Slitherine

August 1941, Karelian Isthmus

What if the Germans had spearheaded the Northerly attack on Leningrad?

Now updated to v1.0!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/32epawd2w51ht ... 0.zip?dl=0

Repurposed the Karelian Isthmus map from Winter War to make it into a summer battlefield. 4 Central VP's to take and hold.

Excellent, you are on a roll

First few turns done Erik.

My first thoughts, there's nowhere near enough income for either side I don't think? I'm already low on turn 4!

I'm not sure about the reinforcements on Turn 3 as it was actually better for me to save the money until Turn 4 and deploy my units further forward in the bases I'd captured in Turn 1!

I like the attack vectors currently, but think that the air war is a bit too well resourced (esp given the amount of AA we're both taking!)

Well, you obviously purchased fighters only and I had to stock AA unbits real quick.
I think the scenario works quite well from both sides, plenty of action and visibility is good. (A sandstorm is really difficult to fight in)

Fighters only seems like the only viable strategy in many MP maps... e.g. Dubno

I might have a rethink about the reinforcements and have the forces ramp up more so it's not a massive fighter ambush at the start. Also, certainly needs more RP for the cost of repairing your fighters!!

Maybe you could add some non-fighter units as aux and reduce the air command points. Similar to recon and AA units.
I think a well-balanced force is more interesting than 'tanks only will guarantee a victory'-strategy.

Yeah, I think that tanks are an important spearhead here, but they're expensive and there's quite a few places where infantry can cut them off..

Shards wrote:Fighters only seems like the only viable strategy in many MP maps... e.g. Dubno

I might have a rethink about the reinforcements and have the forces ramp up more so it's not a massive fighter ambush at the start. Also, certainly needs more RP for the cost of repairing your fighters!!

Playing without airforce is a counter strategy for all fighters strategy. True you get harassed if there are no hiding places but in a war of attrition, RP savings are enormous. I was thinking it would be good to add air CP as a separate faction with its own RP.

Sadly the Russians don't have an alternate faction like the Germans, Americans and Japanese..

And I'm guessing that you can't get away with just adding a second Russian faction to an alliance

I've done some tweaks to the map which I'll publish in a bit (mostly just moving villages and forests around a little bit to make for better conflict zones).

But I'm still finalizing what I want to do with the forces and CP/RP.

My initial thoughts were that the Germans should start out with a larger force (due to being the attacker) but with the Russians gaining more reinforcements as the game progresses. But with the victory locations/VP system as it is, the game might be over before it begins if the German player has amassed too many VP at the start.

So, my current thinking is to give both sides slightly reduced starting RP from where it is now, then add staggered reinforcements. So Germans get some extras immediately (and maybe they start with Air Superiority to encourage bombers?) but then the Russians get a larger boost around turn 5 to push the Germans back. And then add a cash bonus for both after 10 turns to set up a grand finale (rather than a whimper)?

Of course, what I'd really like to do is some clever stuff with each side only having a set quantity of reserve RP that they can choose to trade income/turn for a quick cash injection, but that'd be horrible to set up without a few tweaks to the current triggers....

Updated to v0.4

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1tkph7pno90an ... 4.zip?dl=0

Smaller starting forces for both sides
Germans get reinforcements on T1, Russians on T3
Germans start with Air CP, Russians arrive on T3
Added a second wave of reinforcements that arrives for the side that's losing first with a 3 turn delay before similar forces arrive for the other side
Removed a few village flags
Tweaks some of the scenery to improve battle lines (removed the mountains which I don't think are appropriate here)

Thanks

I'll resign our current games.
Put up new challenges if you want to test the latest version.

There's two challenges hosted already Erik

I do prefer the current version with the Germans getting their reinforcements first (and therefore having the initial advantage).

It's meant that I still had that chance of a Blitzkrieg breakthrough as the attacker, but the Russians do have quite a few natural choke points to try and delay the German advance.

What do you think Erik?

I prefer to keep the Germans on the offensive, but I think they have too many resources currently. I think I have 400+ in the bank.
The Soviets have several counter-attack opportunities and resources seem ok. I have about 150 plus.

One of our games ended with your German victory just as the Soviets got their last batch of reinforcements.
Not too sure what happened victory-wise here

I captured your HQ

Really, I didn't notice that the vodka was gone.

I need to add a "Defend HQ" Primary Objective

See that bit of German territory at the bottom of your screengrab