Game killing problems

[toddtreadway]

What about lowering the amphibious transport capacity from a 3 to a 2 at game start?

[Joel Billings]

Easy to do if you want to test it. One number changed in one data file would get you weaker WA transport amphib capacity. Another thing you could do is to remove some of the excess WA transports at the beginning of the war. We didn't realize just how many transports the Allies have that they don't need to have out getting resources until 1942 or later (when their production power demands more resources). Cutting the 3 off South America (or moving them to frozen zones in the Pacific off Mexico) would probably help cut down on the Allied flexibility. We are looking at future changes to AV rules. We may decide to make a change with regards the transports when we make the AV change. These are serious game balance changes, however, so they should be made with some care.

[5cats]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Easy to do if you want to test it. One number changed in one data file would get you weaker WA transport amphib capacity.

Omg, what a simple idea! Of course it eluded my "swiss-cheese brain" completely.

[Uncle_Joe]

Well certainly with the current AV silliness going on, I dont think lowering the Allied transport capability is a good idea. That would make it much harder to keep Germany off balance while she is off scalp-hunting Neutrals.

If something is done reign that in, then changing the WAllied transport capacity might be good idea.

[carnifex]

I love it when people start whipping out how long they have been a wargamer and how they have the original version of Tactics II, no wait, two versions, one they play and one unpunched in a display case, and look here is my picture with James F. Dunnigan at the first Origins, oh and didn't I tell you before my great-grandfather played the original Kriegspiel?

[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

[Agema]

Actually, I'm not totally sure the movement thing for long distance naval invasions is so unfair. In GGWAW, each unit represents what, a corps? In game terms, considering the troops landed D-day would be best represented probably by one para landing and one infantry unit at most, yet within three months there were whole armies in France and Paris was liberated.

Imagine that the invasion in the game represents two phases; an initial landing and then the rest pouring in the expand the bridgehead and push the enemy back. Strat. movement represents troops pouring in after there's a substantial bridgehead. As each turn lasts 3 months, it's not unreasonable to think troops could come from training in Australia, maybe R&R in Britain a week or two, and then pile onto the Normandy beach-head. Also as the game is turn based, you might like to consider the whole operation, shipping and invading, takes up to 4.5 months, but the game mechanics rounds it down into 1 turn.

[von_Schmidt]

Agema,

I agree with the concept that since a turn represents 3 months, troops can move in from quite a distance, hit the beach and drive inland and reinforcements can pile in after the first wave of the invasion.

The flaw, however, is that in those months the defender would *also* transfer units to [FRANCE] and engage in counterattacks to drive the attacker into the sea...which the turn system does not allow.

Haven't got a clue how this might be resolved in the current system. IMO it;s not really a gamebreaker anyway; I am comfortable with the layers of abstraction and can live with the occasional odd situation.

A we-go system (all sides give orders, followed by a execution phase a la Dominions2) might be an idea, but not in this established engine.

Cheers,

von Schmidt

[Fazman]

In regards to the Mongolian incident I did some testing and a same side nation can only move into another same side teammate territory if it was previously occupied by enemy forces....so fair game.
IMO.

Transports....
IMO early invasions are possible for the Wallies but not to the tune that is being bemoaned here. In reality the Wallies have very little capability to sustain such an action in the early game and that action can't even be established without a little German neglect/aggressivness. What I think is being forgotten here are the games victory conditions and play balance.

Germany must sacrifice the med for a chance at eliminating Russia in an early invasion but they also need to heavily defend in Italy. Sure the Allies can invade Tripoli/Sardina.... the whole frikkin north coast of Africa.... if Italy holds, Germany is still way ahead in regards to RP's. Again this comes down to play balance. Make it harder for the Wallies to distract German attack on Russia and what do you have.... no alternate strategy whatsoever and a game that doesn't have replayability. Make the German mindful of the western forces and Russia gets a few more turns to increase the doubt/intrigue/FUN factor of this game...

I haven't had enough human opponent games go the distance yet to truly get a grip on this issue but start tweaking Wallies transport capacity and this game will get very predicable ( read boring)...

I don't think it takes much on the Germans part to have a Wallie attempt to invade early turn into the Dieppe that actually befell the Wallies in WWII.

Make it so the Wallies have no chance to punish an overly aggressive German player and play balance goes out the window... Russia falls every game.

Before you can criticize the game mechanics I think victory conditions should be thoughly considered.

[Grifman]

ORIGINAL: t3mplarKn1ght

One other point:

Take a look at the after action reports posted here. In just about EVERY ONE, the British have invaded somewhere prior to American entry into the war. Norway, Denmark, France, Finland, Africa. It's a given.

If in most EVERY GAME this happens, but it did NOT happen historically, isn't there a problem?

Well, it did happen historically, what are you talking about? The WA invaded Norway, got kicked out, the British invaded Libya after defeating the Italians (which is why Rommel was sent, after all), the British invade Ethiopia, all before the US entered the war.

[WanderingHead]

I have a friend in the US Naval Nurse Corp, who reported that it took 8 days to get a navy hospital ship from San Diego to Sumatra after the tsunami this winter. If you have enough transports and free ocean lanes, it is definitely not unreasonable or unrealistic to be able to get troops anywhere in the world in 3 months.

Using the existing chain of transports to accelerate tranny deployment can be looked at as an abstraction for having some port/refueling facilities in place along the route. But I think that getting every single transport in the world into one sea zone in a turn is too much ... probably using trannies to accelerate trannies should freeze the so used trannies. Then you could also get rid of the inconvenient (causing much undo/redo of strat movement) rule than only trannies that haven't been used for strat movement yet can accelerate other trannies. I think these changes would really clean up tranny movement rules, which are currently kind of hard to swallow.

[Battlebyte]

t3mplarKn1ght:

The sub war also needs looked at. It just doesn't "feel" right. Most sub warfare should be defensive in nature (i.e. subs attack, destroyer escorts sink them), not offensive (i.e. destroyers sortie out, sink subs then return whence they came).

In the games I've played, the subs are typically based in ports. They sortie out on patrol, attack convoys, the escorting destroyers try to sink them, then the surviving subs return to port. Also, aircraft are stationed on ASW patrol outside the ports to hit subs entering or leaving. That's defensive. The destroyers don't sortie into the sub pens on offensive missions. The only offensive ASW is usually bombers hitting the sub pens. It feels right to me.

This game is a guaranteed win for any competent Allied player. I told Faz that I thought that was the case on turn 2 of our game. It was quickly obvious to me that the Axis has to defend EVERY area as if it was Calais. [...] Take a look at the starting setup for the Wallies sometime and try it out. As far as I can tell with a brief scan, there is ONE region (Yakutsk) that the Wallies CAN'T reach to mass multiple transports on TURN ONE! Every other coastal region in the FREAKING WORLD can be massed with transports.

There's only one major flaw with this plan -- it benefits the Axis more than the Allies. Try it. A massive early-game invasion by the British as a push to early victory could only be useful in one of two places.

1) Attack the northern coast of Europe. Since all your force is concentrated up there, the Italians will seal the Mediterranean. The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine will deal heavy losses to your amassed ships. The heavy German wehrmacht forces will smash the few troops you managed to get ashore. It will take years for you to replace your losses, during which time the Axis are running rampant through Africa, the Middle East, and India. You'll probably have lost connection to most of your colonial resources.

2) Attack in the Mediterranean. You'll take losses to the Italian navy, but you can prevail. And their coastal defenses are weaker. But now you have long, vulnerable SLOCs (sea lines of communication) which are easily cut by the U-boats. The best you can hope for as a result of your invasion is that the Wehrmacht will halt you cold in the alps. Meanwhile, with all your forces concentrated in the Mediterranean, the British isles are relatively easy prey.

Either way, you haven't the ground units or air support to turn an early invasion into a decisive victory. Limited raids are one thing, but you must avoid attempting to force a decisive battle, or you'll do more harm to yourself than the Axis. As for the Axis defense; most coastal defenses need nothing more than an arty, a flak or fighter, and a militia (more if partisans are present). The Axis player has internal LOC, and therefore can keep reserves somewhere central which can easily respond almost immediately almost anywhere in Europe. It doesn't take much to deal with the few troops that the British can land in the early game.

[marc420]

Well, to me there's something missing in this game, well most war games for that matter.

Its not so much could the transport sail to that part of the world in a turn. Its more a question of could an invasion be pulled together, planned, organized and effeciently executed that quickly. That's the part that missing. If you just watch a ship move, could a transport move from Austrailia to Suez in three months? Yeah, sure it could.

The reason if feels wrong in the game, is that most of us know from history that there wasn't much chance in the world of the UK organizing and launching an invasion from Austrialia that quickly. Fubar wouldn't begin to describe the result.

In the game, the only rules affecting this are the transport rules, so that's what seems wrong. And its probably the place to try to twiddle and fix the rules, as I don't see them putting in a full scale attack planning system.

One thing I think is that there should be an amphipbious invasion tech. I'm not sure any of the WWII combantants could have launched an amphibious invasion against a defended beach in 1939. It took the Allies most of 1942 to learn how to get it right. Think of the special equipment and boats that were developed. Think of the tactics that were developed. And what was learned from places like Tarawa. All of that led to the ability of the allies to invade Sicily, Italy and D-Day. When you think of the 1939 armies trying to pull that off, its really hard to picture that any of them could have done this in 1939.

I don't know if you want to add a new tech to the game. That could work. An amphibious attack rating and tech that starts off near zero. Since maybe that's not practical, maybe just a flat negative modifier to amphibious assaults that changes based on the year. 1939 there's a big negative. By 1944 its gotten a lot smaller.

[Joel Billings]

There is a large negative modifier on the attack dice of a unit amphibiously invading if they move over 2 areas (section 8.5.4, last paragraph). This is not a big deal if the area being attacked is cleared out first by air and naval power, but I did want to point out that there is something in the game that reduced the ability to invade from far away.

[Scott_WAR]

Once again, I must bring up tech. I just finished a battle where I attacked 3 infantry, with an evasion of 6, with 8 heavy bombers with an attack of 5, and accomplished nothing. No hits at all.

Its laughble. Honestly Joel, you guys HAVE to do something. Unhistoric is one thing. Unrealsitic in the name of playability is one thing. Unrealstic AND harmful to gameplay, which is what tech being so exaggerated does, is a problem. It needs fixed.

Edit- I just looked at the game again. EVEN WORSE, is the fact that the infantry had no supplies for defense.

[Joel Billings]

Your bombers with 5 dice attacking infantry with a 24 net defense should hit 6% of the time. However that's only for the first 3 bombers. After that, the remaining 5 bombers should hit 31% of the time. That means you should have gotten close to 2 hits on average. No hits is bad luck. But I don't see why this situation has anything to do with tech as you are basically giving the standard values for WA heavy bombers versus German infantry as of 1940. Now you may want a more A&A like combat system where the weakest unit always has a 16% chance to hit even the best unit, which I understand, but that's a huge game change which will change all kinds of interactions in the game dramatically.

[willgamer]

Fubar wouldn't begin to describe the result.

Good analysis Marc; that seems to fit the problem.

One thing I think is that there should be an amphipbious invasion tech.

I like the idea of a tech that limits the number of transports that can be used. Otherwise a low transport capacity can be overcome with large numbers... the exact opposite of the 1939 reality.

Advancing the tech could even depend on actually using it at the lower levels.

[Scott_WAR]

It was stock USSR bombers, vs stock German infantry. No tech increase on each.

My point is that a 1 tech level advantage, whether stock or from research increasing it, gives too strong of a combat advantage. 2 to 1 odds should be able to overcome a 1 tech level advantage, in my opinion. Others opinions my differ, but I had near 3 to 1 odds in the above battle, and still was unable to do anything,..... even if it was a bad roll.


Honestly though, if I had got 2 hits, I probably wouldnt have complained.

[JanSorensen]

Once again, I must bring up tech. I just finished a battle where I attacked 3 infantry, with an evasion of 6, with 8 heavy bombers with an attack of 5, and accomplished nothing. No hits at all.

Its laughble. Honestly Joel, you guys HAVE to do something. Unhistoric is one thing. Unrealsitic in the name of playability is one thing. Unrealstic AND harmful to gameplay, which is what tech being so exaggerated does, is a problem. It needs fixed.

Edit- I just looked at the game again. EVEN WORSE, is the fact that the infantry had no supplies for defense.

Scott

Would you be kind enough to report the die rolls your bombers made? You seem to be on a crusade against tech - but omitting the actual "luck" part isnt fair. Sometimes you are just unlucky - tech doesnt have to be the reason for everything

[Scott_WAR]

I very rarely look at the actual rolls made. Luck is luck, but in cases of 3 to 1 odds, luck shouldnt make much of a difference.

As stated in the post about tech. I can spend 7 PP to increase most units a tech level. Those same 7 PP can get me 2 infantry or 2 artillery, or 1 tank. Which holds more value, the 1 or 2 units I can get, or the 1 tech level increase on a unit? I dont think its possible for anyone to deny that the tech level is worth MUCH MUCH more than 1 or 2 units.

[JanSorensen]

very rarely look at the actual rolls made. Luck is luck, but in cases of 3 to 1 odds, luck shouldnt make much of a difference.

As stated in the post about tech. I can spend 7 PP to increase most units a tech level. Those same 7 PP can get me 2 infantry or 2 artillery, or 1 tank. Which holds more value, the 1 or 2 units I can get, or the 1 tech level increase on a unit? I dont think its possible for anyone to deny that the tech level is worth MUCH MUCH more than 1 or 2 units.

The fact that luck does play a part is what makes it fun to me. Otherwise we might as well be playing chess.

Units without tech = bad
Tech without units = bad
Balancing units and tech = good

It doesnt strike me as that bad a deal - though I do agree its not perfect and that it can get out of hand if one side lets it.