A funny thing happened on the road to Moscow

[Simon Edmonds]

I seem to have found a part of the game that doesn’t play historically. I will only use one example of something that seems to happen multiple times on most turns. I am talking about routs that aren’t really routs.

This game has been started using the latest update. In the example as the German player I surround a strong Soviet motorised unit. The unit has; 10,845 men, 108 artillery units and 76 afv’s. In order to leave it with nowhere to retreat I occupy the surrounding six hexes with divisional sized units. I then attack and get a result of “routed” The result shows the motorised unit losing 643 men; 8 artillery pieces and 26 afv. Before I go any further I will show the accepted military definition of a rout.

Rout - Wikipedia
A rout is a chaotic and disorderly retreat or withdrawal of troops from a battlefield, resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale. A key feature of a true rout is that the routed forces abandon equipment, especially weapons.

At the moment I will accept the loss of just 6% manpower in a routed unit without question. What I will question is the artillery losses. This fully encircled, routed unit was able to organise their transport; hook-up their artillery and fight their way through the encirclement. All for the apparent loss of just 8 artillery pieces.

Historically; and not just in the second world war the first thing a routed unit abandoned was the artillery.

Am I reading the battle result screen wrong or is there something I am missing?

[No idea]

The Real losses are bigger, because part of the damaged equipment is lost during the logistic phase and not during the combat phase. But it has been damaged due to combat, so you can say that combat is the real reason for the loss.

[56ajax]

There are probably many parts of the game that don't play historically. Allowances have to be made for it being eg weekly turn based game. Anyway you do not want the enemy to rout but to surrender.

[Djouk]

This is a théoric aspect of this game. As you play in turns and not in real time if you surround an enemy unit it is assumed to be supplied from start to end of a turn. You have to wait next turn for the game to consider this unit without supply line. So in a same turn you have impression to do hardest job surrounding units and get only few enemy loss and rout attacking them. One thing disturb me in this méchanism : if you are able to trace a supply patch of only one hex you can resupply an entire army. I had prefered calculation of supply with proportion an army can link to it s supply source because the 1 hex rule is binary too simple and greatly avantage the more powerfull army.

[EwaldvonKleist]

I agree with you about the routing aspect. Routing causes almost equal losses to a standard retreat and forcing a retreat over multiple hexagons causes (1) more damage than a rout (2).
But (1) is still an organised retreat with a free path to safety (2) is a rout (because of low morale/TOE/high fatigue or because there is no retreat path) and, because it is less organised, should cause equal losses in men/non-damaged AFVs, but more in artillery and damaged AFVs.
Isn't it possible to include an extra, significant retreat attrition for artillery/damaged AFVs for routed units?

An example: My understanding of the Charkov back hand blow by Manstein has always been that the damage done to the Soviets did not consist of mass encirclements/surrender of many men, but by forcing the Soviet units into a situation where the soldiers abandon heavy immobile or damaged equipment and try to get through a weak German screening force to own lines (as opposed to early war pockets where the manpower simpyl surrendered and became POWs). So the damage done was not to the manpower, but to the equipment. That is pretty much the equivalent to an ingame situation of a rout caused by absence of a retreat path. But ingame this rout will not result in significant losses to the Soviet units as it historically happened.

[Kielec]

Perhaps the issue of a 10 miles long hex border being (hopefully) held tight by a division should be raised here? Or, rough terrain, maybe?

I understand, that pointing out to the fact that the game's mechanics do go a bit "light" on first turn encirclements is not necessary...

[Simon Edmonds]

Here is another one of those question mark things. This time the Germans (98th, 122nd, 123rd Inf XX) are attacking the Soviets (49th Tank) from hexes 76:47, 77:47 and 78:48 into hex 77:48. The Soviet strength is 9363 men, 47 art, and 135 afv. The result is a “retreat”. The Soviets are retreated across the major river Dvina into hex 77:49 with losses of 298 men 2 art, and 10 afv.

Here is the catch. A quick check on Google Earth reveals that the river here is 118 meters across and there are no bridges. To avoid capture the 9,000 soldiers can swim across the river (should we factor an attrition for drowning? Nah, just kidding). However tanks and artillery can’t swim and would have to be abandoned. (In an orderly retreat this equipment would be blown up to prevent it falling into enemy hands. In a rout it would just be abandoned for the enemy to capture.)

A number of replies have questioned why historical micro management is important or necessary.

To me the answer is simple. This is the best game of its subject that has ever been created. Daylight second. I was “blooded” many decades ago on a newly released game called “Fire in the East” The designers of that game could only dream about what has been achieved with War in the East.

So why make these little changes. Because the small nuances that effect battle results ripple up to eventually effect the course of major campaigns.

[56ajax]

I agree that the game should be as historical as possible.

If there are variations I make some allowance provided it is applied to both sides.

In defense of the game a turn is 1 week ie the Russians have a week to retreat across the river; historical TOEs of Tank Divs have 3 Bridging Companies; the game has to make some generalizations about the width of rivers; historically there may have been boats? [:)]

The Russians were very adapt at crossing major obstacles, certainly later in the war

and

many more losses happen in the logistics phase (which you don't see)

[morvael]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
forcing the Soviet units into a situation where the soldiers abandon heavy immobile or damaged equipment and try to get through a weak German screening force to own lines (as opposed to early war pockets where the manpower simpyl surrendered and became POWs). So the damage done was not to the manpower, but to the equipment. That is pretty much the equivalent to an ingame situation of a rout caused by absence of a retreat path. But ingame this rout will not result in significant losses to the Soviet units as it historically happened.

Since equipment is paired with men when in units, it's hard to lose equipment but not men (they would have to go to the pool immediately and would be redistributed to other units). Restriction of the model...

[Simon Edmonds]

In a previous post I was having a bit of a whine about rout’s not working the way they did historically. I have since been playing the game and reading the rulebook and I think I may know now what the problem is. I use the following as an example.
This game has been started using the latest update. The Soviet 16th tank division is stacked with the routed 18th tank division. Together they have a strength of; 16084 men, 81 artillery units and 439 afv’s. The Germans attack and as a result the 16th tank division is routed to one hex and the routed 18th tank division is routed a second time to a different hex. The losses are 1475 men, 10 art and 107 afv. Another German unit encounters the routed 16th tank division and it then jumps to another hex further away. Yet another German encounters the twice routed 18th tank division and it then jumps also to another hex further away. All pretty straight forward so far.
Then I was reading the manual and came to 15.9.4 Effect of routing. It states “Routed units do not participate in combat, but if part of a stack that is attacked and is forced to retreat, the routed unit will be shattered.” In the above example the routed Soviet 18th tank division was not shattered. It appeared to be displaced to another hex.

Question 1. Is this a mistake in the coding or have the rules changed.

Further reading leads to 15.10 Displacement moves. It states:
A displacement move is a special type of movement by non-phasing combat units that have been routed or zero CV units that find themselves adjacent to an enemy combat unit.
There are several conditions that cause a unit to make a displacement move:
• A combat unit routs following a retreat result after combat
• A unit with zero CV finds itself adjacent to an enemy unit while not stacked with a friendly, non-depleted combat unit. This would include HQ units, on-map construction support unit, or a depleted or routed combat unit
• In some cases when a unit with a zero CV is part of a stack forced to retreat due to combat.
•
Question 2. The second and third bullet points seem to contradict the intention of 15.9.4. Is this intentional?

[morvael]

I've played since 1.03 and I don't remember routed units to shatter automatically. If this was changed from what they state in 15.9.4, it was long ago.

[thedoctorking]

Actually, having them shatter when confronted again would probably be a good idea. There would have to be a good bit of modding to make it work properly, though.