How the heck do you calculate odds accurately?

[thedoctorking]

I'm playing a game with a guy where, when he attacks, every single one of his attacks is successful. When I go to attack, I have 50:7 according to the displayed CV and when I actually go to fight (with no reserve activations on either side) the actual outcome is 1:1.07. Frustrating, to say the least.

Looking at the detailed combat result, I had 181 elements disrupted, but no sense of why that might have been. No enemy air support, no enemy artillery support, just random. My CV went down by about 80% behind those 181 out of 2265 elements.

[thedoctorking]

Getting to be table-kicking time...[:@]

[thedoctorking]

And my two regiments of artillery including a Guards regiment of 8-inchers disrupted exactly 5 of his ground elements.

[VigaBrand]

Could happen. Shouldn't be normal, but could sometimes happen. It is just bad luck.

[thedoctorking]

I had two attacks in the same turn where similar things happened. I had an apparent advantage of 4:1 or greater, and I lost. Some things I thought of:
- Is this about attacking in the blizzard?
- Does fatigue possibly cause disruption? The guys just fall asleep instead of fighting?

[VigaBrand]

With the same commanders? Tolbukhin is very good. Are the other units under Tolbukhin, too?
Who was the other commander in your second battle?

Leader rolls could be very deciding. Maybe the army from Tolbhukin had to much troops? Please show us the supply details from the 15th cavalery corps (you could see the probabilities)

[chaos45]

You did hasty attacks is why you lost...hasty attacks seriously degrade your own combat factors. Think you actually only attack with like 25-35% of your actual CV when you use a hasty attack.

[thedoctorking]

Everybody was pretty much in the same army. I do my best to make sure all the attackers are under the same HQ.

The earlier attack was a deliberate with about a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of reported CV. This one was 50-odd to 7 on a hasty attack. Normally I'd think 2:1 for deliberate or 4:1 for hasty should do the trick. But not in the last couple of turns in this game.

[Crackaces]

The date is 1942 .. so I know it’s not our game
Alt CV I am a German Fanboy ... I assume the Soviet is going to pass their leadership checks (x2 CV) unless I am sure otherwise. I make sure to 1/2 my Pz units CV if any terrain is involved. As far as SU’s are concerned open terrain I assume 50% of this the ROF for each art unit will disrupt a device or squad. Stukas are pretty close to 1:1. That does not calculate blast which is gravy in this situation. This is of course detection level 10.

You have seen my battle reports. I tend to deliberately attack if any terrain is involved. Sometimes hasty with big big numbers but usually only when the terrain is favorable. I am at about a 90% win rate.

[thedoctorking]

It's a different game. I'm the Soviets, my German opponent has a much better grasp of which attacks will be successful. I'm trying to analyze what it is he's doing.

[VigaBrand]

Please show us the supply details from the 15th cavalery corps (you could see the probabilities)

Could you screenshot this information?

[VigaBrand]

ORIGINAL: chaos45

You did hasty attacks is why you lost...hasty attacks seriously degrade your own combat factors. Think you actually only attack with like 25-35% of your actual CV when you use a hasty attack.

Why? Think the hasty attack halved the cv.

[morvael]

I would never do a hasty attack with Soviets in this period of war, except when attacking lone small Axis Ally units.

[chaos45]

Vigabrand---Im pretty sure its worse than a 50% cut for the soviets and even for the germans....could be wrong as I dont have all the math going on under the hood, but as Morvael says doing hasty attacks with the soviets in the first couple years of the war rarely works unless the Axis unit is extremely weak.

Maybe the hasty attack % of attacking CV is also based on unit experience/morale? Not sure but I do know I would not calculate it at much over 25% for the early war period for the soviets.

[thedoctorking]

Looking at the last several turns of attacks, I did five hasty attacks and succeeded in three. In each case, the defeated unit was either a regiment or a badly depleted Axis Minor unit. So a hasty attack against an SS unit was probably ill-considered.

Just frustrating to not be able to do much of anything during blizzard turns.

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: thedoctorking

Looking at the last several turns of attacks, I did five hasty attacks and succeeded in three. In each case, the defeated unit was either a regiment or a badly depleted Axis Minor unit. So a hasty attack against an SS unit was probably ill-considered.

Just frustrating to not be able to do much of anything during blizzard turns.

What kind of blizzard? +1 attack? What does your OOB look like?

Very soon the 8MP Axis AAR will be updated .. but I can say as the center commander the Soviet's are doing a lot ..

[thedoctorking]

We are playing full blizzard but no Soviet attack bonus. Things are going sort of OK in the Ukraine but north of Bryansk there is basically no joy whatsoever. There have been more successful Axis attacks than Russian. Axis priority seems to be in the north/center, though. He successfully took Leningrad because I didn't realize that newly-constructed forts would just disappear - so he marched his Finns across the undefended line and took the port. Then he pushed into the hills behind Velikie Luki and cut off a big hunk of NW Front, and during the snow turns he cut off a bunch of Western Front guys around Smolensk. But the line is still far forward of where it usually is in that area - he's nowhere near Moscow. I think this may be an intentional move on his part. He's hoping to beat up on my army and expecting to capture territory next year. We'll see how the summer goes.

I have like five Guards units. No or almost no failed German attacks and few counter-attacks by me before the start of blizzard.

[thedoctorking]

It's just the way the game reports your estimated CV. Three attacks in a row with reported odds greater than 4:1, deliberate attack, and final odds in the 1.5:1 range.

There's really no point in attacking as the USSR, I think, at least in the early going, unless the Germans are very weak, out of supply, etc. And then you'd better have at least 5:1 CV advantage.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Are you heavily overloading your armies?
Having an army overloaded by 100% turns a Zhukov into one of the crappy early war leaders.

Are you talking about deliberate or hasty attacks? I have the impression that hasty attacks have much more random results.

[thedoctorking]

My armies are never overloaded. Fronts are overloaded sometimes though I'm trying to avoid that. Almost all attacks are by units of one army only. I bomb twice before attacking if I have bombers to spare (usually). I have pretty consistent air superiority over the battlefield so defending troops rarely have air support during battles.

Almost all of my attacks are deliberate. I only do a hasty if I'm attacking a lone Italian or Romanian.

I'm thinking it's the weather. In clear weather, if I have a reported 2:1, the actual odds might be 1.5:1 or they might be 2.5:1 but they are never going to be 1:4. I think there's a random disruption or something that's happening under the hood that is making units ineffective at the moment of combat and it affects attackers more than defenders? Or maybe it affects the Soviets in ways the CV math doesn't take into account - Soviet reported CV values are a lot higher in blizzard turns; maybe that's not accurate.

The other candidate is fatigue. My guys are getting quite fatigued now, even though I'm trying to rotate severely-fatigued units (over 50%) out of the line for a couple of turns. It's late January and we have been attacking for six weeks straight.

The last two turns in this game, I've used the rule of thumb that the reported odds should be 4:1 before I launch a deliberate attack, and that's with just infantry in the attack. That has worked out pretty well. I only had one failure out of about 10 attacks last turn.