Millions of russians

[dave123]

Ok, I've tried 2games aginst the computer, and 2 against human. in every game, the germans run into an incredible amount of russians. In fact, the russians are so
strong, the germans never get close to moscow, and are on the defensive during the summer of 42. in all the games, the germans were doing well going
into russia. I have tired lots of corps, but ran out of manpower. lots of tanks and stukas, but ran out of oil. a balance does no better.

how in the world is everyone not having this problem? partisans everywhere also bleed the german manpower. i don't expect them to win, i mean, they lost in the
real war, but they were not on the defensive during the summer of 42! I haven't even seen rostov fall.

is there anyway to slow the russians? or is there a strategy i, and the ai, and my friend, are missing?

any help appreciated. other than this, the game is great.

[Lexmanbis]

Hi, there are manuals available which explain tactics etc to use, but while i try to applicate them as good as possible i always end up in the same way as you, next time i'll play with the Allies

[Peter Stauffenberg]

A good Axis player should be able to keep the initiative in Russia in 1942 and it's possible to either take Leningrad, Moscow or advance past Rostov in the south.

You ARE supposed to get problems as the Axis late 1942 (quality drop due to manpower, beginning oil shortage etc.). We've balanced the game so the initiative changes from the Axit to the Allies late 1942 or early 1943. The reason is that you're measured against the real Germans. If you do better than them then you're winning, if you're doing worse you're losing.

So the Axis is supposed to hold as much territory as possible and if you can keep Berlin in May 1945 then you've won a minor victory.

The key to good Axis play is to know when to attack and when to defend. You just don't attack just because you can. That burns oil and manpower. You attack because you have an objective you want to reach, e. g. a river line you can use to defend later or an important city or resource.

I've managed to hold a line in Russia from Leningrad to Tula to Voronezh to Rostov all the way until May 1945 as the Axis. I even managed to keep the Allies out of France and Italy when the game ended. I won a strategic victory. Some players do even better (like Supermax) and win ultimate victories as the Axis.

If you think the Russians are too strong then I suggest you try to be Allies against Supermax.

[joerock22]

Was dave123 even talking about GS or was he playing vanilla CEAW? If it was the former, then I agree with Stauffenberg. The game seems to be pretty balanced as far as I can tell.

If dave123 was playing vanilla, then all I can say is keep practicing. And maybe do some searches on these forums for topics that might give you some pointers.

[timhicks]

Hi Dave, I've only played against the computer so far, but I hope that it's a good way to practice your tactics. Against the Russkies you need to make sure that you kill units, while at the same time keep moving fast toward your objectives. If you kill about a hundred PP's of units each turn, then you can start to make some progress. I prefer to only have two spearheads in Barbarossa, one to Moscow, and the other to Kiev.

Only units in these two spearheads should attack, unless you're mopping up surrounded units, or you're making a defensive line for winter.

Naturally all the armour and air on the Eastern front should be dedicated to these spearheads.

Many people prefer to just have a single attack to Moscow, but I like to capture the following as well, to slow down the Russian Counterattack, Riga , Kiev and Gomel (as well most Cities on your route). To speed your advance , you don't have to capture all the towns with Garrisons, you can surround some, and take them with Axis Allies or in the Winter.

[dave123]

Was dave123 even talking about GS or was he playing vanilla CEAW? If it was the former, then I agree with Stauffenberg. The game seems to be pretty balanced as far as I can tell.

If dave123 was playing vanilla, then all I can say is keep practicing. And maybe do some searches on these forums for topics that might give you some pointers.

Sorry, I should have said GS.

thanx for the replies, I will try to limit my German ambitions as you say. I guess I'm used to Strategic Command, where
I go for the knockout every game. I really think that unless the Allied player is clueless, that the Germans can't win in russia. I have no doubt many of you guys could take me out, but I'm new to this game. Equal opponents would mean russian dominance every game, I believe.

If anyone here would like to play a game against me as axis, I would like to see how you beat the russians.
dave

[Clark]

Was dave123 even talking about GS or was he playing vanilla CEAW? If it was the former, then I agree with Stauffenberg. The game seems to be pretty balanced as far as I can tell.

If dave123 was playing vanilla, then all I can say is keep practicing. And maybe do some searches on these forums for topics that might give you some pointers.

Sorry, I should have said GS.

thanx for the replies, I will try to limit my German ambitions as you say. I guess I'm used to Strategic Command, where
I go for the knockout every game. I really think that unless the Allied player is clueless, that the Germans can't win in russia. I have no doubt many of you guys could take me out, but I'm new to this game. Equal opponents would mean russian dominance every game, I believe.

If anyone here would like to play a game against me as axis, I would like to see how you beat the russians.
dave

I believe GS is set up so that the Axis player can generally only "beat" the Russians by holding on to Berlin through May 1945. Only a really good player should be able to capture Moscow against a human player, and only an extremely good player can manage to capture Omsk.

[gerones]

I believe GS is set up so that the Axis player can generally only "beat" the Russians by holding on to Berlin through May 1945. Only a really good player should be able to capture Moscow against a human player, and only an extremely good player can manage to capture Omsk.

I don´t consider myself as a good player but in a game I´m currently playing I have capture Moscow in 1942 and now is 1943. What I mean is that you can beat the russians if you perform a really strong Barbarossa and have luck about weather.

[joerock22]

I believe GS is set up so that the Axis player can generally only "beat" the Russians by holding on to Berlin through May 1945. Only a really good player should be able to capture Moscow against a human player, and only an extremely good player can manage to capture Omsk.

That's definitely true for Omsk, but Moscow can fall in a game between fairly evenly matched players.

Now that I know dave123 is talking about GS, I think I can offer some basic pointers. The most effective Barbarossa strategy I've seen belongs to supermax, who invades as early as possible (sometimes even May 1941) and uses great speed, moving everything eastward as quickly as he can. It is important to invade early and move quickly. Do that, and you put the Russians in a tough situation. If they defend too far to the east, you can inflict heavy casualties before winter arrives. And if they don't, then you can capture many cities and get some extra revenue for your 1942 offensive.

Your strategy in 1942 should change drastically. By then, the Soviets will have a sufficient number of troops to challenge you in the field. Your focus should shift from speed to power, from capturing territory to destroying enemy units. The reason is that the Russians will eventually be strong enough to go on the offensive, and every unit you kill now is one that you won't face in 1943-on. After a few turns of losing 6-10 units per turn, the Russians will either retreat or collapse, and you will be able to capture some cities.

This isn't the only workable strategy, obviously, but it's one I've seen work the most often in GS and its predecessor the BJR Mod. Hope this helps.

[Clark]

I stand corrected!

[supermax]

I believe GS is set up so that the Axis player can generally only "beat" the Russians by holding on to Berlin through May 1945. Only a really good player should be able to capture Moscow against a human player, and only an extremely good player can manage to capture Omsk.

That's definitely true for Omsk, but Moscow can fall in a game between fairly evenly matched players.

Now that I know dave123 is talking about GS, I think I can offer some basic pointers. The most effective Barbarossa strategy I've seen belongs to supermax, who invades as early as possible (sometimes even May 1941) and uses great speed, moving everything eastward as quickly as he can. It is important to invade early and move quickly. Do that, and you put the Russians in a tough situation. If they defend too far to the east, you can inflict heavy casualties before winter arrives. And if they don't, then you can capture many cities and get some extra revenue for your 1942 offensive.

Your strategy in 1942 should change drastically. By then, the Soviets will have a sufficient number of troops to challenge you in the field. Your focus should shift from speed to power, from capturing territory to destroying enemy units. The reason is that the Russians will eventually be strong enough to go on the offensive, and every unit you kill now is one that you won't face in 1943-on. After a few turns of losing 6-10 units per turn, the Russians will either retreat or collapse, and you will be able to capture some cities.

This isn't the only workable strategy, obviously, but it's one I've seen work the most often in GS and its predecessor the BJR Mod. Hope this helps.

I agree there with Joe. In the Vanilla game, i could never loose with speed. Now, things have changed in GS. By this i mean that in 1942 you do have to trade the 1941 speed for power. Joe is a master of doing that, and i learned you need to do that in my first game as Axis in GS. I was doing good time as always, beating on Saratov's door in the beginning of the summer of 1942, but then something happened... The Russians had an incredible numebrs of troops and entrenched behind the river... At once i realised that i would not be in a position to reach Omsk in this game. Altough i will win a strategic victory by keeping Berlin, i would have never tought that the Russians could get back up from the blows i gave them in 41 and 42. So as Staufenberg says, the games is balanced in a way that the Allies get the initiative in 1942, unless you do something drastic...

I quite honestly have an idea on how to do that, by doing a revised and doped version of my speed Barbarossa... Next game i play agaisnt someone i will try it. but i believe that if you want to beat the Russians, and by beating i mean taking Omsk, you have to be in Gorki/Stalingrad line before the good season ends in 1941. As the german players, if at the end of 1941 you are at the gates of moscow, or just taken it, and you are at the gates of Rostov, then you will not destroy the Russians. So your objective from then on should be to take Moscow and hold it until the end of the game, with a solid defensive line behind rivers and with tanks ready to counter-attack any breaktroughs.

The GS mod is historical in this sense because beating the Russians, from an historical point of view, was impossible for the germans. So you have to do a LOT better that what they did historically.

[ncali]

I tend to think the Russians are a bit strong in GS. I'd probably downgrade their starting tech slightly to compensate.

That said, it's true that historically the Germans did not beat the Soviet Union. Looking at the numbers one can see why. But victory or defeat in war is not only about numbers. Morale and psychological factors always come into play to some degree. At some point, people begin to think that resistance isn't good for them personally or worth continuing. See for example, Vichy France. And I realize there were a lot of political factors at work - but also think about the Russian Empire in WWI. The Tsar's regime folded and the Bolsheviks made peace less than a year before total victory for the Allies, without the Germans coming close to Moscow or St. Petersburg. The German empire in WWI also folded without the Allies making much advance into Germany proper. Mussolini was toppled in WWII, and Italy surrendered with even less of a fight. I don't dispute that the Soviet Union proved stronger than these regimes. But sometimes when your back is against the wall (or Siberia), food supplies are low, and you suffer military defeat after defeat - you may look for an end to your current regime and/or to war.
And that's not to mention the significant military defeats the WWII Axis suffered at Stalingrad and Kursk.
I think that sometimes historical outcomes can seem inevitable primarily because that's what happened.

[Clark]

I tend to think the Russians are a bit strong in GS. I'd probably downgrade their starting tech slightly to compensate.

That said, it's true that historically the Germans did not beat the Soviet Union. Looking at the numbers one can see why. But victory or defeat in war is not only about numbers. Morale and psychological factors always come into play to some degree. At some point, people begin to think that resistance isn't good for them personally or worth continuing. See for example, Vichy France. And I realize there were a lot of political factors at work - but also think about the Russian Empire in WWI. The Tsar's regime folded and the Bolsheviks made peace less than a year before total victory for the Allies, without the Germans coming close to Moscow or St. Petersburg. The German empire in WWI also folded without the Allies making much advance into Germany proper. Mussolini was toppled in WWII, and Italy surrendered with even less of a fight. I don't dispute that the Soviet Union proved stronger than these regimes. But sometimes when your back is against the wall (or Siberia), food supplies are low, and you suffer military defeat after defeat - you may look for an end to your current regime and/or to war.
And that's not to mention the significant military defeats the WWII Axis suffered at Stalingrad and Kursk.
I think that sometimes historical outcomes can seem inevitable primarily because that's what happened.

Yes, it's true that psychology plays into it - the early French morale losses provoked some French units to retreat from their lines even before the main assault. But the above examples you give really illustrate the difficulty of continuing on when your side is completely whipped on the battlefield. I think all of it is fairly well reflected in CEAW GS. Morale loss reduces effectiveness upon invasion by the Axis, and so does aerial and naval bombardment. On a strategic level, players will often make panicky moves both when they are surprised by a good move and when they are being slowly ground down. And if you see little possibility of winning, you can always resign!

[timhicks]

I think that it would be a good idea for the Russians to suffer an extra effectiveness loss when Moscow falls. (the same for the UK when London falls).

It seems realistic that this should happen, after all I think that the capture of Moscow (especially in such a centralised state) would have demoralised the Russians, maybe by 10%.

Moscow was actually more important in real life than in both GS and Vanilla, I think that it's loss should be a big blow, particularly the rail points.

[gerones]

The fact is that in 1941 when Barbarossa started the main part of the Red Army and Soviet Air Force (VVS) was close to the borders so the germans could overrun these forces causing tremendous losses to the russians. In three days, the russians had lost 2.000 aircrafts in the ground. The same could be said about mechanized and armoured forces that were mainly deployed close to the border and were destroyed in a very large number.

In CEAW GS 1939, for getting a well-balanced scenario in the east, we don´t have such a deployment of the Red Army. As you could see there´s no armours at all in the initial scenario and the mechanized units are spreaded all over the USSR territory. This way, the russian player can save these valuable troops for defending east making defensive lines in the rivers. To these units you can add the ones you have been building since the russian entry at war is closer. This is the reason you can see "millions of russians" as you say in this thread.

But none of these things happened in the real war since the russians lost the main part ot their army, their tanks, vehicles and aircrafts in the borders and almost they had to built from 0 an operational army as commander Zhukov tells in his memories.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Players won't repeat the mistakes made by the real war commanders. So our goal should be to make a balanced game when players make good decisions. E. g. Stalin initially ordered the Russian units to counter attack in June 1941 and it was a major disaster. For most of 1941 the Russian commanders made mistakes so the Germans pocketed a large part of the Soviet army. A smart Allied player won't repeat those mistakes.

So we have to make sure that a normal Barbarossa can achieve normal results when both players play quite well. With a normal result I mean that the front line when the first winter strikes should be almost historical. It's not possible to achieve historical losses because some players decide to build many armor units prior to Barbarossa and counter attack early and hold the Germans at the Dnepr. Other players run to a safe line further east.

So what we need to discuss is if the setups possible for both sides starting in 1939 can make a pretty historical Barbarossa. If the answer is yes then the game balance is pretty good. If e. g. the Germans would never be able to achieve historical results then I would agree that the Russians are too strong.

If we look at the reported results with GS we see that many of the victories are Axis victories. I don't think it's that hard for the Germans to achieve good results in 1941 and even better ones in 1942. But this requires you haven't fought in Spain and heavily in Egypt.

I believe that some people who complain about the strength of the Russians are the ones who like to attack more targets that the historical ones (Norway, Greece and Yugoslavia) prior to Barbarossa. If they do that then I think it's fair they pay the price with a weaker Barbarossa. If you can go for Gibraltar without consequence to Barbarossa then something would be wrong with the game,

[gerones]

The fact is that the russians had a large force deployed close to the borders and this large force consisted in a large number of tanks, vehicles, aircrafts and men that were completely overruned by the axis forces. This is not represented in CEAW scenario that only has garrison units deployed in the border as if they were "roadblocks" to the axis advance. Certainly, if we built a russian 1939 scenario with several tank, mech and air units deployed closer to the border, they will be overrunned by the germans. But this is what exactly happens in real history.
I think if we represent an historical scenario we have to built it as it was. The russian mech forces are spreaded all over the russian territory in CEAW GS because we know today this is a smarter deployment of the russian forces than deploying them close to the borders. But the russian generals did not know this in 1941 and they perform obsolete war theories that led the soviets almost to the disaster.
I really think that the eastern scenario is well-balanced in GS but this scenario is not by far the historical 1941 scenario.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I based the Russian 1941 OOB on this link:

http://niehorster.orbat.com/012_ussr/41 ... ka_41.html

Here is an example showing the Western Military District:
http://niehorster.orbat.com/012_ussr/41 ... stern.html

It contains the:
3rd Army (with the 11th Mech corps as a separate unit)
4th Army (with the 14th Mech corps)
10th Army (with the 6th and 13th Mech corps)
13th Army
17th Mech corps
20th Mech corps

We've discussed this before when Russian tank corps and tank armies didn't appear until they reorganized their tank army in 1942. Before 1942 the Russian armored units were grouped in divisions used in mech corps.

So the Russian armor is simulated in mech corps units. Russian tank corps units will have to be built by the Allied player and those units simulate the tank units after the reorganisation.

So I don't understand the idea that the Russian at start forces are so ahistorical. We could have replaced some garrisons near the front with fighter or tac bomber units to simulate the air units being overrun, but I wonder if we really need to make that change.

[ncali]

My feeling so far is that the Soviet Union remains just a little too powerful. I like the Soviet's resilience and their strong economy. I wish I could pin it down, but if I had to point to something it might be a very slight potential for over-tech in the '42-'43 period. Perhaps their organization tech level should begin at 0, or perhaps they should have potential for 1-2 less labs in '41-'42.

[gerones]

I based the Russian 1941 OOB on this link:

http://niehorster.orbat.com/012_ussr/41 ... ka_41.html

Here is an example showing the Western Military District:
http://niehorster.orbat.com/012_ussr/41 ... stern.html

It contains the:
3rd Army (with the 11th Mech corps as a separate unit)
4th Army (with the 14th Mech corps)
10th Army (with the 6th and 13th Mech corps)
13th Army
17th Mech corps
20th Mech corps

We've discussed this before when Russian tank corps and tank armies didn't appear until they reorganized their tank army in 1942. Before 1942 the Russian armored units were grouped in divisions used in mech corps.

So the Russian armor is simulated in mech corps units. Russian tank corps units will have to be built by the Allied player and those units simulate the tank units after the reorganisation.

So I don't understand the idea that the Russian at start forces are so ahistorical. We could have replaced some garrisons near the front with fighter or tac bomber units to simulate the air units being overrun, but I wonder if we really need to make that change.

The Western Military District had in 1941 6 mechanized corps. 4 mechanized corps (mentioned by you) were deployed close to the border: 11th(Grodno), 14th (Kobrin, close to Brest-Litovsk), 6th and 13th (both in Bialystok) but none of these are represented in GS 1939 scenario. The other two mech corps (17th and 20th) was deployed further east in Minsk area as it is in GS. What I mean is that there was 6 mech corps in the Western district but only are represented in GS the ones that were not deployed close to the border.

In the Kiev Military District we find the same thing:
There was 8 mech corps in total. 4 of them were deployed closer to the border: 22nd (Lutsk), 4th (Lvov), 16th (Stanislav, in the actual Ivano-Frankivsk) and 8th(Drohobic) but none of them are represented in GS scenario. The mech corps of the the Kiev district that are represented in GS are the ones that were deployed furhter east around Kiev: 9th, 15th and 24th.

The same for the Odessa Millitary District: in this district there was 2 mech corps both represented in CEAW GS but also deployed in a safer position further east. This is not correct. The 2nd mech corps was stationed at the city of Chisinau in Moldava but in GS appears 7 hexes further east and the 18th mech corps was stationed near of Odessa and appears 4 hexes further east almost in the crimean peninsula.

So, keeping in mind a total of 16 mech corps on these three military districts mentioned, 10 were stationed close to the border but none of this 10 mech corps are represented in GS scenario.

And the same could be said for the russian air force since there was not an important fighter presence in Moscow and Baku as it is showed in GS. The main air force was in the western areas (specially in the Leningrad and Baltic countries area and also in Kiev) of Russia as it is showed in this updated soviet Barbarossa order of battle: http://www.warandtactics.com/smf/barbar ... =printpage

So may be here we have the answer to the frequent comments of CEAW GS players about a little bit too strong russian army in GS. Historically the russians lost the main part of their army and air forces in the first phases of Barbarossa so they could only save a minor part of their starting forces so they almost had to start building a new army from 0. But in CEAW GS, on the contrary, the russian can save the main part of their army in 1941 and they almost only lose garrisons in the first phase of Barbarossa.