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).
I accepted, that I could not stop my opponent in blizzard, in snow and in clear weather (and I can understand it), but this mud mayhem continues and ...
(there were important battles - my opponent opened corridor to 2 encircled mortised divisions (in city))
First - in both combats you have mixed commands - each division/corps is from a different front - this causes you to lose 25% of the CV from the non-commanding commands. The Soviets cannot afford to lose that much CV and hope to do much. Spend the APs and make them all under the same Army.
Second - the best unit you had in both combats was the Guards Cavalry Corps with 86 TOE and a morale of 61. The other divisions were TOE of 40 to 60 making them extremely fragile since TOE + Morale < 90 = ROUT. You have to be careful about this. Your divisions are worn down too much to really hold anything.
Third - Look at your fatigue levels - that will also help a unit rout more frequently. I am thinking that the unit screen shots were AFTER the combats. Quite a bit of the fatigue probably came from the combats and are thus not preventable.
Fourth - the Axis are using prime mechanized divisions against you and out-number you at least 2 to 1 in raw manpower, artillery, and tanks. Their troops are much better than yours - so you lose. Not much you could do otherwise with what you are showing here.
How do you avoid it? Well that is what experience helps you do! Shell divisions must be kept out of the front line for as long as possible to allow their TOE and Morale to max out. I notice you are keeping the Rifle XX TOE at Max 80 - this makes them easier to wear down so that the infamous TOE + Morale will bite you in the a** fairly fast. Take a closer look at your front line troops and monitor their TOE and Morale levels closely. Either pull back the lower TOE units or send them out front as speed bumps - they are gonna die in the front lines.
Hope the above helps. Just keep plugging at it until you get the hang of it all. And keep a stiff upper lip - the Axis will make a mistake sometime and you will get to start beating up on them eventually.
hmm, thank You for info but my question was, why Soviet CV is so reduced. Not to mention very high losses.
Thing is in most of the battle during mud defender's CV drops very much (both sides, SOV a bit more, but it is understandable) and attackers increases. But not always.
It is not fun, because I am not able to predict what might happen. (that is why these were mixed stacks, because I expected them to be able to defend themselves and I didn't want to spend any AP)
How to judge what kind of change in CV can be expected?
Kamil, tbh, these results are not that crazy. You've got mixed commands and plainly are failing leadership rolls, and yes, that will kill your CV. The units are not in brilliant shape.
The heavy losses are resulting from routs. Don't stack so much. I'm pretty sure that your units retreating are getting overstacked on retreats and routing as a result. If you've got an almighty traffic jam going on due to lots of units, any retreat result is going to be very ugly. This practically guarantees routs.
Ill add the following to Carl. Seen from a CV PoV. I have no knowledge on how the combat engine actually works other than what u can deciper from the manual. While i've done alot of tests on CV and u can record the end results. How it actually gets there is then speculation. So ill strongly underline much of the following is speculation on my part.
First as Carls say CV wise u lose some on different command and ur units generally seems pretty depleted. Having all the fewer ground elements in them. This doesnt help u any bit.
Manual is clear on that ur CV is reduced to 1/8 in mud as attacker. Says nothing about actual combat ability tho. I suspect there are no reduction.
So Kamil gets attacked by in lower example 5 on map units and 22 support units. 85813 men, 1031 art, 300 AFVs. Thats alot of guns.
If u look at the fate of Kamils ground elements, non retreat related, then 200 are destroyed (7 by air), 280 are damaged and 905 are disrupted. Out of 2564 elements. Thats over half of the elements and as the 2564 is all included. Presumably the heaviest blows falls on the combat elements more so than support elements so the CV tanks by dropping to 1/5 of the original combat str/CV cuz thats what is left of ur units combat force after being bombarded to hell, shoot to pieces by his infantry and overrunned by tanks. Very possibly along with failed leader rolls.
In the end his 1/8ed CV doesnt matter as ur CV has tanked so much u barely got any left. The comparible number of destroyed/damaged/disrupted elements can suggest that the mud doesnt reduce his firepower comparily speaking or if so not particular much.
Soviet in all are reduce by 1385 elements vs his 450. About 3:1 about the same as the difference is in men and art.
If this is true. One can then ofc discuss is it right there is no reduction in firepower in mud. Mud/rapustisa stop movement as much tactical as it does operationally. A pz div, well just about any one, relies heavily up on mobility for its appliance of firepower. if u cant or is significantly restricted in ur movement how can u effectivly attack/apply ur firepower to the enemy positions through out a 10 mile hex during severe muds.
Any how it is as it is, if it indeed is like that. This is, if i make correct judgements on the combat system, one of the problem i have with the combat system and modified CV works.
Unlike boardgames and most computer hexagon games i know u dont remove losses before doing odds. Well this seems to be the case in WitE.
I can understand how u can argue this line of thot. It should be the number of men left after combat that determains the results. Seems logical, but the looking at the effects make me question if this is the right way to go.
The nature of hexagon map is that its few times u can only attack a hex from only 1 hex. Most of the time u can attack from 2 hexes and at times 3 hexes with the rarer 4 or more.
Well if we for sake of this example have each unit set at 10.000 men. Then u can max stack 30.000 men in one hex, but if u can be attacked from 3 hexes the attacker can bring 90.000. So from the beginning he is 3:1 in odd. Problem is that the firepower isnt the same. While there have been made restrictions to firepower max in game, u still seemingly so comes into situasion where the firepower of the 90k is higher than the 30k. Even if we say they have the same firepower for the sake of this example.
Lets say 10k worth of elements is destroyed/damaged/disrupted on each side cuz of restricted maximun fire power in the firephasse, the post firephase odds has changed.
90k-10k=80k of CV vs 30k-10k= 20k. Now the CV odds are 4:1. If it has been 15k losses on each side it would be 75 vs 15 or 5:1 odds post firephases. This in essence means that the attacker gets extra added not only by being more in it self but gets added atop of the odds cuz of firepower even if we assume the firepower is exactly the same on each side. Which i doubt it would be, but for sake or argument we leave it at that.
The defender can try and counter this with modifiers. Terrain and forts. Again ill underline i enter the realm of speculation.
I think its the experience of most of us that engineers have an effect on forts. How exactly it works again is speculation, but the fact is that u can see Fort lvls drop after even after unsuccesfull attacks, One could speculate that there is a roll, where its possible to remove forts lvls in combat depending on eng factor. Also in the light of seemingly consistancy in the firephase losses are applied before odds are resolved. That the fort lvls are "removed" pre odd resolving.
So lets say we have a hex with 3 fort lvl and light forrest. Thats a significant multiplier, but lets say engineers can reduce forts in this thot up example by 2, down to 1.
Well then defence is double by fort and by the light forrest. That leave a times 4 multiplier which is ofc still nice, but one then has to realize just as the CV is multiplied by 4, so is the lost of each destroyed/damaged/disrupted element as per above firepower calculation reducing the CV by that multiplier of 4. Meaning like in the case of Kamils mud defences if there isnt many combat elements left after the firephases while the times 4 multiplier is still very real. The much reduced actual combat force still tanks the overall modified CV.
If u take these things together assuming correct use of HQs for modified CV, this is why i believe we see the difference in modified attacking CV vs defending modified CV. Leading to the seemgly difference in effective modified CV attacking vs defending modified CV in the test of the system i have run of ending on a average of 2.71. There are many potential things that remove defensive CV, leading to typical around same modified defensive CV and often lower modfied CV, but very infrequently a significantly higher modified defensive CV. Where as there on the attacking side the in effect number of reducing effects on attacking modifed CV are far fewer. Leading many time to possible several times higher modified attacking CV.
The great hidden equalizer in this is ofc reserves. Defensive reserves give u the indirect ability to up the number of men in the defending hex throwing out some of the attacking advantange in numbers. Why we see ppl being so succesfull when using reserves.
One should note that there has been changes in reserves some time back where they dont get the defensive benefit during fire combats from the fort and terrain lvls unless its an urban hex.
There has been a progression in the ability of players where more and more ppl have started to get profecient in the use of reserves defensivly.
I predict that the next progression if it ever happens will be that ppl will become better at using reserves when attacking. Inparticular with late game russian attacks. With the frequent use of pz behind heavily fortified lines mid to later game on the axis side. One of the atleased to me seemingly so far unused ways of over come this, is using reserves to a far greater extend when attacking. U need the attacking front hexes to be stacked with Corps for max CV leading to lack of supportive type units to be used in attacks like AT bdes, more CV and such. In most of the late game AARs i 've seen the german seems to have a fairly large number of AFVs consistantly exceding the historical number by much.
Because of the current lack of for example AT bdes when attacking the german fort lines with reacting pz units the russian side really could use more AT guns to disrupt/kill more AFVs than we currently see. The current situasion leads to a lack of retreats in effect really cut down on german AFV losses. Using attacking reserves seems like a natural progression in ways of trying to overcome this.
Unfortunatly with the current AP game i fear that it will be the stopping block of this ever happening.
This isnt to say that this can be used by both sides earlier. For example when attacking the likes of Leningrad or Moscow hexes, there could be a greater use than now of attacking reserves. Making it even easier taken those hexes.
Even if im entirely incorrect in my speculations, it seems to me that the system as is, heavily favors those players with a higher understand of certain aspects of combat and modified CV. To a degree that it creates a difference in what results the more casual player can achieve vs those spending more time on the game. That might not in it self be unusual, but i wonder if a system is created with a hidden complexity that doesnt help the game. Because things and possibilities arent naturally intuiative to players, forstering a needless gap in acheiveble results inparticular when players of the different types meet.
