Cheeze strategies

[sillyflower]

I doubt neither your ability or experience.
Is that a 'no' then?

[Flaviusx]

Nah, I'm looking to find ways to win as the allies nowadays.

[AlvaroSousa]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

It is very much a micromanagement thing, I have had to sit down and hotplay this build a half dozen times to squeeze out the maximum benefit.

The key is this: every disbanded rifle corps yields 90 resources. For 120 you get a cav corps. So it is close to a straight swap. But the cavalry is 3-4 times as strong due to the massive difference in experience. Once you take into account upgrades, it's almost an even swap, because each level of upgrades for a rifle corps cost 18 production, versus 12 for the cav corps. (This is the other problem with rifle corps. They are way cost ineffective. 180 points base cost.)

You can save up to 6000 build points via disbands and per turn production by March of 1940 when the Finnish war ends and you do the swap. So it's not just a swap, there is for real additional production here. But it means you no longer have ant units even on the front line. Rather than useless speed bumps, 4 point cavalry corps can put up a bit of a fight. And they have nice mobility. They're also pretty great in the marshes.

You can keep building more of them after March of 1940. Or throw in some mech and mountain. You do have to set points aside to upgrade and reinforce the starting mech and HQs. I am honestly debating whether it is even worth doing this for 20% experience mech. The ones that start off understrength are ok, because replacements increase their experience. The full strength mech corps at 20% are close to junk. 150 point disband will yield you a cavalry corps with equal raw strength and 30 points in surplus production.

I did notice the gimmick with the Finland modification. I actually thought I removed it in one of the betas. I will double check.

Disbanding the initial corps should not be cost effective. I'll run the math again

[AlvaroSousa]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Nah, I'm looking to find ways to win as the allies nowadays.

I am in two games currently. In both the Axis are winning. I have played 8 games myself to test balance and find issues.

Now I understand what you mean. I will investigate. I think I actually forgot to lower the cost for the Soviet starting Corps thus why they are so not cost effective.

[AlvaroSousa]

Ok so this is what I did. This will delay beta to official for 1 week. I have to test this myself.

All Cavalry are now 3-1-2 firepower, guns, artillery
Soviet large corps are now 120pp, 3-2-2 (vs 4-2-2 Armies which haven't changed
Removal of the +10% finnish gain... all Soviet new units are at 35% experience starting

The current 20% experience units stay where they are.

This should remove micromanaging min-maxxing which is currently required to maximize defense.

What this should do is make it cost effective to build the large corps but also allow the choice of the USSR on how to spend it's money balancing force size with saving money. I tend to agree the game slightly favors the Axis at the moment. It is balanced but the Axis seem easier to play. The Allies really need good resource/unit management in building the right quantities of naval, air, and land forces to achieve victory. Personally I find this a real challenge and quite fun.

I will be uploading the new beta sometime today.

[Flaviusx]

I can live with this. Thanks, Alvaro.

[PanzerMike]

Is there any incentive then to attack Finland as the USSR? The AI event will still trigger and some territory is gained, but that's all then isn't it? And for a human player? What does he benefit?

For the record, I have hardly played the Allies, so maybe this is a dumb question.

[ncc1701e]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Soviet large corps are now 120pp, 3-2-2 (vs 4-2-2 Armies which haven't changed

Great, now aligned to other countries in term of production cost.

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Removal of the +10% finnish gain... all Soviet new units are at 35% experience starting

Or, reduce the Finnish gain to 10% and all Soviet new units are at 30% experience until the even is firing.
That way, you will have Infantry Large corps at 20%, 30% and, after Finnish war, at 35%.

[AlvaroSousa]

I just took out the +10%. That's a gamey mechanism and Flavious was right. If you do know you just wait with the production. if you don't know... Well then you screw yourself.

So the decision is removed from an absolute number and placed as a strategy. Will the Axis attack in 1941 or 1942? Should I hold my PPs to build 1942 armies? Or buy the corps? How many should I buy? How much should I save for armies? How many should I defend up front with?

Those are the strategic thoughts I want players to consider. Not 4 X 9 X .27 = X and 4 X 7 X .2 = Y thus Y is less than X so sell all this buy all that.... blek. That's gimmicky and min-maxxing.

Now that I understood Flavious's request correctly I saw what he was seeing when I worked the math.

[Franciscus]

Hi

Is a new beta patch still going to released before the official one ?

Regards

[ncc1701e]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

I just took out the +10%. That's a gamey mechanism and Flavious was right. If you do know you just wait with the production. if you don't know... Well then you screw yourself.

So the decision is removed from an absolute number and placed as a strategy. Will the Axis attack in 1941 or 1942? Should I hold my PPs to build 1942 armies? Or buy the corps? How many should I buy? How much should I save for armies? How many should I defend up front with?

Those are the strategic thoughts I want players to consider. Not 4 X 9 X .27 = X and 4 X 7 X .2 = Y thus Y is less than X so sell all this buy all that.... blek. That's gimmicky and min-maxxing.

Now that I understood Flavious's request correctly I saw what he was seeing when I worked the math.

Thanks, I understand now. I think this is a good move. I have just proposed to Hairog to wait this patch to playtest it.

Cheers

[Hairog]

There are two facts that always stood out to me, and most historians, about the first months on the Eastern Front.

1.The initial blitzkrieg tactics and the encirclement of millions of Soviet troops, who surrendered and were subsequently starved to death. I suggest that this must be recreated if the Germans attack on schedule. If not then all bets are off.

2. The Reds saved Moscow with a combination of bad weather and throwing new and untrained units into battle where they were destroyed. However, their destruction took, time and resources neither of which the Germans could afford to waste.

Me thinks some of you are making this way too complicated. It should be quite simple to simulate what would happen if you used the same historic strategy and tactics for both sides. It should also be possible to change those strategies and tactics to present the players with an opportunity to explore other alternate histories.

The solutions have been mentioned a number of times and so far appear to not be rising to the top, much to my dismay.

Manual's definition of Operation Points...

Operation Points – How often a unit may move and attack according to its range. Land units have a range of 1 and many operation points allowing them to move and attack often. Air and naval units have 2 operation points but a much greater range."

Different air units vary on their ranges which are affected by advancements. Naval units have a fixed range of 24 hexes with 2 operation points. Attacking any unit requires an operation point. Land units show their operation points as a number. Naval and air units have the option of showing their operation points as dots as they have only 2.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but and Ops Point can and should include efficiency of command structure, the staff’s abilities, unit’s mobility, efficiency of logistics, ability to attack or defend efficiently, communications. In this game, basically, you need Ops Points to move or attack.

There is no better, and historically correct solution, than to give fewer ops points to units who have poor communications, mobility issues, poor chain of command etc.? fewer ops points means being overtaken/surrounded by better units. Thus, recreating actual events if warranted.

How do the Soviets counter losing millions of troops? By creating lots and lots of untrained cannon fodder to slow up the advance and pray for bad weather. So, I suggest that you put a ton of Soviet units in the pipeline until newly ordered units, created by the player, can enter the game. If they choose another strategy then so be it and good luck.

[sillyflower]

The trouble with this idea at the moment is that, in game, the Soviets' shortage is men not prod. points. In real life it was the other way round early on (plus other factors outside the unit buying process such as training and C&C) which showed up dramatically in organisational changes like greatly reducing arty (inc. mortars) and tanks and other vehicles from TOEs. When the new inf xxx were created, they were quite weak at the start,reached a max. TOE strength in '43 then reduced again. The tank xxx also stared weak but got larger and with generally heavier tanks as the war went on.

By late war the problem reversed: lots of kits being produced but a shortage of manpower. This was caused by the massive casualty/POW numbers which very seldom happen in game.

The nearest WP approximation to '41 that I can think of would be for the Russians to be able to create very weak, and very cheap, inf units in 2 turns (tho' probably will have to be 30 days to fit with game mechanics) combined with much higher manpower production. They will use up Axis operation points and unit organisation levels more than they will cause casualty points.

[AlvaroSousa]

The Allies 100% need to send the USSR help in 1941. It's a must to help their survival.

To Hairog. One thing at a time. This update fixed a gimmick Flavious pointed out which was pretty large.
My rail fix was to motivate up front defense because the rail damage didn't make an impact with defending up front or running away. USSR could easily runaway and the Germans run out of rail line and have to wait anyways for supply.
With a 4 opts instead of 5 the USSR could still just run away at will. The game I encountered where my opponent did that strategy he retreated just enough to stall me... which was less than 5 opts. Running away doesn't impact ZoC. Maybe it should.

So it isn't off the table yet.

Let's see what this iteration works out to be. Maybe I drop the cost a little and lower the opts in the next patch to encourage what you said.

[governato]

I admit following the WarPlan forum and this thread in particular for a while.... I am excited to see a developer so involved in improving the game. I just wanted to add my 2c on the topic of how to model the 1941 Barbarossa campaign...I have developed a scenario for TOAWIII/IV (Eastern Front 41-45) and I had to think on similar lines..

Most Barbarossa campaigns face the same problem ..how to prevent the Red Army from withdrawing to more secure lines avoiding encirclements. This problem is exacerbated by insight..or 'Monday General syndrome'. My suggestion 'd be to look at the larger political/logistics picture and see if there are ways to include them easily into the game framework. Hopefully that 'd gently constraint the players decision making process without the need of 'ad hoc' rules.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert of warplan rules, so forgive me if some of these points have already been discussed/included/ruled out .

Let's see if I can summarize various takes:

- obviously one could just let the Red Army retreat (Flaviusx position). why not? Generals should be able to make their own choices.

- One could help the Axis to advance faster (say better rail/more fuel) so that the Red Army cannot really withdraw...the problem tho is that Axis advance was intrinsically limited by lack of fuel (as a rule of thumb, according to history book s there was fuel only for two panzer `armies' at the time) and trucks for the infantry.
Moreover Axis supply was slowed down by the necessity to replace the railroads to German gauge. So if the Red Army is able to disengage it should be able to retreat relatively unhindered, UNLESS one makes life artificially easier for the Axis. But I confess I dislike this option... I like warplan to stick to historical constraints if at all possible.


- However, the Red army had intrinsic strategic/political constraints that limited its ability to withdraw, I wonder if the following 'd be hard to implement


- the red army had to protect factories (and civilians/workers) while they were being evacuated. A loss of industrial regions earlier than the historical timetable should come with severe penalties in later production.

- In a similar fashion The Red Army conscripted soldiers on a seasonal basis, mostly in Spring and Fall of every year, the historical numbers are quite interesting (please see the attached image taken from my historical sources) but by and large the largest number of soldiers was thrown into the fray during Summer-Fall 1941. An important consequence is that IF the Ukraine is lost too early..the number of conscripted soldiers in summer 1941 should decrease! Similarly if the Red Army does no reconquer the Ukraine in 43/44 its late levies should be smaller.

- on a political basis Stalin could ill afford abandoning the largest cities to the Nazi Hordes without a fight. I don't see how the Red Army and civilians morale could have been preserved that way (there is a difference between operational and strategic withdrawals here).

-at the operational level of the game, the Red Army often lost control of entire armies...TOAW has ways to make sure that the red army player is never sure if they will be able to move specific units the following turn. This makes a 'run for the hill' strategy a lot harder to implement.

In short, the game could model an earlier than historical loss of large cities with production/manpower/morale penalties. All these penalties would have occurred in real life and provide a counterbalance to the strict military advantages of an early withdrawal. Involuntary loss of Command&Control for individual armies/Corps/Front could be added. In general Manpower influx should follow the historical peak in summer/fall 41 with a decline after, These options would also benefit a daring Axis player willing to risk it all in Fall/Winter 41..as historically happened..

[AlvaroSousa]

Right now I speed up the rail repair as I noticed there is a slow no matter what the russians do.
I also have some factory moves in place based on ownership.
The manpower things. Mmmmmm can't manipulate that.

I just finished 2 games in which the Russian front went really well. But this was previous versions and we fought for every hex where both sides ran out of manpower almost.

1.00.07 will show more of the small adjustments I made.

[Tejszd]

Couple of ideas for a future patch to either stop the Russians retreating without a fight or the Germans stopping before Moscow to build a defensive line if needed;
1) have victory locations give points per turn AND points at the end of the game. This makes holding or taking the locations during the campaign mean something.
2) have reduced movement allowance or chance of a missed order in early 1941 to prevent the Russians running a way (communication issues or political considerations) and same for the Germans in late 1941 (probably tied to the weather getting bad the 1st winter, though I guess weather would have to be random to stop the German retreating before being impacted)