Of Course Not, The Entire Game Is An Anti-German Design [8D] - Bread (Axis) vs Beethoven (Soviet)

[AlbertN]

I said that long long ago already when I proposed more granular VPs.

Bonus VP should be handed out only to the side with the initiative.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

lol
A good way of fixing it - no VP bonus for Soviets until initiative switch. Right now it is a stupid situation where Axis do not take cities as they can lose this cities and VP cuz of a winter/bug with an urban combat.

Something along those lines sounds like a good suggestion to me. Although for the specifics it might need some careful thought regarding a couple places like Rostov that were taken in 1941 but then lost again in 1941, I don't know how it could/should work in that sort of case.

But currently the VP system gives players strange incentives in some cases, in particular it gives an incentive NOT to take cities like Voronezh or Tula because Axis will end up with less VPs (due to Soviets getting bonus VPs) if they are re-taken during blizzard.

[Stamb]

Maybe I am missing something but I see no problem with Rostov or Kharkov.
Axis has initiative -> takes this cities, gets bonus VPs. Soviets take them back, Axis retake them ahead of schedule:
1. If Axis took this cities initially with a maximum VPs bonus - no bonuses are added, just base value.
2. If Axis took this cities initially without a maximum VPs bonuses, then a difference between maximum bonus and current bonus VPs, for a specific city, is calculated.


If Soviets take this cities ahead of time when they do not have initiative - they get base VP value. If Axis do not retake this cities any more then during initiative switch - maximum VP bonuses should be added to a Soviet side.

Maybe some polishing is needed in order to prevent abuse

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Just going through some of the VP locations mentioned.

Tula always is worth taking - as it never fell historically Axis will score 6 bonus points and Soviet will not score any whether they retake it in winter or not.

Rostov has a Soviet recapture date a turn later than the Axis date (turns 22 and 23). So if you are able to hold it for longer than a turn you will end up ahead - so that is probably always worth going for

Kalinin has recapture dates for both sides in 1941 (Turns 17 and 26). So I think that is situation specific. If Axis don't take it the Soviets are 'up' by 6 bonus points. Similarly if Axis take it on T20 and lose it on T23 Soviets are still up 6 bonus points. If they take it on T17 and lose it on T23 they are up 3 bonus points net. I think the risk for Axis with Kalinin is not so much that something odd could happen with the points but more that those points might turn out to be extremely expensive in terms of men and the position the effort might leave you in.

Rzhev is where things start getting odd. As far as I understand it if the Axis never take it the Soviets do not get their bonus points until the initiative switches. Given how late the Soviet recapture date is it is very hard to get a net gain on the bonus points. So in that situation it might be better to leave it in Soviet hands so it does not have any negative effect on the VP total until the initiative switches.

Voronezh is a similar one - in that case the Axis player can afford to leave it till 1942 and still get the full bonus. So it is better to delay taking it till then and avoid the risk of the Soviets retaking it during winter and getting a bonus themselves.

[Stamb]

You can not take Kalinin without taking Rzev, it has lvl 2 railyard. Technically you can ignore that 1 hex, but it makes no sense to do so.

[Zebtucker12]

Do people actually care about vps other than not getting a sudden death?

[Beethoven1]

Start of Soviet turn 5

Pskov falls:



Some attacks by motorized and infantry near Smolensk, but Panzers rest:



The bridgehead near Gomel is expanded, but Gomel itself still holds. I think my defensive unit placement last turn here was not very good (and in general it is somewhat substandard because I am doing turns relatively quickly rather than carefully). I was afraid this area in particular might be worse, but thankfully it is not.



More advance in the south, contested by only a few cavalry etc. Bread is going so far as to pocket NKVD border guards in some cases, which is sort of amusing.



Despite there only being battles on relatively small parts of the front, I took 163k losses, which may be a bad sign.



Here are Axis attacks this turn, with my losses in # of men. The highest 24k loss one was surrender of some isolated units that had been defending Tallinn. However, other than that, losses from deliberate attacks so far seem to be very high, often losing close to 100% of the defending Soviet troops. Losses from hasty attacks are a bit more manageable.



The next few turns are critical, mainly in terms of whether we continue to see losses be this high due to my lack of armies and generals etc, or whether they become lower as I start to get forts and better supply, and as the German infantry starts to get lower CPP from having attacked the previous turns.

Bread also tried running more interdiction in order to further check if it has any effect. This had a very minor effect:



However, despite the fact that I disbanded all my support AA and had no air force at all, Germany lost 317 planes and 241 of those from flak (mostly from the interdiction missions). The flak, I suppose was from cities where there is flak that you can't disband without AP (although I did set it all to 50% TOE) as well as flak in the infantry division TOEs.



It seems fairly clear that interdiction is not worthwhile in clear terrain, though under certain circumstances it could potentially be in rough/swamp/heavy forest terrain.

[AlbertN]

If I remember well the manual the lowest levels of interdiction only affects motorized units (and thus also freight delivery to units).
Non motorized units need some extra points of interdiction to suffer from it.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

If I remember well the manual the lowest levels of interdiction only affects motorized units (and thus also freight delivery to units).
Non motorized units need some extra points of interdiction to suffer from it.

More on the uselessness of interdiction:

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 5

THE GREAT YELNYA COUNTEROFFENSIVE, PART I

Semyon Budyonny, commander of the Western Front (our second assault front), has launched a POWERFUL ATTACK, thus kicking of The Great Yelnya Counteroffensive.

At precisely 3:27 AM on July 22, one month after the start of Barbarossa, Budyonny's men crept silently out of their swamps and suddenly attacked en masse, catching the fatigued 20th motorized division unawares. The Germans were thrown back with tremendous losses of 236 men. The 3rd motorized division was a tempting target, with just 3 cv according to our intelligence (which was slightly off and standing in clear terrain right in front of the gates of the clear path towards Yelnya. 2 divisions from STAVKA, with no commanders or officers of any sort whatsoever, also participated in the attack, proving that generals and officers are a bourgeois invention unnecessary for a proper proletarian army.

While some doubters had suggested that Budyonny should use army and corps commanders for his attack, Budyonny brushed off these counterrevolutionary suggestions as the fascist propaganda that they were.

This is but our first great victory, assuredly many more are to come.



By the way, the western front has only 63% TOE because I had it set on 50% TOE for a while until I decided to make it an assault front a turn or two ago. Who needs leader rolls when you have 117,000 men attacking 15,000?

[Stamb]

Army of front the Soviets are strong!

[Beethoven1]

End of Soviet Turn 5

Pulling back a bit in the north, 1 Panzer is isolated in Estonia:



In Smolensk I am really stacking up my defense. I have a lot of high quality units here, but bad commanders. If they can hold up ok without taking ridiculous casualties, then probably I will win the game. But if he can attack and get very high casualties against strong TOE stacked up units due to my bad leader rolls, then Germany may have a real chance. The next turn or two, in particular how effective the German infantry is at grinding, will probably determine how things go from here. I need the casualties to not be as bad as in those previous battles.



Pulling back a bit around Gomel, but mostly trying to stay out of range of the German infantry and use the swamps to stop the mobile units from advancing too quickly/easily. The obvious paths of advance are strewn with Airborne, NKVD, and cavalry to get in the way of the Panzers.



Cavalry cut off 1 Panzer north of Kiev. Sadly I could not cut off more. I have various generally weak units (mostly cavalry with some infantry further back) scattered around in the swamps to threaten to cut off the mobile units if they snake ahead to quickly.



Just a little bit of cavalry to similarly try to get in the way a bit and bee annoying. The Kirovoi Rog pocket was broken. The NKVD border guards in Kirovoi Rog have been ordered to hold out to the last man, and it is expected that they will hold for at least 5-10 turns, with heroic resistance.



You can also see here in this screenshot for the first time that I did not build forts or put units at the gates of Crimea. Why? Because I figured some Panzers would come down here, and they would end up breaking through on one of the 3-4 entrances. Once they broke through on any single one of the 3-4 entrances, then they would be able to cut off all the units defending the other 3-4 entrances, and I would end up losing 100-200k men or so for no real gain.

[Stamb]

My prediction for Smolensk - because of 50% CPP lose in any attack, even against weak units, German ID will lose combat capability rapidly. As a result - lack on firepower to grind through.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

My prediction for Smolensk - because of 50% CPP lose in any attack, even against weak units, German ID will lose combat capability rapidly. As a result - lack on firepower to grind through.

Yeah, that is one thing to keep in mind about my high losses on the deliberate attacks in the previous turn. Most of the German infantry that was attacking was probably in the 50-100 CPP range. But they won't always be that high. Also my supply issues will hopefully start to stabilize. They normally do and pretty soon all Soviet units have perfect supply, so they should do so as long as the supply issues are not caused by leader rolls, but instead are a temporary issue of railing the units around and new units on the map starting with low supply, and using freight for the large initial number of reinforcements rather than for supply (1 million man manpower pool!!!)

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

My prediction for Smolensk - because of 50% CPP lose in any attack, even against weak units, German ID will lose combat capability rapidly. As a result - lack on firepower to grind through.

And actually, you made me think of something.

If it indeed turns out that you are correct, and that is what happens, then I think that would suggest that one good way to buff Germany might be for them to get back 6 assault fronts in 1941.

Remember that the reason assault fronts were originally nerfed was mostly to nerf Soviets. So it may not have been needed to take Germany down from 6 to 4 assault fronts in 1941. The assault front command capacity was nerfed, so it would not be the case that Germany could have every infantry division under an assault front, just more of them than currently. That is also something that would affect balance in 1941, but not necessarily that much subsequently, and 1941 is the part where there seems to be the most obvious balance problem. Later years of the game are less certain due to fewer games having reached that period.

[Stamb]

I was not playing this awesome game in that golden era when Axis had 6 assault forms with 12 corps capacity. I only saw it in youtube
You need 4 turns, 1 month!, for a division in non assault army to get to 100 CPP without! moving. This is insane in my opinion.

I would also vote for 6 assault armies (that is quick fix probably) or I would like to see dynamic CPP in attack, as we already have it in defense.
I can not imagine why panzer division, ok not panzer division as they are pretty bad
Why SS division with close to a 50 attack with appropriate SUs is spending 50% of its CPP to attack airborne brigade in clear hex that was already beaten 3 times and is on the edge of shattering but somehow is still holding. This is a long way to fix it probably. But I think game will evolve to that stage. Sooner or later.

[Beethoven1]

Start of Soviet Turn 6

I took 170k losses:



Despite taking high losses from lack of generals, my OOB is now up significantly above 3 million men in the field:



Looking at individual battles, the results look a bit more promising than last turn for the prospect of my losses going down. There are still plenty of battles where I am losing 100% of my men to deliberate attacks, but there are more exceptions where I am not losing so many of them any more. It seems like that is happening more in battles where I have multiple divisions rather than just 1 defending, so I may try to do that more.



Also, it seems like my supply problems are quickly disappearing now that many units have been on the map and more or less stationary for a turn or two, with more trucks being mobilized etc etc. Despite the bad leader checks, I have now reached the point where I am getting significantly more supply than "need," so within another turn or two I expect my supply issues to be essentially totally resolved.

[Beethoven1]

Start of Soviet Turn 6

Grinding in the north. The division that I used to cut off the Panzer division is now isolated in Estonia, but that is fine. It has 5,000 men, which is less than I lose in a lot of deliberate attacks.



Smolensk fell to direct assault. I could have defended it more, but I sort of wanted him to attack there rather than other hexes. This gives a bit more time to build forts and for CPP to go up in the other hexes nearby.



More grind, no big breakthrough around Gomel:



More barely contested advance in the south:

[Beethoven1]

Soviet Turn 6

Bread has left out a 1 CV Panzer regiment in clear terrain. This won't end well for him, at least not unless I get very bad leader rolls. Which is... entirely possible!



We'll have to have our cavalry check this out and see if we can encircle it before attacking it, and thus rout it if we can win the battle.

[Beethoven1]

uh-oh. Clicking on cavalry reveals that he doesn't have any hidden units next to it, so I will be able to surround it and (hopefully) rout it.