Red Storm Release - Eastern Front Tournament

[unitlost]

This map is excellently designed and enjoyable. Thank you whoever did this!

[Shards]

This map is excellently designed and enjoyable. Thank you whoever did this!

The map was originally made for the Winter War expansion where the Finns were defending against a massive Russian assault (designed by uran21 I believe).

I took it, moved it to the summer (hence Kesä) and tweaked a few of the rivers and roads to make for more of a meeting engagement (and swapped Finns for Germans to give a better force match). Feedback from the previous test tournament helped refine it more, with the removal of spawn points in the centre and a new tournament scoring system.

Glad you're enjoying it

[unitlost]

I not a big fan of being able to bring fresh troops in when you lose a unit. In this game I was outmatched a bit so when I lost units I simply built a defensive perimeter around my two HQs. Granted my opponent will win by virtue of points, but it seems like my opponent should be given the right to overrun my HQ once my front line had collapsed.

I think when you lose a unit, that's it. You should not be able to bring in replacements.

Just wondering what opinions people have.

[Erik2]

That would mean pre-purchased non-core units. I think this variant has some merits.

[Shards]

It's a valid variant, but it's very much not reflective of the usual game experience of order of battle. In the SP campaign, if you lose units, you buy more to replace them.

The changed strategy in MP is making the most out of our income knowing that you're probably going to take loses.

My concern about having fixed forces is that there's really very little that can be done once the battle has turned against a player (which is admittedly historically correct). I generally prefer to give players the chance to come back and fight again if they make a mistake or lose an early combat.

If units become irreplaceable, then things tend to go rather WW1 with players unwilling to take risks.

[unitlost]

Thank you both for your responses (Erik2 & Shards). I needed to hear your perspective. It does make sense what you say.

[LynxCom]

I like the new scoring system of a tournament (points for killing units).

My two cents in discussion about re-purchasing new units. Both (unitlost and Shards) have good points. It´s the same discussion as always. Lots of players feel something is wrong with deploying new units on or near a front line. It feels gamey. Shards solved this partly in Karelian Kesä map by replacing villages on secondary objectives with other terrain. This is a solution. Not great one, but better than nothing.

The "problem" is in the game mechanics - new units are deployed in towns/villages with flags. In majority cases towns/villages are objectives so someone who owns a town with a flag can deploy new units there. Am I satisfied with this? No. But we have to accept it. However I would rather see reinforcements coming from a rear. That´s why I prefer custom scenarios over official ones. Or scenarios with smaller income.

[Shards]

In general, I agree with all the points you make there LynxCom. And yes, the intention of the changes to this map was indeed to reduce the spawning of units on the frontline. It was an experiment, and it seems to have gone okay?

Of the maps to come, Raseiniai still features some deployable targets, but not all, but this feels more okay given the size and intent of that map. The third map Kiev-Zhitomir has terrain features instead of villages like Kesä.

I'll be continuing to try things out to find the best solutions to these issues to make for the best game experience I can.

[roywfw]

Can I just say well played to roywfw and Moonshill!

Roy has obviously played very well there, but super Kudos to Moonshill for playing through the turns in good order under extreme pressure and (from looking at his game as USSR, an amazing defensive stand to keep roy from taking the two Russian HQ's!).

Thanks for the kind words. It was a hell of a lot closer than the score indicates. There were a number of times when it could have gone completely differently but the unknown is a killer. Moonshill just didn't know that I had nothing to stop him in a particular corridor. I might add that he used his engineers very effectively. In other words they were a monumental pain in the patoot and I blundered into their traps a number of times.

Oh yeah, I enjoyed the map and while having to bring new troops up from the rear was mildly frustrating, it was the same for both of us and more reflective of actual battlefield reality.

[conboy]

I must say that I very much liked the new scenario. Much improved and easy to understand.
Quite a strong performance by Lynxcom. I never really caught my balance.
I dont like the idea of not being able to recover lost units.

conboy

[roywfw]

I've come across a couple of problems with multiplayer.

The 1st has no effect on game play so it's relatively inconsequential. The message system won't scroll so you can't read any more than the first 3 or 4 messages.

The 2nd is more problematic. I have played the same number of turns in both matches in the current round and yet the turn numbers don't match up for both games. For example, before starting my most recent turn, the menu page showed one game on turn 3 and the other on turn 5. The discrepancy is further demonstrated by the recon plane that the German side has. Both my opponent, Shards, and I spent the first 3 turns (it was 3 turns from my perspective) moving the planes east toward the Russian side of the map and yet his plane moved a whole turns worth of movement points farther than my plane was capable of. On top of that, I don't think that this is the first time this has happened. In the first round, I suspect the same thing happened to Moonshill in that, I think, his first turn was omitted (great for me, not so great for him). From my perspective, this is what happened... after purchasing and placing my units (turn 1) I submitted my first movement orders (turn 2) and when I watched the replay before figuring out the next turns moves, the replay showed all my moves as expected but there was no change to Moonshill's map footprint. I didn't expect to see any of his units but I did expect to see an expanding map footprint. I was surprised but just assumed that he was bunkering down or engaged in some other unknown strategy. Now I suspect that we both experienced a lost first turn.

I may be all wet and there may be some game mechanic going on that I absolutely don't understand but, on the other hand, there might be a problem that needs examining.

Let me add that if indeed I lost a turn somehow, I don't think it makes much difference to the outcome of my game with Shards as he is thumping me like a drum!

[Shards]

Hmm, the interesting thing there is that you deployed and then immediately moved? That's not generally how these maps work, you deploy, I deploy, then you make your T1 moves...

I can't remember seeing that happen personally, and I didn't notice anything odd when seeing the replays of your turns...

I'll take a look at the turn submission log on the back end see if I can see anything odd.

[roywfw]

I apparently stated the order of events poorly.

turn #1 - purchased and placed units, submitted turn.
When it was my turn again...
turn #2 - submitted first movement orders.
When it was my turn again...
turn #3 - rinse and repeat.

Did my map footprint expand at all in your turn replay of the first turn of movement?

[Shards]

Hi,

Yeah, I saw your worm-sign on both Russia and Germany first turns.

[Erik2]

Currently playing Raseiniai, we're about equally good/bad
What we've noticed is that both of us roll over the Soviets when we play the Germans.
Also, the Soviets run out of resources pretty fast while the Germans wade in monetas.

Anyone else have the same experience?

[conboy]

Yeah pretty much. I was able to pull a sort-of-victory out of utter disaster on the German side. My Soviet opponent (yanndab1) jumped way out as the Soviets and racked up a lot of points in the southeast villages that set me off-balance the whole match. He jes plain whup me the other way around. And I thought I knew how to play the Soviets... But we play both sides so that's the way it goes.

Shards, I like the match set-up on both these scenarios. Maybe a spotter plane for the Soviets would have been a little more realistic. But thass okay, both guys have to play it.

!BUT! both of my games against this tournament's opponents have been like, "conboy, go sandpaper that wildcat's ass until it is smooth and shiny." Very hard to salvage any dignity out of a task like that. I got no luck of the draw this time around.

What bothers me more than anything about this first official tournament is that I am 1 point behind you, Erik, at this point. Grrr!

conboy

ps -- I never had any issues running out of RPeez on the Soviet side.

[pullg]

Ah -- hadn't realized we were supposed to play each scenario from both sides simultaneously...will have to keep that in mind next time.

[Erik2]

I don't care how I fare in the tournament, as long as conboy is 1 point (and only one) behind

[roywfw]

Currently playing Raseiniai, we're about equally good/bad
What we've noticed is that both of us roll over the Soviets when we play the Germans.
Also, the Soviets run out of resources pretty fast while the Germans wade in monetas.

Anyone else have the same experience?

Due largely to the kind efforts of Shards in instructing me in the nuances of this fine game, and his apparent belief that I would be better able to absorb the lessons if I wasn't confused with an excess of units, my Russians aren't being constricted by a lack of resources at all.

[roywfw]

Ah -- hadn't realized we were supposed to play each scenario from both sides simultaneously...will have to keep that in mind next time.

I did the same thing but fortunately it was in a test tournament and, believe it or not, I woke up in the middle of the night with an "ah ha!" moment and was only delayed by a couple of turns.