Caspian Crusade

[Flaviusx]

Resistance tends to increase ammo consumption more than fuel. But I disagree that there are not hard physical constraints to supply even in the absence of resistance. A long enough supply line will simply break down, regardless. The consumption of fuel by trucks delivering supply overland will exceed their carrying capacity. This is leaving aside mechanical breakdowns -- simply running a mechanized unit around without pause will eventually immobilize it for that reason alone. WITE actually represents this reasonably well to some extent so far as AFVs are concerned, but less so for trucks supplying it because trucks are represented in a global pool. You can draw on trucks that are working from that pool, but in reality the ones breaking down are the ones being used most over the longest supply hauls. No real supply friction.

[Michael T]

Sure the thing ain't perfect but it offers a reasonable contest for intelligent minds to do battle across a setting of WWII in the East. The odd house rule helps dissuade distasteful strategies for sure. One would hope that each incarnation of the game would improve upon its predecessor. The game as it stands is fun, playable and of a complexity that allows skill to overcome luck in most circumstances. I like it. And I look forward to the next instalment.

[Mehring]

Indeed, Flaviusx thank you for taking up the mantle in my absence.

One of the first things that struck me with WitE was that it actually allows the Germans to make something akin to their historical advances in the first week of the campaign, encircling Minsk for example. You couldn't do that in SPI WitE, or I couldn't anyway. The problem is that they, with a few air drops maybe, keep going at almost the same pace until mud comes. It's just not credible simulation.

Apart from the logistics element, I'm all talked out there, what about fatigue? IIRC, there is a relation between fatigue recovery and morale or experience which enables the best units, if also supplied, to shrug off the previous week's herculean exertions on every new turn and begin again as if nothing had happened. I know troops were given speed to keep them awake, but that does take its toll- so I'm told.

Is this another aspect of the game, and an excellent one, that could also do with a tweak?

[carlkay58]

There are a few things that need to be looked at and fixed in order for WitW to work right - let alone WitE 2.

The fatigue effects and recoveries are too easy on players. Infantry units march 16 mps - about 160 miles in one week and yet have fatigues of 5 or less at the start of the next turn. This makes them rank above Stonewall's Foot Cavalry in the Shenadoah Valley campaign in speed. It also means that the horses in the divisions are able to pull the wagons and artillery for that distance consistently. Horses that are worked that hard for more than a week or two will break down and fail to continue being of any use. This is just NOT a sustainable rate. Perhaps for a week or two at a stretch but not much longer than that.

Air supply relegating the entire Luftwaffe to being flying gas tanks is unrealistic in capability and DEFINITELY not realistic politically within the Reich (or any other armed forces). If this is not fixed in WitW, the Allies will NEVER have a supply crunch!

Victory in combat should not allow you to lose 10 guys to knockout over 1500 of the enemy. The Soviets got a quick reputation of being very difficult to root out of good defensive terrain. This should cause more casualties than the combat engine currently does.

When massive surrenders happen, the attacker takes extremely low casualties and can move on. What happened to the troops required to keep control of the prisoners? What happened to the mid and late war knowledge on both sides of what being a prisoner means in life expectancy? There were very few prisoners taken very easily past Summer of 41 - those that did surrender had no supplies left at all - not just because they were cut off. The attacker casualties should be higher past the surprise turn as the last of the ammo will be used by both sides before the surrender option would be taken. This does not necessarily apply to the Western Fronts but is definitely true in the Eastern.

[Ketza]

Currently I have a few games as Soviet getting into the late part of the war. The glaring issue I see is the ability to just grind forward along the whole front turn after turn. There is no restriction on the amount of attacks that are launched which is somewhat unrealistic.

I agree however its an awesome game that I cant get away from!

[SigUp]

Well, this griding forward right now is too easy. Historically the Soviets still suffered huge losses while grinding forward. In the game once you win a battle your losses will be relatively negligible. Therefore you can turn after turn just grind forward, as your units won't end up with 30% TOE after a short while. For the next games a fix for the combat system should be high on the priority list. A new and better logistics system is only half the content. Then I agree that fatigue shouldn't go back to zero as quickly as they do right now. I think a 0 fatigue unit should be able to conduct something like a month of fighting, but afterwards it needs a good few weeks time to get back to normal.

[Seminole]

I find these advances quite unrealistic; I find some of the recent blizzard porn shown elsewhere equally problematic.

I called it porn because it struck me as essentially a fantasy scenario. Axis stymied with convenient landmarks (the Dnepr bend salient and Peipus-Pskov Lakes for encirclement anchors), a huge Soviet Army that had suffered practically no significant losses (I think I had lost 18 rifle divisions at that point - I had over 20 Guards units before December and 10 tank divisions hadn't been converted (this formed 1st Shock Army's exploitation force that reached the Gulf of Riga)).

I presented it in no small hope that a German player would show how they actually handle the blizzard. Is the _only_ choice to just run like the devil? In my ongoing game with AGame I allowed a bunch of pockets in '41 as Soviet (continually misjudged the range of the panzers), and I think this led him to conclude the blizzard would be weak, but I still had spectacular results (at one point I had AGC and OKH in a pocket!). I have the saves and screens and will resume the AAR at some point (probably when/if our game gets into '43 and I can talk more freely about my strategy).

I'm hoping M60 hangs in long enough, and with enough of an army, so we can see MT execute an Axis blizzard defense. I feel there must be a middle ground between running for 8 weeks and standing to be devoured in 6. From what I've see so far (only playing First Winter against humans as Soviet and once as Axis against AI) I do think the December blizzard rules for Axis combat power are too punishing.

[Flaviusx]

Ketza, I will be the first to admit the problem is general, not limited to the 1941 Axis offensive. And I will include the blizzard counteroffensive here. When I say the game is biased in favor of the offensive, this applies to whoever is on the offense.

Seminole, the current solution to the blizzard, near as I can tell, is to cripple the Red Army to the point that it cannot mount much of a counteroffensive. That is to say, the best defense is a good offense, so far as this game is concerned. No, I'm not happy about this.

[hugh04]

As people have so eloquently pointed outed, the current engine has too great a relationship between retreat and losses. A successful later war attack against a single fortified german division would in reality cause large soviet casualties as they advanced through the prepared artillery, at gun and machine gun kill zones. The fact that this sophisticated defense caused alot of casualties is a matter of historical fact as is the fact that after a short hard period of fighting, the division would be busy retreating. Winning attackers, currently, just dont take enough damage to be forced off the line to rest in any realistic time period. Still a great game though.

vandev

[Seminole]

The defence offered by the enemy plays no small part in it all. You can't outlaw a bad defence and a bad defence should be punished.

Were Torzhok, Kalinin, Gomel and Chernigov undefended? It appears that Torzhok and Chernigov may have had defenders, but it is hard to tell. Is that actually the case?

I'm trying to get my head around the movement costs in your achievement:
Near as I can tell you moved your furthest unit (mot div) at least 18 (20?) hexes in enemy terrain (also not sure if it went farther toward Gomel and retreated, or the infantry nearer Gomel actually did that to create the link - so I'll stick to the low side estimate).
I think at best it started in the woods south of Cherkassy. If you swing toward Chernigov and avoid the swamp I can see
the following costs:

22 hexes crossed
+20 enemy hexes (assuming morale sufficient that enemy terrain costs +1)
+2 minor river
+4 major river
+4 major river

52 MPs (and that assumes a clear path with no friction from enemy ZOC)
[&:]

What am I missing?

[SigUp]

Speaking of the Soviet losses during 43-44. I think WITE 2 needs a "Soviet Attack Doctrine", and I'm not talking about 1v1 = 2v1. Soviet units attacked differently than German ones. When a German division ran into heavy resistance they would try to find ways to bypass it. Soviet units, however, (especially during 43 and early 44) just sent their troops forward until either the German units were overwhelmed / ran out of ammunition / etc. or the Soviets ran out of men. Currently, as Flaviusx has pointed out, the best defence is either offence, or running away, which is not a good representation of either the Soviet defence in 41-42, or the German in 43-45.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: SigUp
Speaking of the Soviet losses during 43-44. I think WITE 2 needs a "Soviet Attack Doctrine", ...

You kind of lost me here. As long as you have enough MPs, you are free to assault a strong position as many times as you ever want, either until your units are bloodied or the opponent runs out of ammo and finally collapses? It is up to the player to repeat such foolish doctrine, ain't it?

There is only a little fubar regarding this for the 1941 Soviets. Generally the MP of the poor morale infantry is so low, that you oft can only attack once. And even then you cannot withdraw but set the wrecked units up for encirclement. This would be of little concern and in fact good speed-bumps if Soviet replacements/unit building costs were up to that. Otherwise also the RoI is quite low, if you will, and you don't inflict as many casualties or cause supply issues to delay the Germans and add to their casualties such that you can repeat the historical course even if you wanted to aim for that. In 41, on the receiving end, you couldn't recreate Barbarossa that underlying model. But generally a player could throw out hindsight and follow foolish doctrines, or just learn.

[Flaviusx]

Eh, that is a gross simplification of Soviet doctrine, Sigup. The better commanders reinforced success, not failure. Also, some of what you're referring to was operational maskirovka. I.e., sometimes attacks were deliberately mounted knowing they would fail dismally in order to attract and fix German reserves. Tolbukhin's offensive in mid 43 is a classic example of that, and made possible the Belgorod-Karkhov offensive following Kursk.

All that being said, Soviet methods on the offense were not cheap. The butcher's bill on the offense was mostly higher than shown in the game.

[SigUp]

The Soviets, even late in the war, had massive problems with competence on the mid and lower levels. No doubt did they make great progress on the operative level. But the Stalinist system did not encourage people to use their head, rather if you followed orders without questions, you were mostly on the safe side.

As for Flav, of course I was oversimplifying. But even during successful Soviet operations, their losses were enormous. As for Tolbukhin's offensive, they were too large in scale to be categorized as a diversion only. The attacks against 1st Panzer Army and 6th Army had operative targets. The losses suffered there were also severe for such an offensive. While the Red Army made good progress in the Southern sector in terms of commanding ability, their counterparts in the North and especially in the Centre still struggled applying modern principles. Especially in those highway battles at Orsha in autumn, winter 1943 the Red Army used mass tactics in their most brutal ways. But even in the South the Red Army suffered huge, often unnecessary, casualties. The victims were often those poor people out of recently liberated areas. They were forcibly drafted and sent into battle with no proper training. When these units met a German unit that was still coherent, they were massacred.

Having said that, the game still needs improvement modelling the breakdown of the Wehrmacht. Many AARs showed the Wehrmacht at 3.5 to 4 million men in 42-43 which does not correspond to the realities of the Eastern Front. By 44 the German army in the East was a shadow of itself. Largely demotorized, divisions only at regiments' strength, Panzer divisions that barely had 50 operational tanks. But even in this state the Wehrmacht still had to be accounted for in the maneuver warfare where they repeatedly outwitted the Soviets.

As long as you have enough MPs, you are free to assault a strong position as many times as you ever want, either until your units are bloodied or the opponent runs out of ammo and finally collapses?

Thing is, this happened down to a tactical level, which is beyond the scope of this game. I don't mean this as a handicap to the Soviets. But rather as a different approach, which enables a strategy to attrite the Germans to a breaking point, using the Soviet Union's superiority in industry and human resources.

[Flaviusx]

Sokolovsky (then West Front commander in autumn of 43) was a poor Front commander. That's why he got sacked. (But Zhukov had a hardon for the guy as a chief of staff and Sokolovsky evidently knew how to play the political game and did very well for himself post war.) The game rather overrates him, btw.

We will have to disagree about Tolbukhin. Manstein got suckered by him and paid the price in Belgorod. Although Tolbukhin himself didn't realize he was being used for maskirovka purposes until Vasilievsky let him know after the fact. Actually, Manstein was getting suckered on a fairly regular basis by Soviet maskirovka operations from mid 43 onwards. Maybe Hitler wasn't so crazy so sack him.

[SigUp]

I would not blame Manstein. In late 43 German units grew so weak that even smaller scale Soviet attacks could achieve operative breakthroughs. Manstein had no choice but to throw his panzers around as fire brigades as Hitler declined to shorten the front to get reserves. Also I think you are underrating Manstein's abilities. If you look at the disasters all around the Southern end of the East Front he did what he could. Like his rochade to save the front after the collapse of 4th Panzer Army. Or how he completely made a fool out of Zhukov at Kamenez-Podolski.

As for Belgorod, Hitler played a huge role in that. Manstein's plan was to send the SS divisions to Stalino to clear the Soviet brigehead, but on the way there they should clear the Soviet bridgehead at Izjum. But when the divisions arrived at Izjum Hitler refused to allow the divisions to attack, so that the Germans were robbed of a good few days time. Another problem was the fact that AGS had to give up a good number of their divisions to AGC to stabilize the situation there. Well, I think you are overrating the maskirovka aspect, or in other words, underrating the weakness of the German front in 43-44.

Sokolovsky was a weak commander. But the problem in the centre extended further down to the lowest levels. Speaking of overrated commanders, I think Ernst Busch is massively overrated by the game. As the war went on he degraded himself to a relaying station of Hitler's orders. Von Küchler wanted to relieve him of his command in early 1943 for his poor performance, but his relationship with Hitler saved him and even earned him the promotion to commander of AGC. Then he possibly showed the worst performance of a German general in the last century when he did nothing in the face of the Soviet onslaught during Bagration.

[Flaviusx]

I'd give the nod to Paulus, myself, but Busch is surely up there. They actually had a good deal in common come to think of it.

[SigUp]

Ah yes Paulus, he also gets a few points. Did a good job in spring 1942, but his refusal to disobey Hitlers orders stands up there. Why Busch gets my vote is really how weakminded he was, especially compared to other Nazi generals like Schörner and of course Model. When Busch warned Hitler of the vulnerability of his army group and presented proposals for withdrawals, a single sentence by Hitler was enough to get him back into line: I didn't know you also belonged to the group of generals who always look back. Afterwards he did everything in his power to win Hitler's favour back. Most notable is the issue of him ignoring the warnings of his armies before Bagration. Even though German recon was severly hampered by that point (and the Soviet maskirovka), the armies of AGC had a pretty good idea where the attacks were coming from before the start of Bagration. But these reports and warnings were held up at army group level: Busch avoided information that could agitate Hitler. And when the offensive began Busch did nothing but relay Hitler's hold orders (which especially infuriated Reinhardt), so in the most important first week of Bagration AGC was basically leaderless. Guys like Model were also nazis at heart, but perhaps no other German general did committ that many insubordinations and challenged Hitler as often as Model (which cost him his job as commander of 9th Army in autumn 43).

[Flaviusx]

On reflection, my vote for worst German General of the last century goes to von Brauschitsch. He was a disaster and made possible Hitler's take over and corruption of the army. He was compromised from the start by Hitler's bribes. Maybe not as dramatic as the battlefield failures of a Paulus or Busch, but here is the core of the institutional failure.

[Michael T]

Were Torzhok, Kalinin, Gomel and Chernigov undefended?

No, No, Yes, Yes.

BTW the Mot unit north of Chernigov came from AGC.

Also M60 tells me he has retaken Kalinin. Its a dog fight up there.