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New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:47:43 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		How are the germans expected to conduct a Blitzkrieg when on turn 4 there is light mud going from Leningrad all the way down to just south of the Prippet Marshes?

Then on turn 5, it gets better. The light mud goes from Leningrad all the way south to Odesa and Zaporozhye.

The prediction for turn 6 is the rain disappears but the light mud will remain for at least one more turn again from Leningrad to the Black Sea.

So turn 4, 5, and 6 Army groups North and Center screwed with light mud whilst Army group south is in the very enviable position of only being screwed on turns 5 and 6.

The weather model might be realistic but this much mud this early is a guaranteed defeat for the Germans.



Attachment (1)

< Message edited by DesertedFox -- 7/29/2021 3:57:54 AM >
Post #: 1
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 3:30:00 AM   
GloriousRuse

 

Posts: 906
Joined: 10/26/2013
Status: offline 		The actual weather is randomized. There isn’t a set turn or even hex set for light mud. That being said, light mud is an inherently overcomeable condition that close to the east Prussian supply bases and with the Soviets still in the disarray of the early weeks. Heavy mud is a show stopper - light mud just takes some of the shine off.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 6:07:29 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		I understand the weather is randomized. However in my humble opinion this much light mud, this early does a tad more than take a little of the shine off.

I assume you understand what Leningrad to the Black Sea entails? The date is July, not October.

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Post #: 3
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 7:27:46 AM   
loki100


Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012
From: Utlima Thule
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

I understand the weather is randomized. However in my humble opinion this much light mud, this early does a tad more than take a little of the shine off.

I assume you understand what Leningrad to the Black Sea entails? The date is July, not October.


a) it rained in places, at times, all that summer;
b) light mud should be seen as the norm not the exception
c) so clear becomes a bonus
d) check out the impact on movement and combat of light mud, it can be little but a marginal issue
e) yep, realise what Leningrad to the Black Sea entails ... interesting question is why are you trying to redeploy over such long distances
f) taking Leningrad is hard, takes a fair bit of planning and commitment, and those plans are best made against the expection of rain and poor roads (as affect AGN historically)

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 8:30:30 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		yes I know it rained in places throughout the summer. Where did I say it didn't. It certainly never rained across the entire front for weeks on end though in July 41. I understand the randomness of the weather but this is just a tad too much of a penalty for the Germans in July 41. You may it isn't well, we have different opinions on that.

Where did I say I was deploying across the entire front from Leningrad to the Black Sea? What I said was there is rain and light mud from Leningrad to the Black Sea.

And just for the record, I am not deploying across from Leningrad to the Black Sea.

This is a great game but one can get a tad annoyed when any suggestion things may not be 100 % with it and the response is assumptions are made that are incorrect.

As for checking out the penalties for movement and combat, I had already done that. It's not the end of the world, but it's also not a small matter as it greatly impacts the advance and of course
supply and is especially when taken in context this is not in isolated areas but across the entire front.

But nevermind, aparently weeks of rain from north to south in july 41 is acceptable and suggestion otherwise is totally unwarranted. Close the thread please.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 8:38:38 AM   
821Bobo


Posts: 2311
Joined: 2/8/2011
From: Slovakia
Status: offline 		You can take the rain to your advantage as well. Pz/mot regiment holding a pocket have no chance against Soviet counter attack, with light mud it is different story.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 8:44:35 AM   
tigercub


Posts: 2004
Joined: 2/3/2003
From: brisbane oz
Status: offline 		i was happy to see Rain and i am the Russian player on the other end of this and i can say rain as it is Random has rolled Cats eyes. it does seem excessive at this time of the year and rain on the Parade is over the top!

Tigercub

< Message edited by tigercub -- 7/28/2021 10:57:13 AM >

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 8:56:23 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		Is there some unseen rule in the game for July 41 because my units do not appear to be paying the extra +1 movement cost when moving into a light mud hex?

And I can assure you that LM hexes are everywhere in great depth, but it appears I am not paying the extra movement cost for LM.

I ran a test and I am paying for the extra LM cost to enter. don't know what it was I was seeing earlier, most likely a move in
strategic mode or something.

< Message edited by DesertedFox -- 7/28/2021 9:53:08 AM >

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 8:59:19 AM   
squatter

 

Posts: 1033
Joined: 6/24/2006
Status: offline 		For me, the last thing this game needs is anything that makes things MORE difficult for the axis in summer 41 than it was in real life.

It’s in both player’s interests that the axis has a strong opening campaign to give the game drama, and prevent it feeling like too much of a forgone conclusion already after turn 15 of 200 if the axis opening campaign is underwhelming.

So - even as an exclusively soviet player - I sympathise with the OP.

For me, there should be options to disable random weather, at least for the opening 15 turns or so. Then everyone can be satisfied.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 9:04:16 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		This would be the greatest storm ever experienced in Europe. The light mud goes from north to south as previously stated and from the west, of Hannover, yes Hannover near the Rhur, to Kharkov, and all points in between. In the northeast, the mud extends past Moscow all the way to Molotov, 50 hexes east of Moscow.

< Message edited by DesertedFox -- 7/28/2021 9:09:04 AM >

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 9:11:44 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: squatter

For me, the last thing this game needs is anything that makes things MORE difficult for the axis in summer 41 than it was in real life.

It’s in both player’s interests that the axis has a strong opening campaign to give the game drama, and prevent it feeling like too much of a forgone conclusion already after turn 15 of 200 if the axis opening campaign is underwhelming.

So - even as an exclusively soviet player - I sympathise with the OP.

For me, there should be options to disable random weather, at least for the opening 15 turns or so. Then everyone can be satisfied.



I absolutely agree squatter. I am a soviet fan myself but want to get an idea of how the Axis plays. This is most likely the only game I will play as Axis.

The Axis player needs a good 41 otherwise the game degenerates into an easy Soviet win.

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Post #: 11
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:00:12 PM   
AlbertN

 

Posts: 3693
Joined: 10/5/2010
From: Italy
Status: offline 		I agree with what of the above, that it seems a rather rainy summer to begin with.
And Axis has already an overwhelming amount of difficulties from my perspective. (Which will snowball in turn due to how the game is designed netting Soviet avalanche well in advance).

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Post #: 12
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:03:37 PM   
carlkay58

 

Posts: 8650
Joined: 7/25/2010
Status: offline 		A few comments:

1) You are experiencing bad luck if you have light mud over the entire front. This rarely happens in the June - August time frame. It is, however, very common that light mud will exist in at least part of the front at all times during this period.

2) Light mud is not that large of an effect on anything. You get used to it and are able to continue driving forward - especially the Axis in 41. It will increase your movement losses a small bit and the movement costs in bad terrain - but these are areas that the Axis will be slow in even in good weather.

3) The Axis can continue driving forward in light mud conditions in 41 and causing large Soviet losses - remember the movement penalties goes both ways in a human vs human game (not so in an AI - human game if AI can teleport).

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:19:06 PM   
HardLuckYetAgain


Posts: 6987
Joined: 2/5/2016
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

This would be the greatest storm ever experienced in Europe. The light mud goes from north to south as previously stated and from the west, of Hannover, yes Hannover near the Rhur, to Kharkov, and all points in between. In the northeast, the mud extends past Moscow all the way to Molotov, 50 hexes east of Moscow.


This has been my experience with "Light Mud" over the whole of the Soviet Union. If this was just isolated to certain small sections of the map then no big deal. But when the WHOLE of Mother Russia is covered in this crap it does add up as DesertedFox says.

P.S. Nice seeing you again DesertedFox :)

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Post #: 14
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:25:44 PM   
HardLuckYetAgain


Posts: 6987
Joined: 2/5/2016
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

A few comments:

1) You are experiencing bad luck if you have light mud over the entire front. This rarely happens in the June - August time frame. It is, however, very common that light mud will exist in at least part of the front at all times during this period.

2) Light mud is not that large of an effect on anything. You get used to it and are able to continue driving forward - especially the Axis in 41. It will increase your movement losses a small bit and the movement costs in bad terrain - but these are areas that the Axis will be slow in even in good weather.

3) The Axis can continue driving forward in light mud conditions in 41 and causing large Soviet losses - remember the movement penalties goes both ways in a human vs human game (not so in an AI - human game if AI can teleport).



@1 I seem to experienced light mud over the entire front or almost the entire map myself. I mentioned it in my AAR games but left it alone after the mention. You can check out those AAR which I have many.

@2 that little effect adds up quick if you keep adding to it 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=XX and if keep adding can equal a very big number of negative events across the whole front

@3 Don't disagree the knife cuts both ways.


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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:40:08 PM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		Hi Hardluck, yeah mate nice to swap a line with you again. Once one of the most competent and nicest opponents I have ever had the privilege of kicking my arse..lol. I have been following your AARs with interest.

Absolutely agree that LM presents difficulties for Russia as well apart from what is mentioned above I believe it may slow down fort construction. However, the Germans are at a greater disadvantage in comparison.

Germany needs to tick a lot of boxes in 41 to make the game competitive into 42. I am playing a Russian game as well at turn 9 and I don't even register the LM to date it's been so scarce, which I like.

I told Tiger I didn't want a restart as this is about me getting a handle on German abilities so I will cop whatever is thrown at me. However, as a Russian player, I would gladly offer a restart to my opponent if he copped this much light mud this early.

I appreciate the work and help Loki has done so much for many games with Matrix and I want to emphasise the respect I have for him. I disagree with him on this account, that it's not a big blow for the Germans in this instance.

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Post #: 16
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 1:45:39 PM   
squatter

 

Posts: 1033
Joined: 6/24/2006
Status: offline 		I'm no coder, but I would have thought it would be a fairly easy job to create a 'historic summer 41 weather' campaign scenario variant?

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Post #: 17
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 2:00:06 PM   
Bamilus


Posts: 973
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: The Old Northwest
Status: offline 		I echo the sentiments that the randomness can be brutal. Is it cool? Yes. But there should be an option for historical.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 2:04:14 PM   
821Bobo


Posts: 2311
Joined: 2/8/2011
From: Slovakia
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: squatter

I'm no coder, but I would have thought it would be a fairly easy job to create a 'historic summer 41 weather' campaign scenario variant?



What is historic summer 41 weather? As have been already pointed it was raining all the time. Mostly local storms/showers but mud have been present.
But I tend to agree that for 2 weeks having mud on 1/3 - 1/2 hexes is too much.


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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 5:11:34 PM   
baloo7777


Posts: 1190
Joined: 5/18/2009
From: eastern CT
Status: offline 		Not an experienced WiTE2 player, but have played ('41 campaign scenario) as the German vs AI Russian (against normal 100 morale Russian AI) through the end of 1941 4 or 5 times now, and have mostly experienced light mud on a very large area of the map in late July through August. Possibly just bad luck on weather rolls, but it adds up to a very long slog feeling with not a lot of hope for successful advances from mid-September on for the Axis. I would like to try a historical weather mod also if it could be added to the game.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 5:25:04 PM   
Joel Billings


Posts: 32265
Joined: 9/20/2000
From: Santa Rosa, CA
Status: offline 		You probably aren't seeing the extra movement cost because you are moving in friendly territory where you always subtract 1 MP even in poor road hexes, and if you stick to better roads subtract more. So if moving in a clear light mud hex you pay only 1 MP. It's only as you cross rivers or move in non-clear terrain the MPs go up.

The dominant weather in the area is clear during the summer, so what's impacting things is the weather fronts that come in, which add a ton of variability. I suppose there could be a non-random weather that could be developed that would basically be a script of weather front movements for the entire game. That is not a trivial task to come up with, even if the code was set up in the editor to create such a script and execute it (and it isn't). It would basically have to allow the entry of a weather front center location and size for each weather front on the map for each turn. There would still be randomness in which hexes get impacted, but it would give you control over the major flow of the weather.

Now this would be a three front task.
1) Writing the code to allow for the entry of the data for fronts each turn for the war
2) Writing the code to allow setting the non-random weather preference and have it execute that instead of normal weather.
3) Coming up with a roughly 200 turn list of weather fronts location and size for each turn. The person/group doing this would need to understand how the weather system uses the weather front location and the date to determine what the weather front does to the weather in different climate zones.

In some ways the last part is probably the hardest. Pavel could probably do the programming part without too much difficulty (I do not claim to be a programmer so I could be wrong about this, and it would take some time). Coming up with item 3 would be a very large task, especially if you wanted it to be "historical" as opposed to our generic (and not necessarily correct) thinking about what the weather was like at different times of the war (especially across the entire playable areas of the map).

If there are any amateur (or better, professional) meteorologists out there that would like to come up with a "historical" weather table of weather fronts, let me know. Or even better start a group effort to come up with the info - but before you go too far I'd need to confirm that this system could be programmed if we had the data. There may be a simpler way to provide players with less randomness, but it doesn't come immediately to my mind.

While we see the semi-randomness in the weather as a feature, we recognize that it can be disconcerting when you get an outlier result with extreme weather (tons of rain/blizzards or no rain/blizzards). The system I mention above would be more for those wanting a known commodity (basically a tournament play option).

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 5:31:21 PM   
AlbertN

 

Posts: 3693
Joined: 10/5/2010
From: Italy
Status: offline 		While I do not know how the system works in specifics, isn't that just a matter of percentages / rolls on weather tables / something like that can be altered or tinkered?

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 5:42:44 PM   
loki100


Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012
From: Utlima Thule
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

While I do not know how the system works in specifics, isn't that just a matter of percentages / rolls on weather tables / something like that can be altered or tinkered?


no, not really.

There is a fixed table of what is the 'expected' weather in that zone for that week 8.1.1), so most of the Western USSR is humid, and in say 10-20 June this is going to be clear.

This baseline is then adjusted by the weather front (8.1.2) and each will affect that base in different ways (this varies according to front type and time of year as noted in the manual discussion). You can dig into this in the editor.

so there is no roll on a weather table, there is instead the generation of fronts and their movement across the map. And then their varying impact on that map as they move around.

To make it harder, even within weather zones there is not a perfect match between the weather zone and an area affected by a given front, so over time different hexes have variations in snow depth or water levels. You'll see this in late spring where even in a narrow sector you can have clear, light mud and possibly even heavy mud hexes.

In WiTE1 you got huge blocks of weather and the very binary clear or mud conditions.

< Message edited by loki100 -- 7/28/2021 5:43:02 PM >

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/28/2021 6:00:53 PM   
baloo7777


Posts: 1190
Joined: 5/18/2009
From: eastern CT
Status: offline 		Thanks, Loki for explaining the difficulties and complexity of the weather system. I guess all things considered it is operating very well for this excellent game (currently one of my favorites). Being stuck in the days of weather tables with simple die rolls that do not really incorporate the whole of weather patterns is probably what happens to old wargamers like me. I don't like starting over against the AI for weather anomalies as it goes against my nature, although I've started over several times when a new beta is released.

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RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/29/2021 4:03:34 AM   
DesertedFox


Posts: 314
Joined: 8/3/2004
Status: offline 		A couple of things. I can apparently only upload 1 attachment per thread. I have deleted the original attachment showing the weather pattern and exchanged it with a shot of the amount of light mud that is overlaying the map.

Its density is very very high. Please look at the NEW attachment. For me, this is not a minor hiccup for the Germans. Remember this is for at least two turns in the south and at least three in the centre and north.

I appreciate Joe's comment that yes we will experience at times excessive weather patterns, and I totally understand this.

I obviously wasn't clear in my original intentions with this post. I seriously doubt the weather patterns can be changed to help the Germans not get totally screwed in the summer of 41, but rather to point out, it does happen, the Germans are screwed if it does and a restart is only fair.

Finally, this is a brilliant game, far better than I was expecting.

< Message edited by DesertedFox -- 7/29/2021 4:04:16 AM >

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Post #: 25
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/29/2021 12:55:26 PM   
squatter

 

Posts: 1033
Joined: 6/24/2006
Status: offline 		Thanks for the explanation Loki. The mechanics of how the weather is coded go over my head somewhat, but surely there is an easier fix to make the summer of 41 less likely to rain than having to research and program historic weather tables for the entire war etc?

Perhaps something like introducing a 'reduce ground water level by 1' modifier at the beginning of every turn from June - Aug 41 to reduce the likelihood of mud forming?

Or tweak the coding so that the only weather fronts that appear from June - Aug are Polar Continental Fronts (which as I understand from the manual will have no effect on clear weather in summer?

I really like the weather system in the game, it is excellent and is indeed a 'feature' of the game as you say. It's just summer of 41 that for me can harm the game when the weather is overly inclement.

< Message edited by squatter -- 7/29/2021 12:56:45 PM >

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Post #: 26
RE: New Russian General - Light Mud - 7/29/2021 1:41:53 PM   
loki100


Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012
From: Utlima Thule
Status: offline 		you basically have 3 options

a) some sort of hard code that says a given hex in a particular region can't have light mud on more than x occasions between y and z dates
b) tweak the relative cost of light mud for poor roads vs clear for poor roads using the editor
b1) do this purely for June-August 1941 (no idea if its at all feasible)
c) tweak the impact of a given weather front type when the 'expected' weather is clear (again can be done using the editor)

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