Slitherine

Here are the files in RAR and ZIP format. Read below before playing the game so you see the reasons why I changed things.

COPY PASTE the following into the browser. Clicking it takes you to the home page for some reason.
http://www.dndadventure.com/ftp/ceaw.rar
http://www.dndadventure.com/ftp/ceaw.zip

I have been working on a historical mod since the game editor came out. I have tested the game playing both sides until December 1941. I have just made my latest revision but have not play tested it for balance. Nothing big mostly russian front stuff. I changed a lot of things in the game so I am not going to go over technical details. But I will tell you what I did that affects the game and how.

Sources:
Brute Force, Ellis
Why the Alleis Won, Overy
WW2 Databook, Ellis
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia of WW2, forgot who
Various statistical sites on the internet.

I created the game to give the feel of a real historical simulation of ww2. From production, technology, logistic, forcepool, and training within in the game scope. I did have to fudge it up some to make the game playable.

PRODUCTION: Germany really wasnt producing at a wartime economy for later in the war. So I made it so. They start with lots of high quality units but low production. The allies start with higher production but crappier units. This also allows the allies to get more labs early to catch up technologically later in the war. It works out well. I actually had to use a negative war effort to keep the USA production low enough so they dont overwhelm the axis. I based the production on historical models accounting for quality of equipment, cost of production, men, trucks, tanks, airplanes, ships (not merchant marine), and artillery. I also combined this with the steel production of each country. Then calculating for what each country has at a specific time period considering casualties..... well I got a fairly accurate game.

OIL: Not important to the allies because they had all the oil, important to the axis because they had not much. armor and bombers I kept at 2 oil, fighters, mot, ships at 1 oil. I do notice the brits bomb the germans a lot using their fighters and their oil. Fighters were also 1 engine planes while bombers 2-4 engines.

CAPTURE OF RESOURCES: in reality the Germans had all they needed. I reduced capture to 30%. Unlike a lot of board games the real problem with germany was gearing up. From 39 to 44 I beleive their production increased 10-15x over, dont quote me though.

IRON ORE ROUTE: I included some off map production for germany (Sweden iron ore) and narvik is worth 15. So this gives a reason for the Germans to go after it.

TECHNOLOGY: Germans have much more than allies at start but since their war effort is low they cant tech up. The alleis can.

Battle of the Atlantic: Germans subs are tech 3, UK ASW tech 0. This reflects the actual status of subs vs convoys. At the start of the war germany did more damage per ship than at any other time of the war. Partly due to lack of proper technology by UK. Mostly due to how they escorted convoys, the availablitiy of sub hunting aircraft (of lack there of), and the physical number of destrotyers dedicated the escort. The UK can build up ASW to where by 1942 have a large advantage over subs. This is when the war in the atlantic was won.

The germans start with 1 level of art, tank (I think), and the highest organization. Their tactics, comradery (spelling?), logistics, and tactics were the best int he world. Man for man the german solider was much better than any counterpart. Air tech UK, Ger start at 3, FR 1, USA 1, all others 0. Surface ships UK-US, Ger 3, all others zero. They really had the best ships.

UNIT SCALE:
planes 400 per unit
destroyer 25 per unit
battleship 3 BBs per unit
carrier 3 CVs per unit
armor 2 arm divs, 1 mot div per unit
inf 3-4 inf div per unit axis and allies, russians are 5 divs per unit
mot 2 mot divs, 1 inf div. russians 4-5
subs 20 per unit (done on purpose for game playability)
scale is 2 week turns
Took manpower from actual population figures and oil production and consumption based on the same.

Only the russians actually have more units than they had at the start of barbarossa. I scattered them out so they take time to come to the front lines. Its for game balance. Otherwise the germans overrun then of they have less units.

The germans generally go to yellow recruitment around december 41. In reality the germans expended themselves and their army fighting the russians. By the time the summer offensive came about they were lucky that the russians decided to defend moscow and not the south russia. The germans biggest weakness lack of men for divisions throughout the russian campaign. Also by this time the germans should be getting low on oil. So they will have to stop and save up to make a summer offensive.

Operation sealion: do-able but what I added was a garrison for every city port for the UK. This makes it possible for the germans without slaugtering UK. Like in my 3rd version of this mod.

I also made land based air much more effective vs ships. In the naval battles involving land based air vs ships the air slaughtered their opposition. See murmask convoys and the battle for crete.

On the map I added several cities and ports to accomodate the extra ships. I just dont know how to do the maginot line.

for the UK about 60% of their income comes from convoys. I believe it was actually 90% of raw materials got shipped in but I made it reasonable for game play.

One thing I did was place many russian airplanes right on the border of the germans. This is there to simulate the destruction of their airforce. Its a nice touch that works out well.

All the countries starting units were modified to fit the scale of the game.

Well enjoy it and write feedback. I got tired of typing. I would play test it beyond dec of 1941 but That would take more time. Soooo I leave that up to you.

winky51 wrote:The germans generally go to yellow recruitment around december 41.

When do the Soviets go yellow?

late 1944, 1945 they should but it needs to be play tested till 1945 so I can accurately adjust their manpower.

There are a few discussions about ww2 that if the Germans played their cards right they could have stalemated the Russians. The tactics the russians used we rediculous, their philosophy of battle barbaric. They would juet basically throw men at the enemy. Divisions fought till they were destroyed. They never were reformed just rebuilt from scratch. If you notice any statistics about how many men the soviets lost vs the germans the ratio is staggering despite having so many more tanks, planes, and men. If the russians fought how they did and the germans didnt lose battles like stalingrad, kursk, and all the men in tunisia, they could have stalemated the russians. The russians would have simply run out of men by the end of the war and they did. I dont remember the exact counts for german losses but I will venture the following from memory.

120,000 men tunisia
300,000 men stalingrad, 100,000 were taken prisoner 5,000 returned home.
dont remember kursk but they lost a lot of material also.

if i remember correctly germans lost around 70% of ALL his armor at kursk, meanwhile the russians lost 50%, the fact is that russian replace these units short after, relatively short in time, germany never on the war be capable of replace all armor lost at kursk,

with regards,

alaric.

winky51 wrote:The germans generally go to yellow recruitment around december 41. In reality the germans expended themselves and their army fighting the russians. By the time the summer offensive came about they were lucky that the russians decided to defend moscow and not the south russia. The germans biggest weakness lack of men for divisions throughout the russian campaign. Also by this time the germans should be getting low on oil. So they will have to stop and save up to make a summer offensive.

Actually, the Battle of Kharvkov happened in such a way that Hitler and Stalin surprised each other with a southern offensive in the Spring of 42. It turned out that the Germans won hands down and rolled the Soviets all the way to Stalingrad. So in that respect there was a massive build up of Soviets in the southern Ukraine to strike the Germans there rather than around Moscow or Leningrad. It turned out that Hitler wanted to get the oil fields so had planned his own build up after staving off the Soviet winter offensive.

Truth be told, the Germans did quite well regarding the defense after the counter-attack when they tried to reach Moscow back in November. They really just ended up falling back to the lines they prepared before Hitler told them to go forward after the battle of Smolensk while Hitler waited for Kiev to fall before pushing onwards to Moscow.

I forget the actual casualties but I believe it was only 60,000 casualties before the Soviet counter attack and even after that it wasn't that harsh as what happened with Stalingrad.

But I would say the Germans went yellow during the Battle of Stalingrad moreso than before.

They did lose a lot of resources at Stalingrad to give them NO hope of winning or stalemating but their units were weak all along the line in spring 1942 except where their offensive was taking place. They were weaker in comparison to what the entered russia with. Their largest shortage was manpower.

Stalin believed Hitler to attack moscow again. So in may Stalin did an offensive down south right were the Germans were prepared. The offensive was a fiasco with the russians losing a lot of divisions. The germans let them through their lines and certain points encircled and destroyed the units. So by the time Case Blue started the soviets were weak down south and the Germans could plow through them. Not saying they couldnt normally but it was a double situation. Many units in moscow, a failed offensive down south where the Germans were really planning theirs. Well you see the picture. many German divisions in the spring were not fit for combat. I have the stats in one of my books somewhere.

If the Russians fought anywhere close to good they should have crushed germany. Really look at the men, equipment, production, what the germans were up against on all fronts. It should have been a cakewalk for the russians. Only their stupidity prevented a complete destruction of the germans in 1942. The way they fought was aweful wasting men. There were incidents where the russians told hundreds of soldiers to link up arm in arm and run across a field to attack the germans and to clear the minefield at that location. Thats insane and they did it over and over. Russians gave their units enough supplies for the offensive and strict orders to commanders. If the commander didnt follow protocal and LOST hed be shot, so they didnt. Russian units never got reinforcements, they DIED in the field and were rebuilt with new troops behind. Their attack plans were inflexible so they couldnt adapt. Just look at the comparison of loses for both side, 3.25m for the germans on all fronts. The russians lost 12m just vs the germans. These are military personel not civilian. The russians simply sucked at combat. The Russians late in the war had 18,000 aircraft vs the German 5,000. THey still sucked. Terrible pilots broken equipment that was not flyable more than 60% of the time. They just sucked.

Anyways here is a good site for stats BTW
http://www.world-war-2.info/statistics/

I notice this mod does not contain a .data file.
Is this required?
or are you only replacing the .scn file, (along with the .txt files)
What does the .data file contain?, as some mods replace this file also.

I only see the .data file when I create a game. So my assumption that is the uniform file that encompasses all the files together when you reload the game from save.

I noticed if I change the txt files it NEVER affects my saved games.

UPDATE: I added the maginoit fortress to this mod.

Also I noticed that the computer opponent is not too savy playing this sceanrio as the axis. They dont conserve oil and always use the tanks and mot units. Really it is best played vs another human. As the allies I am not sure how the PC does. I play tested this vs myself doing everything I could till 12/1941.

I attacked france early and historical. I attacked the ussr. I did sealion. I did med options for both axis and allies.

My suggestions for human vs human play

no invasions sept-april in france, germany, norway, baltic, lisbon and up.
no invasion oct-march med north (italy, france, turkey, lisbon and south).
year round invasion africa egypt (syria down)
Germans are limited to 3 units in africa untill they take malta or gibralter. (supply restrictions)

There are a few discussions about ww2 that if the Germans played their cards right they could have stalemated the Russians. The tactics the russians used we rediculous, their philosophy of battle barbaric. They would juet basically throw men at the enemy. Divisions fought till they were destroyed. They never were reformed just rebuilt from scratch.

This is absolute rubbish - mythology invented by Nazi Germany to justify their treatment of Russians as sub-humans, and you do yourself no favours repeating it.

Certainly the Russians were generally not so technically skilled as the best trained German or western units, but their best units were very good, and you can find numerous instances of German units being destroyed and then rebuilt, or disbanded due to losses too.

Hi there.

Thanks for making this mod i am currently playing it as axis with moderate allied advantage. I will let you know how things progress.

Poland fell quick as is historically correct.
Holland was mass bombed by tac and fell in one turn historically correct. As that was was only 5 days and after the luftwaffe leveled the Rotterdam city center Holland surrendered.
Belgium will fall in two turns and my armour is already over the river in France on the day i declared war on Belgium which is also historically correct.

Suggestions changing Rouen for the city Caen just 1hex southwest of Rouen bodering the sea. Its just me longing for that d-day feeling i guess

Oh why is the german army on a yellow org most of the time 50%-60% ? Is that intended? As ingame i see they have org tech 5 which sould by default yield a much higher org.

Will keep you posted what will happen.

After dow Belgium this is turn 2 guess what will happen to France in turn three. Yup they surrendered. That is maybe a lil bit fast Look also at the clogging of French units at the maginot line. Also Denmark surrendered.



Now its becomming weird:
Feb 2 1940 Norway surrenders
March 15 1940 Yugoslavia surrenders
April 12 1940 Sweden surrenders

July 5 1940 why on earth sould i wait till summer 1941 to attack Russia. I am ready for it.


I was ready for it leading to this unhistorical and weird situation at december 1940 at the gates of Moscow.


The fighters and tacs you placed on the border are starving Russias industrial points. As i have a huge high tech airfleet they get completly owned time and time again leading to valuable repairs leaving the Russians their needed new divisions instead of useless air.

Late 1941 Perm will fall you wanna bet

GAME: As for france the weather is really a problem. With no weather its a cake walk. Thats why this scenario is made for human vs human.

Also I noticed you didnt play with oil. I guess its just me but I always play with oil rule. It affects the axis a lot and you have to plan. Even if I play myself I can hold off the Germans till next summer as France. The PC makes foolish attacks and doesnt use terrain well. I am looking at your screen shot and the PC has 4 corp extra behind the Maginot when the need ZERO. Hows that for foolishness.

The PC is really not that good so its easy to play vs them. Last night I decided to play the allies with no oil and by the end of 1940 France took back Netherlands, Belgium, and were in Germany. The UK took the Italians out of africa and sank their whole fleet w/o a loss. This was in my mod also where the PC germany attacked France right away.

We seriously need weather in this game.

Ruon is there for its industrial capaciity. But I see your point from a marketing point of view. I thought about adding Calias in there also.

NEW HUMAN VS HUMAN PLAY: Suggestions.

no invasions sept-april in france, germany, norway, baltic, lisbon and up.
no invasion oct-march med north (italy, france, turkey, lisbon and south).
year round invasion africa egypt (syria down)
Germans are limited to 3 units in africa untill they take malta or gibralter. (supply restrictions)
Sitzkreig till April 1st: Germans can invade anyone but the low countries and France.
Play with Oil

Thanks for the comments

-----------------
Russian Front Stalemate Debate:

I did not invent this I read this. The Russians did use immoral tactics in battle. One example is sending political prisoners out in the middle of a battlefield so they would get killed. The Russians would notice where the machine gun nests were to attack. Tell me thats not barbaric. I am not saying the Nazis were "good guys" I am saying the Russians fought terribly for the most part. Yes there are many mechanized units that were excellent and fought as well as the Germans but for the most part.... Another example is where their soldiers would link up arm and arm and run across a mine field to find mines. Thats insane. In their airforce they had very few good pliots. When you see stats like 18,000 air planes for the Russians remember that when they sent in an attack formation a handful of pilots were good and lead the pack... the rest were there to take the hits and cut down the chances the good pilots were not killed. Every family suffered a loss in Russia after the war. Just look at the casualty figures. How could a country with an airforce 3.5x as big as the Germans, 10x more tanks, so many more men could have such hidious losses in combat compared to their adversaries. Their tactics were terrible. Here is another. Late in the war the russians were send to attack a defense line in Poland, I forgot who the German commander was, Rundstedt?. Anyways he flooded the plains only leaving very few roads open. He jammed the few open roads with anti tank guns behind 2 defense lines. The 1st defense line had very few soldiers. It was to draw the russian artillery. The 2nd line was the real defense line with the AT guns. Zhukov decided to get 150 search lights and blind the German defenders in a night attack. He pointed them straight at the enemy to blind them, silly. Instead of blinding the Germans they basically lit up all their forces silloutetting them in the field making easy pickings for German guns. Why did the Germans lose this battle? They ran out of bullets and shells. Heres another one, Winter War. How do a handful of Finns hold out vs an enemy with 10x their numbers inflicting huge casualties. While perhaps their top generals were fairly competent they didnt have any good officers below. They all had to learn in the field overtime and even then they were, overall, not close to being as good as the Germans. Their barbarism extended to civilians too. Peole would be forced in labor camps. "you go work" "no" POW bullet in the head "you go work" "uh ok". Their factory workers were almost treated as badly as Nazi slave labor in many cases. The fact that Stalin pulled of the "Patriotic War" propaganda and people rallied to his cause saved the country. If the Germans hadn't treated the Russians so poorly, Ukranians, not sure what would have happened.

The premise is that by 1945 IF the germans made no mistakes and the russians still fought the way they did the Germans could have stalemated them. The Russians simply ran out of young men to fill their armies in 1945. Think about the huge losses Germany took and where. Now take this amount and add it to the front. Add in the 300,000 men lost at Stalingrad, 100,000 at Tunisia, the tanks and men lost at Kursk. Right there thats probably around 500,000 men. Either way the Germans were losing the war. The A-bomb would have done them in eventually. The Source is Why the Allies Won by Overy. Brute Force takes a different approach that the allies were idiots and they could have won sooner than they did. Only their poor planning and understanding of tactics prevented them from doing so. Even if Germany did everything right Ellis says that they had zero chance if the allies did everything right also and in fact Germany would have died sooner then 1945.

I just state what I read. I actually have no opinion on WW2 except that there is no way the axis could have won considering everything. Also I am glad, obviously, that they didn't. In my opinion Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. Just be thankful they didnt team up.

One more thing... as for organization I noticed the non-effect also, thats why I bumped it up. It only seems like a 10% diff at most. Not sure why it happened that way.

The answers to your questions are recorded historically - the Russians were, mostly, incompetant in hte sense that they did not have well developed tactics and systems.

however they did not set out to kill their men needlessly.

The attack with the searchlights is a good example (but you've got the time wrong - it was against the Seelowe Heights on hte outskirts of Berlin in 1945) - they thought it would give them an advantage, and they were wrong. Any number of commanders have made similar mistakes....eg the Germans on the whole attacking Russia thing!!

The Russian army in 1941 was a total mess - read Glantz's "Stumbling Colossus" for a fascinating insight into how bad it was.

But it wasn't bad because the Russians were barbaric (well other than Stalin's purges.....) - it was bad because it was recoverign from those purges and was in hte middle of an absolutely huge expansion and reorganisation - which wasn't due to be finished until mid 1942. Units were at half strength or less (especially the recently formed Mechanised Corps), technical equipment was in short supply because industry was only jsut gearing up for the massive expansion and couldn't provide enough trucks, artillery tractors, guns and the like befoer barbarossa (but they weren't asked to - tehy weer planning on getting it done by mid 42....)

The Soviets used the best tactics their training and equipment allowed - that they often got it wrong is no great surprise, nor is it any great surprise that they used penal units for suicidal tasks.

sometimes they resorted to stupid tactics - such as the headlong assault by Zhukov on Sealowe heights in 1945 - but by then the war was won and Stalin had made the capture of Berlin a personal contest between Zhukov and Konev and soem common sense was thrown out the window.

But even then they had assembled 17,000 guns to support the attack and obliterated the German front line - ......3000 tanks were assigned too so it's not like they jsut formed a human wave and expected it to advance without any support

However there are 2 sides to any conflict and hte Germans refused to co-operate.......they had withdrawn their troops just before hand so the artillery hit nothing, and as you say they released teh waters onto the plains making the ground particularly wet and soggy, and channeling the Russian advance into areas where the German counter-barrage caused extremely heavy casualties.

This wasn't blind human wave attacks by the Russians - it was a carefully planned and massively suported asault that was met by better tactics......and which still ultimately succeeded due to the amount of firepower the Soviets had. The German defending units had 3 lines of well constructed defences, but ultimately they had insufficient numbers and equipment, and by the end of a "mere" 4 days of assault the German IXth army was utterly destroyed and the way to Berlin lay open.

Say what you like, but the Soviet attack was not planned to have such casualties, and the Soviets put in a lot more than just manpower to achieve a fairly rapid breakthrough of multiple fortified lines....and they succeeded.

Only the Western allies had the luxury of well trained and equipped and supplied forces by late in the war......and yet Market Garden, the Dieppe raid, the Battle of the Bulge, Kasserine Pass, Monte Cassino and myriad other screwups show that they also had incompetance to spare.

Ahhh there we go. I read the story a long time ago so I didnt remember, thanks.

By 1944 the germans just simply couldnt keep up ecomically with the losses. Hence yea if you have 3000 tanks barreling down on you and only a dozen tigers to deal with them (with 25 shells each) then you are boned.

A lot of the stuff I read was early in the war that they did.

One of the interesting notions I read was how the westeran allies fought the germans. They go in, get the crap beat out of them, back up, shell the crap out of the germans to the point the germans retreat, march up and occupy the area. Repeat. The americans used 40x as much artillery ammunition as the germans did. Thats a hell of a lot of shells. Ellis writes that if the western allies actually fought the war with tactics they would have ended it sooner and had less casualties. But once again this is just what I read. I guess thats why WW2 wargames are so much fun, the "what if"s are so much.

Can't wait for computer WIF.

and just to show that even German "elite" Panzer's could behave like rank idiots, the first encounter between Russians and Tiger II's makes them look like utter Newbies - just as bad as the Sov's were in 1941 advancing without covering forces, infantry, recce, etc....

See

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/articles/tigertam.htm
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=85
http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?opt ... 88&lang=en (translation of Soviet Heavy Tank Regt commander's combat report)

I dont doubt you. I do want to point out this article is on a Russian site thought

I just like the history and wargames man. Who says what don't matter. I just read it.

FYI oil was done wrong in the scenario not accounting for war effort. I am going to research this and upload the new files. For now dont play with oil... sadly enough.

winky51 wrote:I dont doubt you. I do want to point out this article is on a Russian site thought

Well we don't mind reading German accountsof how things went 41-42, so I figure it's only fair and balanced to read Sov ones from 44-45!!

Ok I forgot to compensate for the oil in relation to war effort in production. So what was happening is that about end 1940 the germans ran out of oil and werent producing enough.

Now the problem can be fixed by increaseing war effort but this will skew the historical production.

So I made a calculation based on what Germany would have produced compared to what they are producing when reaching 100% war effort. I added this to the base oil stores of the axis. Right now they are at 900 for the axis. This should last them till 1942 then they have to conserve. This is the only solution I could come up with.

as you know Tanks and air cost 2 oil, ships and mot 1 oil to operate.

The files are updated here as always.
http://www.dndadventure.com/ftp/ceaw.rar
http://www.dndadventure.com/ftp/ceaw.zip

ADDED: New counters for inf, mot, arm, and garrisons. I tried to make them a bit more like military symbols. Havent decided what I want to do with the air and ship symbols yet.