Want suggestions to possible future BJR-mod changes

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Since we've been so lucky to get help from a Java programmer it's possible to update the CeaW class files and implement some of the BJR-mod house rules in the game code.

But we also have a chance to fix things in the vanilla game that can't be governed using house rules. I want your suggestions to which of these changes we should try to fix and how to fix them.

1. Minimum Oil reserve

The first change we've looked into is to prevent the oil reserve from dropping below 0. The new rules are like this.
* You can't move or attack with an oil consuming unit if it brings the oil reserve below 0. This is the same as in the vanilla game
* The enemy can't force you to burn oil so you drop below oil reserve of 0 e. g. because of air interceptions. The air units will still intercept, but these are for free if the oil reserve is already at 0. This is a change from the vanilla game.

This means the Axis player always will have a SMALL positive oil reserve at the start of his turn even when he dropped to 0 during the last turn. So the Germans can now move some of his oil consuming units even late in the game, but they don't have the oil to support several attacks.

2. Partisans

There are 3 different issues with the current partisan rules
* Partisans can only appear in unconquered countries. So you won't see partisans in e. g. France or Yugoslavia late in the game
* Partisans always appear at strength 10
* Partisans can appear both as garrisons and corps units

We would like to see if it's possible to have partisans appear in conquered countries as well. Do you think that is a good idea?

Another change we would like to see is that partisans can only appear as garrisons and never as corps. Corps strength units are much tougher than garrison strength units and woul require a big effort to eliminate. This doesn't feel historical. Partisans were a nuisance, but not a big military threat (except maybe in Yugoslavia).

We would also see if it's possible to let partisans appear at a lower strength than 10. Maybe we can put countries in different groups so e. g. partisans in Russia,, Yugoslavia, Spain and Turkey appear at 7-10 steps. Partisans in France, Sweden, Greece etc. appear at 4-7 steps. Partisans in Norway, Denmark, Poland, Holland etc. appear at 1-4 steps. This change is probably necessary if we decide to let partisans appear in conquered contries as well.

Is this a good idea to pursue or should we look into a simpler way?

3. Placement of partisans

We would like to make the house rules simpler so it's less to remember. Now you're required to place units in conquered capitals and all cities inside Russia. To remove such a rule we thought it would be smart to change rule for placing partisans.

We propose to have the partisans appear in ANY occupied hex not occupied by or in ZOC of enemy units. This means partisans can appear directly in enemy cities if you keep them occupied. That should be a good reason for the Axis player to garrison is conquered cities, but he can decide to not garrison some cities. Then he might face the loss of a city so he must reconquer it.

Do you think this is a good idea to try to implement? It means we need a house rule less and gives the Axis player a choice of whether he wants to garrison his cities or not.

4. Russian winter effects

The vanilla game is made so the winter effects only appear inside Mother Russia hexes. The winter doesn't affect the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, Romania etc. So the Russians can exploit this when the get so far west so they can attack with full movement allowance during the winter. It means the Axis loses ground faster than they should have historically.

We would like to see if it's possible to make the winter effects affect the following countries in addition to Russia.

* Norway
* Sweden
* Finland
* Estonia
* Latvia
* Lithuania
* Poland
* Hungary
* Romania

Maybe even
* Bulgaria
* Turkey

This means units inside this territory will have lower movement allowance during the winter. This feels better because these countries definitely had quite severe winters.

Do you think such a rule is a good one and if yes which countries should be added to the countries being affected by the winter effect?

E. g.should all countries except maybe Africa have movement penalty during winter and then only units within mother Russia will get the efficiency drop? We all know that it wasn't easy to fight during the winter in e. g. Italy. The roads were muddy and movement poor.

I guess you see there are many possibilities here. I think it's too much work to add complete weather (clear, mud, winter etc.) to the BJR-mod just like CNAW, but we could let the Russian winter effects appear in more countries than mother Russia. The question is which countries should be affected.

[Amicofritz]

Well, if your Java wizard could implement a REPLAY function, I'd make that first priority. But I guess that's a big task and not possible without fiddling with the basic game code ...

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Well, if your Java wizard could implement a REPLAY function, I'd make that first priority. But I guess that's a big task and not possible without fiddling with the basic game code ...

That is probably too time consuming and the risk of introducing bugs is a big one. We don't want to fix everything because we all want a CEAW2.

Changing the class files can be done for minor issues. Fixing bigger things would require Firepowerjohan and I don't think new patches are in the future plans for CEAW. It's probably smarter of Slitherine to use their resources on CEAW2 or something else so they can sell what they make and earn money. Vanilla CEAW is pretty much bugfree and mods like the BJR-mod open up for many new possibilities with the current CEAW.

A replay function is definitely something that future Slitherine games should have.

[raffo80]

well, i would leave russian rule just to russia and eventually baltic states.

Personally i also think that the penalty in effectiveness to axis units in east should apply only on first winter where they had no winter uniforms and supply. For following years, germans were prepared for winter (in fact they also performed some attacks after stalingrad defeat to stop russian offensive).

[raffo80]

Some proposals: why not changing manpower requirements for navy and air? they should be all down to 1 mp IMO.

[dooya]

Maybe it is possible to hard code the limitation of sea transports, like it is defined in the house rules of the BJR Mod? I really like this rule because it brings much realism into the game...

Apart from this, I like the changes proposed in the first post. Only one comment concerning the fuel rule: How do fuel consuming units do, if they are attacked and the fuel pool is already zero. Will they defend, or will they disband?

[ftgcritt2]

4. Russian winter effects

The vanilla game is made so the winter effects only appear inside Mother Russia hexes. The winter doesn't affect the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, Romania etc. So the Russians can exploit this when the get so far west so they can attack with full movement allowance during the winter. It means the Axis loses ground faster than they should have historically.

We would like to see if it's possible to make the winter effects affect the following countries in addition to Russia.

* Norway
* Sweden
* Finland
* Estonia
* Latvia
* Lithuania
* Poland
* Hungary
* Romania

Maybe even
* Bulgaria
* Turkey

This means units inside this territory will have lower movement allowance during the winter. This feels better because these countries definitely had quite severe winters.

Do you think such a rule is a good one and if yes which countries should be added to the countries being affected by the winter effect?

E. g.should all countries except maybe Africa have movement penalty during winter and then only units within mother Russia will get the efficiency drop? We all know that it wasn't easy to fight during the winter in e. g. Italy. The roads were muddy and movement poor.

I like the idea of expanding the severe winter, but don't go overboard with it. One of the harshest effects of the Russian winter was to severely disrupt and slow down supply lines which were already strained by very long distances. So while it may have been very cold in Poland and the Baltic states, the German army was not as severely effected by the winter in these countries. Maybe you could extend a minor movement penalty into these areas, but I would not tamper with the effectiveness penalty outside of Russia.

[rkr1958]

Maybe it is possible to hard code the limitation of sea transports, like it is defined in the house rules of the BJR Mod? I really like this rule because it brings much realism into the game...

Apart from this, I like the changes proposed in the first post. Only one comment concerning the fuel rule: How do fuel consuming units do, if they are attacked and the fuel pool is already zero. Will they defend, or will they disband?

They will defend. Note that tanks and motorized corps that are attacked do NOT use oil in any CURRENT versions of CEaW. Only aircraft and ships that defend do. The new "Country.class" file that our team is currently using will not allow oil to drop below -1. Units will still defend as usual even when their oil levels reach this value. The different now is that the Axis will always have a small amount of oil to begin their turn. For example, suppose late in the game the Axis oil production produces 20 oil points per turn. Then no matter what they will start each turn with 19 oil points (20-1).

Thus, the Allied tactic (which I've used before) of attacking Axis air, or forcing their fighters to intercept, to drive their oil so far negative that it can never get postive again isn't possible with this new class file.

See viewtopic.php?t=8106&highlight= for discussion on this a while ago. This new class file seems to have solved this issue (though testing using it is still underway).

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Maybe it is possible to hard code the limitation of sea transports, like it is defined in the house rules of the BJR Mod? I really like this rule because it brings much realism into the game...

We have this on our to-do list. Timothy (our Java programmer) will tell us what is possible when it's time to look at this. We're fixing one issue at a time and then playtest it thoroughly before we move on to the next. This is the safest way to limit the risk of introducing bugs.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I like the idea of expanding the severe winter, but don't go overboard with it. One of the harshest effects of the Russian winter was to severely disrupt and slow down supply lines which were already strained by very long distances. So while it may have been very cold in Poland and the Baltic states, the German army was not as severely effected by the winter in these countries. Maybe you could extend a minor movement penalty into these areas, but I would not tamper with the effectiveness penalty outside of Russia.

I think we have two separate issues regarding the winter.

1. Winter will reduce movement to about 2 MP's.
2. The Russian severe winter will reduce the effectiveness of units

Bad weather that would reduce movement would happen in most areas of the map. It might be tough to program weather effects per country, but it may be easier to program weather effects e. g. north of a specific hex row. Then we could say that north of this hex row winter is in effect and will reduce movement during the turns of the winter. This hex row could e. g. be defined so Africa, parts of Spain and Italy would be placed south of hex row which would define the reduced movement.

If we manage to introduce reduced movement due to winter based on a hex row then we can let issue 2 (efficiency drop) remain the way it is, meaning it will only happen in Mother Russia.

What I feel strange with the current game is that if you're in Russia during the winter you can only move 2 hexes, but as soon as you get into Estonia you get full movement allowance. I agree that the severe winter effects (efficiency drop) shouldn't be expanded, but expanding the reduced movement to a bigger area is probably not a bad idea.

Doing this will not hamper the Germans very much. OK, it won't be possible to blitz Holland and Belgium during the winter months due to movement restrictions. But the real Germans actually waited till the Spring before they attack because it was too risky to attack during the Winter.

Germany will finish with Poland before the Winter and will stay inside Russia for battles after the start of Barbarossa. But the winter rule reducing movement allowance in e. g. Poland and the Baltic states during the winter will HELP the Germans when the Russians are pushing towards Berlin.

So this winter rule will actually help the Germans to survive longer. E. g. the Allies can't move so quickly towards Berlin during the winter.

If we introduce this rule then we have to playtest how it affects the fall of France.

[raffo80]

severe winter in france, germany and italy isn't very historical. During winter Germany made the offensive of ardennes, they were about to attack france (they postponed only cause their plans of an attack through belgium fell in the hands of french) and so on.

Maybe they will help germans, but it's not realistic. The problem in russia wasn't just the winter: it was the storms, the -20° but mostly the old and inadequate road system which was not modern (unlike france/germany/italy and so on) so germans weren't able to supply troops near moscow.

In winter '42-'43 German destroyed the russian advance, conquered karkov and menaced Kursk.

If you go this way, at least make 2 versions of the mod so some can still play the normal one.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Some proposals: why not changing manpower requirements for navy and air? they should be all down to 1 mp IMO.

We will have a look into this, but even naval and air units required a big crew. E. g. Tirpitz alone had a crew of over 2000. Air units weren't only pilots, but soldiers to protect the airbase. E. g. the Luftwaffe even had military divisions fighting on the ground.

So it would be too much to drop the manpower to 1 for naval and air units, but I think it's possible to discuss if we should lower them a bit. That's very easy to do. What do you think should be the right manpower requirements for BB's, CV's, DD's, fighters, strategic bombers and tactical bombers?

[raffo80]

Well, my math was:
Infantry corp takes 10MP
Infantry corp equals 4 divisions (60.000 men)

So 1 MP was cause to "run" 1 airflotte, it was requiring pilots and more or less 4000 people on the ground (base and defence).

[Peter Stauffenberg]

severe winter in france, germany and italy isn't very historical. During winter Germany made the offensive of ardennes, they were about to attack france (they postponed only cause their plans of an attack through belgium fell in the hands of french) and so on.

Maybe they will help germans, but it's not realistic. The problem in russia wasn't just the winter: it was the storms, the -20° but mostly the old and inadequate road system which was not modern (unlike france/germany/italy and so on) so germans weren't able to supply troops near moscow.

In winter '42-'43 German destroyed the russian advance, conquered karkov and menaced Kursk.

If you go this way, at least make 2 versions of the mod so some can still play the normal one.

We're not talking about severe winter (meaning the efficiency loss) everywhere in Europe. That's not needed. We're more talking about reduced movement during the winter turns. I've seen a lot of programs about WW2 battles. The mud weather in e. g. Italy during the winter really hampered the Allies in 1943 and 1944. Most wargames have weather effects in Europe during the winter. E. g. in World in Flames you can't attack into France just after you capture Poland because it's mud weather and you have less movement allowance and less firepower due to air units being grounded, tanks stuck on muddy roads etc.

If you look at the actual battles in WW2 Europe during the winter then you won't see a lot of movement taking place. You refer to the Battle of the Bulge, but that offensive was a failure for the Germans and they didn't get to Antwerp as they hoped. They didn't move that far. It's still possible to perform the Battle of the Bulge with a reduced movement during the winter.

As I wrote before, we're talking about 2 separate issues here. The Russian severe winter effects (reduced efficiency) happened only in Russia due to extremely cold winters. So the German soldiers virtually froze to death. But almost all European countries were hampered with bad weather during the winter making it harder to move. The mud weather (a lot of rain) was actually worse for movement than the winter (then the roads froze and you could driive faster).

I live in Norway myself and nobody can say that it's realistic that you can move military units as fast here during the winter as you can during the summer.

Most wargames have weather effects that affect movement so it's not necessarily ahistorical that CeaW could have the same as well. In CeaW you can move 6 hexes per turn with armor e. g. through Poland or the Baltic States in January. Is that realistic?

Another question is if the reduced movement happening in mother Russia is too harsh for the rest of Europe. E. g. armor units are reduced to 2 MPs, infantry to 2 MP's and motorized just to 1 MP. Maybe movement during the winter should be halved (rounded up). Infantry MPs. is reduced from 4 (or 3 if supply level 3) to 2. Armor MP's reduced from 6 (or 5 if supply level 3) to 3. Motorized from 5 to 3 or 4 to 2 (supply level 3). Garrisons reduced from 2 to 1.
That means garrisons would have a movement allowance of 1, infantry of 2, armor and motorized of 3. That is not so bad.

Another way to implement movement during winter outside Russia could be to reduce the movement allowance by 1.

Exactly how this will end up depends upon the possibilities we have when changing the class files.

[rkr1958]

Well, my math was:
Infantry corp takes 10MP
Infantry corp equals 4 divisions (60.000 men)

So 1 MP was cause to "run" 1 airflotte, it was requiring pilots and more or less 4000 people on the ground (base and defence).

In CEaW, an infantry corps equals 50,360 men. A 10 step air unit equals 260 aircraft. A 10-step fighter uses 3 MP versus 10 MP for a infantry corps. Thus, 260 fighters in CEaW require the equivalent of 15,108 men. A 10-step strategic or tactical bomber also represents 260 planes and requires 4 MP, which is equivalent to 20,144 men. A 10-step sub, DD, BB and CV represent 50 ships each; require 4, 5, 6 & 7 MP (respectively); which translates into 20,144, 25,180, 30,216 & 35,252 men (respectively). As Stauffenberg pointed out these manpower numbers include more that just to operate the planes and ships. It includes the numbers to maintain, service and protect these elements.

For completeness, a 10-step garrison & motorized corps require 5 & 9 MP; which would imply 20,144 & 45,324 men. However, each 1-step loss adds 5036 to the infantry causalities summarized by CEaW in that screen.

A armor corps represents 520 AFVs (armored fighting vehicles) and requires 7 MP; which translates to 35,252 men.

Note in the CEaW causalities summary only infantry corps, garrison & motorized corps losses contribute to the infantry causalities number. Losses for these corps when loaded on transports are NOT added into the infantry causalities number but are added into the ships number.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Here is a map showing the averange minimum winter temperature in Europe:

http://www.your-garden-ponds-center.com ... zones.html

This map shows where you could expect severely cold temperatures and the answer is Mother Russia and Finland. So it seems right that the efficiency reduction during the winter shouldn't be outside Mother Russia (maybe with the exception of Finland).

This link shows the European climate zones and annual precipitation:
http://printable-maps.blogspot.com/2008 ... urope.html

[IainMcNeil]

This looks very interesting guys - keep us posted on how it develops!

[gerones]

Without a last turn replay option, all the BJR house rules should be hard coded if possible and this way these rules would be too observed when playing with AI. I´m agree with expanding winter movement effects to all these countries mentioned by Stauffenberg, but the penalty axis effectivenness (45%!!!, the first winter) seems to me a little unrealistic both in vanilla and BJR mod. As rkr says, germans were only fairly affected by winter effects in 1941. With respect to partisans, the proposals mentioned by Stauffenberg sounds good but only in the countries where historically these irregular units really affected axis power and had a little organisation: France, USSR, and Yugoslavia. It´s very unrealistic when you´re playing against AI or PBEM, and appears all of these iraqi partisans units when you´re triying to capture oil fields... And, finally, instead of an atlantic ocean-persian gulf sea lane I would implement a transportation loop, editing 3 or 4 sea hexes near of Kuwait, wich it seems to be more aesthetic than the actual sea lane...

[fiskog]

1. Limit a country's embarked ground units to that country's number of surface naval units. Or maybe 1.5X with fractions round up. Or Maybe 1.5 for US, UK, and Germany, and 0.5 for Italy and Russia. In this way building a fleet would build AMPH capacity. There was no way that Germany or Russia could have had a dozen corps afloat at one time.

2. Put some effectiveness penalty on Axis units that enter the Russian winter on turns after the winter starts.

[rkr1958]

1. Limit a country's embarked ground units to that country's number of surface naval units. Or maybe 1.5X with fractions round up. Or Maybe 1.5 for US, UK, and Germany, and 0.5 for Italy and Russia. In this way building a fleet would build AMPH capacity. There was no way that Germany or Russia could have had a dozen corps afloat at one time.

That's intriguing, a limit on the number of transports that a given country can have active at any given time. I don't know it I would necessary tie this to the number of warships a country has but maybe limit it based on country, year and / or naval tech level. We would still need the amphibious landing constraints too (I feel) but a limit on the total number transports would prevent the tactic of the Axis having 10 or more transports at sea in 1940 around several coastal areas of England looking for a "weak" place to land.

By the way, the approach we take when we constrain something by house rules (e.g., amphibious landing limit) is to make it as straightforward as possible to implement in order to avoid confusion and misinterpretation of our intent. However; if we're able to implement the constraint automatically in the CEaW game engine then we can use a more complicated set of logic PROVIDE it's relatively straight forward change to the code and with a low risk of introducing bugs. For any potential changes that we're considering the latter (i.e., straight forward to program and with a low risk of introducing bugs) is a MAJOR consideration. We defer to Timothy (our Java programmer) for the programming assessment since he's the one who actually makes the change.

2. Put some effectiveness penalty on Axis units that enter the Russian winter on turns after the winter starts.

Personally, I can't think of a situation where I've been impacted by this. Do you have a specific example where this has had a significant impact on game?