Panzer Korps....should have at least 1 PZ div.

[Muzrub]

I am playing a game agianst someone who shall remain nameless.

He has a Panzer Korps with NO! Panzers in it. He told me:


as u know jamie the greatest art of war is deception. re that panzer corps in the south it may well have been a fake but until u annihilate it u wont know?


I have bombed it and attacked it, but their seems to be no Panzers there!.

For all of you familiar with the game cricket you might have heard the saying:

Its just not cricket

That means that the gentlemens game has been tarnished, by un-gentlemen like conduct.

I know he may well mean what he says, but he could still use that Panzer Korps to drive through a gap and leave my men without supply.
I myself would never even think of doing this, because "its just not cricket!".


I know there was another thread about this on the forum, but I think more attention should be brought to it!.

Thanks.

BTW....If the game is not going to be changed to fix this problem, we at least need a CODE of CONDUCT.

[ August 05, 2001: Message edited by: Muzrub ]

[heibis]

IIRC the germans had several Pz Corps that were only infantry divisions (or maybe with just some bn of tanks). This is not wrong as the deception can be quite strong.

However, these units should not be able to plot 5 hexes for crying out loud, after all it is what's inside that counts.

Jens

[jager506]

I believe some of the Panzer Korps in 1944-5 had only infantry divisions and a couple of pz/jpz battalions. That said, it is painful for the Russian player to figure out which are REAL pz korps and which just raiders/phoneys, especially since his airforce generally cannot penetrate Luftwaffe defenses before early 1944 or so.

[moonfog]

Muzrub,

IMO your opponent isn't wrong as he states, that deception is the greatest art of war (or at least one of the greatest). I think it was perhaps the art which was practiced throughout history of warfare (for ex. the Trojan horse or in WW2 Rommel who let his few Panzers drive in circles to make a lot of dust pretending there were many, many tanks comming up the desert)

I think it is not un-gentlemen like when one tries to hide his comming offensive by putting his Pz units in an Inf Korps and vice versa filling his Pz Korps with Inf Div. As you stated, the opponent is capable to detect this deception by conducting an air strike (risky but the only way). IMO this way to conceal future actions MUST remain in the game.

An other point is the plotting ability. There I think must something be done. Your demand is "Panzer Korps...should at least have 1 Pz div". IMO it could, concerning movement, be "Panzer Korps are not allowed to have ANY Inf Div" otherwise it can only plot 2 hexes (but this restriction should only be active in the plot phase, not in the combat phase, where reinforcements are given without control of the player).

That's my opinion and I think this topic is really worth a further discussion.

BTW: we seem to be into the same style of music.

Moonfog

[ August 05, 2001: Message edited by: moonfog ]

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Muzrub:
I am playing a game agianst someone who shall remain nameless.

No, name him so I'll know to avoid playing with him.

as u know jamie the greatest art of war is deception. re that panzer corps in the south it may well have been a fake but until u annihilate it u wont know?

I don't have a problem with deception, but because of the way this is mismanaged in WiR leads to some bizarre situations. First and foremost is the idea a Soviet armored corps could spend a week adjacent to an enemy unit and not know that the units has only a battalion in it, or its a panzer unit with no panzers.

Because of WiR's "container" system for corps units, it means there is all sorts of room for exploits. Gary must have just ignored the problem since it would be difficult to fix.

In WiR there should be more. A percent chance every turn to identify the unit types in the adjacent enemy unit, with air power and the number of friendly units adjacent to this enemy adding to the chances. There should also be an almost immediate realization of an adjacent enemy corps with only a battalion unit in it.

WIRIII is supposedly a division based simulation so hopefully all the "tactics" involved with what goes in a corps "container" will be avoided, i.e. you'll at least know your facing a division with possible independent battalion attachments.

[Ranger-75]

I agree that one should be able to put any type of division/unit into a corps/korps. When on the defensive, it helps to keep the enemy guessing. (When I played Western Front. I was constantly aggravated when hitting 1st and 2nd SS Pz Korps with air strikes to find only a few infantry divisions and separate Bns).

But when one is on the offensive those decisions should have appropriate negative consequences.

I remember the original rules (for Second front) imposing a large readiness loss for non-motorized units plotting. Perhaps this can be used to cut down on the abuse, but it would require a code change.

A code change limiting any panzer korps (or tank army for that matter) that has any non motorized divisions (the non-divisional Art, AA, etc were all motorized) in it to 2 plots should also be implemented.

Historically, the Germans didn't use infantry units in their panzerkorps until 1943-45 when the panzer units were too decimated, or were kept at Army HQ for reserves.

What really ticked me off the most though (in Western Front) was the fact that the entire US and British armies were 100% motorized and only "armoured divisions" (& brigades) could be made, and further, the US / British infantry units paid the same readiness costs for move / plot as the foot marched German units. That was a complete BS job IMHO.

[PMCN]

I have to agree with both the original poster and with Ed.

Because there is an ingame difference between Pz Korp and Inf Korp than you must ensure that the units in a Pz Korp are reasonable, there is nothing else that can be said about this. The closest, personally, I come to this is when I convert the Italian expiditionary force to the 16th Pz Korp (but I also add 1 Pz Batt, 1 JPz Batt, 1 German Inf Division, and 1 Flack Division) but I would say that is what I am doing off the bat. All the units in there at least are motorised (baring the infantry but I leave 1 INF in all my Pz Korp).

Exploitation of a game loophole is not "deception" or part of the art of war it is simply cheating. It goes hand in hand with "optimising" production...such as switching all the russian aircraft factories to producting Yak fighters...or switching all the german tank factories to 1 kind.

I tried playing this game by PBEM and got supremely frustrated. Though in honesty I suspect my opponent did as well since I wanted to play a recreation of the battle for russia not some arbitary "red" vrs "blue" kind of game. Since then I have been extremely leery of another go at it. Which is too bad since playing against another human is very much the best experience in WIR.

[matt.buttsworth]

I think the second front rules imposing severe movement penalties on any armoured corps/tank divisions containing infantry units would solve this problem - the infantry attached to a panzer corps would be useless.
As the next version allows cavalry to move at the speed of armour, I think a limit of two squares movement on any panzer or tank division containing infantry would be fair and historically accurate as historically they just could not keep up with tanks.
This means defensive armour packed with infantry divisions would still be possible. But offensive armour would want to be fast and streamlined to do encirclements which historically is what they are.
Hopefully these rules can be implemented in Wir 4.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Matthew Buttsworth:
I think the second front rules imposing severe movement penalties on any armoured corps/tank divisions containing infantry units would solve this problem - the infantry attached to a panzer corps would be useless.

There is a penalty, but its not strong enough. However, in the buglist, I've asked for the game to check the corps at the moment of movement and if it finds a non-motorized division in a panzer corps, the corps's movement is truncated to just 2 plots.

[moonfog]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:



There is a penalty, but its not strong enough. However, in the buglist, I've asked for the game to check the corps at the moment of movement and if it finds a non-motorized division in a panzer corps, the corps's movement is truncated to just 2 plots.

But what happens when a Pz Korps is reinforced during the combat phase. For ex. the third plot of a Pz Korps results in battle and the Korps is reinforced beyond the control of the player. Could the Korps move forward the remaining 2 plots or would it halt?

If it would halt, the only solution to prevent that would be to have no Inf Div in the HQs of the Pz Armies. But that would leave the HQs defenceless against attempts to overrun them (and destroy the aircrafts in it).

Moonfog

[heiks]

Originally posted by moonfog:


But what happens when a Pz Korps is reinforced during the combat phase. For ex. the third plot of a Pz Korps results in battle and the Korps is reinforced beyond the control of the player. Could the Korps move forward the remaining 2 plots or would it halt?

If it would halt, the only solution to prevent that would be to have no Inf Div in the HQs of the Pz Armies. But that would leave the HQs defenceless against attempts to overrun them (and destroy the aircrafts in it).

... or you could limit the reinforcing by only allowing motorized units reinforce panzer korpses.

[PMCN]

The problem with limiting movement of units which have INF or other units in them is that it is not realistic. As things stand now the INF will contribute only to the first few pulses and after that they do not significantly effect combat. Or at least that is what I have noticed, and I always have a single INF division in my Pz Korp (basicly to fill it up...normally they have 2 Pz Div, 1 motorised, 1 Inf, 1 JPz, 1 Flak, 2 Art) which may not be completely historical but is damned hard to avoid after all the reinforcment that occurs during the first few turns.

Making a Pz Korp that had only INF DIVs in it plot 2 is acceptable (ignor Pz Batt, PzJ Batt, arty, and Flak). But otherwise this is nonsense. German Pz Korp had infantry attached to them historically. Certainly as the war went on this became more and more true.

I would say increase the penelty to the point that INF in Pz Korp loose significant readiness after the first 2 pulses and leave it at that. Say double the penelty to INF Divisions which make more than 2 movement plots. Otherwise you have to remove the reinforcement routine.

This won't stop the cheat of making Pz Korp out of 1 INF division or whatever but I don't see how you can do that in practice. Because I could make a Pz Korp with a single Pz Battalion in it or a single artillary or flak.

If you check that the number of motorised-tank divisions compared to the number of infantry divisions and then truncate movement based on that result that would strike a good balance too. Since in general even after reinforcement you should still have more Pz-Motorised-PzG-Cav Divisions than infantry.

I would say have a Korp-army that has nothing but support units (independant battalions, artillary or flak) be immobile. So a Korp or Army must have at least a single combat division in it to plot). Maybe this can be done simply by checking the stacking pts and assigning a minimium value of them to allow movment? If memory serves all the non combat forces have 0 stacking pt value? Plus these units should not be able to dig in.

[Don Shafer]

The biggest problem with this issue is movement. While it is true that in later years, many German units were named Panzer Division and contained no panzers, that did not automatically mean they were a true panzer division. The panzer/tank army shell in WIR has increased stacking limits and increased movement. Problem with this was that usually some unscrupulous curs would create a panzer shell, put a understrength infantry unit in it, and automatically get to plot 5 hexes. If infantry armies are only allowed to plot 2 hexes, why would an panzer shell with infantry only in it get to plot 5? Placing an infantry unit in a panzer shell with armor is fine since the infantry would more than likely pick up the added transportation from the armored divisions. There is suppose to be a penalty in that infantry travelling in a panzer shell would have increased readiness loss with any plots past the second plot. I wouldn't want to limit panzer movement just because the shell contains infantry, especially since all the panzer/tank shells at the beginning of the game do contain infantry and they do help on defense, but I would like to see the readiness penalty increased for infantry travelling in a panzer/tank shell. I'd also like to see it put into place that a panzer/tank shell must contain at least one armored division. Maybe put something into the combat phase where any newly created units are checked, if no armored division is in the shell, the divisions are transferred to the nearest HQ and the shell removed.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:



There is a penalty, but its not strong enough. However, in the buglist, I've asked for the game to check the corps at the moment of movement and if it finds a non-motorized division in a panzer corps, the corps's movement is truncated to just 2 plots.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by moonfog:


But what happens when a Pz Korps is reinforced during the combat phase.

No, I'm talking about making the check at the very beginning of movement before the 1st movement phase, i.e. prior to the 1st plot. No checks would be made on corps after that, so Pz corps that get a non-motorized division as a reinforcement during combat will not be affected.

[Svar]

Currently the game reduces mobile divisions readiness by 10% per plotted move and non-mobile divisions by 20% per plotted move during clear weather. It doesn't matter whether they are in an infantry shell or a panzer shell. So a panzer division plotting 5 moves will be at readiness 58 if it started at 99 while an infantry division will be at 63 readiness if it plotted 2 moves. Pretty comparable but if an infantry division were in a panzer shell and plotted 5 moves it would end at a readiness of 32 if it a started at 99. This is why many people are so irritated in the beginning turns of the 1941 campaign game when the AI reinforces their panzer korps with infantry divisions. After the second turn the infantry divisions in a panzer korp are totally worthless. The only exploit is the use of the panzer shells to have small non-mobile units plotting 5 hexes deep into enemy territory and keep going even though eventually they will contain no squads, guns or afvs but still able to cut rail lines and capture cities.

Svar

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
The problem with limiting movement of units which have INF or other units in them is that it is not realistic. As things stand now the INF will contribute only to the first few pulses and after that they do not significantly effect combat. Or at least that is what I have noticed,

I just ran a panzer corps with an infantry division for 5 plots. The readiness difference between the motorized divisions and the infantry division is only 12%. Thats not good enough, since we're talking about something that shouldn't be possible.

and I always have a single INF division in my Pz Korp (basicly to fill it up...normally they have 2 Pz Div, 1 motorised, 1 Inf, 1 JPz, 1 Flak, 2 Art) which may not be completely historical but is damned hard to avoid after all the reinforcment that occurs during the first few turns.

If your talking about combat reinforcement that is not a problem. The check occurs before the 1st plot has been executed. Panzer corps during subsequent combat and movement getting a non-motorized division are not affected.

Making a Pz Korp that had only INF DIVs in it plot 2 is acceptable (ignor Pz Batt, PzJ Batt, arty, and Flak). But otherwise this is nonsense. German Pz Korp had infantry attached to them historically. Certainly as the war went on this became more and more true.

The check I proposed truncates the panzer corps movement plot to just the 1st 2 plots, it doesn't disable movement. You can still have a panzer corps with infantry if you want, it just won't be allowed to plot more than 2 squares. I think the historical situation involves forces that are not plotting or moving as fast as they could. It is perfectly reasonable to have inf in a panzer corps which is on the defensive, and isn't moving. That covers most of the historical reason why inf was in panzer corps later on, I believe. The rest is probably motorized through some motor pool, as was the US Army, but the game doesn't support this.

I would say increase the penelty to the point that INF in Pz Korp loose significant readiness after the first 2 pulses and leave it at that. Say double the penelty to INF Divisions which make more than 2 movement plots. Otherwise you have to remove the reinforcement routine.

If we agree that the readiness penalty should be large, aren't we essentially talking about doing the same thing? For me a 20% or 30% penalty is not enough, since I believe we're talking about something which otherwise can't happen (a foot division moving as fast and as far as a motorized division).

As I said earlier, this pre-movement check would not affect panzer units later in the movement that get inf divisions during combat reinforcement.

This won't stop the cheat of making Pz Korp out of 1 INF division or whatever

No, it won't stop it, it will just make the tactic pointless, since the inf division can only plot 2 moves regardless of whether its in a panzer corps or an inf corps.

but I don't see how you can do that in practice. Because I could make a Pz Korp with a single Pz Battalion in it or a single artillary or flak.

Thats a different problem which will require a different solution (and a different thread).

If you check that the number of motorised-tank divisions compared to the number of infantry divisions and then truncate movement based on that result that would strike a good balance too.

This avoids the essence of the problem: NO foot-bound infantry division can move as fast or as far as a motorized division could, so allowing just one inf div to move the full distance in a panzer corps is wrong. We leave out the issue of inf reinforcements going to a panzer corps during combat, since that is too complicated to fix, but a simple pre-movement check will put an end to a lot of the shenanigans that have been going on.

I would say have a Korp-army that has nothing but support units (independant battalions, artillary or flak) be immobile.

....

Plus these units should not be able to dig in.

I absolutely agree with this. Sounds good.

In fact, making a corps immobile because it has only battalions in it can be done at the same time as my suggested pre-movement check. If a corps is found to have no division sized units in it, its plot is deleted entirely, making it effectively immobile.

[RickyB]

I agree with Don on this one, although maybe not to the point of removing the HQ. I think tie this in with Ed's pre-movement check. Thus, any tank/panzer HQ without a panzer/tank/motorized division will only carry out two plots. I don't think the game should prevent these HQs from plotting 5 hexes just because of infantry, as long as the faster unit is also attached. This is something like 100 miles or 160 km, which for a week is not a bad march for infantry as long as there is not a huge amount of fighting. The faster units would be leading any possible breakthrough in this situation, so the infantry shouldn't get tied up in too much combat to slow it down, or as much recon. The infantry can move 5 hexes outside of combat, so this seems fine to me, as long as there is a faster unit in the HQ.

[Svar]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:



No, I'm talking about making the check at the very beginning of movement before the 1st movement phase, i.e. prior to the 1st plot. No checks would be made on corps after that, so Pz corps that get a non-motorized division as a reinforcement during combat will not be affected.

Ed,

Your premovement check to limit Panzer Korps to 2 plotted moves will cause a big pain in the 1941 campaign game for the German player as the AI will always reinforce the Panzer Korps with any available infantry during the clear weather turns. The German player will have to go in and cull all the infantry divisions every turn. Where will he put them, right back in the HQ's because all the infantry korps will also be plotting. Lets not make the game more complicated than it already is.

Svar

[RickyB]

Also, you can't do a regular transfer if readiness is below 50, which infantry will quickly fall to. I like to transfer these units into a new Infantry HQ right behind the panzers to help protect their rear while the existing infantry units move up, but can't do it when the readiness drops down, which is frequently.

[MagnusOlsson]

I believe the plotted movement (1,2,3,4 or 5 hexes) should be determined by moveability of troops (there's motorized div's without vehicles and there's infantry divs like the Sturm with vehicles, how do you handle them?), weather, terrain, leadership, readiness and experience.
I would like to have the possibility of a 'forced march', making inf divs do 3 or 4 hexes (perhaps with a possibility of failing the last 1 or 2 moves) to be payed with a terrible loss of readiness and perhaps equipment like artillery.

/Magnus