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For me there are several related problems that may lead to the 42 stalemate.

In no order of importance.

1. Forts, too many, too fast, too effective.

2. Ants, too many and too much influence on the attacker due to a lack of a proportional ZOC rule and the lack of an over run rule.

3. High odds attacks not inflicting enough losses on the defender.

4. The 1:1 to 2:1 rule.

5. Lack of truely debilitating Soviet command penalties in 1941 and 1942. I don't know about others but I don't seem to have any trouble command wise with the Soviet Army. I have plenty of AP's to co-ordinate any attack I make. I NEVER suffer command penalties when I attack. Yet I often see negative modifiers for command when the Axis attacks or defends. That seems wrong.

I have had one of the better 1941 campaigns (see my AAR vs Cpt Flam), and I was able to keep rolling vs the Soviets. 1942 is possible, but not necessarily likely. In a way I like that, I should lose and be beaten back some times (and pushed around in the winter I have been), or I could weather the winter and move on, but most of the time it should be a struggle.

Part of the issue I have now is not that 1942 is always impossible, but that when I play an average to good winter I feel I should have a better chance to at least dictate some of the 1942 tempo than I do now.

ORIGINAL: Ketza

Initially I was in the Leningrad at all costs camp as Axis but as the game has evolved other strategies are starting to become tempting.

Emir recently made a post showing the different Industry and pop numbers for different "zones" and it got me rethinking a few things.

It is comforting to have the Finns and have a sort of "Anchor" on your left flank but what do you give up for that? Are the Finns actually a liability after thier inevitable morale erosion? Would 4th PZ be better used driving towards Moscow? Once again I am a firm believer that players need options and the more options you put in front of them the better the game will be in the long run.

I'm pretty sure they do become a liability if you use them past the stop line. Frankly, once you're past the blizzard, the Finns have no business screwing around in Russia proper. I'd pull 'em back behind the svir and dig in, and put Germans on the Volkhov and let the Soviets batter away at these lines fruitlessly until 1943. Not sure why so many German players insist on defending well to the east of these natural stop lines.

As far as panzer group 4 goes. You need to maintain a plausible threat. Leningrad is an incredible troop sink. The Soviet tendency is always going to be to throw more and more stuff there to lock it down if the pressure is kept up. It is the threat to Leningrad more than its actual capture that complicates Soviet defensive efforts (indeed, they can actually reduce their commitment up there once it falls, even taking into account the Finns crossing the Svir.)

Maybe very late in the summer you could remove Hoepner from the area for other purposes.

Leningrad can be a huge troop sink for both sides, but especially the Russians. You can have upwards of 2 1/2 fronts worth of troops in the area and certainly no less than 2 fronts if you are serious about defending the place. The additional risk of course (and benefit for the Germans) is a big pocket formed from either a drive to the shores of Lake Ladoga and/or the Finn border.

Part of the issue for the Germans looking ahead to the fall and winter (and not knocking out Leningrad) is the length of the front they must defend and also that a Russian drive to the south or south west there can essentially threaten the entire German left flank. What is really nasty terrain when not in blizzard gets totally transformed in blizzard as the swamps freeze and the rivers are a non factor.

I am sort of like Ketza in that I would like to try some other things out as the Germans in 1941, but the restrictions on PG1 make it very difficult. The Germans MUST have a couple of good turns to open the game and round up as many Russians as they can and that includes a big mass of troops in the south. Failure to do so just means crazy pain later on as a lot of Russian units get away to delay your advance further and costing you precious time.

Like most of the guys who have been posting here, I want what is good for the game; not necessarily one side or the other, but to make the game fun for both sides. I would not take very much satisfaction playing the Russians right now in most cases if a game when the way a typical non-Pelton AAR has been going for the most part. A good tempo for the game to me is a smashing offensive by the Germans followed by the Russian counter offensive. The Germans would try to launch some operation in 1942 with the Russians hanging on for the most part, but eventually causing the Germans to end their offensive. 1943 would see the Russians slowly start taking the fight on a front wide bases to the Germans and 1944 would be a barn burner to see if the Russians could get to Berlin fast enough to get a win.

My two cents:

1. 1941 - basically working as it should. No need for adjustments (including forts and 1v1); as noted in many cases the German player exceeds historical by capturing Leningrad. The burden should be on the German to be aggressive in 41, more aggressive than most players are being.

2. Blizzard - also basically working, although some system of restricting the Soviets to targeted offensives rather than broad, entire front wide blastings couldn't hurt (no idea if this is possible, but throwing it out there). Some restoration of German morale (perhaps contingent on not suffering a set level of defeats or territory loss) also would be ok.

3. Brigades - no issues with getting rid of Soviet brigades entirely (I actually find them annoying to administer) or at a minimum simply ending their ability to dig or to dig past level 1. Since the Soviet has relatively few brigades in 41, this doesn't affect the aforementioned play balance and it would eliminate a lot of the later war carpeting issues. Maybe compensate a bit by throwing the Sov a few more APs to build the units he will need to replace.

4. 42 and beyond - Soviets get too strong too fast, coupled with casualty ratios that rarely exceed 1-1 or 2-1 and a mechanism that makes it so panzers are ineffective against anything other than Tank Corps, make the conversion to the defensive pretty unfun and probably unhistorical for the German player.

5. End the ridiculous system of a German unit of any size entering a Soviet city and immediately destroying all industry, no matter how long it's there. This would end the ahistorical gameplay of mad dashes all over the place to exploit this...compensate by having evacuated Soviet industry take longer to recover (or something to that effect).

ORIGINAL: hfarrish

My two cents:

1. 1941 - basically working as it should. No need for adjustments (including forts and 1v1); as noted in many cases the German player exceeds historical by capturing Leningrad. The burden should be on the German to be aggressive in 41, more aggressive than most players are being.

2. Blizzard - also basically working, although some system of restricting the Soviets to targeted offensives rather than broad, entire front wide blastings couldn't hurt (no idea if this is possible, but throwing it out there). Some restoration of German morale (perhaps contingent on not suffering a set level of defeats or territory loss) also would be ok.

3. Brigades - no issues with getting rid of Soviet brigades entirely (I actually find them annoying to administer) or at a minimum simply ending their ability to dig or to dig past level 1. Since the Soviet has relatively few brigades in 41, this doesn't affect the aforementioned play balance and it would eliminate a lot of the later war carpeting issues. Maybe compensate a bit by throwing the Sov a few more APs to build the units he will need to replace.

4. 42 and beyond - Soviets get too strong too fast, coupled with casualty ratios that rarely exceed 1-1 or 2-1 and a mechanism that makes it so panzers are ineffective against anything other than Tank Corps, make the conversion to the defensive pretty unfun and probably unhistorical for the German player.

5. End the ridiculous system of a German unit of any size entering a Soviet city and immediately destroying all industry, no matter how long it's there. This would end the ahistorical gameplay of mad dashes all over the place to exploit this...compensate by having evacuated Soviet industry take longer to recover (or something to that effect).

Supply needs to be modelled. It constrained fort building and offensives.

Not just "supply" as that is already a factor of sorts - but also the administrative costs of mobilising the supply, and the units and activities that are consuming it.

Bring an AP 'running cost' as well as a (reduced?) cost to build new units. This helps rebuild units once they are lost (and no longer an admin burden) yet also prevents run-away army sizes if few units are lost. The fort building could come from the 'purchase' bag, but also have some minimal on-going cost if they are occupied (else they degrade over time).

I agree with Pelton the 1-1 thing has to go. The sooner the better. A few other things that come to mind.

1.I still think the Russian rail cap is too high.

2.Been saying for awhile now that there should be a morale drop for taking Moscow.

3.Perhaps there could be some sort of modifier for building forts,according to the year like there is for manpower. (not sure about this)

4.I don't think that the capture of resources has a big enough impact on the game.

5.It seems that it is extremely hard to impact Soviet production perhaps the distribution of armament factories needs to be looked at.

Still the best Eastern Front game ever.

Dynamic national morale is a good idea. Why tie NM to history when the war is not progressing historically?
Also forts shouldn't be semi-permanent as in the current state of things.

ORIGINAL: majeloz


FWIW, the fact that we are getting decent games in WITE is a tribute to the designers already -- I pretty much think they have done a great job of getting most of the way towards an historical, playable, enjoyable AND balanced eastern front game. That's an enormous achievement given the complexity of it.

+1 on that. And it is a sign of progress that a couple of months ago we were discussing winter 1941, now we are discussing the problems of summer 1942. [:)]. In a while we will probably be talking about the problems of spring 1945 (or autumn 1945 if my defense holds out [;)]).

ORIGINAL: hfarrish

3. Brigades - no issues with getting rid of Soviet brigades entirely (I actually find them annoying to administer) or at a minimum simply ending their ability to dig or to dig past level 1. Since the Soviet has relatively few brigades in 41, this doesn't affect the aforementioned play balance and it would eliminate a lot of the later war carpeting issues. Maybe compensate a bit by throwing the Sov a few more APs to build the units he will need to replace.

The more I think about it, the more I think Soviet brigades might well be eliminated from the map and treated like support units. A Soviet tank brigade probably has the same combat effectiveness as a German Stug battalion, yet one is on the map as a unit and the other not. Coupled with the Soviet regeneration capabiliy which means they can treat brigades as expendable, these weak units have an influence far beyond their size and combat effectiveness.

ORIGINAL: hfarrish

5. End the ridiculous system of a German unit of any size entering a Soviet city and immediately destroying all industry, no matter how long it's there. This would end the ahistorical gameplay of mad dashes all over the place to exploit this...compensate by having evacuated Soviet industry take longer to recover (or something to that effect).

That is also a good point. Let industry take hefty damage every turn of occupation until at 100% damage, then destroyed. Or maybe just leave it at 100% damage, presumably they would be rebuilt when the city is reoccupied. Or even let them take up to 150 or 200% damage, that would ensure a down time after recapture before the industry is repaired.

Lower the repair rates of industry to compensate, and this will incidentally delay the Soviet buildup by making it take longer for evacuated factories to get online.

Historically, the Red Army didn't get its organisational act together until the end of 1942. Ditto for leadership skills. It takes about four years of serious experience to make an expert... ...Supply needs to be modelled. It constrained fort building and offensives.

So, Russian leaders begin the game with lower abilities than at present but have more scope than at present to improve with experience (Have to say I find the predetermined maximum command level for a leader a tad bizzarre, couldn't that be ditched?).

Logistics are reworked to relate combat effectiveness to supply stockpiles (and roads, port capacities, single and double track rail line are introduced, of course )

And fort construction consumes supplies too, making their construction, I'd argue, increasingly expensive as their level increases. As with leader quality, the Russian logistic capability will improve with time.

So there you have it, folks, a raft of measures which could allow for more historical development of Russian combat effectiveness without severely, if at all, reducing their performance in summer 1941.

Tarhunnas, these brigades, as annoying as you might find them, were used as building blocks for larger units. Rifle brigades got consolidated into divisions, and tank brigades into corps. Treating them as support units doesn't fly. They were genuinely independent entities of their own, not just glorified battalions. (Especially true for the rifle brigades, which were demi divisions. A 3000 man support unit? C'mon.)

I hate rifle brigades. (I'm not a fan of tank brigades, either and also wind up eliminating those over time.) I get rid of them ASAP. (I flip each and every one of them to a rifle division en masse in May.)Too many gamers are obsessed with ant tactics, and we're looking to find ways to reduce this nonsense. But they are NOT support units.

This is just the way the Red Army worked.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Tarhunnas, these brigades, as annoying as you might find them, were used as building blocks for larger units. Rifle brigades got consolidated into divisions, and tank brigades into corps. Treating them as support units doesn't fly. They were genuinely independent entities of their own, not just glorified battalions. (Especially true for the rifle brigades, which were demi divisions. A 3000 man support unit? C'mon.)

I hate rifle brigades. (I'm not a fan of tank brigades, either and also wind up eliminating those over time.) I get rid of them ASAP. Too many gamers are obsessed with ant tactics, and we're looking to find ways to reduce this nonsense. But they are NOT support units.

This is just the way the Red Army worked.

I am not annoyed by brigades per se, just trying to generate some discussion on how to improve things. But why wouldn't it fly? They could still be consolidated into divisions even if they were support units. And yes, they were more independent entities than battalions, but did Soviet C&C allow them to be used truly independently, in a way that warrants them having the operational influence they have in WITE?

Removing them would de-clutter the map, and alleviate the high unit density. I am not at all sure it will solve everything, I just though it might be a possibility to explore.

The rifle brigades were used in lieu of divisions. They were an expedient. Eventually they got reformed as divisions, but in the meantime were easier to control for the green Soviet officer corps.

To just sweep them under the support unit rug and attach them to an HQ is preposterous. They didn't "support" anybody, they got used in the same way that divisions got used. They took their place on the line and held it.

Think of them as "practice" rifle divisions, and that gets you closer to the spirit of the thing.

I note that 1. Shock Army in December 1941 was composed entirely of brigade sized units.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The rifle brigades were used in lieu of divisions. They were an expedient. Eventually they got reformed as divisions, but in the meantime were easier to control for the green Soviet officer corps.

To just sweep them under the support unit rug and attach them to an HQ is preposterous. They didn't "support" anybody, they got used in the same way that divisions got used. They took their place on the line and held it.

Yes that is true. And I think some armies were composed mostly of brigades in early 1942, so that would also be a problem.

New ideas then:

* Make them more brittle and reduce or eliminate their ZOC if they are alone in a hex.

or

* Group them into composite provisional units called brigade groups or something.

What was the combat effectiveness of the rifle brigades when facing combat? Did they tend to shatter more easily (with less support units), or were they about as effective as the (quite small) divisions in later 1941/early 1942?

I ask this because I do not know, but now the smaller size is an advantage as the scaling of combat seems to lead to smaller casualties for them.

How about an automatic conversion of brigades to divisions beginning in Mar42: each turn there is a 10% change that an inf brigade will "flip"; when it "flips" there is a 50% chance that it will convetr to a division and a 50% chance it will be removed and all personnel/material returned to the pools. That would give a high probability that all would be converted automatically by May with no change in the eventual number of divisions or in manpower/production

There are some issues with the brigades.

Because of their smaller overall size and the casualty caps in the game, the Russians will actually take fewer casualties having them in the line than from divisions or corps. Granted they are easier for the Germans to defeat than divisions or corps, but if your objective is to delay and make the Germans burn MP's to get through a defense, then they are ideal. A rifle brigade in a good fort is not something the Germans can just brush aside either in general. It takes deliberate attacks. The border guard regiments are the worst in this regard. You can slam one with a full stack of Germans (deliberate or hasty, doesn't matter) and the unit will generally take less than 1k casualties and either rout or retreat when in reality it should be shattered, but that is a subject for another thread.

Because they are an independent unit and because of how construction rules work, these units are very handy to put down carpets of forts in a hurry if properly supported from HQ's and/or near a group of cities, despite the fact that they have a very low construction value.

One other thing I don't know that I am a fan of is combining the naval infantry brigades into rifle divisions to "rebuild" them during the winter offensive. While perhaps a bit screwy, I don't think this has the impact like the two above points do.

Tank brigades exercising the same exact zone of control compared to a rifle corps is a bit hard to take, but that is likely a programing nightmare to fix. Infantry brigades exercising a "regular" zone of control I have far fewer issues with since they can be upwards of 4k men, etc and sometimes can exceed the value of a worn down infantry division. Brigades need to be in the game at this scale. Just need to get a couple of things straighten out with them.

I don't think brigades should be done away with or auto converted but their zoc and those of similar sized formations are hard to swallow. Would it be feasible and desirable to make the effectiveness of zoc more fluid, dependent upon the actual strength of a unit, not its formation size, also perhaps its mobility, servicable equipment and morale? CV appears to be calculated in this way, why not zoc too?