Simple Fix for German Raiding

[Peltonx]

Good PT man.

Again in the words of Tarhunnas, There is nothing to fight for!!!

Its amazing to easy to evac production, so after turn 12 why bother advancing east as German player?

I say totally trash HQ build-up, fix factorys or make it dam hard to rail them out. Better yet when a production unit is moved put it 100% out of service for 12 to 24 months.

There is zero reason to advance east after turn 12ish, unless your playing a newbie.

So-called exploits, in this view, are not cheats because they do not change the game in any way and therefore could be accessible to all players if they know how to do it.[2] The players who use such techniques may consider them fair for use in the game in cases when they are not explicitly disallowed in the Terms of Service or other such rules governing participation.[

In other words the devs of game X left W exploit in to cover up other crappy rules which they didn't have time to think through because game was rushed to public before it was fully tested.

I been there done that one more then a few times in 15 yrs.

And thats why we are currenty testing it for Gary and for free!!!!!!!!!!

Same goes for every other game to date.

Making manpower centers a bigger part of game is a move in right dirrection, but you still have to give the Germans a reason to advance east after turn 17. The Russians don't have a reason to fight for that matter before turn 10, railing out production is way to easy and the Germans are fixed to railheads.

Removing 1v1=2v1 was a HUGE step in right direction which anyone could see including me when we read the rule book before playing.

As with any game poeple need a reason to fight and there just is ZERO reason at this pt that realy matters.

All things being equal.


Pelton

[Wild]

I agree with Pelton. We need more things to fight for to make the game more interesting. Granted i am an Ai only player but i think some of the following should be considered for adding excitement to the game.

1 - Greater Rail penalties for moving russian industries so there is more fighting for strategic cities. (don't know it might make it too hard for Russians) Maybe instead a max number of factories could be moved but once that limit was reached then no more evacs. Forcing the soviets to defend those cities.

2 - Make resources and oil actually mean something!!! This should be a no-brainer. This is the only way to get the Germans to go for the caucacus. Which in my opinion would make for a very fun game. Something really has to be done here as it would add a whole new aspcet to the game.

3 - A national morale hit for Moscow and Stalingrad to encourage players to make offensive drives on those cities.

I think this game has so much potential we just have to find a way to unlock it. 1.05 goes a long way but we still need to find adequate reason for the German player to keep trying to advance. And to have more fun.

I would also suggest letting the Germans build their own support units, but i'll save that for another thread.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Pelton
Better yet when a production unit is moved put it 100% out of service for 12 to 24 months.

I would like to nip this in the bud before it becomes your next flying pig crusade. To keep a factory of production for 24, or even 12, months after evac seems wildly unrealistic, IIRC the Sovs had them up and running much faster than that (although I'm sure initially at much reduced capacity). Any evidence for such a long period with no production, or it is just another idea to make the game "fair"?

[Flaviusx]

Many evacuated factories were in full production by the end of the first blizzard.

I'm just going to offer a screenshot of what my opponent James is doing as of the end of turn 9 to show what the Axis can do. Note: done with exactly one HQ buildup.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Wild
Maybe instead a max number of factories could be moved but once that limit was reached then no more evacs. Forcing the soviets to defend those cities.

While I agree that more thought should be given to how to get the Russians to defend to the West and the Germans to attack to the East, let's avoid ideas like the one above, which is a totally artifical construct only meant to "balance" the game rather than reflect anything like reality.

Rather like the revised implentation of the 1:1 rule (1:1 till March 1942 then poof!).

[morvael]

A good incentive to fight for would be dynamic, accumulating VP. They should be dynamic and different for both sides. They also could be somehow random, to prevent repeating strategies. So, for example in 1942 there could be a 90% chance for the German Top HQ (one guy called Adolf) to request that Stalingrad be taken - this would be worth, for example, 5VP for every turn Stalingrad was held by the Germans in 1942. And there could be 10% where another objective would be selected (like Moscow or Leningrad if not taken). The same could apply to the Soviets to prevent fast withdrawal in 1941 - 5VP for every turn Kiev and Smolensk would be in Soviet hands in 1941. So on and so forth. The final result would then depend less on the ineviteable defeat of the Germans in 1945 and how far did the Soviets advance, but on who better fulfilled the requirements of Hitler/Stalin during the entire war.

This could even simulate Soviet suicide attack strategy in 1941 or German stand fast strategy in 1944+ - in the first case each turn in 1941 would cost the soviet player -X VP when he didn't meet the number of required attacks per turn, the Germans could pay -X VP for every city retaken by the Soviets without fight.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Many evacuated factories were in full production by the end of the first blizzard.

I'm just going to offer a screenshot of what my opponent James is doing as of the end of turn 9 to show what the Axis can do. Note: done with exactly one HQ buildup.

Flavius, land means nothing so your screenshot contains no relevant information.

How has he done on factory destruction?
How has he done on casualties for and against?

Land is meaningless in WitE and your German opponent is either going for a combination of dead Soviets plus destroyed armaments, or he doesn't care about losing in 1944.

One of the most overlooked aspect of the current metagame argument is that the victory conditions for both sides SUCK in terms of incentivizing fun gameplay.

No thought went into the gameplay aspects of GC victory conditions (all the more surprising because the Scenarios are balanced quite well). Give both sides a reason to fight for land, and the game will get a lot better fast. The GC absolutely needs victory conditions similar to those of scenarios: per-turn VPs for certain places, and cities releasing VPs if they are held on particular turns (for example, 500 points awarded to whoever holds Kiev on Turn 10, etc.)

[Flaviusx]

He's grinding me quite effectively and keeping the Red Army just a hair over 4 million. When you include the Axis minors, he practically outnumbers me. I have actually reduced my TOE to 90% across the board to deal with the heavy losses, and down to 50% for most SUs which are heavy armament consumers. Only the diggers are now at 100% TOE. (Sappers and RR brigades.)

The manpower multiplier has been reduced in 1942. Losing Leningrad and Moscow is going to hurt, and will put you below 100k replacements/turn. When you consider attrition losses, this doesn't leave a lot of room for the Red Army to grow, and it will only grow slowly. In my AI testing I was struggling to keep the Red Army above 6 million in 1942. Parenthetically playing against a hard German AI is now quite hard. The AI actually was able to do a very creditable Fall Blau on me; it also took Leningrad, which has never happened before.

I've done well in my factory evacuations. I have to. With the 130 multiplier, the Soviet can't afford to lose too much now, and even if you get most of the armaments out, you'll be hard pressed to show a surplus. Towards the end of 1941 your armaments will crater to near zero and for most of 1942 even with an excellent evacuation you will have no real slack. Indeed, the Red Army's demand for armaments will only grow.

I'm not quite sure what changing VPs would add to any of this.

1.05 patch has really changed up the game. We may even have overshot the mark in several respects, although I want to see more AARs before concluding this.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
One of the most overlooked aspect of the current metagame argument is that the victory conditions for both sides SUCK in terms of incentivizing fun gameplay.

No thought went into the gameplay aspects of GC victory conditions (all the more surprising because the Scenarios are balanced quite well). Give both sides a reason to fight for land, and the game will get a lot better fast. The GC absolutely needs victory conditions similar to those of scenarios: per-turn VPs for certain places, and cities releasing VPs if they are held on particular turns (for example, 500 points awarded to whoever holds Kiev on Turn 10, etc.)

Yeah, I think this is a good point. Lots of people talking about all kinds of changes to the game engine to achieve balance, but maybe a change to the VC is all that would be required?

In some previous thread I think Joel or Pavel said that this would not be easy to code, which seems strange because this feature is already present in the scenarios. It could a real challenge to the balance of points right, however.

[heliodorus04]

I personally think we're going to find the combination of Fortification change combined with Armament Factory multiplier will likely be too much in favor of the Axis at least in 1941. It depends on where the median Soviet Armament Factory loss will fall in deciding where "too much" may be.  And given the changes, it's going to be a LONG while before we see the cumulative, 1943-1945 aggregate data give us a picture we can debate, let alone agree on.

(ALSO: given that the AIs are NOT programmed to incorporate the new Fort building rules, and the Player vs. AI game has taken a huge hit with 1.05, and we need to make Player-vs.-AI players aware that they need to turn settings differently to compensate).

Given this, as a former outspoken advocate for Axis fun, I want to say this to the German-favored player (I am one who likes playing Germany more than Soviet). The Soviet players are entitled to their complaining right now, and likely will be for a while. Be sympathetic to their plight.

One thing I'm advocating for is to make factory relocation costs reflect a standard marginal cost curve, (see link if you're not familiar with the concept) because that's realistic.  The first few factory points moved should be expensive (25% of a location), the middle 50% should be much cheaper, and the last 25% should be very expensive again. (But given that we don't know if the 130 multiplier is too severe, we can't mess with that anytime soon).  Applying the curve to factory movement forces Soviets to think in terms of strategic tradeoffs. 

I do think it's time to focus on developing new victory conditions for GCs, even if it's hard to code.  The GCs need to share the same style VP arrangement that scenarios do. I don't know how hard it would be to code, but I do know that it would be very hard to play-balance.

[Flaviusx]

So far as I am aware of there's no historical basis for applying a curve to rail cap costs for factory transfers.

What's more, this probably wouldn't make a lick of difference to me in practice with the way I handle evacuations. I do them in big chunks. Whatever premium is applied up front gets made up for on the back end.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

So far as I am aware of there's no historical basis for applying a curve to rail cap costs for factory transfers.

What's more, this probably wouldn't make a lick of difference to me in practice with the way I handle evacuations. I do them in big chunks. Whatever premium is applied up front gets made up for on the back end.

I would assert that the reason you're not aware of it is that historians don't pay attention to economic theory. I doubt Glanz had any concept of the marginal cost of production since he worked for DoD and to the DoD, money grows on trees.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
So far as I am aware of there's no historical basis for applying a curve to rail cap costs for factory transfers.

What's more, this probably wouldn't make a lick of difference to me in practice with the way I handle evacuations. I do them in big chunks. Whatever premium is applied up front gets made up for on the back end.

I would assert that the reason you're not aware of it is that historians don't pay attention to economic theory. I doubt Glanz had any concept of the marginal cost of production since he worked for DoD and to the DoD, money grows on trees.

Well, he doesn't know/care too much about the air war, either.

WiTE is already doing something like that curve when applying damage to the factories. timmyab pointed it out to me on my AAR, and I've been tracking how much damage do receive factories when evacuated. I'm getting results like this:

16 evac'ed points -> 50% damage
1 evac'ed points -> 90% damage
7 evac'ed points -> 50% damage
13 evac'ed points -> 57% damage
...

seems to miss the last leg of your curve though.

[heliodorus04]

I wasn't aware of that, and assuming it's a reliable pattern in the data, I'm pleased to see it this way.

My point was that I'd prefer a game mechanic that made it more difficult to move the factories, and adjusting the cost to move based on what the aggregate Soviet performance data shows us is 'normal' to lose in 1941, rather than adjusting the factory armament multiplier.

[Flaviusx]

Yes indeed. The more you rail out the quicker the factories recover...which is another reason to do them in big chunks at a time.

I will say that this applies only to the armament factories, though. The plane/afv ones are getting the scraps of rail cap and are being evacuated in fairly minimal numbers...which will considerably delay their recovery. This is really the only way to get a big leg up on the armament factories.

I'm shooting for roughly 20 armament factories each turn. That's 120k rail cap right there. I might have 10-15k cap to spare beyond that depending on how much is used on force transport and that's being used on non armament factories. The total Soviet railcap never exceeds 140k and gets smaller as time goes on. So the railcap budget is by no means going to be able to cover everything. I'm writing off all my vehicle factories, all my HI, all non AFV vehicles, and everything west of the Dnepr.

You have to plan your placement of shells very carefully now in order to get the most bang for your rail cap buck. Placed correctly, you can move them where they need to be in a turn or two cheap, and they can fill out in the meantime. So you have to anticipate what the German will do.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
I wasn't aware of that, and assuming it's a reliable pattern in the data, I'm pleased to see it this way.

Well, as reliable as it can be, since I'm doing it manually (and now that I'm looking at the data I notice I've failed to record some evacuations). If you check the AAR I'm keeping you'll find there a link to the spreadsheet I'm bookkeeping those numbers by yourself.

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
My point was that I'd prefer a game mechanic that made it more difficult to move the factories, and adjusting the cost to move based on what the aggregate Soviet performance data shows us is 'normal' to lose in 1941, rather than adjusting the factory armament multiplier.

Yes, tweaking the multipliers is rough.

When you mean "normal" you mean "normal as in historical sources" or "normal as in allowed by game mechanics".

If it's the latter, there's the question of how the devs can get that aggregate data? The only way I see that data gathering possible would require that a substantial number of WitE players recorded their factories figures on a turn by turn basis and then made it publicly available. But I see a foundation problem with such data: it would be highly correlated with Axis and Soviet performance at the operational level (which not only rests on ability, there's also a luck factor involved which is not negligible). So unless the observations could be assumed to be generated, equally likely, by even and uneven matches, they won't be very useful. This requires some work from a lot of individuals.

If it's the former, which I think might be more reliable, then I think one needs to go to the bibliography listed in the manual (there's quite a bit of it), and do a synthesis of the possibly contradictory accounts one might find there. And then, compare the allotted railcap (also a dynamic factor, which depends on Axis rate of advance) with the accounts from the bibliography, and see if it's over-dimensioned or not. This requires a lot of work from one single (or a few) individuals.

[heliodorus04]

I actually was referring to "what is allowed by the game mechanics" rather than history.

Since the Soviet player can easily (or at least based on 1.04 data) outperform history in terms of evacuating armament factories, and armament factories predict the growth of the Soviet offensive force better than any other single predictor variable, game design has to balance the fact that superior Soviet performance in 1941 will lead to superior Soviet performance at all other times thereafter.

Again, to me I come back to the imbalance of mechanics available to the Soviet side compared to the German.
The Soviet KNOWS that armament factories are more important than any other single source, so again, the Soviet player is icentivized to do something different than history. As Flavius demonstrates with his post: who needs aircraft factories, tank factories, heavy industry factories or vehicle factories?  The Communist Party had no idea that ALL they needed was armaments (indeed, there may be a design problem here in that tanks and planes don't matter to the strategic production aspect of the game).

So IF the Soviet player can leave every factory EXCEPT armament factories to be captured by the Germans and still be fine in strategic terms, it strikes me that there is a problem with either the macro production system or there's a problem with the freedom given to the Soviet player.  (All of this is ignoring the 1.05 multiplier changes).

To me there is a very big problem of hindsight in that the Soviet simply knows: screw all factories except armament.
As an example to what I'm talking about, think about how this change might change the game (it's not one I'm advocating; it's a way to show the problem I'm talking about).

Imagine that instead of the maximum Soviet rail capacity being 120,000 points -minus rail center losses - to do with as you will, imagine that instead you had 120,000-minus rail center losses - AND ALSO minus the historical rail cap (actual WW2 data) spent moving vehicles, heavy industry, and specific air/ground element factories (for whatever specific turn you're playing), and what was left each turn is what you could spend only on armament factories.

Right now, since Soviets have the hindsight advantage that they'll be way fine losing all those OTHER non-important factories, they can ignore the others and focus only on what matters.  This is double-leverage in favor of the Soviets. The first lever is knowing you can avoid the casualties of the 1941 campaign, the second lever is knowing your only constraint is armaments, so that's all you move.

[Flaviusx]

The new emphasis on armament factories is a product of the reduced multiplier. You had some slack before. Now there is none. Even if you get virtually all of them out, you will be struggling to produce as much as is demanded.

The mix and strategy of evacuations would be different otherwise (and indeed was in 1.04.) The emphasis on armaments is also going to mean the Soviet has a tougher time getting his air force and mobile forces up to speed compared to 1.04, because these factories are now taking it in the chin to allow the rail cap to save the armament production.

If the Sov can survive into 1943, then his plane and afv production will hit their maximums, but he has to survive 42 to see this.

Armaments can't grow -- so you have to evacuate them in full to preserve the production.

The bottom line here is that all of this gives the German a window in 1942 to close the deal. These changes are in the Axis favor; but evidently there is no pleasing some people.

[Lieste]

Possibilities to limit odd evacuations/raiding:

• Plan evacuations over several turns/but delayed by a turn or two, rather than 'now'.
• On approaching a city, the factory/factories generate a workers Bn or Regt, and the attacker must attack.
• Once the city has fallen, the enemy factories are only 'killed' over the course of several turns. Some immediately, most by the end of the following week, and the remainder a week later...

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The new emphasis on armament factories is a product of the reduced multiplier. You had some slack before. Now there is none. Even if you get virtually all of them out, you will be struggling to produce as much as is demanded.

The mix and strategy of evacuations would be different otherwise (and indeed was in 1.04.) The emphasis on armaments is also going to mean the Soviet has a tougher time getting his air force and mobile forces up to speed compared to 1.04, because these factories are now taking it in the chin to allow the rail cap to save the armament production.

If the Sov can survive into 1943, then his plane and afv production will hit their maximums, but he has to survive 42 to see this.

Armaments can't grow -- so you have to evacuate them in full to preserve the production.

The bottom line here is that all of this gives the German a window in 1942 to close the deal. These changes are in the Axis favor; but evidently there is no pleasing some people.

I'm really uncertain on your last paragraph. I think WitE is a game where the Axis is only getting an auto-victory by aberration. The game tilts as heavily in favor of the Soviet Union as history did (in fact, given our 1.04 AAR data, you yourself have admitted Flavius that the game was stacked more strongly in favor of the Soviet than history was).

As far as armaments not growing:
The tradeoff is that armaments can be moved over multiple turns, whereas everything from element factories that is left behind is immediately destroyed as soon as you move 1 point. I'm not opposed to armament factories growing similarly over time, but that creates another balancing act. Certainly growth potential is a 'bonus factor' for the element factories, which the Soviets can basically live without anyway. Since element factories grow, I always played that you move 40% to 50% minimum, and let it grow. The lost production allows more room for armaments to be moved.