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Greetings,
in my game (id=313522) I believe something strange has happened. It regards morale of Soviet units on Eastern Front.
Following first winter turn fo USSR (early January 1942), morale of most of my units suddenly degenerated down to around 50-70%. That's really strange, because nothing has happened, which could land such a blow. Last NM target, Dnipropietrovsk, fell in November, 2 turns earlier. In the meantime, USA joined the War, which caused spike up in Soviet NM.

Next turn (30.01.1942) morale for most units almost didn't recover, even though fighting was very modest, as were losses. In the meantime, Soviet Winter hit. Some German units were affected by it, though not so harsh as they could I believe (but I digress).

Getting back on topic - it's not the first game where it happened. Unfortunately, I don't have screens from previous games which show exact morale of units. Only from this game I started to take them and I will show them below.

My suspicion - something is wrong with event called 'Prepare for Winter Warfare'. It fires in 09.1940, if USSR doesn't attack Finalnd - I didn't. Ofc only answer to this event is yes, and this was picked in this game. Still, when winter 1941/1942 begun, I got hit really strongly. Therefore - could there be a bug of some sort?

Below I show some screens. National Morale of USSR was 87% and then 86% respectively, German 107 and 106%. So there was no multiplier change.

The same army, not involved into a fight, next turn. Both morale and readiness dropped.

Next example - Sovet army at supply 12, 1st turn:

And the next turn. Despite supply 12 and no combat, supply is lower.

At the same time, German corps in poor (5) supply, retains excellent stats:

Next turn, its morale dropped down to 113%, so 1 pp. According to formula from manual, it should be around 95%, ceteris paribus.

Lastly, an example of soviet units at low morale out of sudden:

And other one, which didn't see combat at all.

Hi Marcinos1985,

Was there a possible surrender of an Allied nation during this time? Perhaps in the Pacific theater?

If so this would have an effect on Soviet unit national morale, for a few turns. Actually the unit national morale of all Allied nations for a few turns.

Hubert

Indeed, Philippines went down in late December/early January Axis turn. Would this cuase such a hit? Around 20-30%? Don't get me wrong, but Soviets have enough truoble of their own to care about an Island several thousand km away. [:)]
Update - on February Allied turn Soviet morale got a bump back of around 25%. Army from Leningrad from post above went up to around 107% again. So this may be this, a temp shockwave from PHI surrender. Question is, is this not too severe penalty? I could imagine Japan taking country by country each turn to keep Allied morale low. Or maybe it's PHI which causes such a shockwave, Manila is victory target I believe. Something to consider, USSR has enough problems in SC:WaW. [8D]

P.S. There's also the case of this GER corp at 5 supply. Maybe it's the same thing - they got temporary morale boost for PHI surrender? If that's true, that's a 50% of morale swing against Soviets. If it happened around April/May 1942, USSR would have a very bloody turn. Food for thought.

ORIGINAL: Marcinos1985

Indeed, Philippines went down in late December/early January Axis turn. Would this cuase such a hit? Around 20-30%? Don't get me wrong, but Soviets have enough truoble of their own to care about an Island several thousand km away. [:)]
Update - on February Allied turn Soviet morale got a bump back of around 25%. Army from Leningrad from post above went up to around 107% again. So this may be this, a temp shockwave from PHI surrender. Question is, is this not too severe penalty? I could imagine Japan taking country by country each turn to keep Allied morale low. Or maybe it's PHI which causes such a shockwave, Manila is victory target I believe. Something to consider, USSR has enough problems in SC:WaW. [8D]

I couldn't have said it better...[;)]

Question is, is this not too severe penalty? I could imagine Japan taking country by country each turn to keep Allied morale low.

I don't have to imagine anymore, that's exactly what happens in this game. Soviet morale consistently falls to around 50%, while German may skyrocket even to 120%. And that's all because small countries in distant Pacific give up each turn. First Philippines, then New Guinea, then Solomons, now DEI. Malayas and Burma still to take. I can't imagine that Ivan or other Nikita sitting in the trenches in 05.1942 could care less though [:)] I believe it's an engine case (country goes down, appropriate side takes a hit), but I don't know if this could be tuned somehow. Morale boost for Axis is understandable, a dip for UK or US maybe, but for USSR - in my opinion - less so.

I believe there is no much that Allied player can do either, without resorting to cheese of some sort, like bringing UK fleet to Pacific and intercepting JP transports. I believe some players even agreed (house rule) no to do so, because it's such a blatant hindsight that even avid metagamer like me would feel ashamed. [:)]

And now I learn that every confetti that falls in the Pacific causes Soviet morale to plummet.

I'm going to be giving this some thought to see what can be done to avoid such an impact on the USSR here.

Thank you very much. Great support as usual. [&o]

And thanks to Marcinos1985 too. [:)]

I can just second that, I win most of my Axis games and lose as the Allies, because Russia dies in almost any at all PBEM against a capable Axis player

ORIGINAL: Marcinos1985

I don't have to imagine anymore, that's exactly what happens in this game. Soviet morale consistently falls to around 50%, while German may skyrocket even to 120%. And that's all because small countries in distant Pacific give up each turn. First Philippines, then New Guinea, then Solomons, now DEI. Malayas and Burma still to take. I can't imagine that Ivan or other Nikita sitting in the trenches in 05.1942 could care less though [:)] I believe it's an engine case (country goes down, appropriate side takes a hit), but I don't know if this could be tuned somehow. Morale boost for Axis is understandable, a dip for UK or US maybe, but for USSR - in my opinion - less so.

Interesting as this tactic was used on a smaller scale with SC-WW1 concerning the infamous 'Montenegro Gambit'.
1st turn..Luxembourg surrenders>following turn CP buff. 2nd turn, Montenegro surrenders (chit selling on turn one to operate 3 or more German corps next to Montenegrin capital> new CP buff for 3rd turn.

Mean while..Central Powers go all out on Russia and Serbia with these two buffs on hand...and demolish Russia while they are trying to receive their 2nd and third turn units that are mobilizing to the board. Also, because of the 2nd and 3rd turn surrender buffs..All of Russian Poloand is cut off by uber 120+ morale CP forces.

Now..all of this has been fixed in the last patches for SC-WW1...and thanks much for that!

However...I was involved in 2 major tests to figure out how to fix this after it came to our attention on the forum over there. A few of us secret squirrels knew about the possibility to take out Montenegro on the second turn after about the first month SC-WW1 came out. But, nobody that I know realized just how big the buffs..especially chained, could be. The usual was..take Luxembourg..that helps further the push west into Belgium and France. This we knew..and didn't mind as this was a cool design feature. It took someone though..to put two and two together, and go for a bigger prize using these back to back buffs...Russia!

While all these tests and huge discussions were going on, I heard from a couple of people via pm off forum, that this stratagem of knocking off one smallish country at a time, e.g. New Guinea, then Solomons, etc, etc or some combination, consecutively, and not at the same time..was the trick.

So..its possible that a WaW expert brought that over to SC-WW1, where it was used to great effect as I described above...and turned a gambit like taking Montenegro on the second turn of the match, into an exploit...where it was unleashed on unsuspecting players for months.

There's my 3 cents. I like the surrender buff, but as Marcinos pointed out..why would the loss of lets say The Solomon Islands affect the Soviet Union at all, especially with the Axis beating down their doors up into the first winter of 1941, the same time as the Japanese start their rampage? [:D]

Marcinos - can you share the USSR National Morale graph over this time period?

ORIGINAL: EarlyDoors
Marcinos - can you share the USSR National Morale graph over this time period?

Yes, here you go.

While all these tests and huge discussions were going on, I heard from a couple of people via pm off forum, that this stratagem of knocking off one smallish country at a time, e.g. New Guinea, then Solomons, etc, etc or some combination, consecutively, and not at the same time..was the trick.

Yes, this seems the way to go. This buff is so powerful, that Germans troops have higher morale than soviets despite Soviet Winter event. Same for China - if it's somehow alive still, then it will get a final stab with prolonged morale buff for JP.

These effects seem quite powerful, this case from SC:WW1 seems to underline it.