janh
Posts: 1216
Joined: 6/12/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Pelton
The major problem with the game now is even if hq build up is removed the russians just have no need to fight.
They evac and run and play cat and mouse.
Most of the AAR's are full of
German only gets 3 million kia by Dec,
Russian has saved 90% of amrmament pts, because we know hvy means nothing.
Russian army is 5 million strong by Blizzard with extra armament pts.
Russian army is 7+ million strong by June
Steam roller starts by late 42 or ealry 43.
The only way German wins is if Russian player doent have game figured out yet.
The German vs and equal Russian might take Moscow but so what? Its means little to nothing he still have 7 million men by summer.
The game is way out of wack, the more you play the more you see it.
Thats why there so very few games that get into 43.
Pelton, now that you have figured the German side of things a little better, you might want to switch to playing the Russians for a while. Even if it is not your favorite, it doesn't hurt to know the enemy, plus you could finally prove that as a Russian you don't need to run. That would add a lot of credibility to your arguments. However, I doubt you can, and that's not because of your abilities and knowledge of the tricks the game engine allows.
You should also mention that the German Army presently enters spring 42 in most AARs with around 4 Mio men, a good 1 Mio more than the calibration point. I believe the historical high-water mark was Kursk with about that number. Given that, Soviet numbers also reflect that the German players are a lot more conservative, and plan ahead for a blizzard defense, instead of running their units dry against the Russian defenses at Moscow. More realistic numbers might only come about, (a) if the German player attacks more recklessly, and (b) the Russians get the toys at hand that allow to stand and perhaps to counterattack occasionally. So why do you want to force a Russian player into mistakes, and decide as attacker on where and when the defender should defend, if you yourself deviate strongly from historical decisions/doctrines/mistakes? Just recall raiding as an artifact of the ZOC rules (perhaps ZOC should only affect the actual vicinity of units?), and the static IgoUgo phasing.
The way I see it presently, the fact that the Soviet Army is vastly toothless in 41, and apparently now also a little weaker during blizzard 41/42, makes it a no-brainer decision not to employ it forward except as speed-bumps to enable factory evacuation. (Which, as established in the other thread, was gotten about right by the designers -- none of the sources contradicted what types where primarily evac'd historically, so why not give arms and vehicles priority as well (assuming the categorizing in game isn't different than IRL -- arms here may include heavy facilities for armament production); but I agree that supply and logistics ain't tight enough for both sides, but we haven't seen the Soviet or German supply situation in 43/44 from a GC yet). With fighting forward, all that a Soviet player can do is to loose more -- any counterattacks are extremely costly, as should well be so, but they do not gain anything except to set up more units for pocketing, which hardly costs the Axis time. If the German Army in 43 or 44 would face the same disparity in combat value, we would soon see a similar phenomenon, namely that the Germans would just fall back and avoid battle unless they reach a contracted position that offers hope, or prohibits any further retreat. We have seen this with earlier patches in the 41 blizzard, where German players slowly retreated as the rules prevent them to hold off Soviet attacks. It is the same thing. However, presently the German Army is at least sufficiently powerful in 43 and 44 to blunt Soviet spearheads and force on a cautious, careful Soviet strategy.
Presently the Axis achieves German standards with relative ease as there is not much strain on logistics, even in the south (question: did the Germans historically beef up logistics in the south at the cost of AGC and AGN, or how did that happen??). Leningrad is a standard as much as the Lvov has become, Rostov is well possible; Kharkov, Kursk, have become typical. As you are now figuring yourself, Moscow by turn 12-13 seems to doable as well, without any need to cut back on the other objectives. But does this feel right, do you think the Germans could have optimized their forces that way that this could have been a possible outcome? Not sure, rather not. Presently looks like the Germans back in time were total idiots at their business. If this trend continues and Moscow also becomes a standard, the future will see Soviets fighting until all critical industry is removed, and then pull back to the Urals until they are able to contest the Germans on more even terms.
I believe the Soviet base moral should be a little higher to start with in 41/42 (even though that side least interests me either, much as you Pelton). Not much, though. It seems to be fairly easy to hurt the Soviets, too little can go wrong, and why play out 41 if you already know where it ends? We could as well start after blizzard, when things are hopefully more even and interesting? The designers have obviously tried to enforce the swinging of initiative between Soviets and Germans at certain times a little by things like the 1:1 rule and the shift of national morale instead of naturally let it evolve from the true battlefield conditions. You probably could picture two virtual curves that represent the combat power of both sides. They shift dramatically on small timescales at certain points like towards the Soviet side during Dec. 41, and slowly goes back to German favor by spring 42. Besides such short-term variations, the German curve will have a slight long term skew that is probably designed to mimic the slow decline until 45, and the Soviet curve goes thru a minimum in summer 42, and thereafter steadily increases until 45. Perhaps the speed of changes (gradient) of the initial drop and later recovery of the Soviet combat power (national morale/experience) is too pronounced? If the national morale drop and difference to the Germans would be a bit less, and correspondingly also the later gains tuned down, the Soviets might be capable of putting up some occasional fight in 41 and 42, pull off a little better blizzard offensive, but still only gradually catch up with the German Army by 43 instead of experiencing rather sudden, artificial jumps? Then the artificial 1:1 rule would be totally obsolete, even in 41?
< Message edited by janh -- 11/11/2011 11:48:36 AM >
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Printable Version
Sudden Death Optional Rule Proposal - 
) can be simplified even further. Rather than an optional rule, do the same thing WitP does: IF the autovictory ("sudden death") conditions are met then the AV screen appears awarding victory to who ever met the conditions with a "Continue Game" message at the bottom the screen. Now if the players had previously agreed to use AV the game ends but if they choose not to then just continue on.
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