Boring Opening Moves?

[fbs]

For the record:

e4 --> boring
d4 --> boring
a3 --> now that's interesting
c4 --> even more interesting
b3 --> hah, if Larsen plays this, I play it too
a4 --> what??!

[saintsup]

ORIGINAL: fbs

For the record:

e4 --> boring
d4 --> boring
a3 --> now that's interesting
c4 --> even more interesting
b3 --> hah, if Larsen plays this, I play it too
a4 --> what??!

e2-e4 --> boring : 1 second
1st Axis turn --> boring: 2 hours of intense concentration (to do everything correctly), a multi page to-do list, and several hundreds clicks

[Redmarkus5]

The OP presents a lucid and balanced analysis of some key issues.

My two cents:

1. The 'checkerboard defence' isn't a historical option that the Soviets simply failed to select in '41. As the OP points out, it was an impossibility in 1941 at least and it doesn't represent anything remotely plausible.

2. Checker boarding should lead to penalties, IMO, based on units having 10km empty spaces on their flanks. This could be addressed by:

- Adjustments to combat resolution to punish open flanks - e.g. no contiguous defence line
- Bonus points for attacks from multiple hex sides (as per almost every other hex-based war game I have seen)
- Lower ZOC penalties

If the Axis player has no choice but to checkerboard in some form in '42 or later this shouldn't give him an advantage - it should be a last resort.

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

The OP presents a lucid and balanced analysis of some key issues.

My two cents:

1. The 'checkerboard defence' isn't a historical option that the Soviets simply failed to select in '41. As the OP points out, it was an impossibility in 1941 at least and it doesn't represent anything remotely plausible.

What is impossible in that units are covering more front? The degree of organization and planning a player can bring to the defense might be ahistorical, but it's hard to do anything about without restricting players a lot more, and that would make the game boring too.

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

2. Checker boarding should lead to penalties, IMO, based on units having 10km empty spaces on their flanks. This could be addressed by:

It need not be empty. A unit in reality is not of fixed size like the counters in the game, it can extend or contract to give a different force to space ratio.

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

- Adjustments to combat resolution to punish open flanks - e.g. no contiguous defence line
- Bonus points for attacks from multiple hex sides (as per almost every other hex-based war game I have seen)

I would say that is far more an exception. And there is a kind of built in advantage in that due to stacking, more units can be brought to bear if more hexsides are exposed to the enemy. Plus we wouldn't like the side effects, which among other things would be far fewer bulges.

ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

- Lower ZOC penalties

That would lead to general ooze through problems and change the game a lot.

Checkerboarding is not really a problem in the game IMHO.

The lack of political objectives except for Leningrad is.

[Kel]

Three ideas to introduce some variations and unpredictability in the game.

1/ Change the activation of on-map frozen HQs from a calendar-dependant activation to an AP activation of frozen HQs. For both sides. If the soviet wants his new reserve armies to leave their staging areas, he will need to pay for them. If the axis wants an early AGS Panzerkorps or 2nd Army activation, same thing.

2/ Introduce some variation in the arrival of reinforcements and withdrawals by spending APs to accelerate the arrival by 1 or 2 turns. Want this panzer division one turn earlier, spend APs, want to keep that SS mot one more turn before the unavoidable withdrawal, spend APs.

3/ Introduce +slight+ variations in the historical weather pattern (1 to 2 turns for the appearance of mud, ice etc)

[Aussiematto]

In response to a couple of things:

personally don't find chequerboard that much of an issue. It's a problem only if you don't work hard to defeat it (ie like any other defence). Just playing 2 games at the moment, one run-away, one chequerboard: pretty much my panzers in AGS are in the same position with either. I have less losses in the runaway game; I have more in the chequerboard -- but so does he.

I love the idea of different activations for AP... for a whole series of things. It doesn 't make the game ahistorical, it represents the making of alternative history from possible choices at the time. So, no APs for hovertanks, but yes, you can create different options. But from what I can tell the aim of the game is to make the Germans play within historical limits, perhaps testing all those claims from various generals that they could have won but for Hitler

[Wild]

I also don't find checkerboard to be much of an issue.

I think there should be a morale penalty when Moscow falls and that the capture of resources have a greater impact.

That way there would be 3 big objectives Lenningrad to release the Finns, Moscow for the effect on morale, and resources in the south. Thus giving the game some real strategic decisions. I think this would improve things a lot.

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: saintsup

ORIGINAL: fbs

For the record:

e4 --> boring
d4 --> boring
a3 --> now that's interesting
c4 --> even more interesting
b3 --> hah, if Larsen plays this, I play it too
a4 --> what??!

e2-e4 --> boring : 1 second
1st Axis turn --> boring: 2 hours of intense concentration (to do everything correctly), a multi page to-do list, and several hundreds clicks

That's why I always play a3 as the Germans: transfer everything to Berlin and fortify, from Jun-22-1941 onwards. After 4 years fortifying, I want to see anyone break my impregnable barrier.

After all, what's the point of going all the way to Moscow, wasting 3 million men, when I'll be right back at Berlin? a3 for the win, that's what I say

[:D]

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: tigercub
To me just putting the russian industry on rail and getting away, i think its far too easy for the Russians to do, its not a true repersentation of what the russian could do i feel as yet.

Agreed, most games have it taking a year to move and get the factories back up to operational status, this system seems a tad too easy on them. And it probably took a lot of effort to do as well, not just something you could just say "okay, load it up".

I was reading about the attack on Leningrad on the weekend, and as the Germans advanced the Soviets focused on moving the industry out of Leningrad, they didn't bring any supplies in, or move any civilians out. I assume they would move a train with empty cars in so they didn't have to spend any time unloading them, load the cars and rail it out, if there wasn't a train on the tracks heading out, there was one heading in.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
Nice post.

Starting toward the end, you're not as good a player as you need to be until you can beat the AI on normal in 1942.  So in that respect, some of it is you,

Gee thanks. I'm gonna cry now. [:(]

j/k [:D] - I figured it was mostly me. I get my butt kicked the vast majority of time in regular strategy games against a friend of mine, so I'm no expert.

By the same token I was unsure about against another player, which is going to play better than the computer. So I was looking for the opinions of players who have played others, and are generally better than me.

but don't worry, we all failed that our first time or three.  I set my 'proficiency goal' of taking Leningrad/Moscow/Kharkov/Rostov before blizzard, and from there it works out pretty well for you (well, this was under 1.03).

This is my goal as well, its taken a bunch of restarts (more than 2 or 3, I've lost count actually) but I think I'm getting there on my latest one. I was pretty close to the early July line, and I look to be on target - or better - for the September 1st line.

Klydon is right that Leningrad becomes the sine quo non focus of 1941 by virtue of the fact that it's the only geographic location that provides any tangible benefit.  Unless something else becomes a reward for the German to own and hold, Leningrad is the only no-brainer of 1941.

Yeah, there really should be some other options there so that the first few months aren't so obvious. A morale bonus/ detriment for Moscow, and probably Stalingrad (I never have been able to figure out why they want after Stalingrad, going south after the oil should have been a much better choice - although it was suggested in a book I was reading that they were slowly drawn that way, probably to distract them from the oil).

I agree very much that the opening moves of 1941 are both necessary and boring.  The whole first turn for the German is pretty dull, with (at least speaking for me) looking at someone else's AAR first-turn moves and replicating them, trying not to move one single panzer division into the wrong hex.

Heh, yeah, that's about it. I found myself starting a new game on Friday, and half way through my first turn going "ugh", and then restarting from my previous game's first turn as it had been fairly decent.

Again, speaking for me, WitE is losing some of its luster because a properly played game by competent players of each side will see trench warfare develop in about 1943, with the Soviet looking at 100 turns of beating Germany with a slow, heavy club, and Germany trying to keep anything major from getting broken.  I am starting to forecast a future in which games are only really fun until 1943 anyway, unless changes come along.  Don't ask me what those changes should be.

Yeah, as soon as trench warfare settles in, it tends to become pretty boring. And it seems to be a fairly common result of East Front games.

There are some real problems in the absence of historical command and control limitations, I think.  Both sides benefit greatly from hindsight of history, and from awareness beforehand of what is necessary to perform at peak efficiency.

Indeed. We know that prior to the winter the Soviets may as well not bother trying to counter attack at anything more than a lone - preferable flankable - unit. The Germans should try to to over-run Leningrad and not starve it out. On the same token, don't try to bite off the entire country its too far, so determine how far you can get and don't push beyond that. The Germans have to make some preparation for the winter, its not going to be business as usual. We know the best paths, we know roughly how well our units will perform today, etc., etc.

The game can certainly be fun, but there are caveats.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: majeloz
So, it's not about a turn zero, but about a turn 2 Turn 1 is already, effectively, Turn zero.

Some War in the Pacific games start on Dec. 8 (or have the option to), basically saying that everything that happens on Dec. 7 is more or less fixed and there is little point in reproducing it every time.

So maybe we need a Turn 2 start option for WitE? Skip over the tedium of the first few days and then go to the Soviet turn for a reaction. Put the Germans in their aproximate historical June 26 position, and get rid of all the units that were smacked in the first four days.

"Half your army has just been destroyed, over-run, forced to surrender, or routed. What are you going to do now?"

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

ORIGINAL: neuromancer

In the AAR "The Anti Bolshevik Crusade - Tarhunnas vs Q-Ball" the topic of the giant Lvov pocket - and its predictability came up.

So, I'm an example of the predictable and boring! [X(]. Should I take this as sign that I need to be more exciting? Hope my wife doesn't think the same...[;)]

Heh, no actually it was because of a side discussion going inside your AAR. I originally started this post there, and then decided not to further side track your AAR and moved it out here.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: Uxbridge
I wish that ground HQ's had to use ADM points to activate. If you wanted to have a HQ activated on game turn 2 you had to activate it in game turn 1. If the HQ is inactive during the present turn, the units fight and behave normally, but have drastically reduced movement capabilities. This way the player have to think ahead: where will his own offensives fall and where might the enemy attack. In the beginning of the game, the USSR player should be lacking in ADM.

There is something to be said for that, for the most part the idea of constant attacking and moving is impossible - or at least extremely difficult - in reality. The Germans were prepared for their initial offensive so could do it for a few weeks, but after that they would have slowed dramatically. The same for the Russians, they were mostly acting like chickens with their heads cut off for a while. Around Kiev that was literally the case, their C2 was breaking down due to the German assault, then the general in command of the region was killed, and that was it, the entire sector collapsed into chaos and they were surrounded and forced to surrender.

A board game - Third Reich I beleive it is - has an interesting system, you have HQ activations. You have to 'buy' the activations and its possible that not all the activations purchased will come into effect. You can also do a General Offensive (the major broad campaigns like Barbarossa) but you can only do that once a year. An HQ activation activates one HQ and it can activate units within a few hexes. Each turn is one season in that game, so if you are doing something like France you would pile up units in an area, and then activate one HQ to attack with some units, in a future activation you would activate another HQ and some more units in attempt to capitalize on the gains your earlier attack made.

The Barbarossa to Berlin and Stalin's War games has another concept, this one is probably more applicable here. You have a number of cards in your hand that can be played for various things (special events, reinforcements, replacements, or Operations). When played for Operations you get a certain number of activations. In Stalin's War units are at least a corps in size, you can move every unit that does NOT start in an enemy ZOC for free, and then you spend activation points to leave a ZOC or to attack. One activation triggers an entire stack, you can trigger multiple stacks to combine for attacks. In the early game the German player has a number of decent cards he can use for OPs, while the Soviet player is a bit leaner, he also wants to pull units back while leaving other for road blocks. This system is interesting in that you never have enough points to do everything you need. Each turn is a month or two long, but has 5 phases that go back and forth. If you use OPs in succession it gets less effective to represent fatigue, straining your supplies, etc.

Something similar could be done here - although its unlikely as it would require a major rewrite of the engine - using admin points as Uxbridge suggests.

The amount of admin points would vary a little bit randomly, and would slowly change over the course of the war. The Germans would start out with a lot, but would only slowly renew them, burning them faster than they earn them in 1941. The Soviets meanwhile would start out with a limited amount until the fall or winter. The German refresh would fall over the winter, then pick up again in the spring of 42, then fall off some and never recover in the Fall of 42 (probably slowly reducing over the course of the war). The Soviets would get more for the Winter offensies, and then fall off in the spring, and then start picking up again slowly to a hgh point that they would maintain until starting to lose them again in 45 when exhaustion started to set in.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: PeeDeeAitch
For the record, while many of my openings have been similar, there are changes. I have experimented of late with other moves as well. The "same opening" is also in part because we as players are all about at the same point in our learning. I expect more interesting things in the future.

Fair enough, and Flaviusx had an interesting thought there as well.

Sadly I think that no matter what we are going to eventually find an optimal first turn and then every Axis player is going to follow that to try and maximize their chances. After that things will start to go differently as the Soviet player follows his own strategy, the Axis player pursues his own strategy and reacts to the Soviet player, etc.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: majeloz
I love the idea of different activations for AP... for a whole series of things. It doesn 't make the game ahistorical, it represents the making of alternative history from possible choices at the time. So, no APs for hovertanks, but yes, you can create different options. But from what I can tell the aim of the game is to make the Germans play within historical limits, perhaps testing all those claims from various generals that they could have won but for Hitler

I think my main complaint is I don't think the Soviets are nearly as limited. Both sides had their own share of problems, and I'm not sure the Soviets are getting enogh of their own imposed.

ORIGINAL: majeloz
I think there should be a morale penalty when Moscow falls and that the capture of resources have a greater impact.

That way there would be 3 big objectives Lenningrad to release the Finns, Moscow for the effect on morale, and resources in the south. Thus giving the game some real strategic decisions. I think this would improve things a lot.

+1 !!

Different vaible objectives would make things much more interesting. Right now to not go for the big pockets you can get in the first few turns, or not to go for Leningrad in '41 isn't a strategy, it seems to be attempting to play with one arm tied behind your back.



Thanks for all the comments guys, appreciate it.

[Klydon]

I tried something different with the "panzers out of Rumania" gambit on turn 3, so I am doing my part to be different. [:D]

[neuromancer]

Cool! [8D]

What I want to see is a serious disagreement on what the best Axis stratgeies for the first few turns are. If there is no One Clearly Best Option, then the first few turns shouldh't be so repetitive any more as people consider those options.

[TulliusDetritus]

ORIGINAL: neuromancer

Some War in the Pacific games start on Dec. 8 (or have the option to), basically saying that everything that happens on Dec. 7 is more or less fixed and there is little point in reproducing it every time.

That's the scenario I always choose when I play WitP. But differences will not be that big [;)] Ok, if you start the 7 you [Japanese player] might sort of bypass the Philipines and send your Amphibious TFs to Jolo or Tarakan instead... You will NOT achieve decisive objectives though. And every Japanese player fears the Marblehead (Light Cruiser) which might appear and trash some transports along with their troops!

Well, some gamey guys might not attack Pearl Harbor and attack Cavite instead [:D] BBs are nothing, SSs will cripple your merchant marine in the long run... So they target the 27 American submarines whilst they are in Cavite (2 are at sea)... Welcome to the Twilight Zone...

A different disposition of Soviet troops on this game (WitE) might be catastrophic though (to the German player that is).

[Michael T]

"Necessity is the mother of invention". New gambits will be developed by the more ingenious players as required.

[carnifex]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

Unlike any other Russian theater game, the PG1 panzer/mech units that are frozen on turn 1 pretty much force the Germans to send at least some help to AGS from AGC on turn 1. Not to do so pretty much means the bulk of good Russian units escapes the initial onslaught.

I just want to note that it is possible to bag the southern forces on the opening turn AND activate the Romanians without using a single AGC unit.