Ah, for some reason I missed this comment, sorry:
eskuche wrote: ↑Mon Sep 15, 2025 2:37 pmMore thoughts on balance for MP:
The Allies don't have much to spend prestige on up to 1943. Any Soviet fights that you try to train up experience-wise can be picked off immediately, and upgrades being limited to the far east and 4 trains only, with only a few models worth considering, has been a sad experience. I have 3000-5000 prestige saved up in several games. Maybe I am not looking at it from the right angle, but upgrading a T34/41 to a /42 for 400 prestige, for example, does not make sense at all. Can Soviets only have very limited core slots open for purchase to reward managing prestige well? Say 3-5.
It is indeed somewhat hard to spend Allied prestige up to that point. But in the next version there will be a bit less Allied prestige, which may help. It is also true that there are not a lot of good Allied units to upgrade to in this period. Which is somewhat true historically, though.
Triggers could use some tidying up or documentation. I wasn't clear when all of Tunis was officially conquered (seemed to require all Africa flags). Soviets up by Murmansk randomly unfroze at some point.
Yes indeed, there will be more detailed documentation for the next version, mainly for the multiplayer version, but some of this can be used for the single player as well. The documentation will cover these things, and a lot more.
Can I have far east units unfrozen if Germans don't control, for example, Tobruk by mid-1943; Voronezh by mid-1943.
In the next version the Soviets will get a few more Lend-Lease units if the Axis do not capture Tobruk by mid 1942 and if they do not hold it until November that year, as historically. And then the Soviets get a few more units on top of that if the British capture the other objective cities in North Africa (Tripoli, Benghazi, El Agheila) earlier than historically.
This may help to discourage the Axis player from abandoning North Africa early on. I think this is historically plausible as it appears that the British had hundreds of surplus tanks and other equipment in the Middle East in late 1942 that they did not use in battle for some reason. My guess is that they had more available tanks than crews for them and they also had supply problems. (Delivering fuel and other supplies was difficult due to U-boats and Axis air power.)
As a result, after the El Alamein victory and especially Tunisia, the British had hundreds of Valentine, Grant and Stuart tanks in the theater that they did not need any more. So they tried to send them to the Soviets, but they refused them since they did not like the Grant and Stuart tanks and they considered their own massed produced T-34 superior to these anyway. They only wanted the Valentines. And so the British ended up sending some of these surplus and now obsolete tanks to Australia and India. But my impression is most of these ended up on a scrapyard without firing a single round in battle.
My argument is that, had the Germans abandoned North Africa earlier, the British would not have needed these tanks in that theater earlier in 1942, and then the Soviets might have accepted them at that time since they were in a more desperate situation before the Stalingrad victory.
In conjunction with this, would like to have some no-fly zones for paras (none of my opponents have used this tactic yet but I can imagine I am tempted by it) deep in Russian territory if key Soviet cities are not claimed.
It is highly recommended to play the mod with the house rule of not dropping German paratroopers further than 12-13 hexes from the nearest Axis airfield. That's the approximate range of the Ju 52 transport plane in the scale of the mod. And then ferrying Axis units between Axis airfields should be allowed to double that range. This should apply to both single and multiplayer games.
There is not much I can do about that due to the hard coded game limitation that air transports do not use fuel, giving them unlimited range by default.
Other than that, in the next version most of the Allied airfields in the hinterland will have a fixed unit to occupy it, preventing the Axis player from capturing it easily by air, in case if he does not follow this home rule.
Soviet logistics is also quite cumbersome. In the snow with only 3 trains, I spend about half my turn moving units forward step by step by step. I understand the spawn points have to be this way because the Germans may be pushed forward in varying amounts. Suggestion: expand number of trains by 1-3, perhaps over time, expand upgrade cities' upgrade and train hexes by 1-2 each, e.g., have 3 city hex tiles with railroads in the spawn points.
I actually like it that way (and by the way, there are 4 and not 3 available Allied train transports) and it helps to create the Soviet "Steamroller" effect: a cumbersome, but largely unstoppable force moving slowly to the west. I had the "misfortune"
to experience that first hand in my recent multiplayer match vs. Duedman. And even that match ended earlier than it should have ended historically. Had the Allied side have even more train transports, the Soviets would advance even faster, potentially ending the game even earlier...
Unit balance: I am not sure at what point soviets will get better planes, but the VVS and even heavy anti-air are quite poor performers, perhaps somewhat historically, but unrewarding from a gameplay perspective. I have turns where my entire AA battery of 5-6 units around Moscow get 0 casualties. Perhaps time will tell, but there is basically no competing in the air whatsoever (even with heavily banked air forces).
I think that was bad luck. I had the exact opposite experience in my recent MP match. Me and Duedman were on the opinion that especially the Soviet heavy AAs were a bit too effective: they allow the Allied player to shoot at enemy fighters from behind the frontline, weakening them just enough to make them vulnerable to massed Soviet fighter attacks. But this was in the latest BE 2.5 beta version, which had slightly weaker Axis fighters and more Soviet mobile AAs, which also helped the Allied player.
Anyway, this will be rebalanced in the next version as well: it appears that historically the Soviets mainly used their heavy AAs for the point defense of important cities and industrial centers against the German medium bombers in the hinterland. Their main frontline AA weapon was the the medium 37 mm autocannon and that was responsible for about two thirds of the kill claims while the heavy AA guns claimed about a quarter of the enemy planes shot down. So in the next version there will be more Soviet 37 mm medium AA guns in the frontline and there will also be a few more truck mounted autocannons than earlier. The Americans also delivered about 5000 of their own similar 40 mm M1 AA guns to the Soviets and these will also appear. And most of the heavy AA guns will be used for fixed defense.
Not to mention the weather with 80% accuracy extremely favors the Axis. One turn of snow that is actually cloudy will lead to all the VVS demolished.
True, and there's not much to do about it, other than being cautious when playing the Allies. And also, on the other hand: one turn of predicted cloudy that is actually snow is a missed opportunity for the Allied player.
Either way, the (partial) randomness of weather can greatly affect the outcome, especially the MP games. Again, not much to do about it, other than making all the weather fully scripted but that would obviously take away the unpredictability factor, which would be even worse.
