Smokindave vs. Sapper222 (No Sapper)

[smokindave34]

Losses - yes I know the German captured number is brutal. Compliments of Sappers blizzard offensive....

[smokindave34]

Production:

I haven't had an armament point in 3 months. I've moved some of my high build cost artillery back to OKH to try and lessen the drain on my armaments. Sapper launches wave after wave of air attacks (airbase and ground attack). This turn I lost 342 arty units to air attacks and 377 to ground combat. I'd really like to be attacking more right now but it only serves to lower my OOB more each turn. I'm going to stick around in this game until the start of '43 to see what effect my increased armaments multiplier will have on things. Maybe I'll be able to attack more at that point.

The other effect of the constant air attacks is that my Luftwaffe does not engage in any ground support during the Soviet turn. I'll never start another game without some house rule regarding bombing of airbases!

[smokindave34]

AGN

[smokindave34]

AGC - thats Minsk to the east (Minsk!!!!)

[smokindave34]

17th and 6th armies: Sapper is dangerously close breaking through to an area where I have no forts. I have a replacement panzer division arriving next turn and it will be sent to this area.

[smokindave34]

Rumanian border

[timmyab]

Wow this looks bad.
It's no disgrace though, the Soviet side is way overpowered starting from the first blizzard.It's difficult to say for certain but I'd say the game's timeline is off by up to a year, maybe six months at best.Basically German players should be looking to try and survive until mid to late 44, anything after that is a bonus.

[STEF78]

Mud comes soon, it will hold.

You built a lot of forts west of the Dniepr, weren't you able to hold this line during the blizzard?

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: timmyab

Wow this looks bad.
It's no disgrace though, the Soviet side is way overpowered starting from the first blizzard.It's difficult to say for certain but I'd say the game's timeline is off by up to a year, maybe six months at best.Basically German players should be looking to try and survive until mid to late 44, anything after that is a bonus.

Leaving aside the usual blizzard problems and logistical issues, I think Sapper broke the airgame on this one. The Luftwaffe is gone and the Red Air Force is doing whatever it wants to do. 10-15k losses from the air a turn is insane.

Basically every possible game mechanic that could be abused got abused.

[SigUp]

Yes, the airgame is bad in WITE. The Red Airforce just balloons after the first month or so. Compared with the aircraft figures in the 42, 43 and 44 scenario I have the feeling that the average Soviet player possesses twice that number. Issue seems to be that it is impossible for the Germans to shoot down that many Soviet planes (or the Soviets losing that many). As far as I know the Red Airforce lost some 100.000 planes from 41 to 45. But by the looks of it WITW will make a significant step forward in this regard.

[timmyab]

Even without the cheese I would expect a good Soviet player to be in Berlin 6 to 12 months early.
I notice SD lost 20 divisions due to ZOC locks.I'd like to see a two hex minimum move for German units for WITE2 to better model their superior tactical abilities and avoid unhistorical German pockets.
I dread to think what sort of wackiness people are going to come up with for the air game in WITW.

[Flaviusx]

Actually, from what I saw of it, the WITW air model will get rid of spam bombing. It's totally different beast.

Which isn't to say that folks won't come up with totally new cheese, but at least we'll have something new to argue over.

So far as the blizzard goes, it seems Sapper has perfected some kind of crazy combination of zoc locking and hasty attacks...more spam, in other words. Reign in the logistics, tone down the morale hit, and tame big red and much of this ought to go away. The blizzard shouldn't be deciding games. It's too easy to leverage it right now, and I won't pretend otherwise. Despite MT's superb recent winter defense in his AAR.

[timmyab]

What do you think of a two hex MM for German units?I don't want to stop Soviet players having their fun in the blizzard on a smaller scale, but I think destroyed German divisions in 41 should be rarities or simply due to incompetence.

[Flaviusx]

I dunno, I think the key is changing up the blizzard itself and reigning in the offensive capability of the Red Army, while not wrecking German morale quite so much. Make hedghehog defenses more possible for the Wehrmacht, too. The Red Army simply shouldn't have much long range offensive capability, it ought to be rapidly exhausting itself as it takes to the open ground and tries to bypass Axis defenses. This gets us closer to the kind of crazy front lines you saw in real life, with salients based on lines of communication and terrain features.

You can actually see a little bit of this in MT's game, which pleases me. But it's obviously extremely hard to do this with the present model. It ought to occur almost naturally, here you have to work against the grain of the system to do it and start with an extremely advantageous position as the Axis going into the winter.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: timmyab

Even without the cheese I would expect a good Soviet player to be in Berlin 6 to 12 months early.
I notice SD lost 20 divisions due to ZOC locks.I'd like to see a two hex minimum move for German units for WITE2 to better model their superior tactical abilities and avoid unhistorical German pockets.
I dread to think what sort of wackiness people are going to come up with for the air game in WITW.

Well, the Soviets could have ended the war in Summer 1944, had they invested the potential they (successfully) utilized in Belorussia into the area of Kovel. A drive from Kovel to Warsaw and then to the Baltic Sea could have spelled disaster for the Germans.

[timmyab]

Both sides made serious mistakes so I guess we'll never know for sure.
If everyone reached a consensus that the Soviets should be in Berlin a year or six months early that would be fine by me.You'd need to adjust the victory conditions accordingly though.Even as it stands now, if the Soviets take Berlin by June 45 they get a win - WHY?This should be a draw or even an Axis minor.

[Flaviusx]

I don't buy an early Soviet victory, myself. For both political and logistical reasons. I am absolutely convinced that the game's design accelerates operational tempo in general for both sides, and once the Soviets can seize the initiative for good they will tend to get ahead of their historical timetable as a result. It's the flipside of the 1941 situation for the Germans, which is also hugely accelerated.

Game just needs to slow the hell down. More friction, please.

[SigUp]

I do agree that in the current engine the game is too fluid. Aside from the times of rasputitza advances can be sustained for practically infinity. Neither side is stopped by logistical using vanilla settings. With the experts in using the broken aerial resupply feature the German summer campaign of 1941 is basically a continuous advance from June to October, instead of the advance degenerating into spurts once the Germans outran their supply lines starting in July. Similarly the Soviets are never forced to halt their campaign for a few months. Another issue that prevents historical movement is the combat system that's favouring the winner. Right now the Germans won't suffer 800.000 casualties until December, and the Soviets won't have to deal with offensives running out of steam due to enormous losses.

[smokindave34]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Actually, from what I saw of it, the WITW air model will get rid of spam bombing. It's totally different beast.

Which isn't to say that folks won't come up with totally new cheese, but at least we'll have something new to argue over.

So far as the blizzard goes, it seems Sapper has perfected some kind of crazy combination of zoc locking and hasty attacks...more spam, in other words. Reign in the logistics, tone down the morale hit, and tame big red and much of this ought to go away. The blizzard shouldn't be deciding games. It's too easy to leverage it right now, and I won't pretend otherwise. Despite MT's superb recent winter defense in his AAR.

I'm happy to hear this. I was concerned that under a design simlar to WITE's air war the 8th air force would be the ultimate weapon to unleash on the axis.

I like the 2 hex minimum rule for the blizzard (or any other condition for that matter). I think it would encourage axis players to fight during the blizzard without the fear of losing multiple divisions to ZOC locks from those pesky tank brigades.

[smokindave34]

ORIGINAL: STEF78

Mud comes soon, it will hold.

You built a lot of forts west of the Dniepr, weren't you able to hold this line during the blizzard?

I stopped pulling back when I reached my fort lines and unfortunately thats when I really got in trouble. Sapper was able to concentrate his attacks on my flanks and then send in cavalry divisions or tank brigades to lock me up. I was able to use my armor to free up some units but it wasn't until February that I could count on a combat victory from even my best units.

Sapper has learned to get the most out of every aspect of the game and I respect that however it's just not my type of game (and not because I'm getting trashed). I'd prefer to not see fantasy results from either side.