Barbarossa, transfer of industry to Siberia, Lend Lease etc.

[Cybvep]

ATM when the Axis declare war on the SU, most players simply evacuate troops to their preferred defensive line and wait for winter to arrive. The result is that the fighting is not fierce until the Axis hit the Soviet defence line. However, IRL exactly the opposite happened. Many cities saw extremely heavy fighting and the Soviets were indeed trying to stall the Germans for time, but not by retreating, but fighting! The Soviets lost most of their army in the initial months, which they managed to rebuild (although the quality of their divisions was questionable in 1941), but they achieved their objective - the Germans were stalled and the German casualties were higher than expected.

One of the reason why this rarely happens in CEAW is the fact that the Allied player has practically no incentive to defend his territory from the start in 1941. In fact, he is motivated to do the opposite, because it's in the Soviet best interest to stretch the Germans as much as possible in order to catch them in 4 or preferably 3 supply areas and to avoid the excessive fighting before 1941 because of the Soviet surprise DOW penalty and high Axis efficiency penalty during winter.

IMO the titanic struggle in the East should start on turn one of the DOW. One of the needed changes is the introduction of the transfer of industry to Siberia events. IRL the Soviets evacuated most of their industry (along with workers) behind the Urals and they needed time for this. Many Siberian cities grew in importance during WWII because of this transfer, while before WWII they were relatively unimportant. Therefore, I think that most of PPs from Omsk should be moved to the Soviet European holdings in 1939-1941 scenarios and that after the German DOW the PPs from these territories should slowly be transferred to Omsk and to an unreachable hex called "Siberia". The rate at which this happens would be slightly randomised in order to prevent gamey strategies and give the Axis player a reason to be ultra-offensive, too. Moreover, since the Soviets used railways to arrange the transfer, I think that their rail cap in 1941 should be reduced until the transfer is completed. This would make the evacuation of Soviet troops harder.

Also, while both the Arctic Convoy and the Persian Corridor are represented in CEAW and I'm glad that they are there, the game ignores the importance of Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Approximately 50% of the Lend Lease stuff came through Vladivostok. Again, in-game this should be represented by additional PP revenue in the unreachable "Siberia" hex. However, it should be possible to reduce this revenue by severing the Trans-Siberian Railway. This would represent the additional logistical effort required for the transfer of Lend Lease stuff to Europe which would be necessary if the link to Moscow was severed.

All this should make the Allied player more willing to defend the Soviet cities right from the start and increase the casualties in the early months.

[avoran]

I like the idea of gradually transferring PP's to Omsk/Siberia.

Another possibility is a morale effect - losing core Soviet cities, or at least important ones, could be made to hurt Soviet effectiveness. Obviously this would affect game balance, as would Cybvep's PP idea, so it can't be implemented cold turkey, but it's definitely worth trying for in (maybe) a post 2.1 release.

Important cities, in my opinion, would include (obviously) Moscow and Leningrad, but also Minsk (Belarussian capital), Kiev (Ukrainian capital), Stalingrad (because of the name as well as its size) and possibly also Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk (again because of their size) and Sevastopol (because of strong historical associations). It could also be set up as a range of impacts: e.g. a loss of 2 effectiveness for each 0 PP city, 4 for each 1 PP city and so on (loosely representing the number of people affected, which would be proportional to the number of refugees spreading panic) with "extra" morale losses for symbolic cities like Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, etc.

For balance reasons this could be offset to some extent by reducing the default effectiveness penalty.

[Cybvep]

Yeah, this is not sth that can be implemented right away, but I think that it should be considered.

I like your morale loss ideas. That could work quite well.

[Diplomaticus]

I think this is an intriguing idea. As people have been saying, it would affect game balance, so would need careful design & tweaking.

While we're on the topic, shouldn't it be possible to cut the lend-lease through Persia and the convoy route through Archangel/Murmansk? If the Axis cuts off the route to Persia or captures Archangel, should this impact the flow of PP's to the USSR?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

We already have some mechanisms that hurt the Russians if they lose their cities. One is reduced rail cap. Another is reduced manpower from the cities with rail cap.

We don't have factories in GS and therefore it's a bit hard to simulate the evacuation of the factories.

A good Allied player won't just abandon western Russia and form a defense line far to the east. If you do that then the Germans will reach the line too early and can break through it. Then 1942 will become hard for the Russians. So you need to screen your main force so the Germans get to your main line so late that they don't dare to engage it in fear of the soon upcoming Russian winter offensive.

The real Russians initially defended in the west and lost a lot of units to encirclements. That's one big problem between a game and the real war. You can't force players to repeat the mistakes of the real war. It's the same with the Allied movement into Belgium in May 1940. Therefore most games behave differently regarding Case Yellow and 1941 Barbarossa than the real war.

What we should focus on is how balanced the game is so the Germans are able to get to the historical resuts both in France and Russia. GS simulates that quite well. France often falls in June 1940 and it's not hard for the Germans to get to the 1941 defense line.

1942 is a do or die year for Russia and from all my Axis games I manage to push the Russians very hard in 1942. So if we force the Russians to make a forward defense then we need to compensate by allowing them to have more units and then you're back to square one. You might actually break a game balance we've tried for years to fix.

[avoran]

We already have some mechanisms that hurt the Russians if they lose their cities. One is reduced rail cap.
A good Allied player won't just abandon western Russia and form a defense line far to the east.

I am absolutely not an expert on this game But it seems to me this is exactly what everyone (including the elite players) does in the AAR's... I don't remember seeing any serious battles in the west in any of them.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

We already have some mechanisms that hurt the Russians if they lose their cities. One is reduced rail cap.
A good Allied player won't just abandon western Russia and form a defense line far to the east.

I am absolutely not an expert on this game But it seems to me this is exactly what everyone (including the elite players) does in the AAR's... I don't remember seeing any serious battles in the west in any of them.

Try being the Allies against Supermax or Morris. If you make a rear defense line then you will lose Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in 1942 and all the oilfields in 1942 for sure. I think they will get to Omsk in 1942 as well.

You need some stumbling blocks to prevent the armor from moving 6 hexes per turn towards Moscow. In the first few turns the efficiency level of the Russians is so low so the armor can move with little risk of being seriously hurt. They only need to protect the flanks so they can't be cut from supply.

When I play the Russians I try to get my mech and corps units to the rear and use the garrisons as stumbling blocks. You get 8 garrison reserves in August 1941 and those are fine to use to delay the Germans. If needed I build more garrisons to delay the Germans so my corps line further east can become a double defense line in time. If the Germans arrive there in September or later then you will probably survive through the winter. If the arrive in August then your main line will get crushed. So you need to at least delay the advance by 2 turns.

If you look at a good Axis first turn attack on Russia you see lots of Russians destroyed at the front line and encirclements several places. So all front line units will be crushed. The closest rear units will be crushed too because they will get in contact with Axis units on turn 1 so they can't rail to safety.

My experience with the Russians is that it's very hard to form a holding 1941 front line so you need to do whatever you can to delay the advance. I tried once to not form any defenses in front on my main line and then the Germans were at Moscow and Leningrad in August. Then I was forced to sacrifice many Russian corps units to hold these cities through the winter.

If you should be safe from losss you need to form your main defense line at the Caucasus and behind the Volga, but that means you give up too much ground so you can lose Omsk in 1942.

Russia has no weapon against a concentrated German spearhead in 1942 towards Omsk if the Germans can start in May 1942 from a location at the Volga. 10 German armor units can roll at will towards Omsk with just infantry to protect the flanks. Russian armor units aren't strong enough at that time to stop the disaster. This is the easiest way to win as the Germans. Get a good advance in 1942 and storm towards Omsk in 1942. If you fail then you're doomed, but if you succeed then Russia is out of the war. You rarely see that anymore before good Russian players form their 1941 defense line in front of Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov.

It's not that hard for the Axis player to reach that line rather early in 1941. Look at Supermax against Morris. He's taken Leningrad and Sevastopol already and managed to get to the historical line elsewhere. It won't be easy for Morris to repeat what he did in his last game. Supermax now has time to dig-in and form a double line that can hold through the winter.

[Cybvep]

While we're on the topic, shouldn't it be possible to cut the lend-lease through Persia and the convoy route through Archangel/Murmansk? If the Axis cuts off the route to Persia or captures Archangel, should this impact the flow of PP's to the USSR?

I thought that it was already possible to cut the Persian route by capturing Basra. Don't know about the Arctic Convoy. Murmansk is not on the map, but it should be possible to cut the Murman Railway. Capturing Arkhangelsk AND severing the Murman Railway should stop the Arctic Convoy altogether.

We don't have factories in GS and therefore it's a bit hard to simulate the evacuation of the factories.

PP.

A good Allied player won't just abandon western Russia and form a defense line far to the east. If you do that then the Germans will reach the line too early and can break through it. Then 1942 will become hard for the Russians. So you need to screen your main force so the Germans get to your main line so late that they don't dare to engage it in fear of the soon upcoming Russian winter offensive.

Um... Not really. I haven't seen an AAR with fierce battles in the west. Most players, including the famous ones, just withdraw to form a defence line.

The real Russians initially defended in the west and lost a lot of units to encirclements. That's one big problem between a game and the real war. You can't force players to repeat the mistakes of the real war. It's the same with the Allied movement into Belgium in May 1940. Therefore most games behave differently regarding Case Yellow and 1941 Barbarossa than the real war.

The player could still form inner defence lines, but the negative consequences would be greater.

What we should focus on is how balanced the game is so the Germans are able to get to the historical resuts both in France and Russia. GS simulates that quite well. France often falls in June 1940 and it's not hard for the Germans to get to the 1941 defense line.

But in a completely unhistorical way, because there is little initial fighting.

1942 is a do or die year for Russia and from all my Axis games I manage to push the Russians very hard in 1942. So if we force the Russians to make a forward defense then we need to compensate by allowing them to have more units and then you're back to square one. You might actually break a game balance we've tried for years to fix.

Obviously, this is not sth which can be included in the 2.1 update. I was thinking more about post-2.1 future. The world doesn't end with 2.1, right?

And yes, I think that during Barbarossa there should be a lot of heavy fighting right from the start and the German player should at least have a chance at encircling groups Soviet troops other than border garissons...

Also, the Vladivostok route was the most important of the Lend Lease routes, so it should definitely be in.

It's not that hard for the Axis player to reach that line rather early in 1941. Look at Supermax against Morris. He's taken Leningrad and Sevastopol already and managed to get to the historical line elsewhere. It won't be easy for Morris to repeat what he did in his last game. Supermax now has time to dig-in and form a double line that can hold through the winter.

Morris follows completely unusual but linear strategies and most patch changes were aimed at making them less effective, so I'm not that surprised...

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I forgot to mention that the evacuation of the Russian factories is actually simulated via war effort. Even after Russia joins the Allies the war effort needs time to get to max. You only get to max in 1942. So the Russians struggle with war effort of 60% or so while the Germans have 120% or more. The war effort increases by 6-7% every quarter.

So the Russian production is actually quite low through 1941. They can only afford to build 1-2 corps units per turn and they lose much more than that each turn. It's not unusual to see 50-60 Russian units destroyed in the casualties list by the end of 1941.

[Cybvep]

I forgot to mention that the evacuation of the Russian factories is actually simulated via war effort. Even after Russia joins the Allies the war effort needs time to get to max. You only get to max in 1942. So the Russians struggle with war effort of 60% or so while the Germans have 120% or more. The war effort increases by 6-7% every quarter.

So the Russian production is actually quite low through 1941. They can only afford to build 1-2 corps units per turn and they lose much more than that each turn. It's not unusual to see 50-60 Russian units destroyed in the casualties list by the end of 1941.

This is a poor explanation and it doesn't nudge the player in the historical direction at all.

Historically the Soviets lost MILLIONS of troops in the first months of war, they lost practically all tanks (when does it happen in CEAW?), made lots of terrible mistakes and still managed to rebuild their entire force and defend Leningrad and Moscow. This shows their RL capabilities.

EDIT: I found one of my favourite quotes from the GS 2.0 manual.

The goal for this mod was to transform the standard game into the most accurate simulation of WW-II in Europe and North Africa while maximizing play balance, enjoyment and replayability.

I don't think we want Germany to reach Omsk at all, just as we don't want them to lose by 1943. Those should be extremely rare cases IMO.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Remember that most of Russia was offmap. So production coming in from the Far East would also go to strengthen the border to Japan and China.

Russia actually has quite a substantial offmap production (20 PP's multiplied by war effort). That production comes from hexes outside the map, including the Vladivostok lend lease route.

USA has a lot of production that's not in the game because this production was designated for the Pacific war. It's the same with Russia. Most went to Europe, but some to the Far East.

I've seen AAR's for GS games for years and it wasn't so long ago the norm for the Russians was to form a main defense line along the Dnepr and Dvina. Then the Axis players complained it was completely ahistorical because the Germans wasted so much of their forces getting across that they were lost in 1942. So we altered the rules so the Russians suffered a serious efficiency loss that would only decrease slowly with time. Now most Germans managed to cross the Dvina/Dnepr line and the Russians paid the price. So instead the clever Allied players formed the main line further east and only delayed the Axis advance. That leads to the current situation. Still under that situation the Russians struggle in the Spring of 1942 and will lose a lot of territory.

Why should we force the Russians to defend behind the Dvina and Dnepr if that's strategically a bad idea. The players don't want to be told how to play.

GS v2.0 is a GAME and not a complete simulation of the real war. You can build what you want and move your units where you want. That is a lot of freedom and we have to have a game robust enough to be balanced against good play from both sides. I still haven't seen the ultimate way to attack or defend in Russia in 1941.

PP's aren't that important in 1941. Russia can easily afford to lose 10 PP's extra per turn if they can save their army doing so. The Axis can lower the Russian production quite a bit by bombarding Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad with strategic bombers. So even if we placed more PP's on the western cities it wouldn't alter the Russian strategy.

The only thing that could force the Russians to fight in the west in force would be to add factories in Russia and only allow them to evacuate 2 per turn. Each factory could be 5% war effort and loss on an intact factory would mean permanent loss of war effort. If you then placed factories in cities like Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Stalino then you would see the Russians desperately trying to hold a line in the west to get the factories out in time. But such a method would be a rip-off of World In Flames. What would happen is that the Axis player would exploit this by building armor blobs and take the hit for that and rush towards the factory cities to grab some of them.

Remember that many players play to win and will do whatever they can to weaken their opponent. They will only be bound by the limits in the game and not what is historical or logical. So if you introduce such a rule you might invent a serious game balance issue. Then you have more tweaking to do and you end up with almost the same as before. You have to give the Russians more at start units to prevent being overrun in the west and you need to give the Axis more units to counter for the numerous losses against the front line Russian units. When the smoke has settled the Germans will still be at the historical line and have the same number of units as before. The same with the Russians. It's certainly possible to make such a change, but it would require intensive testing and that means no upgrade except for the beta testers for 6+ months.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

This is a poor explanation and it doesn't nudge the player in the historical direction at all.

Historically the Soviets lost MILLIONS of troops in the first months of war, they lost practically all tanks (when does it happen in CEAW?), made lots of terrible mistakes and still managed to rebuild their entire force and defend Leningrad and Moscow. This shows their RL capabilities.

EDIT: I found one of my favourite quotes from the GS 2.0 manual.

The goal for this mod was to transform the standard game into the most accurate simulation of WW-II in Europe and North Africa while maximizing play balance, enjoyment and replayability.

I don't think we want Germany to reach Omsk at all, just as we don't want them to lose by 1943. Those should be extremely rare cases IMO.

I didn't write what you quote. All I say is that the game is more historical than vanilla CeaW. It's still a GAME and we actually don't want it to be 100% historical because then the end result will be given in all games. All games are in fact unhistorical because you're allowed to decide what will happen next. What we want to do is to encourage people to follow most of the historical path lines, but we won't force them. Therefore Sealion is possible and easier in GS than in the real war. We could easily have made Sealion so hard so no Axis player would even try, but then people would claim they lost their freedom.

GS is a game that must abstract some of the mechanisms of the real war. One is the use of factories. We don't have factories in GS and many wargames don't have that and they're still fun to play. So we don't need that to have fun. What I said is that the Russian war effort is lowered in 1941 for a reason. It's not up to 110%. The main reason for that is that the Russian factories weren't very effective. Several were being transported and rebuilt in Siberia.

So you actually have a mechanism to keep the Russian production low in 1941. Having variable production in a hex would require rules about when they will be transferred and how fast. Then you also need rules to cover if the enemy captures the hexes before the transfer is complete. Then you need even more rules to deal with the hexes being liberated again. This opens up for bugs and even more bugs. And for what?

As I said before you can't force the players to repeat the mistakes of the real war. So don't expect good Allied players to defend far to the west in Russia. Many PP's in Minsk, Kiev etc. won't be enough to let the players do that.

Should we also have a rule to force the Allies to send the BEF into Belgium in 1940 as well? It's not historical that the Allies retreat to the French rivers and abandon Belgium to their own fate. That was not a political possibility for the Allies in 1940, but it happens in most games.

So games will follow alternate historical lines. It doesn't mean the games are less fun to play. As I said before, in GS the French still fall in June 1940 as they did in the real war. The Germans still get to the historical 1941 line and the 1942 offensive is still as powerful. So what's the problem with HOW they get to these positions?

I've played lots of GS games now and I still don't think 1941 Barbarossa is that ahistorical. You still manage to destroy 3-5 mech units and 10+ corps units.

You asked where are the German tanks. Well, the Russians had their tanks in mech corps until the reorganization in the Spring of 1942 when the tank armies were formed. If you look at the 1941 Russian setup you see 15 mech units. THOSE contain the armor. You can kill many of them as the Axis if you really go for it. Many are placed in forward positions so they can be reached on turn 1.

Russia had a huge airforce, but most of it was destroyed at the airbases in the beginning of Barbarossa. So where are those air units in GS. The truth is that they're already considered to be destroyed. So the few air units you see are the reserve units. We once considered having the air units on the front line so they had to be crushed by the Axis, but that meant the Luftwaffe would not do anything, but attacking air units and that meant the Axis player would need several more air units. That would make a balance problem for 1939-1940 and oil issues for Germany later.

So the Russian OOB is actually abstracted a bit to make the game playable. This is something you see in many games.

[Cybvep]

Remember that most of Russia was offmap. So production coming in from the Far East would also go to strengthen the border to Japan and China.

Most of the units were withdrawn in 1941 after the NAP with the Japanese. It was beneficial to both sides, because they had more pressing issues than guarding their common border heavily. This is actually represented in-game quite well, because the Soviets receive Siberian divisions.

China had enough of its own problems and western Chinese province was actually pro-Soviet for quite a while (I won't even mention Mao).

GS v2.0 is a GAME and not a complete simulation of the real war. You can build what you want and move your units where you want. That is a lot of freedom and we have to have a game robust enough to be balanced against good play from both sides. I still haven't seen the ultimate way to attack or defend in Russia in 1941.

I'm all for this freedom. I think that generally GS maintains a good balance between playability and accuracy. However, the fact that there is no industrial transfer at all is simply historical nonsense, as it was EXTREMELY important IRL. As I said before, most cities behind the Urals became heavily industrialised only during WWII, because of the factory transfer.

Also, please don't use "this is just a game" tricks. They are cheap.

Why should we force the Russians to defend behind the Dvina and Dnepr if that's strategically a bad idea. The players don't want to be told how to play.

This should be dictated by strategic situation, not player's wishes. This is what I call "strategic dynamism".

PP's aren't that important in 1941. Russia can easily afford to lose 10 PP's extra per turn if they can save their army doing so. The Axis can lower the Russian production quite a bit by bombarding Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad with strategic bombers. So even if we placed more PP's on the western cities it wouldn't alter the Russian strategy.

The only thing that could force the Russians to fight in the west in force would be to add factories in Russia and only allow them to evacuate 2 per turn. Each factory could be 5% war effort and loss on an intact factory would mean permanent loss of war effort. If you then placed factories in cities like Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Stalino then you would see the Russians desperately trying to hold a line in the west to get the factories out in time. But such a method would be a rip-off of World In Flames. What would happen is that the Axis player would exploit this by building armor blobs and take the hit for that and rush towards the factory cities to grab some of them.

Remember that many players play to win and will do whatever they can to weaken their opponent. They will only be bound by the limits in the game and not what is historical or logical. So if you introduce such a rule you might invent a serious game balance issue. Then you have more tweaking to do and you end up with almost the same as before. You have to give the Russians more at start units to prevent being overrun in the west and you need to give the Axis more units to counter for the numerous losses against the front line Russian units. When the smoke has settled the Germans will still be at the historical line and have the same number of units as before. The same with the Russians. It's certainly possible to make such a change, but it would require intensive testing and that means no upgrade except for the beta testers for 6+ months.

It's more or less sth I have been thinking about. However, I wouldn't disregard the possibility of losing much PP income in the sense that it would remain in European parts of Russia and contribute to the German effort instead of being transferred to Omsk and the unreachable Siberia area.

I perfectly understand the problem of gamey strategies. Actually, what I proposed would counter them, because retreating all your divs to the inner defensive line can be considered gamey. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be possible, but the game doesn't punish the player enough for this action.

I didn't write what you quote. All I say is that the game is more historical than vanilla CeaW. It's still a GAME and we actually don't want it to be 100% historical because then the end result will be given in all games. All games are in fact unhistorical because you're allowed to decide what will happen next.

Oh no, not this again... Pretty please, don't use such arguments in discussions with me. I have NEVER said that everything should be perfectly historical and I most certainly don't want every game to always play out in the same way. I cannot believe you actually wrote sth like this.

Therefore Sealion is possible and easier in GS than in the real war. We could easily have made Sealion so hard so no Axis player would even try, but then people would claim they lost their freedom.

As long as Sea Lion doesn't happen in most games, I'm fine with that. It doesn't seem to be too common ATM if the Allied player didn't lose too many units in France and didn't overcommit themselves in Africa.

GS is a game that must abstract some of the mechanisms of the real war. One is the use of factories. We don't have factories in GS and many wargames don't have that and they're still fun to play. So we don't need that to have fun. What I said is that the Russian war effort is lowered in 1941 for a reason. It's not up to 110%. The main reason for that is that the Russian factories weren't very effective. Several were being transported and rebuilt in Siberia.

Have you looked at the Soviet production stats? The Soviets alone outproduced the Germans in most fields despite losing Belarus, the Baltic states and Ukraine. They were able to mobilise their economy for war effort at an astonishing rate and their efficiency also increased considerably over the years, while the Germans only mobilised their economy in 1943-44 period.

BTW it would be interesting if the Germans got some additional war effort when they are making their last stand.

Do you actually have a mechanism to keep the Russian production low in 1941. Having variable production in a hex would require rules about when they will be transferred and how fast. Then you also need rules to cover if the enemy captures the hexes before the transfer is complete. Then you need even more rules to deal with the hexes being liberated again. This opens up for bugs and even more bugs. And for what?

You can use such argument against ANY important game improvement...

As I said before you can't force the players to repeat the mistakes of the real war. So don't expect good Allied players to defend far to the west in Russia. Many PP's in Minsk, Kiev etc. won't be enough to let the players do that.

Who said that making the Germans pay dearly for every captured city was a mistake? The first months of Barbarossa were more costly for the Germans than all their previous campaigns COMBINED. Of course, the initial surprise was a blow, but this is already represented by the efficiency drop.

Also, the game should allow roughly historical outcomes, right? Therefore, there should be a system in place which allows the Soviets to recover even when they lose most of their army in their western territories and the alternative path (withdrawing to the inner defence line) shouldn't be a no-brainer. I actually think that this fits the mod philosophy quite well.

've played lots of GS games now and I still don't think 1941 Barbarossa is that ahistorical. You still manage to destroy 3-5 mech units and 10+ corps units.

O___________O The Soviet casualties numbered millions and they still recovered from that.

Should we also have a rule to force the Allies to send the BEF into Belgium in 1940 as well? It's not historical that the Allies retreat to the French rivers and abandon Belgium to their own fate. That was not a political possibility for the Allies in 1940, but it happens in most games.

Actually, it would be good if there was an incentive to defend Belgium as well, but I reserve this for another discussion

You asked where are the German tanks. Well, the Russians had their tanks in mech corps until the reorganization in the Spring of 1942 when the tank armies were formed. If you look at the 1941 Russian setup you see 15 mech units. THOSE contain the armor. You can kill many of them as the Axis if you really go for it. Many are placed in forward positions so they can be reached on turn 1.

IRL the Soviets lost approximately 20k tanks during Barbarossa. I repeat - 20k. The Germans didn't even have 4000 in 1941.

Russia had a huge airforce, but most of it was destroyed at the airbases in the beginning of Barbarossa. So where are those air units in GS. The truth is that they're already considered to be destroyed. So the few air units you see are the reserve units. We once considered having the air units on the front line so they had to be crushed by the Axis, but that meant the Luftwaffe would not do anything, but attacking air units and that meant the Axis player would need several more air units. That would make a balance problem for 1939-1940 and oil issues for Germany later.

You could include them and give them sth like a 50% efficiency drop, so it would be likely that most of them would be lost during the initial phase of the invasion.

So the Russian OOB is actually abstracted a bit to make the game playable. This is something you see in many games.

We are also trying to make the game as realistic as possible, right?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I will just conclude with that we're trying to make a MOD that's PLAYABLE and FUN. We have some restrictions from the how the vanilla was made. Adding factories is simply not worth the effort in my opinion. We can certainly have a discussion about the general basic rules of the game and if I had made the game from scratch I would have done things differently, but we had to work on what we had, i. e. CeaW.

I feel that this game works pretty well at the moment and we try to balance it enough to be able to release GS v2.1 and then take a break from changes. Players don't want constant changes. They want a stable game where they don't have to install patch after patch. So I believe that once GS v2.1 is out the door then you won't see more game mechanism changes.

Before you we haven't heard any requests for transferring production from western Russia to Siberia. It was actually suggested by me one year or so ago, but it was rejected by the beta testers because it would complicate the game for little gain.

Again I claim that adding more production to the west won't create what you want, i. e. heavy fighting in western cities. For this to make a matter you would put most of the production in the vulnerable western cities and that's actually not accurate at all. When a city like Moscow only produces 10 PP's then it would be wrong to add more than 3-5 in Kiev and 2-3 in Minsk. So the only way to make it work is to add factories so you have to send production to a factory to produce. Then loss of factories would hurt the Russians. If we add factories we would have to do it elsewhere as well. That's like makin a new game.

If we add factories we would allow for the loss of a few like Minsk and any same Russian player would rail out the ones they can and pay the overuse cost to do so. Still they will defend in the rear. So adding factories won't fix the "problem" either.

The reason to fight far to the west in the beginning of the war was because Stalin insisted to not give ground. It was only after he saw the heavy losses he began to listen to his generals and then the Russians started to retreat to save time (1942 is a good example until the made a final stand near Stalingrad).

Why is it so important to let this become the main way for Russia to defend? Players will only defend at the front line if it's better for them to do so than defending in the rear. I can't see what would make players do so willingly.

If you want to recreate the horrible losses then we need to lower the Russian efficiency drop, but that would drain the Germans so much so they need to start with a higher production, more manpower, oil etc. Doing so will reset the game balance and we're back to square one and will have to re-test for months again. And I ask again, for what?

I can guarantee you that skilled players like Morris will exploit the new possibilities if we added factories in Russia and find a way to easily crush the Russians so we need to make counters to prevent that. So for the factories to work we need to have a workable evacuation system. Having a fixed number of factories every turn seems arbitrary. Players would want to use up rail cap to evacuate factories. E. g. they can use 8 rail cap per factory. Then they can almost get out 2 per turn, but with heavy overcost they can get out 3.

In WIF you're able to build factories so you can replace lost ones. We don't have that possibility in GS. Adding new items to build will mean we have to write a lot of new code and place the possibilities in the already crowded user interface. So in GS the factories will be lost forever if captured. That can cripple the Russians if they were unlucky while in WIF you just pay 15 production or whatever to get an extra factory.

How do you think the game balance would be if most of the Russian units were at the front line and the Russians couldn't build anything for the rear. Then the standard Axis strategy would be to build lots of armor to blitz through the defense line and encircle the Russians. The infantry can then deal with killing the pockets while the armor move eastwards capturing city after city. Nothing would stop them from getting to the Volga in 1941.

So to prevent that we need more units so Russia also have some rear units. Then we need to give Germany extra units too to compensate and you still have a problem.

If you look at the starting locations of the Russians you see that most of their units are in the front line. We even moved more units to the front to make it possible for Germany to kill a lot of them. So it's not like the Germans fight no opposition.

What do you think would happen if we have a strong Russian main defense line along the Dvina and Dnepr. Then you won't see the panzers storm eastwards, but instead you will see a war of attrition and then panzers won't make it to the Don in time in 1941. This is how it was before.

One issue I see with CeaW is that it's impossible with the game engine to recreate the blitzkrieg in France 1940 and Russia 1941. Case Yellow started around May 10th 1940 and Paris fell in the last week of June. That's just 3 game turns. Not even Supermax can storm through the low countries and fight all the way to Paris in just 3 turns. Therefore you see Case Yellow start in March 1940 and end in June. That is ahistorical, but with the game engine it's unavoidable.

Barbarossa is the same. Minsk fell after just one week and the Germans were at Smolensk in July 15th. In order to do that with a June 22nd invasion date you have to teleport the Axis panzers, but they only have 6 movement.

Recreating blitzkrieg in strategic games is not easy and many good games end up using attrition to simulate losses. I don't see often enough big encirclements in games like the ones happening in Russia.

Not having a lot of Russian units in western Russia actually simulates quite well how fast the Germans were able to move through the Russian territory. Russia had units of different quality and the front line units were very poor so in several games you see different counters with bad Russian units that can easily be crushed. But in CeaW we're bound by techs and that means all units of a country of the same type will have the same stats. In WIF each unit can have unique stats. That's not possible in CeaW. So if you want the terrible front line Russian units then all will be the same and Russia can't recover tech wise later in the game.

I just mention this to show how hard it is in a game to actually make things work properly. If you alter one thing it will have effects elsewhere you don't intend. There is a reason we've tried for 3+ years to balance GS and still hasn't quite made it.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I will conclude my discussion by saying that we have a beta team for a reason. Many of the suggestions you mention here have been suggested before. We've discussed them in the beta group and voted on the changes. Some are voted in and most are voted out. That's just how things work.

Having factories in GS was voted out before, but if suddenly many beta testers would argue that it's needed now then we have a discussion to make. So far I just notice that none of the beta testers have joined the discussion here and made any opinion.

So the best way to make changes to the game is to join the beta team and make suggestions there so we can vote on things. We will make discussions before we make the final vote and we follow the majority.

I've had many of my suggestions voted down and accepted that. The main reason for most of my suggestions has been than it complicates the game for little gain. That's actually a valid argument. Most players want to play a WAR game and not a logistics game.

I've seen some games where you have to move resources, oil, build points around the map to factories to produce. That's maybe a better simulation, but quite a choir in my opinion. I always hated in WIF to lay out convoy lines to get all the resources to the right factories for production. Often I made a mistake and lost some resources.

[Cybvep]

Hmm, if you don't want to bother with the mechanics changes and 2.1 is supposed to be more or less final, then you could have just said so at the beginning of the discussion.

It also seems that making the game realistic is not the most important factor here and that text from the manual is just for show (when even the word "simulation" was used!). A pity, but then, I'm not a developer.

[Kragdob]

It also seems that making the game realistic is not the most important factor here and that text from the manual is just for show (when even the world "simulation" was used!). A pity, but then, I'm not a developer.

I develop games as tactical level and it is always trade off between history & playability. Word "simulation" is good for me as simulation does not need perfect realization of given environment. It just should provide you with the one that reflects the most important features (the more the better), but no all of them, if you have all then simulation becomes "real world".

I faced several such discussions for games we do and there is some key facts that should be noted:
-> Players know how history went and what is initial setup - asymmetric information is not fully possible
-> Expert Players with that level of information will not make historical mistakes of leaders/commanders that didn't have that information
-> You should choose between complexity and playability - the more complex the game the less people find it funny
-> You need to tweak your game unhistorically to reflect historical output.

I do not even count how many times I discussed with some 'historians' why we placed this Panzer division 30 kms from their historical position. The simple reason was that for given game system it prevented unhistorical movement (e.g. reaching Bastogne in Ardennes in day 2). You can say that that means that our game is not good but in term of effort and playability I prefer to move division 30 km away that change/balance whole system (which will turn into other 'problems' elsewhere).

This is what happens here. I do not agree with your proposals for the single reason that in this game I want to focus on strategies and not on managing economy of any counters. Current PP mechanizm is working quite well for me.

[Cybvep]

I do not even count how many times I discussed with some 'historians' why we placed this Panzer division 30 kms from their historical position. The simple reason was that for given game system it prevented unhistorical movement (e.g. reaching Bastogne in Ardennes in day 2). You can say that that means that our game is not good but in term of effort and playability I prefer to move division 30 km away that change/balance whole system (which will turn into other 'problems' elsewhere).

You cannot be serious. The problem I described is the one on a way, way higher level. It affects the way the whole campaign is played and it represents one of the key elements of RL Barbarossa.

[Samhain]

The manual is not just for show. It's very helpful documentation that explains the more difficult to understand bits. It has its problems but nothing beyond nitpicking.

[Diplomaticus]

I'm on the side of Stauffenberg and the rest of the development team on this one. What you are asking for in terms of altering the game play to reflect your description of RL is opening an enormous can of worms for IMHO very limited benefit.

One of the things that makes this game pretty damn well balanced (when compared to most other games especially) is that players on each side share the same advantage: they know the historical mistakes and can choose to act differently. So the French don't manouever stupidly in 1940, making it tougher for the Germans to reach Paris, but then Hitler doesn't make stupid mistakes like at Stalingrad, making it harder for the Allies. All in all, I think it equalizes out pretty well. These arguments about how the Real War went differently... well it's like he said, are we going to strait-jacket players in the name of historical accuracy?