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land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/28/2004 11:39:35 PM

Caranorn

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In my first few games I noticed land warfare in WitP seemed to progress much faster then historically. Following are some of my conclusions and fixes.

1) Just to make certain I checked whether map scale is in nauticals or standard miles. Comparing the map with various maps I own myself I decided it is clearly in nauticals. A bit later I decided to calculate naval speeds to see whether these were correct for nauticals and they proved my point. I think this may have caused a few problems with air unit ranges, and possible land unit speeds.

2) I noticed an apparent problem with Japanese units moving too fast into Malaya and Burma in scenario 15. Historically the Imperial Guards took 9 days from the Indochina/Siam border to Alor Star. At the same time the 55th took 5 days to Victoria Point. From that I derive that these units at least moved roughly 50 nautical miles a day along railtracks or 25-30 nauticals along road portions. Considering that these movements were in ideal conditions (no military opposition, no starting fatigue etc.) it becomes clear that the current game speeds of 90 and 30 respectively are much too high. The road bit might not seem like much of a difference, but the railroads make a huge difference. Therefore I propose to change the game values for rail at least and review the values for any other terrain type with actual great unit moves as a basis. (Strategic movement via actual high quality railnets might have to be looked into, maybe create a new terrain type (tough to implement I bet).

3) Land Combat also ends too fast. The current system would work at a much lower scale, but not with 60 nautical mile hexes. As an example, the fighting for Hong Kong (not the advance) alone took about two weeks before the British were forced to surrender. At Singapour the final phase was even longer. In WitP right now this never is the case.

4) Points 3 and 4 combined largely explain why land warfare currently doesn't seem to work in the game. Fixing 3) should be easy, 4) requires digging into the combat system (and I don't have all the numbers, I think bringing base sizes back might help as that's part of the issue (fighting in an atoll with roughly the same odds as Hong Kong or Singapour tended to end after no more then a day or two)).

5) Until this is fixed, land campaigns in the western half of the map won't work anywhere near historical (for start of the war scenarios that means a huge advantage to teh Japanese). I'm not sure how much this affects China, but I expect it's a major issue there as well.

So in conclusion, map scale definitelly is 60 nautical miles per hex. Land units move much too fast over rail and roads at least (this does not even take into consideration bad situations like fatigued and disrupted units with low supply etc.) (reminds me, this also means retreats cannot be instantaneous). Land combat (not invasions I expect) is much too brief and probably not bloody enough.

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: This affects the Luzon and probably Java campaigns as much as Malaya, Burma and China I expect.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 12:45:05 AM

hithere

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i think you are right about some things...land combat is kinda generic (ie; more troops win) but i think that it does a pretty good job overall...esp for basially a naval sim. it takes into acount fatigue, organization, being dug-in, and supply. those are really the main factors in any land combat. it does seem to go kinda fast, but this whole game is faster than normal. as for you points

1) i thought it does say in the manual that it is nautical miles. could be from reading the forum though.

2) the Imperial Guards took alot of Sake breaks

3) on the hard level, i was able to hold Singapour till late feb 42. i think that it, just like real war, depends on chance.

4) you refer to points 3 and 4, but this was on point 4.

5) i agree overall that the lcu combat is not perfect, but it is not too bad, and i have no prob given the japanese player a little leeway in the beginning to help. after all, this is a game, as the allies i think it would get old just slapping the japanese player around for a few years, (game and real time

) also, those same adv will apply to the allies in 44 - 45 timeframe

just my 12 cents

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 12:53:17 AM

bstarr

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I've wondered about the land portion of the game myself. To me, it seems to easy to beat the chinese, nevermind the fact that this exactly what japan had been trying to do for years.

In the designers defense, however, we've got to keep in mind that the same system has to work for every battle in a very diverse theater - the same system that covers the sweep through Malasia has to cover the bog in China.

Perhaps they should slow things down a bit, but, if they did, I'll bet someone else would be posting about how the LCUs move too slow and even come up with stats to prove it.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 1:03:38 AM

Oleg Mastruko

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Many players observe how "it's too easy to beat the Chinese". Well of course when you're playing the AI...

I think Chinese will be major pain in the ass for Japan in full campaign human vs human games.

Land combat works fine overall, for the game of these proportions. Land *movement* is sometimes strange (they acknowledged some bugs and are woring on them) but land *combat* is OK for this scale IMO.

O.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 1:20:34 AM

hithere

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quote:

Perhaps they should slow things down a bit, but, if they did, I'll bet someone else would be posting about how the LCUs move too slow and even come up with stats to prove it.

"You can use statistics to prove anything even remotely true"
- Homer Jay Simpson, 1997 (?) (the meteorite one)

< Message edited by hithere -- 8/28/2004 6:21:20 PM >

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 2:20:21 AM

Mike Scholl

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Much of the speed jump is caused by "pursuit movement". Get one rather small enemy unit started retreating,
they pursue your way along at 60 miles a day no matter what the terrain. Interesting idea, but in practice it's
a disaster. It needs to go as a first step to bringing ground movement into some kind of reality.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 2:21:39 AM

Grotius

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I agree that land combat is OK given the size and emphasis of this game, and that land movement is a little bit wonky. My main hope for land units is that in the next game based on this engine (e.g., the rumored Med war project), land warfare will be treated in more detail.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 2:53:34 AM

Williamb

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I was just wondering.........

Isnt LCU combat suppose to be a sort of staged thing ?

I mean I remember reading that if you hold off attacking and build up your LCU supplies and/or preparations then your attacks should be more effective.

Does anyone know if this is broken ? It seems that its far too easy to win and attack every turn even without preparing.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 5:10:27 AM

mogami

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quote:

2) I noticed an apparent problem with Japanese units moving too fast into Malaya and Burma in scenario 15. Historically the Imperial Guards took 9 days from the Indochina/Siam border to Alor Star. At the same time the 55th took 5 days to Victoria Point. From that I derive that these units at least moved roughly 50 nautical miles a day along railtracks or 25-30 nauticals along road portions. Considering that these movements were in ideal conditions (no military opposition, no starting fatigue etc.) it becomes clear that the current game speeds of 90 and 30 respectively are much too high. The road bit might not seem like much of a difference, but the railroads make a huge difference. Therefore I propose to change the game values for rail at least and review the values for any other terrain type with actual great unit moves as a basis. (Strategic movement via actual high quality railnets might have to be looked into, maybe create a new terrain type (tough to implement I bet).

Hi, I'm keeping track of the IG divison on it's march south. It has been 8 days (Dec 14 1941) and the IG is still 180 miles from reaching Alor Star and I did not send them to Victoria Point first.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/29/2004 10:30:46 PM

Caranorn

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I let the computer run ai against ai a bit today and last night. I could not stay at the computer most of today to watch it, but I again noticed Hong Kong fall within 5 or 6 days of the first Japanese units arriving in the hex. On the other hand, The move on Singapour was a bit slower (had it run scenario 16 so different starting setup, but the advance on the main axis is pretty much identical to scenario 15). One reason for that slow down was probably in the ai's routine, when I play the allies as human I always evacuate Victoria Point, apparently the ai does not target an empty base (at least under those circumstances) and instead marches towards it's next target (Alor Star). So in my allied vs. ai games I tend to see the IG division arriving about 3 days earlier then at times where I sacrifice that base force (historically they did retreat, VP was not on the IG's route of advance either, or at least not it's target).

But in any case, movement along rail seems to be too fast. A possible solution might be to reduce movement rates as I proposed and institute some sort of strategic movement (the specific idea I had would probably clash with the fog of war rules (no enemy lcu visible w/i 3 hexes and no bomber unit withing range of the starting hex)).

In any case, the examples I used all ignored pursuit as they were either concerned with straight movement without enemy opposition (Indo-China to Malaya or Indo-China to Burma) or simple combat execution. On a scale of 60 nauticals per hex you cannot expect to conquer a large land area in a few days, particularly in the predominantly bad terrain of the pacific. Small islands are an entirely different issue from coastal or continental areas. Before posting this thread, I took a look at various attoll and island battles and found that most of the serious fighting (in WitP till a base is captured, which can lead to added fighting against the stuborn japanese) took place within a few days of the initial landing. Larger areas on the other hand required much longer periods of fighting. In Witp this later fact only happen if forces are roughly equal in strength and quality, yet in reality this also happened otherwise (in the Malay campaign I consider the Japanese to have had 3:1 and more odds at any time and front not even considering their troop quality, yet it took them months to capture Singapore (and they originally expected at least another month necessary to complete the campaign)). That is where I feel the concept of base size comes in (was it UV that had it or PacWar?). The same odds should lead to drastic differences in conquest rate depending on your location.

In the end, when land combat in some cases seems to be at least twice as fast in WitP then historic events, something is wrong with that part of the game. When land movement also seems to be off at least when using rail movement that greatly increases the problem. Pursuit if combined with longer battles might actually work (though it should not be instantaneous), say you fight over some 60 nauticals of terrain for two weeks and finally push the enemy out of it's last defensive position in the area, after a short rest and refit period you would logically set out in pursuit and have lost no more then a day or two distance (a force in flight can indeed move faster, though it might be realistic to add heavy equipment loss to retreaters).

Anyhow, as it is now, the land warfare is barely tollerable to me. It's almost impossible to organise an allied land defense early in the game. The final defense of Singapore and Bataan don't seem to be impossible (ai against ai showed Bataan holding until march 42, but I expect that reflects a quick retreat to the peninsula as the PA seems barely scratched), but the previous delaying action seems to be impossible (oddly, the more I try the faster the japanese can advance and I'm in no way a novice to wargaming (GG's combat systems and games)).

I will start a new game today, possibly letting the eastern portion of the war run on automatic and just concentrating on the Phillipines, Malaya, Burma and the NEI (to run more tuns in a relatively short time).

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: I never play the Chinese or manchurian areas on automatic as I don't know much of the historic course of that conflict, nor do I feel partisan warfare to be reflected well in the game (but then that's tough to do anyhow (most people don't seem to understand it even today as I realised from a documentary I saw on TV a few days ago (on the GPW))).

P.P.S.: I don't think to be an excellent, possibly not even good wargamer. But organising a defense like Malaya or the Phillipines once you understand a game system is pretty basic. So the problem I expect ain't my skill level;-)

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:32:31 AM

Tristanjohn

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I agree, the problem (such as it is) hasn't to do with your skill level but intrinsic flaws in the land-combat model vis-a-vis the rest of the system.

Keep in mind that WitP is fundamentally an air- and sea-power simulation, with the land campaigns thrown in to wrap the package more or less neatly for the sake of historical completion. At this scale there may not be a comprehensive fix, and in any event there's no way Gary's doing it at this stage of development-- though I tend to believe that just slowing down land combat by whatever degree could only help.

Pretty good summation on your part. Thanks for the effort. Old hat, though--goes back to UV and PW and such.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:37:03 AM

Halsey

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Isn't land movement cost based on the hex that the unit is leaving from? Can it be changed to the hex that they are entering instead?

Pursuit? Isn't that something on a more tactical level?

One other thing that I've previously mentioned. Allied LCU bombardment takes place after the Japanese land combat phase. So there is no disruption from the LCU bombardment against the attacking Japanese. Then it resets itself to zero at the end of day. Shouldn't it be: Offensive Fire-Defensive Fire-Land Combat Resolution?

< Message edited by Halsey -- 8/30/2004 6:33:27 AM >

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:39:13 AM

hithere

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quote:

One other thing that I've previously mentioned. Allied LCU bombardment takes place after the Japanese land combat phase. So there is no disruption from the LCU bombardment against the attacking Japanese. Then it resets itself to zero at the end of day. Shouldn't it be: Offensive Fire-Defensive Fire-Land Combat Resolution?

that is somthing i am kinda fuzzy about as well....per the manual, there is really no reason for the allies to do a bombardment mission as any effects will be gone at the end of the turn

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:44:34 AM

Halsey

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Outside of expending more supplies to kill a few more boys. That's all it's good for.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:50:31 AM

Montbrun

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IIRC, the bombardment issue came up during UV, but I don't remember the reasons...

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 1:05:24 AM

Hartley

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Warfare in Burma seems slows enough.

It takes weeks to move a hex, and with 70 fatigue.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 2:59:58 AM

dtravel

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I thought one of the betas stated that bombardment attacks cause disruption in the targets, which doesn't necessarily immediately "go away". Is this wrong?

(I know that Allied units suffer disruption from Japanese bombardment attacks. I've just never played as the Japanese.)

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 12:10:48 PM

Mr.Frag

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Disruption is a quick effect, rendering you combat ineffective immediately. Fatigue which is caused is a long term effect.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 5:03:02 PM

Nikademus

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dtravel

I thought one of the betas stated that bombardment attacks cause disruption in the targets, which doesn't necessarily immediately "go away". Is this wrong?

nope. Disruption only goes down by a maximum of 25points per turn. Less if the unit is bombarding, attacking or being attacked/bombarded

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 5:36:17 PM

Caranorn

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Just a last note (at least for now). I am indeed aware that WitP tries to concentate on the naval part of the war. It seems to do a pretty good job at that (air warfare too except for ground attack) too. On the land portion, naval attacks also seem to work quite well. It's only when it coems to the land vs. land that a serious issue seems to be at hand. Which is why I think the original idea of base sizes (I'm not dreaming, that was either in PW or in UV (probably the later)) might be the way to fix or at least reduce the problem. That and generally reducing movement rates on rail and road (when I mention Burma I mean south, central and northern Burma, the southern part has pretty good communication ways in WitP).

I probably prefer the war on the western half of the map due to the combination of land based air, surface combat groups (a few cruisers or even PT boats can have a ncie effect, no to speak of mines...) and land warfare. Unfortunatelly the last part currently is broken leading to a much faster start of the game with less opportunity to make a difference in the air or at sea (though it makes some beautiful staged evacuations possible (only in the final phase of the campaigns, but unfortunatelly that can urrently happen quite early in the game;-).

In the end it all comes down to combined arms, in the east the navies and carrier born air arms play a greater role, in the west cruisers and land units are predominant (lba is about equally important).

Which is probably the fun of WitP (and PW and UV before), you can actually have the three main arms interacting and play around with supply as well (though that some times feels overly complex, but as I already played PW in it's original form (pre Matrix) I've gradually grown used to it).

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: Only started issuing first turn orders for scenario 16 last night, so I haven't gotten to actual plying yet (a lot of work in the first turn to get all the bases set up correctly (as I have seen unproteced auto-convoys to the Phillipines or the like once too often now:-) and to have various units converge to be actually useable). Time to log off and fire up the game now.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 5:49:29 PM

Montbrun

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IMHO, the land combat system, is not by any means, "broken." Given the scope of the game, it works fairly well. Could it use some tweaking? - sure.....

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 6:04:34 PM

tsimmonds

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Depends on your definition of "broken". If you don't mind the possibility of incredible feats of marching leading to historically impossible results, then "broken" is too strong a word. Personally, I don't want to start a PBEM until this is fixed....

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 7:10:05 PM

ZOOMIE1980

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Many players observe how "it's too easy to beat the Chinese". Well of course when you're playing the AI...

I think Chinese will be major pain in the ass for Japan in full campaign human vs human games.

Land combat works fine overall, for the game of these proportions. Land *movement* is sometimes strange (they acknowledged some bugs and are woring on them) but land *combat* is OK for this scale IMO.

O.

How true. Against a human player, China is a morass. Japan may be able to still win there, eventually, but it will be a year long bloody rumble with Japan dedicating every possible resource on every front to eventually make it happen.

That said, the game is really a naval-amphibious model first. The landmass warfare is obviously an afterthought, kind of forced into the naval/amphib model.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 9:43:12 PM

Mike Scholl

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quote:

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Depends on your definition of "broken". If you don't mind the possibility of incredible feats of marching leading to historically impossible results, then "broken" is too strong a word. Personally, I don't want to start a PBEM until this is fixed....

AMEN Eliminate pursuit. and make the units actually spend the time needed to march
"into" each hex. Even if they continue to get a "free jump to combat" on entering so
they can attack..., they shouldn't be alowed to leave the hex until they have marched
the full 60 miles. Movement takes time..., and the game should reflect it.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 10:04:07 PM

Xargun

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Many players observe how "it's too easy to beat the Chinese". Well of course when you're playing the AI...

I think Chinese will be major pain in the ass for Japan in full campaign human vs human games.

In my first PBeM I was kicking chinese butt all over the place and had half of china conquered by feb 42... But in my second game against the same opponent (first game died due to patch problems) I am not going nearly as fast - not even close.. In this game he is staying and fighting more and making it much harder to capture bases without them being useless.. I captured Changsha after a week of combat and the base is useless to me, everything is damaged 100% (or close enough) that if it wasn't a strategic position I would let him capture it back..

What I think people are finding is that the allied player doesn't put up much of a fight in china as they do everywhere else, thus china is falling faster than normal... I've had 2:1 odds in some bases and still can't take them..

Xargun

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 10:05:17 PM

Xargun

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

AMEN Eliminate pursuit. and make the units actually spend the time needed to march
"into" each hex. Even if they continue to get a "free jump to combat" on entering so
they can attack..., they shouldn't be alowed to leave the hex until they have marched
the full 60 miles. Movement takes time..., and the game should reflect it.

If you eliminate pursue, then eliminate the ability of retreating units moving an entire hex.. They can't move any faster than those that pursue them. Well at least not THAT much faster.

Xargun

< Message edited by Xargun -- 8/30/2004 8:05:56 PM >

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 10:37:17 PM

DrewMatrix

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quote:

then eliminate the ability of retreating units moving an entire hex

If they don't vacate the hex, you will get a "beating a dead horse" effect where you get >100:1, then >1000:1 the next turn on the rubble, then . . .

Running away just one hex and sitting there with high fatigue and low morale seems pretty bad in itself.

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/30/2004 11:53:25 PM

tabpub

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From the descriptions that everyone is speaking off, I would think that eliminating the "pursuit" would be the first step.

Now, someone mentioned that with no pursuit, that the "retreat one hex free thing" should go away also. Agreed.

How about that a retreating unit would go back the hex, but have a "distance" applied to them to "work off" before they can start moving/digging.

In essence, if you retreat, you have to "march" off the 60 miles of the retreat first, and then you apply your movement on the map...on second thought, perhaps the number should be 30 to reflect the benefits of defense and retreat.

Thus, if your infantry is retreating down a road/rail, they will be able to stay ahead of the pursuing infantry, but the enemy armor/mech will be able to catch up to them due to their faster move allowance on that terrain.

Just some thoughts...

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RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/31/2004 1:24:01 AM

ZOOMIE1980

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Xargun

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

AMEN Eliminate pursuit. and make the units actually spend the time needed to march
"into" each hex. Even if they continue to get a "free jump to combat" on entering so
they can attack..., they shouldn't be alowed to leave the hex until they have marched
the full 60 miles. Movement takes time..., and the game should reflect it.

If you eliminate pursue, then eliminate the ability of retreating units moving an entire hex.. They can't move any faster than those that pursue them. Well at least not THAT much faster.

Xargun

This is a real tough one to model in a game. In this game, you can have an attacking unit just enter the hex from one side, and the defending unit can be 59 miles on the other side of the hex, but for combat purposes the two will engage as if right next to one another. Or in a combat where one unit retreats, it magically just "warps" 60 miles away in an instant! This is all very tough to model in a wargame and why it almost always works the way it does in this game.

The only other way I could conceptually conceive to model land combat was to place units in a particular "mode" similar to the defensive, bombardment, deliberate, shock attack modes. Maybe add retreat, shattered, and surrender modes as well. In retreat mode units will not fire back (or fire back as much) when fired on, i.e. they will inflice no enemy casualties in combat, but at least they don't "warp" out of hex. Maybe a "Fighting Retreat" mode and a general Retreat mode. Alternatively they can "shatter" which is basically a ROUTE where units completely disorganize and personnel escape but they do so individually into the countryside. And of course they can surrender. The difference between shattering and surrendering is shattered troops are not lost, they go back into the manpower pool to be reconstituted into future units.

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Post #: 29

RE: land warfare not working anywhere near historical... - 8/31/2004 2:01:01 AM

Andrew Brown

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Joined: 9/5/2000
From: Hex 82,170
Status: offline

Another idea would be to 'lock' a retreating unit for the number of days it would take to move to the hex being retreated to. During that time new orders cannot be given to the unit (due to the retreat, disorganisation, low morale or whatever). After the 'lock' time has expired the retreating unit is moved to the hex being retreated to and is able to be used again. In this model there would be no pursuit - a victorious unit can simply be ordered to move to the hex that the other unit is retreating to, and continue the fight there. The movement of both the retreating unit and the 'pursuing' unit would be done using the normal movement routines, the only change being that the retreating unit is 'locked'.

Regarding rail movement, I don't think that it should be slowed down. If anything it is too slow now. The problem is that when rail hexes are captured they are available for immediate use. This should be prevented somehow. Ideas for how to do this have already been posted in the 'wishlist' thread.

(in reply to ZOOMIE1980)

Post #: 30

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