New morale rule is Fixed

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

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Michael T
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Michael T »

I ran the tests on 10 ID. Don't have time right now to post the data but will do so later. I had one ID go from 37 to 51 in 2 turns with the new rule. Without new rule 37 to 41 in 2 turns.
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Michael T
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Michael T »

Ok tested 10 ID. All in refit more than 10 hexes from the front with 1.07.03

Unit - Start morale T1/ T3 morale

178 - 32/37
18 - 37/42
144 - 40/44
166 - 37/41
187 - 33/37
229 - 39/44
160 - 37/41
170 - 33/37
186 - 32/36
98 - 35/39

So mostly they went up by 4 points. Avg 2 per turn.

Now same units at T1 with same morale but patched up to 1.07.06 (new morale rule)

178 - 32/41
18 - 37/51
144 - 40/49
166 - 37/50
187 - 33/41
229 - 39/47
160 - 37/45
170 - 33/43
186 - 32/43
98 - 35/47

That's about another 3.3 pts per turn on top of the 2 pts per turn. So ~5.3 pts per turn in total.

It's just too much Joel.

I have the save files if you want them.
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morvael
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by morvael »

Duble post.
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morvael
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by morvael »

I like the change. With all the latest fixes Axis should last till '45 not early '44. Everything that puts away the sudden death Axis victory is also ok (hate spend 100s of hours and miss the fun part). Also, higher Sov morale in '41 may result in more forward fighting and that is great. I miss the chance to do it. Of course I am not against 1-5 point adjustment to NM in 41-42, if that will help balance a bit (I want the Germans stopped at the gates of Moscow, not Smolensk or Minsk).
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: morvael

I like the change. With all the latest fixes Axis should last till '45 not early '44. Everything that puts away the sudden death Axis victory is also ok (hate spend 100s of hours and miss the fun part). Also, higher Sov morale in '41 may result in more forward fighting and that is great. I miss the chance to do it. Of course I am not against 1-5 point adjustment to NM in 41-42, if that will help balance a bit (I want the Germans stopped at the gates of Moscow, not Smolensk or Minsk).

Sounds right to me. If the balance encourages a Soviet player to fight and to launch counterattacks in the Summer-Autumn that is for the good. If it allows the Germans to turn the period 43-45 into a long contested retreat without hitting a cliff somewhere in early 44 that also sounds good.

From my (limited) experience there are 3 main systems at work in 1941. An overpowered German turn 1 (mainly due to the accurate OOB and no Soviet reaction), an overpowered Soviet winter offensive (mainly as the Soviets often have kept more of an army than they had historically) and the tendency for Soviet players to give up too much, too easily in the July-September period. Its the balance between them that matters.
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by SigUp »

I agree with Flavius. Cap the NM at 45 and it should be about right. 50 right now is just too high. As for the forward fighting component, I just don't know. If units gain such spectacular numbers in such short time, it would actually encourage the Soviet to throw away a couple of turns just to refit a giant number of units and then send in a brick wall to stop the Germans. Coupled with the blizzard rules it could be potentially disastrous.
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Peltonx
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Peltonx »

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Did a simple test on this new morale rule. I put 5 Sov ID on T1 in to Refit mode. All 10 plus hexes from the front. Look at the results on T3.

16th ID 32 to 36
199th ID 32 to 39
183rd ID 33 to 44
18th ID 33 to 43
132nd ID 34 to 46

Yes no typo the 132nd went from 34 to 46 in two turns. Utterly ridiculous.

How to screw up a game with one flick of a switch.

Extrapolate this across the whole Red Army and blind Freddy can see how the Germans are screwed in 41 now.

@ 2by3, Please fix.
Did some look backs (AI vs AI) and I have to agree SHC NM should be tweaked back to 45 in 1941.

and Sigup is right standard MO for SHC is run the first 3 to 5 turns depending on area. No one will fight forward if they don't have to.

2by3 has done a good job getting game ( P v P ) right from June 41 to June 43 with the conversion WAD about to be fixed game would be balanced from June 41 to June 45, but the 1941 SHC NM levels needs to be tweaked back to 45 as Flaviusx has pointed out or the game is back to where it was the day it was released as far as balance goes..
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by carlkay58 »

Since the tweak to Soviet NM from 45 to 50 occurred because the Soviets were too weak with the bug in place, then setting it back to the original would seem a no brainer. The big change (overall) of the bug fix is to make units recover morale faster than when it was not working correctly. So 'reborn' units will be ready to go to the front in 3 or 4 turns rather than the 8 or so turns that are currently. Oh, and the Axis units actually can hit their NM now too.

Switching the Soviet NM back to a maximum of 45 in 41 will still allow the Soviets to bring the reinforcing and reforming units to the front faster and keep the Soviets from not having sufficient units in the front line to HAVE a front line. When the units reform faster, then the Soviets can afford (to a certain extent) to throw some units away in Summer of 41 to buy time and cause additional Axis casualties. Read this as the Soviets will be able to fight forward with less down side.
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Manstein63
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Manstein63 »

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Shrug. Just cap Soviet NM to 45 for all 41 and call it a day. What's making this a bit inflated is that Sov morale starts at 50 and declines gradually from there. So those July and August rifle divisions will be pretty tough customers.

I agree that this would probably balance better. The only exception should be for any Guard units that are formed prior to Jan 42.
As it stands now the Axis player faced with 8 or so turns of blizzard tends to do what the soviet player does for the first 17 and that is keep out of the way and fall back until the weather changes.
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Flaviusx
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Flaviusx »

There shouldn't be many guards early on. It takes a while to farm wins, and they only start showing up in limited numbers in the autumn. The real large scale farming of guards generally has to wait until the blizzard.

A half dozen or even a dozen guards rifle divisions in September isn't going to wreck game balance. I don't think I've ever managed to do more than that, even against the AI. I only hit guards cap during the actual blizzard counteroffensive.

Those guards deflate considerably in 1942, too. Once NM is set to 40, the guards bonus merely puts them back around 50 moral assuming a few wins under their belt. If they take some knocks, they'll drift back down to 45 range, which is not very impressive.

Michael is right to note that 50 is a kind of inflection point for morale so far as the Soviets go. 40 I think is another inflection point: the one where units are virtually non combat effective and can be considered useless 1 point ants and have no business anywhere near the front line except as sacrificial units.

As such we are working within a relatively narrow range here.
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morvael
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by morvael »

50 is 56% better than 40 (0.25 over 0.16 - including experience equal to morale), also we don't know when and how are the numbers rounded so it may be even more (or less).
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morvael
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by morvael »

Since morale was not working it would be good to return to morale rules from version 1.0 and start from there, as all later changes were not what they seemed to be, because of the bug. In 41, 45 NM would be ok for me.
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by rmonical »

The test I ran on 1942 Germans showed that about 15% of the German units below NM were getting a bump

My post blizzard German results are similar. Will try to quantify over the weekend. Time consuming because I want to look at units off the line even though units on the line get an occasional bump.
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Joel Billings »

Thanks for the test results. For some reason the Soviet morale increase due to the change happens much more often than it does for the Germans. Sounds like we have to find out what that is and either dial it back or reduce Soviet 41 NM as suggested. We'll look into it. Pavel is out of town this week so I don't think any changes will be possible until next week.
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Hetulik
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Hetulik »

Question: I am in the middle of doing turn 1 in a game I started as the axis against the soviet AI. Should I revert back to version 1.07.04 before ending turn?

And if so can I just apply the 04 installer over my 06 installation?
Thanks!
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Michael T
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Michael T »

FWIW I think a Soviet NM brought back closer to the 43-45 range in 41 is needed here. AND a slowing down of the rate that topping out is acheived through the *new* morale rule. Topping out in 2 weeks from a low of 30 something is still too fast. The Soviet player should face the decision of whether to place low morale units in the front or not. If the rate of morale increase remains the same you will still see morale 35 units on T1 be at 45 by T3. Which doesn't sit quite right with me. Anyway I trust 2by3 will come up with an answer. I am thankful that it is going to get fixed [:)]
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Michael T
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Michael T »

As an another option, it seems to me 41 was pretty close to balanced without this *new* rule and it is not going to help the Axis that much in 41 so why not simply leave it out in 41 altogether. Bring it on line in 1942. Thats when both sides really need it.

So don't mess with 41, it wasn't broken.
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Mehring »

Playing Russian in spring 42 and cycling low morale units from front to rest. Over ten hexes from enemy they rise 3 or 4 morale per turn (typically 47 to 50 in a turn), even when still entrained. Some rest and refit. How about stopping morale rises and refits for entrained units?
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Flaviusx »

Mehring, presumably they stuff those rail cars with drill sergeants.

I kid, I kid.
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Mehring
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RE: New morale rule has screwed 41.

Post by Mehring »

Flavius, what an aweful thought.

I really hope the morale in WitE2 will in part be determined by events. This Russians railing north business is a great game tactic but please let's have logistics, game objective and morale incentives to make historical choices at least worthy of consideration for both sides.
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