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As Robert E Lee walks across the white house lawn to accept the formal surrender of the North from President Lincoln......

Sorry, this is not about the American Civil War but the "lost" excitement for both the Germans and the Soviets in WITE2 attacking and defending in the South. Before I start this conversation I want to say this is "not" a bash thread. It is a plea to make the south "interesting" again. I am also not looking at this from just a German point of view or a Soviet point of view but a "fun" factor between life and death. Because as it stands right now there really is "no" strategic reason to even consider the 'South" in WITE2 as a viable win option unless Germany is going for sudden death victory conditions in 41. Which in my opinion is 99.999999999999% unattainable against equal opponents. And with the new patch "Moscow" IS the only true play for winning the game.

Here is a list of items (please feel free to add to the list in posts and I will add to the opening thread here)

* Industry free evacuation without hit to rail I heard it mentioned on the forum there is a hit. I don't know but the way Soviets move units around the map I have my doubts.

* Industry only has a delay before producing again after hex taken. If it was life and death of the Industry the Germans would drive for it and the Soviets would defend it or use rail to move it early. Makes for a VERY exciting game on both sides!!!!! Currently I see the Soviets just let industry fall to come back with a delay. Look Mom I participated, I got a trophy for doing nothing AND I get my production back! Aren't I a "GREAT" player.

* Odessa falls too easy (could be a reason of full evacuation of the south to the north & center. And Naval interdiction too powerful fully cutting off?)

* Kiev falls too easy (could be a reason of full evacuation of the south to the north & center)

* Oil - why even bother with an offense to the the oilfields in the South when oil has no meaning and have no or little VP's attached?


I know there are more we can and will add but I wanted to start this off with the key ones above. Again, I am not bashing the game. I am looking for better "reasons" and above all "excitement" to play in the South again. As it stands now the south is a GHOST town with little reason to pursue. Maybe house rules, maybe we could get an option for industry destruction. Maybe house rule higher VP's for the South. But right now the South is "DEAD".

I obviously agree with all the above.

One thing I would add from the Soviet perspective is that an unfortunate side effect of the changes in the .39 patch which make Soviets start with -100k trucks discourage defending the south, at least in the initial turns, even more than was already the case. This is not to say that those changes were not needed or justified, but just that an unfortunate and probably unintended side effect is that it discourages defending forward in general. There also less incentive to defend forward because Germany starts with -15k trucks, so Germany will suffer logistically if they advance, even if Soviets choose not to defend at all. But also, it means that Soviets need to disband a decent # of tank divisions in order to save trucks. And a disproportionate number of tank divisions start in the south, so this disproportionately impacts the south. That should be less the case with the .41 patch changes which make it -50k instead of -100k, but it is likely still an issue to a lesser degree.

A second point is that even if Soviets want to do so, it is difficult to reinforce the south in the first turn or 2. Soviets have relatively bad supply in the south in front of the Dnieper, because they start without that many depots, and other than Kiev the depots start without that much freight, and because (at least as compared to e.g. Smolensk) it is further from the Soviet NSSes. If you rail in units to reinforce the south on Soviet turn 1, that just makes these problems worse, because it uses up some of the rail capacity.

A third point is that, obviously, Axis can do ahistorically strong openers, especially on turn 1 in the south. With equal opponents, I don't think you will ever have a case where Soviets defend in front of the Dnieper as well as they did historically.



What would be some solutions to these problems? I could and would say making industry matter more, but that is a core design decision which either that will happen or not (almost certainly not). So I will skip that and focus on other things that could help work around the total irrelevancy of industry. Many of these other things could also be changed merely by editing the scenario, rather than requiring programming changes:


1) Make Kiev a NSS, and probably add some more starting depots in the south.

- This should not affect the game in the long term because, at least if I understand correctly, the NSS status should be removed as soon as it is captured. But it would make Kiev a lot more important in the short term, and it does not seem . This would alleviate the initial Soviet supply problems in that area, and make it more viable to reinforce Kiev and nearby areas and to defend it. It is also plausible/reasonable that it should be a NSS - it is, after all, the capital of Ukraine.


2) Make the SW front start with high CPP rather than high morale.

- Currently, Soviets have a huge incentive to rail away, at the minimum, any 55-60+ morale divisions away and keep them safe, because if they are kept safe until winter they will be hugely valuable. This obviously weakens any defense of the south. If instead of starting with high morale, they started with 100 CPP, there would be way less incentive to rail them away to safety, and more incentive to fight with them in the south. I would say also make the southern front start with 50 CPP. CPP, rather than morale, also seems like it would better reflect the fact that the SW front was more PREPARED for combat than Soviet troops elsewhere. The only reason why morale is used rather than CPP seems to be because this mechanic is a holdover from WITE1, and WITE1 did not have CPP. But WITE2 does, and CPP is a better fit for this role. If extra CPP is not enough, SW front could still start with additional morale, but i could be just a small amount like +5 (similarly to units that start near Moscow currently). In practice, you will not get high morale divisions from this. Switching from morale to CPP is one of the most important changes, but unfortunately it is hard coded and cannot be changed by editing the scenario. Even if you lower unit morale in the editor, they will still start with high morale because it is hardcoded


3) Make mountaineer divisions, like infantry divisions, come back if destroyed until Dec 1941.

- Soviets likewise have a huge incentive to rail away mountaineer divisions, because they have +5 morale. They all start in the south. If Mountaineer divisions are lost, currently they are lost forever. So Soviets have a huge incentive to get them the heck out of the south ASAP and keep them somewhere safer.


4) Make German Panzer and motorized divisions in the South start with ~30 MP rather than 50 for turn 1.

- This would go a long way to prevent ahistorical openings in the south, and allow Soviets to defend he south in a more historical manner. Germany should still be able to do very well on turn 2, since they should basically have 50 MP then.


5) Make the Panzergruppe 3 Panzers/motorized start further north, but with the same # of MP distance as currently to Brest Litovsk.

- This will disincentivize sending them ahistorically south.


6) Make Soviets start with higher national morale, but make it go down when you lose cities like Kiev and Odessa (and perhaps Dnepropetrovsk).

- Make Soviets start with ~52 national morale, but have events that make it go down -1 when Kiev is lost and when Odessa is lost. Or maybe -2, IDK. This can be done in the editor AFAIK. This is not an ideal solution, because it is too binary (dependent on just those 2 individual hexes rather than the broader front), but at least it is something, and this can be done in the editor.


7) Make the hexes next to Odessa have forts, as well as Odessa itself.

- Wasn't this the case in WITE1? If so, why not in WITE2??? Part of the problem with Soviets defending Odessa is also that it is hard to move units into the city fort, because they have to be next to the city fort without moving for a turn. In practice, what can happen (partly because Germany can advance there faster than historical, especially if they do a Romanian border opening) is that they will simply get routed away while they are spending the turn not moving, waiting to move into the fortress city. Historically, Soviets did not just defend the city of Odessa, but the surrounding area also.


8) Make Odessa itself somehow at least somewhat defensible.

- There are two real problems causing the issues with Odessa. The first is that isolation is a binary state. This also makes other fortress cities, in general, a non-viable proposition. This is one of the major remaining problems with the game. Sadly it will likely not be changed, but it has to be mentioned. The second problem is that 11th Army can just walk up to Odessa and basically 1-shot it with pioneers. Why would any sensible Soviet player ever defend Odessa with e.g. 100k troops if they will all become guaranteed prisoners? The answer is that no sensible Soviet player will do so. The 11th Army bit could at least be handled through house rules though.


9) Buff the Stalin line, in particular making it more continuous.

- Currently it is indefensible for anything more than delaying even a single turn (the delay being the delay it takes to wipe pockets, not so much a delay caused by actual combat) because Germany will just drive around it with 50 MP. Even with all he other various changes, if the Stalin line remains as indefensible as it is, then even if Soviets defend the south, hey will mainly do so by retreating to the Dnieper and defending there. Whereas historically they did defend in front of the Dnieper for several weeks. Even a city like Vinnitsa did not historically fall until July 21, nearly a month after Barbarossa began.

I think the most fundamental issue is that when German frontal attacks typically yield thousands of Russian casualties for literally a dozen or so Germans, sometimes even none, what's the point in the Russians defending forward if they don't have to; for the German, what's the point in encirclements? It seems to me that the casualty ratios invite a Russian retreat. Fighting forward is not just suicidal, there's no upside, no attrition of the Germans. This is a carry over from v1 and its actually worse in v2. The cpp system allows the Russians to attack in summer but it's largely for fun, and I can't see them straining the German logistics more than their own combat capabilities. A player whose prime concern is game winning probably won't bother under most circumstances. The tediously meticulous retreat a few hexes in front of the German infantry until you have numerical superiority remains the sensible thing to do.

Let the Russian defenders kill and maim Germans in quantity, as they did historically. Force the Russians to defend (personally I enjoyed the industry evacuation game) but force the Germans to attempt encirclements, there's no need right now. I can't see any way to end the bloated autumn OoB's.

HardLuckYetAgain wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 12:10 pm As Robert E Lee walks across the white house lawn to accept the formal surrender of the North from President Lincoln......

Sorry, this is not about the American Civil War but the "lost" excitement for both the Germans and the Soviets in WITE2 attacking and defending in the South. Before I start this conversation I want to say this is "not" a bash thread. It is a plea to make the south "interesting" again. I am also not looking at this from just a German point of view or a Soviet point of view but a "fun" factor between life and death. Because as it stands right now there really is "no" strategic reason to even consider the 'South" in WITE2 as a viable win option unless Germany is going for sudden death victory conditions in 41. Which in my opinion is 99.999999999999% unattainable against equal opponents. And with the new patch "Moscow" IS the only true play for winning the game.

Here is a list of items (please feel free to add to the list in posts and I will add to the opening thread here)

* Industry free evacuation without hit to rail I heard it mentioned on the forum there is a hit. I don't know but the way Soviets move units around the map I have my doubts.

* Industry only has a delay before producing again after hex taken. If it was life and death of the Industry the Germans would drive for it and the Soviets would defend it or use rail to move it early. Makes for a VERY exciting game on both sides!!!!! Currently I see the Soviets just let industry fall to come back with a delay. Look Mom I participated, I got a trophy for doing nothing AND I get my production back! Aren't I a "GREAT" player.

* Odessa falls too easy (could be a reason of full evacuation of the south to the north & center. And Naval interdiction too powerful fully cutting off?)

* Kiev falls too easy (could be a reason of full evacuation of the south to the north & center)

* Oil - why even bother with an offense to the the oilfields in the South when oil has no meaning and have no or little VP's attached?


I know there are more we can and will add but I wanted to start this off with the key ones above. Again, I am not bashing the game. I am looking for better "reasons" and above all "excitement" to play in the South again. As it stands now the south is a GHOST town with little reason to pursue. Maybe house rules, maybe we could get an option for industry destruction. Maybe house rule higher VP's for the South. But right now the South is "DEAD".

OIL OIL OIL OIL

^^^^^^^^^^^

This was the key focus ( along with Stalingrad ) in 1942 for the Germans, its been spoken about over the course of the games release many times, with the answer ( I recall ) being the Germans will have issues in 1943 and beyond ( possibly or not ) if a game last that long, well that's fine for a long term game I guess but historically for the Germans they needed the oil in 1942.

If anyone was on the old forum and followed the thread when WITE2 was still in development, oil and The Caucasus was to play a big issue in this game, as it stands it really isn't for both sides.

MAKE OIL GREAT AGAIN

While I agree with your post @HLYA and yours @Beethoven1, on the capture of both Kiev and Odessa, I must be playing it wrong as I always have trouble with Odessa not so much with Kiev, but if it helps then so be it ( I do agree with supply base for Kiev definitely ) also adding to that I wrote sometime back that while Moscow is a big prize its supply status classifies it a prime target, if taken ( in my view ) renders the Soviet cause almost lost, speaking as one who plays PVE, it might be different for a Pvp game.

OPEN UP THE NORTH

Yes well I am talking about the other end of the country however if the Finnish front was in game and The Axis could take Murmansk, that would knock out a important LEND LEASE supply source I believe, this in my view would make The Caucasus a key target area again my view.


Anyway that is my 2 cents

regards

One important thing to add to my post.

I was only really touching upon the ability of the Soviets to defend the south. However, that is only 1 of 3 necessary pieces to it for a good historical and immersive game in the south:

1) Soviets have to have the ability to defend the south (not an excessive ability, but at least the ability to defend it more or less as well as historical).

The other 2 essential pieces are:

2) Soviets have to have an incentive to defend the south. Currently this is to a large extent lacking. Industry could provide an incentive if it mattered more. VPs could provide some incentive if it were more feasible to hold in the south long enough to get bonus VPs out of it (which goes back to Soviet's lacking an ability to defend the south, especially forward parts of it like Kiev/Odessa).

3) Axis has to have an incentive to go for the south. Currently this is somewhat lacking. There is some incentive to capture population centers and VPs to a point, but there is no real incentive to go further than Rostov or so, even if you can - that puts Germany in an unsustainable position for winter, and just makes a longer front line that Germany does not have enough counters to fill, and hurts Axis logistics for not much gain. In terms of VPs, a big problem is that Soviets gain bonus VPs from re-capturing VPs early, so Axis is perversely incentivized NOT to take VPs that may be lost too early (especially leading up to the 1941 winter).

Beethoven1 wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:04 pm

5) Make the Panzergruppe 3 Panzers/motorized start further north, but with the same # of MP distance as currently to Brest Litovsk.

- This will disincentivize sending them ahistorically south.

Just to clarify (even thought its obvious to most in context- and I know you know)- you probably mean Guderian's Panzergruppe 2. - probably specifically the Das Reich, 10th Panzer, and Gross Deutsch Regt. of the 46th Mot. Korps.

Would it be sufficient to allow the player to have the ability to do some point scaling as is done in WITW?

I would think that is an easy solution, but it sounds like your issue is more the quality of the fight than whether you can get to claim victory. Do I understand you?

Thanks.

The design idea as best as I can tell with the south in WitE 2 has been something along these lines...

The incentive for the German player is to get to Dnepropetrovsk as early as he can without trashing AGS too much in the process so he can grab a lot of VPs in the area (Zapo, Stalino, Kharkov, maybe Rostov) with their associated max bonuses to increase the HWM. The incentive for the Soviet player is to hold on to these for as long as possible so the bonus VPs go away and the Axis HWM is not increased by as much.

Where it doesn't work is with a Soviet player that is going to preserve the Red Army, VPs be damned. In this scenario the Axis can probably advance with little opposition in the south - but they are constrained by the rail repair speed because there is only one continuous rail line from turn 1 along Ukraine. So they can't fully take advantage of the road ahead being clear, without trashing their trucks (especially with 15 000 less trucks on scenario start). Meanwhile the redeployed Soviet divisions are reinforcing the center and/or north (or the divisions from the south reinforce the center and divisions normally going to the center are now reinforcing the north). This usually deadlocks the north because of the good terrain (especially with Soviet counterattacks as early as turn 1) well ahead of Leningrad, first along the Plyussa and second along the Luga. Likewise the room for encirclement battles in the center goes down and it's up to grinding forward, routing divisions with little chance of shattering. Before the CPP changes this was a foregone conclusion: AGC could not make much progress beyond Smolensk just by attacking everything frontally.

So if the incentive in the south is primarily VPs (all the manpower, resources, factories and industry don't matter that much in the game), and if by holding the south you weaken the north and center as a Soviet player, isn't the optimal play still to mostly abandon the south even if Beethoven's list of changes were implemented? As I've noted the Axis player is constrained by the rail repair on top of the 30% freight penalties until April 1942, so there's not a lot of exploitation possible once the Axis player takes Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye from freight reasons.

On the industrial part I perfectly agree in general and already crusaded in the past about it on these same forums.

For Odessa and Kiev business - I do disagree. These may be dictated by player choices.
For Kiev - I do agree that the Soviets may have a hard time to hold in open plains especially when there is the logistic rope keeping Germany at bay. It's just easier to ditch Kiev and fight further east where Germans struggle more. The problem here to me are the German logistics being too poor that scream 'fight further east Soviet'.

Odessa is due to game mechanics. Romanians are extremely poor and will never take Odessa pretty much of their own. Everyone invests Odessa with the 11th Army and regular German troops. That's a player choice. And anyhow it's needed by how the game engine works. Because you won't go in Crimea without having taken Odessa first.
I am sure if there was a repeat of history in planning, and leave the Romanians to besiege Odessa, with pratically minimal German presence, in '44 the Soviet army returns to liberate Odessa at that stage by how the game works, and even if the 11th Army seized Sebastopol, supply convoys will get to Odessa from Batum.

Not all has to be historical and here it's just more logical to act in this way.
Exactly as the Soviet players ditch their magically evacuating factories. But that is a problem because the factories magically evacuate. Odessa is a deliberate choice of how to use on-map assets.