Please fix Soviet morale in 1941, its broken.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: mktours

unfortunately both Guderian and Manstein didn't share the same conclusion with you, they admitted that German shouldn't start that war at all. i didn't think you are better than they were. the best result would be badly wounding the bear, but german inevitably lose in the end.

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: mktours

in fact, the Germans stood no chance to win the war in history, Hitler just shouldn't start it. both Guderian and Manstein admitted this after the war.

That's completely an opinion.

Germany would have easly won a 1 front war. Based on a few simple facts.

Populations:

German 86 million not even counting minor allies.
Russia 176 million

Combat ratio 3.5 to 1.

Germany was easly winning the war of attrition.

Russia could not build enough trucks to keep logistics above 70%, they had to have western allies help.

Germany had several million combat troops doing nothing in the west.

Germany could have easly "won" the war if Hitler had commited 1 million more men to the east in 41. This fact alone makes The War in Europe problematic. A sandbox WiE would be an easy German win, they will have to find some way to keep GHC players from going all in on the Eastern Front in 41

They said what they had say to stay out of jail lol.

You can not and never will change the cold hard numbers I put up. They simply can't be refuted by anything other then fairytales and feelings.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: morvael

Several million combat troops in the West in '41? Where did you read about it?

Its called Google or Hitler vs Stalin ect ect

Less drama son and more facts

[Peltonx]

Generally people want to keep Germany in a box fixed to a nice clean allie victory when in fact Germany would have easly won if they had committed more troops in 41 or 42.

Russia was using female units in late 42 and pushing old men into service shortly after that.

Germanys easy win would have been mostly because Stalin was a complete moron for killing off the Russian officer corp and his world war I strategy's he used until findly doing what his generals wanted in 1943.

[Peltonx]

363,000 allied trucks.

see how far Russia gets with out them, [:D]

[morvael]

Germany was doomed, because they achieved war production in 1944 (gearing for that started as late as '43). In 1941 they ran out of ammo, fuel, vehicles and tanks. Not completely to be defeated immediately of course, but enough to slow down the operational tempo two or three times before winter and give some much needed respite to the Red Army (and give some serious fears to German High Command, just read their diaries). Planning for a 3-month campaign to reach Urals was fantasy, and even that might not mean the end of the war as well. If, and only if, Germany would be on war production levels from late 30's (as was USSR) and focused more on land power (Bismarck - what a waste of steel), they would have a chance for a knock-out blow IMHO. But then, from where would they take so much resources to feed their industry and especially fuel for their tank armada?

I can imagine that had there been no land-lease USSR would order some more trucks produced instead of insane amounts of tanks and assault guns. How far did Germany went on their French, Belgian, Dutch and Czech trucks? Their infantry divisions from start to end of war required several thousand horses each, and there were problems with obtaining more as soon as late summer '41. WitE is already too generous to Germans in the logistics department.

[Walloc]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

Germany would have easly won a 1 front war. Based on a few simple facts.

Populations:

German 86 million not even counting minor allies.
Russia 176 million

Combat ratio 3.5 to 1.

Germany was easly winning the war of attrition.

Been here before, but lets go again. While the population numbers are correct they fail to take into account that the russian was able to mobilize a far higher % of its population than the german ever was or ever was going too.

So the population numbers in the selves doesnt mean much if they dont directly correlate with mobilization numbers.
U have several times quoted G F Krivosheev's book when adding up russian casulties. U do seem to forget the part of his book where he looks at the russisn mobilization numbers. Just under 30m and that not counting the alrdy standing army, IIRC.
So if germany and allies was to win a war of attrition vs 1 to 1 with a 3.5-1 loss ratio they had to mobilize around 10 mio man, alone to fight the at the russian front. They didnt, was never ever going to or any thing remotely close.

The 3.5-1 number we have discussed before. Its correct if u stop at dec 1944 and includes axis Allies. How ever this means these numbers DO include the mass russian surrenders early on but DOESNT include the mass german surrenders, obvisouly scewing the numbers.

Germany had several million combat troops doing nothing in the west.

Define West and when? The peak number for france, and the Benelux totalled was in 1944 at approx 880k men. As to doing nothing, i think most would disagree. As to them being combat or even combat worthy troops well OKW differs with u looking at the operational ratings they give many of these men. Not to mention quite a few of them arent even german or close and is purposely held at the western front as they tend to speak pretty good russian, polish/related languages.

Germany could have easly "won" the war if Hitler had commited 1 million more men to the east in 41. This fact alone makes The War in Europe problematic. A sandbox WiE would be an easy German win, they will have to find some way to keep GHC players from going all in on the Eastern Front in 41

Where are this spare 1 mio man in '41 or '42? what would have happend if germany moved every man in the West, Norway, yugoslavia and in the Med to the russian front? would the western Allies just had sat on ur asses with no forces between the English channel and Berlin? not to mention the other fronts.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[elmo3]

Please stay on topic. Joel is not going to wade through all this superfluous discussion to see if there is a consensus on the problem and any reasonably easy fixes.

[morvael]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: morvael

Several million combat troops in the West in '41? Where did you read about it?

Its called Google or Hitler vs Stalin ect ect

Less drama son and more facts

Some 30+ infantry divisions, no more than 600 000-800 000 men. Also they couldn't be completely taken away as someone was needed to occupy all those captured lands and protect the coast. I can't imagine there would be no serious problems if all occupying forces were withdrawn from the West. At most, Axis minor allies would have to be placed in the West (another problem - would they be willing to do it and efficient in that task?) so that would bring some quality improvement, not size or maneuverability improvement in the east. All '44-'45 measures would have to be taken to maximize strength on the front - squeezing excess men from Goering's Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, creating Volksturm divisions for garrison duties, manning Flak at home with teenagers. German leadership wasn't willing to do that before everything in the East went avry, thus it's more like a fantasy scenario for them. The potential was there, but no one wanted to tap into it.

edit: sorry elmo, my post was written as you posted and I didn't refresh the page.
feel free to delete it.

[morvael]

More on topic: higher than "real" morale has to be accepted for the Soviet side, because it's the counters and their CV that stop Germans, not logistics. That has it downsides, but you can't fix one thing properly while the rest remains broken. The morale must improve at the moment when German advance stalled due to logistical reasons and again it must fall down when they did their Fall Blau. And since there is some delay before NM "filters down" to unit level, this must be done in advance. Something should also be done about the positive feedback loop, where winner gets stronger all the time and defender weaker. Fast morale regain to NM level is one of such measures.

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Pelton
You can not and never will change the cold hard numbers I put up. They simply can't be refuted by anything other then fairytales and feelings.

Despite what you might want to believe, history and war is not about 'cold hard facts' or statistical inevitabilities. It's about politics, people, decisions, emotions, uncertainty, guessing, gambles, mistakes, learning, etc. Cold hard facts should prove that Germany had no chance against France in 1940. The reality was different.

Hence the strong debate about a factor so murky and intangible as 'morale'. And rightly so, because such intangibles are at the heart of any inter-human conflict, especially war.

To the topic, it seems the easy solution is to reduce Russian NM to below 50 (likely 45) in 1941, and/or reduce the size of morale gains when refitting 10+ hexes from the enemy, or make the requirement to be 20+ hexes away.

Alternatively, it could be incremental: 10+ hexes gives max 1 per turn gain, 20+ hexes gives 2 per turn, 30+ hexes 3 per turn, etc, although that might be not so easy for the programers to implement.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

Please stay on topic. Joel is not going to wade through all this superfluous discussion to see if there is a consensus on the problem and any reasonably easy fixes.

We did that about 2 days ago.

Most people are doing 110 GHC to 100 SHC ML or 105 GHC to 95 SHC.

Personally I like the 105 to 95.

Simply way to easy for SHC to do far better then historical vs everyone other then a handful of people.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: mktours

in fact, the Germans stood no chance to win the war in history, Hitler just shouldn't start it. both Guderian and Manstein admitted this after the war.

That's completely an opinion.

Germany would have easly won a 1 front war. Based on a few simple facts.

Populations:

German 86 million not even counting minor allies.
Russia 176 million

Combat ratio 3.5 to 1.

Germany was easly winning the war of attrition.

Russia could not build enough trucks to keep logistics above 70%, they had to have western allies help.

Germany had several million combat troops doing nothing in the west.

Germany could have easly "won" the war if Hitler had commited 1 million more men to the east in 41. This fact alone makes The War in Europe problematic. A sandbox WiE would be an easy German win, they will have to find some way to keep GHC players from going all in on the Eastern Front in 41

And where would the equipment for this huge army come from? The Germans squeezed their economy, putting some long-term capacity enlargements on hold, to just equip the 3 million men that stood at the border on 22nd June 1941. Of course more could have been achieved through efficient structues and more power to the industry itself. But that would be creating a fantasy scenario, like somebody saying if Stalin had listened to Tuchachevsky, the Germans would have been steamrolled.

[Aurelian]

After wading through this, especially the debunked "millions of soldiers in the west" nonsense, IMHO, leave morale alone.

Change it, and you're still going to get the same complaints down the road.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

After wading through this, especially the debunked "millions of soldiers in the west" nonsense, IMHO, leave morale alone.

Change it, and you're still going to get the same complaints down the road.

lol so many people still on the Stalin band wagon, old fairytale die hard.

German army June 1941 5.0 million Eastern Front 3 million. In the West there were 800,000 active duty and 1.2 million reserve. The reserves duty men were called up during the following 12 months to active duty. Close to 60% were not called up to front line units, but still that's another 500,000 men for combat.

So basicly Germany had another 800,000 men that could have been used on eastern front in June 41. Thats easly 2 or 3 full Armies plus support units.Also sun shine Germany was still a peace time economy, Germany did not gear up until 1943 for War.

LW 1.6 million
Navy 400,000
SS 150,000

If Hitler had gone from a peace time to war time economy in 1940 instead of 1943 and moved the 1.2 million reservist to active duty Russia would have been toast in 1941.

The plain facts are

Germany 86 million
USSR 170 million

Combat ratio 3.5 to 1

Germany was winning the war of attrition.

Germany had several million active duty personal not on the Russian front in 1942, again Hilter made the same mistake in 1941 as 1942 by not going all in on the Eastern Front.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: morvael

More on topic: higher than "real" morale has to be accepted for the Soviet side, because it's the counters and their CV that stop Germans, not logistics. That has it downsides, but you can't fix one thing properly while the rest remains broken. The morale must improve at the moment when German advance stalled due to logistical reasons and again it must fall down when they did their Fall Blau. And since there is some delay before NM "filters down" to unit level, this must be done in advance. Something should also be done about the positive feedback loop, where winner gets stronger all the time and defender weaker. Fast morale regain to NM level is one of such measures.

to try and keep this on topic ...

the Germans outmanouvered the Red Army across most of 1941 and 1942 quite simply due to better command structures. Koniev's memoires are instructive, he mentions several times that the Germans were simply quicker and that by the time the 1941 style Soviet structures responded, they were already in an encirclement.

One of the main things that balanced this out was logistics.

Now in a way ahistorically high Soviet morale is a way of bringing back in that logistic context.

If we are looking for a simple way to create the space for the operational tempo advantage that the Germans had in the first summmer then try:

a) make the range for the regain morale more than 10 hexes, something around 20 would make it a real decision for the Soviet player as those units would not be usefully creating a final defense line around Moscow while improving their NM. Would start to look like the dilemna that faced Stavka during Typhoon when they starved the front line armies of replacements and reinforcements in order to build up a critical mass for the counter-offensive;
b) given the Germans a MP boost for say June-July (although I suspect, added to all the other turn 1 exploits, this would be too much)
c) nick an idea from HOI2. Those who played that may recall there was a mechanism to reduce Soviet defensive competence (to reflect command chaos) for a period (usually till end August). More elegant would be to reduce the command range for Soviet HQs in that period. That, plus the loss of the Corps, would mean more Soviet units were out of command range.

Note for Pelton - not everyone who has the temerity to disagree with you, is a fan of Stalin.

[Michael T]

Joel should apply some kind of filter to screen himself from the lunatic fringe. Upon request I will provide him with a list [:D]

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

After wading through this, especially the debunked "millions of soldiers in the west" nonsense, IMHO, leave morale alone.

Change it, and you're still going to get the same complaints down the road.

lol so many people still on the Stalin band wagon, old fairytale die hard.

German army June 1941 5.0 million Eastern Front 3 million. In the West there were 800,000 active duty and 1.2 million reserve. The reserves duty men were called up during the following 12 months to active duty. Close to 60% were not called up to front line units, but still that's another 500,000 men for combat.

So basicly Germany had another 800,000 men that could have been used on eastern front in June 41. Thats easly 2 or 3 full Armies plus support units.Also sun shine Germany was still a peace time economy, Germany did not gear up until 1943 for War.

LW 1.6 million
Navy 400,000
SS 150,000

If Hitler had gone from a peace time to war time economy in 1940 instead of 1943 and moved the 1.2 million reservist to active duty Russia would have been toast in 1941.

As I stated before, Germany didn't have enough equipment to properly equip those divisions. In June 1941 the Germans possessed 129 divisions they categorized as fit for all dutys, all of them were lined up across the Soviet border. As for the economy part, Germany couldn't have gone to a fully mobilized wartime economy by 1940. Stating this is fully neglecting the character of the Nazi regime. The economic decision making process (or better said decision making process in general) was inherently inefficient in that system with all kinds of institutions hindering themselves and Hitler reluctant to make definite decisions that could anger parts of his supporters. The complexity of German road to wartime economy is too complicated to be described in a single post. But it took two major crisis to pave the way. The "ammunition crisis" of Winter 1939/40 to create the Ministry of Armaments under Todt and then the failure before Moscow with the prospects of economic collapse to convince Hitler to give control of the war economy to Todt (then Speer after Todt died the day after securing Hitler's decision). Saying Germany could have went into war economy by 1940 is a fantasy like somebody saying the Soviets could have steamrolled through Europe if Stalin had kept Tuchachevsky and his ideas alive.

[Disgruntled Veteran]

I think the best the Germans could have hoped for is an armed stalemate where the Red machine was simply bled out and unable to launch repeated offensives. Maybe the line would have settled somewhere near the original war start line. Had the American industry not provided so many goods of all types (trucks as a big one) than this sort of stalemate should have been theoretically possible. Without the increased mobility deeper soviet penetrations would have been less frequent. I doubt Germany could have ever defeated the USSR. No state has ever endured so many catastrophic military blunders and still survived. The Germans did very well and were a top rate force but they just didn't have enough. Anyway..my opinion in a useless argument.

Back to topic. I have refrained from vocalizing an opinion about morale because in both of my games I have seen the war go fairly well for me. (Well meaning that I wasn't annihilated during blizzard and moved faster than historical). I think if the Blizzard wasn't so damned horrible for the Germans the current morale tables would be acceptable. A good Soviet player could stop a lackluster German drive. Sometimes I just imagine what would have happened if Stalin had abandoned Kiev and pulled SW Front behind the Dnepr in Aug-Sep 41. Its very likely the war would have ended a year or more sooner.

So far I like the idea of NM = 45 and 20+ hexes in order to refit. However I am a Germophile and still only in my 2nd mp game.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: Disgruntled Veteran

I think the best the Germans could have hoped for is an armed stalemate where the Red machine was simply bled out and unable to launch repeated offensives. Maybe the line would have settled somewhere near the original war start line. Had the American industry not provided so many goods of all types (trucks as a big one) than this sort of stalemate should have been theoretically possible. Without the increased mobility deeper soviet penetrations would have been less frequent. I doubt Germany could have ever defeated the USSR. No state has ever endured so many catastrophic military blunders and still survived. The Germans did very well and were a top rate force but they just didn't have enough. Anyway..my opinion in a useless argument.

Back to topic. I have refrained from vocalizing an opinion about morale because in both of my games I have seen the war go fairly well for me. (Well meaning that I wasn't annihilated during blizzard and moved faster than historical). I think if the Blizzard wasn't so damned horrible for the Germans the current morale tables would be acceptable. A good Soviet player could stop a lackluster German drive. Sometimes I just imagine what would have happened if Stalin had abandoned Kiev and pulled SW Front behind the Dnepr in Aug-Sep 41. Its very likely the war would have ended a year or more sooner.

So far I like the idea of NM = 45 and 20+ hexes in order to refit. However I am a Germophile and still only in my 2nd mp game.

By all means the war should have ended in 1944 nevertheless. But conservative Soviet planning meant that even though Bagration was a spectacular success, the Germans were able to build up a new line at the Vistula and hold it till January 1945.

As for the main discussion, I think all in all getting morale increases above NM should be much harder. I just noticed 78th Infantry Division back in East Prussia has experienced a bump of morale from 97 to 99 from turn 24 to 25. Then the distance should be increased. As has been stated before 10 hexes for the Soviets basically can serve as a reserve defensive line.

[Flaviusx]

No state has ever endured so many catastrophic military blunders and still survived.

Rome, 2nd Punic War. But both these cases are very exceptional.