Please vote: Shock armies and river attacks

gerones · Post by **gerones** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 3:58 pm

Schnurri wrote:I think #4 is important to prevent early exits by the Allies, but, it would cripple the Russians if the Germans delayed Barbarossa. Is it possible to code it such that they have no research focus until Stalin orders the mobilization and then let them focus research?

Good point. The russians should be able to activate their focus lab strategy from october 1941 in any case.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:14 pm

We can code so you can set focus points if you're at war or have mobilized. That means the Russians will be able to do so no later than October 1941.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:16 pm

Morris wrote:I will show you the reason after the present AAR with Max & Plaid by starting another AAR which I will play Axis . It will be my great pleasure if I have a chance to play that AAR with you .

That is a bit late. It's NOW we will make the changes and if you can't give your explanation to why you think we shouldn't alter these settings then you need to do it NOW. Otherwise we will make the changes and you will have to live with that.

When we put a point up for voting you have to make yourself heard at that time.

Plaid · Post by **Plaid** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:21 pm

I may want to add, that its problem with research randomness, not only with focus points.
Sometimes you can put focus for USSR in say dog fight on very first turn and still find youself 2 techs behind germans for most of the game.
Sometimes you can do the same and have parity with germans. Some randomness is OK maybe, but now this random factor have major influence on game (if you got poor luck and you opponent got good luck, your troops will be combat-unable, no matter what strategy you try to use they will lose any single battle), and its not OK, i think.

PionUrpo · Post by **PionUrpo** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:38 pm

Plaid wrote:I may want to add, that its problem with research randomness, not only with focus points.
Sometimes you can put focus for USSR in say dog fight on very first turn and still find youself 2 techs behind germans for most of the game.
Sometimes you can do the same and have parity with germans. Some randomness is OK maybe, but now this random factor have major influence on game (if you got poor luck and you opponent got good luck, your troops will be combat-unable, no matter what strategy you try to use they will lose any single battle), and its not OK, i think.

I mentioned the same while back when the fast pace of air tech was discussed and I agree that the most extreme research results should be reduced.

JimR · Post by **JimR** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 12:01 am

My preferences:

1c
2b
3 - yes, make attack across river in winter same as in fair weather
4 - yes, tech focus only for countries at war

The overall impact will help to shift the balance in the direction of the Axis. In my experience of beta testing GS, the Axis is the side that needs a bit of a boost.

amcdonel · Post by **amcdonel** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:34 am

My votes:

1 ==> c
2 ==> c
3 ==> yes to river in winter of 50%
4 ==> yes to change

Thanks!

supermax · Post by **supermax** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 3:23 am

1 = c
2 = a
3 = yes to river in winter of 50
4 = yes yes, tech focus only for when at war

Maybee, also, the solution is for people stopping to focus on Moriss.

Its pretty obvious that if he keeps playing like that he is going to have a hard time finding adversaries after a while.

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:04 pm

supermax wrote:1 = c
2 = a
3 = yes to river in winter of 50
4 = yes yes, tech focus only for when at war

Maybee, also, the solution is for people stopping to focus on Moriss.

Its pretty obvious that if he keeps playing like that he is going to have a hard time finding adversaries after a while.

Yes , people do not need to focus on Morris , but they should forcus on truth they believe . If 4 is yes , it will make Russian have too big tech difference from Germany . It will make Axis win the upper hand in the east front line easily by using correct strategy .

Plaid · Post by **Plaid** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:09 pm

Suddenly I thought about very radical solution - what if we remove entire focus points mechanic?
So there will be no tech min-maxing (which I believe is not real) and no extremes.
Balanced research is rather slow and predictable. Also probably if focus points will be removed there will be no more need to keep this lab number limits (like no 3rd lab in area until 2 elsewhere etc. Not like this limits really hurt, but for example when I build labs for Italy I buy some labs to met requirements, then I build what I wanteed and then I sell useless labs build for limit rule. It wastes a bit of PP)

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:24 pm

I think lab focus in needed to catch up with areas where you fall behind or if you want to get a new important tech before the next offensive.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:32 pm

Morris wrote:Yes , people do not need to focus on Morris , but they should forcus on truth they believe . If 4 is yes , it will make Russian have too big tech difference from Germany . It will make Axis win the upper hand in the east front line easily by using correct strategy .

I don't agree with you here. Removing tech focus for Russia won't alter the tech difference because Russia can still build new labs as early as before. They even start with tech level 1 in many areas to simulate the tech advances made until the start of Barbarossa.

All you do with removing the focus option before Barbarossa is that Russia will make even research in a tech area. This means slightly less tech on an area you wanted to put focus on and more tech on the other 2 areas.

As I said before, most players don't min/max their tech advances like you do. So by making this change you will see that most players won't be affected very much by it.

You also have to take into consideration that until the start of Barbarossa then Russia has maybe 5 labs in total. That means maybe 1 air, 1 infantry, 1 general and 2 armor. Or if we do like you 2 infantry, 2 armor, 0 air and 1 general. So if you look at this you will notice that for most of the time you remove the ability to do focus for 1 lab and for some time 2 labs. That won't make a big of a difference. Maybe the difference is 0.5 tech less in the particular area you wanted to focus, but instead you have 0.25 tech more in the other 2 areas.

What this means it that you don't get Russians with only focus on artillery and blitzkrieg so their mechs and armor have very high offensive firepower in December 1941. I think that's good because the Russians surely weren't on par with the Germans so early in the offensive areas. The real Russians actually put effort in armor for their tanks and not blitzkrieg. They learnt the need for blitzkrieg the hard way after Barbarossa begun.

So I believe that this change will only make the Russian winter offensive more normal and the game MORE balanced and not less. It may be that your strategy will suffer, but that's not a bad idea since you seem to crush every opponent you play against.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:42 pm

Regarding air techs we have to remember we increase the air tech difficulty and that means the progress will be slightly slower. That also means lucky results won't increase the tech as much.

I think that some of the fun with GS is that you have some kind of uncertainty regarding research. We have many examples in the real world where one country got a big tech advantage and used it very well. In the long run the luck will even out and you simply need to take advantage of the techs you actually get.

E. g. if you're focusing on blitzkrieg for your tanks and instead you get the armor tech up. Then you have very resilient tanks who don't hit so hard. That can be used as an advantage as well.

I think the tech that will make the biggest impact is the dogfight tech 5. Then you get +2 to air attack. All air techs up to that level are minor so you can live with being 1 tech level below your opponent. With the increased air tech difficulty then players shouldn't get dogfight tech 5 as early as 1942.

I've been the Allied player with dogfight tech 3 or 4 against Germans with dogfight tech 5. It hurts in the air battles, but you counter that by having more fighters than the Germans so your bombers get through anyway. That means you win on the ground and have to pay a lot of PP's to repair air losses. If you have twice the number of fighters you can repair depleted ones and the full strength can escort the bombers. You force the Germans to repair air losses every turn and they burn quite a bit of oil intercepting your fighters all the time.

So you just need to adjust your strategy if you get behind tech wise in important areas.

There's always the option to turn random research off when you start a new game if you don't like unpredictable results.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 3:00 pm

I've now coded the following for GS v2.01.32 that's sent to Ronnie and Paul

1. Siberian reserves spawn date added to general.txt so it can be changed later without coding.
Date set to turn 41 (November 9th). That is 1 turn delay
Votes were:
a. 40: 4
b. 41: 6
c. 42: 4

2. Russian siberian reserves general set to c. Meretskov
a. Chuikov (5-1-1): 4
b. Kuznetsov (3-0-0): 4
c. Meretskov (5-0-0): 5

In addition I changed the unit the leader arrives with. It was the 1st Siberian Tank Army and not it's the 2nd Shock Army. The reason is that Meretskov commanded the Volkhov Front at the time the Shock Armies were formed and the 2nd Shock Army was linked to the Volkhov Front. The actual commander of the 2nd Shock Army was Vlasov and he's not in GS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkhov_Front

I think Meretskov is a good choice because with a quality 5 leader the Russian units spawning will get 10 extra efficiency as they did from Chuikov. They lose efficiency by railing so they need a leader to be able to fight right after they get to the front line. Kuznetsov would add 6 extra efficiency instead of 6. By not having a +1 attack and +1 defense leader it means the reserve units won't be super units. The shock units already have guard status. So the Allied player must spend precious PP's to buy Chuikov and that could be hard as early as 1941.

3. Attack strength across river in winter is now altered from 70% to 50% as most of you wanted. Attack across river in severe winter still has attack strength of 70%.

4. Tech focus can now not be set for countries that aren't at war or haven't mobilized.

In addition I altered the focus rules so you only spend focus points for setting focus in a particular area. You can set the tech research back to balanced without spending a focus point. That means you have more freedom to use your focus points without having to be stuck in an area for a very long time. This means you can actively use focus to boost a tech advance and then switch back to balanced. Before you had to think twice from changing the focus because you burnt another focus point switching back again.

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 4:14 pm

ok , i will accept the change . I will show you how this change make Allies suffer in the future by new pbem which I will play Axis . Let's see !

JimR · Post by **JimR** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:24 pm

These changes could help to bring better balance to the game. All other things being equal (players' experience and abilities, equal proportion of lucky breaks), the Allies seemed to have a consistent edge in recent beta versions.

Blathergut · Post by **Blathergut** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:53 pm

Morris wrote:ok , i will accept the change . I will show you how this change make Allies suffer in the future by new pbem which I will play Axis . Let's see !

I wish you would explain instead of always show through AARs where we don't have your comments each turn to help explain why/how you are doing things. The "showing" takes weeks and months. Am interested in your ideas but I still feel I have never heard your descriptions for your "Allies always win" strategies.

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:19 am

Blathergut wrote:
Morris wrote:ok , i will accept the change . I will show you how this change make Allies suffer in the future by new pbem which I will play Axis . Let's see !
I wish you would explain instead of always show through AARs where we don't have your comments each turn to help explain why/how you are doing things. The "showing" takes weeks and months. Am interested in your ideas but I still feel I have never heard your descriptions for your "Allies always win" strategies.

Since English is not my native language , My english is too poor to have long term of explaination (BTW ,I am also short of time to do that) ,That 's also the reason why always my oppoent did the AAR . Thanks a lot my friends !

Anyway , after I finish my present AAR & pbems , I will begin to play Axis , because Axis will have a great opportunity then !

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Sun Oct 23, 2011 1:45 pm

Morris, why don't you challenge Supermax to be the Allies against you using GS v2.01.32?

Morris · Post by **Morris** » Sun Oct 23, 2011 2:13 pm

Stauffenberg wrote:Morris, why don't you challenge Supermax to be the Allies against you using GS v2.01.32?

Why not ? I will do it after our present AAR . But I don't know whether will he accept my challenge .