The current state of WitE, New normal .13+

[Peltonx]

tm.asp?m=3208517&mpage=13

ORIGINAL: timmyab

Saper is totally fried in this game.And this is one of the strongest Axis players out there.
1942 is completely out of whack.If the Axis can't make significant gains in 42 then the game becomes boring for both players.Six months of fun followed by three years of WW I style warfare, and we all know how popular WW I games are.
The blizzard needs taming for a start.
I'd also lower the Soviet leader ratings across the board in 41 and 42 by one point for each category and make it more difficult to swap out bad leaders.Maybe only allow leaders to be swapped out after they've reached a certain number of loss results and only allow promotion after they've got a minimum number of win results.
Well done by the way Harry, you must be a strong player to hold Saper comfortably like this.

[Peltonx]

tm.asp?m=3204059&mpage=12

Bomazz another undefeated GHC easly crushed in 42, all things being equal in 1942.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

ORIGINAL: Seminole

Good info, but the better players simply stay under 2.8, MT has always been closer to 2.5 and thats vs the better GHC players.

I bet on his third or fourth try Stalin could have held Soviet losses down too.
That's the biggest problem with trying to make comparisons to historical outcomes in these games.
We're like Bill Murray in Ground Hog's Day, constantly getting to replay the same situation over and over and refine our approaches.
How many AARs have we seen where a Stalingrad Pocket is successfully snared by the Soviets? Experienced German players just won't let it happen.
If the developers could somehow reach complete historical fidelity the players are still going to learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. A luxury Stavka and OKH didn't have...

+1

+2

Nice way of putting it. It comes down to the question who historically made bigger mistakes, and which player will this benefit more from hindsight.

A scripted test scenario, in which all units are moved more or less on historical schedule and battles are fought more or less on that (as far as that is at all possible), would be needed to make some sense of the historical figures. Basically replicating all mistakes, from Stalingrad to the isolation of LG, from futile Russian counterattacks in 41 to Feste Plätze or not withdrawing and fighting forward when it was time to chose the ground more wisely, for both sides. Have AI versus AI run that couple dozen times to get a statistics, and see.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Leber
I think the problem here is that the unrealistic Soviet blizzard offensive is a response to an incredibly unrealistic Axis advance in 1941.

...

Sorry I shorted the quote, your whole post is well worth reading. I must agree, the dynamic of the 41 battles feels very different from what I would have expected it to be based on books and historical sources. Much of what you are mentioning is not represented due to the time resolution being 1 week, or because the I-Go-U-Go is not We-go. New rules and game mechanics would be beautiful for the new games to allow for defender reactions and stuff to make I/U more dynamic, less chess like. I imagine if the German units in Normandy won't be able to react to bypassing etc. in the first turn, Witw will see its first mega-pocket before July.

Initially the blizzard rules seem to have been there as simple representation of the logistic Fubar the Germans made, and as a tuning parameter to adjust such that the German engine gets curtailed after winter, and only can go onto a limited offensive after spring. The devs said that the sophisticated logistics model that would allow to model that break-down as a consequence of real logistic issues will have to wait for WitE2, but I assume once it is grounded properly, it will work a lot better. And perhaps allow for special winterization rules.

I tend to agree that tuning the German blizzard penalties down at this point seems sensible. At least somewhat. GHC is still doing pretty good in many AARs, and a few AARs show that a lot can still be achieved after 42. There is a huge spread, however, since random effects including mud turns can have serious benefits, for both sides.
Quite a few games deviate strongly from the average "historical course" since the random effects are "large". Also the moral thingy Flavius or Pelton referred to add to that: success accelerates itself, and defeat also, i.e. the damping factors (moral caps, morale gain or loss probabilities per battle etc.) to keep the game in the middle course are "weak". This allows for the game to become interesting and not just replicate history, though, but causes some of the "peculiar" games where either side is highly successful, and the other throws the towel well before 43. I guess one has to pick which is the better personal choice, high or low variability.

Another catch that arises from this is that (manpower) replacement rates, production, withdrawals or the AP (costs, or pools) are tuned or represent the historical thing, and do not adjust to different situations. That can make further accelerate a situation to deteriorate when realistically, measures would be stepped up to stall the opponent, or when more units would be withdrawn or less new units be affordable/build due to already being (much) more successful. I believe that's particularly true for SHC as it gets a lot more stuff, and I believe if it had been much more successful to stall Barbarossa, it would have been offered less Lend&Lease support, and Stalin likely also had been slower to go to extreme mobilization or recruitment measures. I believe we should not see 8M SHC Armies by summer 42, that is.

Pelton might be exaggerating a bit, but he is right that the blizzard dynamics is presently as unhistorical on the large scale as the German bowling run in summer 41. Both will hopefully look very different in WitE2.