Matrix Games Forums

Nope, wasn't some mass disaster at the hands of the Soviets. It was an MTOE change......simple as that - and something that needs to be re-looked because this is broke.

On 1 Mar 1945 the new '45 Panzer MTOE comes into effect. And it gutted my Wehrmacht panzers. Compare the panzer strengths in the screen shot. Most Pz Divs had 150+ panzers, now....111. This ain't right guys.

MTOE changes are based pretty much on two major factors during the course of the war. The first was technological/tactical improvements which modified the ratio of types of equipment and introduced more effective weapon capabilities. Good examples are the German motorization to Panzergrenadier development and the numerous changes on the Soviet side with Corps from 1942 onwards. The other reason for MTOE changes was the diminished capabilty to fill organizations with equipment and personnel. While certain Soviet formations are affected by this, this is mainly a German issue as the war progressed....fewer tanks avail caused the MTOE changes.

But what if the games we play don't go along historical lines? We don't lose 200,000+ in a Stalingrad or gut our armor in a Kursk? Onfortunately we still are shackeled with the historical MTOE changes that reduce the effectiveness of the German army. Infantry divisions are barely maxed out at 10,000 men, despite numerous rifle squads and armaments available in the pools. And come 1 March 1945 - despite how effective the Germans are in the game - the panzerwaffe is neutered.

I'm posting this to beg to make the MTOE changes optional to the players. If the game is moving along historical lines, it would make sense to adapt the historical changes. But if a German player is doing better than historical, he shouldn't be saddled with an internal gutting of his formations. This panzer MTOE change is especially costly - having husbanded and conserved the panzers only to see Herr Speer take away over 1100 in a single week is criminal. IF nothing else, allow the excess overages to remain in overstrength units until attritted down by combat.

Now, back to the game with what I have left....

This community doesn't care that the German army is hard-coded to suck at precise points on a time line irrespective of the historical nature of the Wehrmacht's evolution or the performance in game of the German player. By the same token, the design decisions of WitE enable optimization of the Red Army to ridiculous levels, and has redundant fail-safes that enable the Soviet to always stay better than his historical predecessor.

Whether or not Stalingrad happens, or Demyansk, or Bagration, units disappear according to the events of those battles.

As Flavius said to me when last I read a post of his, they just don't care about differing opinions, and they have no intention of fixing any of it (unless you count buying a future re-designed product a 'fix'). They feel that their are enough people who are happy with the product (or at least who paid full price, giving them the illusion that they are happy with it) that criticisms are irrelevant.

As I noted for them in history, Mythic Entertainment and Sid Meier himself have all followed their own sense of infallibility to the loss column of the business ledger, despite a flurry of magazine-publisher glad-handed, 'critical acclaim' reviews.

It should be noted that this TOE nuke of the German army happened before, with the 1942 TOE changes. Only then, the TOE changes forced the Wehrmacht to conscript morale levels as soon as they switched. This was after Beta (well, if you assume beta ever ended on this product, prior to announcement of War in the West).

It's only now, 16 months after the release of an $80 program that players are reliably able to get to 1945. I myself never made it to 1943 before abandoning all hope, as either side. Your stoicism is to be commended.

Don't you have something better to do with your time? Blah blah blah, $80, debs don't listen, blah blah blah.

There are a lot of players who have made constructive criticisms that have majorly improved the game (blizzard impact reduction, fort reduction, HQ buildup limitation etc.). Maybe changing TOE rules will be one of those, maybe not. But sitting aroun to complain about how you spent $80!!!!! For the 9000th post gets wearisome. If you're that hard up maybe you should spend less time whining on game boards.

Just gets annoying in the midst of actual discussion.

I think its $80 well spent having played the game almost everyday since its release.It may be broken but I enjoy it.

I'll be honest, if they produced a WITE2 that fixes the problems of supply and script and recognizes the realities of the what if's then yes, I would pluck down another $80. The Eastern front should be a premier game representing the mammoth struggle between Germany and Russia.

Half the movement and double the turns would have to be a necessity.

As far as Helio is concerned, as long as he wants to speak..... and they let him...... post away.

The TOE change is not broken. It 's WAD.

Try playing the Soviets and watch as your 5/6/7 CV tank divisions become 1CV tank brigades.

Watch as your army command span drops from 24CP to 18.

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

I think its $80 well spent having played the game almost everyday since its release.It may be broken but I enjoy it.

$80 for WiTE is a bargain compared to DG's Computer War in Europe.

If there is an allowance to keep happy TOEs it will make the Soviets stronger early on, compared to current rules. If you want the Axis to be stronger you'll pay the price of the Soviets being stronger, receiving the advantage much sooner. Are you Axis guys sure you want the deal?

Like many things maybe it would be a nice option to select (or not) at the beginning of a game. Both sides could go in eyes open. Personally it seems to me that regardless of how the Eastern front is going, any spare troops would be chewed up / requisitioned in the west, so either way toes would be downgraded. Either way, though, doesn't hurt to have more flavors.

ORIGINAL: randallw
If there is an allowance to keep happy TOEs it will make the Soviets stronger early on, compared to current rules. If you want the Axis to be stronger you'll pay the price of the Soviets being stronger, receiving the advantage much sooner. Are you Axis guys sure you want the deal?

Honestly, yes I would. Perhaps that would act as an improvised fix to give the Soviets a little more teeth early on. Besides, if their pools run out, they will be better off switching to the smaller ToEs (much as a German player would be) for the majority of his units. Sort of speaking: better 200 10k Inf Divs ready than 100 16k divs and 100 close to unready. Same way you may be better off building cheaper brigades than loosing whole divisions in the early game, so perhaps no problem there either. It would add to the ability of both sides to keep a core of strong formations, though, which may be an interesting new dimension, and not even implausible.

At least much better than seeing the static timeline behavior of parameters that are definitely not that disconnected from the progress and happening in-game. I really think this must be changed, even if by an optional game rule. It doesn't matter whether this occuring means the game was already lost for the opponent, just as said in the older thread on this topic, because some people want to go through the whole thing. After all, this game is called "War in the East -- The German-Soviet War 1941-1945". And this seriously shouldn't happen in future titles either.

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

The TOE change is not broken. It 's WAD.

Try playing the Soviets and watch as your 5/6/7 CV tank divisions become 1CV tank brigades.

Watch as your army command span drops from 24CP to 18.

Sigh... Those type of answers feed the resentment of the Heliodorius of this world... Look in the logic of the game this TOE change in NYIdahor's game makes no sense, none, zilch....

Its WADness is a stupidity. Sure you can argue and counterargue all you will. Fine point taken, just play with the editor, yada yada yada...

Can't you try to be constructive from time to time ?

ORIGINAL: Randallw

If there is an allowance to keep happy TOEs it will make the Soviets stronger early on, compared to current rules. If you want the Axis to be stronger you'll pay the price of the Soviets being stronger, receiving the advantage much sooner. Are you Axis guys sure you want the deal?

That is an interesting comment, and actually yes, agree with Janh, it would make the game more interesting, giving the Sovs more teeth in the early game.

But the Soviet TOE changes do not really compare to the Germans ones, it is like comparing apples to oranges.

The German TOE changes in the late game simulates German organizational responses to various shortages (manpower or equipment). If the Germans had the equipment and manpower, would they have made changes to well functioning TOEs? Hardly!

The Soviet early TOE changes that are taken as examples above, the abandonment of Tank and Mech divisions, were in response to these formations being too unwieldy for the Soviet commanders and command system to handle.

I think, that heliodorus04 is right at the end.
The way WitP is handeling these withdrawls a better solution and here it is very hard to understand, why units are treated historically, when the
"game history" is totally different.

One option would be to keep these 1945 TOE separated from the others and install it by the game engine if the german manpower falls below a certain level at anytime in 1945 (or the historical date these TOE were installed).
But I doubt that's possible with the current engine.

Personally, I am glad Heliodorus speaks out. Shame on others who want to suppress. I don't believe in suppression. If you do, then we can agree to disagree on that, and you can attempt to suppress me also.
 
As far as the above example, I really don't think TOE changes should be implemented as they currently are. If Germany has a manpower crunch, or a AFV crunch, those shortages will get reflected in game. If anything, TOE changes should be implemented due to natural attrition.
 
Does anyone seriously think that, in this instance, with plenty of tanks in the army, Germany would have sent 20% (or whatever the percent is) away? Yes the game is semi-broke with respect to certain things, it would be really nice to be more flexible, but its still a great game, there is room for improvement, and a different implementation of TOE changes is one of those things.
 
Remember, the Soviets for the most part can bypass TOE changes by simply not building stuff that was not effective.

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

This community doesn't care that the German army is hard-coded to suck at precise points on a time line irrespective of the historical nature of the Wehrmacht's evolution or the performance in game of the German player. By the same token, the design decisions of WitE enable optimization of the Red Army to ridiculous levels, and has redundant fail-safes that enable the Soviet to always stay better than his historical predecessor.

Whether or not Stalingrad happens, or Demyansk, or Bagration, units disappear according to the events of those battles.

As Flavius said to me when last I read a post of his, they just don't care about differing opinions, and they have no intention of fixing any of it (unless you count buying a future re-designed product a 'fix'). They feel that their are enough people who are happy with the product (or at least who paid full price, giving them the illusion that they are happy with it) that criticisms are irrelevant.

As I noted for them in history, Mythic Entertainment and Sid Meier himself have all followed their own sense of infallibility to the loss column of the business ledger, despite a flurry of magazine-publisher glad-handed, 'critical acclaim' reviews.

It should be noted that this TOE nuke of the German army happened before, with the 1942 TOE changes. Only then, the TOE changes forced the Wehrmacht to conscript morale levels as soon as they switched. This was after Beta (well, if you assume beta ever ended on this product, prior to announcement of War in the West).

It's only now, 16 months after the release of an $80 program that players are reliably able to get to 1945. I myself never made it to 1943 before abandoning all hope, as either side. Your stoicism is to be commended.

Do we have to listen to you "Trash Talking" again?

There may be a simple rule/progamming change to reflect better than historical performance and therefore the ability to delay historical TOE changes, and that would be to link the TOE switch to the number of VPs the Axis player has - once the VPs drops below a certain threshold (Soviet move into Poland?), then the TOE switch could be triggered. A different VP threshold could be set for each TOE change.

As I have mentioned in the past, German ToE changes should be tied to losses and what is available. Those are the two primary reasons they changed ToE's as the war went along, not because of some date. Unfortunately that would take some programing to fix and we all know that isn't happening anytime soon.

To some of the other issues. I paid money like everyone else. I have not played and probably won't play this game again for a long time if ever again. It simply isn't worth the time investment to start a game up, then have a big patch come out in the middle of it and/or find something else like Idaho did. I got my entertainment's worth out of the game. I got plenty of other games that I have paid for, played, enjoyed and now rest on the book case and won't be played again.

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak
There may be a simple rule change to reflect better than historical performance and therefore the ability to delay historical TOE changes, and that would be to link the TOE switch to the number of VPs the Axis player has - once the VPs drops below a certain threshold (Soviet move into Poland?), then the TOE switch could be triggered. A different VP threshold could be set for each TOE change.

If it is to remain a decision automatically considered by the computer (ironically a "friendly AI"), I wouldn't tie to the VP points. That would get into problems if, for example, one player attempts a new strategy that abandons a lot of VP grounds for immediately taking a defensive position further back, which he may have been developing there for a long time (like a double or triple fort=4 line from Minsk to Kiev). Whatever fantasy people can come up with for new, perhaps promising strategies.

Plus, I don't think it can be that hard to implement a code that loops through the present ToE, compares refit needs with pools and actual production rate, and performs switch if say 3/4th of the slots cannot be filled up within say 6 turns. I don't know the source, of course, but I assume it is well structured.
It may need taking into account the "overall refit need" for each ToE item, summed up for all units at the beginning of each turn instead of just the pool (i.e. "pool+6x production rate" divided by units in need), but even that is but a single array that should be "comparably straight-forward" to code given that the Overview lists already can sum up specific items for all selected formations etc.

You could even implement a progressive check to ensure that things will be improved by this, e.g. by doing the same test for the new ToE to make sure the new one can at least be filled out better than the old one.
If you wanted a really thorough checking, one could even code something more complex such as calculating CV for the present the new ToE for the next turn under a crude assumption that as a minimum "pool+1x production rate divided by units in need" replacement items will be added.

Already just having something like the 1st suggestion in place to make sure that there is at least a need to change ToEs would sound like a big improvement. It does not seem to have any major strings attached to me, i.e. wouldn't sound like screwing up AI or so?

On the cost issue. I have played this game more than any other game since i bought it more that a year ago. Even though it has room for improvement in some areas, it is by far MY BEST BUY EVER when it comes to wargames! I feel I have gotten my money's worth several times over.