I thought this was suppose to be a realistic game!?!

[Ozz022]

I spent 10-15 moves setting up a mass encirclement and it worked very well with 4 pockets of cut off units! I'm patting myself on the back thinking I have this game locked! I let the the Soviet side do its turn wondering how bad it's going to be for that side and to my astonishment, right behind all my encircling units, 108 NEW SOVIET UNITS just magically appear! None taken from the North, they are still all there. I'm not good enough for FOW so they weren't hidden, and apparently no movement restrictions! It's as if during WW2, a Commissar just had too plant a seed, and in one week, WALLAH, an entire division just springs up from the ground!
I have suddenly lost interest in this game and it's a shame because I really enjoyed it.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Firstly, nice pockets !

If the AI morale is set to 110 or above it is able to teleport units around like this. Partly because of the situation you have described - it is difficult to program the AI to be aware of threatened pockets. Given 10-15 turns of preparation a human opponent would see the risk and just withdraw out of danger.

Suggested solutions:

1) Set the AI to 109 morale or less. The downside is that this will significantly decrease the challenge, especially with FOW off.

2) If the AI is already under 110 morale might be worth posting this in the tech support sub-forum as it may be the AI is being able to 'teleport' when it shouldn't.

3) Turn on FOW. This will have a twofold effect, it will be much harder for you to make these kinds of massive encirclements so the AI doesn't have to 'cheat' so much and also it will be less obvious when it does teleport units around so you can maintain immersion.

4) Take the plunge and look for a human opponent.

[Light4bettor]

Hahaha, as if that 4 pocket mass encirclement was realistic in the first place.

[tm1]

Hi
You are playing against the AI it has to have some chance or you will be at Moscow before Winter.
Besides just destroy the pockets then encircle those new troops.
Also just remember The Soviets get something like half million men in replacements easily in the first six months more possibly, there are some events that give them like 150 000 replacements a turn.
Not only that if you don't kill, capture or wound 3 million men before Dec your going to be in a world of hurt.

[Ozz022]

Thanx for the replies! First off, this is Sept '42. What's the point of encircling if 100 new units are just going to keep instantly springing up from the ground. And finally it's not just the fact that the Soviet units just appear with no movement restrictions, it's the fact that 10 NEW ARMIES just magically appear from the ground!

Oh, and the moral is set to 100 both sides

[tm1]

Thanx for the replies! First off, this is Sept '42. What's the point of encircling if 100 new units are just going to keep instantly springing up from the ground. And finally it's not just the fact that the Soviet units just appear with no movement restrictions, it's the fact that 10 NEW ARMIES just magically appear from the ground!

Oh, and the moral is set to 100 both sides

OK well I have " old eyes " and missed that it was 1942, again I would like to point out your playing the AI ( it needs some help ) you should still be able to wipe it off the map and win at one of the 1943 sudden death dates, if your playing sudden death ?

I play the AI and generally the AI is at 100 moral my first 3 games were disasters, twice giving up in the middle of winter 41 / 42 and one before, I don't know how many games you have played ( experienced against the AI ) but those pockets are massive for Sept 42 if you could post a screen shot of the OOB I would like to see the Russian manpower numbers, it looks like you have trapped at least one third of there army possibly half, my guess those 108 Divs are not full strength.

Cant see the Leningrad area so assuming you don't control it, no big deal you can still take it, better still wipe out the pockets take Smolensk, Kursk , Kharkov , Orel and Rostov then decide if you want to strike in the Caucasus or at Moscow, if Moscow take Voronezh and Tula.
If you choose the South I would avoid Stalingrad unless you take the rest of the South quickly.
By July 43 the last sudden death chance for Germany you should just have enough points to win.

Or
Play through till Jan 45 and hope you have enough points to win.

regards

[Ozz022]

After reading your reply, I attacked one of the newly hatched units to see if they are under strength, not only are they full strength, but besides just magically appearing, they all came newly hatched with a fort level 1 immediately!

[tyronec]

Playing the AI is like playing a hydra; you want to continually make pockets and wipe them out. Eventually the Soviets will start running low of manpower and it will become easier and easier to pocket them.
It is to be expected that they will be turning up with some good quality new units but not all of them will be.
To track your progress the thing to be looking at is the graph of manpower rather than the number of counters on the map. What would be interesting would be to see that and if cleaning out those pockets makes a good dent in it.

[Shiva the Destroyer]

I spent 10-15 moves setting up a mass encirclement and it worked very well with 4 pockets of cut off units! I'm patting myself on the back thinking I have this game locked! I let the the Soviet side do its turn wondering how bad it's going to be for that side and to my astonishment, right behind all my encircling units, 108 NEW SOVIET UNITS just magically appear! None taken from the North, they are still all there. I'm not good enough for FOW so they weren't hidden, and apparently no movement restrictions! It's as if during WW2, a Commissar just had too plant a seed, and in one week, WALLAH, an entire division just springs up from the ground!
I have suddenly lost interest in this game and it's a shame because I really enjoyed it.

LOL Aside from the "techno geeky" way the game accomplishes this, this is probably the exact same reaction of the German High Command during the East Front conflict. Over and over again, they thought they had them smashed and yet more and more freshly raised Soviet units appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The problem for them was they couldn't suddenly lose interest and quit once they had the tiger by the tail.

[Joel Billings]

The AI should not be creating new divisions without using manpower and equipment from the pools. If you have saves for this I'd like to see them. I'd need one right after the encirclement and before the next Soviet turn (and then one from the Soviet turn or next German turn so I can see the results. There is less warping around under 110, but looking at your game it appears there are still some cases where it will do it even below 110. I'd like to know if those units were already on the map or if they were just created. I will move this to the tech support area so you can attach saves there, or email them to 2by3@2by3games.com. Thanks.

[Ozz022]

I'll send saves from before I attack, and right after. Just let me know if further ones are needed.

Just one small problem, I need to know how to go to the save screen, and send the saved scenarios.

[Joel Billings]

You can find the save files in the dat/save folder inside the folder that contains the game's exe. Once you know where they are, you can attach them to a post here by clicking on the Attachments tab just below where you are creating your new post, or you can attach them to an email.

[Ozz022]

E-mail sent

[Joel Billings]

Thanks for sending the saves. Looking at your saves, what I found was that the Soviets had over 60 combat units in the rear, usually stacked 3 high in cities. There were around 30 units in the Moscow area alone. The way Gary's system works is when he brings units onto the map, he makes sure they stay far enough from the rear to represent their travel time to the front. On the turn after they appear, he is allowed to warp them around defensively. Given how many units were available in the rear, the AI wasn't creating new units out of nothing. The AI did leave a few more gaps in the lines in the north/center, so it does seem to be pulling some units from other areas, but primarily the units that jumped in to fill the line came from the units in the rear. Now I'm not sure why the AI had so many units in the rear, including some in cities far from the rear. I wouldn't have expected so many to be in the rear, although some of the units were low morale/experience so possibly some of these were training in the rear. I'd have to see saves going back further in time to see if the AI is routinely keeping this many units in the rear. In my AI vs AI tests, I don't see this kind of thing. Also, the AI has 920k active men in the pool on your turn 65 while on turn 66 it has 807k active (so it is using some, but still has plenty to call on). I'm not sure why there are so many men in the pool. I'd expect the AI to be building more units at this point, although there are 6 million men on the map. IIRC, the AI does build some rifle divisions and/or brigades when it thinks it is short in addition to other builds it does over time. But all of these new units use men and equipment from the pool.

The fact that your high water mark is low (if you were not playing the no early end the game would have already ended), indicates to me that Soviet cities were not captured early or often, which leads to more manpower being available for the Soviets. However, you have caused very high permanent losses to the Soviets, and along with the roughly 500k men you have surrounded, you're going to surpass 6 million Killed and captured losses by the end of 42 (maybe get to 7 million?). That is offset by the higher Soviet mobilization given the slower loss of cities. The AI at 100% has it's limits, so you may be able to push it around quite a bit and keep it from switching over to the attack as it needs to in order to win a no early end game. I can't say what would happen in the future if you pull off another major pocket. It all depends on whether there are enough units on the map for the AI to react. Gary concluded that we had to allow the AI this ability to move on defense or the AI would be too easy to beat.

BTW, the idea that warping only happens at/over 110% morale help is not correct. There are different kinds of warping. This kind of fill a defensive hole warping appears to be allowed at any help level as long as the units are on the map already.

[GANC]

Is there any way to completely disable warping?

Thank you Joel for your quick and thorough writeup. Always interesting to read some behind the curtain analysis.

I have definitely seen tons of defensive warping below 110 morale. You could imagine my confusion at watching ai units teleport all over the place at 100 morale even with knowledge of the bonuses printed on p211 & p544 of the living manual. Bewildered to watch my concerted offensives grind to a halt as the ai conveniently swaps fresh/broken units between sectors. Same frustration in WitW.

[Joel Billings]

No, there's no way to stop that basic level of warping. Even if Gary were to make that a game option (not sure how possible that is given it could be in many places), I don't think many would be happy with the results. It would likely weaken the AI so much that it would be easy to defeat.

[Champagne]

It would likely weaken the AI so much that it would be easy to defeat.

BUT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEED, O GREAT ONE!

j/k

Thanks for all that you do for us.

[DarkHorse2]

The AI takes some liberties when reforming their lines at the end of their turns.

Try not to look too hard at the screen when that happens, because the idea of AI teleporting units minimizes the immersion.

Basically, it is a coding short-cut to keep from having to code for AI strategic reserves and not having to worry so much for opponent breakthroughs, etc.

Something you would not think the best simulation of the Eastern Front (WWII) would be resorting to.