Question

[2ndACR]

There is also a complete flak bn that showed up.

[OTZ]

ORIGINAL: Ketza

Even before WITE I considered a strategic defensive doctrine with mobile reserves to be the best Axis choice on the eastern front if the knock out blow could not be delivered in 1941.

Oddly enough, this is the exact strategy that would have probably lead to the Germans "winning" the war in the East. Had they not gambled on Kursk, the attrition rate would have bled the Russians far quicker than the Germans.

[juret]

and flak comp

[Q-Ball]

Suppose the RL Germans cancelled Fall Blau, and immeidately went into fort-building mode in 1942. No Stalingrad, no Citadel, just digging and training. Do the Russians reach Berlin in April 1945?

If the answer is no, they don't, then the game could be absolutely perfect in simulating history, and still produce an a-historical, stalemated outcome. Because the real problem at that point isn't the simulation, but the fact that there is no political imperative to attack.

IRL, no way the Germans sit on their hands in 1942

[Helpless]

Suppose the RL Germans cancelled Fall Blau, and immeidately went into fort-building mode in 1942. No Stalingrad, no Citadel, just digging and training. Do the Russians reach Berlin in April 1945?

If the answer is no..

Correct, the answer is no, they could reach it even earlier in such a case..

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Helpless
Correct, the answer is no, they could reach it even earlier in such a case..

What makes you think that? Would more strict force conservation in 42 and 43 allow the Germans to have more reserves for delaying the Russians? Seems somehow counter-intuitive to me.

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Richard III

In regard to the Sovs. " fighting harder" in early `41 wnen you do, as in trying to fight from a Lev. 2 fort on a major river line, the CRT generates these results. I can post about 10 more similiar screenies. Note the odds, where do the Ger. get those numbers with a few SU`s attached ?

BTE: why does a 'ready" Fort give a 0 value to the battle ?

Why did I lose 15 Ftrs & 3 Bmrs . to one Flak Company unit ??

These results are what we get from all attacks. No matter what, or where, anywhere from 5:1 to 250: 1

Probably I`m just a really bad Sov. player VS myself ( H to H ) in 5 games and the AI in about 7, so I`ll refrain from saying "the Ger. unit Exp/Morale and MP`s are waaaay to high and the Sovs. are way to low so one gets there hopeless combat results. ooooh ! sorry, I couldn`t help myself.[:'(]

How would I "Fight Smarter or harder " ???? I`m really interested in fighting " forward" and for the cities ( like in the Real War, but when we do we get toasted and a wrecked army going into the winter.

BTw, why was there a need to nerf the ` 41 Sovs in 1.5...and mayber in `42 as well ?

Not trying to be mean here, but this is a discussion for another thread.

Mostly a good discussion so far.

An add on question if I may.

Lets say we have a victory point system in place. How much different from historical should someone have to get to in order for it to be considered a marginal victory or should there even be a concept of a "draw" in place? Example: 100 points might be a draw. Should 101 or 99 be considered a marginal or should maybe 110 or 90 be the threshold to declare a "winner"?

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

An add on question if I may.

Lets say we have a victory point system in place. How much different from historical should someone have to get to in order for it to be considered a marginal victory or should there even be a concept of a "draw" in place? Example: 100 points might be a draw. Should 101 or 99 be considered a marginal or should maybe 110 or 90 be the threshold to declare a "winner"?

I would start by asking what one considers the USSR's May'45 "win" to be, decisive, minor, draw?

If you ask me, May 1945 was a "draw" or "Minor Victory" for the Soviet Union because they did not occupy all of Germany and suffered enormous casualties, whereas had they done so the 2nd half of the 20th Century might have been very different.

I also feel that VPs for a grand campaign should incorporate Losses as a VP contributor.

[OTZ]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: Helpless
Correct, the answer is no, they could reach it even earlier in such a case..

What makes you think that? Would more strict force conservation in 42 and 43 allow the Germans to have more reserves for delaying the Russians? Seems somehow counter-intuitive to me.

Nic Zetterling would also agree (unless his opinion has changed xince he wrote his book on Kursk).

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

ORIGINAL: Klydon

An add on question if I may.

Lets say we have a victory point system in place. How much different from historical should someone have to get to in order for it to be considered a marginal victory or should there even be a concept of a "draw" in place? Example: 100 points might be a draw. Should 101 or 99 be considered a marginal or should maybe 110 or 90 be the threshold to declare a "winner"?

I would start by asking what one considers the USSR's May'45 "win" to be, decisive, minor, draw?

If you ask me, May 1945 was a "draw" or "Minor Victory" for the Soviet Union because they did not occupy all of Germany and suffered enormous casualties, whereas had they done so the 2nd half of the 20th Century might have been very different.

I also feel that VPs for a grand campaign should incorporate Losses as a VP contributor.

Interesting point on losses. How do others feel about this topic and how much weight should casualties carry compared to geographical objectives?

I do think the Russians should have a rather heavy "penalty" for not knocking off Berlin by close to historical time. While we can't have any assumption/effect on the advance of the Western Allies in this particular game, we do have to somewhat assume historical advancement. I don't see how Nazi Germany would not have pulled additional troops from the east to defend against western advances and there is nothing we can do with the game as it is at the moment about this. Among the Allies, there was discussion on who was going to take Berlin. If the Russians were far enough behind schedule, I would think the Western Allies would have captured Eastern Germany, including Berlin, to end the European war, so from that perspective, I think the Russians would have made every effort to beat the Western Allies into Berlin.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: OTZ

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: Helpless
Correct, the answer is no, they could reach it even earlier in such a case..

What makes you think that? Would more strict force conservation in 42 and 43 allow the Germans to have more reserves for delaying the Russians? Seems somehow counter-intuitive to me.

Nic Zetterling would also agree (unless his opinion has changed xince he wrote his book on Kursk).

It is an interesting questions, and I am somewhat aware of the arguments I guess Helpless is referring to. His opinion would be valuable here as he is one of the few lucky ones that can easily peek at both side of the medal as he speaks Russian. I wonder what the opinion of authors and historians with Russian background is about this.
My take is that you have to be careful with such extrapolations, since what the Germans wasted at Stalingrad (the offensive or later rescue attempts) or Kursk wasn't just mediocre Infantry divisions and fresh recruits. Involved were the veterans, and elite formations. The loss of the veterans, especially in the NCO corps but also up the echelon were be felt by the Germans soon after. So husbanding these forces, despite not binding the Russians and inflicting some casualties there as well (which were hardly above the ratio the Germans would have needed, esp. at Kursk) should provide some stock for a prolongation of a defensive fight, sort of a "economy of force measure"?

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
Suppose the RL Germans cancelled Fall Blau, and immeidately went into fort-building mode in 1942. No Stalingrad, no Citadel, just digging and training. Do the Russians reach Berlin in April 1945?

If the answer is no, they don't, then the game could be absolutely perfect in simulating history, and still produce an a-historical, stalemated outcome. Because the real problem at that point isn't the simulation, but the fact that there is no political imperative to attack.

IRL, no way the Germans sit on their hands in 1942

True, and a good guideline for alternate VP conditions.

Probably because until Kursk, a good part of the decision makers in the OKW and OKH, who were in Hitlers favor, believed that beating the Russians was the only acceptable "win" situation and still possible. Ideology surely goes into that. So they had to attack, and bring the bear to fall; perhaps hoping for some kind of internal breakdown due to an uprising in the population, or army, or a tumbling of the will to fight for Stalin once key points had been lost for good.

I suppose many of the higher echelon officers (except a "few" famous ones who stated later or wrote in their books that they believed the whole invasion to be hopeless from the beginning) began to realize only during the later part of the war, that winning in a true sense was out, and that even keeping Russia out of former German territory would be almost impossible. The latter would be sort of the minor victory for Germany, but if someone had said so loudly in 41 or 42, he probably would have had a few hard nights. It had not settled at that early time, unlike the hindsight provides Axis player with the knowledge that this is the perhaps only chance for victory they have, and they might have to plan early for it.

You could tune VP conditions also such that a German victory at any level would require a true Russian defeat, and anything that gets Russia back to the border a draw at best? But that gets back to the question how much the VP conditions for an Axis direct win must be eased, or if Axis can and could have won this contest at all?

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Klydon
Interesting point on losses. How do others feel about this topic and how much weight should casualties carry compared to geographical objectives?

If you wanted to add casualties in, how about weighing them according to the situations: E.g. late in the war, the Russians would be so strong that they true aim/skill of a player should be advancing at as little cost as possible, in contrast to grinding forward inelegantly using brute force. So Russian casualties in late war could count double or so. Similarly in 1941, German casualties could count double, which would give additional incentive for the Russians to fight forward. Maybe from 12/41 to 12/43 casualties should count normal.
(this is a bit like coupling the loss-value to the quality of the lost troops, i.e. veterans being more costly than fresh draftees)

You could keep track of the losses very first December turn in a table, and then figure a "proportionality factor" to add them to the VPs?

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: Klydon
Interesting point on losses. How do others feel about this topic and how much weight should casualties carry compared to geographical objectives?

If you wanted to add casualties in, how about weighing them according to the situations: E.g. late in the war, the Russians would be so strong that they true aim/skill of a player should be advancing at as little cost as possible, in contrast to grinding forward inelegantly using brute force. So Russian casualties in late war could count double or so. Similarly in 1941, German casualties could count double, which would give additional incentive for the Russians to fight forward. Maybe from 12/41 to 12/43 casualties should count normal.
(this is a bit like coupling the loss-value to the quality of the lost troops, i.e. veterans being more costly than fresh draftees)

You could keep track of the losses very first December turn in a table, and then figure a "proportionality factor" to add them to the VPs?

I think that the way it's done on the Scenarios is about right (for instance, 1 VP for each 5,000 men lost, 1 VP for each 500 arty pieces lost, 1 VP for each 50 AFV's lost). The actual "conversion rate" from losses to VP's is indeed a scenario parameter. Making it time dependant seems to me a bit too complex.

I invite anyone interested in experimenting with this to try their ideas out with the spreadsheet I posted on this other thread:

fb.asp?m=2922672

There you can see the data for the first 16 (?) of the game Q-Ball and me are playing right now.

Scoring has two elements: a 10% of VP's associated to currently held cities/towns is added to the current score, and the contribution of losses to date.

Regarding Helpless remark: taking into account losses, and awarding VPs each turn for towns/cities held, I observe that the Axis gets a huge advantage in the early turns (T1 - T8) and getting a 5:1 advantage by turn 4. Interestingly, this advantage vanishes, and the current victory level starts to degrade as the Soviets, either in the defense or the attack, inflict more damage on the Axis armies.

For instance, during the mud turns, Q-Ball victory rating - according to my spreadsheet - declined by 0.2 each turn. This decline accelerated considerably, as the December offensives started (about 0.6-0.8 per turn), but it slows pretty quickly as Soviet losses mount during extended offensive operations.

The bottom line is that the Axis starts "losing" as soon as it stops going on the offensive.

[janh]

Yes, I agree, it is right, and the other is too complex for little benefit.  Amusing, I wonder whether a similar discussion has taken place in the early WitP days, especially since the contest is there so much more uneven for the Japanese. 

If I read your table correctly, the accumulating VP's (VLs) for holding cities are very minor compared to the VPs gained by inflicting losses (like 1:10 ratio or so).  Maybe this is going to flatten off as the character of the fighting changes, but this way it would seem cities are even more unimportant to hold in this variant.  I suppose you could easily tune up the 0.1 factor you set for weighing it, depending on whether you'd want to shift more strategic focus on strategic locations (i.e. on increased importance on offensives), or on Army destruction (i.e. defensive).  Is the present factor not a little low?

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: janh
Yes, I agree, it is right, and the other is too complex for little benefit.  Amusing, I wonder whether a similar discussion has taken place in the early WitP days, especially since the contest is there so much more uneven for the Japanese. 

I wouldn't be surprised. The whole point of using the A-bomb of Japan was to settle the issue decisively without confronting the losses a conventional campaign would entail (or that was the argument for Truman, I think).

ORIGINAL: janh
If I read your table correctly, the accumulating VP's (VLs) for holding cities are very minor compared to the VPs gained by inflicting losses (like 1:10 ratio or so).  Maybe this is going to flatten off as the character of the fighting changes, but this way it would seem cities are even more unimportant to hold in this variant.  I suppose you could easily tune up the 0.1 factor you set for weighing it, depending on whether you'd want to shift more strategic focus on strategic locations (i.e. on increased importance on offensives), or on Army destruction (i.e. defensive).  Is the present factor not a little low?

Good points. I see two ways to adjust this scoring scheme. One is to tweak the loss -> VP conversion rates (notice the boxes on the far right of the table, they allow you set the ratio at the value you want, and differently for the Axis and Soviet player). The other is to make some towns/cities more valuables than others. I know this is already the way it works (Moscow hexes more valuable than the Kharkov hex), since it has been discussed/hinted at by testers, but I'm struggling to extract a full listing from the stock GC 41 scenario.

Right now, the 200 VP's the Axis easily gets by September 1941 (that is all the way to the east including Leningrad, Orel, Kursk and Stalino) are 20 VP/turn. Those are equivalent to 100,000 losses per turn, without risking into a major offensive operation. And here is where it becomes apparent that strategic locations and losses are locked in a feedback loop. They're not independent variables at all. Your opponent should inflict to you enough losses each turn to compensate for those 20 VP's and his own losses, which become VP's for you.

Say you're the Axis, and you get to April 1942 with 3.5M men in the ranks of the Wehrmacht (this is not an unrealistic proposition at all) and you're gaining 20 VP/turn. Your loss ratio is something like 5:1 or better. What should you do? Tip the balance even further into your advantage, or just tank your gains?

If you don't tip the balance further, you're giving the initiative to your opponent. Literally, you're putting yourself in his hands. However, if you try to get more advantage, since your opponent has become somewhat stronger - in numbers, in quality it will be a worse army than that one faced in summer 1941 - and your units have lost some of their fighting edge - not the motorized units, whose morale is preserved no matter what happens during December 1941 to March 1942 - you're risking to suffer losses you can't afford, and lose the initiative but with an inferior strength and position.

I'm not a WitP:AE specialist, but this sounds as a similar decision the Japanese player has to do once he achieves the historical objectives: Burma, New Guinea, etc. Should he stop there, fortify, and wait for the Allies to come to him? Or he should go after Australia, India or New Caledonia?

Going back to WitE. The problem perhaps lies in that there aren't enough "immobile" strategic assets - manpower, resources, oil - at the reach of the Axis as to cripple the Soviet Union in a decisive enough way as to render further Soviet offensive action futile or harmful. We need to look at this in a honest and comprehensive way. For instance, is the SU fracked if the Axis, for instance, get the Caucasus? The answer should be either yes or no.

I don't have an answer myself. I wonder how effective (or uneffective) would be a Red Army with a long-term shortage in Fuel. I need to check off-map production as well. Perhaps reducing certain off-map resources things might become feasible if they already aren't.

People in these forums say that going after the Caucasus is "far-fetched".

I would like to remind them that the most celebrated WitP:AE AAR's usually show Japanese players that, after emulating very efficiently or more efficiently than historically, Imperial Japan performance, they embark on operations which were only seriously considered by pulp sci-fi writers. Such as invading India, Australia or crushing Nationalist China once and for all. Some of them even get away with that (for some time). It could be argued that even just by trying they just made Allied decisive victory unfeasible.

My opinion is that, on 1.05, with VP scoring schemes similar to that in my spreadsheet, and the hindsight on what failed regarding 1942 Summer Offensive, the Axis can get to Baku with reasonable logistics while inflicting cataclysmic losses in the process. I'd like to note that the worst trimester for the Red Army, in losses, for the entirety of the war was June-September 1942 with over 2M losses. Maybe they'll have abandon it eventually, but destroying the production there would - should - have a catastrophic effect on the Red Army ability to fight effectively for a extended period of time.

Again to WitP:AE. What if the Japanese raids Brisbane and Sydney? Or NZ? Or Ceylon? Would they be able to hold them? Probably not. But the damage they would have done in the process would be terrible.

EDIT: Edited for clarity and better English.