Agree. I just get feeling great about my situation on land and then just get killed on water and rage quit.
The navies calmed down and now things are heating up. I got to the doorstep of Moscow in 1941 and couldn’t quite finish the job before winter arrived. (Of course it would be balanced that way…) Now I’m desperately trying to retreat my forces before the Russians can close me into a pocket.
I was able to clean this up pretty well by the end of the turn. Now it’s bed time. Damn strategy games keep me up all night.
My God, the hordes. This can’t be right for summer 1942, can it? The Soviets have twice as many troops as me and they’re all upgraded.
That’s just what the Germans said! ;)
Well, I think I read something about German counterattacks in 1942. That’s hard to do when the Soviets are on just about every hex from Leningrad to the Black Sea!
How does your game compare to history? Did you get to the gates of Moscow in '41, have Leningrad surrounded, and take Rostov? If you didn’t kill as many Soviets as the Germans did historically in '41 that could explain why there are so many in '42.
Offhand I’d say the Soviets had at least a 2-1 manpower advantage in June '42. Of course German quality was still better in every way which is in part why they were able to get to Stalingrad in '42 with the Case Blue offensive, but they were definitely outnumbered.
I took Leningrad but didn’t make it anywhere close to Rostov. I’m sure I wasn’t playing optimally and I’d love to try it again to see if I can take Moscow.
I guess this campaign now feels kind of… pointless? It’s hard to explain. I get that the Germans lost the war and a proper simulation should start pushing me back. But I checked the income reports and the USSR went from 150 MPP per month in summer of 1941 to 680 the next turn and now they’re over 1000 per turn. Do I really want to click on the units every turn against that kind of grind? I’m just asking myself some questions about the time investment.
Maybe I’d have more fun in a new scenario. I’ll think about it.
[EDIT] Maybe 2:1 is about right. I’ve eliminated 89 USSR units and lost 12. They have 85 left to my 122. Back to it, I guess.
The unit numbers are quite good and give a realistic base. If you know the game well enough, how the rules work and don’t make the same mistakes Hitler made, you can definitely win.
I’ll say, I still love this game and it’s my favorite WWII milk and pretzels WW2 fix.
That would’ve helped. When I start a new wargame, I usually play a tutorial scenario and then read the entire manual. In this game the tutorial is in the campaign, so I figured I knew enough to continue. I never got around to reading more details. I didn’t even know HQs were a supply source until 1941. Heh.
I’m pretty sure this is my first operational WW2 campaign game, and the first long strategy campaign since I became super impatient with games. I find myself really enjoying the game and then I get antsy when the turns just keep coming. Individual scenarios work better these days. I need stopping points.
If you ever like to curl up with a good manual, this game has it in spades. It’s a truly great read.
Wow, this 1941 Operation Barbarossa campaign probably has a better start than I had in my 1939 grand campaign game. (Well, except that it’s already June.) I’ll have to come back to this one day and try again.
The 1944 D-Day to Berlin campaign looks like too many units for me. I think I’ll try to finish out my game and then take a break.
Been meaning to buy this game for … years? Some questions:
- How’s the pbem? Works? Stable? No problems?
1.1) How long would it take 2 people to complete the full war in pbem?
- Some of the chit/map mods looks good. Any comments on any of the “boardgame” mods?
- Works great as far as I know.
- Hmmm good question. It would be super fun to do though since turns are pretty I involved.
- No opinion here as I really like the original artwork.
If you play from the Soviet side, they basically get nothing for an army until the invasion starts. Then they get a sacrificial army that pops up near the Germany border in order to give the German’s something to pocket in the opening weeks. After that, the ramp-up in Soviet military industry is huge.
This hobbling of the Soviets before the war helps produce a historical outcome, but not for the historical reasons. I guess it’s just really hard for a game to model why the Red Army did so poorly right at the start, and how it was able to come back.
I was kind of annoyed that Moscow was empty a turn before I rolled in, and then 8 units appeared out of thin air. Is there an automatic trigger? It didn’t even look like they moved. I guess that was just the production arrival date.
Anyway, I watched a Let’s Play and realized I was playing it all wrong, so I abandoned that game. I was going to play it out and try to stop the surge, but the joy per hour payoff would be too low.
I’ll come back to this game later this year.
I don’t recall. I know that there are some significant “Siberian” reinforcements that happen via event that would arrive around that time. I don’t know if they are actually triggered by the Germans getting close to Moscow or what.
Another thing that can happen is they strategic move units to threatened areas. Of course, at this time the USSR is also getting a lot of units every turn from regular construction, so why not put them in your capital.
The good news is if they showed up the turn before they at least aren’t very dug in.
This is the common bugaboo for all historical wargaming. No commander goes into battle desiring a fair fight, hence most wars start with one side rightly or wrongly feeling they have a significant advantage (relative to their goals and aims of course). Or, you get a war/campaign/battle where one side has no choice for a variety of reasons, and hence the affair is unbalanced in the other way.
France 1940? How do you simulate a collapse of command and, arguably though increasingly questioned, a collapse in morale? If you do a straight-up military assessment the Germans are toast. Battle of the Bulge? Germans don’t have a chance in hell, really, so game designers have to create all sorts of alternative victory conditions or other work arounds. The Eastern Front? Outside of the early months, when it’s arguable that a German seizure of Moscow might have “won” the war, the chances of a German victory in any real sense of the term just go straight down; after early '43, it’s a holding action.
Game designers have to do a lot of weird stuff to make games out of history. It’s one reason many gamers tend to be into simulation of events, rather than competitive gaming I think.
Definitely very good points.
I guess I am thinking about the different approaches of Hearts of Iron IV and SC in modeling the Soviets. In SC, the Soviet army basically doesn’t exist before 1941. Then there are events and a huge ability to replace and construct new stuff. In HoI4, the Soviet army exists but has big combat debuffs that go away over time.
In theory, the HoI4 approach is closer to reality, but what tends to happen is the Germans pocket the Red Army on the borders in 1941 and there isn’t enough time to build a credible resistance after that. In SC, the German player destroys the (event-controlled) border armies and runs ahead with little opposition at first, but there is a race of whether the USSR can use it’s suddenly acquired massive ability to produce armies to put enough in place to stop them before they get too far. Which makes for a far more engaging east front!
A lot of people have argued that HoI4 should have big reserve stockpiles of weapons that can be used to quickly fit out some poorly-trained replacement armies. Unfortunately the AI would use any such stockpiles to build more divisions to put on the front line and be pocketed. Maybe a stockpile release event? In general the game doesn’t represent the economic cost of maintaining large standing armies very well, IMO.
Yeah, that’s one reason I’m not a game designer–I have no idea how to handle these sorts of things! We have hindsight, the people at the time did not, and most importantly, we don’t have any skin in the game so to speak. For the folks actually involved, it was life and death, with a lot more variables.
One reason i tend to appreciate games as simulation or replay of events rather than competitive things is that I can explore a set of circumstances and possibilities within a pretty limited context, and not worry about whether one side or the other has a fair chance to win. But even there, designers still have to decide how to model stuff that in reality was the composite result of lots of microdecisions and contexts.
Not a trigger but a script. It is the movement of Siberian forces and a call up of able bodied people to hold the area West of Moscow.
If you’d pushed on and got slaughtered that’s part of the fun. After all, didn’t you just repeat history? wink