Since early 44 my PBEM has turned silly -----

[Cavalry Corp]

I have been very much enjoying this game after managing to learn the airside of things after an immense struggle. I still think it's overcomplicated and unnecessary but it is what it is.
I still cannot really work out transport aircraft and can never get enough supply into bases to make them work at all.

My current play bar e-mail is in July 1944 now, and as you can see from the map, the Germans gave the Russians of good hiding during 42 and 43 to an extent.
Once the winter 43 came along with pretty much consistently clear whether I got trashed by the Russians. There is nothing you can do to stop them. I realised that the winter of 43 may have been milder but you should have much more mud turns.

Our PBEM been through a lot of patches.

I'm really not kidding but I am losing two or three leaders every turn now. There must be a way of rebalancing this because it is just silly. Please see the screens attached. Because the HQ is run the risk of retreat, there is no point in putting good leaders in charge of the units, which is completely against what happened. I would say that leaders in HQ's that are stacked with combat units reduce the chances of being killed when retreating by at least 75% from where it is now. They should also only face a maximum of say two chances in a given turn of bad event happening.

The national reserve is not working for me and the units are not filling out despite squads being in the polls et cetera. Please look at my Tiger pool it's over 500 strong that is just stupid. I think some of these changes came along in one of the recent patches and it is making it unplayable as I cannot refit units at all that leave the map. This means the front is completely disintegrating by the complexity of the game itself not by my actions. The strange thing is unit seemed to have much more chance of refitting properly if they go into the theatre boxes which I thought was against what we were told about the game. National reserve receives priority over everybody, I was told. I realised that you change this in a recent patch, but you need to consider games that are approaching the period we are in will be ruined by these changes.

The operational losses on aircraft are way too high. It's rather strange that the game AE seems to have these losses about spot on and I do not see anyone complaining about them. Also, I have said before that flak units should not be firing at units flying over unless that are attached to Towns etc. I don't know who thought up this system, but I don't like it. And perhaps you need a button to say choose route around least Flak if you want to work around for it.

I would also say that national morale should only change when certain events are triggered rather than just having fixed dates. That is killing, My army has been victorious during 42 and most of 43 and then by the computer programme gets turned into a heap of Jelly.

All in all things have gone off the rails now in 1944 and I think some of these things need addressing for the sake of the future.

These criticisms are intended to be constructive, and I hope the experience of this long running play by e-mail is of some value to the developers.

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[Cavalry Corp]

Tigers!! So many and no use!!!

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[Jango32]

Did you actually put the units in the reserve on refit mode?

[Joel Billings]

It could be all about manpower (lack of it). Do you have a save, or is this a game on the server? If you have a save, please email it to 2by3@2by3games.com. I'm interesting in looking at the situation. For July 44 you still hold a lot of territory, but without a save I can't really comment.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

What date is the map screenshot from? If it is up to date and early 44 you look to be well ahead of the curve - looks to me like you still hold Smolensk (albeit encircled - fell Sept 43) and are still around places like Kharkov (fell August 43) and Orel (fell August 43). If I've read the turn summary correctly your opponent needs almost 200 more VP by the end of 1944 otherwise he will lose.

So it looks to me that you have plenty of space that you can trade for time and the opportunity to rest and refit whilst the Soviets catch up.

I think the morale issue is a question of preference - I know that AlbertN was very vocal in his AAR about how he didn't feel it was correct that his apparently victorious army was losing morale towards the lower NM. The way I see it is this - that the morale/NM represents a combination of pre-combat training levels and the 'will to fight' and or perception of how the war is going overall. If you don't get a sudden death victory then the game will be following roughly historical lines and it will be becoming increasingly apparent to your soldiers that eventual Soviet victory is inevitable and all they are fighting for is to delay this sufficiently in the hope that a political solution can be found (most likely surrender to the Western Allies) before the Soviets reach Germany. The dropping NM reflects that realization. Its worth remembering that your units do not lose their experience in the same inevitable way that they do with their morale. So for me the system makes sense in terms of first principles. That's not to say that everything is working mechanically in terms of how morale and experience are weighted in the combat engine.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, and it's not just about will to fight/morale. It's about the efficiency that is lost as units lose soldiers, or have soldiers that have fought without let up for far too long and are past the point of their effectiveness. Yes, ideally there would be a system that would account for losses and other factors and reduce national morale based on that. But this would be INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT to balance out (sorry for yelling). We've discussed it many times since early WitE1 days, but we never felt we could get it to work well enough in our lifetimes. BTW, the event system provides a way to mod national morale, so there may be a way to create events that alter morale. It might require adding a few new items to check against, but Pavel has said adding these are fairly easy for him to do. If someone was actually trying to do this and knew what they wanted to check, we could look into adding them. However, I know I wouldn't want to try to do this myself as I think it would be very hard to balance.

[Cavalry Corp]

Ok thanks for the replies.

we are last week July 44

I realise I am ahead of the curve so to speak that's because he lost a lot in 42 and 42. The Army now is being destroyed by extra low Morale, lack of replacements entering units and the weather in winter 43 - which was too nice - not even virtually any mud. Then there are the leader losses.

I think I thought in NR they are always in refit?? - let me check but I did set them the 100% TOE but nobody seems to get almost anything - I cannot return units to the front as they are not filling out BUT I have tons of stuff in the Pool, I agree if I had not had the stuff ready they cannot refit, that is fair enough.

I will send a turn its not server its plain old PBEM. tks for listening.

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[Joel Billings]

No doubt it is a global manpower shortage. If you check your active manpower pool, it's probably very low (what you get built in one turn). You need men to put weapons back into units. If you check your supply details for units that you think should be getting men and aren't, likely you are getting No Manpower with a low number next to it indicating that manpower ran out quickly in the replacements phase. Have the Allies invaded France and made progress in Italy? This all starts to use up manpower. If you have most of your units on 100% Max TOE, that could also be an issue. Most divisions were running at lower levels (certainly infantry divisions), which frees up manpower to fill the mobile divisions.

[Jango32]

Units in the national reserve are not automatically set to refit mode, no. You need to explicitly set every one to refit mode. You can tell if refit mode is activated if there is a green symbol present on that unit's counter in the reserve TB.

[Cavalry Corp]

OK I will check these points but what about 3k squads in the pools - do you mean they do not exist as ready to join units ?

save sending in a moment

yes allies in Normandy and Italy.

[M60A3TTS]

OK I will check these points but what about 3k squads in the pools - do you mean they do not exist as ready to join units ?

save sending in a moment

yes allies in Normandy and Italy.

3k squads in the pool only represents the necessary equipment to fill them out, i.e. things like rifles, grenades, etc. It does not include a single soldier. That is what the manpower is for. Think of it solely as an equipment pool that must be married up with an entirely separate manpower pool.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

So I just popped into the 1941 campaign start and as far as I can tell if you are just playing for the victory the game is already won.

By my calculations the Soviet victory points held at the beginning of the campaign are 540VPs.

So to avoid a sudden loss at the end of 1944 your opponent needs to not only get you back to your 1941 start line but also get another c.100VPs on top of that.

It looks to me that your opponent has done a good job of smashing up your army through sheer weight of numbers and attrition but has fallen short of the ambition/imagination needed to exploit that advantage by concentrating his forces to achieve strategic successes and not just tactical/operational ones.

If you wanted to make the game a bit more interesting than just running the clock down to the end of the year you could retreat like 10-20 hexes in the south and see if you can outmanoeuvre your opponent to achieve a 'backhand blow' in 1944.

[Edit] The one thing that seems a bit off to me is the number of leader deaths which seem really high? Where are you placing your HQs? Are your leaders dying when their HQs get displaced or in 'normal' combat situations where your Corps HQs are c.3-5 hexes back from the front line?

[carlhebert]

I am the Russian opponent. I like the last post because it focuses in my strategy, which may or may not be well-advised (this is my first campaign game to the end). My thought was to wear down the Axis with attrition and then, when Axis manpower becomes critically low, break through the crust and start encircling Axis formations to widen the breach. This just happened when the Axis lost the equivalent of approximately 2 or 3 armies in a variation of Stalingrad near Bryansk. So far the Axis has lost in excess of 5 million men (I have lost slightly more than 12 million, mostly in the first 3 years). I have no way to know yet if these numbers are atypical. I also won't know if I have waited too late in the game to finally break through. I guess I will find out. I also pursued a northern sub-strategy to force Finland out of the war, which occurred in March or April of 1944--got some good victory points from that one, I think. Just finally captured Pskov, too.

Yes, the Axis has lost a lot of leaders. Cavalry Corp often places them near the front lines and I specifically target them to cause leader casualties during displacement. I get the leader casualty messages during my attacks and I see a bunch of replacement leaders I have never heard--probably low competence jumped-up party functionaries.

Finally, I have learned from bitter experience from my very worthy opponent about back-hand blows and I am always on the lookout now, having taken some severe losses on occasion. Stalin would be proud.

[malyhin1517]

Cavalry Corp often places them near the front lines and I specifically target them to cause leader casualties during displacement. I get the leader casualty messages during my attacks and I see a bunch of replacement leaders I have never heard--probably low competence jumped-up party functionaries.

I hope you don't overwrite headquarters attacks until you kill the general? Because if you make a save before attacking the headquarters, then you can repeat the attack until you get his kill!

[Veterin]

Sounds like an interesting game. Could you share the OOB screen and Loss screen out of curiosity

[carlhebert]

One attack-one result. Anything else would be dishonest. The odds of killing a leader in a displacement movement is fairly high, if I recall. Maybe as high as 50%.

[carlhebert]

I confess to not knowing how to take a screen shot. Once I figure it out, I will take shots of the loss screens.

[malyhin1517]

One attack-one result. Anything else would be dishonest. The odds of killing a leader in a displacement movement is fairly high, if I recall. Maybe as high as 50%.

The chances of killing the general by moving the headquarters have been significantly reduced. If I remember correctly, up to 15% approximately.

[Cavalry Corp]

Here are my replies.

My HQ are put where they need to be and almost always behind the lines and stacked with a unit.I do not just leave them wandering about. Maybe when a HQ gets a retreat/ displacement result it should retreat to be stacked with a unit within its organisation not stand in an open field.

My leader loss is very very high now. Cannot believe its 15% chance of a kill. That still seems a bit too high anyway. I am losing 2 or 3 a week.

We play the games for the long term so this is the no surrender campaign. I suppose its fair to say I play for the journey and never winning on technicalities - its been pretty ok until that 43 winter. It was just like summer regards devastation. Please look at the weather. From reading - I think may players finish games by end of 41?

I made a mistake in thinking elements that are ready are truly squads - I had no idea it depended on MP. That is my fault but what about the 500 Tigers and other stuff do they exist? assume they do.

[Veterin]

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Base loss is 15% but in the living manual they note that actual losses tend to be higher (there must be some complex coding in place if the true loss rate is unknown!).

It's possible that the HQ displaces more than once in a turn too if enemy units keep bumping up against it after it displaced the first time.