V1.02f balance test - Chuck Berger v Vic

[ChuckBerger]

Turn 11 - August 1

Weather clears this turn, so full speed ahead:

AGN: The 7th Independent army pulls back from Karelia to Tikhvin, in time to save that city, for now. Otherwise the Russians pull back in a desperate bid to escape mass encirclement. They fail, 4PzG still has enough fuel and hitting power to mop up some formations gumming up the roads and bridges around the Volkhov River, and Totenkopf Division meets up with advance units of the 6th Army advancing through the Valdai Hills, thus closing the trap. 17 Divisions and 3 Army HQs are trapped in the Novgorod/Luga pocket. They might re-open a tenuous line next turn, but I should be able to mops them all up in the coming turns. A rearguard at Pskov is overrun.

AGC: Vic counterattack the 2PzG spearhead with all he's got, something like the better part of four armies is committed to large but costly and unsuccessful attacks at Vyazma. For my turn, 3PzG finally has enough fuel to enter the fray, and they do so with decisive effect. 8 Divisions are surrounded and forced to surrender north of Vyazma by the concerted attacks of both panzer forces. Another 3 divisions are encircled west of Rzhev, and a further half dozen units are shattered and pushed back. Along the Moscow road, three tank units are crushed in progressive attacks by Guderian's panzers, which brings them to the very gates of Moscow. Lead patrols of the 29th Motorised division report overrunning workers still preparing fortifications on the outskirts of the city, and have sighted the Kremlin in the distance...

Not much Vic can do here, I think. North of the main Vyazma-Moscow rail line, his forces are in disarray, with only a handful of combat-effective units left. South of the line, he has some strong formations from Bryansk to Kaluga. He just might be able to snip off my spearhead next turn, but even so 3PzG is in good form and would easily be able to muscle forward. Moscow should be mine in a few turns at most.

AGS: Miraculously, the Romanian tank division survives, the conscript armies that should have trapped it obviously failed their activation rolls! With clear weather returning this turn, the division pulls back to 11th Army lines, which now stretch from Zaporozhe to just short of Mariupol. Time for 11th army to get some rest. Other armies are all moving up to the front, Vic has lots of conscripts from Dnepropetrovsk through Stalino and, presumably, on to Rostov.

The Romanian 4th army occupies all of the Crimea except for Kerch, which has a garrison but nothing else.

Von Kleist's panzers take Kursk, but are out of fuel. Maddeningly, I still can't move my FSB forward to Kiev, the only options I am given are all down south (Kerman, Melitopol, Krivoirog, Nikolaev). If that doesn't change, 1PzG will sit there, out of fuel, for the entire rest of the game.

Incidentally, I have so many PP that I can shop for birthday presents for Brauchitsch (do you think he'd like these pants?), play a starring role in propaganda films, give my Chief of Staff extended leave, tinker with R&R for a dozen individual divisions, and still heaps in the bank. Maybe I could lend some of them to Goering at interest? Or give some away to Antonescu? Or just frame a few to hang on the wall in my office? Any ideas?

[ChuckBerger]

And finally a screenie. This is just after the German phase on the 1 August turn. Leningrad has fallen and what's left of the Reds is mostly in a huge pocket at Luga/Novgorod. Guderians panzers are in the lead of AGC, just at the gates of Moscow, with the Russian centre battleaxed in two.

In the south, German forces are still catching up to 11th Army's early blitz into the Donbas. Russia still holds Dnepropetrovsk. Kleist's panzers are through Kiev and all the up to Kursk, where they sit awaiting fuel to catch up. There are no russian troops to be seen between Orel and Dnepropetrovsk, though perhaps some reinforcements are there in the fog-of-war around Kharkov.

[ChuckBerger]

Turn 12 - August 5

AGN: The trapped Russians briefly reestablish a line of communication east of Novgorod, but this turn I shut the trap for good, and reduce the perimeter of the encirclement all around. Luga falls. 15 Divisions and 3 HQs trapped at Novgorod, otherwise the only Russians in evidence in the north are the 7th Independent army at Tikhvin.

AGC: No coup-de-main at Moscow, alas. The Russian 34th army is hurriedly rushed in to Moscow just in time to save it, for now. The 34th deploys in fortifications surrounding the city, and it looks like a conscript army will be deploying there soon as well. Vic throws the kitchen sink at at two divisions on the main rail line, in a bit to cut off all of 2PzG, but doesn't quite manage it. His 3 divisions trapped near Rzhev manage to break out, however.

Moscow is now too strongly held to grab it on the run, I'll need to hammer away to take a few hexes on the city before I can assault. No major garrison yet. This turn 3PzG, 2Army and 9 Army focus on securing the northern shoulder of our long salient pointing at Moscow; in 2 separate operations they surround and eliminate 9 divisions near Rzhev, and shatter several more. That's it for the northern half of Soviet AGC. To the south, a slower push back towards Kaluga, and 4th Army manages a penetration of the Russian line at Bryansk, just to keep up the pressure all around. At Moscow, the depleted 2 PzG gains one hex on Moscow, pushing the newly arrived 34th Army out of some fortifications, hopefully for good this time.

AGS: Vic has confirmed that the inability to relocate my FSB base is apparently a bug. The list of valid FSB relocation points should include the 4 choices closest to the existing FSB (for me, Lvov) - but instead I'm being given the further 4 options. So I could relocate to Sevastopol, but not Kiev. The upshot of this is that AGS will never receive any more fuel! At the current FSB of Lvov, its too far for trucks, but at Melitopol or Kurman or whatever, it's way too far for trains. So for this game we're just going to have to assume that the Corporal pulled 1PzG back to France to prepare for Sea Lion '42.

Normally this would of course be a game breaker, but I'm just happy we found a bug and am happy to keep playing.

1PzG's infantry units can still move, and the Hungarian cavalry unit probes forward, finding Belgorod and Kharkov both undefended. Kharkov is taken, though only with a ZOC, maybe this will push Stalin over the edge, at a crucial moment in the Moscow battle. Elsewhere, still moving infantry forward. 17th Army pushes a single division out of Dnepropetrovsk, but the bridge is still his. Two Romanians divisions fail to dislodge a garrison at Kerch.

[ChuckBerger]

Clarification: the FSB issue I'm having isn't a bug, exactly. The FSB options given will be the four valid locations closest to the front line. So it's WAI. But Cameron and Vic are looking to improve the implementation to avoid the situation that has arisen in this game, where I've been "trapped" by my rapid progress into a set of FSB choices that are way too far ahead of German rail gauge, and also way too far from my PzG.

[Michael T]

Either way, balance question aside, this game is yours.

[ChuckBerger]

Turn 13 - August 9

AGN: The Novgorod pocket is cleared, 15-odd units destroyed. Finland intervenes, too late to see any combat. They grab Petrozavodsk without opposition. The Soviets abandon Tikhvin, pulling their last army in the north back towards Vologda. PzG4 heads south to help out in AGC, but they're far beyond any adequate logistical base and probably will run out of fuel before even reaching the army group boundary line. I relocate FSB to Luga, the best of a bad set of options...

AGC: Vic again counterattacks Guderian's spearhead at Moscow, while pulling back along the north and south shoulders to try and form a coherent line. Rzhev is abandoned without a fight. At Moscow, his troops don't do half bad, losses are about equal and my panzers are beat up a bit, but the panzers hold the hex, and the counterattack sets me up nicely to surge forward during my turn. The full force of 2 Panzergruppe swarms around Moscow, 3PzG drives north along the western suburbs, while 2PzG hooks around south and up the east side of the city. By the end of the turn, I have five hexes on Moscow, only a single road north remains. Vic may be able to kick me out of one or two of these hexes, we'll see. Moscow itself has a major garrison and no less than seven infantry divisions, but six of them are conscripts.

Further south, an initial assault on Kaluga fails. Fourth army is locked in a bitter contest with the Soviet forces around Bryansk. Both sides attack, 4th Army winds up taking the city, with heavy losses all around.

AGS: Vic unleashes a wall of conscripts against my 11th Army SE of Zaporozhe. Lots of T-34s are involved. My line holds, largely due to Luftwaffe and Counterbattery support, I suspect. Losses are about equal. My other infantry armies are still marching, marching, marching. The Romanians storm Kerch, kicking out the garrison and opening up the back door to Rostov.

As for the stranded 1PzG, no luck. IN theory I should have at least had Kursk as an FSB relocation option, as it is right on the front line. No such luck. In frustration, I relocate FSB to Zaporozhe. Nothing good will come of it, it's way too far on Russian gauge rails.

[ChuckBerger]

Turn 14 - August 14

AGN: The Finns move into the line at Tikhvin, the German infantry are all heading east into the endless forest. PzG4 is out of fuel. Nothing much left to do here.

AGC: Soviet counterattacks on the forces trying to surround Moscow fail to dislodge any of them. For my part, I decide on direct assault with most of both Panzergruppe. Defending are 6 divisions and a major garrison, all with entrenchment from 100 to 200. I have a +75% concentric bonus. Moscow falls. My losses are light. Who needs siege artillery...

To the north, 9th army launches a few costly and unsuccessful attacks around Kalinin. To the South, 2nd army has better luck at Kaluga, storming the city and pushing the Russian back across the Oka. 4th Army continues punching and getting punched around Bryansk, and in general coming out ahead. We've pressed ahead to the bridge at Orel, and I think the energetic counterattack here is running out of puff.

Game's not quite over in the centre, as several Russian armies are moving up to counterattack around Moscow. My armies are depleted, most panzer and panzer grenadier units are between about 50-65% TOE. It should be enough to hold just fine. 2PzG finally switches out of blitzkrieg mode. And with Moscow in hand, and a bit of fuel in reserve, I have the breathing room to move FSB forward to Vyazma.

AGS: Vic continues his massive assaults on 11th Army's lines. Losses are heavy on both sides, but 11th army doesn't give an inch. 17th Army has finally arrived in force at the great bend of the Dniepr, and it crashes across, taking the Dnepropetrovk bridge and threatening to roll up the big line of conscript armies attacking 11th army. 6th Army moves slowly towards Voronezh, where Vic has a conscript army. 4th Romanian Army crosses into the Kuban, no Russians in sight.

Total casualties are about 1.9million Russians, to about 170K Axis. I've lost about 1200 panzers, so with reinforcements my overall panzer force is at about 60% of the starting force. Russians have less than a million troops in the field, and have had less than a million since turn four, except for a brief peak in late July when they got back to 1.1 million, before dropping to around 900K now.

[ChuckBerger]

Turn 15 - August 17

AGN: Some new Russian armies show up near Tikhvin, which gives the Finns the chance for their only combat of this war. They blast back an infantry division. 4PzG gets a bit of fuel and, as they are not needed at Moscow, cut NE through the forests towards Vologda.

AGC: At Moscow, two large Russian counterattacks are stopped cold. Something like 13K losses, for less than 1K German casualties, even though the defenders were caught switching modes. The German counterstroke collapses what is left of the Russian line north of Moscow, perhaps 10 formations are erased, Kalinin will fall next turn, and about 13 division will be cut off NW of Kalinin, another 15 divisions are nearly trapped just north of Moscow. Vladimir is seized. Both Russian counterattacking armies in the south are smashed back.

In the Bryansk/Orel area, a Russian counterattack wrecks 2 infantry divisions, but even here the Germans retain the upper hand, pushing the Russians back across the Oka everywhere but a small bridgehead.

AGS: A lone infantry division approaching Voronezh is very roughly handled by the conscript army there, and pulls back to await reinforcements. In the south, three separate attacks by conscript armies are shattered, again here around 15K Russian dead for no more than 2K German and Romanian losses. The German 11th Army immediately goes over to the offensive against these disrupted armies, and perhaps a dozen Russian divisions are eliminated or rendered unfit for combat, maybe another 15,000 losses. 17th Army reaches Pavlograd, but the initial assault doesn't have quite enough AP to take the city. Still, I'm confident now that AGS can reach Rostov even without the assistance of a Panzergruppe.

The Romanians take Novorossiysk and Krasnodar, still no Russians in sight down there.

[ChuckBerger]

At this point Vic and I have decided to call the game finished. The Germans hold Leningrad and Moscow, the Russian counterattack on Moscow has been repulsed, and all Russian forces north of Moscow are set to be rounded up in the next few turns. In the south, Rostov is not exactly close, but the Romanians are in the Kuban, and the powerful German infantry armies are rolling steadily forward around Kharkov/Pavlograd/Mariupol.

Total losses are about 2.1 million Russian, and 198K Axis. I have about 1500 panzers in the field.

This has been a most interesting game, thanks so much Vic for the challenge and for the chance to help out, in a very small way, with improving the game.

In my opinion, the game shows the need for some further rebalancing on PBEM games. It's all too possible for the German player to leapfrog very quickly to Leningrad and Moscow, especially if the Russian player has bad luck on early activation rolls (as Vic did in this game). I seldom had to pause the panzers for anything, only lost perhaps 1-2 turns in AGN and 2 turns in AGC to fuel shortages. Similarly, no need to refit for the whole game for most units, I think I only did refits on 3 panzer divisions about halfway through, and then about half of the infantry in 11th Army. There just isn't enough there - whether Russian troops or logistical challenges or whatever - to stand in the way of a determined and reasonably skilled German commander.

Thanks again Vic!

[Vic]

Thanks to Chuck for a nice and educational game!

I had a really bad start and some suboptimal play but I think I say enough when I refer to Camerons earlier announcement that early next week is going to see a public beta 1.03 PBEM balance patch.

Best wishes,
Vic

[Flaviusx]

Poor activation rolls early on aren't a product of "bad luck." You have to take some pretty heroic measures in order to get anything like a reasonable rate of activation.

The vast majority of the border armies have initiative ratings between 5-15. A couple might be much more than this (up to 40ish.) But by and large they are zombies with only a very small chance of doing anything.

A marshal might raise this initiative to somewhere around a 20-25. Still bad. Focus card and Zhukov add another 45, and now you are in business, but you can only do that in one theater. Or you can throw Zhukov directly at an army for 60, but that's good for one army only.

These initiative ratings are abysmal.

[FeurerKrieg]

Doesn't the early game Luftwaffe offensive push down activations as well?

[Speedysteve]

It does indeed if you select specific choices in the d+2 air offensive yup

[ChuckBerger]

Poor activation rolls early on aren't a product of "bad luck."

Well, of course right at the start most armies won't be activating most of the time. But you can still do better or worse than average, and luck still plays an important role.

All activation rolls aren't equally important. Some are critical, in the sense of being the difference between the complete destruction of a large reserve army (SW or Western MD, for instance), or its ability to pull back to a line that could be defended for a few turns. Even doing all you can with improving the odds, sometimes one of these critical rolls fails.

Such is the ordeal of playing the Russian in this game.

From a design perspective, it can be nearly impossible for the Russian player to recover from especially bad activations in the early game. In this game, things like the total encirclement of SW Front and his inability to get anything at all into Riga or Tallinn cascaded through the rest of the game. They were the result of chance, not bad play.

There is no question of skill here. The random setup and activation rolls meant there was nothing at all in Riga on T1, and no ability for Vic to get anything there by T2, when I moved in to the city with no resistance, followed by Tallinn on T3... Narva T7, Leningrad T9 followed as night follows day.

I challenge any Russian player to do any better in 1.02 - but fortunately we won't have to, as PBEM re-balancing update is on the way!

[Flaviusx]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Vic here or implying I could do better. But I don't see this as "bad luck" at all. Given completely ordinary luck these armies will never activate. What would be lucky is them doing otherwise.

You have to assume that no Soviet army is ever going to activate without you kicking them in the ass one way or the other. And your foot isn't big enough to kick all of them thusly, only a portion.

Modest proposal: non activating armies should improve their initiative by 1 each turn. This should help normalize matters. As things presently stand, the game something of a feedback loop in terms of activating or non activating armies. Any activation including partial improves initiative. And an army that never activates will never get any better.

Alternately, army initiative is simply too low as is. 5-15? That's a joke. Put the floor at around 20. As things presently stand, I'd argue that taking the no purge option for the Soviets is probably required in competitive PBEM play. That will raise everything across the board by 20. Which means your zombie armies are really anywhere between 25 and 35 initiative...not amazing, but also not completely worthless. They will be mildly ambulatory zombies.

[olivier34]

Interesting thoughts. I have started my two first pbem games as soviets with the goal to play the same strategy in both of the games.
vs Isokron : a very bad random setup. only two officers with initiative ratings above 15 (30 and 40). First turn 0 activations, second turn only one partial, third turn only one partial. My only way to not lose everything and maybe slow down the german advance was to garrison Minsk and Odessa and put some garrisons. (maybe a threat on a city could ramdomly active a soviet garrison in it. This is strange to see the map empty of soviet troops !
vs Grab : very good starting position, 5 officers with good initiative ratings, a few partial and total activations per turn. Sorry grab if you read this [:D]

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: ChuckBerger

Poor activation rolls early on aren't a product of "bad luck."

Well, of course right at the start most armies won't be activating most of the time. But you can still do better or worse than average, and luck still plays an important role.

warspite1

One of the things I find frustrating with most computer wargames is the 'black box' that governs things. With say MWIF I have a table, I have a dice; I know what the chances are for each outcome before I roll. I can easily see if I've been lucky/unlucky or whatever.

What is, with the most extreme good fortune imaginable, the most that the Soviets can achieve in terms of activation? Is it 100%? Is this kind of information purposely restricted or can this be made available?

Similar question for land battles and the range of outcomes for an attack.

Just curious.

[Flaviusx]

Warspite, theoretically you could get 100% activations in the same way that theoretically you could win the lottery.

Odds are terrible.

Let's assume, arguendo, that each Soviet army has an average 10% chance of activating each turn. (Which is close to correct on turn 1, less so afterwards.) So the odds of everyone activating in full are .1 to the nth power, n being the number of such armies.

Good luck with that. You're going to need it. It is in fact quite likely that nobody will activate, save perhaps for the odd leader or two in excess of 15 initiative.

Army initiative is so poor that it's very easy from a mathematical standpoint to see that your odds aren't good here. Raise the floor, please.

[ChuckBerger]

Warspite: one of things I love about this game is the fact that there is no CRT to view, that combat is to some degree a black box. In real life, generals had to make decisions based not on some transparent, perfect CRT, but rather on an intangible assessment of troop numbers, terrain, supply, experience etc etc. Too many wargames turn into an actuarial exercise when the CRT is known and can be min-maxed. Also, in too many wargames attacks never really fail, because the attacker can see when the odds are not in his favour. But in reality, attacks failed often, and often with terrible losses. In my opinion DC3 gets this exactly right. You have to make an educated guess about the chances of success of any given battle, and even a seasoned player will sometimes get it badly wrong!

Flavius: I actually don't think activation rates are a problem. Bear in mind that something like 5-6 Russian armies "failed to activate" at the beginning of Operation Typhoon, so as late as October 1941. In game, the Russian player usually can rely on good activations by that point. I think activation for the Russian should be an ongoing big problem all the way through December. What is a problem is that (a) Germans probably don't take heavy enough casualties; and (b) Russians don't appear to have the resilience of real life Russia, the ability to rebuild credible defensive lines very quickly after crushing defeats. IRL, Russia lost its entire central frontier armies within days, and rebuilt on the Dniepr. Then they lost the whole centre front again at Smolensk, and again rebuilt it all. Then they lost 5 entire armies at the outset of Typhoon, again virtually their whole AGC, and rebuilt again at Mozhaysk in time to save Moscow.

In DC3, if the Russian player loses 5 armies to encirclement in AGC after the frontier battles, it's game over.

I also think German casualties, especially for reducing pockets, need to be increased somehow. It feels like too often the German infantry armies are battling around Moscow with hardly any losses from earlier battles. In reality, the Germans took major losses all along the way. Smolensk was a huge German victory, but Glantz notes that German Motorised infantry units (in the Panzer and PzG divisions) were as low as 30-40% strength following the Smolensk battles.

[Flaviusx]

German losses I think are fine...provided they are attacking well entrenched defenders, or defenders in non clear terrain.

You can really see this against the Soviet AI where the Germans have to clear out more or less every city location from garrisons. That adds up after a while. It's a lot bloodier. Plus, fort spam, which tends to appear in very handy locations. It's a lot tougher to steamroll Western Front, for example, if the game starts with forts along the Berezina. It'll die, but the butcher's bill won't be so cheap.

But in PBEM, they are mostly fighting out in the open in mobile conditions, and the Soviet hardly has a chance to get dug in somewhere unless they fall pretty far back in the center. In the south, you really can't get dug in anywhere north of Dnepropetrovsk, or for that matter east of it. And conscripts out in the open are just chewy toys.