Should WITE2 force the Germans into a short war approach?

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Pelton
Its really kinda funny when poeple argue economics or logistics when Germany was still in a peace time econemy in 1941.

Not funny, just simply the reality. In order for the Germans to do what you propose (send everything east, develop some magical additional logistics capability, etc) would mean that Hitler never gains power, and that likely means no war to begin with and no WitE game. The Nazi system was rotten and inefficient. That's why it failed. Goering in charge of production? He sat on his butt most of the time, entertaining guests at his mansions. All the in-fighting between various Nazi jurisdictions, the inability of industries to work together, the use of inefficient slave labour, etc. The Nazis were working on a shoestring budget (figuratively) the whole time and eventually it caught up with them.

And what are the western Allies doing with all these extra 2nd and 3rd rate German divisions (and aircraft) in Russia? I suppose they're enjoying a nice summer of tea and crumpets at the beach? A large amount of resources (food in particular) was stripped from occupied western Europe. With the west unoccupied, the Germans get little of this, the Resistance is fully operational and supplied, the Allies probably land in Europe in 1942, Italy likely surrenders in 1942, southern Europe is open to Allied occupation, etc.

It's all very easy to say with hindsight that Germany should or could have done this or that. People often forget about political, economic, social, and other constraints and pressures. These kinds of events and timelines don't happen inside some kind of easy to understand bubble. The likelihood of Germany pulling some magic bullet out of it's hat is just as likely as Stalin's purges NOT happening, and the Red Army being in much better shape in 1940-41 than it historically was.

As with many things in war, the invasion of Russia was always going to be a gamble with a good potential for failure. To simply brush it off and say if Germany had done a couple things differently that it would've been easy is to assume that Germany was existing in a vacuum and that those around Germany (people and societies) would simply stand around doing nothing differently either.

[Schmart]

To answer the original question, to a certain extent the game should encourage the Axis to gamble on a short war approach, because that was their only (slim) chance of success.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: timmyab
This would make the situation much worse.The only way to make it possible for the Soviets to fight forward is to limit Axis mobility.Improving the already generous Axis logistics situation would either result in massive Soviet pockets or, more likely, them running away even faster.

Accelerating the German op-tempo, or more correctly the op-temp of the attacking side as this also applies to blizzard or the later Soviet advance, would dramatically unhinge the game playability. The defender already has only few rules and tools to shape a defense that doesn't just look like being the pins in bowling, and the advances of either side seem to be easier than defending.

The German advances is way too fast as it is. I guess this is pretty well accepted. Play against AI, dial it up to 119 across the board and reduce your own logistics to 50-70, and test whether you run into so serious problems that you run "aground" early due to dry supplies/fuel. Or even get stuck severely and pushed back by brutal counterattacks at certain phases. It won't happen, at least not be significant to stop you such as mud of blizzard does. But it should, even against a punching back you should -- taking usual consumption and average fighting -- at points simply have to go over to the defense of 1-4 weeks.

You can only change this by returning the Soviet units some "teeth" and more realistic reinforcements, so that a forward defense or even (desirably) brutal and relentless counterattacking does result in a better attrition rate (see the discussion of the retreat losses etc etc), and a little more success. Presently, if you do so while the German side hasn't made mistakes already and is behind the curve, you just waste your force and sell it way to cheaply to big pockets. Clausewitz would turn in his grave to waste them for (militarily) worthless ground that you even have plenty of. This could work, but still logistics would be too generous for the attacker.

If you did so, and would get typical games in which the German side is more stretched, weakened by more losses, etc. then you could finally do away with the 2:1 rule for blizzard. But also here you need to tune down logistics to get the Soviet side to focus on small sectors for counterattacks as they also did not have the means and power to do what is presently possible if you forced the German to fight for every inch without a single step back.

You'd end up with a game, without the player being forced to anything. Perfect. Use houserules to require the Soviets to fight forward, and they'll like do it automatically if it carries fruits to attrit the Germans and slow them. Besides, it is probably fun to counterattack and screw up your opponents plans more than presently the desperate retreat is. You could allow your German opponent hindsight and allow him hear the calling of the Generals, foremost Guderian, to stop the offensive with first mud, retreat and form shorter, not overextended lines. Or have a houserule that requires to also hold forward and get punished, though not as bad without the 2:1.

Guess it is all mingled, and if you touch the 2:1 rule, you have to touch upon the Soviet base proficiency/morale and their reinforcements, so manpower, APs and cost etc etc. Touch on the retreat losses and start over fine-tuning everything. That will hopefully happen for WitW and WitE2. But for now, I guess we can be pretty happy to have WitE, which actually does a really good job already compared to anything there was before on computer.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Schmart
To answer the original question, to a certain extent the game should encourage the Axis to gamble on a short war approach, because that was their only (slim) chance of success.

Or because it was the actual and original war plan and "victory goal" of "Barbarossa"? The basis of their entire logistic and military plan?
Because it was the reason the Germans pushed so hard from October to early December despite mounting losses, slimming cadres of units, growing logistic problems and dangerous overextension -- the requirement that perhaps only allowed the success of the Soviet blizzard battles -- while Generals were already urging to stop and winter it out?

But I agree with the choice of your words: "encourage" is just right. Not force, but give incentives to give "everything" for a quick victory. Perfect choice of words.

[rmonical]

Play against AI, dial it up to 119 across the board and reduce your own logistics to 50-70, and test whether you run into so serious problems that you run "aground" early due to dry supplies/fuel.

Have you tried this?

[janh]

ORIGINAL: rmonical
Have you tried this?

Yes, I have different standard setting when playing Axis, when Soviet, and during 41, blizzard and later period to make up for generous logistics, or the blizzard weirdness.

Axis:
41: Putting the Soviet AI values to 119% makes it act a lot better, and will require you to think more about hasty versus deliberate attacks. Reduce in particular the Axis logistics setting to 50-70. The rest is quite ok. If you are unhappy with the flexibility of the German staff to assign etc. set administration up to 150% or so. It is no game breaker.
Blizzard: reduce both sides logistics to 50. Set Soviet moral modifier to 60 (! mediate the 2:1). Set Axis morale modifier to 120 or even higher. This kind of allows a no-step back strategy, at least against AI. Against humans, this might still be a terrible idea unless you are BigAnorak with a sleeve full of nasty tricks.
After that: Go back to the 41 settings. I tried to dial down Soviet logistics modifier in the later period to 60 as well, which reduces the number of attacks AI stages a little, but not as much as the morale setting does. However, since the Soviet advance usually is much slower than the Axis one, much smaller and slower hops, logistics does help even less to reduce the pace.

Soviet: Inverted, but only dial up the Axis morale modifier to 110. The Germans are already so powerful, that unless you manage to dig extended lines of forts>=2, they will keep bulling through triple-stacks with reserves behind supporting. However, I try to stay forward committed and don't have so many units digging, and give a full effort to relieve the front units (in the rather rare cases AI makes pockets -- it kind of starts setting them up often very very nicely, and just would have to finish sealing, or leave the units be until next turn's isolation, but instead in the last part of the movement phase then uses the Panzers etc. to wipe and rout them back into your lines instead of using the mobiles to penetrate deeper...) and try to counterattack as much as I can. The latter is difficult because the poor morale Soviet units lack MPs so often once the hexes are flipped, especially the mobiles types. And it is rather poorly effective, attrition with a 1:10 rate or worse is surely no a state under which the Soviets would have kept this up given they had the same reinforcements as in-game I'd guess.
During blizzard, tune down your own values to 60 or 70. And be gentle on AI, don't pocket them, else 42 won't have another offensive.

[timmyab]

Jahn, just to be clear.You are agreeing with me yes?Or did you mean to quote Chuckles?
You seem to be saying more or less the same thing as me only using a lot more words.

[janh]

Maybe I should add that a good scenario to quickly test the parameter are the smaller ones, Demyansk, Fall Blau etc. You'd need to see the opponent/AI to be able to at least do something that is similar in potential to what was done historically, else something is poorly off.

Demyansk is nice because pockets in this game are already hard to keep alive for reasonable periods. Make sure the units in Demyansk get surrounded with an airfield present, and see how many turns they survive the AI hammering. I think a good tuning should give you a pockets that survives 7 out of 10 times you rerun the scenario. That happens with 60 for AI morale and logistics in particular. That way you can stage a relieve attempt and recreate history. If this were not possible with this engine, it would not be an (even only abstract) simulation, but merely a very distantly reminiscent game of the Eastern war. Sort of playing it out with a chess game, where the Red side gets triple the counters.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: timmyab
Jahn, just to be clear.You are agreeing with me yes?Or did you mean to quote Chuckles?
You seem to be saying more or less the same thing as me only using a lot more words.

I am agreeing with you, and from skimming through here with the vast majority of others. Don't force anything, and if so, please only with optional rules you can select at start. The more flexibility you leave in and in to houserules, the more you can get out of a single game.

Btw. there is lots of good ideas being thrown around these days, about the Corps staff rating etc. Let's hope Joel & Co read these things as well and think them over.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: rmonical
Have you tried this?

Yes, I have different standard setting when playing Axis, when Soviet, and during 41, blizzard and later period to make up for generous logistics, or the blizzard weirdness.

Axis:
41: Putting the Soviet AI values to 119% makes it act a lot better, and will require you to think more about hasty versus deliberate attacks. Reduce in particular the Axis logistics setting to 50-70. The rest is quite ok. If you are unhappy with the flexibility of the German staff to assign etc. set administration up to 150% or so. It is no game breaker.
Blizzard: reduce both sides logistics to 50. Set Soviet moral modifier to 60 (! mediate the 2:1). Set Axis morale modifier to 120 or even higher. This kind of allows a no-step back strategy, at least against AI. Against humans, this might still be a terrible idea unless you are BigAnorak with a sleeve full of nasty tricks.
After that: Go back to the 41 settings. I tried to dial down Soviet logistics modifier in the later period to 60 as well, which reduces the number of attacks AI stages a little, but not as much as the morale setting does. However, since the Soviet advance usually is much slower than the Axis one, much smaller and slower hops, logistics does help even less to reduce the pace.

When you say AI values at 119, do you mean morale, or also the transportation / logistics and fort construction? And as for German logistics, do you go for 50 or 70?

[Seminole]

RRrate in baltic goes to 10 RRrate in the rest goes to 5 or better. (historical)
Soviet has to defend forward or its certain he will lose (or so Im told)
Remove the German spring surprise rule advantages. (gamey anyway)
The soviet now can defend forward. (playbalance restored)

You don't make is easier for the Soviet to defend forward by giving the Germans better supplies. You'll just have more and bigger pockets, as Panzers continue being able to bound forward at June/July rates of advance. That's why so many patches were introduced to nerf German supplies.

[Seminole]

Japan is an interesting case here as well. They actually "won" the peace post WW2. Showing that their previous policy of colonialism and economic autarky was unnecessary and self defeating. Although they now have a terrible deflation problem that should have been addressed long ago. (BOJ finally has decided to get serious about this.)

The Japanese are blowing up their economy, and the money printing will only make things worse.
If you're interested in the how/why check out this piece from Kyle Bass, too much to get into here. (skip ahead to 8:45 for his start)

[hfarrish]

I think that's the first time Kyle Bass has entered into a WITE discussion. I like it.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: SigUp
When you say AI values at 119, do you mean morale, or also the transportation / logistics and fort construction? And as for German logistics, do you go for 50 or 70?

Moral, logistics and transport levels are the main ones. The latter two I always put to the same values, never changed them separately. I'd don't have game or manual handy, but I think that this transportation dial only affects the RR/train transport allocation. Moral is the one that really strongly affects AI aggressiveness. 119% is a huge difference to 100.
If you reduce it to 60 for the Soviets in blizzard, the number of attacks goes down a lot. It only makes sense if you have pushed your Axis units hard, them being in bad and overextended shape, and perhaps use lots of broken down counters. Else it may be better to dial it back up to 80 or more, but then the Soviet AI got to many lucky attacks wiping out the Demyansk pocket.

The fort level at 119% seems ok, didn't notice any extensive fort growth. May depend on your interpretation of what a fort level corresponds to, but I interpret level 2 as field fortifications that can be put up by units without huge engineering support in a week or two. With 119, this happens quicker and you'll notice more own losses on the German side.

For playing AI this is all fine and good though as you can restrain yourself. Besides not being sure that difficulty settings affect PBEM or server games at all, or that they can be changed intermittently, I am not sure this would really resolve many isses. Hindsight and optimization tactics like using fuel-economic motorized division to do the large hops instead of running the Panzers around far and wide simply have a pronounced impact on the degree the German side can do better than history. But the Soviet side can also do a lot better by just not repeating many foolish ideas, like the 41 fighting for worthless and tactically unsuitable grounds, or pushing the blizzard offensive to bloody and far.

[SigUp]

OK, thanks, I will try a new game. I hoped that German 90 Soviet 110 would do an acceptable job delaying the German advance. And although I have not taken Smolensk yet the whole area between Smolensk and Vyazma is pocketed and I am knocking on the doors of Rzhev. In the South the advance is something close to historical, but the reason for that is the slow advance of the infantry. Armoured forces had very good MPs until they crossed the Dnepr. In the North I have taken Novgorod and this turn Mga, although I committed more forces than historical. As for the forts, I rather remain at 100 right now. Although the losses would be better represented I think that it would be a little bit much. Well, I am not too great a player, that has a significant influence. [:D]

[janh]

I am sure I am far from being a good player either. Perhaps everyone has to find a good set of parameters for himself. I am sure players like Michael or Pelton, who do actually count hexes and MPs carefully and plan much more ahead, would be able to squeeze out a lot more with the same parameters (of course in particular against AI). I never do so much planning and also spent less time fine tuning the officer assignments and Luftwaffe than a good player surely does. I should probably as well, especially as Soviet, but...

[chuckfourth]

Hi Sigup

A point comes in the Game where the Russians have grown big enough to go on the offensive and there is nothing the Germans can do about it. Making the RRrate historical (esp. in the Baltic) rather than the present nerfed down values just means that this change-over time moves further into the future, maybe 6 months or so. Is that a problem?

I agree of course the way the rail system is modeled poses an extra level of complication.

Dont forget I am proposimg this change in combination with dumping the spring surprise rule for Germany.

Dumping the spring surprise rule means the German Infantry will have just enough MPs to open the front for the panzers and not advance much more than a couple of hexes into Russia.

Those Panzers that have got out to behind minsk etc in the first week will have nothing guarding there supply line back other than one or two motorised divisions broken down into regiments. This makes these spearheads a much better target for counterattacks and cut off.

Best Regards Chuck.

[chuckfourth]

Hi timmyab

When you say much worse, Would I be right in assuming that means the time when the Russians built up enough strength to go on to the offensive would just be pushed further into the future (a matter of months Im guessing) or do you think the Soviet would lose the game because of it?

Best Regards Chuck.

[chuckfourth]

Hi Seminole

You don't make is easier for the Soviet to defend forward by giving the Germans better supplies

Good point. But not my point. Heres my point.

You make it easier for the Soviets to defend forward by removing the German Spring surprise rules.

Giving the Germans better RRrate (esp in Baltic) is historically accurate. We all agree historical accuracy is a good thing.

I think that the disadvantage of moving to historical RRRate for the Soviets would be balanced by dropping the (ahistoric) Spring surprise rule.

Ive explained why a couple of posts above.

By the way does anyone have a reference that details just how far the German infantry did manage to march into Russia in the first week?

Best Regards Chuck.

[SigUp]

Honestly, the surprise turn has little effect on how hard it is for the Soviet to fight forward. What determines this ability is one, the combat system which makes a Soviet attrition strategy impossible and two, the mobility of the German mobile units.