself was a concession that two months into the war the Wehrmacht could no longer go where it pleased, an admittance that most German generals were not willing to make. That doesn't mean Hitler wasn't crazy, as a broken clock is still right twice a day.

The WitE playerbase has many players who subscribe to both theories, which means there is always bound to be controversy. To a large degree the question becomes whether you think the historical Germans over performed or not. Many players regard it as the base standard, the floor per say, and so think it perfectly plausible that the Germans could advance to even greater lengths than they historically did 'if they don't make the same mistakes'. Personally I disagree with this view, as do many others.

[Flaviusx]

Stahel actually relies primarily on German sources. His books are told entirely from the German standpoint, the Soviet stuff is on background.

That's what makes him so interesting.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: notenome

For this poiThe WitE playerbase has many players who subscribe to both theories, which means there is always bound to be controversy. To a large degree the question becomes whether you think the historical Germans over performed or not. Many players regard it as the base standard, the floor per say, and so think it perfectly plausible that the Germans could advance to even greater lengths than they historically did 'if they don't make the same mistakes'. Personally I disagree with this view, as do many others.

Notenome, while I think this is a helpful summary, the problem is that everything goes out the window once you start asking "Gee, what would have happened if the Russians had just started pulling back as quickly as possible instead of allowing all of those massive pockets". I don't think that this was ever a realistic possibility for a variety of reasons, but given that the Sovs are free to do so in the game it makes it very difficult to determine what the Germans "should" be able to accomplish in the game.

[notenome]

True, but the other side of the question is that if the Soviets do what they historically did (aggressively defend and counterattack), the Germans still have a better than historical advance to the point where many players who once defended aggressively now advocate large scale pullbacks as the only viable option.