Too easy

[ollittm]

Now that I know the relation of movement, op points and special supply .. It was a walkover to be in Moscow for Xmas.

AI *is* an idiot, period. Particular band of heroes for the motherland cut the supply lifeline of 2nd, 3rd and 4th panzer armies preparing to assault Moscow. I had incredible stroke of luck in the form of 3 turns of mud which allowed re-estabilishing supply and restoring all of the panzer corps.

In the brief "snow" season after rains, my first attempt to encircle Moscow failed. Next turn, AI PULLS OFF TROOPS FROM MOSCOW SUBURBS!!!

That was SO stupid. I was poised to repeat historical failure of German assault due to impending shitty weather in December when the stupid SOB hands me Moscow on a platter.

Well, it took 6 panzer corps' 3 turns to eject the guys from Moscow downtown but even so..

Now it's all over but for the screaming.. I pulled Finnish Karelian army to hold the line near Moscow. They must have been promised annexation of St Petersburg :p

..

Anyways, the air-to-air model is broken.. Even when your escorts outnumber the interceptors 2-to-1, they'll easily inflict parity on losses. Even with obviously superior experience on German side.

..

Mountain Corps suffers from huge supply penalty even if they do not get "extra" blizzard penalty .. Feature or a bug?

..

When the blizzard-issues get fixed, maybe someone would like to take charge of the people's army

[PMCN]

Just a note...Mountain Divisions get a bonus in mountains and don't suffer blizzard effects not Mountain Korp. Since in principle no mountain divisions need be present in a mountain Korp.

The AI is dumb yes. I would guess though that you will not hold moscow thru the blizzard. Not so much from retreats since the Finns are there but because you will loose the flanks and their supply will be threatened.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
Just a note...Mountain Divisions get a bonus in mountains and don't suffer blizzard effects not Mountain Korp. Since in principle no mountain divisions need be present in a mountain Korp.

My mountain korps has 2 Heer mountain divisions + Hungarian mnt division. So it should be okay, but instead they get the same ~20% supply level as everyone else. Much better in attack/defence, thought, so they do not get extra penalty to combat.

The AI is dumb yes. I would guess though that you will not hold moscow thru the blizzard. Not so much from retreats since the Finns are there but because you will loose the flanks and their supply will be threatened.

We'll see. I put my panzer divisions into Moscow where they're somewhat safe from elements and Finns are reinforcing the supply line. AI seems to concentrate on the Finnish Corps' for some reason which is the only part of the line that can hold up to them. Can't complain I quess.

I pulled much of my forces into minor cities to save them from unnecessary attrition and to give my supply lines a break.

[Svar]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Barleyman:

AI *is* an idiot, period. Particular band of heroes for the motherland cut the supply lifeline of 2nd, 3rd and 4th panzer armies preparing to assault Moscow. I had incredible stroke of luck in the form of 3 turns of mud which allowed re-estabilishing supply and restoring all of the panzer corps.

In the brief "snow" season after rains, my first attempt to encircle Moscow failed. Next turn, AI PULLS OFF TROOPS FROM MOSCOW SUBURBS!!!

That was SO stupid. I was poised to repeat historical failure of German assault due to impending shitty weather in December when the stupid SOB hands me Moscow on a platter.

Yes the AI is stupid. I haven't tried yet but am about to. Raise the difficulty level of the Soviet to max help. That should give the Soviet AI a lot more men and material to work with and it should get more aggressive. It may not be historical but will give you more of a challenge.

Svar

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Svar:
Yes the AI is stupid. I haven't tried yet but am about to. Raise the difficulty level of the Soviet to max help. That should give the Soviet AI a lot more men and material to work with and it should get more aggressive. It may not be historical but will give you more of a challenge.

Nah. I don't get kick out butchering hordes of drones led by an incompetent. Germans are already at a disadvantage so ..

Besides there are other things I'd like to do except play WiR

Maybe try a PBEM game once the bliz-patch comes out..

[Mist]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
Nah. I don't get kick out butchering hordes of drones led by an incompetent. Germans are already at a disadvantage so ..

Besides there are other things I'd like to do except play WiR

Maybe try a PBEM game once the bliz-patch comes out..

I advise to try out 43,44 campaigns as Germans for everyone who is anoyed by AI incompetence. Try to capture at least two objectives in 43 or lead the war to draw ending in 44. It is a real challenge!! It is like to stop steamer with barehands in 44th and truly "Eagle.vs.Bear" in 43th. It is good to begin from Bagration scenario to find out common problems(except hellish lack of oil) and combat odds which are faced by Germans.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
Anyways, the air-to-air model is broken.. Even when your escorts outnumber the interceptors 2-to-1, they'll easily inflict parity on losses. Even with obviously superior experience on German side.

Not sure I understand you here. Clearly the Germans do not lose the same amount of fighters when fighting the Soviets early on, and they often do very well when outnumbered by Soviet fighters. Sometimes the Soviet interceptors get thru to the bombers, and in bad weather the bombers sometimes fail to meet up with their escorts, but I don't see a parity in losses.

Mountain Corps suffers from huge supply penalty even if they do not get "extra" blizzard penalty .. Feature or a bug?

According to the readme (you have read this haven't you? ), mountain divisions, in addition to advantages for being in mountains, do not suffer when moving in blizzard, and suffer less of a readiness penalty than other units in blizzard, so they aren't immune to the '41 blizzard. A quick test with some mntn divs in a clear hex in blizzard weather shows them having a readiness of 20-30% better than other units. They never got close to 20% readiness, so your units were either/or in a poorly supplied square, or were already very low on readiness just before the blizzard turns started.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Not sure I understand you here. Clearly the Germans do not lose the same amount of fighters when fighting the Soviets early on, and they often do very well when outnumbered by Soviet fighters. Sometimes the Soviet interceptors get thru to the bombers, and in bad weather the bombers sometimes fail to meet up with their escorts, but I don't see a parity in losses.

It's the same old issue about interception model being basically flawed. Since air power effectiveness has been toned down, it's not a huge problem. In any case significant enemy interceptor presence will make raids very costly as the interceptors WILL get through and inflict heavy losses on bombers. Realistic, yeah, but if the escort outnumbers the interceptors fighter losses should significantly outnumber bomber losses.

As it doesn't look likely the model will be revised it's just an intellectual excercise to think how it could be made better. Some ideas would be to introduce repeatable interceptions both in- and out-bound legs and maybe split big escort/interceptor air groups into smaller units for purposes of combat resolution. Say, 30 fighter flights should be about right? So instead of having one 100 plane vs 100 plane encounter, you'd have have 4 smaller encounters. And if you have 5 groups of interceptors vs 3 groups of escorts, 2 groups would be able to attack bombers with impunity (=more interception events). And so on.

If Arnaud wants to work on something like that, great, but unless the air power is tweaked up again it doesn't make huge difference.

About mountain corps' .. You mean ~20% higher as in 30% vs 36% or 30% vs 50%?

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
but if the escort outnumbers the interceptors fighter losses should significantly outnumber bomber losses

As it doesn't look likely the model will be revised it's just an intellectual excercise to think how it could be made better.

Part of the problem which was discussed recently, is the fact that the air combat system is an abstraction anyway. Someone mentioned a group of 100 planes fighting 5 planes and wondering why all the 5 planes aren't blown out of the sky. In reality, you don't literally see this, what you actually see is the normal kind of combat over a one week period, such as patrols, fighter sweeps, and smaller squadrons of ~30 planes carrying out some ground support air strikes escorted by a small number of fighters. The same applies to this situation as well. The 100+ bomber attacks escorted by 100+ fighters and intercepted by 100+ fighters is not literally what happens (except for Western Allied strategic bombing, where literal 100+ bomber raids are common late in the game), its a simulation of the fighting that occurs during that week. This is unlike PacWar, where the combat there is between air groups of 30-40 planes, and where one side can be completely obliterated, as is often the case when P40s are met by an equal or greater number of Zeros. That combat *is* literal, not a simulation.

I do tend to agree with you though that there should be more casualties in air-to-air combat. Even if the engagements aren't realistic, an experienced 50-plane German fighter group should shoot down more than 15 planes from a green 100+ Soviet fighter group during a week of combat.

About mountain corps' .. You mean ~20% higher as in 30% vs 36% or 30% vs 50%?

The divisions lost readiness during the consequtive turns of blizzard, starting from 99% down to around 45% for regular units after 4-5 blizzard turns, while the mountain divisions only dropped to about 70%. Its unlikely that they would have been at 99% before hand anyway, so readiness is likely to have started lower, and therefore dropped lower than they did here. In this test the unit was on a rail-line getting the level 6 supply too.