morvael
Posts: 11762
Joined: 9/8/2006
From: Poland
Status: offline
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1)
Please remember that there is a dense terrain CV modifier. It applies to anything fighting in mountain, rough, heavy woods, swamp and any city with a population of 14 or more. It applies to both attacker and defender, so you see this factored into initial CV (and especially combat CV) only once you attack (in case of attacker). Dense terrain doubles CV value of infantry elements, while it halves CV of afv elements. Attacking into a swamp with a panzer division means immediate CV drop (unless you are low on tanks and your infantry component is contributing a majority of CV).
2)
Another thing worth to know is that there are separate functions counting static CV (without random factors, used to display initial CV and values you see on counters) and combat CV (with random factors, used to calculate how your troops perform during battle). There are differences between functions in some situations, but they should be fairly minor (they mostly affect support units, and isolated or surrounded units). It's the random component of combat CV function that alters this value so much from the static one, and it is this value that is displayed as the modified combat value at the end of battle.
3)
For combat CV the major random factors are leader infantry/mech skill, leader morale skill, unit experience and morale. Those factors can alter the base CV value in range of 0.0625x to 8x (for defender) or 16x (for attacker). Obviously there is a regression to the mean here, because majority of the rolls is done on a TOE slot basis, however for the attacker there is one skill roll at the end of the function that when successful doubles what has been calculated up to this point for one unit. There are other random rolls made for surrounded and/or isolated units (and obviously during First Winter) that can reduce CV even further, but these are special cases and such units are usually already doomed.
4)
Then there is the important fact that at each range the CV is calculated once again from scratch. Fire combat obviously affects it by DDD (destruction, damage and disruption of elements), that lowers the base value. However, unless you have a clear advantage your attack may be stopped cold at any stage, when the CV of your units suddenly drops low (or the opponent's CV soars high), because of random factors in this specific instance (there is no correlation between one value and the next, so a strong attack may suddenly fail at the last moment). Therefore CV of your units may turn out during combat like: 200, 190, 50, 220 (provided if you survived the "50" step), 100, 250, etc. What you see as the MCV is just the last combat CV which resulted in combat ending (defender was forced to retreat or the attacker was forced to call of the attack). You are bound to see extreme cases there, as they are responsible for the combat ending in the first place. Remember that the closer (in meters) you are, the more of those comparisons you have "survived".
5)
Number of elements is important, it forms the basis of CV, but then there are so many modifiers to that value that is gets "forgotten", while it still remains very important. As I said - when you have small number of elite elements, each one of them is worth a lot of CV. Meanwhile in combat they have limits to how many units they kill, so that when confronted by large number of worse elements having the same sum total of CV, they are bound to lose. Continuing the example with Tiger: 1 Tiger at 100 morale and 100 experience is equal to 25 T-34s with 40 morale and 10 experience. So you have 0.09 CV vs 0.09 CV here. Even if the Tiger kills 10 T-34, but will be damaged in turn you still lose. Your CV dropped to 0, while the Soviet side still has 0.054 CV, even before random factors were applied. That's why CV is not the strength on counters you are used to from boardgames. It's just one part of the system, in which a numerical advantage will always be important. As a rule I try to convert my ratios from WitE to boardgame-like ratios by trying to ascertain the number of elements in enemy division (unfortunately you see this in combat detail window only after combat ends, but you can use my TOE guide as a base and reduce this number by how much you think the unit is below strength), and arrive at a number that is between the ratio of elements and the ratio of CVs, closer to the ratio of elements. That's why Soviets can win in late war starting from 1:1 to 1.5:1 CV ratios, while the Germans need something like 2:1 to 2.5:1 to win. For Soviet side 2:1 is an overkill that is worth using only if you expect a lot of reserves to trigger. I remember a situation from testing the new game (WitW), where it was very easy to rout a 2=40 unit with an 8=8 unit, just because the defender had only 700 elements (crack FJ troops in good defensive terrain, but very low on numbers) and the attacker had between 4000 to 5000. So the ratio was not 1:5 as CV shows, it was more like 2:1 in boardgame terms.
Most important thing to say is that my efforts to demonstrate those inherent characteristics of WitX combat engine (and where they fail - huge CV, low element count), allowed for a revision of random modifiers to CV, so in the new game they will fluctuate less (from the top of my head it's something like 0.25 to 2.5 range) and elements performance in combat is (as I was told) more tied to morale and experience now.
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Soviet CV multiplied by 6. WAD? - 
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