Slitherine

One thing that has always bugged me is that major fortress cities like Sevastopol and Leningrad fall too easily. One reason is that you can bombard the unit down to almost 0 efficiency and then you can storm the fortress with few losses. You just need to inflict more damage that the unit in the fortress can repair and you will capture it in a few turns.

Leningrad survived a more than 900 day siege. That is not possible to do in GS v2.0. Sevastopol only fell after Germany heavily bombarded the city for several turns, using e. g. the huge rail gun artillery.

On the other hand we don't want the normal fortresses to become tougher because you need to have a fair chance to take e. g. the Gustav fortresses or the Atlantic wall fortresses.

Leningrad should actually have been a capital because it's as big as Moscow. A capital has an entrenchment level of 8 instead of just 4. That's one reason the fortress falls too early.

Maybe we could have a simple rule that the max entrenchment level of a fortress is 4 + max production from the city. Leningrad has a max production of 6 so it means it will have a max entrenchment level of 10. Since it can be attacked from 4 sides it means it can drop quite fast, but with such initial high entrenchment level it means initial losses will be very high for the Axis. Sevastopol has production of 3 and can then have max entrenchment of 7.

It's possible for the Axis to send 2 air units to the fortress per turn to slowly drop the entrenchment level. It loses 2 and regains 1 every turn. Then it will take quite some time before it's far enough down to be able to storm it. The Axis can't do that for very long because they burn quite a bit of oil and lose bomber steps to flak. The western Allies can bombard the Atlantic wall fortresses before Overlord and have the PP's to pay for the flak losses. So the fortresses will be quite low on entrenchment when Overlord begins.

Normal fortresses don't have production so they won't get an increase because of this rule. Most named fortresses will have production of 1 so the increase is minor. The biggest change will be Leningrad and to some lesser degree Sevastopol.

Leningrad can still fall, but it will require a dedicated effort from the Germans for many turns like designating 2 bombers per turn to Leningrad until you get the level down to about 3-4 when you can think of storming the fortress.

Another change we could add to fortresses is that you can't drop the strength of the hex further down than the entrenchment level of the fortress. E. g. if Leningrad has an entrenchment level of 6 remaining the the strength will be upped to 6 at the end of the turn if it was dropped below before. That means the units inside will get normal supply and can repair 3 steps instead of just 1 or 2. So in order to take the fortress you first need to drop the entrenchment level.

What do you think. Should we add such a rule to fortresses so we can give the major ones a chance to withstand a few more turns before they would collapse?

Please vote separately for.

1. Max entrenchment level = 4 + max fortress production
2. Minimum fortress strength = current entrenchment level

I would say yes to number one

No to both if you ask me.
Leningrad was not fortress at all, it had no special fortification other then naval base coastal defence system.
Only reason it holded for 900 day is that noone even bothered to assault it.

Sevastopol had solid fortifications, but with corps unit inside it takes several turns to smoke the unit out already.
Real germans attempted first assault on the city during winter and didnt have success (and I am sure in game you also will not succed in winter there).
Second assault which taken place in summer succed in less then 1 month.

Actually I believe forts are TO STRONG in game. Several forts in difficult places (like Gibraltar) can be attacked only from 2 sides, one of them is cross-river and you can't even remove ent without wasting land attack. With tough unit placed there fort can hold for VERY long (while I don't think that in reality Gibraltar will be serious trouble for dedicated all-out german attack, but in game you can't go all-out and overwhelm by numbers, because you have only 2 hexes to attack from.

By the way I think game will have much more drama (especially 1041 Barbarossa scenario) if we remove soviet capital from Omsk and place capitals in Moscow Stalingrad and Leningrad (historical objectives for german army groups by the way). So soviet player will be forced to put minimal resistance like in reality, instead of running all the way to the east, no matter how far. In games under current rules (like SM vs Morris 1st one) great progress on 1941 Barbarossa lead only to germans being lured deep into soviet territory and mauled there by soviets, who can fleed all the summer with minimal casualties, no matter how far. As axis you can start invasion in USSR in May, travel deep and deeper into USSR and for nothing?

The game engine has room for 2 capitals. If we move the capital from Omsk to Leningrad then Russia will surrender when both Leningrad and Moscow are captured. That's not right. Russia had plans to move the capital to Omsk if Moscow had been taken. Kuibyshev was only the first stop for the relocation.

The point is that Leningrad is a major city that is larger than most capitals. Taking Leningrad was not as easy as taking e. g. Novgorod.

I agree that Leningrad is no real fortress, but it's not just a city either. What I want is to have an entrenchment level of 8 and not just 5.

Germany tried to take Leningrad, but didn't make the progress they hoped for and didn't want to take the heavy losses storming the city would require.

I vote no as well - with a defensive leader I usually manage to hold it.

I'm with Plaid here. Stick a mech or corps with a cheap +1 def leader on certain forts and they will already hold quite long. Only reason Leningrad falls so easily is because Finnish front can be used for the assault which, I won't say never would've happened, but would've been highly unlikely to say the least. That said, if Leningrad really feels an issue, why not just have a special rule to cover it.

perhaps

max fort entrenchment = max fort production OR 4 when max production is less than 4?

no
no

No and no.

In most games I've played the Russians can hold onto Leningrad (using if needed a mech corps with a +1 defensive leader), unless the Axis have made Leningrad their major focal point. I don't think we should create yet one more difficulty for the Axis.

I agree with Plaid assessment.

I think that cities like Leningrad or Stalingrad can be captured rather "easily" is the result of the abstraction of the game. In the real war cities were completely destroyed if both sides decided to fight for it and the fighting was rather long. In GS cities will most likely not hold very long if one sides committs enough forces. This is even true for fortresses. If you employ two TACs, your best and most experienced ground units and if possibe shore bombardment and perhaps paras even a fortress like Gibraltar will fall after about 3 turns.

I think this thread has much to do with the new upcoming map changes in northern Russia so the germans will find a little bit easier to reach and attack Leningrad. So one thing we could do is to revise a little russian OOB in Leningrad military district and then to add some extra garrisons units in the area (reducing the ones coming in august in the same number added) and/or to make the unit at Leningrad a mech unit (looking at russian OOB in 1941 this would be accurate: http://niehorster.orbat.com/012_ussr/41 ... ngrad.html).

I was mainly commenting the discrepancy between capitals having entrencment level of 8 and fortresses just 4. That's fine for smaller cities and non-city fortresses. My point is that Leningrad is a HUGE city that should have had the same defense capabilities as a capital. Leningrad was almost as big as Moscow.

The more time consuming task could be to create a tertiary capital for Russia only so we could place a capital in Leningrad. I don't want to remove the Omsk capital.

Another way to do it is to move the primary capital from Moscow to Omsk if Moscow falls or the secondary capital from Leningrad to Omsk if Leningrad falls. The problem with that is that if the Germans surround Leningrad and Moscow then all other hexes in Russia will only have supply level 3.

So changing Leningrad to a capital is maybe not a bad thing, but it would require some coding. One is that existing save games would be invalidated because you have to store another variable for the country. So moving the capital is maybe easier because it was what happened in the real war.

What do you think is the best option here? Capitals have better defense than cities and Leningrad certainly would qualify as a capital when it comes to difficulty capturing it. A side effect of Leningrad being a capital is that it will provide supply level 5 so you can repair 5 steps per turn unless you manage to bombard the city strength so far down so it loses it supply capability while isolated. That would make it slightly harder to take the city if you keep up the pressure.

So please vote on the following. What should we do about Leningrad

1. Keep it as a fortress with max entrenchment 4
2. Make it a capital and introduce a tertiary capital for Russia (will invalidate save games)
3. Make it a capital and instead move Leningrad or Moscow to Omsk (that will become a capital) if one of the cities are captured (will not invalidate save games I hope). The problem is that it might look silly if e. g. Moscow is downgraded to a city if captured so we just keep 2 capitals in Russia.
4. Keep Leningrad as a city, but check if we can allow Leningrad to have same defense capabilities as a capital (max entrenchment level 8 and better defense). Problem with that is that it will be hard for players to understand special rules. We could maybe fix that by having a special city image
for Leningrad, e. g. by having a bigger circle. That means we in fact have created a major city resource type and then maybe some will claim that other cities should have the same.

2 I wouldn't worry about invalidating games...this is a beta.

I don't think that a higher entrenchment level would change much in case of Leningrad as the city can be attacked from four sides with ground unit, i.e. the Axis can deliver up to six attacks per turn against the city.

I also do not agree that is is so easy to capture Leningrad in the game. Only if the Axis commit enough effort to capture the city, it will succeed. The best defense strategy for Leningrad is to avoid that the city becomes encircled. This is not so hard to achieve. The two for the Finnish front should be quickly exchanged with INF. Furthermore, the Soviet should form a defense line at the bottleneck an Pskov. A committed Axis player in an early Babarossa will be able to breach this line and manage to encircle the city, but it will be costly and I think this is fair enough.

So I vote for No. 1.

I vote 1
any other choice will make the USSR stronger . Since I do believe even without this change, Allies has the upper hand . So it will make the game too difficult to the Axis player .

I agree with Zechi here. One of the reasons of my weak 1941 Barbarossa in the southern sector of USSR in my AAR game against Mikko was that Luftwaffe forces were mostly concentrated in the north to achieve the surrender of Leningrad. So actually it is an axis player choice to attack Leningrad so he will have to keep in mind that this would mean a weak Barbarossa in the more strategical south.

Anyway, if changing something here, I kind of like 4 (to create a special city). With this option we can also make Stalingrad a special city as Leningrad. We would be creating cities in which historically the defense of the city was fierce and the attackers suffered a lot to take city. Late in the war we could create e.g. Konigsberg as a german city in which the defense was tough.

On initial 2 fortress votes - no and no.

On the leningrad vote - Option 1.

Thanks!!

1 from me - other options are tricky

1 it is then.