janh
Posts: 1216
Joined: 6/12/2007 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Schmart Sure, and why stop there? Don't allow the Soviets to defend with a carpet or checkerboard, because that too is un-historical (other than in July 1943). Don't forget the Russians must attack, attack, attack in the summer of 1941 and cannot retreat, because that is what happened historically (how many Russian players play out THAT part of the historical campaign? I never do...). We could go on and on forever... The point is that this is a game. Not a re-enactment. The game becomes un-historical the moment the Axis player moves his first unit on T1. Nerf the Lvov pocket, and everything else un-historical should also be nerfed. The Russian player can't do anything to prevent a Lvov pocket? No sh*t! Show me an IGOUGO game where the second player can prevent anything that happens on T1... Obviously I failed to be sarcastic. I just wanted to drive your arguments a bit further and show that it really doesn't make sense to force any player to replay historical mistakes -- unless you want ultimately just watch the War as an interactive movie without many choices on your comp. You could add in a load of "force this or that mistake" policies and rules, fix ToEs, allow Soviet only to build historically built units at the historical dates, and attach them only to their original Fronts etc. etc. But why would you want to design a game that aims at allowing you to chance history in that way? In fact I think the argument with the Lvov pocket is valid, and is simply just due to the I-Go-U-Go system, and cannot be purely attributed to alternative German strategies. Things like the latter possibility is lastly why many people plays games -- to check out alternatives. I suppose most people want a good strategy game like this to be accurate in terms of physics, logistics, etc -- anything that was a real given (and could not have been changed even by Hitler or Stalin), yet allow freedom of decision for the rest. I.e. for a good simulation you'd want to be sure that the model is accurate, for example that your tank can't cross the bridge because of size or weight, but not just because someone decided at that time it wasn't deemed sensible to try (and all world already knows if he had tried it could have made all the difference). The Lvov pocket is artificial in the sense that the Soviet side cannot react -- something like a meeting engagement or try to block the spearheads isn't possible, and surely on a time-scale of 1 week the Russians would have reacted and thrown in the kitchen sink to prevent this pocket. The Soviet side has already been trimmed by cutting armaments and the 2:1 rule etc etc, and obviously these changes will have to show their effect first before claiming that the Lvov pocket is a big deal (aside from these units being canned unrealistically early, meaning just a couple weeks early). It doesn't seem to be a game breaker to me, though, and does have only limited side effects (less likely big pockets will be formed in the south etc); and this is a feature that occurs also in later game stages, simply to the sequential movement system. I suppose it is best to live with it, or look for simple solutions like adjusting the MPs of Soviet up, or Germans down, for the 1st turn down south.
< Message edited by janh -- 9/19/2011 9:13:47 PM >
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