Some disagreement with the Commander Grand Strategy

[mamahuhu]

Firstly , the Commander Grand Strategy is a great opus . We Love it !
To make it perfect ,we’d like to provide some disagreements about the Commander Grand Strategy as follows :

1 Winter in western Europe did not effect the troops movement & effective too much . Because the communication in western Europe ( Germany ,France ,etc) was well built around that time . The extreme weather only happened in eastern & northern Europe .

2 It is unacceptable that the target could only be attacked from the air or navy for two times .It did usually happened to concerntrate the airforce & navy on one important target . The exchange rate for each airforce unit is 250 crafts, two unit were only 500 crafts .As we know that the ally used thousands of bomber & fighter to attack on Normandy on the D day ; & Germany used more than one thousand bomber to destroy the Stalingrad in Aug 1942 .

3 The fee for the landing troops is too expensive . Although it seems more reasonable ,it badly decrease the choice of the axis’s strategy . It seems appears that axis had almost no choice to accomplish the sealion mission. It had to attack USSR & had to be sank into the two frontline fight .

4 If axis occupy the Omsk & Moscow before Nov 29th 1941 , after the USSR surrender , the computer also provides the reinforce troop from the far east .

5 Too many guerilla ! For example , after the axis occupy the Omsk & Moscow before Nov 29th 1941 & the USSR surrender, it appeared more than 5 million English guerilla in USSR . How many male were there in Britain in 1942 ?

6 Vichy France should be on axis side ,at least it should permit axis troops passing through .

7 Why USSR had no panzer(tank) unit at the start of deploy of the USSR ? As we know that USSR had more than 15000 tanks on June 22nd 1941 . It seems USSR had more Mech troops , but it had great difference from the tank unit even if it was upgraded .

8 It is not reasonable that if axis attacks Canada before Dec 7th 1941 ,USA will declare war with axis automatically . Actually if it really happened around 1940-1941 ,USA will probably sign an agreement with axis to share the cake of axis victory .

9 It is too difficult to ASW by surface battleship .It made the submarine invincible . Because each unit of the navy are 50 warships, after information warned by the navy or convoy which was attacked by sub ,the fleet should have the ability to attack the sub around the area which the sub had launched the attack ..

10 It is unreasonable for charging more cost if the sea transportation takes more than one turn . It is reasonable to reduce the quality of the troop & cost more fuel .But it is impossible to cost anymore money from their motherland .

11 According to fact of history , there was never a fleet parking at Basra .

12 We checked the exchange rate with the original Commander Europe in War , it is the same rate . But the number of the total unit increased a lot . It means the military human resource increased a lot . Why ? How did it happen?

13 The new icon of unit made us confuse . The picture is not perfect for the icon .

14 The number of the laboratory is ruled by year .it badly influence the developing the technology autinomoously .

15 Double capital for Germany is meaningless. Hamburg was only a industrial center ,had nothing to do with the politics . If it had to be a second capital ,it should be Munich or Berchtesgaden


We are looking forward to hear from you ! Your Chinese battle companion .

[joerock22]

Firstly , the Commander Grand Strategy is a great opus . We Love it !
To make it perfect ,we’d like to provide some disagreements about the Commander Grand Strategy as follows :

1. I’m not too familiar with the weather in Western Europe, but it seems reasonable that movement would be slowed down during those months. I like it because it forces the Axis player to make a choice between two fundamentally different strategies and gives the game an element of randomness.

2. Not limiting air attacks per hex was one of the major drawbacks to standard CEAW. It is unrealistic that opposing air forces could gang up on one unit and destroy it while leaving the others unharmed. In a major air battle, the losses would be more or less evenly spread out. Naval attacks are not restricted at all (except for against subs).

Keep in mind that each turn represents 20 days. You can do a lot of damage to a unit in that time with two bombers. In most cases, you should not be able to completely destroy a unit in only 20 days with just air attacks. Unless the unit is already weakened, allowing that to happen is unrealistic.

3. Perhaps it is a little too expensive, but the cost needs to be enough so that players will think twice before landing troops beyond their landing capacity. I would leave this as is.

4. If someone manages to lose Omsk in 1941, no amount of reinforcements will be able to help them.

5. Not sure if I understand you here. But if the USSR surrenders, the game is basically over anyway.

6. The only way to allow Axis troops to pass through Vichy France within the limitations of the game would be to make them an active participant. We think it’s more realistic and better for gameplay to force the Allies to declare war on Vichy France. It’s not important for the Axis to get into Vichy territory before that happens.

7. The change was made to give the Russian player a choice on what to build. You have more than enough resources to build 4-6 Soviet tanks before 1941 if you so desire. Other players prefer to build infantry or air, and I think they should have that choice. We shouldn’t be completely limited by what the countries historically decided to build before they entered the war, especially if the builds happened after 1939.

8. This is why I’m not on board with some of the new GS changes the mod team is doing in 1.10. YOU CANNOT PREDICT WHAT THE USA WOULD HAVE DONE. It’s as simple as that. I hate using all-caps, but this is a recurring problem that I see and it bothers me.

9. But a sub unit in the game also represents many subs. And if subs are more effective against BBs than BBs are against subs (and they usually are), then it makes sense that BBs would not be good anti-sub units.

10. No, it’s not. If a country is using more transports than their capacity can hold, they have to pay for them. They’re paying private companies or mercenaries maybe to make up the difference. Otherwise, why would you even have a transport cap?

11. I don’t know anything about this, so I’ll have to defer to someone else.

12. It’s for gameplay. Original CEAW had too few units. GS gives you more units and more options, and is therefore more likely to give you a longer game.

13. I don’t understand what you’re saying here either. The icons look fine to me.

14. This actually isn’t that much of a limitation. You still have a choice to ignore certain areas and how to spend your focus points. Those make a huge difference. It also evens the playing field and makes sure the Germans can’t get too far ahead in research so that the Allies never catch up. That would be unrealistic. I think the current limitation is necessary, and I like it because it doesn’t go too far. The research system in GS is very good to my mind.

15. Does this really matter? Hamburg is not counted in the victory determination. The only thing holding onto Hamburg does is keep Germany alive when Berlin falls. They will still lose.

One more thing: you'll never make the game perfect. Personally, I think it should be left as is, but the GS team is continuing to update and try to improve the game. They will never get it right; it's physically impossible to make a perfect game that everyone will see as perfect. What is perfect to you is certainly not perfect to me, and what is perfect to me is certainly not perfect to the next guy. GS 1.06 is a very good game, enjoyable despite its shortcomings and flaws, and that's about all you can hope for.

[schwerpunkt]

7 Why USSR had no panzer(tank) unit at the start of deploy of the USSR ? As we know that USSR had more than 15000 tanks on June 22nd 1941 . It seems USSR had more Mech troops , but it had great difference from the tank unit even if it was upgraded .

The removal of Russian ARM from the setup was done for two reasons;
1) The russian pre-war armour organisation was poor, something they discovered in the weeks following the German invasion. The russians thereafter re-organised their armour organisation which only made itself felt in 1942 onwards. The tanks are therefore actually contained within the many MECH corps that the russians start with.
2) Play balance - there was a strategy that the russians could employ which was to solely focus on armour tech and builds from 1939 which was both ahistorical and difficult for the German player to counter (It was previously possible for the russians to assemble upto 16 ARM units by June 22)

[Clark]

5 Too many guerilla ! For example , after the axis occupy the Omsk & Moscow before Nov 29th 1941 & the USSR surrender, it appeared more than 5 million English guerilla in USSR . How many male were there in Britain in 1942 ?

These aren't really English guerrillas, but rather Russian partisans. Once the USSR surrenders, partisans still pop up but are nominally in the game as Brits. It's the same principle that French partisans and Polish and Yugoslavian partisans are all represented as British, as well.

8 It is not reasonable that if axis attacks Canada before Dec 7th 1941 ,USA will declare war with axis automatically . Actually if it really happened around 1940-1941 ,USA will probably sign an agreement with axis to share the cake of axis victory .

I think it's fair to say that the US would have responded forcefully if their neighbor and close ally to the north were invaded, and crazy to think that the US would have signed an agreement with the Axis to share the spoils of victory. An American declaration of war grounded in the Monroe Doctrine is certainly more historical than having the USSR automatically enter the war in the fall of 1941.

And obviously, what would have happened is unknowable, but it's also in response to games where the Axis gets on a roll and takes out Canada and then attacks the United States without the US so much as mobilizing or massing troops on the border.

[joerock22]

The removal of Russian ARM from the setup was done for two reasons;
1) The russian pre-war armour organisation was poor, something they discovered in the weeks following the German invasion. The russians thereafter re-organised their armour organisation which only made itself felt in 1942 onwards. The tanks are therefore actually contained within the many MECH corps that the russians start with.
2) Play balance - there was a strategy that the russians could employ which was to solely focus on armour tech and builds from 1939 which was both ahistorical and difficult for the German player to counter (It was previously possible for the russians to assemble upto 16 ARM units by June 22)

Oh, that's right. I forgot about the whole "armour blob" thing. Yeah, something had to be done about that. It's not like the Russians can't build armour in 1940-41; they just can't get them in sufficient numbers to do the armour blob.

[joerock22]

Hmmm, walks like a Troll, talks like a Troll, probably a troll, best we not feed it anymore?

Nah, I think it's a good thing to respond to criticism, but we should take turns. Borger usually does it, so I decided to do it this time.

[Kuz]

The gentlemen posted politly and intellegently and a lot of this has been brought up before, I'm not a fan of the air rule either and posted as much, so I wouldn't call the gent a troll. This forum has always been very professional and all ideas have been welcome.

I'm not a fan of the two hex attack rule for air, but it does seem to work after playing several games.

The partisan rule is too much. Its simply a part of the game that actually takes some of the enjoyment factor away for me. I'd rather see a rule that took a way all partisans and reduced german manpower or PP to compensate. Its plain not fun and I think its over done. Other than Yugoslavia I don't think they played that much of a role in a Grand Strategy game.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

About 1. You have to live in Europe as I do to know that you can actually have bad weather in western Europe during the winter.
Just think about the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Allied air force was grounded and couldn't be used to stop the German invasion. The Germans attacked during snow.

Here is a link to how much snow it was in Belgium during the invasion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battl ... _Bulge.jpg

When you actually fight you don't only move along roads. You have to move in the terrain to get anywhere. Most troops weren't well suited to move quickly during the snow. Only winterized units like the Scandinavians and some Soviet units were ski troops who could move fast during winter weather.

Even worse for movement was the mud weather, i. e. rain. If you've been in Europe during the winter you know that it rains quite a lot and that makes it very hard to move especially vehicles in the terrain.

There was a reason the action in the west was much less during November-February. Even the troops in Italy suffered from heavy rain and cold weather during the winter.

Read here about the Italian campaign:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Ca ... ld_War_II)

Notice particularly these sentences:
Continuation of the Allied offensive in early 1945 was made impractical by the poor winter weather (making armoured manoeuvre and exploitation of overwhelming air superiority impossible) and also by further requirements to withdraw British troops to Greece and the Canadian I Corps to northwest Europe as well as due to the massive losses in its ranks during the autumn fighting,[15][16] the Allies adopted a strategy of "offensive defence" while preparing for a final attack when better weather and ground conditions arrived in the spring

About 11. The British units arriving in Iraq and the in Basra. There units were reinforcements from the Far East. Those units are
OFF-MAP and the closest on map area is the Persian Gulf. It's intended that the British BB will sail to the Red Sea and further to the Med or to the Atlantic. We didn't want to have these reinforcements arrive directly in Egypt to give Britain a choice to where they want them sent and to not overwhelm the Axis too early in the Med. If these forces had suddenly shown up in Egypt then an Axis invasion if Egypt might be stopped. Now the units have to be moved and railed to Egypt before they can even engage the Axis.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

It seems to me that the original poster is playing against the AI and would like things to be even easier for the Germans. If you can get to Omsk before December 1941 then you should find a better opponent.

We can't balance a game to suit people who play against very poor opponents like the AI. We have to balance the game to the level of most players.

E. g. complaining about too many partisans seems weird to me because if you've captured most of Russia you have a lot more hexes that can actually spawn partisans. It should be virtually impossible to capture USA and Omsk in GS. It's not possible if both players are not newbies. In most games the Germans get to Leningrad, Moscow and maybe Stalingrad. Then the number of partisans spawning is actually not that bad.

The key to partisans is to not ignore them, but destroy them before they get time to multiply and move. You can lose control of the partisans if you're so focused on attacking that you didn't bother to keep some units in the rear to finish the partisans off.

[Kuz]

I like the mod. But there are problems with it. The minute someone makes a brillaint move that is above your level of expectation you make rule changes to prevent it. Then you make changes based on little known historical events to force strategic historical decisions on the Germans. Might as well read a history book.

"About 1. You have to live in Europe as I do to know that you can actually have bad weather in western Europe during the winter.
Just think about the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Allied air force was grounded and couldn't be used to stop the German invasion. The Germans attacked during snow."

I did. Really? And the western Europeans don't know this? Why does the west have a - penality fighting over an area of the world that they not only live in but has mapped by everyone from Cesar to Napoleon to Hitler and that other than tactical considerations the weather is going to matter? Only the Russians and Scandinavians underdstand snow? It gets cold in the U.S. too dude.

"When you actually fight you don't only move along roads. You have to move in the terrain to get anywhere. Most troops weren't well suited to move quickly during the snow. Only winterized units like the Scandinavians and some Soviet units were ski troops who could move fast during winter weather. "

Only Scandinavians and Russians know this? The weather wasn't bad on the Russian side of the line? Sorry this is nonsense. You do know that Germans attacked in winter of 41 after the mud to within some 15 miles or so of Moscow?

But why reduce their strength. No historical reason for this. You may argue that the Germans on the East Front suffered from lack of preparation but isnt this covered by their effectiveness loss?

You are biased. So the 101st survived in the Bulge because they had personal hot pockets? .

There was a reason the action in the west was much less during November-February. http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/ ... ied-fm.htm But they still attacked.

[Plaid]

I'd rather say, that russians having no winter penalty (aswell as severe winter rule) are unrealistic.
Only few russian troops were actually syberians or north people, used to cold weather - most suffered aswell as europeans.
Severe winter in 90% myth, created by german generals failed to take Moscow.
Soviet generals used very same myth to explain their failure in Finland during Winter war, you know.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

"When you actually fight you don't only move along roads. You have to move in the terrain to get anywhere. Most troops weren't well suited to move quickly during the snow. Only winterized units like the Scandinavians and some Soviet units were ski troops who could move fast during winter weather. "

Only Scandinavians and Russians know this? The weather wasn't bad on the Russian side of the line? Sorry this is nonsense. You do know that Germans attacked in winter of 41 after the mud to within some 15 miles or so of Moscow?

The Nordic country units had ski troops. Only a few elite units from other countries used skis.

We've seen this problem many times when we have NATO exercises in Norway. The soldiers from e. g. USA and Britain come to Norway to train in winter conditions and they're not good at moving in the difficult terrain we have here. The soldiers are unfamiliar with using skis etc. Soldiers of the Nordic countries have used skis from when they were children and skis are used in the regular army to move troops faster.

Reducing the strength of attacking, but not defending units is done to simulate that the units had more problems perfoming offensive operations. E. g. the artillery barrage or air strikes wouldn't hit as well due to snow or rain.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The Russians launched their winter offensive every year and had good successes with them. That's a fact. Since the Germans have better organization and tech it was virtually impossible in CeaW to simulate these winter offensives, even with severe winter penalty upon the Germans.

The original CeaW with nice weather all year in western Europe was the least accurate because it meant that combat was as intensive all year. The Germans could not use weather to delay the Allied march to Berlin etc. That is not historical when you look at how much trouble the Allies had fighting in the mud and winter.

With attack penalty during winter and mud and especially less air firepower we would see the front lines stabilizing and you have to wait for the next spring to launch another major offensive. That is much more historical than in CeaW.

Being winterized in GS means that you don' suffer the attack penalties so you can actually fight normally, except with the usual movement penalties. That's the only way to let the Russians have a real chance to hurt the Germans during the winter and turn the tide in 1943. This is something we have tested for hundreds of games and the method we found works much better than any other methods we found. The Germans fear the winter in the east now as they SHOULD. The Allies hate winter since it means they can't invade, fight as well etc.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

It's always possible to turn off weather effects in general.txt. So why not do that if you don't like these effects?

Most wargames have rules with possibility for mud and winter in western Europe. Some games even reduced the attack strength to half and the movement allowance is much lower. I've played hundreds of different WW2 wargames and so have most of the people in the beta group. So when we introduce something we don't do that without having a good valid reason for it.

Do you actually think it's more fun to play without weather effects at all? Then the Axis player won't stand a chance to hold till 1945.

Remember that GS is supposed to try to simulate the real war effects as much as possible. You can't do everything right because the game is just a game and we're limited by the game engine. But when we do something we test it first to make sure it works towards the goal we had for introducing the change. Sometimes we might find out that a suggested plan doesn't work and then we remove it or change it further. Most changes are made after discussions in the beta group trying to find a good workable solution.

You only know about the suggestions that we decided to implement. You don't hear about all the suggestions we scrap or playtest only to then scrap them.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I'd rather say, that russians having no winter penalty (aswell as severe winter rule) are unrealistic.
Only few russian troops were actually syberians or north people, used to cold weather - most suffered aswell as europeans.
Severe winter in 90% myth, created by german generals failed to take Moscow.
Soviet generals used very same myth to explain their failure in Finland during Winter war, you know.

Why are those unrealistic?

Didn't the Russians launch winter offensive each year with quite a bit of success? Wasn't it a fact that the German tanks froze during the severe col weather in Russia while the Russian tanks were still able to operate?
Being winterized is not about suffering or not, but more about how well you could perform during such harsh weather conditions. The Russians are used to cold weather with deep snow and have adapted their army to that. So they can launch offensives and their vehicles (the oil the vehicles use) don't freeze in the frost. Therefore the Russians can operate better than the Germans.

When you have severe winter in Russia then you can have temperature down to -40C or below. I don't call this a myth. The Germans had big problems fighting under such weather conditions, but got better at it with experience fighting in Russia. That's why you see the severe winter effects becoming a progressive 10 efficiency drop less each year after Barbarossa.

Without such a rule then there is nothing that would prevent Germany from attacking every turn in 1941 and that means they would crush the Russians in 1942. We need a severe winter rule to have a chance to simulate the Russian counter attacks during the winter.

[gerones]

11 According to fact of history , there was never a fleet parking at Basra .

This only simulates Royal Navy ships deployed in Indian Ocean: many of these ships saw also action in the Atlantic and Mediterranean scenarios. Due to CEAW map limitations they appear at Basra.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think the winter rules in GS work well and we get the results we wanted. So why change them? What is the better alternative?

I predict that if you completely remove the weather effects except the vanilla severe winter then the Allies will be in Berlin in 1944 in most games. If we remove the severe winter effects in Russia then the Germans will crush the Russians in 1942.

Game design is not only about being 100% accurate. Sometimes you have to design for effect. That means the rules are made to give the desired effects even though you can discuss reasons for another solution to be more accurate. Still, we're only playing a GAME. We can never simulate the real war. What we want is a fun game that can simulate most of what happened in the real war without feeling the game allows for a lot of unrealistic choices. E. g. the Germans invading Canada only to have USA sit there doing nothing was one of the worst. It meant the Germans attacked USA as soon as Canada was dealt with and the US had no chance to stop that since they were neutral at the time the DoW came. Germany landed hordes of troops directly at the shores of New York and Washington. What made this even worse is that 90% of USA is off-map so most of the US production and mobilization centers are off-map. Due to the map limitation in GS the US weren't able to place reinforcements and eventually had to surrender. With such an ahistorical possibility you make a design for effect like the rule about USA mobilizing the Canada is attacked. This means the Germans won't run over USA too unless they have overwhelming forces. But with the transport rules you can't pay or such a big horde of amphs. That's another design by effect rule. No nation had enough ships to actually support having 10-20 corps units at sea at the same time. Instead of prohibiting it completely we make sure it's possible, but very expensive. It simulates that e. g. Hitler decided to spend most of his war budget on transports instead of new tanks or airplanes. In vanilla CeaW you can make as many transports as you like without paying anyhting. Is that a good rule? I don't think so.

[richardsd]

I think people forget very quickly how 'poor' CEAW Vanilla is compared to GS.

Go back and play a couple of games, GS is sooooo much better.

Of course we wouldn't have GS without CEAW so thats not a dig at Vanilla at all - I bought it twice!

[BuddyGrant]

Hopefully you guys don't assume all GS comments & criticism should be labelled as forum trolling or else I might soon get banned from the forum along with a lot of other posters .

I agree with the initial posters complaint about partisan generation being too extreme. Someone once said that it occurs more in solo games, if that is the case maybe it's not too extreme in the head to head games, but as it is now in the solo game I think it gives far too much credit to the partisans of some countries. For Russia it works out fine I think, 1-4 usually generated per turn, but for France, Yugoslavia, and Greece it seems like far too much.

I also might also have some related concerns about the garrison's defensive ability in the game, though these ratings might be unchanged from the original CEAW. I frequently see corps damage from '0' effectiveness partisan garrisons, and these partisan garrisons seem to have a unrealistically high survival rating. Either they should be easier to destroy or there should be fewer generated.

For the icon unit complaint, I'm not certain what the poster means, but I believe there is still a GS bug that shows mech infantry for Russian infantry corps of a certain infantry tech level (in 1.06 at least).

I don't like all the design decisions made for the GS add-on or the ad hoc way in which some changes are decided on, but IMO at least there are a lot of cool new features that really add to the CEAW experience, and I am appreciative that development of GS is continuing.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I just want to repeat that GS is NOT intended for solo play. The computer cheats in certain ways (e. g. partisan spawn ration), but we're not going to spend time trying to fix AI issues.

I'm not aware of a graphics bug with GS regarding mech. Then you should tell us which tech level it occurs and show screenshots. I just checked the unit graphics and I didn't see any mech for Russian corps. The images don't change with tech changes for corps units.

It's intended that you designate some Axis corps units to deal with partisans once you get past Barbarossa. If you fight them only with garrisons you will suffer losses. The partisans lose efficiency each turn so if you wait a few turns before attacking them then you can do so without taking so many losses. The point is that the partisans will become a nuisance if you don't deal with them when they appear.

The main reason we introduced partisans was to have a reason for the players to actually garrison occupied territory. Earlier we had house rules about having to garrison capitals etc. So the partisans are needed to make sure you will pay the price (lose cities etc.) if you fail to garrison occupied land. There were actually quite a lot of Axis units stationed in countries like France, Norway and Yugoslavia. Those units could have be used at the east front if they didn't have to garrison the occupied territories.