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I have had my first turn as Russian during an early November blizzard and I am deeply worried by the results. We have had a good game so far, the Germans have nearly made it, many Russian units are weak without artillery, but in the first blizzard turn I did three attacks on German units (the rest wisely fled!!) with three shatters. If this goes on the game will be unplayable unless all blizzard combat is banned. The German Wehrmacht will be ruined.
Could someone (Rick please) examine this turn please and tell me if the German shatters were justified. One was definitely fair enough, one was very suspcious and two I am not sure about. But no non-shatter combats, and no Germans holding anywhere, all shatter. That is very, very harsh.
First sight - the blizzard bug is back, and is worse than I had ever feared. This version of the game could be unplayable 1941 winter.
I hope I am wrong.
Help!!!

I noticed the same thing played against the AI (if you can call it that). The 1941 Blizzard = bye bye Wehrmacht. Pretty much every SU attack = a shatter.

Matt,

Go ahead and send me a saved game, and I will need to know the passwords for both sides if playing PBEM encrypted games. I will see what I can see, but I have yet to find a problem when I run things. There is a bug that I found in the last game sent to me where non-divisional Axis units seem to lose twice the readiness so that a Panzer division, for example, woud have a fairly high readiness but its armor subunits were much lower, from the same starting point. But even these units didn't shatter for me.

Anyway, please send it to rbancroft ATatt.net. Thanks!

Hi all,

Yeah my opinion is that blizzards are too effective against the Axis. In my PBEM with me as Axis I was at Vyazma, Leningrad, Kursk, Kharkov come blizzard. Now into 05/42 and have moved back to Pskov, Mogilev, Lvov. About 90% of my units shattered due to blizzard. It was impossible to defend. Now I barely have a Wermacht and don't think i'll last a year, 2 at most. Sure there should be severe penalties for the Axis in blizzard, especially 41 but should attacks result in shatters 3/4 of the time?

Matt et al,

I took a quick look at the saved game that Matt sent me, and will look further into the game. However, almost all the German units I saw had readiness down under 30% in the turn before the blizzards. At this level, the units are nearly guaranteed shattering. I will look further to see what happens to the readiness if absolutely nothing is done with the units, when the blizzard starts, to confirm the readiness in the blizzard itself, but right now the results you guys had is spot on with what should have happened.

For everyone, to summarize what is going on now in the blizzards: Losses are based on full readiness of units, but for the non-Finn Axis units, the readiness is then squared for determining the strength that the losses are removed from. So with 200 squads at 25% readiness, there will be 50 squads present for loss calculations. So lets say losses total 20 squads of the 50. However, the 20 lost squads are subtracted from 200*.25*.25 = 12.5 squads, leaving 0 for the odds calculation, and a shatter result. But using 100 squads at 50% readiness and the same losses resulting from the combat, the 20 squads lost are subtracted from 100*.5*.5 = 25 squads, leaving 5 squads and only a veryyyy small chance of a shatter.

In tests I ran with the latest calcs, units with readiness above 50% never shattered, around 40% there were a small number of shatters, around 30% it was something like 80% shatter. So around 20% you can count on a shatter every time.

Moral: the Axis player must stop his attacks and build up readiness before the blizzards, if he can't get a killing blow in before then. If Leningrad has fallen and you think you can take Moscow before the blizzard strikes, then you have to make a decision about whether to strike for Moscow and probably cripple Soviet industry or not. In this case, the shatters that will result are probably worth the benefit of wiping out so much Soviet industry. But just realize that having low readiness will result in shatters, even if you reach Moscow.

I got to agree about blizzard turns being to effective for the russians. I was playing the Russains vs the computer in 1941. I stoped the German advance just before the first blizzard turn I had and on that first blizzard turn i attacked across the hole front and 70% of the German front line units were destroyed. Lets just say i was in berlin by the summer of 42.

Its just to bad i never saved it, I have never seen so many units destroyed in one turn.

I have opted for a house rule...that Russians are allowed to advance 7 hexes from where they are at start of the first blizzard turn. They cannot attack for the 1st 2 turns of blizzard. This gives Germans a chance to retreat, defines the limit of Russian advance, and hopefully sets up the game for continuance into 42 going onward to at least 44.

Logistics of readiness is not FULLY under control of the player. Previously, high readiness was as bad as low readiness. I will need to play with Rick's identified equation above to convince myself of the rationale. Some degree of shattered troops return @ Berlin...but at what experience level? For my next game, i expect to stay with my 7 hex German retreat house rule.

Unhealthily for my timid 42 activity; my WIR 3.2 game had extremely few German initiated attacks though 42. The stats of this game @ Dec 42 vs Mar 42 was just previously posted.

I am now considering the tradeoff of allowing West/South fronts to shatter while keeping those hordes of Russians off my western border(till 45?)

Mike B

Originally posted by MikeB
...
Previously, high readiness was as bad as low readiness. ...

Mike B

Just to clarify the old way things worked. In all of the earlier versions of WIR, only high readiness was a problem for the Axis in the early blizzards. Prior to this version, the Axis readiness was quartered with a minimum readiness of 20%, for the odds calculation, where now readiness is squared in place of the quartering. So the problem before would only happen when the Axis readiness was high and got quartered. At low readiness the penalty was minor and so usually losses were not enough to lower the remaining strength to 0, unlike high readiness. So before, if you pushed your units right into the blizzard as the Axis, the only penalty was weak combat strength which required strong Soviet units to push the defenders back. But stopping your attack resulted in the very unexpected weakeness of the units and many shatters. A year or 2 ago I ran a test with an earlier Arnaud update where I just attacked to attack, and the Axis lost 40% of their forces within 4 turns, even though they started out at high readiness.

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply Rick.
I guess as German the new system takes a little getting used to.
In our game we had no special supply at all and no air supply for units not at zero supply. This has worked well till winter to stop special supply cheats but what happened now was that Willie faced mud mud mud followed by blizzard with no snow so that although stopped his units were already at a very low readiness before the blizzard struck. He then tried to flee with low readiness during blizzard which compounded the problem.
I think the best blizzard strategies may be to stand and fight a la Hitler but using special supply and air supply to keep readiness at a 50% or higher level.
Thanks again.

Matt

Originally posted by matt.buttsworth
no air supply for units not at zero supply. This has worked well till winter to stop special supply cheats

This is really exagerrated! The PzDivisions did get lots of supplies parachuted from Ju52s during the blitzkrieg and after. You're trying to make the game more 'historical' than history itself.:rolleyes:

I agree K62. Totally. About air drops to Panzers.
The problem we had was with the abuse of the mule special supply rule occurring with other players. I had no problem with air supply. Partner suggested that and I agreed but I agree with you it is a bit extreme. For our blizzard rules I have suggested to partner he use air supply to safeguard his units and I do not mind him using it all the time.
Special supply from changing HQs is a different issue.