What's wrong with this picture?

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: Lava

Your model is incomplete because it does not include danger.

Okay Joel, apologies.

I checked around the game again to be sure of myself and it does appears that the game models "danger," as in the closer you are to the enemy, the more fatigue the unit faces.

Drat! [:@]

But perhaps one could scale things a bit more to keep the Sovs from taking such large retreats without, on the face of it, apparent detriment.

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

Its not cheating.

Yep...

Made a fool of myself...

[Peltonx]

1.05 is probably about right, plus a few tweaks. Unless they plan on doing a major overhaul which I am thinking is not going to happen because of WiTw.

Pelton

[Speedysteve]

A few tweaks like removing HQ buildup spam?[;)]

Pav's mentioned before that more work will be done on the air war etc

[Peltonx]

I really like your post personally.

If you feel soomething is wrong, throw up a nice flaming post and get someone to refute it.

There is 100% nothing wrong with asking questions as long as you are humble enough to admit a good answer to your question.

Devs and mods do a good job most of the time answering questions. I have asked allot of them myself.

And opening your thread with a good old your cheating ect will get it answered 5x as fast as being a nice guy, sorry just how world works.

Pelton

[Peltonx]

Sure what is HQ build up spam?

1 hq build up a turn? I use less then 1 a turn on average.

At this point poeple are just running from me before I get a chance to use them heheh.

Which is ok because I can save on trucks ect hehe

[Peltonx]

Yes the air war is a mess and I really am surpised at the time these guys have and are putting into this game. That alone speaks volumes for the company tring to get it 100% right.

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

There is ZERO reason for the Russian player not to run in the south. You can nerf the Lvov pocket, but after turn 2 or 3 the Russian player will run, because all production will be out of German reach and if they hang around to fight they just get bagged.

It is pretty hard defending with a fast advancing axis player. I tried to apply pressure on the flanks but you need a ton of infantry to force a retreat and any thin advance gets cutof in no time... New soviet divisions are very weak and many veteran divisions die in the first 2 weeks of fighting..

And now soviet production is out of reach in 2 or 3 turns?

Don't be silly Pelton...

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

throw up a nice flaming post and get someone to refute it.

[:D]

Well, all I can say is that I give up. I bought this game with the expectation that playing the Axis would be very difficult. Only I didn't expect it to be THAT difficult. [:@] [;)]

So I've been thinking something must be wrong here... [:)]

Guess the best thing for me is, like all old soldiers (sailor in my case), to just fade away... shut up, and just play the game.

Cheers and sorry for the unruly behavior.

BTW... I'm really enjoying the AARs and especially Flaviusx vs Pelton. Great game guys!

Ray (alias Lava)

[Flaviusx]

It takes about 10 turns to pull off a successful evacuation. So, no, you cannot just run away from turns 2-3 on. You have stick around for a while and get throttled.

After the industry is out though, you really can and should run. Otherwise the Red Army melts away in the mid Ukraine. I ran it down to 4 million at one point, which I regard as a danger zone. At that level it is practically outnumbered by the Axis, if you include the minor.

BG went even deeper into the red zone, dropping down to 3.5 million in about the same time frame. (He's taking heavier losses because Q-ball is actually fighting on the whole map, not just the south.)

There are very few Soviet answers for German mobility in this game in 1941. Space is one of those answers. The proper use of space is an essential tool for the Soviet, and taking away that tool to make the Germans go even faster than they already are is preposterous. Their speed has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. (There are some very remarkable advances out there which some of you folks haven't seen. Stuff which imo shouldn't even possible on sheer logistical grounds.) The game is already much too forgiving of German logistics as is, or, really, the logistics of the attacking side in general. I really cannot put it more plainly than that.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: PeeDeeAitch

ORIGINAL: Rafo
Actually, as Betchley wrote, the main problem with the rules (at least in 41) is that it allows the Germans to make pockets with thin air by converted hex. The cost of ennemy hex is not much for the German motorized units, but very few Soviet units can cross 3 hex of empty "ennemy" land in their own country, even if the first German is 100 km away.[&:]


In my Opinion, the cost of empty ennemy territory should not depend on moral at all. After all, it isn't truly ennemy. Maybe the game need a special status for "no man's land" hexes.

This really isn't true. A cavalry outside of the converted region can get 1 or often 2 hexes into the conversion, a division inside can easily get at least up next to the conversion (if not 1 hex into it). The huge swath of converted is rather easily broken, even a pretty good defended pocket is broken if the German is not careful.

What the large Axis movement does do is make the Soviet have to defend in depth, to slow down such armor exploitation (which they really should be doing on defense anyway).

Sure that's the idea PDH. The problem is to implement and have a decent chance:

1) Linear formation, two hexes deep? That's a 20 miles deep deployment, and it's not much more than a mere speedbump.

2) Linear formation, hedgehog behind? Works better, surely, but it's hard to keep a sealed line and a hedgehog deep enough to contain a breakthrough six hexes deep behind your lines (that's 60 miles).

3) Full hedgehog, three rows, a total of 7 hexes deep area covered with ZOC (that's 70 miles deep!)? That used to work, but no more, since now Motorized Units enter ZOC quite cheaply. It only takes some thought to figure out how to use retreat rules into your favor, and presto, units herded into destruction.

Your example with the cavalry units is also spot on, just the same problem with the sides changed. The difference is that 1941 Cav Divisions don't have the firepower to dislodge even a PzDiv low on fuel with a deliberate attack, let alone a hasty attack. In 1942 two stacked Cavalry Corps perhaps will be able to a similar thing, but those means are certainly out of anyones' reach in 1941. Reaction rules would allow tactics such as protecting a spearhead by deploying units in reaction mode at the base of the spearhead. I'm pretty sure this will come in handy for the Axis side in 1941 and 1942. Beyond 1942, would also very useful to "contain", not fight back, Soviet breakthroughs.

I don't want to sound as the guy on the right hand side of this picture

[center][/center]

by insisting so much, but I really think that some of the "extreme strategies" we have to implement have a lot to do with this issue. I don't think it will do any harm thinking a bit on the causes for having to conduct such "extreme strategies", rather than entering a neverending tweak, rollback, tweak, rollback, tweak, etc.

[timmyab]

I don't see any problem with it myself.The scale of the game and the IgoUgo system mean that a lot of stuff has to be abstracted.In reality the evacuated enemy territory would quite literally be a minefield for the advancing armies.Reargaurds, roadblocks, mines, booby traps, blown bridges etc.In fact, I would like to have seen this sort of thing more specifically represented in the game with the inclusion of major road networks and bridges.
Anyway, all you have to do is isolate the territory with a few mobile units and the whole lot automatically converts for next turn.
However I would like to see the Soviets encouraged or even forced to fight further forward to give the game a more historic feel.It would also make sense to me if the cost of moving through enemy ZOC was dependent on the strength of the defending unit.

[colberki]

Flaviusx - so how deep have some Germans advanced in 1941?

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: colberki

Flaviusx - so how deep have some Germans advanced in 1941?

Deep. Hundreds of miles east of Leningrad and Moscow by November.

[Ketza]

How far can you get without any fighting and just converting hexes? Would be an interesting test!

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: Ketza

How far can you get without any fighting and just converting hexes? Would be an interesting test!

The more interesting question is how far they can get just by fighting. Very far indeed. Morale snowballs in the German favor after a while; all those easy wins add up. Conversely, Soviet morale craters and never gets a chance to recover. Nothing succeeds like success.

My own playtesting shows at this point that German losses are extremely low on the offensive. On the order of 300 men lost per attack or less. Even when the Soviets win a major defensive victory, the losses they inflict tend to be minor. German armies post patch are maintaining their strength in manpower with ease, only the armaments bug was holding them back. (AFV and plane losses, however, can be extremely heavy.)

It is entirely possible right now for the Wehrmacht to enter the blizzard nearly topped off in manpower. I don't think this is right.

[Tarhunnas]

A better victory point system is the answer to too rapid pullbacks IMHO.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

A better victory point system is the answer to too rapid pullbacks IMHO.

No real need. A zone of control model that didn't make impossible realistic mobile warfare would be even better.

[randallw]

The idea of having to spend extra MPs to move into hexes that were last controlled by the enemy, isn't this pretty common in big unit giant map games?

[Peltonx]

The German player can be close to topped off but only if he chooses not to go after Leningrad and Moscow and the Russian play gives up the south.

The lower losses are a reflection of game play and not the game engine. Russian losses are far far lower then historical because they choose not to be stupid and get cut off as per Stalin. Do we forse them to be stupid, noper. Why should we forse German losses to be historical if the tactics used are nothing like what historically happened, which are generally Russian tactics and nothing to do with what the German player is doing.

German losses can be greatly lowered by only doing attacks you know will probably win, in other words very few hasty attacks.

Just the threat of encirclement generally forses most Russian players to withdraw without fighting, therefor German loses are kept low. Not because of the game engine, but because of a general lack of fighting or smart game play by the Russian player.

The losses ect are never going to reflect history 100% because most players are not going to follow history.