I this what 2 by 3 started out to design back 5+ yrs ago?

[gradenko2k]

Semantically speaking, there already *is* a "sudden-death" rule - it's just so far out there as to be impractical to try and aim for at a certain level of skill across players, and that impracticality is shaping the way the meta-game is played.

ORIGINAL: Marquo
What was the military objective of Barbarossa in the first place?

This is actually a very interesting question to ponder: How different would the first ~18 turns pan out of a stock 1941 Grand Campaign, against the Operation Barbarossa scenario?

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

Semantically speaking, there already *is* a "sudden-death" rule - it's just so far out there as to be impractical to try and aim for at a certain level of skill across players, and that impracticality is shaping the way the meta-game is played.

ORIGINAL: Marquo
What was the military objective of Barbarossa in the first place?

This is actually a very interesting question to ponder: How different would the first ~18 turns pan out of a stock 1941 Grand Campaign, against the Operation Barbarossa scenario?

Was'nt the objective the The Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line?

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: Bletchley_Geek

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

ORIGINAL: veji1


Now NM is also influenced by events : For example to emulate's the pressure in the Union for offensive action to finish of the reb rabble, several times the USA have to get armies within two provinces from Richmond otherwise they lose 5 or 10 NMpoints...

True, but those events are also open to abuse. A hyper agressive Rebel, with all those excellant leaders, will pour North. He can be sitting in Baltimore, lay seige to Washington, be sitting in Harrisburg, etc. And your newspapers will be screaming. Not because of that, but because you're not advancing.

I lost an AACW game exactly because of that. Spent six months working on an effective Army of the Potomac. I had smashed Confederate armies in Tennesse in August and had laid siege and captured New Orleans. And then I had to send the Army of the Potomac in a wild geese hunt around Richmond in autumn. After a "satisfactory" campaign across the Shenandoah valley, I found myself stranded at the gates of Richmond while the Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania. After extricating it with a murderous winter march across the Allegheny, I was completely defeated in a major battle northeast of Washington, and it was game over.

I mean, the game was a kind of cool what-if. But the whole business was sort of a "self-fulfilling prophecy" engine, since it sort of creates an incentive to send a unadequately organized, supplied, equipped and trained army into Virginia, with the guarantee of it being shattered in the field.

It's worse against the AI, that exploits this and sends his über leaders with cavalry divisions to Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, etc. totally destroying NM in the process even if Richmond falls and the CSA economy collapses...

And those events were added because smart Northern players would be like Mac and go when they were ready. They really should of put in some kind of trigger where if the Rebs move north, those events are cancelled.

Still, I play it PBEM. Still lose, but I'm of the opinion that the game is won or lost in the East. So next time...

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: Lava

ORIGINAL: Aurelian
Perhaps you can provide the basis on which the fall of Moscow would of meant much.

Perhaps losses of close to a million men in its' defense would serve.

It would not. If losing 29 million winning the war failed to do it, just how would the above do it.

As for Clausewitz, pfft. Moscow fell once. Didn't win the war for Nappy. Didn't cause Alexander I to lose his will. Rather the reverse.

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Aurelian
Was'nt the objective the The Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line?

I'm referring to the Operation Barbarossa scenario of the game itself, where the major German objectives are Riga, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol, Rostov, Stalino, Kharkov and Tula.

[mmarquo]

No - we called it quits before the mud. He turned the Panzers into an unstoppable force - it was hysterical to watch; I was even rooting him on. Defense in depth, echelons, checkerboards - nothing worked.

Marquo [:)]

[KenchiSulla]

I still think many of you are obsessing over winning and losing...

[Redmarkus5]

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has already been said, but one feature I really like in Unity of Command would partially address the main points made by the OP - victory points for key locations that reduce per turn after a specified 'capture by' date. These would reflect the political or strategic priorities set from above.

Then, after the first capture, the new owner of each city should accumulate points for each turn that he continues to hold the location, thus turning it into a valuable target for the enemy.

Thirdly, cities should serve as supply sources, regardless of rail arrangements, continuing to do so for n turns after they are cut off. This represents warehouses, supply dumps, residual capacity, etc. Being in 'city supply' should boost morale and CV, as it does in real life - nothing is worse than being stuck out in the boonies.

If you add another feature I proposed some months ago, whereby factory withdrawals cannot commence until an enemy unit arrives within, say, 5 hexes of a city, thus forcing the defender to actually defend for a few turns, we would have the basis for much more historical strategic decision making.

So, in summary, I need to be better off holding a city (and therefore the key terrain/approaches nearby) than leaving it to the enemy. That would make me stand and fight.

[Redmarkus5]

If 'victory' was based on a combination of objective points and loss ratios, the fighting would become as intense as it was historically - at least on paper!

[Flaviusx]

This 5 hex factory rule is a bad idea. It's ahistorical (the Soviets didn't wait for the enemy to get 50 miles from the factories to begin evacuations) and easily gamed and abused. The Axis need only contrive to advance just out of this range, gas up, and then lock down any factory. Hardly any evacuations would occur. Maybe Leningrad. But just about all the industry in the south would go up in flames.

[Redmarkus5]

Hmmm... it may be a 'bad' idea, but is it worse than the concept of moving everything to the east and then not caring about losing your cities?

Anyway, that was idea one of five. Any comments on the others?

[alfonso]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

Hmmm... it may be a 'bad' idea, but is it worse than the concept of moving everything to the east and then not caring about losing your cities?

The notion that historically all cities during the War in the East were heavily fought is a myth.

Let’s take as an example the capture of Kharkov in 1941:

Erickson, “Road to Stalingrad”: “All attempts to build up a defence west of Kharkov,…., had failed; the Stavka therefore ordered Timoshenko to pull back to the line Kastornoye-river Oskol-Krasny Liman- Gorlovka- river Mius (about 8 hexes east of Kharkov[:)]), a shortening of the front to enable Timoshenko to bring 10 rifle divisions and two cavalry corps into reserve”

Wikipedia: “First Battle of Kharkov”… “For the defense of Kharkov, the 216th Rifle Division had been reformed in Kharkov after its destruction at Kiev. It received little to no support from other divisions or from higher command echelons because the 38th Army was in the process of a strategic retreat and the defense of Kharkov was only necessary as long as its factory equipment had not been completely evacuated.”

This retreat is the kind of thing some want to penalize “for the sake of historicity”.

[Redmarkus5]

I'm not saying that every city was fought over historically, but they were all of strategic importance. Are you suggesting that Leningrad, Smolensk, Vyazma, Moscow, Stalingrad, Rostov, Kiev, Kharkov, Tula, and so many others were not hugely important objectives? The reasons varied - production, political value, rail and road junction, winter shelter, etc, but the primary geographic objectives of almost every major operation included the capture or defence of centres of population, production, transportation or supply.

Now, in the game, what must the Soviet player defend, apart from the Urals? He has no reason to defend ANY city in the game.

You can't just take a single city as an example to support your point. If you insist on doing that, then I can take Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad (also quoting John Erickson) and beat you 3/1

The player may lack the capabilities to defend, say Kharkov, but he shouldn't lack the desire.

[alfonso]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4



Now, in the game, what must the Soviet player defend, apart from the Urals? He has no reason to defend ANY city in the game.

Well, if the Soviet player does not defend any city, the Axis will arrive to 332 points, and it is game over at 290.

If you refer to any PARTICULAR SPECIFIC city, there is no reason to defend it, except those already included in the game (factories, manpower, rail, good defensive terrain, etc...) There is no need to invoke special mystic telluric forces to keep the players tied to every city.

The way the Germans did not press the capture of Leningrad, contenting themselves with a siege, or how they discarded making of Moscow an objective in 1942, or how for everyone at the OKH in June 1942 Stalingrad was only a name in a map serves to illustrate my point.

[randallw]

For the Soviet side holding cities it makes some difference in available manpower, turn by turn.  It would mean a lot more in a short(er) war, where gaining/losing a few hexes here and there would mean a lot to a player's own timetable.

[sajer]

Edited

[Redmarkus5]

But the point is that if the Soviet player feels confident he can take the cities back later in the game, he will just abandon them in '41. Isn't this what people are complaining about - the run for the hills? Or maybe I missed something?

So, we need to give the players a stronger motive to hold their key cities, IMO.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4
But the point is that if the Soviet player feels confident he can take the cities back later in the game, he will just abandon them in '41. Isn't this what people are complaining about - the run for the hills? Or maybe I missed something?

Well, yeah, though it is not generally so extreme in most games as it sounds. And it also was done by the Soviets, they didn't fight for every city unless there was something of strategic, political or economic value left in it. They also realized that it is more important to survive until the Wehrmacht has run out of steam, and be able to fight back another day. They surely also had not forgotten the lessons about the width and depth of the country, or the strong weather that helped them defeat prior invasions, for e.g. Napoleon etc.

I rather think that had the Russians/Stalin had the hindsight that they gained until 1943, they would most likely have adopted a very similar course that the game is presently showing. Much as the German players follow idea of (fighting) withdrawals that a lot of German Generals favored at times of Soviet offensives, but Hitler prevented. Again, we know today what would have been a better course.

Consequently, if you introduce artificial rules or reasons to repeat historical mistakes by both sides, and don't pick the correct ones (i.e. soft political factors, Hitler and Stalin; i.e the latter probably most significant, and what most players seem to be happy about that they are not represented and mess things up), you will skew the character of the game such that it doesn't really reflect the War in the East anymore. Which is fine unless you want a simulation with realistic basis.
Take for example rail capacity or factory evacuation requirements, which the developer based on reasonable technical estimates: you could half the first which would slow things down. But then you'd fight the War in the East with an 1880 rail net... It wouldn't be the same war anymore. Hindsight is just there, much as the "real" Barbarossa surprise is missing -- but how do you tackle that without turning WiTE into a fictional conflict?
You have to be very careful, like for example the "gentle" restruction of Soviet MP on the first turn and cutting that to a half-week duration to mimic the Barbarossa surprise. But already there you get unwanted side-effects, like the easy destruction of the Soviet Southern front at Lvov within two-three weeks.

[randallw]

Right about now someone would say that losing big cities should cause an automatic drop in morale, forgetting that morale in the game is different from the standard definition of morale.