To The Death v1.1

[Ed Cogburn]

Ok, some people found out the hard way that I accidentally disabled the victory condition check when I disabled the Front checks (sorry Mist). Well, this was a bitch to figure out, but I think I got it. Pardon my French.

Addition: 4 heavy industries for Germany in 6/43 to represent the move to total war.

Bad News: I've figured out the rail move points issue, and would you believe the game doesn't track total rail movement points for each side? In other words, I can change the the total to something besides 5000, but the game will apply that to both sides. Sadly, that promising idea is now dead.

Start date pushed to 7/6/41, so the Germans have lost 2 weeks of level 10 blitzkreig supply. This is arguable, but I think that a) a delay getting forces redeployed to the East from the attack on Britain is possible, maybe even likely, and b) this scenario already favors the Germans, so we need to keep it interesting. If I could shift the blitzkreig supply, I would delay it further.


http://www.xtn.net/~ecogburn/wirhak11.zip

[Yogi Yohan]

Great Ed, and a good thing I had not yet tried your scenario.

One thing: I noticed that cities that begin the game owned by the the side they do not own allegiance to (like the Baltic cities, and in my conversion, Warsaw, Belgrad, Krakow and Lodz) DO provide infantry replacements to the side that owns them. However, if lost and later recaptuered they will not add infantry(I presume).

So in your scenario, the thing to do would be to reenable allegiances, but put all non-russian cities (Minsk, Kiev, Tiblisi, Grozny etc) at Axis Allegiance. In this way, the Soviets will get their infantry replacements from there until the Germans capture them (which seems realistic) but later on the Germans will be able to recruit there as well.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
One thing: I noticed that cities that begin the game owned by the the side they do not own allegiance to (like the Baltic cities, and in my conversion, Warsaw, Belgrad, Krakow and Lodz) DO provide infantry replacements to the side that owns them. However, if lost and later recaptuered they will not add infantry(I presume).

I'm not sure this is a bug. The Baltic states had been under the control of the USSR for a long time, and was at peace. It makes sense that these regions would provide draftees for the Soviets at first. Later, when recaptured back from the Germans, the Soviets would find the area decimated by war, civilians dislocated, and/or homeless. Many fighting age men would have fled along with the Germans towards the West. The Soviets in turn would be suspicious (knowing that some of these people fought against them), of this population and would not immediately start taking draftees. Stalin didn't trust any population that had been "contaminated" (his word) by the Germans, so as the Soviets moved west, Stalin had some civilians from liberated areas sent East to labor camps. So having them not support the Soviets once recaptured makes some sense.

So in your scenario

What I wanted to do was give the Germans extra replacements to represent the volunteers or drafted men of Soviet/Russian areas willing to fight against the USSR seeing Germany as a "liberator". By disabling Allegiance, Germany gets replacements from all cities, not just the ones with Axis Allegiance, which is close to what I want (but too high, I'd like to just get a third/half of the population for the Germans, not all of it) but the Soviets can get replacements as well when they recapture these cities, which doesn't make sense (the whole population of a city wouldn't support *both* sides). I don't like this but I haven't found a better way yet to do things.

I could set all cities to Axis Allegiance, but this would mean the Soviets getting no replacements from Russian cities which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either. They would get something out of these russian areas even given Stalin's suspicions of conquered areas.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
The Baltic states had been under the control of the USSR for a long time, and was at peace. It makes sense that these regions would provide draftees for the Soviets at first. Later, when recaptured back from the Germans, the Soviets would find the area decimated by war, civilians dislocated, and/or homeless. Many fighting age men would have fled along with the Germans towards the West.

Ed,
Actually, the Soviets only took over the Baltic states in 1940, I believe. As a matter of fact, they were still converting the rails to their gauge when the war broke out. I don't know a lot about the situation in the three states, but I believe I read that they considered fighting the Soviets if they could have gotten some support from someone, but instead gave into the invasion without a fight as there nobody to support them. Maybe there is someone else around with more information on these countries and their take over by the Soviet Union.

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
I could set all cities to Axis Allegiance, but this would mean the Soviets getting no replacements from Russian cities which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either. They would get something out of these russian areas even given Stalin's suspicions of conquered areas.

Ed, what I meant was to set all NON-russian Soviet cities to Axis allegiance. So cities like Leningrad, Novgorod, Moscow and Kharkov (which is within the republic of the Ucraine but has a ethnic russian population) would still be Soviet allegiance, while Minsk, Kiev, Odessa, Tiblisi, Grozny, Baku etc would be Axis allegiance. These cities are not Russian, but Bielorussian, Ucranian, Georgian, Chechen and Azeri respectively.

The case you made for Soviet suspicion against rebellious population in the baltic states would be valid for these areas as well had they sided with Germany, so the Soviets not getting any recruits from these areas after reconquest seems resonable.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by RickyB:
Actually, the Soviets only took over the Baltic states in 1940, I believe. As a matter of fact, they were still converting the rails to their gauge when the war broke out. I don't know a lot about the situation in the three states, but I believe I read that they considered fighting the Soviets if they could have gotten some support from someone, but instead gave into the invasion without a fight as there nobody to support them.

Hmm, my mistake. Ricky, maybe we should get Arnaud to use editwir to zero out the population for Riga and Tallinn. It will work correctly after that, i.e., when the Germans get them they get the population, when taken again by the Soviets they won't get the population. This is the standard obwir scenario, I'm not talking about my hack here.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
Ed, what I meant was to set all NON-russian Soviet cities to Axis allegiance. So cities like Leningrad, Novgorod, Moscow and Kharkov (which is within the republic of the Ucraine but has a ethnic russian population) would still be Soviet allegiance, while Minsk, Kiev, Odessa, Tiblisi, Grozny, Baku etc would be Axis allegiance. These cities are not Russian, but Bielorussian, Ucranian, Georgian, Chechen and Azeri respectively.

The case you made for Soviet suspicion against rebellious population in the baltic states would be valid for these areas as well had they sided with Germany, so the Soviets not getting any recruits from these areas after reconquest seems resonable.

Ok, if we're still talking about my scenario then this makes sense, it seems. I'll re-enable Allegiance and set the cities listed below to Axis Allegiance. They will start out, though, as providing replacements to the Soviets, *except* for the ones recently taken, i.e. the Baltic and Polish cities. Tell me if this is correct:


City Supply Soviets at start
---- -----------------------
Tallinn no (Baltic)
Riga no (Baltic)
Bialystok no (Polish?)
Brest-Litovsk no (Polish)
Lvov no (Polish)
Zhitomir yes (Ukraine)
Kiev yes (Ukraine)
Turnopol yes (Ukraine)
Poltava yes (Ukraine)
Dnepropetrovsk yes (Ukraine)
Uman yes (Ukraine)
Zaporozhe yes (Ukraine)
Odessa yes (Ukraine)
Sevastopol yes (Ukraine)
Minsk yes (Bielorussian)
Batumi yes (Georgian)
Tiblisi yes (Georgian)
Grozny yes (Chechen)
Baku yes (Azeri)

Is this right Yogi?

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

Ok, if we're still talking about my scenario then this makes sense, it seems. I'll re-enable Allegiance and set the cities listed below to Axis Allegiance. They will start out, though, as providing replacements to the Soviets, *except* for the ones recently taken, i.e. the Baltic and Polish cities. Tell me if this is correct:


City Supply Soviets at start
---- -----------------------
Tallinn no (Baltic)
Riga no (Baltic)
Bialystok no (Polish?)
Brest-Litovsk no (Polish)
Lvov no (Polish)
Zhitomir yes (Ukraine)
Kiev yes (Ukraine)
Turnopol yes (Ukraine)
Poltava yes (Ukraine)
Dnepropetrovsk yes (Ukraine)
Uman yes (Ukraine)
Zaporozhe yes (Ukraine)
Odessa yes (Ukraine)
Sevastopol yes (Ukraine)
Minsk yes (Bielorussian)
Batumi yes (Georgian)
Tiblisi yes (Georgian)
Grozny yes (Chechen)
Baku yes (Azeri)

Is this right Yogi?

Yes, I was talking about your scenario, and yes, this looks right, except for Kaunas and Vilna. Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania before the war. Vilna had a mixed Bielorussian, Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish (40%) population but was part of Poland before the war.

So your list should include:

Kaunas no (Baltic)
Vilna no (Polish)

with Vilna perhaps having its initial 1941 population halved to 1 since the Jews of Vilna would hardly have been enlisted by the Germans.

A note on Sebastopol: Sebastopol, although part of the Ucraine, has a mostly russian population today but this is a post-WW2 state of affairs. Before the war the Crimea was a Tartar Soviet Republic. The Crimea tartars were deported by Stalin after the War (for cooperating with the Germans, by the way) and the Crimea was settled by Russians and given as "gift" to the Ucraine Soviet Republic.

One more thing: If you find that to many people are recruitable by the axis, you could always lower the "Original 1941 population" for the non-russian cities (to account for communists, jews and men already recruited by the Red Army) and leave the start population as is.

[Yogi Yohan]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Hmm, my mistake. Ricky, maybe we should get Arnaud to use editwir to zero out the population for Riga and Tallinn. It will work correctly after that, i.e., when the Germans get them they get the population, when taken again by the Soviets they won't get the population. This is the standard obwir scenario, I'm not talking about my hack here.

The same would go for Kaunas, see my previous post on your scenario.

In fact, the same thing should apply to German-occupied cities like Warsaw, Krakow and Belgrade, which should all be Soviet Allegiance and at 0 initial population.

Prague and Lodz should also be Soviet Allegiance but you could leave a small initial population to represent the Sudeten-Germans and the ethinc German minority of Poland (some of which lived in Lodz).

This I guess would also apply to Ed's scenario, since the "benevolent" occupation assumed in the scenario is for the Soviet Union only, not Poland, Checoslovakia or Serbia?

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
This I guess would also apply to Ed's scenario, since the "benevolent" occupation assumed in the scenario is for the Soviet Union only, not Poland, Checoslovakia or Serbia?

Correct. My scenario's Hitler will manage to contain his racism long enough for the fall of the Soviet Union, but he won't be able to hold back with respect to Poland once it is completely at his mercy and little or no news can get out. Czechoslovakia is a little different as it was treated more like Austria, both were simply annexed and occupied, without war earlier in the mid to late 1930s. Prague has factories producing for Germany unlike Warsaw, even though the later has a larger population. Prague and Vienna should be treated the same as German cities. Also note that the Hitler in my scenario is still planning genocide for the Jews, that part hasn't changed.

As for Serbia, you really mean Yugoslavia. In my scenario Yugoslavia is left unconquered, the Germans just didn't have the time. Yugoslavia is one of the loose ends meant to be taken care of by the Italian and German forces in the Italian Front.