FITE2 Is Russia Overpowered?

[torbenalbertsen]

Hi all

First a little background. Besides a few smaller, I have now played (without finishing) two big campaigns, first dir21 and next FITA2, both with a friend in PBEM mode. We started playing dir21 not knowing it to be designed for AI play. I played as russians and my friend as the axis, and the game ended with the russians completely overwhelming the germans in the winter offensive 41-42, at which point we quit and started FITA2. After learning that it was a game designed for AI play, we presumed then that since the russian was an AI adversary, it had to have been designed to be overpowered, hence accounting for the overwhelming victory.

We then turned the roles around, me as germans and my friend as the russians and playing FITA2. However, the game ended in the same fashion, the russians completely overwhelmed the axis by shear numbers in the first couple of rounds of their winter offensive 41. Now, I am quite content with admitting a few strategic blunders, but I also had some good victories, so I dare say the end result dosnt quite explain itself just because of the blunders. I had a look at the russian front (my opponent) in the end and found that the places of assault was basically 3 lines deep with almost 2 units in each line, where as my german force was at best two lines deep with 1 hole unit in front and a half unit behind, and a few reinforcments here and there, and this was were it was the strongest. In other places it was just half a unit. If the russians had only broken through were I was the weakest (in the south), it would have been understandable, as that was where his initial push came and were I made my strategic error, but they made breakthroughs on all my front simultaneously and in places where I considered myself strongest.

So, before playing the campaign again (turning the roles around again) we would like to ask some questions of more experienced players to see if maybe we are missing some information or doing something wrong, since in our experience it appears that the russians are way to overpowered.

a few questions:

1. does anyone have similar experiences?
2. Does the versions of FITA2 matter in terms of balancing? And, if they do, which version favours the germans.
3. We are concerned that we might have put the equipment files in the wrong place,(we are now aware of where to put it) but, Does the equipment files favour the Axis in any way? (or is that irrelevant to the balancing)
4. Might the rules of "no interception" be a little unbalancing in the campaign?

well, any hint, experiences or solutions are welcome.

thanks

torben

[fogger]

FitE2 is 2 human players only. There is no AI. What version of the game are you playing? Current version is 1.9 released 16 April 2020.

[torbenalbertsen]

HI

Yes, as I explained we played by PBEM mode. we have been playing version 1.4

[r6kunz]

Thanks for posting your experience. Understand this is a scenario by a group of dedicated guys with no remuneration, purely for the love history. It is through feedback such as your that the game progresses.
This game alone is worth the price of admission.
I have not had the time or energy to try playing this game, but I frequent it to find .eqp values for the Road to Moscow series. It has arguably the most researched stats of any game out there.

[fogger]

Try with the latest version. Some of the early versions the Russians were too strong. In the very early test games (back in 2015-17 under the beta tests) I did not get more than 100kms into Russian. The last game I played I got to turn 370.

[golden delicious]

The big challenge for any scenario which starts 22nd June 1941 is that, notwithstanding the structural problems of the Red Army, the Soviets unquestionably played incredibly badly for the opening part of the campaign, making pointless counterattacks, holding firm in positions which had been totally compromised and consistently being unreasonably optimistic about the situation. OKW for their part may not have played a perfect game, but certainly took full advantage of Soviet errors and weaknesses.

As such, assuming the Soviet player has some idea what he's doing, the only way to reproduce anything at all resembling the historical result is to force unreasonable actions on the Soviet player: to insist he holds certain points and even to oblige them to make impossible attacks. I've even heard it suggested that one could have a house rule requiring the Soviet player to make a certain number of attacks each turn which must always be carried out on "ignore losses". The other- perhaps more common- method of balancing is to broadly underestimate the material strength of the peacetime Red Army, so that the Germans can destroy it even when the two players are on a relatively equal footing, or so that extracting a significant portion of the western fronts into the Soviet interior doesn't appreciably add to Soviet strength later in 1941.

One could perhaps make a better scenario by starting from the position at some later point in the year- perhaps after the end of the rasputitsa season- but this problem continued long after the opening phase of the campaign, albeit less consistently. Soviet propaganda was excellent at covering up the mistakes of the regime, but successes like Stalingrad mask other, equally large but generally disastrous offensives which took place during the same timeframe. It was only from 1943, when Soviet material superiority started to justify the wild optimism of Stavka that these catastrophes started to become less of a major feature of the Russian war effort.

[torbenalbertsen]

Hi

I dont quite understand this comment:

"The other- perhaps more common- method of balancing is to broadly underestimate the material strength of the peacetime Red Army, so that the Germans can destroy it even when the two players are on a relatively equal footing, or so that extracting a significant portion of the western fronts into the Soviet interior doesn't appreciably add to Soviet strength later in 1941"

are you suggesting letting some of the russian force stay in the russian interior without using them?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: torbenalbertsen

Hi

I dont quite understand this comment:

"The other- perhaps more common- method of balancing is to broadly underestimate the material strength of the peacetime Red Army, so that the Germans can destroy it even when the two players are on a relatively equal footing, or so that extracting a significant portion of the western fronts into the Soviet interior doesn't appreciably add to Soviet strength later in 1941"

are you suggesting letting some of the russian force stay in the russian interior without using them?

No, I'm suggesting that if the Soviet player has a free hand in how to use their force from turn 1, but the German player is still able to achieve a historical level of success, it's likely to be because the actual balance of force between the two sides has been manipulated by the designer, either to make the Soviet western armies weaker or the Axis forces more potent (this is often done with big shock effects that last for months rather than days).

[loveman2]

I have played as Germans in 1 of my games with an opponent and was doing well until the Russian winter counterattack and have lost half the German army and have retreated back to the German start line. It appears the Russians are way to strong in the winter of 1941?.

[FaneFlugt]

ORIGINAL: loveman2

I have played as Germans in 1 of my games with an opponent and was doing well until the Russian winter counterattack and have lost half the German army and have retreated back to the German start line. It appears the Russians are way to strong in the winter of 1941?.

Did you pick operation Typhoon ? (2 turns with 140 shock, 2 turns with 120 shock, 4 turns with 80 shock) that coincides with the russian Winter offensive?

[gliz2]

The problem with FITE2 is that it tries to be historical on a fictional basis. While do understand that there is a big value in historical setup, soon enough the scenario (because of its scale and timeline) becomes completely ahistorical.
And of course there is no political restrictions which had immense impact on the actual military activities.

All the Russian player has to do is set up defenses. So no counterattacks and blowing up any bridges and ze Germans soon run into trouble (Russian player defending has less chances for organization penalties than when attacking).

I would appreciate more randomness and more flexibility (like allowing for Germans to use more paratroops or maybe penalize Russians for not counterattacking with -VPs).

Also the mechanics of troops transporting by rail is ridiculous. While transporting by ship allows for move after disembarking this is not possible for trains. Which is comical since very often the whole divisions were transported on trains within a day or two straight into the fight.

[Zovs]

All war games become ahistorical as soon as turn one begins because it’s impossible for any game to mimic history exactly, it’s been like that since 1958 when AH introduced Tactics II. I would not want to play an exact historical recreation because it would be boring and would always end the same way it did historically. That being said all Wargames have some historical aspects to them, but they allow you to explore history and operational warfare.

Hope that makes sense.

[gliz2]

Was not my point. I was not referring to replaying historical events.

If you play (relatively) short scenarios (like Normandy or Bagration) the historical setup (events, reinforcements) it makes perfect sense and even some deviations are not hard to program.

But in a long scenarios (over 1 year) this becomes a nuisance and disrupts the game. For example the designer must program reinforces and political events. And should Germans capture Moskau why Hitler would declare war on USA?
Furthermore you are in a god-mode (no one above you, only you are making decisions). Yet you are restrained by "historical/political events". Makes little sense.

When I played the old board game of Easter Front we were negotiating a lot as the things unravelled. After a while we even developed some plausibility scenarios. So for example ze Germans allowed to use full paratroops capabilities or no/delayed war on USA. For Soviet it was for example allowing Kuznetsov tactics (avoiding main battles and burning things as you go).

Unfortunately this is not much possible in AI gaming.

[fogger]

Which is comical since very often the whole divisions were transported on trains within a day or two straight into the fight.

This has been one of my bitches for the past 20 years. I often use the example of an Army exercise I did. On Sunday morning 0500hrs we moved from the Enoggera Army base to the Roma Street Railroad yard, a distance of approx 7kms. We loaded the APC's / LRV's onto railroad flat tops and moved them to Shoalwater bay training area which is approx 630kms from the Roma street Railyard.

The exercise started 24 hours later at 0500hrs on Monday morning.

In TOAW that is one turn to move 7kms, 2nd turn to move 600kms, 3rd turn to move 30kms to the start line. In FITE2 where a turn is 3.5days that is 10.5 days to do something that in real life was 24 hours..

[Lobster]

In August 1943 the Russians moved an army headquarters, a corps headquarters, and six rifle divisions from the Kuban bridgehead to the Ukraine in about two weeks.
The units were the 47th Army and 10th Corps headquarters and the 337th, 30th, 29th, 409th, 353rd, and 223rd Rifle Divisions.

Moving a tank corps and a mechanized corps 1,000 km would effectively stop any other movement on a double-track
line for a week.

The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945
Walter S. Dunn, Jr.
PRAEGER - Westport, Connecticut London

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: fogger

Which is comical since very often the whole divisions were transported on trains within a day or two straight into the fight.

This has been one of my bitches for the past 20 years. I often use the example of an Army exercise I did. On Sunday morning 0500hrs we moved from the Enoggera Army base to the Roma Street Railroad yard, a distance of approx 7kms. We loaded the APC's / LRV's onto railroad flat tops and moved them to Shoalwater bay training area which is approx 630kms from the Roma street Railyard.

The exercise started 24 hours later at 0500hrs on Monday morning.

In TOAW that is one turn to move 7kms, 2nd turn to move 600kms, 3rd turn to move 30kms to the start line. In FITE2 where a turn is 3.5days that is 10.5 days to do something that in real life was 24 hours..

Well- how far in advance was your training operation planned?

How quickly would the move have taken place if it was in response to an enemy breakthrough that happened on the Saturday evening- and the flatbeds were 500km away with a load of farm equipment headed in the wrong direction?

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: fogger

Which is comical since very often the whole divisions were transported on trains within a day or two straight into the fight.

This has been one of my bitches for the past 20 years. I often use the example of an Army exercise I did. On Sunday morning 0500hrs we moved from the Enoggera Army base to the Roma Street Railroad yard, a distance of approx 7kms. We loaded the APC's / LRV's onto railroad flat tops and moved them to Shoalwater bay training area which is approx 630kms from the Roma street Railyard.

The exercise started 24 hours later at 0500hrs on Monday morning.

In TOAW that is one turn to move 7kms, 2nd turn to move 600kms, 3rd turn to move 30kms to the start line. In FITE2 where a turn is 3.5days that is 10.5 days to do something that in real life was 24 hours..

If you used half your movement allowance getting to the rail line you should have some rail movement left. If you used half of your rail movement to get to your destination you should have some of your non rail movement left. Or at least it seems that's how it should work.

[Zovs]

I do believe that this 'issue' has been present with TOAW I. For whatever reason Norm and then Ralph has never changed this aspect.

[fogger]

"Well- how far in advance was your training operation planned?"

Not relevant as we were dealing with peace time public servants. At that time Qld rail was part of the public service. The flattops were booked about a week in advance.

"How quickly would the move have taken place if it was in response to an enemy breakthrough that happened on the Saturday evening- and the flatbeds were 500km away with a load of farm equipment headed in the wrong direction?"

In war time we would have driven there. But in peace time we had a limit of how many "track" kms a armoured vehicle could do in one year.

[sPzAbt653]

Unit Supply affects how far a unit can move by rail - less supply = less distance a unit can move by rail. Not sure that should really work that way.