WiR 3.1 a balanced version?

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Sat Oct 06, 2001 12:50 am

Well, you have only to play the russian to know what Im talking about.

Is it possible hold Kiev in July?
Is it possible make a stop line before of Vyazma(ie Smolensk) with no fear that your units be easily crushed by the germans?
And when the germans arrive to Vyazma (too soon)can the soviets with 35% exp.average stop them?

Should be more difficult to the germans conquer Moscow than defender the city for the soviets but...

The 3 rail hex supply conversion is too much advantage for the germans.
Maybe the solution in not use Hq mules to difficult the germans operations but Im not sure if that is the right solution and... I like use Hq mules!!!
In a game against Mist we dont use Hq mules. We will see...

Josan.

matt.buttsworth · Post by **matt.buttsworth** » Sat Oct 06, 2001 9:45 pm

dumb question. What exactly are hq mules and how do they work?

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Sat Oct 06, 2001 10:22 pm

Originally posted by Matthew Buttsworth:
dumb question. What exactly are hq mules and how do they work?

Hi Matthew,

Hq mules are the Hqs that uses only for supply purposes and nothing more. So you assign a corps to the Hq mule to resupply and after reassign to the original Hq to have this one plenty of Ops.This gives you a better chance of success in the attack or defending.
Is still an issue if the use of Hq mules to supply units is historical or not.

Josan.

Mist · Post by **Mist** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 1:26 am

Originally posted by Josan:
Well, you have only to play the russian to know what Im talking about.

I know <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

Is it possible hold Kiev in July?

I think it is possible but Soviet side must
be *very* carefull and avoid all kind of mistakes.
Then Kiev will be held in *July*. But final price can be incredible for Red Army.

Is it possible make a stop line before of Vyazma(ie Smolensk) with no fear that your units be easily crushed by the germans?

no. You will always be afraid <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

And when the germans arrive to Vyazma (too soon)can the soviets with 35% exp.average stop them?

may be just slow down them a bit, but IMHO not stop.

The 3 rail hex supply conversion is too much advantage for the germans.

rail conversion is ok. It should not hinder Germans so much as it did not older versions.
Problem is with Red Army which is too weak to build any defense. After rail conversion became no problem to Axis, it became obvious(at least to me) that first 2 turns of the game are the big question. Red Army with its experience 20 looks like the worst army in Europe. By the time Western Front was shattered by AGC there were heavy fighgings on South. Germans managed to approach Kiev only at the end of July(AFAIK) with heavy losses.

Maybe the solution in not use Hq mules to difficult the germans operations but Im not sure if that is the right solution and... I like use Hq mules!!!
well, "mules" are so good because they give player more flexibility. It is possible to "manage supplies" and focuse them on critical directions. But... don't you think it is too powerfull thing? Especialy during blitzkrieg. You have a possibility to give special supply to all units and then assign them to just handfull of HQs with no risk of penalties. WiR HQ system is so flawed... I hope it will be reconsidered once.
BTW, Garry Grigsby had told by email that operation points were thought as a combination of supplies and planning. SO it is not pure supply which can be send here and there.

In a game against Mist we dont use Hq mules. We will see...

I see this Josan, and I deeply respect your honorable playstyle and ensure you that I also do not use HQ mules.

BTW, squad overflow fix is not going to be made soon <img src="frown.gif" border="0"> and I am stuck in my turn. When I load the game, several infantry divisions on critical directions have their squads dropped to almost nill beacuse their HQs have repl level 100. This breakes all my will to resist. I am still waiting for news about the approximate date of fix of this bug.. Well.. I hope that something will appear this week. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
[/QB]

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 10:06 am

Originally posted by Mist:

BTW, squad overflow fix is not going to be made soon and I am stuck in my turn. When I load the game, several infantry divisions on critical directions have their squads dropped to almost nill beacuse their HQs have repl level 100. This breakes all my will to resist. I am still waiting for news about the approximate date of fix of this bug.

Did you pass this on to Arnaud? I don't remember seeing a post about this.

PMCN · Post by **PMCN** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 1:06 pm

First off a big thank you to all the people who worked on the upgrade.

I have been playing the germans against the AI and have advanced to the last week in august. Russian resistance is begining to stiffen.

As far as the rails go I pushed the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armees as fast as I would against a human (making sure I didn´t outrun my aircover) and I rested for a week at Vitabesk-Mogalev. I took smolensk in the week of July 27-Aug 2. So given this the rail seems fast enough, perhaps making it variable after the first few weeks would be most fair to the russian (75% chance of 3 hexs, otherwise 2 or something like that).

I took Kiev after a 3 week period of it being isolated with an assult by 7 or so infantry divisions from the 17th Armee and the 1st Pz Armee.

I don´t think the new rail lines thru the Pispesk Marshes help the russians at all though. I sent one of my Pz Korp from the 1st Pz Armee north to Gomel and then south again very quickly and easily while the infantry was moving up on Kiev. I think that the existance of those rail lines will seriously hurt the Russian defence in a human game as coordination between the 4th, 6th and 1st Pz Armees will be much easier than in the past.

The rail line Constance to Oddessa is pretty much a non-issue, I don´t think is significantly changes the rate of the southern offensive.

I have noticed that starting in week 3 or 4 of the assult I began shattering large numbers of soviet formations. I am not sure exactly why although my tendancy to overrun HQs has probably given the computer a sevre case of lack of OPs.

As far as the Russian army at the start of the blitzkrieg goes it was pretty much the worst army of the time period. It was, however; very large. The difficulties the germans faced particularly around smolensk and during the kiev operations had more to due with the sheer number of bypassed soviet formations. It was so disorganised that it was dangerous to the germans (who was surrounding whom). Serious resistance to the german advance did not occur till much later (late september and october) near tula for example where the russians threw back repeated german assults with heavy casulties. The germans collected over 1 million prisoners in the first 9 weeks of the war...no other nation could have survived that. Even so the situation in november and december of 41 was far more dire in reality than I have ever seen in the game. As I understand it Stalin had every asset listed in a book (tank Bn, Inf Bde, and so on) and Zhukov had to ask for each unit he wanted and Stalin would check and say yes or no, this was a critical time for the soviets where small things counted (a few thousand tonne of aluminum or a few tanks or planes). Only the sheer size of the soviet union plus fortitous weather enabled them to survive plus the fact that the germans were engaged in an offensive and had not spent several weeks digging in. If a stop line had existed, or if they had stopped at the line of advance of late october it is unlikely the soviet counter attack would have been as successful as it was.

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 9:51 pm

Originally posted by Mist:
[QB][/QB]

Hi Mist,

Mr. Grysby talked about of over use of Hq to supply purposes?

The supply system is too much abstract and Panzer armies always got more supplies than others and always was the oversupply flow from higher Hqs to support offensives or breaktroughs. Maybe allow one or two Hqs supporting the panzer armies can be a more realistic solution and we can do that in our game <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Josan.

P.S. Waiting your turn patienly <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

Josans · Post by **Josans** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 9:59 pm

I forget, Mist, Im not sure if it is more worse not use Hq mules for the soviets than the germans. With the lack of Ops the soviets have will be more difficult to make a serious line. I suppose you will notice this in our game.

Regards,

Josan.

Mist · Post by **Mist** » Tue Oct 09, 2001 11:36 pm

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Did you pass this on to Arnaud? I don't remember seeing a post about this.

This may mean that ..... MY MAIL SERVER IS PIECE OF SH%T! I was told by my friends that their mails do not reach me SOMETIMES, but did not pay much attention to this since I thought that my server is ok and problem is on their servers. This last few months already. God dam it. I was wondering why people sometimes do not answer on my emails.
I've reported squad thing(with a couple of other lesser bugs) to the list at the same time when I had posted this on the forum.
Then I've became worried that there is no answer from anyone and had send personal mail to Arnaud with a question about confirming recieving my bug report. No answer yet. I've decided that he is either too busy or has some rest after long run to v3.1.
Mail list is also silent. Only couple of mails for past few days. I don't like mail bombing so I 've decided to wait. But I was wrong. I am going to change my email address. Ed, please,
could you possibly forward my squad bug report to the list while I am doing nessessairy changes?

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 4:16 am

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
As far as the Russian army at the start of the blitzkrieg goes it was pretty much the worst army of the time period. It was, however; very large. The difficulties the germans faced particularly around smolensk and during the kiev operations had more to due with the sheer number of bypassed soviet formations.

This I would have to disagree with. The Soviet Army of 1941 was not that bad, not even when it comes to quality. It did have a very rigid and centralised command structure, inexperienced officers (after the purges), not very well trained troops and lot of outdated equipment. But the troops were very tough, brave and determined, some of the equipment was among the best in the world.

The fatal weaknesses of The Red Army in June of 1941 were an idiotic deployment and the fact that they were in the middle of reorganising their armour back into independent units (after dispersing them in 1938-39, having misunderstood the lessons of the Spanish Civil war). Even so, the strenght and suicidal determination of Soviet resistance, even when hoplessly surrounded seriously shocked the Germans, who were used to much softer opponents.

With a better defensive deployment (more depth) and less disorginised forces, the Red Army might concievably have given the Wehrmach a much tougher match. Perhaps they could have held the Stalin-line?

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 10:46 am

Originally posted by Mist:
This may mean that ..... MY MAIL SERVER IS PIECE OF SH%T! I was told by my friends that their mails do not reach me SOMETIMES, but did not pay much attention to this since I thought that my server is ok and problem is on their servers. This last few months already. God dam it. I was wondering why people sometimes do not answer on my emails.

Well, obviously I wouldn't know if your posts were not getting here, but I can tell you your posts are showing up fairly late. 6-8 days after the post you responded to.

Mail list is also silent. Only couple of mails for past few days. I don't like mail bombing so I 've decided to wait. But I was wrong. I am going to change my email address.

No, its not you, the list was very quiet the last 3 or 4 days.

Ed, please, could you possibly forward my squad bug report to the list while I am doing nessessairy changes?

I've tried to see this rollover of infantry squads but can't see it. Do you have a save game that shows this?

PMCN · Post by **PMCN** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 12:22 pm

Yogi, if you care to wait until December I can summarise two articles that covered the strengths and weakness of both the german and soviet armies at the start of Barbarrosa. They are from the series "History of the Second World War" editor is Liddle-Hart if memory serves, the german side is written by a german officer and the russian by a russian officer I think.

You seem, to me, to be confusing the russian soldier with the russian army. The truth is that the russian army had some very good equipment: T34 (the best tank of the war to my mind, excluding the later one which is based on it...the panther), 120 mm mortor, KV1 tank, 122 and 152 mm Guns, the sturmavik aircraft to name the most critical ones. But most of it was not in operational condition and the little that did work was in the hands of poorly trained and ineptly led troops (blame Stalin´s purges here). Things that most other armies took for granted were not possible to the russians (dispersed artillary formations firing TOT rounds, shoot and scoot, effective counter battary fire, mass tank coodinated attacks, radio directed artillary fire (mostly they used field telephones), air interdiction, and so forth). The fault is not the soviet troops, nor in general the ground commmanders but it still existed. But if you want to wait a few months we can continue this and I will feel more secure about discussing this since I will have access to information (other than what I can recall from memory). A few cases of stiff resistance does not mean much in the greater scheme of things nor does the bulk of the forces surrendering mean the average soviet soldier was in some inate sense inferior.

My other question is when you say it is not that bad...to what army are you comparing it?

Muzrub · Post by **Muzrub** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 12:49 pm

Maybe Yogi means the determination that some Soviets fought with or even the barbaric measures used to make the troops fight.

Many fought with strength and determination placing themselves in the line of fire without fear. When captured (with wounds) they held a stoney silence amougst themselves that unnerved German troops and commanders.

What I see in this version is an army that is unable to hold any ground, unable to to fight until its last gasp for a given defensive line.
I dont see the desperate struggle for time, I see a campaign that easily leads to German victory no matter what opposition you place in front of them.
( I'm playing both as German and Russian )

The heroism of the Soviet (Russian) soldier cannot be denied. Poorly lead, misused and an underjudged opponent he fought with a tanacity that 'many' Germans never held during the later years of the war.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 1:24 pm

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
My other question is when you say it is not that bad...to what army are you comparing it?

The French, Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian etc

Almost any other army of the period that was not a great power.

I'll wait with further discussion untill you have your sources.

Mika Väliviita · Post by **Mika Väliviita** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 1:34 pm

About the squad rollover, I see it when playing Russians. I moved newly arrived divisions to a rear HQ to grow, and they were at one point over 200 squads, but next turn some were below 10. This HQ had replace level 100. Same thing also happened in a corps in Leningrad, with an added bonus that the size shown in the corps window didn't match the division info on the next screen (corps info became fixed after running a turn). The Leningrad Front was also at 100 replacement.

Another old problem I saw was when surrounding two enemy corps, and attacking them. First one of them retreated on top of the other and shattered. But the first one was still there. Then the second on retreated on top of the first one and shattered. And finally the first one (or maybe the bug is that there was another corps in the same hex) surrendered.

V3.101, playing vs. computer on even.

Mika

[ October 10, 2001: Message edited by: Mika Väliviita ]</p>

PMCN · Post by **PMCN** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 2:51 pm

Yogi writes...
The French, Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian etc

I agree with you in terms of the French or say the Italians although the deficiencies in either of those case are usually different than those of the Russians. Not always though...the french had good equipment but a bad tactical doctrine. The Italians were more technicaly adept than the soviets but had either bad equipment or else poor troops or both.

Best we leave the disscussion for later.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 3:19 pm

Originally posted by Muzrub:
What I see in this version is an army that is unable to hold any ground, unable to to fight until its last gasp for a given defensive line.
I dont see the desperate struggle for time, I see a campaign that easily leads to German victory no matter what opposition you place in front of them.
( I'm playing both as German and Russian ).

I agree with this, Muzrub. The increased rail conversion does not feel unrealistic, what feels wrong is the total inability of the Soviets to hold - ever. The initial experience (and readiness?) of the Soviet troops should probably be looked at. I cannot see Russian experience should be any lower than the Rumanians, for example (unless absolutely necessary in order to achieve realistic results).

The fact is the German infantry had to fight very hard battles to reduce the pockets surrounded in the first week of Barbarossa, and WIR feels like a military promenade right now.

Chairman · Post by **Chairman** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 3:25 pm

Stalin line wasn´t finished, there were alot of "holes" in it.
Most of the line were made up off strong points if I remember right, with a lot of unfinished parts in it, even if there were enough manpower to defend it, it could probobly be pierced quite easy.
Compared to the Siegfried line it was more or less a joke, maybee some part of the Stalin line were good but most off it didn´t even excist more than a line on the maps.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 3:30 pm

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:

I agree with you in terms of the French or say the Italians although the deficiencies in either of those case are usually different than those of the Russians. Not always though...the french had good equipment but a bad tactical doctrine. The Italians were more technicaly adept than the soviets but had either bad equipment or else poor troops or both.

Best we leave the disscussion for later.

Although I'm not sure we have anything to discuss anymore. We agree on that the Russians had many weaknesses. We also agree on that they were not worse, all in all than the French or Italians. And I agree that only mass and space saved the Red Army from total annihilation.

The Red Army got clobbered when surprise-attacked (even backstabbed) by the best Army in the world using revolutionary tactics which no army anywhere had found a defence against. Small wonder.

PMCN · Post by **PMCN** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 6:31 pm

Well I suspect you are right Yogi we can shelve the discussion since we are agreeing with one another.

So far as rail conversion goes see my earlier post about what is probably fair.

In terms of experience if the russians are at 35% (not having looked I am guessing here) than that is what the rummanians have in my game. Some rare few rummanian units are at about 50%. The question is realy one of are the russian forces uniform? It might be an idea to check which units put up a fight historically and raise those specific divisions above the others, but I hardly think it had to do with anything but mass when you say there was hard battles. Although I am taking a risk since I can not check I do not recall any significant (in WIR terms) resistance before september and by then there was the factor of "friction" which was significant for the germans as they were now a long way from home, with long supply lines and so on plus the pace of the advance had been grueling for the germans. At the start of Typhoon for example most divisions were at either 60% of normal strenght or else had taken 60% losses (I suspect the former is correct), the germans simply could not process casulties and so on well enough to keep their divisions at full strength.

It might be an idea to increase the ability of the soviets to dig in (make it easier) or else give them an automatic entrenchment level bonus when checking for retreat. But to be frank I have seen the soviet resistance start to thicken in my game near the end of august. I just lost 100 tanks and up until that week my total losses had been 70. I am seeing a large numbers of shatters though and I am not sure why exactly. But the rail conversion rate can not be too high since I was able to take Smolensk more or less on schedual something I could not do before and I have not changed my opening move from my standard one significantly. I think those new rail lines in the marshes though are very bad news for the soviets.