C&C: REALLY important

[Gandalf]

I agree that the game does seem to overly restrict the Axis C & C, but it's easy enough to go into the Preferences screen and change the Admin percentage to suit your own historical individual taste.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

On the other hand, the Axis also have very little to spend AP on after they get their leaders in order in late 1941/early 1942 other than shifting divisions and support units from one HQ/unit to another.

How is that material to the subject? Germans are forced to pay for changing command far more heavily than the Soviet. How is that historically accurate, and not just another free gift to the Soviet side so it's not as hard to manage?

Since the German army is only able to conduct operations with initiative for the first 17 turns, the handicap this creates has a-historic leverage when it does the Soviet the most good.

It doesn't matter that the German eventually ends up with a surplus of AP. It matters that the German is handicapped in one of its major strengths (command and control flexibility), depriving it of that strength entirely, while the Soviet is given a boon of C2 when he had no such advantage historically.

The Soviet costs reflect the fact that their divisions weren't amazing. Soviet corps reassignment costs are much higher and are the proper units to compare to German divisions so far as these costs go.

Once the Soviet switches over to corps, he is limited to anywhere between 4-8 reassignments/turn depending on how his leadership rolls go. This isn't a huge number of units.

[KamilS]

Flaviusx

The Soviet costs reflect the fact that their divisions weren't amazing. Soviet corps reassignment costs are much higher and are the proper units to compare to German divisions so far as these costs go.

Once the Soviet switches over to corps, he is limited to anywhere between 4-8 reassignments/turn depending on how his leadership rolls go. This isn't a huge number of units.

I agree it gets harder for Soviets to transport their corps around whole front at will as they can easily do with divisions. But once their strength is concentrated in corps formation they do not need to use their secret weapon - rail transfer and units re-designation.

Thanks to fact that they can spawn armies and new fronts are coming into action they have don not have such problem with overloaded command as Germans.


Germans are much less flexible with reassigning their units, especially in summer of '41 when HQ build-up is key to any meaningful breakthrough.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: Kamil

I agree it gets harder for Soviets to transport their corps around whole front at will as they can easily do with divisions. But once their strength is concentrated in corps formation they do not need to use their secret weapon - rail transfer and units re-designation.

I totally disagree with this. The importance of this never really goes away. Creating strategic surprise means having reserves on hand even in the late war period. Shifting around 2-3 strong armies in one turn with railing and reassignment can catch the German flat footed. The late war period becomes a game of shifting reserves on both sides, and the Soviet has to contrive to play the last trump and find a place on the German line where the German hasn't got reserves to match a Soviet commitment.

If you just mindlessly throw everything up front and grind away, then yeah, I guess you won't need to do this.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

On the other hand, the Axis also have very little to spend AP on after they get their leaders in order in late 1941/early 1942 other than shifting divisions and support units from one HQ/unit to another.

How is that material to the subject? Germans are forced to pay for changing command far more heavily than the Soviet. How is that historically accurate, and not just another free gift to the Soviet side so it's not as hard to manage?

Since the German army is only able to conduct operations with initiative for the first 17 turns, the handicap this creates has a-historic leverage when it does the Soviet the most good.

It doesn't matter that the German eventually ends up with a surplus of AP. It matters that the German is handicapped in one of its major strengths (command and control flexibility), depriving it of that strength entirely, while the Soviet is given a boon of C2 when he had no such advantage historically.

The Soviet costs reflect the fact that their divisions weren't amazing. Soviet corps reassignment costs are much higher and are the proper units to compare to German divisions so far as these costs go.

Once the Soviet switches over to corps, he is limited to anywhere between 4-8 reassignments/turn depending on how his leadership rolls go. This isn't a huge number of units.

That's just another apology rationalizing mechanically a corruption of one of Germany's biggest 1941 strategic advantages and grossly limits the disadvantage of the actual Soviet army in 1941.

Further, you're trying to make it seem like corps have a down side. They have zero down side for the Soviet army.

[KamilS]

Flaviusx


I totally disagree with this. The importance of this never really goes away. Creating strategic surprise means having reserves on hand even in the late war period. Shifting around 2-3 strong armies in one turn with railing and reassignment can catch the German flat footed. The late war period becomes a game of shifting reserves on both sides, and the Soviet has to contrive to play the last trump and find a place on the German line where the German hasn't got reserves to match a Soviet commitment.

It only mean, that once Red Army is on offensive Soviets loose their advantage over Germans in that department, nothing more.

Flaviusx

If you just mindlessly throw everything up front and grind away, then yeah, I guess you won't need to do this.

Was it necessary?

[Flaviusx]

Helio, it's not an apology. Plain fact of the matter is Soviet rifle divisions on average were half the strength of German ones, had very limited combat support elements, and were designed to be easy to control by stripping them down to the bone. They weren't strong units with a highly articulated force structure. The Soviets tended to centralize engineering, artillery and other such assets, too.

So it's a perfectly valid design decisions to discount their reassignment costs. They were, in western terms, demidivisions, glorified brigades.

The true counterpart in the Red Army for western divisions was the corps, although when up to strength they were even stronger than a western division. (Usually they weren't up to strength.) Hence the higher reassignment costs.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Helio, it's not an apology. Plain fact of the matter is Soviet rifle divisions on average were half the strength of German ones, had very limited combat support elements, and were designed to be easy to control by stripping them down to the bone. They weren't strong units with a highly articulated force structure. The Soviets tended to centralize engineering, artillery and other such assets, too.

So it's a perfectly valid design decisions to discount their reassignment costs. They were, in western terms, demidivisions, glorified brigades.

The true counterpart in the Red Army for western divisions was the corps, although when up to strength they were even stronger than a western division. (Usually they weren't up to strength.) Hence the higher reassignment costs.

You and I don't agree on what a fact is, so we can't have an informed discussion. My "fact" is that Soviet C2 in WitE is the equivalent of 1986 NATO capability while the Germans have 1986 WarsawPact capability. Both are 45 years ahead of their time based on the freedom the engine gives players, but one of them has the good leadership efficiency (Soviet) compared to his opponent Germany, does not (we can leave the minors out of it entirely).

Soviet divisions were, in theory, manageable. In practice in 1941, the Red Army purges were so devastating that Soviet C2 was FUBAR for all intents and purposes throughout 1941 and 1942 until Uranus/Mars (and even then, Mars was an utter failure and Uranus lead to 3rd Kharkov and the destruction of several more armies).

WitE COULD implement a design decision (cheap re-assignment for German, expensive reassignment for Soviet) that takes a step toward the C2 realism of 1941/42 (and a step, I might emphasize, that would not cost Soviet players any movement autonomy so they would still have full control of the ability to run away). Instead it makes things far easier on the Soviet player while making things harder comparatively on the German.

The German army through 1942 was the quintessential example of effective C2 being their battlefield differentiator. Does WitE reflect this at all to you, Flavius? To me, it's an utter failure in this regard. Soviets get the same AP as Germany throughout the game, and their divisions are cheaper to re-assign.

I defy anyone to give me examples that demonstrate how Soviet ineffectiveness of command and control is reflected in this game, and I further defy anyone to demonstrate how WitE German command & control is superior to WitE Soviet C2 in meaningful game terms (in other words, stuff the German can do in the C2 arena that the Soviet cannot do equally well).

It's an absurdity to argue that this isn't a significant problem in play-balancing WitE.

What's more, an adjustment to the C2 costs of switching divisions (down for Germany, up for Soviet) would have immediate realism effects in that routing far away from your HQs would have an efficiency impact against the Soviet that would further penalize routing. Right now, when Soviet divisions route so far away from an HQ that they're inefficiency rises to the level of hopelessness, the Soviet can pay 1 or 2 points (rarely 3) and reassign to the closest HQ around without worrying about being over-command (because Soviet leadership is so bad it's irrelevant when they're over-loaded).

The WitE Soviet-side-only players' community does not have much of a clue of the synergies that come together to make the 1941/42 red army far more efficient than it had any basis in fact being.

[Mike13z50]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

I defy anyone to give me examples that demonstrate how Soviet ineffectiveness of command and control is reflected in this game, and I further defy anyone to demonstrate how WitE German command & control is superior to WitE Soviet C2 in meaningful game terms (in other words, stuff the German can do in the C2 arena that the Soviet cannot do equally well).

(because Soviet leadership is so bad it's irrelevant when they're over-loaded).

You did it yourself.

Unless you don't think the horrible numbers that 9/10 of the Soviet generals have are a C2 advantage to the Germans?

Not to mention that the typical German Division has 4 quality leaders rolling for him. Corps/Army/AG/OKH

The Russian unit has two. Army/Front. (with Stavka being permanently overcap)

[KenchiSulla]

Its not an AP problem.. Soviet have to use AP for a lot of other stuff.. AP is artificial

Many civil war games have an option to randomize and hide leader statistics untill they are tried in combat... That would work great in this game as it would benefit the axis the most due to higher overal quality (and one could argue that axis officer quality was pretty wel known as they were in fact combat tested). Right now the soviets just put the best guys in command of the critical areas and try to get the worst of the lot killed....

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

...Right now the soviets just put the best guys in command of the critical areas and try to get the worst of the lot killed....

Like real life except they just executed the worst of the lot. [;)]

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Mike13z50

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

I defy anyone to give me examples that demonstrate how Soviet ineffectiveness of command and control is reflected in this game, and I further defy anyone to demonstrate how WitE German command & control is superior to WitE Soviet C2 in meaningful game terms (in other words, stuff the German can do in the C2 arena that the Soviet cannot do equally well).

(because Soviet leadership is so bad it's irrelevant when they're over-loaded).

You did it yourself.

Unless you don't think the horrible numbers that 9/10 of the Soviet generals have are a C2 advantage to the Germans?

Not to mention that the typical German Division has 4 quality leaders rolling for him. Corps/Army/AG/OKH

The Russian unit has two. Army/Front. (with Stavka being permanently overcap)

I'll concede the rolls to a certain extent. I doubt there are many times when the distance to an army group or OKH make long-term differences given the leadership advantage you yourself point out. But Army Group South and Army Group Center, in 1941, are so over-loaded that they might as well not make certain rolls anyway.

The Soviet doesn't suffer as severe a problem at Front level because a) Leaders are of inferior quality in general so the range of variation is narrow and results generally low; and b) Soviets simply have more fronts and thus, given the way game mechanics work, the Soviets have more C2 flexibility at the Front level than the German does at the Army level or at the Army Group level.

But I will NOT cede that leadership is the equivalent of C&C in this game because it is not. Leadership has precious little to do with C&C in game terms. At best, it adds a few movement points with a good roll here and there, and for the Soviet, that is largely irrelevant.

When on the defense in 41/42, you're retreating over friendly terrain at the optimal cost given your poor morale. By 43 and later when Soviets take the initiative, it's a slow army and thus the MPs aren't making the difference in maneuver warfare the way they need to for Germany in 41/42. When Germany misses rolls at the corps/army level for movement allowances, the Army Groups are over-loaded and won't be of much help in 41, and the difference between an infantry corps (to speak nothing to the panzer corps) with an average MP of 10 versus average MP of 12 in 1941 is absolutely enormous compared to a Soviet rifle division in this same period.

Things you could do to easily make the C2 differntial better for Germany:

Make Soviets round UP for successful command transfer rolls, let Germany continue to round down.

All Soviet Army HQs that arrive are automatically assigned to the nearest Front HQ. All divisions that arrive are automatically assigned to the nearest Army HQ.

The advantage the Soviet side gets for having units come in under STAVKA are absolutely enormous. As the German player, I'd trade that for every reinforcement coming in assigned exactly as it was historically, and we all know this would be in Germany's favor simply because they get so few units.

The Soviet reinforcement table gives them a blank slate to reorganize as near to perfect an army as can be managed, for almost no cost in AP.

These are the kinds of unspoken, unrecognized advantages that make Germany the weaker army by comparison and doom it to be a bit player in a Soviet grand strategy game. There are more.

[heliodorus04]

double-post

[carlkay58]

The Soviet army in 1941 WAS a blank slate. The purge had eliminated most of the commanders with any initiative or innovation. The leadership was still in flux and turmoil - and after the war started there was the fear of being 'fired' by Stalin as a very real threat.

The German command, on the other hand, was a strict hierarchy with the commanders being arranged by seniority of rank. There were political factions within the military that had many effects on the conduct of the war. Corps and Army commands worked together for several campaigns. Transferring the command of divisions was rare in contrast to the Soviets.

There was a single Soviet division in September of 1942 near Stalingrad (the 264 Rifle Division pops into mind - but I can't recall for sure) that switched armies twelve times in that month. Divisions were swapped between armies and fronts on a regular basis. When a division wore down in combat, it was reassigned to another army/front for moving to a reserve area. In the reserve area, it was quite commonly reassigned to another army/front for its recovery and rebuilding - often several hundred miles from the front.

The place where the German army had much greater flexibility was in cooperation between commands - temporarily loaning formations from one command to another. This should be shown in the game in a smaller penalty for different formations participating in combat together - I don't know if the game does have different penalties for this for the Axis vs the Soviets - but this is where I would argue that the Germans should be better than the Soviets.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

The Soviet army in 1941 WAS a blank slate. The purge had eliminated most of the commanders with any initiative or innovation. The leadership was still in flux and turmoil - and after the war started there was the fear of being 'fired' by Stalin as a very real threat.

The German command, on the other hand, was a strict hierarchy with the commanders being arranged by seniority of rank. There were political factions within the military that had many effects on the conduct of the war. Corps and Army commands worked together for several campaigns. Transferring the command of divisions was rare in contrast to the Soviets.

There was a single Soviet division in September of 1942 near Stalingrad (the 264 Rifle Division pops into mind - but I can't recall for sure) that switched armies twelve times in that month. Divisions were swapped between armies and fronts on a regular basis. When a division wore down in combat, it was reassigned to another army/front for moving to a reserve area. In the reserve area, it was quite commonly reassigned to another army/front for its recovery and rebuilding - often several hundred miles from the front.

The place where the German army had much greater flexibility was in cooperation between commands - temporarily loaning formations from one command to another. This should be shown in the game in a smaller penalty for different formations participating in combat together - I don't know if the game does have different penalties for this for the Axis vs the Soviets - but this is where I would argue that the Germans should be better than the Soviets.

The actual history is incidental to the game mechanic, and I don't care how the real commanders did things, because they didn't have Admin Points!

REAL Soviet Generals had political commissars ready to execute anyone who stepped east. Since WitE ignores the concept of fighting westward as a national Soviet imperative that it was historically, I don't give a crap about a division that changed hands several times in a year. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the Eastern Front (and I count myself among them) can stop any given game discussion by citing some anecdote that coincidentally justifies a faulty game mechanic. (Queue the crazies who cite that Ju-87 pilot who destroyed every tank on the eastern front at Kursk)

I'm dealing with game balance. The history is done and WitE deviates from that history starting on Turn 1...

The Soviets still have too many game mechanics unrealistically bent heavily in their favor in that the hindsights of history make clear an optimal strategy that the German simply can't compete with. The Soviet side is uncompetitive. Now, I understand there's a school in the community that says this is historically accurate. To them I say, fine: if you're happy with WitE, then maybe my expectations are faulty.

But I expected a competitive game, and I don't see that product here (again; I had that feeling in 1.04 before, too, and now it's back).

[janh]

Yes, that's it.  Two schools, one that wants a game that gives the German better chances for an even or even offensive ("total") victory, and there is the school of people that play this to get into the mood of these times and the situation that both sides did find themselves in.  The designers attempted a little of both, getting the overall strained situation into the picture without some "confusing orders from supreme command" (Hitler,Stalin) or other political implications.  This is a compromise, and such necessarily never optimal for people at the two extremes.  However, they called the game "War in the East", and not "War in the East -- a fictional alternative history".

I am of the latter type and although I vastly prefer the Axis side of the game, care little about the fact the Germany must loose and likely never stands a chance to bring the bear to fall, but I am looking to find myself in the same desperate struggle that we know so much and at the same time so little about. 
I think the modeling of C&C/changing seems to me to be a well-conceived design.  In fact, fortunately we won't see a Hitler sacking some 20 generals in one round after the termination of the last Axis offensive of 41 for political and loyality/control reasons, which would add a lot of burden to an Axis player to fix his ranks with poorer leaders.  So actually I find myself well off compared to what I could imagine it could be.  And for the lesser AP points to be spend Soviets, Flavius explained that nicely.  The counterpart of a German division is a Soviet corps, and a Soviet division is very different in nature and should be "more flexible (cheaper)" to reassign.
 
Now of course people that want to play WitE as a more balanced, more even game, you could perhaps create an alternative mod in which certain historical constraints to both side could be thrown overboard.  Not as ideal as having an option in the difficulty settings to disable AP on transfer, but could could boost the Axis AP by either offering a larger start pool, or add more AP per turn.  You could even add some other benefits, such as higher production rates of better Axis equipment and perhaps kill the withdrawals in return for tigher victory conditions.  That would be an equivalent to the Japanese WITP/AE Iron Man scenario, which besides the historical campaign is being played a lot in PBEM.  Not for everyone, but perhaps a nice addition?

[ComradeP]

One thing to keep in mind is that even though Soviet formations were historically often seriously understrength, that is not always or even often the case in the game. I have yet to see a Soviet player create so many units that he can only keep them at about 60-70% TOE like their historical counterparts.

Most players create an optimized Soviet army. No matter how you spin it or the historical justification, that is a big advantage. Not game breaking, but it is a big advantage.

We've recently discussed the possibility of lowering Soviet army HQ command capacity, but the developers are understandably reluctant to do so without giving the Axis a historical penalty like poor logistics after 2-3 months in 1941.

The in-game Soviet leaders tend to be worse than their German counterparts, and although I am still of the opinion that a number of leaders are rated for their potential rather than for what they had actually achieved at the start of the campaign in 1941, I don't see Soviet leader quality as a problem now that the Soviets are (how exactly it happened is a mystery to me) not as likely to get good modified CV values than they got around release.

The requirement for the Soviets to use more HQ's should the army HQ command capacity be downsized at one point will also automatically result in them being forced to use more of their mediocre leaders. Currently, a Soviet army is an actual army, not a corps sized formation by Western standards, as it can include 12 full strength divisions/6 full strength corps. That also means fronts can become similar to army groups.

[heliodorus04]

MARK MY WORDS: Just as I was correct about forts being the major inhibitor to competitive games in 1.04, Soviet freedom of movement is about to coalesce into a 1941 standard strategy that German players are going to be unable to unbalance. The game is about to take a shift toward one ultra-effective 1941 Soviet defense that will push the 1942 game back toward 1.04 Soviet detente.

The strategy will be a massive, hedgehog-coordinated retreat that prevents Germans from taking armament points and prevents them from large-scale isolation of units, and preserves an army in the 5-million mark by Turn 17.

With the continued re-balancing of supply, German infantry will not be able to reach a point where it has enough supply to conduct deliberate attacks until about turn 12, leaving German players 5 turns to try to damage the Soviet army and take the more meaningful population centers.

The Soviets will be at 7 to 8 million men by summer 1942, and German attacks will be able to push the line by 10 or 12 hexes, but won't be able to capture units or take ground, so Germans are going to go back to trying to create World-War-1 style trenches in 1942 and waiting it out in boring, uninspired gameplay.

That's the game the Soviet players' community is inviting based on their defense of Soviet a-historic advantage of C2.

This thread is replete with examples of Soviet players describing how their armies are superior to the historic 1941 Red Army. No one is even denying that your WitE armies are superior to the 1941 Red Army. Instead, they're arguing that Soviet command was more agile than German command. Which is ludicrous.

It is ludicrous that the Soviet Army has greater freedom of command in 1941 than Germany. The reason the Soviet Army switched the corps operations in 1942 is because 1941 division operations were unacceptably inefficient. This historic fact is better reflected in Corps being LESS expensive to transfer than Soviet divisions (or at least at scale, so maybe they BOTH cost the same to transfer in a command tree).

So WitE, in another example of play balance that is actually backward, makes divisions MORE efficient for the Soviet, but also more efficient than Germany.

This game continually makes thing easier on the Soviet than they were historically and gives them a head start on getting to 1943 levels of army efficiency. So when your 1942 armies are perfectly capable of keeping Germany from crossing the Don in 1942, remember that I told you this would happen.

[karonagames]

Any chance of any evidence to back up these rather sweeping statements?

The evidence I have from the game I am playing is that I caused the Soviets 4m casualties and faced a 4m Red Army by the Blizzard. My opponent did not run away and made me fight for every single hex - the same tactics I would use. I would be surprised and disappointed if the reduced manpower multiplier and armaments multiplier allowed the Red army to increase in size by 75% in the next 24 turns.

I can't say what the axis potential for offensive action is in 1942, but at least I know I will not be faced with lvl 4 entrenchments, 4 deep, which was the situation when I took a break from playing 6 months ago. At least 2 AARs have shown successful Case Blue offensives - something we never saw prior to 1.05.

I do agree that Axis C&C seems much tighter than the SU, especially when 11th Army leaves the theatre. I have lobbied for "Armee Abteilung" to made available from winter 1942 onwards, but as yet I have not received a positive response, and I support the idea of reducing soviet command capacity levels.

[ComradeP]

You're acting like it's a new problem, virtually nothing has changed regarding Soviet C&C since release (things like brigades not being able to merge into divisions until mid 1942 now have little to do with C&C directly). If anything, things have improved a bit because the Soviets now don't get seriously high modified CV values on a regular basis anymore.