Originally posted by Svar:
One of the reasons you sometimes get the responses that you do is your characterization of game play. WIR is a war game. When players get this game they play it by the rules hardcoded into the game. If they find an aspect of the rules that gives them an advantage most take it, afterall if it's hardcoded it must be correct. Not everyone has the same level of knowledge about the history of this war as you so many of them do this in ignorance.
You're probably right, except for my level of knowledge is not really that good (see below). I'm not arguing here, but I can't imagine brand new wargamers starting with GG's WiR. That's incredible. Surely many wouldn't last long given the steep learning curve, and the absence of true detailed documentation that could help a new player understand what is happening. I've always thought that players coming to War in Russia, Pacific War, West Front, etc, etc, are already veteran wargamers.
You on the other hand have an enormance knowledge of the history of this war and know what is possible or not. When the game allows something that you think is impossible, you label that game play as cheating.
My knowledge is far from enormous. See below.
Lets consider Finland. You think that the Finnish forces should not be allowed to attack Leningrad because they never did. However many old board war games did allow that. In The Third Reich by Avalon Hill, the rule is Finnish units may never move farther than 6 hexes from the Finnish border. In War in the East by SPI, the rule is Finnish units may not move more than 10 hexes from the Finnish border. In the Russian Campaign by Avalon Hill there wasn't any restriction.
*I* didn't know about the Finns refusing to help with an attack on Leningrad, until a discussion here (some Matrix forum, I think) between some Finlanders occurred that prompted me to look this history up. I was mad when I discovered this because of all those games you mentioned (including Advanced Third Reich too) that didn't represent Finland correctly, at least as an option. The fact that A3R didn't do this is really disappointing. They covered the politics of Finnish border squares in their appendix, and limited deployment from Finland, yet the section on Finland says nothing about Leningrad.
So from the history of war games it would appear that their designers did feel that it was possible.
Are we sure its because they knew but decided to ignore this "problem" or they didn't themselves know all the restrictions on Finnish cooperation with Hitler? I ask this because with a game like Advanced Third Reich, it handles a lot of the "political" issues as this game is grand strategic. Look at the section that covers the hypothetical fall of Britain to the Germans. They went to a lot of work, so it is hard for me to think they would deliberately leave out the Finnish restrictions problem.
I don't know what was possible and neither do you, we only know what happened. Beyond that we are arguing politics and to label that cheating is inflamitory, hence the reactions to you accusations.
We do know that one possibility could have happened: what actually happened historically. At the very least an operational level game such as WiR should provide to the players the option to use the historical geopolitical situation.
And if such a game, operational scale, doesn't provide this as an option? Well, I don't know. From what I've read and heard from Finlanders here there was no love-fest between Finland and Hitler. I'm not ruling anything out, just pointing out that, in this case, what happened historically is the outcome that was most likely to happen. At this point my problem is with the game designers. There is nothing wrong with the game providing alternatives to the players, but there should be at least 2 alternatives, and one of them should be the historical case. This is just my opinion about this particular example, of course. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
As for the use of Infantry Divisions in Panzer Korps, we again have a difference of opinions. You think it was impossible for them to move and fight for 100 miles in a week so it should not be allowed. Other people think not only was it possible but it was done.
I have yet to hear one person claim foot-bound infantry could keep up with motorized units. I'm sorry but that's a simple fact, so far.
I seem to remember newsreel footage of German tanks moving down dirt roads at high rates of speed covered with infantry.
As for the infantry riding the tanks, that is certainly an option to investigate. I can't find anything conclusive, but I did find some interesting numbers:
http://history.vif2.ru/library/archives/stat/stat4.html
http://mops.uci.agh.edu.pl/~rzepinsk/1939/html/skladang.htm
The numbers from the last one are interesting, because what they show is an unmotorized 1st Wave German inf div requiring about a 1,000 cars and trucks, while a motorized inf div requires about 2600, or more than 2.5 times the number from a foot division, a difference of about 1600 cars and trucks. Notice the motorcycles are doubled too. Now I'm assuming that the cars and trucks of the tank division are being used for the tank divs own infantry and other stuff. So can a tank div use its 325 tanks to be the equivalent of 1600 vehicles? Add to this the fact that early war tanks could not carry much infantry anyway. Take a look in the encyclopedia of Steel Panthers 6.1, and the carry capacities for the Pz38, PzII, and PzIII, and early PzIV tanks. In most cases it would take 2 tanks to carry one squad. This one is iffy.
The bottom line is, your labeling of some game play as cheating is just your opinion and although you are aware of that not everybody else is and they feel maligned. I realise that is just your opinion and you are entitled to it but can understand other peoples reaction to it.
Everything I say is just my opinion. Always has been. I was honestly surprised by Josan's reaction, I didn't know people were actually getting upset over this argument. I apologized to Josan about this, and I'll apologize as well to anyone else that was angered by my aggressive debating. This doesn't mean I'm going away, but I'll try to maintain a lower intensity level.
[Sorry about the mixup with the URLs]
[ August 18, 2001: Message edited by: Ed Cogburn ]</p>
