We can read very frequently in threads in this forum that land units in the game represent army corps or divisions in the case of garrison units, however anyone willing to check the OOBs will find that this is not true.
For instance, at the start of the war the German army poised to invade Poland has in the game 14 corps (9 Inf+3Panzer+2Mot) and 6 Divsions. In reality it had 19 Corps and 13 divisions.
The OOB for other countries like France is even more innacurate.
What I mean with this post is simply put aside all arguments based on what acorps was historically in comparison with the units in the game. This game is, like any other, an abstraction. Furthermore, it is not a wargame, but rather an strategic game, so units represent only approximations to the relative power of different countries, as best as the developers/modders could get.
what does exactly represent unit in the game?
Moderators: firepowerjohan, rkr1958, Happycat, Slitherine Core
Forget about garrison units as representing division sized units in this game: this is not exact. CEAW GS 1939 OOB for Case White is correct. A total of 18 Wehrmacht corps units participated. If you look at the names of the units participating in Case white they all match with the real ones and all of them all included. This way, VII Armeekorps , a reserve unit for case white, is deployed in Berlin. And this unit is a garrison unit because not all of german inf corps were composed by 3 or more division units as they should but some of them were formed by 2 or even 1 division.
But then what do you make of the 13 divisions attached directly to armies or army groups? Anyway my main point is still valid because if you look other armies or scenarios the difference is still wider, for instance the German OOB for France May 1940 included 34 army corps, and if you look the French army or the Italian army there are even more differences. besides, when you play the game from the start you will never get as many units as in the set scenarios. I am pretty sure the correspondence unit=army corps is false. Not that I resent that, the game is an abstraction, only that arguments based on that premise should be dropped.
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Peter Stauffenberg
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The unit size is approximately corps based. What also decides the number of units is the map size (number of hexes) and production.
So the OOB in September 1939 is approximately accurate, but we made sure we have 1 unit per border hex in France and Poland.
The OOB for the France and Russia scenarios are based on what's needed to achieve the breakthroughs that happened in the real war and what was possible to produce when starting from the 1939 scenario.
So we played sample games from 1939 to the start of each scenario and had normal production. This way each scenario will be realistic from the start of the game.
You will not have a completely accurate OOB. E. g. there were more German and Russian units at the start of the 1941 scenario than in GS, but we can't implement that. The main reason is the 1 unit per hex limit. To have a more accurate OOB we would have to allow stacking and that's not possible with the game engine.
The main thing is that the OOB in GS is balanced so the results you get when you attack feel ok. I believe that the scenarios actually work pretty well.
You can't look at OOB's for e. g. Russia when you start in 1939 because you decide as a player what to build. If you want more armor you build it and so on. Then the OOB will not match the 1941 OOB, but that's part of playing a strategic game.
So the OOB in September 1939 is approximately accurate, but we made sure we have 1 unit per border hex in France and Poland.
The OOB for the France and Russia scenarios are based on what's needed to achieve the breakthroughs that happened in the real war and what was possible to produce when starting from the 1939 scenario.
So we played sample games from 1939 to the start of each scenario and had normal production. This way each scenario will be realistic from the start of the game.
You will not have a completely accurate OOB. E. g. there were more German and Russian units at the start of the 1941 scenario than in GS, but we can't implement that. The main reason is the 1 unit per hex limit. To have a more accurate OOB we would have to allow stacking and that's not possible with the game engine.
The main thing is that the OOB in GS is balanced so the results you get when you attack feel ok. I believe that the scenarios actually work pretty well.
You can't look at OOB's for e. g. Russia when you start in 1939 because you decide as a player what to build. If you want more armor you build it and so on. Then the OOB will not match the 1941 OOB, but that's part of playing a strategic game.
So, you are in agree with me that arguments based on considering units as representing historical army corps are not valid, right? Units are a convention that plays well in the game but are not historically OOB based. That was my whole point.
Not that I would propose an historical OOB btw, just that I have seen a good number of threads in which some people have based arguments on the unit=army corps equation.
Not that I would propose an historical OOB btw, just that I have seen a good number of threads in which some people have based arguments on the unit=army corps equation.