Matrix Games Forums

Marquo, we're discussing different things.
I'm not preoccupied with which side gets the most benifit from a rules change. I play both sides equally so it doesn't matter to me that much.

What I'm discussing is to leave morale up to the players not script it and use it as a game balancing tool. Get ride of all these restrictions and let the players sort it out.
It's not necessary and frustrating in a game with this scope.

Shock Armies provide their +5 bonus for non-guards units which don’t already have a specialty bonus. Guards Armies provide their +5 bonus for Guards units which don’t already have a specialty bonus.

I'm afraid I'm not clear on the Shock / Guards Army bonuses application/stacking.

Am I correct that specialty bonus refers only to: All Cavalry, Mountain Airborne and Air Landing units, and Axis Allied motorized units +5, German Motorized Units +10, Soviet Motorized Units (from Sept 1942-August 1943) +5, Soviet Motorized Units (Sept 1943-end of war) +10.

If I have a Guards rifle division under a Shock Army, it receives no bonus for being in a Shock Army, correct?
If I have a Soviet motorized unit under a Shock Army after Sept '42, it receives no bonus for being in a Shock Army, correct?
If I have a plain rifle division under a Guards Army, it receives no bonus for being in a Guards Army, correct?
If I have a Guards motorized unit under a Guards Army after Sept '42, it receives no bonus for being in a Guards Army, correct?
Guards unit designation and Guards Army membership does stack (excluding those with specialty bonuses already), correct?

I'm just trying to be clear on how I should (re)-org my forces for maximum morale effectiveness in the first blizzard and beyond.
If I'm clear on the rules, I'll be happy to put together a table to aid Soviets in double checking their army assignments.

Glvaca,

I am also an equal opportunity player; you got me interested in organizing the morale rule changes [:)]

Seminole,

I beleive you are correct except for, "If I have a plain rifle division under a Guards Army, it receives no bonus for being in a Guards Army, correct?"

The rules read :V1.04.22 3) New Rules – (Section 9.2.4) – Soviet non-guards units that are directly attached to a Guards Army HQ will receive a five point bonus to their national morale. The Soviet Guard units already receive a ten point bonus to their national morale.

Marquo

ORIGINAL: glvaca

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

Ya know, I read the whole section 9.1-9.14.

It must be in invisible ink, or one has to wear feldgrau glasses because I don't see anywhere that it says German NM is 50.

Russian NM, yes. 9.1.3 shows it's 50 from 42 on.

Check out the readme's on patches. The manual isn't up to date.
Although I'm not saying NM is 50.

True, but still no backing for the German NM is 50. Or hardcaps. (I know you don't claim either.)

ORIGINAL: Marquo

Glvaca,

I am also an equal opportunity player; you got me interested in organizing the morale rule changes [:)]

Copy [;)]

ORIGINAL: delatbabel
I think the big thing about the Soviet recovery in National Morale is that it models the actual effectiveness in the Soviet combat forces as a whole in the period 1941 - 1945.

From what I'm reading it appears that the recovery of Soviet National Morale is simple based on dates on the calendar. That is a terrible simulation. I'm sure one could statistically show that Soviet National Morale correlates directly to date, but in truth the significance of such a correlation is zero. Soviet National Morale almost certainly was tied to the battlefield and the closer the Soviets got to Berlin the higher it grew.

As I have written before, there are no "hero cities" in Wite. But the fact that cities did receive that recognition and indeed given that the Soviets were quite willing to accept close to a million casualties in the Battle for Moscow shows that cities did make a difference. Tying national morale to territorial gains, by either side, would appear to be an absolute minimum necessary if we want to move the game closer to history.

But fixing what appears to be a broken morale model on the strategic level would still leave us with an even more fundamental problem and that is what happens in 1941. As many have stated the Germans are at least a week (or more) ahead of historic time lines, right from the start of play. Most folks point at HQ buildup and the Lvov Pocket as the primary cases. But neither of these can account for the Axis knocking on the door of Minsk after the first three days of the war. Something more basic is at play here.

As I have tried to explain on various threads, the reason the Axis get such a turbo injected start is not because of features or operational art, it is because the way morale is simulated on the tactical level is also flawed.

There are two reasons why Axis players can create huge ahistoric pockets on Turn 1: one we can't change, and the other we can.

The first reason is because the Axis player knows where the Soviet units are and can simply move around them instead of actually encountering them as happened in the war. Historic hindsight at work here which has no fix.

The other reason the Axis player is allowed to make such huge pockets is because any potential resistance which could slow down the advance are removed by the way the game treats routed units. As we all know, when an Axis unit moves to the adjacent hex of a routed Soviet unit, that Soviet unit automatically routes again. The Axis player not only gets to convert Soviet territory for free, but also receives free Soviet casualties. This is not a simulation of warfare.

If OTOH, the Axis player had to AT LEAST expend MPs to force a second route these huge ahistoric pockets would immediately collapse. Think about it, the Axis player has to pretty much make a perfect move in the way of MPs in order to close off the Lvov pocket. Should he encounter even a single routed unit between Tarnapol and the Romanian border, and be forced to expend even just two MPs, there is a good chance he would fail to close the pocket and activate the Romanian army.

Now there has been some really good exchanges here as to how to bring more balance back to the game on the strategic level, but we also need to acknowledge that the imbalances don't start in '42 or '43, they start on Turn 1.

Ray (alias Lava)

"As I have written before, there are no "hero cities" in Wite. But the fact that cities did receive that recognition and indeed given that the Soviets were quite willing to accept close to a million casualties in the Battle for Moscow shows that cities did make a difference. Tying national morale to territorial gains, by either side, would appear to be an absolute minimum necessary if we want to move the game closer to history."

The Soviets were often forced to fight and die in cities for idiotic reasons, not necessarily because anyone except Stalin saw any value in what was being done. Morale is closely linked to territorial gains --> one has to fight to advance, and this causes morale to increase.


Marquo

ORIGINAL: alfonso

What does your reference to Brian of Nathreth mean?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l23GPWAWSFo

It's an iconic scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian". "I'm Brian of Nazareth and so is my wife" is just another way of saying "me too".

ORIGINAL: Marquo
"As I have written before, there are no "hero cities" in Wite. But the fact that cities did receive that recognition and indeed given that the Soviets were quite willing to accept close to a million casualties in the Battle for Moscow shows that cities did make a difference. Tying national morale to territorial gains, by either side, would appear to be an absolute minimum necessary if we want to move the game closer to history."

The Soviets were often forced to fight and die in cities for idiotic reasons, not necessarily because anyone except Stalin saw any value in what was being done. Morale is closely linked to territorial gains --> one has to fight to advance, and this causes morale to increase.

Before any link between NM and progress/success/defeats is being made, one must first separate it into the proper parts, namely "will to fight" and "combat experience/training"! Before the convolution is resolved, any such coupling will be very strange and should not be done.

Will to fight could go up, if you like, both for an attacker after having taken a key city, and could go down for a defender loosing it. Also will to fight should go up for a defender if he defends a key position. However, the changes should remain rather subtle or must be topped to a small margin if you want to avoid any serious self-accelerating effects than can already happen with the simple moral gain rules. Else, nothing will speed up victors than more victories, and there will be hardly any a stop. Neither for the Germans early war, and even less so for the Soviets once they start rolling and retaking their cities on the reverse. And since they are much more numerous, statistics will give them a large benefit with any such rule.
Besides a certain trend that will allow German morale to peak in 42 with its furthest progress, the factors that are not captured dynamically in game should remain present, however:
Will to fight for the Germans should naturally still decline as the quick promised victory over Russia fails to materialized by start of 42, as the bombing campaigns at home start and the German soldiers more and more realize the hopeless of their situation, initially slowly after 42, and then quicker after June 44. Similarly Soviet morale growth should gain higher rates at certain points aside from any gains due to recovery of terrain.

Combat experience should be either be explicitly treated through replacement pools such as done in WitP/AE for the pilots (3 months training <30 exp, 6 months, 12 months etc.), or be based off the historical timeline that the changes in German training programs did have (the latter would assume that on general average in most games the losses and need for replacements would follow that the historical rates, which is probably good enough -- the first option adds micromanagement burden). In the first case, the released replacements would then affect the unit exp that they enter appropriately. As the war goes on, German training time would need to be shortened in order to get more replacements forward. The longer training pools could be "shut off", and lower exp recruits be forwarded. That naturally would lead to the decline of the Wehrmacht soldier quality that presently is linked to a time-line rather than true losses. I guess it won't make a big difference, though.

PS. Returning reconvalenscent soldiers could always come back with a certain morale (say 50 or so, indepedent of their state when wounded), or go into the specific slots.