Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marquo

The Lvov pocket causes panzers to drive south west...and this is not towards Kiew/Kharkov; yes alot of units get bagged, but the Axis loses at least 1, if not 2 - 3 turns fighting in the wrong direction.

Marquo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marquo

The Lvov pocket causes panzers to drive south west...and this is not towards Kiew/Kharkov; yes alot of units get bagged, but the Axis loses at least 1, if not 2 - 3 turns fighting in the wrong direction.

Marquo

Piffle. The Axis can cross the Dnepr by turn 6 in the area of Cherkassy-Kremenchug and then get behind Kiev and strike directly towards Kharkov. This is hilariously ahead of schedule compared to real life. You don't lose any time at all driving SW, you are in fact reaching the historical crossing point almost two full months ahead of schedule.

quote:

ORIGINAL: fbs

Here's the thing... Stalin had many defeats in the first months because he refused to trade space for time. He'd rather trade soldiers (and Generals) for time. Only by 42 the Soviets had a clear strategy of giving space to avoid encirclements - and the proof is that they had much less of them in 42.

My point is: it's easy to think of Stalin's stand-or-die orders in 41 (and Hitler's similar orders in 44) as a megalomaniac caprice of an all-powerful dictator who ignored the mathematics of attack/defense ratios, but the reality was probably more complicated. A general (or even dictator) that retreats with no gains easily ends up in disgrace, because it's easy to see in the map the lost territory, but difficult to see exactly how much time he gained.

So problem with retreat (even if necessary) is that nobody likes to lose territory and population. In a democracy we can call that the heroic call of duty to protect the innocent while in a dictatorship we call that a cynical waste of soldiers and refusal to see reality -- but I suspect the underlying reason is the same: nobody likes a retreater.

Therefore, the way I see it, Stalin was not the czar Alexander. The czar could not be deposed, while Stalin could; immediately after the invasion he thought he would be killed, and being so neurotic I bet that he wasn't too comfortable even by 42. I doubt that the official discourse in the STAVKA on 41 was: "Comrades, let's allow the Huns come to the gates of the capital, when a very timely winter will freeze them solid and we'll unleash our Siberians to victory!!". I think it was more in the lines of "Comrades, we'll protect Minsk to death!"; then "Comrades, the enemy will NEVER conquer Kharkov!"; then "Comrades, the war will be won at Smolensk!". And so forth.

I'm not saying the Soviet generals were a warm bunch - I'm sure they would allow 100,000 soldiers die for nothing. I'm just saying that in the real USSR it took a specially ruthless and specially confident general to order and survive a general retreat. Your run-of-the-mill general would order his men to stand firm and die for the Motherland - that's way safer for him.


ps: I think the best way to argue about retreat is this: resistance is always expected to increase when the defenders are defending their own country. In military terms there's no reason to defend a hill in one's country more strongly than the same hill on someone else's country, but that's what happens. The reason is not logic, but ethos.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marquo


Fix logistics, and the issue in this theatre will be fixed.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Klydon

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marquo

The Lvov pocket causes panzers to drive south west...and this is not towards Kiew/Kharkov; yes alot of units get bagged, but the Axis loses at least 1, if not 2 - 3 turns fighting in the wrong direction.

Marquo

Piffle. The Axis can cross the Dnepr by turn 6 in the area of Cherkassy-Kremenchug and then get behind Kiev and strike directly towards Kharkov. This is hilariously ahead of schedule compared to real life. You don't lose any time at all driving SW, you are in fact reaching the historical crossing point almost two full months ahead of schedule.

Have to agree here. The Lvov opening can be extremely powerful. The best way to see the effect it has on the Russian player for the first several turns is to play a "hot seat" game where you play both sides. I think any Russian who says they prefer a Lvov opening vs a weaker central thrust compared to a historical opening is sort of kidding themselves at this point in time with the game. Look at how much more you can rescue out of the Lvov area, including at least some of those mountain divisions, which can come back to haunt the Axis during the winter, not to mention the amount of extra resistance AGS is going to face over the next several turns.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

quote:

ORIGINAL: Klydon


The game is too much of a track meet right now. Russians retreat very quickly

No they do not. People need to stop repeating this nonsense. It is not that the Soviets are retreating too quickly. It is that the Axis offensive is preposterously accelerated. The Red Army is simply being blown away too quickly and stuff is being overrun as a result.

You can't hold Kiev until September when SW Front is pocketed on turn 1. Generally the Dnepr is being crossed as early as turn 6. Leningrad can't be held at all. Moscow is falling in a non trivial portion of games. None of these things are because of "runaways." The first real runaway is the one that happens in the winter...by the Axis.

quote:


Therefore, the way I see it, Stalin was not the czar Alexander. The czar could not be deposed, while Stalin could; immediately after the invasion he thought he would be killed, and being so neurotic I bet that he wasn't too comfortable even by 42. I doubt that the official discourse in the STAVKA on 41 was: "Comrades, let's allow the Huns come to the gates of the capital, when a very timely winter will freeze them solid and we'll unleash our Siberians to victory!!". I think it was more in the lines of "Comrades, we'll protect Minsk to death!"; then "Comrades, the enemy will NEVER conquer Kharkov!"; then "Comrades, the war will be won at Smolensk!". And so forth.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vicberg

quote:


Therefore, the way I see it, Stalin was not the czar Alexander. The czar could not be deposed, while Stalin could; immediately after the invasion he thought he would be killed, and being so neurotic I bet that he wasn't too comfortable even by 42. I doubt that the official discourse in the STAVKA on 41 was: "Comrades, let's allow the Huns come to the gates of the capital, when a very timely winter will freeze them solid and we'll unleash our Siberians to victory!!". I think it was more in the lines of "Comrades, we'll protect Minsk to death!"; then "Comrades, the enemy will NEVER conquer Kharkov!"; then "Comrades, the war will be won at Smolensk!". And so forth.

Have you read Russian History? Stalin took a census prior to the war. He didn't like the results. He purged the entire department. The next group told him what he wanted to hear. Of the two, Alexandra was much easier to depose than Stalin, who repeated purged every part of his government and country until everyone was afraid to stand against him. The entire country was at his disposal.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vicberg

Have you read Russian History? Stalin took a census prior to the war. He didn't like the results. He purged the entire department. The next group told him what he wanted to hear. Of the two, Alexandra was much easier to depose than Stalin, who repeated purged every part of his government and country until everyone was afraid to stand against him. The entire country was at his disposal.

quote:

ORIGINAL: fbs

Imagine it's 1980, and the Soviets launched a surprise attack against NATO, and are rolling in all fronts.

Would you order your troops to march to the front and stand and die, so the population can evacuate and reinforcements can build a 2nd line of defense, or would you pull back your troops, face the media (that will call you a coward) and leave the civillians to their fate?

I would stay in the front, for a matter of ethos: it's very difficult to run away and leave the enemy run rampant in your country - even if staying means a high chance of defeat. That's a fundamental dilemma that, I believe, many professional soldiers would struggle with in real life.

Meanwhile players are not troubled with (or punished for) trading territory for time in the game. The lack of attachment to the little dots in the map is, for me, the biggest difference between a player playing WITE and a real general playing the war. The former will choose "X" with mathematical precision because he will get whatever maximum probability, while the later will choose "Y", even if that's not the best mathematical choice, but is the one he can live with in real life.

Any thoughts?

quote:

ORIGINAL: marty_01

A fair number of those little dots along the frontier are actually Polish or Bessarabian or Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian...i.e. the political stigma associated with Russian Field Marshals abandoning Polish\Bessaribian\Lithuanian (etc.) wasn’t quit on par with your above example.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marty_01

quote:

ORIGINAL: fbs

Imagine it's 1980, and the Soviets launched a surprise attack against NATO, and are rolling in all fronts.

Would you order your troops to march to the front and stand and die, so the population can evacuate and reinforcements can build a 2nd line of defense, or would you pull back your troops, face the media (that will call you a coward) and leave the civillians to their fate?

I would stay in the front, for a matter of ethos: it's very difficult to run away and leave the enemy run rampant in your country - even if staying means a high chance of defeat. That's a fundamental dilemma that, I believe, many professional soldiers would struggle with in real life.

Meanwhile players are not troubled with (or punished for) trading territory for time in the game. The lack of attachment to the little dots in the map is, for me, the biggest difference between a player playing WITE and a real general playing the war. The former will choose "X" with mathematical precision because he will get whatever maximum probability, while the later will choose "Y", even if that's not the best mathematical choice, but is the one he can live with in real life.

Any thoughts?

A fair number of those little dots along the frontier are actually Polish or Bessarabian or Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian...i.e. the political stigma associated with Russian Field Marshals abandoning Polish\Bessaribian\Lithuanian (etc.) wasn’t quit on par with your above example. In fact, there was actually great deal of debate amongst the Red Army General Staff prior to the commencement of Barbarossa as to the best strategy to employ if the Germans attacked the Soviet Union. The two possible options being either to fight the German Army on the Frontier -- or as Zhukov argued -- retreat into the hinterland and trade space for time. It therefore wasn’t a particularly inconceivable strategy for the Red Army to retreat into Russia rather than nailing itself to Lvov, Bialystok, Kaunus and etc. And of course there is also historical precedent for the Russian Army employing Fabian strategy – ala. Kutuzov’s 1812 Campaign.