Thriumph or Tragedy? (D21)

[700851McCall]

Of course a human player is going to give you a better game but I'm in the middle of D21 right now and I'm not finding the PO is that easy to beat. Granted, I'm far from the world's best TOAW player. But I don't like playing both sides myself, never have, and I can't commit the time at the moment to playing against a real opponent. Not unless he was happy to wait a week or even 2 weeks to get my next move through. And no-one wants to play a game like that.

[Jukipo]

Hell, I do go as far to say that an avarage player as commander of STAVKA will slow you down more than historically.

I agree. Almost anybody can play better than STAVKA historically. It's not because everybody in STAVKA was an idiot. The problem is the average human player knows what happened historically. It's easy to avoid big mistakes when you know what you are up against. All you have to do is to give ground, keep you units alive, and play for time until you are strong enough to hold ground.

[gliz2]

Well the samu (unfortunately) goes for German player. Normally we all prepare for Soviet Winter Offensive which historically Germans were unaware of.
I'd say you need to have a goid buddy and also many times restrain yourself. I have developed order cards which kind of helps with the knowledge of history.

I like you AAR. And believe me I know how hard it is to find time to play the monster scenarios [;)]

[DanNeely]

ORIGINAL: gliz2

Well the samu (unfortunately) goes for German player. Normally we all prepare for Soviet Winter Offensive which historically Germans were unaware of.
I'd say you need to have a goid buddy and also many times restrain yourself. I have developed order cards which kind of helps with the knowledge of history.

I like you AAR. And believe me I know how hard it is to find time to play the monster scenarios [;)]

Agreed. At most you can try and adjust the scenario to encourage humans to try and follow historical actions.

On the eastern front tying the size of shock effects to the rate of German advance - eg morale plummeting and the red army falling apart after Stavka ordered it to stop fighting and run or production penalties from letting the Germans advance fast enough to capture factories before they can be evacuated could be done to try and encourage the Soviet player to attempt to fight forward.

The German push on Moscow instead of digging in for the Soviet counter attack is probably a bit harder to promote, although cancelling the Soviet shock bonus crippling the winter offensive in the process due to the evacuation of Moscow leaving Stavka in chaos. Replacing it with a penalty for however long it took the command to reestablish itself farther east might be reasonable as well; although I'd worry that it might give too large an advantage to the Germans.