March Madness 42 back on topic

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.

The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).

Moderators: Joel Billings, elmo3, Sabre21

User avatar
delatbabel
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:37 am
Location: Sydney, Australia
Contact:

March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by delatbabel »

How many AARs of games started in the late 1.05 betas do we have currently beyond March 1942?

Unfortunately I tend to play FTF rather than PBEM and I am bad at AARs, but some things I have noticed in my current game:

I thought I put together a fairly comprehensive blizzard plan. Push the Germans back in a few areas. Leave units behind, fortifying on river lines. Attempt to free Leningrad (it was encircled, but the Ladoga ports were still running), and hold the Volkhov line. Push back to the Dnepr line -- actually an inattentive opponent allowed me to get beyond that after I brought a couple of shock armies in as reinforcements. Push away from the Moscow defenses. Threaten to retake Tula. Push back to the Valdai Hills to try to regain the high ground there.

Then March 1942 happened. Level 4 & 5 forts at Leningrad were just ignored -- a single panzer division blew straight through the defenses and linked up with the Finns. Similarly, Moscow fell to a fast frontal assault straight through several layers of 3 & 4 forts. I pulled back to river lines but they were just driven over. In 3 months the Germans have taken the Donbas, driven through D-town, Z-town, Rostov, and towards Stalingrad (I am guessing that will fall no later than August), encircled and obliterated Bryansk and South West Fronts, and I probably will lose the Caucasus fairly quickly, although I'm struggling to rail the remnants of Southern Front back to form a defensive line along the Kuma river (at least Baku is a permanent supply source).

What do Soviet players do to stop this? I have very few rifle divisions with a CV > 1, probably only 10 other than the guard divs and I don't have enough of those to go around. German CVs are probably 15 - 20 x my CVs up and down the line, worse than 1941 and longer, so even at a level 3 fort or a major river there's no slowing the Germans down. Even the shock armies that I railed back to Yaroslavl & Gorky to try to hold the upper Volga line are all CV 1 divisions now, so there won't be any holding that line either, even if the Germans don't get an AV before that.

Any ideas?
--
Del
User avatar
Tarhunnas
Posts: 2900
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:19 am
Location: Hex X37, Y15

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Tarhunnas »

The difference with history is IMHO that the German offensive in 1942 is much faster off the mark than the historical 1942 offensive. In history, the battle of Kharkov kept the Germans occupied, and anyway it took some time to reorganise and build up supplies for the 1942 summer offensive. The German summer offensive in 1942 only got going in late June, and then met with spectacular initial success.
 
The game unfortunately fails to recapture this. No Soviet offensive in May 1942 will stand a chance of acheiving even the modest gains of the Soviet Kharkov offensive, and the German offensive of 1942 has its best chance in March.
 
I suppose the mud in june is a way of delaying the summer offensive, but that is an artificial way of compensating for the lack of a serious supply system. The weather swings are too great in the myd-clear-mud period in may-june, and too easy to exploit, and the supply system doesn't recreate the stockpiling of supplies that is the necessary prerequisite for an offensive. I love this game, but in such a complex game that attempts to account for every last machinegun and Panzerschreck on the Eastern Front it is a pity that supply and weather are handled so halfheartedly! It would have been a better game with less attention to counting every piece of equipment and more on supply and weather, which had a far larger impact on operations than whether a certain anti tank battallion was equipped with Marder II or Marder III.
------------------------------
RTW3 Designer
amatteucci
Posts: 385
Joined: Sun May 14, 2000 8:00 am
Location: ITALY

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by amatteucci »

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
I suppose the mud in june is a way of delaying the summer offensive, but that is an artificial way of compensating for the lack of a serious supply system. The weather swings are too great in the myd-clear-mud period in may-june, and too easy to exploit, and the supply system doesn't recreate the stockpiling of supplies that is the necessary prerequisite for an offensive.
In my humble opinion this point cannot be stressed too much. We do need something to recreate stockpiling of supplies.
JAMiAM
Posts: 6127
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 6:35 am

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by JAMiAM »

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
The weather swings are too great in the myd-clear-mud period in may-june, and too easy to exploit,...
Which is another huge reason for playing only with random weather.
JAMiAM
Posts: 6127
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 6:35 am

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by JAMiAM »

In my opinion, rivers should be more of an obstacle in the late Winter/early Spring. Given that they are generally frozen solid, they offer zero combat benefit for the defenders, and no obstacle to movement. I can see this, if they were frozen solid, but if there are any ice flows, or partial freezings, then they should be of even more beneficial to the defense, and more of an obstacle for movement than they are in the Summer. As it is now, in the game, their complete negation by the freezing lend the strategic attackers (generally, though not always, the Axis in early 1942) an unrealistic impetus for launching offensives that would otherwise be greatly slowed by broken ice and thaw induced flooding.
User avatar
Baelfiin
Posts: 2983
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 9:07 pm

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Baelfiin »

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

In my opinion, rivers should be more of an obstacle in the late Winter/early Spring. Given that they are generally frozen solid, they offer zero combat benefit for the defenders, and no obstacle to movement. I can see this, if they were frozen solid, but if there are any ice flows, or partial freezings, then they should be of even more beneficial to the defense, and more of an obstacle for movement than they are in the Summer. As it is now, in the game, their complete negation by the freezing lend the strategic attackers (generally, though not always, the Axis in early 1942) an unrealistic impetus for launching offensives that would otherwise be greatly slowed by broken ice and thaw induced flooding.
+111
Very good point!

This will also have benefits for the defender in the late game. I would go so far as to say that Major rivers should not just disappear for the winter, they should have some effect. I am not sure how easy it would be to put into code however.
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
WITE-Beta
WITW-Alpha
The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
User avatar
Flaviusx
Posts: 7732
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2009 3:55 pm
Location: Southern California

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Flaviusx »

It wasn't rivers impeding the Wehrmacht (or the Red Army for that matter) in March of 42. It was logistics. That and sheer exhaustion.

I agree in principle that weather in this game needs improvement, but it's not fundamentally the issue in this particular case.

As to how to manage the March madness, see my post #12 in the original topic for some ideas. This should help mitigate it to some extent. But the measures involved are ahistorical and heroic and driven entirely by game mechanics.
WitE Alpha Tester
User avatar
Emx77
Posts: 453
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:12 am
Location: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Contact:

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Emx77 »

ORIGINAL: Baelfiin

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

In my opinion, rivers should be more of an obstacle in the late Winter/early Spring. Given that they are generally frozen solid, they offer zero combat benefit for the defenders, and no obstacle to movement. I can see this, if they were frozen solid, but if there are any ice flows, or partial freezings, then they should be of even more beneficial to the defense, and more of an obstacle for movement than they are in the Summer. As it is now, in the game, their complete negation by the freezing lend the strategic attackers (generally, though not always, the Axis in early 1942) an unrealistic impetus for launching offensives that would otherwise be greatly slowed by broken ice and thaw induced flooding.
+111
Very good point!

This will also have benefits for the defender in the late game. I would go so far as to say that Major rivers should not just disappear for the winter, they should have some effect. I am not sure how easy it would be to put into code however.

I'm also very happy to see that someone finally mentioned this winter rivers nonsense.
User avatar
Tarhunnas
Posts: 2900
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:19 am
Location: Hex X37, Y15

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Tarhunnas »

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

As to how to manage the March madness, see my post #12 in the original topic for some ideas. This should help mitigate it to some extent. But the measures involved are ahistorical and heroic and driven entirely by game mechanics.

Heroic? [&:]
------------------------------
RTW3 Designer
User avatar
delatbabel
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:37 am
Location: Sydney, Australia
Contact:

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by delatbabel »

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

It wasn't rivers impeding the Wehrmacht (or the Red Army for that matter) in March of 42. It was logistics. That and sheer exhaustion.

I agree in principle that weather in this game needs improvement, but it's not fundamentally the issue in this particular case.

As to how to manage the March madness, see my post #12 in the original topic for some ideas. This should help mitigate it to some extent. But the measures involved are ahistorical and heroic and driven entirely by game mechanics.

I've tried a lot of what you suggested in that post. I simply don't have the number of units for a 10 hex deep screen (and I'm not sure other Soviet players do either, unless they are hoarding APs somehow and using them to buy acres of brigades), but I did try a screen of brigades falling back to a fortified river line. When the Germans hit that river line they just went 15 - 20 hexes straight through it and ran around the back of me. Where I'd heavily fortified rear echelons (e.g. the approaches to Moscow) he simply switched to a frontal assault -- it seems that layers of forts that will hold the Germans off in September and October of 1941 present no difficulty at all in March 1942, they just drive through the middle of them.

I'm now starting to slow down the German offensive but I'm guessing that that's due to distance from the rail heads, not due to units in play. I may or may not be able to stop the Germans crossing the Volga at Yaroslavl, that's a long way and a lot of hexes to recover to get to Berlin. As of October 1942 I will be able to stop them taking Baku but I'm guessing that if my CVs don't improve in 1943 that will just be a matter of time. All that was after a front line that was a reasonably solid block to stop the Germans advancing in 1941.

I'll try this again with zero blizzard offensive in 1941, just using construction units to build deeper levels of forts.
--
Del
janh
Posts: 1215
Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:06 pm

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by janh »

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM
ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
The weather swings are too great in the myd-clear-mud period in may-june, and too easy to exploit,...
Which is another huge reason for playing only with random weather.
[/quote]

I prefer random weather as well, makes the whole game less predictable (number-crunching) and more prone to human erring, which gives so many wars their character.
No one would be surprise that weather plays such a key role and predicting it perfectly (as with non-random) can give huge benefits in long-term planning. All the armies in the past, as much as today, go to great lengths to get the best available weather forecast data.

In-game, with a permanent risk of rainfalls and mud, extending your arm too far can be detrimental. Kind of reduces op-tempo to more conservative, self-protective limits. Unfortunately beyond 7 days, there wasn't any real hope of a reliable weather forecast without today's technologies (which are still not very accurate at such time intervals). With 7 day turns, weather reports are kind of obsolete, although you could argue that you move through these days in your turn, so some kind of forecast would be nice in the future titles.

A major catch is the phasing that always at first exposes the Axis player, so gives him some additional warning of the new facts, so to say. I think this is a huge benefit, and weather changes should be allowed to happen between any phase instead. I know the linked Soviet phase is supposed in mind to happen simultaneously, but of course it doesn't (sequential movements simply force a sequential and non-simultaneous time evolution). Another catch of the I-go-U-go system. It appears easier to master for a game, but has just too many disadvantages at this level of simulation detail.
User avatar
Flaviusx
Posts: 7732
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2009 3:55 pm
Location: Southern California

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Flaviusx »

Am curious to see how a zero blizzard offensive works out. In the past I would never have recommended it, as you lose your best chance to get some wins and guards conversions. But now, it may be worth it.

OTOH you won't have any kind of territorial cushion if you just sit the blizzard out. So if your defenses can't take the hit in March, you may well yourself somewhere east of the Don before mud hits, and that's not good.

WitE Alpha Tester
User avatar
ragtopcars_slith
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:33 am

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by ragtopcars_slith »

You really have to play with random weather...  otherwise you can stretch supply lines/etc without the inherent risk of the unknown!

Started a 41 GC server game recently on random weather, and low and behold got hit with some mud when least expected really slowing down AGS...

[X(]
User avatar
Peltonx
Posts: 5814
Joined: Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:24 am
Contact:

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Peltonx »

Forts have little effect if the attacker has engineers.

Rivers should be impassable during spring unless crossing at a bridge. The flooding would make even minor rivers uncrossable other then at bridges. Bridges could mean railroads or major citys, but again if the bridge is defended it would be next to impossible to cross.

The effects of spring flooding seem to be left out of the game totally. This would make the snow offensives by the German army much more defendable by the russian army.
German players would have to make sure that units would not be cut off from supplies during flood turns.

Just a thought to make things more interesting.

Pelton
Beta Tester WitW & WitE
User avatar
56ajax
Posts: 2132
Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:43 am
Location: Cairns, Australia

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by 56ajax »

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

What do Soviet players do to stop this? Any ideas?

Once I stopped crying I resigned my game...
Molotov : This we did not deserve.

Foch : This is not peace. This is a 20 year armistice.

C'est la guerre aérienne
User avatar
Tarhunnas
Posts: 2900
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:19 am
Location: Hex X37, Y15

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by Tarhunnas »

ORIGINAL: janh

A major catch is the phasing that always at first exposes the Axis player, so gives him some additional warning of the new facts, so to say. I think this is a huge benefit, and weather changes should be allowed to happen between any phase instead.

I agree that it would be much better if shifts could happen randomly between phases, and weather last for at least two player phases to affect both players equally.

I do not agree that the Germans moving first gives them a benefit. On the contrary, in the later war when the Germans are on the defensive, the Germans being hit by new weather first favors the Soviets. Instead of the mud stopping Soviet offensives through supply difficulties, it will protect Soviet spearheads from German counterattacks and doom surrounded Axis units (of which there will often be several each turn, so the odds of this happening on a clear to mud shift are pretty high). However, whatever side you think it favors, a change to weather shift between player phases would solve the problem.

I also think that mud should affect operations primarily through the supply system and not by artificially reducing the combat value of the attacker.
------------------------------
RTW3 Designer
User avatar
delatbabel
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:37 am
Location: Sydney, Australia
Contact:

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by delatbabel »

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Am curious to see how a zero blizzard offensive works out. In the past I would never have recommended it, as you lose your best chance to get some wins and guards conversions. But now, it may be worth it.

OTOH you won't have any kind of territorial cushion if you just sit the blizzard out. So if your defenses can't take the hit in March, you may well yourself somewhere east of the Don before mud hits, and that's not good.


I'll let you know how that goes in my next game.

I had no territorial cushion after attacking in the blizzard. All of my blizzard gains were wiped out in the first two weeks in March, and then some (Leningrad fell in the first week of March after holding from early October onwards, Moscow fell in the second week of March without having been in any real danger in October). Yes, it was nice to have some guards units by the end of the blizzard but I lost about 3/4 of them to encirclements in the first two weeks of March.

--
Del
janh
Posts: 1215
Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:06 pm

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by janh »

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
I do not agree that the Germans moving first gives them a benefit. On the contrary, in the later war when the Germans are on the defensive, the Germans being hit by new weather first favors the Soviets. Instead of the mud stopping Soviet offensives through supply difficulties, it will protect Soviet spearheads from German counterattacks and doom surrounded Axis units (of which there will often be several each turn, so the odds of this happening on a clear to mud shift are pretty high). However, whatever side you think it favors, a change to weather shift between player phases would solve the problem.

Yes, also the Soviet can rip benefits from it, which can be equally important. What I meant was that the Axis player, first phasing, always knows the weather and can ajdust in his turn. He has what is often extremely critical, the initiative, in this sense. In worst case, he can backtrack (assuming he didn't overextend too badly/boldly), or make use of the weather first. The Soviet player, when playing random weather, relies on luck to see bad weather strike Axis. He can only harvest the "remaining fruits", never the first.
ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
I also think that mud should affect operations primarily through the supply system and not by artificially reducing the combat value of the attacker.

That for sure, but I imagine that the idea the designers saw behind the lower combat values might be tanks, guns and equipment getting stuck during advances, or relocating during a mobile defense, and exhausted/tired infantry slogging on alone after a while?
User avatar
mmarquo
Posts: 1376
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2000 8:00 am

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by mmarquo »

"Am curious to see how a zero blizzard offensive works out. In the past I would never have recommended it, as you lose your best chance to get some wins and guards conversions. But now, it may be worth it.

OTOH you won't have any kind of territorial cushion if you just sit the blizzard out. So if your defenses can't take the hit in March, you may well yourself somewhere east of the Don before mud hits, and that's not good."


I am finding that keeping Soviet units at a higher TOE and higher moral with less unreadiness is acheivable by merging the flood of reinforcement brigades directly into unready and dangerously depleted units during the blizzard offensive. Instead of divisions falling to 5 - 6,000 men, they can be sustained at 8 - 10,000 men and they are much more resilient. It is a sure way of funneling reinforcements directly to where they are needed rather than depending on refit mode. Hopefully this will buffer the March hit.


Marquo
User avatar
delatbabel
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:37 am
Location: Sydney, Australia
Contact:

RE: March Madness 42 back on topic

Post by delatbabel »

That's one of the things I'll try in my next game, along with getting the guards units to withdraw and leaving a bigger gap between my brigade screen and my front line. It seems a pity to sacrifice all of those brigades but it's better than sacrificing a couple of fronts.

It's clearly impossible to hold either Moscow or Leningrad in 1942 with the current 1.05 so it will be a matter of where behind the 1941 line to make a stand. I think the Volga river line should be defensible, and it should be possible to hold Baku even if you give up most of the rest of the Caucasus. I'd like to see some other AARs to see where people have defended against the March onslaught.
--
Del
Post Reply

Return to “Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series”