Economy out of whack (Full Version)

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robbersonr -> Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 4:58:28 PM)

After finally playing through a major portion of the game until it crashed to the desktop (late 1944), I started realizing that there is no limit on countries to build units. This became very apparent with the Axis minors, who continued to build and build and build units. By the time the game crashed, all of the southern Balkans were covered with Hungarian and Rumanian units competing with the Italians to see who got Greece (comically, due to the gridlock imposed by 3 nations fighting Greece, none could bring enough force to bear on Athens; the Greeks continued to reinforce the unit there everyturn).

But this points out the fallacy of not limiting the minors on their military and industrial capacity. Historically Hungary and Rumania did not have the industrial or population base to pump out units as simulated in the game.



Vypuero -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 6:02:44 PM)

something like a manpower or unit limit may make sense... The historic information is available - a good source is here but I also use a book - but now I forget name I will edit it when I remember.  Anyway, divisions and even corps are readily available - though they do take some reviewing to see what the reality of their composition and strength was.  This is one site: 
http://orbat.com/site/ww2/drleo/index_01.htm



winky51 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 6:21:07 PM)

John Ellis  "The World War 2 Databook" has everything, and I mean everything you want for statistics.  Its slightly lacks in ship armor description but thats about it.

OOBs, battles, production, resources, What units were on which front, and so on.  If you like WW2 stats thats the book to get.

But yea there should be an upper limit on # of units a country can build and for several reasons.

UK + US: Even though they had a massive economy they simply couldnt supply an infinite # of men and machinary overseas. Too much oil, too many merchants needed, also the ports wouldnt be able to keep up the loading and unloading of supplies for such a massive army. The US 1st thought of a 200 division army but came to the supply conclusion and dropped it to ~90.

USSR: Their problem was manpower. By late in the war Russia ran out of men literally. They had no young men left to put in the front lines. So they should have a limit based on that

Germany: Their problem was oil. While they had synthetic plants, their own crude, and Romania they couldn't supply infinite panzer groups and aircraft with fuel. Also they started having a manpower problem late in the war.



Toby42 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 6:25:29 PM)

3R had a limitation on counters available by country. I agree that there should be some limits on what any country can build.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 7:46:02 PM)

Petroleum or manpower are solutions that we can exclude at the very beginning, not this kind of game.

We will think about some kind of solution which may prevent minors from building huge armies.



winky51 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 8:18:57 PM)

simple force pool allocation should be sufficient.  If you wish I can pull the data off of my sources and give you them to you.  Actually I already made up a force pool list for a board game I was creating from this book.  let me know if you are interested.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 8:47:30 PM)

All data is welcome.
[:)]



Vypuero -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 9:46:22 PM)

Ellis' book was the one I was thinking of - and I agree without a manpower/oil system then I suggest some kind of counter limit.  It could even be done by naming them so that they have names already, which would be easier than having them all "new unit" as a default - I like having names but not so much that I want to do research and remember what units I have named what when every time I build something new.  Corps are kind of harder since they have divisions in them, but some compromise can be worked out - some limited number of divisions + corps, but not every one of the divisions - and when you upgrade the division goes back in the pool and a new corps unit is pulled out - that kind of thing.



Alex Gilbert -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 11:25:41 PM)

Regarding the minor country force issue, how about implementing economic exhaustion-- the mechanism and code for this already exists with the war economy percentage. For the smaller countries, the war economy could fall after a certain point. It would leave them with the ability to replace (some) losses, but put further unit development beyond their resources. There is even a real life rationale for this in that smaller less developed economies overheat faster than larger more modern economies. Thus, Hungary would not be able to maintain its wartime economy with higher military spending but Germany or the US would not suffer this drop off (at least during the timeframe of the game).

I was originally going to suggest this be applied to all countries, but for play balance decided not to. Still, for the smaller countries, it should not impact balance too much.



winky51 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/12/2008 11:34:09 PM)

Its harder to implement that code.  I simple counter to units being produced is easier for the programmers.

I will work on getting this list together for you.  The OOBs of all european powers.  I will give # of divisions of each type and a corp = X divisions amount.

The only problem I forsee is Russia.  They had smaller divisions than the rest of the european powers so I might have to do some adlibbing.



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 5:06:35 AM)

Yes. lets all argue about not being historical THEN demand force pools.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 7:46:25 AM)

Amount of troops in divisions is a thought one
Yugoslavian has got around 30k

Polish Cavallery brigades were almost as large as german cavallery division

So the whole issue is not so easy.
What about SS volounteers.

There are many issues that impact size of potential constripcts. So I'm afraid that just putting a number of max div for a country is not the best option, but it might be only one which can save us from micromanagement or only one that can be implemented in the code.



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 8:32:08 AM)

How about we leave it like it is? I mean it is not like the game is completely in line with history anyway.

A couple people complain and games get changed. I see it happen in every game.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 8:54:01 AM)

Twotribes,
We are listening into all the complains and all feedback.

If somebody came with a proposition and it is reasonably argued, then devs are discussing about it. We always considering playability, thats why Malta has been and why there is PBEM and little more in 1.20

The game never be perfect for all of you. One will want something to be like that and other in another way. We will never satisfy all of you and thats the reason why we put as many as possible in csv files. If you don't agree with our point of view, go ahead, change the game.

So nothing has ben said in this case until now, but we see that might be a problem.



winky51 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 1:16:25 PM)

In any game of this size there is a function of balance compared to complexity.  The more complex you make a system the higher chance it has to fail or have failures.  In regard to manpower/oil a force pool is a simple rule that covers that.  CEAW had both and the system had problems. 

This is a wargame not a historical recreation.  The game pushes history to a border that comes together with a good wargame without making it dull and predictable, like World in Flames.  You must have  a balance of both and I think my ideas don't overwork the system.

If you made the game pure historical it would be boring and predictable.  Realistically the moment Germany declared war on Russia they lost the war.  At best case they could stalemate them.  Realistically if the German's did EVERYTHING right they still lose the war with the allies to the a-bomb at worst case.



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 1:25:35 PM)

The problem is not force limits, the problem would be economies. If force limits are put in I suggest it be a preference toggle.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 1:32:40 PM)

Another option would be to add a scaling "upkeep" cost for a certain number of units, which would eventually limit the smaller economies in terms of how many units they could support.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 1:37:01 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Another option would be to add a scaling "upkeep" cost for a certain number of units, which would eventually limit the smaller economies in terms of how many units they could support.


And that's exactly where we are heading to, also with a suggestion made by Twotribes - preference button.
ATM I can't say nothing about, we need to take a look into the code ;)



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 2:01:22 PM)

Actually if you do the scaling that would be addressing the real problem , rather then forcing hard unit limits.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 2:07:09 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

Actually if you do the scaling that would be addressing the real problem , rather then forcing hard unit limits.


Why do you think that?



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 4:00:07 PM)

The economic model is wrong in some fundamental way or these countries would not be fielding to large of an army. Scaling that is done right address that issue. It adjusts the economy and while in effect it may limit armies it does it through the economic model not some arbitrary force limit.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 5:33:11 PM)

Twotribes, this economy modell was implemented to minimalize micromanagement. We didn't want to copy solutions from Hearts of Iron (or our Bitter Glory), we just wanted to make it simple as it should be for board game so PP represents food, oil, manpower, resources etc.

Of course we can come to conlusion it is beter to leave it as it is, but we can also find a solution which will lead to playability improvement.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 5:45:03 PM)

Twotribes is actually agreeing with you, as far as I can tell. [8D]



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 6:11:55 PM)

Oh.
It's really possible he agreed.
Dodn't get the context.
[sm=bow.gif]



winky51 -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 10:04:33 PM)

Scaling upkeep is possible, especially since the game is moddable.  Players can rearrange production to their preference and adjust upkeep.  Sounds like a nice alternative.  You can then make certain resources, like Ploesti, worth more than normal representing oil.

Thats a simple idea that balances the game.  I like it.

BTW I am almost done with my OOB.  I will post it tomorrow.  I have included ALL countrys in europe and some asian just for kicks.



doomtrader -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 10:21:52 PM)

quote:

BTW I am almost done with my OOB. I will post it tomorrow. I have included ALL countrys in europe and some asian just for kicks.

looks like we have start to think about our wiki



PDiFolco -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/13/2008 10:32:42 PM)

I really don't like that whacky "improving upkeep" idea, it has no semblance of reality... A Romanian soldier (or any other) was not marginally more expensive than the previous one [:'(], but the number of possible Romanian soldier was limited, comma.
If things are to be "complexified", a manpower limit is the only good solution, as it's the only realistic one.

I still don't have the game, and will still hold...



Twotribes -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/14/2008 2:28:13 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

I really don't like that whacky "improving upkeep" idea, it has no semblance of reality... A Romanian soldier (or any other) was not marginally more expensive than the previous one [:'(], but the number of possible Romanian soldier was limited, comma.
If things are to be "complexified", a manpower limit is the only good solution, as it's the only realistic one.

I still don't have the game, and will still hold...



The more troops you have under arms the more infrastructure you need to support them. Scaling provides for that.

However people are forgetting that Rumania provided a fairly large unit count Army, and reformed it once during the war.



robbersonr -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/14/2008 2:37:03 AM)

The other thing you have to remember about economies is that they need to be planned and anticipating what will be needed. Otherwise all sorts of bottlenecks will occur in areas where your war effort will least expect it. You simply do not pump out X amount of rifles because you have X amount of draft-elgible people in your population. Everytime you take able-bodied people into the armed forces, you have will have to deal with the consequences of taking skilled and unskilled labor out of the very industries needed to support those soldiers. You have to weigh the consequences of taking butter from the non-combatants to give guns to the military. And you have to deal with the law of dimishing returns.

And while the Romanians fielded a large army, you have to consider what effect it had on their economy - and does this game impose those consequences.

I like the idea of scaling up the costs of maintaining/building extra units over the historical OB's. I think it is an easy and elegant decision.



jeffreysutro@jeffreysutro.com -> RE: Economy out of whack (8/14/2008 4:23:38 AM)

quote:

Realistically the moment Germany declared war on Russia they lost the war. At best case they could stalemate them. Realistically if the German's did EVERYTHING right they still lose the war with the allies to the a-bomb at worst case.


winky51:

I agree with you that it would have been very difficult (though not quite impossible) for Germany to have won the war, but I think this should be reflected in the game. A realistic victory condition would be that if Germany survives until the end of 1946 it should count as a decisive German victory. Otherwise the game becomes too ahistorical and much less fun. A game with reasonably accurate production levels allows both sides to play both sweeping offensives and desperate defense, while exercising the skill of judging when the "hinge of fate" (as Churchill called it) will swing, and deciding how to prepare for it. I do believe that the game should have a good deal of latitude in allowing realistic historical "what if's", but not to the point where it becomes too implausible. I don't mind if Germany is able to conquer the U.S.S.R. on rare occasions but, in my opinion, it should be very unusual.

That said, I apologize (slighty [;)]) for jumping into this thread to preach from my soapbox on a topic that I already discussed in another thread. For what it's worth, I agree that scaling upkeep sounds like an elegant way to limit production to reasonably history levels, and I hope it gets implemented. With that, I will now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion. [:D]



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