Zone of Control exerted by unready or tiny units

[ToxicThug11]

Zone of Control exerted by 1,000 man NKVD detachments is equal to a Soviet Rifle Division consisting of 15,000 men and 200 guns.

This means that if you are using a Panzer Division and run into a NKVD detachment, you must pay a large amount of MPs to move past tiny formations that have no business holding up an entire Panzer Division.

Small units such as NKVD detachments, Airborne Brigades, the Osel Rifle Regiment, and low toe Cavalry "Divisions" currently have a much higher value than they would've historically due to their ZOC. Preventing hex flipping is one thing, halting entire divisions with a meager amount of men is another.

The easy fix is to remove ZOC from these tiny units, but I'd like to propose something which makes a bit more sense:

ZOC based on unit strength.

Three Soviet Rifle Divisions (45,000 men, 600 guns) will naturally exert a stronger zone of control than say, 1,000 NKVD policemen with no artillery.
Conversely, if these divisions are to become unready, they will exert a weaker or no ZOC.

The hex flipping power of an unready Cavalry Division is absurd, I have witnessed unready Cavalry flip miles of land in my game against KB. The idea that these depleted divisions can survive the rout and then proceed to exert ZOC over elite mobile Panzer formations is ridiculous.

TL;DR, NKVD Policemen exerting the same amount of ZOC as elite Panzer Divisions. Unready units able to ZOC. Unit ZOC should be based on elements, rather than binary.

[Zebtucker12]

This game could benifit plenty from being less binary in plenty of regards.

[rebelkevin12]

I agree with that post. I had often wondered why this happens and have exploited it in my games to take advantage of ZOC rules.

[ToxicThug11]

It's also questionable that these small or otherwise unready forces are able to deal the same amount of "contact attrition" as fully ready divisions with a compliment of guns. (When a division is adjacent to an enemy unit, it takes contact attrition). Again, this is another case of tiny formations having more impact than they should have historically.

Theoretically, an NKVD detachment can end its turn next to 9 German divisions.

What will the losses to the Soviets be in attrition? Minimal. A few squads of riflemen / policemen at best.

What will the losses to the Germans be in comparison? Massive. Like as if every single one of them was next to a fully equipped Soviet Rifle Division. They will also become fatigued and not gain CPP as quickly.

This makes little sense. There are a few ways to fix this issue. Small / Unready formations could:

1. Deal a miniscule amount of attrition damage when in contact with enemies

2. Deal no attrition damage

3. Deal attrition damage based on elements within the formation

I understand that this may be difficult to program from a developers point of view, but these tiny units really should not be able to attrition an entire German army for a week (when its probable that a single German Division would be able to wipe these ragtag units out with just their guns).

[ToxicThug11]

While low intensity combat should happen and result in attrition, it should be determined by things such as:

Unit strength

Amount of mortars and other guns

Unit readiness (You will find that an unready division, fatigued and torn up will be hard pressed to do any low intensity combat with an entire German army).

However, if it is not possible to model contact attrition / ZOC by element, an easy fix is to simply remove ZOC from units which are miniscule.

Another example of arbitrary nonsense:

The Romanian Cavalry Brigade is able to flip one hex per movement because it is a brigade.
It consists of around 6,000 men and 70 guns.

Meanwhile, a relatively full strength Soviet Cavalry "Division" consists of around 4,000 men and 19 guns. It is able to flip five hexes per movement and exerts the same amount of ZOC as the Romanian Cavalry "Brigade".

Interestingly, the Soviet Cavalry I faced in my Germany AAR consisted of 200-1000 men at a time and was able to flip many miles of land. After I rout them, they simply refit for a turn and ride back into my land, cutting railways and causing attrition to my units.

I am certain that this is not intended. Unready units should never be able to flip huge amounts of land, and should never be able to force the reaction of entire proper German divisions. However in my game against KB, this was consistently happening. This is a very bad bug which needs fixing.

[ToxicThug11]

Here are some examples of units that can hold up entire Panzer armies

Note that the NKVD Detachment was routed and instantly refitted to 100 toe, ready to cause grief to more German units.

[jasonbroomer]

It does all seem a little odd and out of character with the impressive detail given to other parts of the game

[HardLuckYetAgain]

It does all seem a little odd and out of character with the impressive detail given to other parts of the game

@jasonbroomer - It is just a tactic of using these units against a German not well versed in how to deal with these two types of units properly. NKVD & CAV Div's are just an annoyance if used in this fashion. I will take the free kills as Germany.

To me much of this comes from less than optimal play on the German side is my take on the write-up. I don't know how many AAR's I have seen with huge gaps in the line allowing low TOE CAV Divisions to rampage around flipping hexes. If you allow the vast openings then "one" man(even a rumor of an offense) from an under strength CAV division, with ZOC's, would have the local populace cheering for Stalin and Kulik's return thus reverting to Soviet control. As such if you leave large openings then the Soviets should be able to convert large swaths of land.

NKVD is around how many turns? Yeah, they leave early.

[Wiedrock]

From a new player's perspective:

Zone of Control exerted by 1,000 man NKVD detachments is equal to a Soviet Rifle Division consisting of 15,000 men and 200 guns.
[...]
ZOC based on unit strength.

Three Soviet Rifle Divisions (45,000 men, 600 guns) will naturally exert a stronger zone of control than say, 1,000 NKVD policemen with no artillery.
Conversely, if these divisions are to become unready, they will exert a weaker or no ZOC.

A differentiation between size would be nice, but having 0 additional MP cost even for 1000 Men would be off, since every formation has some flanking protection in place and can even shift/rotate it's assets. Maybe they could just use the defensive CV shown on counters of enemy units to determin the cost, this number already includes all kinds of stuff (morale, supply, TOE,... etc.), like: "at least 1 and then +1 for each full 10defCV in the Hex above 20 ...", this way you could assess the path to take (if you have the recon on them).
But overall looking at history, the worst you can experience as a Panzerdivision is flankingfire/open flanks and this therefore is somewhat represented by additional MPs even by small units since you can't speed up to 100% while moving past an enemy formation. Going down to the Squad scale of war, a PTRD squad consisting of two guys could destroy all types of early German Panzer in 41 with side shots and therefore delayed their advance despite of their size.
Additionally those additional MPs are used for supply Truck movement, therefore if you'd remove them for smaller CUs you'd completely neglect their presence concerning suppliy delivery/availibility. Just check the News of March/April this year (Ukraine) and you know what I mean.

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Interestingly, the Soviet Cavalry I faced in my Germany AAR consisted of 200-1000 men at a time and was able to flip many miles of land. After I rout them, they simply refit for a turn and ride back into my land, cutting railways and causing attrition to my units.

I feel more like: "why even play with people using such cheese & exploit stuff"?
Partisan activity is already represented by Partisans themselves and doesn't need to be done manually.
Comming from HOI, there were Rule Sets of sometimes 10 pages, so a Rule to "not cheese/snail with Cav" shouldn't be too hard to be set before starting a match.
Or adjust you play style, as @HardLuckYetAgain somehow said (I can't comment on that since I am a newbee).

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While low intensity combat should happen and result in attrition, it should be determined by things such as:

Unit strength

Amount of mortars and other guns

As a new palyer who doesn't care about frontline attrion yet (I guessed it'd already being calculated by strength etc.) I have to remember to not forget "scountingcars" (SdKfz 222 ...etc.)
...or just take the Attack/Defense CV Values in a Hex once again to determin the losses, since frontline attrition is also caused by things like night-raiding the opposing position to capture officers and gather intelligence and therefore every Ground Element could have an impact/being impacted.

[jasonbroomer]

It does all seem a little odd and out of character with the impressive detail given to other parts of the game

@jasonbroomer - It is just a tactic of using these units against a German not well versed in how to deal with these two types of units properly. NKVD & CAV Div's are just an annoyance if used in this fashion. I will take the free kills as Germany.

To me much of this comes from less than optimal play on the German side is my take on the write-up. I don't know how many AAR's I have seen with huge gaps in the line allowing low TOE CAV Divisions to rampage around flipping hexes. If you allow the vast openings then "one" man(even a rumor of an offense) from an under strength CAV division, with ZOC's, would have the local populace cheering for Stalin and Kulik's return thus reverting to Soviet control. As such if you leave large openings then the Soviets should be able to convert large swaths of land.

NKVD is around how many turns? Yeah, they leave early.

Ah, that's because you don't want to have them nerfed before playing me

[HardLuckYetAgain]

It does all seem a little odd and out of character with the impressive detail given to other parts of the game

@jasonbroomer - It is just a tactic of using these units against a German not well versed in how to deal with these two types of units properly. NKVD & CAV Div's are just an annoyance if used in this fashion. I will take the free kills as Germany.

To me much of this comes from less than optimal play on the German side is my take on the write-up. I don't know how many AAR's I have seen with huge gaps in the line allowing low TOE CAV Divisions to rampage around flipping hexes. If you allow the vast openings then "one" man(even a rumor of an offense) from an under strength CAV division, with ZOC's, would have the local populace cheering for Stalin and Kulik's return thus reverting to Soviet control. As such if you leave large openings then the Soviets should be able to convert large swaths of land.

NKVD is around how many turns? Yeah, they leave early.

Ah, that's because you don't want to have them nerfed before playing me

No, that is not it. I use CAV divisions differently when I play the Soviets in WITE2 compared to what was described above. It is a nice tactic but eventually those players will progress with time.

[EwaldvonKleist]

+1 to everything you wrote ToxicThug. The binary ZOC and attrition loss issue is less severe than in WitE1 [1]but remains a significant inconsistency in the game. There is absolutely no reason why an NKVD border regiment with low mobility and no ranged weapons should cause the same attrition as a rifle or mech corps. And there is no reason why a low TOE rifle division should either.

Imho: ZOC and attrition somewhat dependent on enemy CV, like base value+value dependent on CV[2] The ability to flip adjacent hexagons should be dependent on a minimum threshold for unit mass, e.g. having at least 7k men, and not only on a unit being called "brigade" or "regiment" or "division".

[1] It is easier compared to WitE1 to rout/shatter weak units out of the way, but there remain many situations where small units have completely exaggerated effects.
[2] I would argue that the ability of a unit to exert ZOC beyond its current position depends on a units readiness, ranged fire power, mobility and reconnaissance ability. CV is usually a good approximation for this except for the influence of mobility, and the value already exists in the game.

[malyhin1517]

Small units simply shouldn't exist on the map. The same border guards could simply be attached to fortified areas as support, similarly, other brigade-sized units should not be on the map.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

WoW, small units giving so many problems to people. I had no idea that these small units were that serious of a threat and game changing

[EwaldvonKleist]

Small units simply shouldn't exist on the map. The same border guards could simply be attached to fortified areas as support, similarly, other brigade-sized units should not be on the map.

Imho brigade sized units are okay (since we also have regiments which are even smaller than brigades in theory), but they should lose their superpowers.

[Zovs]

Small units simply shouldn't exist on the map. The same border guards could simply be attached to fortified areas as support, similarly, other brigade-sized units should not be on the map.

I disagree here, I don't mind small units like battalions, regiments or cadres on the map, part of the problem is the stacking and the zone of control effects that WITE2 does (or does not do) depending on the unit size and its currently strength or TOE of unit in a hex.

The arbitrary only 3 units no matter what size that can stack in a hex is unrealistic for such a complex game.

In the board wargame Fire in the East/Scorched Earth (aka the Europa Series) these use stacking points based on regimental equivalence (RE). Basically a division is 3 RE, a brigade or regiment is 1 RE and battalions are 1/2 RE. You can stack 3 divisions and 3 non-divisions in a hex and up to two artillery units (that are not artillery divisions), so basically you can have up to 14 RE stacked in a hex, the artic and the desert has limits on RE stacking limits as well.

Theoretically, a computer game such as can not only implement something like that but it could be factored to also weight those RE based on TOE's and use a sliding scale so for example a 1/2 strength/TOE division might only be 1.25 RE, another 1.75 RE and yet another at 2.25 RE etc.

Also in the Europa games not all units have a zoc, only divisions do, no brigade or regiments or battalions do, again you could make a sliding rule up to factor a unit like a Soviet Cavalry division that is at 50% TOE it only has reduced ZOC and so forth.

[TallBlondJohn]

Since WITE2 knows how many men, AFVs, guns etc a unit has its 'footprint' should be a simple calculation that then can feed into a stacking mechanism.

But I'm sure this has been discussed before - the problem isn't re-programming the stack limit, its the effect on play balance. There would need to be another way to limit how many units can actually be fed into a battle and effectively controlled and this limit would change over the course of the war. Zhukov gets good stats, but even he never fully mastered how to wield the steamroller.

[Wiedrock]

I feel like they rly tried to make it somehow realistic, I can't say anything about Multiplayer but it feels like most of the complains come from the attitude this game should be more competitive/balanced/unhistorical in some kind.

Let's assume they would remove smaller CUs or their ZOC (I'd also prefer a size-based ZOC-MPs-Calculation), then other people will start complaining, that there are no smaller CUs (including me), since they were used historically. Completely removing them would erase the whole purpose of this game being historically accurate. Just look at the W/NW of Stalingrad in Fall/Winter 1942 where Axis allies held the Don front. They were spread that thin that it could only be represented by Regimental sized units (or even smaller) and while they were small they still managed to stop the Soviets from crossing/advancing for quite some time. And when the Soviets launched Uranus (when the river was mostly frozen) they not just bypassed those Defenders without "paying" any ZOC-MPs, no they had to fight their way through using their MPs to rout them.
And looking at the smaller CUs/ZOC topic one shouldn't forget that this game is using 1week turns, therefore not having any ZOC would basically mark those units afk/braindead for about a week (after which they are encircled) ....and while this may be true to some of the Soviet units in summer 1941 (historically speaking) that's not the case over the whole duration of the war.

In the board wargame Fire in the East/Scorched Earth (aka the Europa Series) these use stacking points based on regimental equivalence (RE). Basically a division is 3 RE, a brigade or regiment is 1 RE and battalions are 1/2 RE. You can stack 3 divisions and 3 non-divisions in a hex and up to two artillery units (that are not artillery divisions), so basically you can have up to 14 RE stacked in a hex, the artic and the desert has limits on RE stacking limits as well.

In WITE2 imho you can already "stack" enough, and there are not even Reserve units or maxed out SUs in the Test, stacking almost up to 5 Divisions in 1 Hex seems to be more than just a little historically inaccurate.

stackadizzle.jpg (81.43 KiB) Viewed 881 times

...anyway, a Hex is 10miles, so a Frontline between two hexes is about 5.77 miles. I'd like to see a historical battle where that many 100% Divisions would attack from one diretion. Just take a look at Stalingrad (again), there were like 16miles of frontline where about 6 worn down Divisions (LI [389ID, 295ID, 74ID] + XXXXVIII [24Pz, 94ID, 29IDmot]) assaulted from West+SW/(NW) with about 80k Men. Looking at this historical numbers it feels pretty realistic to have a stacking limit of 3. If you want more power, use HQ SUs, directly attach SUs or use/activate Reserves. Or play Soviets with more Men in their Corps-Counters which already reflects their meat grinding warfare tactics.

Ofc there are always exceptions in history, but overall those exceptions prove the rules the developers should care about.

[Zovs]

In the Europa game series each hex is about 16 miles a across, so the scale is slightly different than WITE2. However I also like having (what they called 'ants' in the Europa series, i.e. regiment, battalions and even companies) small units in the game, it adds flavor and historical feel to the game.

I would argue that for the Germans by 1943 they could have several divisions (not just three) compacted into a small area, and I would think the same of the Soviets in 1941-42.

Granted you do have a point if you were to stack just three infantry divisions in a hex each with 3 SU, however this breaks down when you can only stack 3 units of any type in a hex. For example one HQ, one Regiment and one Brigade, that is ahistorical. or one HQ and two Divisions. So again I think that stacking points would help here.

Maybe it could be 12 stacking points per hex with no more than 3 divisions in a hex, each HQ or other smaller than division sized unit counting as 1 point a piece?

Of course I don't think they will change any of this due to the complexity of the code and how it effects everything else.

[ToxicThug11]

WoW, small units giving so many problems to people. I had no idea that these small units were that serious of a threat and game changing

You won't until you play against someone who uses them effectively, then you will have an entire spearhead fail to nip an encirclement due to 700 policemen. Tiny units are a force multiplier for the Soviets who can use them as spotters for their ground support. Not to mention they prevent CPP growth and cause fatigue for the cost of 700-3000 men depending on whether you are using cav or a NKVD policeman.

The idea that an NKVD detachment could hold up any Panzer Division (and make them lose much of their movement points trying to clear the tile) is hilarious.

Would the 700 policemen engage the Panzer Division? Possibly. Would it be like a fly hitting a windshield? Depends on whether they are dug into difficult terrain.

Fixing this is a step in the right direction to make the game more fluid. Near depleted divisions / tiny subunits should not have the same ZOC as a tank corps.

Divisions should exert ZOC and be able to flip tiles based on their strength. If this isn't possible then meme units should simply not be able to exert ZOC.