Slitherine

Just had a look at the GS mod, which looks like a superb improvement, great work!

However, it seems there are NO tanks in the Russian 1939 forces? I guess this could be for balancing reasons but it is surely wildly ahistorical:

http://ww2total.com/WW2/History/Orders- ... y-1939.htm

After all, it was with Russia that Germany did lots of blitzkrieg doctrine training to perfect their forces before the war...

trulster wrote:Just had a look at the GS mod, which looks like a superb improvement, great work!

However, it seems there are NO tanks in the Russian 1939 forces? I guess this could be for balancing reasons but it is surely wildly ahistorical:

http://ww2total.com/WW2/History/Orders- ... y-1939.htm

After all, it was with Russia that Germany did lots of blitzkrieg doctrine training to perfect their forces before the war...

The Russians start with several mechanized (not motorized) units. It is these units that represent the Soviet starting tank forces. Going by the source you referenced the Red Army in 1939 had 4 Heavy Tank Brigades and 21 Light Tank Brigades. 4 Heavy Tank Brigades is less than an armor corps. 21 Light Tank Brigades represents 7 divisions and less than three "light" tank corps. The increased number of mechanized units represents this starting Russian tank force, which was distributed across several units. You as the Allied player can decide in in 1939 and 1940 to build up heavier and concentrated tank formations (i.e., tank corps in game terms).

The Russians had mechanized corps until late 1941 when they reformed the armored forces and created tank corps units.

Some links:
http://www.battlefield.ru/en/articles/3 ... s-toe.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_corps_(Soviet_Union)
http://gadabyte.com/ww-ii/soviet_armor.html

The Allied player can build armor units from 1939, thus starting the reorganization early. The Russians have a lot of mech corps in the 1939 scenario, simulating the infantry units strengthened with tank divisions. So by build several tank corps before Barbarossa Russia can have a significant armor force. Removing the initial 4 tank corps units seems more historical because the STAVKA needed the German blitzkrieg experiences and the setbacks in the Finnish Winter War to realize they had to concentrate armor units into corps units.

Another reason to not let the Russians start with tank corps units is to reduce the efficiency of the armor blob strategy the Allied player could use. Some Allied players only built tank corps units and with the at start units could have 12+ tank corps waiting for the Germans in 1941. That meant the German blitzkrieg could end in disaster in 1941, losing most of their own armor units or lots of infantry.

I should know the number off the top of my head but I counted 10 Russian mechanized corps at the start. That's quite a force of AFVs.

Fair enough, a bunch of mechs... still would be better to remove two of them and put in one armour, should not unbalance matters.

trulster wrote:Fair enough, a bunch of mechs... still would be better to remove two of them and put in one armour, should not unbalance matters.

You can always build armor corps units before the start of Barbarossa if you want to.

True, always possible, but not really the point when making a 39 comparison Having France and Italy with armour in 39 and Russia not is a bit off. Also the Red Air Force castrated bit as well I see:p

Well, it is a common problem in WWII games to balance matters making it possible for Germany to copy their historical exploits. CEaW/GS, unlike some others, ties the Russian to their forward deployment ensuring the destruction of the front line units, so there should be less reason to stray so far from historical OoBs. This must be the only aspect in which the orginal CeAW is better than GS, for the rest the latter is way preferable!

trulster wrote:True, always possible, but not really the point when making a 39 comparison Having France and Italy with armour in 39 and Russia not is a bit off. Also the Red Air Force castrated bit as well I see:p

Well, it is a common problem in WWII games to balance matters making it possible for Germany to copy their historical exploits. CEaW/GS, unlike some others, ties the Russian to their forward deployment ensuring the destruction of the front line units, so there should be less reason to stray so far from historical OoBs. This must be the only aspect in which the orginal CeAW is better than GS, for the rest the latter is way preferable!

The design decision was to used mechanized units to represent the Soviet forces in 1939 which had their armor diluted across several units.

Unlike France and Italy who get a chance to move their armor corps before engaging the other side, Russia doesn't. As the Allied player you are free to build armor formations and if you want, you can place them forward so they can get destroyed when the Axis invaded.

Also, we felt the starting 1939 Russian OOB adjustment was a good, and historically defensible, fix to the armor blob strategy, where the Russian player had 12+ armor corps by the summer of 1941. We had discussed imposing force pool limits but decided against it to allow players the ability to choose their strategy and force composition. Though I've never tried it or faced it I dare say that the armor blob strategy is probably devastating in the vanilla game too. Also, in the vanilla game there are no max lab constraints so the Russian player could build infantry and armor labs only only making the armor blob more deadly. It's been 18 months since I played the vanilla game so all this is extrapolation from earlier versions of our mod.

Bottom line is that we think we've found a historically defensible design solution that allows the players to play the game the way they want. Our objective was to produce a fun and balanced mod with near infinite replayability without imposing any house rules.

I use(d) the "armour blob" in the vanilla game.

All I built were Russian tanks. When the Germans invaded...just wait until you get a nice ripe bit sticking out...and "snip". Then run away before too much pounces back on you and keep repeating. Actually ended the German invasion!

Regarding the size of the Russian airforce. Please think about the fact that Germany bombed and destroyed most of the Russian airforce in the initial phase of Barbarossa. Russia was taken by surprise and lost most of their air units while they still were parked on the ground on the airfields.

Also take into consideration that Russia will receive huge reinforcements once USA joins the Allies. 2 armor corps, 2 mech corps, 2 infantry corps, 1 fighter and 1 tac bomber. These units will arrive near Omsk (Siberian reinforcements being sent from the far east).

It's discussable whether Italy should have an armor unit or not. Their armor units were so weak so technically a mech unit would be more accurate. Italy had 3 armored divisions (131 Centauro, 132 Ariete, 133 Littorio). In 1943 came the 135 Ariete. They had plans for the 134 Freccia armored division, but it was never formed. The 136 Giovani Fascisti division was not a real armored division. It was really an infantry division with trucked artillery. The Italian armored divisions were sent to North Africa so combined they qualify as an armored corps. Italy will probably not build new armor units due to low production. So we felt having one armored unit for Italy best reflects their armored capability instead of having 3-4 mech units. There weren't that many units in Libya.

The French also diluted their armor among the infantry and could have been better represented with 3 mech units. Britain has no armor in CeaW although we know they had armor units in France who fought the Germans.

Here is the actual data about how many tanks on each side fought in France in 1940:
German armored strength May 10 1940: 2439 battle tanks, of which 349 Panzer III and 278 Panzer IV.
Allied armored strength May 10 1940: 4204 battle tanks including 300 Somua and 274 Char B.

So the Allies had more armor, but they were less effective because they weren't concentrated. Still we know about Allied armor formations fighting against German armor formations to stop their advance. In order to recreate the Allied counter attack possibility it feels right to concentrate their armor power in one unit (French). Germany should maybe have less armor units and more mech, but we need 3 German armor corps to be able to penetrate the Allied defense line. A game is just a game and can't fully recreate the real war. So sometimes one must design for effect rather than accuracy.

Mech units are NOT the same as motorized units. They start the game with higher ground attack and ground defense all will get more upgrades than the corps unit. Most of their upgrades will come from infantry tech, but some from armor tech.

We've fixed the movement allowance for mech in the winter so they move 2 hexes in clear terrain (and not 1 as before).

Mech units are excellent against enemy cities and more cost efficient than armor. Just play with mech units and then you will see that they're actually well worth buying.

Grand Strategy is not the only game which uses mech corps to represent the initial Russian armored units. I've played several other games doing the same. Many of the changes in GS are based upon ideas introduced in other games.

rkr1958 wrote:I should know the number off the top of my head but I counted 10 Russian mechanized corps at the start. That's quite a force of AFVs.

Yes, the russians had many tanks at the beginning of barbarrosa but most of them were light tanks (mech units could represent this) and unable to be a match for the german panzer forces. Only the KV-1 was a good tank (in fact, it was superior to any other german tank) but there were only a few of them...