Proposed Change to Supply Level Distances

[Plaid]

Now we're worried about a tac blob? Have you ever looked at the original 1944 scenario? England resembles one huge aircraft carrier. How did the Germans smash through Europe? By concentrating air at points needed to be taken. How did the Allied invasion of Anzio survive despite the fact that the encircling German forces had numerical superiority? With air and naval supremacy. How did the invasion of Normandy succeed? Air and naval supremacy protecting and supporting offensive and defensive operations. Blobs won the war for the Allies. Are we going to limit them, too?

Yes, allies have many airpower late game and in 1944 scenario, but they still have balanced all-around armies. Blob is when 90% of units on the map are TACs, how would you like it?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I don't think we can blindly look at production numbers when it comes to production capacity. E. g. Speer turned the German war machine into a very efficient machine where most factories were used for war production. Early in the war Hitler wanted to let the German population have luxury goods etc., but later in the war such production was changed towards military materials.

USA, on the other hand, still had quite a lot of production that was intended for the US public and not the armed forces. The US population still received a lot of peace time goods. So US production capacity wasn't completely geared for war.

E. g. Japan's capacity was said to be just 3%, but still they managed to keep USA at bay for several years. Most US production went to the Pacific and USA also helped Britain and Russia with lots of goods (simulated by convoys). So US production in GS is not too low in my opinion. If you look at the number of units that USA has in GS in e. g. June 1944 you see that they have about as many as they had in the real war.

I believe that the Allies don't win the war unless they put quite a bit of effort on strategic bombing. It's possible to keep the German production below 100 at the time of Overlord if you have maybe 10 strategic bombers stationed in Britain and Italy. If Russia helps with 2 bombers as well going after Ploesti you can hurt the Germans on PP's and also oil. Germany will end up with manpower problems anyway due to losses every turn.

What's important is what you can do with the units you build and I feel that the western Allies have the strength they should have in 1944 using the production they have at the moment. I think that Britain is maybe a bit too strong and USA a bit too weak, but combined they have the correct strength. So one way could be to lower the British production and increase the US production. Since the British production in England is so low it means we need to lower the sizes of the convoys and let the production remain in USA. That means the Germans have less to fight for i the Atlantic and that's not good either.

[Plaid]

By the way current german oil income can maintain 12+ armor units? Surprising.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think we should remember that we're playing a GAME here, not a real war simulator. It's easy to make a simulator that puts so many restrictions on the players that they have to follow the historical path. But players don't want to play such games. They want to have the freedom to explore alternative strategies. We have to allow players to do that, e. g. by building a really strong armor force. Since we allow the players having freedom to decide where to attack, when to attack, what to build etc. we need other methods to prevent the game from being ruined by weaknesses in he game rules.

With the German armor blob situation we should ask ourselves what would have happened if the real Germans had formed 12 Panzergruppen instead of just 4 for the east front. How long could the Germans have supplied these units with oil and shells. Germany had limited supply of oil and if they had put too much effort into oil consuming units they could have run out of oil too early.

So one way to make the armor blob less attractive could be to let the armor oil consumption start at 3 instead of 2 and remove one of the later increases. That means the armor units would be at 4 oil consumption for the start of Barbarossa. Unfortunately I don't think this will work against the armor blob created by Morris. The reason is that he hasn't built a single air unit so he's saving a lot of oil using less oil on airstrikes. That compensates for the extra oil used by having many armor units.

That means the remedy we have left is to do something with the ability to push deep into enemy territory. Units in GS has a quite good range. Infantry 4, mech 5 and armor 6. It's the good movement range that causes the problems. High MP's are needed to be able to move from ZOC to ZOC (costs 2 extra MP's) and these type of units certainly had the ability to push through holes in enemy lines.

So one alternative could be to do the following:
* Reduce the infantry MP from 4 to 3
* Reduce the mech MP from 5 to 4
* Reduce the armor MP from 6 to 5
* Reduce the ZOC to ZOC extra MP from 2 to 1

This means the units can't push as far per turn in uncontested territory, but movement near enemies won't be affected. This will certainly have an effect. Then we can keep the supply reduction range of (20/40) instead of (15/30).

I believe the German armor blob will eventually meet its doom because of the major weakness of putting everything in one basket (land units). The Axis player doesn't build air units and that means the Allies and Russians can just build hordes of tac bombers with just a few fighters to engage the onmap Axis fighters. The Allies will soon get air tech superiority in the air. The Axis will the realize that their shiny armor units aren't worth much when they're bombarded every turn by Allied and Russian tac bombers. It's too late to put effort into air tech.

So the German armor blob relies upon getting to Omsk in 1942 and knock Russia out of the war. If the movement range had been slightly lower then such a strategy would have been less attractive.

On the other hand, we just can't make special rules for every creative strategy people find. That takes out much of the fun of playing. In most cases players are good at finding counter strategies against clever ideas and then the idea won't be used anymore. E. g. before most Axis players invaded Greece by sea. Now it's considered too risky and they invade from Yugoslavia instead.

What we should be concerned about are strategies that exploit the game rules to give results that were impossible in the real war and no apparent way to counter these strategies exist. In those cases we need to do something. We did it against the Russian armor blob and I hope we can do it against the German armor blob without limiting the choices made by the players. The key is to find the right remedy.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I strongly disagree with Notapacifists claim that GS has ruined the chances for naval invasion. In CeaW you could not land in an occupied hex and air units were strong obstables in coastal hexes. So it was standard procedure to garrison every hex possible where the invaders were. I managed to fend off Joe for more than one game year in France using that strategy in 1943.

In GS you have got amphs that can invade enemy occupied hexes. Air units are much weaker against ground units so using them as coastal barriers is a bad idea. The BB's and DD's can still inflict efficiency damage on coastal units in addition to occasional step losses.

In CeaW there was no para units so you couldn't support naval invasions with paradrops. I simply don't see how these changes actually make naval invasions harder.

I believe Notapacifist is referring to max 2 airstrikes per hex. In earlier versions of the BJR mod we didn't have such a limitation and then the game was ruined by concentrated airstrikes. I can give you one example we used. The Allies send a transport adjacent to Rome and place lots of tac bombers on Sardinia, Corsica etc. Then the tac bombers all concentrate on the Rome hex. With 10 air units bombarding the hex you will finally destroy the defender there. Then the transport can land in the empty Rome hex and force an Italian surrender. No reason to invade Sicily or mainland Italy. THAT is a huge game flaw and we removed it.

We had similar other situation. With concentrated airpower on a single hex it was simple for the Allies to e. g. harass the Germans in France by concentrating airpower to kill one armor unit at a time. There was no way the Germans could have units stationed near the coastal hexes. They would simply be destroyed by concentrated air power. So the coastal area couldn't be manned by the Axis and the Allies could easily land their invaders with little opposition.

Remember that we're playing with corps sized units. I don't think the USAF alone could wipe out an entire panzer corps. Airstrikes were used to soften up the defender and now they do that. You lower the efficiency so much and inflict some step losses so the defender has the choice of repairing losses to retreat out of harm's way. With such airstrikes you ensure that the units that can attack your units at the beachheads are significantly weakened.

When I attack I usually let 1-2 air units soften up the defending hex and then the combat odds are much better. Retreats become more likely etc.

[PionUrpo]

Now we're worried about a tac blob? Have you ever looked at the original 1944 scenario? England resembles one huge aircraft carrier. How did the Germans smash through Europe? By concentrating air at points needed to be taken. How did the Allied invasion of Anzio survive despite the fact that the encircling German forces had numerical superiority? With air and naval supremacy. How did the invasion of Normandy succeed? Air and naval supremacy protecting and supporting offensive and defensive operations. Blobs won the war for the Allies. Are we going to limit them, too?

Thing isn't the amount of air units but without any limit you can concentrate enough against one ground unit to wholly annihilate it. In WW2 no air attacks alone could completely wipe out corps sized units. If that were the case, why would Allies bother landing? Just bomb everything down. Every landing had huge amount of initial air/naval support but there's still the need to fight it out on land as well.

Do you have any data to back this up? The US was entirely galvanized for war. Granted, nobody wanted to invade Japan and fight hand to hand all the way to the Emperor's palace.

Against Japan I'm 100% sure the US would go for the kill no matter what due to the shock of PH. However, I was refering to Europe if USSR would somehow fall. It's still very likely they fight to death (esp. after Nazi atrocities are exposed) but landings aren't happening in time for the GAMEs timescale (i.e '44 latest if want to make it to Berlin in time for game end.) if there is no Eastern Front.

Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Jugoslavia, Greece, Moscow...maybe Gorki, and Italy were all meant to fall for reasons that began long before WWII started. It was only Hitlerian stupidity that stopped it happening in Russia. We have a game where the Axis player can avoid Hitlerian stupidity...but he's hampered or we want to hamper him in so many ways that he can do no better than Hitler. Where is inspiration to play where one is confined so tightly?

Sorry but there's no way that all is somehow predestined to fall if there's no 'Hitlerian' mistakes. Allies can do so much better as well. Frankly, it's a miracle Axis they got as far as they did.

I could ask why no possibility for Allies to do the smart thing and ending Fall Gelb on start lines by stopping German Army to Ardennes. This would completely play havoc with the game. Choices can still be made but there's no way to make every single choice possible with one game engine. Thus, IMO the need to keep Russia competetive enough in the game.

Destroying a unit from the air has to simulate many things in this game since they aren't part of the engine. It has to simulate casualties. It has to simulate disruption. It has to simulate impediments to reinforcement.

It is simulated well enough without destroying whole units. As long as enough enemy units are bombed (twice) they can't be used against e.g. a beachhead with full strenght/effectiveness. So far I've managed landings safely enough with that. Only situation I could think this doesn't cut it, is when an area is complete blocked with units (GAR mostly) but I would think there's better solution than making TACs able vaporize entire armies.

We worry about blobs being gamey when the gamiest thing off all is to build so many gars that movement is brought to a halt.

Here's the latest advice given to me from an opponent as the Russians neared my fortress line in eastern Germany: "this is where I sell off all of my labs and buy a ton of gars." I couldn't do it because I'd already sold off all of my labs two turns previously to build inf and mechs.

Well, this I do agree with. Although I don't build these double garrison lines because they have absolutely no other value than to hold couple more turns. No way but down from that point.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Notapacifist claims that GS game balance is broken. It's certainly not perfect, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it broken. It's DIFFERENT from vanilla CeaW and that means you need to find other methods to get good results.

E. g. a few weeks ago several beta testers felt it was too hard for the Axis even get to the historical winter 1941 line in GS v2.0. Suddenly we have Morris who finds another strategy and now we're discussing how it's possible to stop the Germans from getting to the Urals in 1941.

This just proves that none of us have yet figured out the optimal way to get results in GS. We can still improve our gameplay a lot. So before claiming that a game is broken I think it's better to try out different strategies that give better results. Most strategies can be countered by another strategy. It's like chess. If you always find the good response to your opponents moves you keep the balance. Once one player makes a mistake the initiative shifts to the opponent and you may end up being forced to make suboptimal choices to avoid losing on the spot. Over time these suboptimal choices will add up to a serious disadvantage and your opponent can exploit that to win the chess game. If you make less mistakes than your enemy you will win.

We can't get a perfectly balanced GS game, but if we can give both sides a fair chance of winning then the game would be fun to play. If one side would win all the time then it's not fun to play. I would only call a game broken if it's not pretty well balanced. So far I have seen no evidence that GS v2.0 is broken as Notapacifist claims. GS v1.0 had combat results of about 60% / 40% in the favor of the Allies. With GS v2.0 we don't know the numbers, but we've seen enough victories from both sides to believe that the numbers are closer to 50% / 50%.

A game can be "broken" for a person if he's unable to find a way to win the game, but it doesn't necessarily mean the game is really broken. It could be others know how to deal with certain challenges and then it can be balanced for them. I agree that amphibious landings are not easy in GS, but it surely wasn't in the real war either. Just think about the speech Eisenhower wrote about a failed Overlord. Even on the day of the invasion he feared it would fail completely. It was a big risk to take and even with complete air and naval supremacy the Allies could have been defeated on the beaches. One reason it didn't happen was because Hitler refused to release the German armor reserves because he believed Overlord was a feint. He wanted the reserves close to Calais. God knows what would have happened if Rommel had got his way and the reserves would have been released upon the Normandy beaches.

I prefer to play games with challenges for both sides. You should feel your strategy was vital to your victory. If you can win on auto-pilot then the game is not fun for me. So if Notapacifist is met with Axis double defense lines everywhere in 1944 then I would think he must have been too passive with the Allies allowing them to build so many units. If you don't bombard the Axis resources and cities then you can end up with such a situation. You need to create front lines in the Med no later than 1942 and so on.

[NotaPacifist]

You're right. It is just a game with a script that we keep trying to change because we've put in place too many ways to take advantage (gaminess) by removing the abilities of airpower. How long will we keep tweaking? Now we consider yet another tweak to Axis oil usage.

I'm not trying to be rude. But I can only present so much data before I am forced to give up before stubborn opposition.

Imagine the Typhoon Wing over Falaise Gap.

"Tally ho! German panzers at two o'clock...looks like about a dozen of them! Alpha Group, take them out with your rockets!
"Roger, Alpha Squadron attacking...Firing! Alpha group to Wing Commander...We only got two of them, RTB to reload."
"Baker Squadron, your turn...get them all and I'm buying the Guinness!"
"Roger, Baker Group attacking...Bloody ell' I got oil on my windscreen. Looks like you're not buying the drinks tonight."
"Charlie Squadron ready to attack wing commander!"
"Negative Charlie Squadron! The rules are the rules, Old man! Can't have Jerry crying foul now, can we? I think we passed over a bakery ten minutes ago. Better use your rockets on that."

[gerones]

So one alternative could be to do the following:
* Reduce the infantry MP from 4 to 3
* Reduce the mech MP from 5 to 4
* Reduce the armor MP from 6 to 5
* Reduce the ZOC to ZOC extra MP from 2 to 1

Such change with the GS release so close would have to be tested. People is just used to current rules about units MP´s in CEAW GS so they would have to familiarize with this big change.

I like the idea of increasing oil consumption in armour units for Barbarossa. This increased consumption of german armoured units plus the new supply range limits seems like the easier solution and it should be definitely enough to counter german armoured blob.

We can let for the future the rest of the changes suggested.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I don't see the 2 airstrike per hex as the real problem. It certainly wouldn't help the Russians against the German armor blob because the Russians have a very small airforce in 1941.

We haven't said we will alter oil consumption. What we did was to ask the question what would be the problem for the real Germans building more than double the amount of armor units than then did. Would oil then be a problem? I concluded that altering the German armor oil consumption would NOT help against the armor blob because having less air units means less oil spent on airstrikes. So oil would not solve the problem.

Altering the movement allowance or having supply range lower in 1939-1941 could help a little. The latter will have little consequence on the game balance because it would only affect situations where the Germans push beyond Moscow in 1941.

What's a fact is that the Russians used broad rail gauge and the Germans had to convert them to standard gauge when they conquered Russian territory. That took time. The result of that was that supplies from Germany being sent by rail had to stop quite far to the west of the front line and sent further by trucks. Trucks had a certain range so the Germans couldn't move too far away from their rail heads without suffering supply problems.

It's not scripting simulating such a situation in GS. Many other wargames have rail lines on the map and rail conversion units. E. g. War in Europe has this and in this game the Germans even have a problem getting to Moscow in 1941. They have to attack unsupported for some turns because the front line units are outside the range of the trucks that can move eastwards when rail heads move 1 hex eastwards each turn.

I would claim that a game where the Germans can sprint to the Urals with a certain strategy is NOT a good simulation of WW2 in Europe.

Changing the air rules won't change anything about that situation so we don't need to explore that path. I don't understand why you still talk about the max 2 airstrikes per hex as a major problem. Most players do very well with this rules. If you don't then you can alter general.txt and set the limit to 99 or whatever value you want. There are actually many values that can be changed in general.txt.

[NotaPacifist]

How can it be considered 'almost a miracle' that the Axis got as far as they did? In France they fought superior sized armies using tactics that were new. In the Balkans they were fighting smaller armies with outdated equipment still using those same tactics. And they got close enough to Moscow to see the spires of the Kremlin fighting an army whose leadership had been gutted by a political party that was so afraid of a non-existant internal enemy that their army was reduced to ineffectualness. And this despite a huge southward turn of their main thrust followed by poor weather conditions.

Please explain this 'miracle'.

[NotaPacifist]

If you don't then you can alter general.txt and set the limit to 99 or whatever value you want. There are actually many values that can be changed in general.txt.

Nobody wants to do this in a PBEM environment.

[NotaPacifist]

I know about the rail gauge, I know about supply difficulties. I'm just talking about facts. Did Germans see the Spires of the Kremlin? Yes. Did Hitler turn south when he could have continued east? Yes. Did whoever had air superiority at the time bomb the crap outta whoever stood in their way? Yes. Was the US a production giant? Yes.

Why do Axis players quit trying to defend with air units? Because they know they can, and as long as their line can be replenished cheaply, they will. They can go deep into negative PP's by having Bulgars, Romanians, and Hungarians on their beachfront when they need.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

So one alternative could be to do the following:
* Reduce the infantry MP from 4 to 3
* Reduce the mech MP from 5 to 4
* Reduce the armor MP from 6 to 5
* Reduce the ZOC to ZOC extra MP from 2 to 1

Such change with the GS release so close would have to be tested. People is just used to current rules about units MP´s in CEAW GS so they would have to familiarize with this big change.

I like the idea of increasing oil consumption in armour units for Barbarossa. This increased consumption of german armoured units plus the new supply range limits seems like the easier solution and it should be definitely enough to counter german armoured blob.

We can let for the future the rest of the changes suggested.

I agree with that and therefore we should try to find another solution like the supply range lower in 1939-1941 or a production limit. It's possible that the lowered supply range won't help very much. Only playtesting will show that. Neil will try that out soon. Production limit will surely help, but by doing that we restrict the player choices and that's not a good thing in my opinion. It should be the last resort.

Another possibility is, of course, to do nothing, hoping that nobody will adopt Morris'es strategy. If they do then I'm sure we will have players claiming that GS is unplayable for the Allies because they get wiped by the German armor blob strategy. Do we really want that? If elite players like Neil gets wiped by this strategies 3 times then something is definitely wrong. Neil improved his defense in Russia in each run and still had no chance being overrun even when setting the Russian main line as far back as Moscow.

The main culprit is that the Russian units are too low on efficiency because they need to be railed / moved from their initial positions to the main defense line. We added the lowered efficiency regain in Russia to prevent the defense at Dnepr strategy from stopping the Germans in every game. The change worked, but that makes the Russians are too weak to make any counter attacks.

I don't have a really good and simple solution and just give hints about different possibilities we could discuss. Once we have something we can use then we can adapt that. Since we don't want to delay release we need to find a solution that won't alter game balance elsewhere. Changing the movement allowance WILL do that and not be a good solution, NOW.

The simplest solution for a game developer would be to create an iron wall in Russia from Leningrad to Rostov that would only be lifted in 1942. German units moving through the wall could be sent to the force pool and we could claim it's a "bug". :p Joke aside, I think we need to find a way to deal with the armor blob before we release GS v2.0

[Peter Stauffenberg]

If you don't then you can alter general.txt and set the limit to 99 or whatever value you want. There are actually many values that can be changed in general.txt.

Nobody wants to do this in a PBEM environment.

Why not? If people feel like you do then I'm sure they would change that value. If they feel the current restriction is better they keep it at 2. I've only heard you speak about the airstrike limit of 2 as a problem. So it doesn't seem that most people agree with you there.

It's not possible to get people to agree upon every little rule. When we introduce changes we vote on that and most often follow the majority of votes. That means a minority didn't agree upon that rule. Still they accept that and move on. Some even change their minds later.

Sometimes we make a change that was stupid and we go back. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened. So far I have heard very few arguments that having an airstrike limit of 2 is worse than no limit.

How do you intend to prevent the cheesy way of taking Rome with unlimited airstrikes that I just described? That was the situation in vanilla CeaW. Do you reallly feel that's better? Players will exploit every possibility they can if it's allowed in the game engine.

[Plaid]

How can it be considered 'almost a miracle' that the Axis got as far as they did? In France they fought superior sized armies using tactics that were new. In the Balkans they were fighting smaller armies with outdated equipment still using those same tactics. And they got close enough to Moscow to see the spires of the Kremlin fighting an army whose leadership had been gutted by a political party that was so afraid of a non-existant internal enemy that their army was reduced to ineffectualness. And this despite a huge southward turn of their main thrust followed by poor weather conditions.

Please explain this 'miracle'.

Norway, France, Crete. All of this had less then 50% success chance for axis and they won. Several in a line. It can be called almost miracle, why not?

[Plaid]

Did Germans see the Spires of the Kremlin?

never. only from the air maybe.

[NotaPacifist]

Did Germans see the Spires of the Kremlin?

never. only from the air maybe.

This is wrong. It's been documented many times.

[Plaid]

Did Germans see the Spires of the Kremlin?Khimki was the site of the closest German advance to Moscow in November–December 1941.
never. only from the air maybe.

This is wrong. It's been documented many times.

Khimki was the site of the closest German advance to Moscow in November–December 1941.

Its 26 kilometers from Moscow.

Spires of Kremlis is beatuiful word by some german general. More likely he had seen suburb barracks

[richardsd]

I think the supply change will most likely be enough outside of weather issues - fine from April to end of Oct will still be enough though