Some Suggestions for the Next Patch

[wadortch]

Hello again.

While we are on this topic and your are making a list and checking it twice here's another gripe.

Have started a new PBEM game, settings on historical. On the very first turn Leeb starts unhappy and I cannot assign a focus to 4th PG (besides the other penalties associated with this).

It really seems improbable that this kind of thing should be affecting the very first turn of a historical settings game.

[budd]

You can turn off past history in the settings that way all relationships start at zero at game start. The changing relationships game to game is one of the small things that make each replay different.

[wadortch]

Hi Budd.
I thought that turning Historical on would set the relationships to nearly 0, meaning I didn't think historically that Leeb was grumpy and an obstructionist from the get go.

[wadortch]

Hello again Cameron.

Isokron is OK with posting up some shots of the game so here is the first of 3. All show the situation at the start of Soviet Turn 24.

[wadortch]

Here is screenshot two of 3. Lot's drama in the center. A bold sudden death producing move being made by Isokron to take Gorki.

[wadortch]

Third of 3. Situation in the South. Isokron has taken Stalingrad. I really have not figured out how the Soviets could ever prevent the loss of Rostov. I ran with a goal of preserving regular armies but they could not run fast enough. Nothing but conscripts appear normally in the south and I did not think I could afford changing the arrival theatre of regular armies.

[lancer]

Hi Wadortch,

Mmmmm... You're in trouble here.

Holding Rostov is tough. Blowing bridges can hobble the German logistics, especially the bridge over the Dneper at Dnepropetrovsk.

What's Isokron done to negate your previous strategy?

Cheers,
Cameron

[wadortch]

Hello Cameron

What did Isokron do to whack my strategy?

First he was, as he posted previously, patient. He never attacked a big Soviet force on the fly and would often sit for several turns before attacking to ensure he had full AP's and his artillery pounded fortifications.

Second, he played the logistical side of the game very well, shuttled HQ's back and forth to refuel and thence return to subordinate units loaded up (taking a risk leaving them out of command at the right time).

Third, related to the first two points, he took his time setting up more than two hex side attacks to win the battle and inched forward hex by hex--which is fast enough if the Germans arrive near the big 3 cities soon enough to do this in good weather.

I surrendered the game today and have attached the final dramatic scene around Moscow. I would not have raised the white flag if he had not cut the supply lines into Moscow with a very bold move by PG 2 which I did not have enough forces to cut off.
Note the Siberians pushing out of Gorki and much more importantly the arrival of PG 1 near Ryazan.

Am I convinced that my strategy is totally undone? No. Next time I play as Soviets I will build smaller "Towers of Doom" and put the troops thereby freed up on the flanks. Try to keep an army able to menace the flank of AGN through the Valdai Hills as AGN grinds towards Leningrad.

Bridges--not one did I blow up. Zhukov too busy shoring up Marshal's to spare for this. Something to think about for the next patch would be to give the Reds a little more ability to blow bridges.

Additionally, it is still not clear to me that the auto default to defensive posture for Soviet Armies under the 103.r is quite right. Think about a system where the Soviet player could chose the posture of arriving armies. More than once I would have loved to have an army arrive in offensive posture instead of defensive posture.

Finally, as mentioned previously I think the Southern Front is a lost cause for the Soviets. Germans really don't even need PG 1 once they have destroyed the regular Soviet Armies and the German Infantry is across the Dnepr.

I hope Isokron weighs in here, he made a number of insightful and correct critiques of my play while the game was underway and I thank him for the great game! We have started another game with me as the Huns and it will be interesting to see what he can do as the Reds.

[Isokron]

Hm yes the game went surprisingly well after the script I laid out in the other thread. Except that wadortch had disabled the finns so agn had to wait for agc to cut the railroads instead of having the finns do it.

But yes especially in ags the soviets need some sort of buff, the germans can always work around the long supply lines for the panzers by sacrificing some turns and moving back the hq. And trying to hold back a pg with conscripts in the open is no fun even if you can get them in defensive stance.

[Franciscus]

Hi, Lancer.

I am playing a campaign as germans vs AI with 1.03r and normal settings (after several campaigns on easy.[:D])

I must say I am having a blast and really appreciating your game. The AI has given me a tough fight and currently, it's almost end of September and I am either at the verge of a spectacular victory or an humiliating defeat...[:D] After leaving hundreds of panzers in the russian steppes...

The only real gripe I have and think maybe could be tweaked is the siege artillery: In normal settings, the heavy guns can only travel in converted rails (nlije in "Easy"). The end result, at least in my game is that they are useless. Sure, I can use it in the opening turns in Brest-Litovsk (not really necessary), but I am unable to get them anywhere near any of the other important fortified cities. Riga ? Talinin ? Minsk ? Smolensk ? Odessa ? Forget it. Never has the converted rail line reached any of these cities when I needed (or ever, really, in some cases) until now.


Regards

[lancer]

Hi Wadortch & Isokron,

Some interesting feedback there. The south is tough to hold for the Soviets but that's largely due to geography. It's the only objective the Soviets lost in '41.

Hi Franciscus,

Siege artillery has been changed significantly to the current state in order to align it more with what happened on the day (it allowed some pretty gamey, a-historical, tactics before). The Germans only ever managed to deploy it (after Brest-Litvosk) in situations where there was a prolonged attempt at taking a city (eg. Odessa, Sevastopol). It required German gauge rail to operate.

Whether this makes for a good game outcome is an open question. To date you're the only person who has mentioned it whereas in it's previous state there were a multitude of complaints. You can always use Easy mode where it reverts back to the original system but that also negates a lot of other game features so it might not be ideal.

In the absence of further feedback I'm going to go with the numbers on this one.

Cheers,
Cameron

[Isokron]

Well the old siege artillery was a deathray that made cities easier to take than open ground while the current one removes it from the game. Neither is optimal but the current implementation is less disruptive for the rest of the game.

[Franciscus]

Yes, that's my point.

Currently siege artillery in normal settings is useless and irrelevant. Why have in the game something that - in the time frame of the game (Barbarossa) - will never be used ? But no big deal, of course !

PS: I finished my game, with a decisive victory, capturing Moscow and Leningrad right before the beginning of Rasputitsa. Great fun. [&o]

Looking back, I was completely reckless with my panzers. PG 2,3 and 4 never had a rest/refit, although I switched them early to sustained offensive stance. I lost more than 2450 panzers !
We get complaints and states of mind from the truck guy up to Hitler himself, but the PG commanders never complain...[&:] And the armygroup leaders all loved me (superb relations)

You would think that after being forced to blow to pieces their panzer divsions (all of the Pz divisions of PG 2 and 3 were on foot at the end of the game) Guderian and Hoth would be kicking Halder's door in a murderous rage...[:D]. It would perhaps be a good addiction to the RPG part of this game that the PG commanders also made complaints or at least "demand" in some way for a rest and refit, what do you think ?

Regards.

[lancer]

Hi Franciscus,

That's a good idea.

Cheers,
Cameron

[RandomAttack]

Currently siege artillery in normal settings is useless and irrelevant. Why have in the game something that - in the time frame of the game (Barbarossa) - will never be used ? But no big deal, of course !

IMO siege arty has always been useless when confined to German gauge-- you simply can't convert rail fast enough to make it useful. And it seems to be designed to counter a self-inflicted problem: Major Garrisons. They are so strong that it's very difficult to defeat them when in cities that you can only attack from 3-4 hex-sides. In my games, Riga almost always gets a major garrison (no matter what settings I use)-- which is completely ahistorical and tremendously slows the advance. For single-player the design has always been to slow down the historical advance any way possible to compensate for the snowball effect that can happen when you finally break through. I've suggested before that the answer is to increase Soviet mass (reinforcements) later in the game rather than trying to stonewall the Germans early. Personally, I mostly play this to get the "feel" of the real Barbarossa. For all that this is a great game, it doesn't "feel" like that to me. I've done some minor modding (reduce major garrison strength, etc.) that has helped some. I wish I was better at modding this so I could tweak some more stuff and add more reinforcements to compensate but it seems a bit beyond me at the moment.