Berlin falls in 1943 in PVP Stalingrad to Berlin game

[Beethoven1]

In a game of unmodded Stalingrad to Berlin scenario against a human opponent, Stamb took Berlin on turn 55, December 2, 1943.





700,000 Soviets attack. It could have been a million, but Stamb was too impatient to surround Berlin and attack from all directions rather than just 4 directions.

Needless to say, Stamb chose the best Soviet general, Grigory Kulik, to lead the assault on Berlin.

Seems a bit earlier than historical.

Granted, the Axis player made some mistakes. But all that really means is that a better Axis player could likely hold out until at some point in 1944.




Reasons why this happened (IMO):

1) Soviets can grind Axis and they will just collapse in the mid/late game. A couple of successful attacks by the Soviets lowers the German morale and raises the Soviet morale, and it just snowballs from there.

2) Soviets can ALSO pocket Axis more effectively in the late game than Axis can pockets Soviets in the early game, because Soviets have a lot more counters. I suspect the game is balanced partly based on the WITE1 map, which is smaller than the WITE2 map. As a result, Axis does not have enough counters to put up a viable defense in the late game, at least with unmodded vanilla and closed TBs. If Axis suffers even a single encirclement, lack of counters will snowball into additional encirclements quickly.

3) Soviets can just set supply priority 4 and not really have their advance meaningfully slowed down despite massively outrunning their rail repair.

4) Soviets never have to stop and rest, they can just keep attacking every turn. Even in heavy mud you can actually attack.

5) At a certain point, the Axis player more or less gave up and could have held on better with more care put to the defense (but credit to him for playing it to the end). So yes, a skilled and experienced player trying as hard as humanly possible could hold out longer. But how much longer? Until March 1944? June 1944? September 1944? December 1944?



For reference, here is the situation at the end of turn 40:



End of turn 30:



End of turn 20:



End of turn 10:




save here btw in case devs want to look at it:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... Soviet.psv




Also to clarify, this did NOT happen due to temporary motorization of Guards Rifle Corps. Stamb could have won even faster if he did that and if it were allowed.

[Wiedrock]

3) Soviets can just set supply priority 4 and not really have their advance meaningfully slowed down despite massively outrunning their rail repair.

4) Soviets never have to stop and rest, they can just keep attacking every turn. Even in heavy mud you can actually attack.

Moscow to Berlin is like 1600km, if a Division marches 30km a day that's 53days ....let's make it 60days, so 2 months till Berlin should be possible.

[Zebtucker12]

Main issues i saw was.
Germans if beaten big cause very low losses for the soviet attackers no matter what.
Soviet have zero supply issues driving straight to berlin.

[Zemke]

This is a problem throughout the entire game. The modeling or combat model or something is not correct. Not sure how you can fix the "grinding" method, which is more reminiscent of WW I than WW II. I suspect the combat modeling within the program needs something...not sure what.

I have been saying for years that "something" is not modeled correctly. In the 1941 campaign game between evenly matched players, the Germans should be able to reach historical lines of advance (LOA), but very rarely do they, and I would bet if they can, it was between unevenly matched players. Not saying the Axis should try and reach historical LOA, that is another question entirely.

What generally happens in the 1941 scenario is the Soviets get reserve Armies starting near or at Smolensk and then they assign them to an Assault HQ to build CCP. This creates hugely strong Soviet units, that I think are not accurate nor historical. Just the fact those Reserve Armies start at or near Smolensk is problematic and according to David Glantz is not where they were deployed in June 1941. Yes, the Soviets did fight tenaciously at Smolensk. Yes, the Soviets launched several counter-attacks that caused the Germans some problems, but nothing that was not able to be handled. Yet in the game, the cagey Soviet player can launch multiple counter-attacks, that literally will blow German divisions right out of their positions, and not just once.

I have even tried to fix this myself, by tweaking the 1941 scenario, and running several test games playing both sides, and found it very difficult to create an Axis force that can reach historical LOA without making the 42 and beyond years unbalanced. You can do a lot with the editor, but some hard-coded functions would need to be changed to fix this problem.

Another possible solution is tone down the logistical burden on the Axis in 41 a bit, and maybe reduce the national morale of the Soviets a bit, and fix some of the deployment issues.

[Joel Billings]

What I've seen is that games between expert players have the Germans doing just fine in 1941 (often winning in 1942), while games between average players has it difficult for the Germans to match historical advances. Much can be told by how quickly the German player takes Smolensk. If he gets bogged down there after the first few turns, it's a bad sign. Honestly, I don't know how to balance the game in all cases given this discrepancy based on player skill. We have added two new game options in the latest beta version we just released to our beta testers:

• New Game Option – Reduced Retreat Attrition – When enabled, routing units will suffer less retreat attrition than normal. The default is for this to be off. This value may not be changed once a scenario has begun in PBEM and MP games.
• New Game Option – Morale Mod (by country) – This allows a value between 0 and 20 to be set for each active country. The value set is added to the ground national morale value for the country. The default is for all of these to be set to 0. This value may not be changed once a scenario has begun in PBEM and MP games.

We found that the very large personnel losses in retreat came to units that were routed. So we backed off on that in the first game option. The 2nd allows you to easily experiment with different national morale mods (although you can't lower an NM). This allows those that want to boost some of the Axis Allies to easily do so, while it can also be used to "bid" for side in 2 player games.

[Zebtucker12]

What I've seen is that games between expert players have the Germans doing just fine in 1941 (often winning in 1942), while games between average players has it difficult for the Germans to match historical advances. Much can be told by how quickly the German player takes Smolensk. If he gets bogged down there after the first few turns, it's a bad sign. Honestly, I don't know how to balance the game in all cases given this discrepancy based on player skill. We have added two new game options in the latest beta version we just released to our beta testers:

• New Game Option – Reduced Retreat Attrition – When enabled, routing units will suffer less retreat attrition than normal. The default is for this to be off. This value may not be changed once a scenario has begun in PBEM and MP games.
• New Game Option – Morale Mod (by country) – This allows a value between 0 and 20 to be set for each active country. The value set is added to the ground national morale value for the country. The default is for all of these to be set to 0. This value may not be changed once a scenario has begun in PBEM and MP games.

We found that the very large personnel losses in retreat came to units that were routed. So we backed off on that in the first game option. The 2nd allows you to easily experiment with different national morale mods (although you can't lower an NM). This allows those that want to boost some of the Axis Allies to easily do so, while it can also be used to "bid" for side in 2 player games.

Cant wait to try these changes out!
The world will tremble when it sees my italians take stalingrad.