Matrix Games Forums

I've finished my first campaign against the AI as the Germans in the '41 starting campaign. By late '43 the on-map russians were down to a sparse collection of tank corps with no remaining manpower. When Icaptured all their NSS's except for Krasnovodsk (the port on the east side of the Caspian sea) all the remaining soviet territory flipped to me except for a little in the far north and Krasnovodsk and 4 dot city hexes in the south (Kazakstan).

At this point the soviets only had HQ's on the 5 hexes in the south. Krasnovodsk had 3 HQ's. No more russian units could appear on the map because of over stacking at Krasnovodsk.
There were still sizable garrisons in the russian TB's but they don't get released.

I get that the "no early end" option is there for so that the game can be continued with the sudden victory/loss triggers but there should be some thought given to :-
1. Not surrendering the far eastern areas of russian territory when the 2nd last on-map NSS is captured.
2. Releasing the russian TB's when logically appropriate.
a)Transcausasus TB when German forces are within 10 hexes of Baku. They should appear either on the Iranian border or in the reserves TB.
b) The northern TB when German forces isolate the TB from all NSS's by rail. They should appear near Arkhangelsk. If isolated from all NSS' the NF TB forces should be treated as isolated and the German Fi TB required forces should be reduced.
c) The far east TB garrison requirement should be reduced proportionally as each russian NSS is captured.
3. There should be another russian NSS added off the east edge of the map.

These changes should allow the game to have a less silly ending.

I totally agree. When I do the "no early end" scenario I'm not following the concept of striving after VPs in key regions.
I think the hard pressed developers relented to the pressure of many users and just deleted the early end conditions without changing anything else. But "no early end" is a different concept.
Some time ago I found out that cutting the lend & lease delivery routes via Iran and Murmansk/Archangelsk does not influence the amount of delivered goods. When asking why I got the answer "don't complain, you have won the game". But I didn't want to win the game by VP standards but to game on. So one of my strategic aims was to cut the lend & lease life lines. Not feasible currently.
The same goes for you with the TB problem. To be honest, the devs are doing what they can, but I hope that in some future some illogical items in the "no early end" version will be changed.