EP '14 mechanics/balance

[ComradeP]

Regarding trenches, one thing the engine doesn't model well due to there being no slope hexsides is that in an era where the majority of the weapons are direct fire weapons, digging in on a hill will give you a very significant defensive advantage as it makes your troops more or less immune to most kinds of fire because the trajectory of most weapons means the fire will hit the hill/earth breastworks and not your troops.

There are no slopes in the game, so you can't create a reverse slope defense, but it would be far more effective to do so in these early stages of WWI with limited artillery and no mortars than in WWII or later wars with large quantities of indirect fire weapons.

Having no top cover means little without air burst weapons or without situations where shrapnel or shrapnel like objects are in the air like with tree bursts. Regular artillery shells buried men alive because the shock blew the earthen wall of the trench at them. Top cover wouldn't change much about that. Top cover would also make “going over the top” on a broad front impossible, not to mention that there were thousands of kilometres worth of trenches that simply couldn't be covered without deforesting Europe.

Deep trenches with strengthened walls offered good protection to WWI type artillery, the trenches of about half a man's height of the first year of the war wouldn't provide much protection from artillery fire, but would give good protection against direct fire if the attacker is below you.

To continue the discussion about the balance in Clash of Empires:

First, Russian supply isn't likely to be 30 at the frontline starting September 1st but about 20. I'm not sure why both Volcano Man and my current opponent, who tested the game, think it's 30. If you open the 1st Masurian Lakes scenario, it's clear that supply is about 20 at the frontline and the supply situation for 1st Army is slightly better than for 2nd Army. Global supply actually never decreases according to the game, which surprised me, so that remains at 60 (it's 30 in the 1st Masurian Lakes scenario, and adjusted for supply level decrease in other scenarios as well) but your main supply sources drop from 70 to 40.

Any discussion of supply too much or too little needs to take into account that supply already degrades the further you move away from your supply sources, so it's about 20 points lower at the front than at the edge of the map. 50 supply is already fairly bad, particularly when facing an opponent who doesn't face any supply difficulties. As many of your HQ's will be out of command each turn, avoiding/recovering from Low Ammo through the HQ roll is often not possible, so you rely on the regular supply roll.

In practice, even in the best of cases at about 50, units are unlikely to be properly supplied more than half the time. That is already a serious penalty. At 20, units have just 1/5 chance of being in supply.

No matter how chaotic the supply situation was for the Russians, units being able to fire about twice each day (including a successful HQ check) in a normal supply situation will cripple any offensive operation and any defensive position that isn't dug in.

It's also important to keep in mind that Russian support weapons are already D or E morale, as noted in my previous post, so when they become Low Ammo regular infantry division MG units become E morale and are no longer all that scary for the Germans.

The reason why I feel the various penalties combine into a too significant overall penalty to Russian effectiveness is that historically the Russians fell apart when under pressure. Currently, their effectiveness just falls apart all by itself.

A campaign scenario requires careful balancing, and maybe I indeed don't understand what will happen if the Russians are improved, but I doubt the Russians are as threatening to the Germans as is implied with range 2 HQ's and somewhat better supply. The German maximum effective front that can be covered by the divisional and brigade command radii (on a line: 6 to one side, the hex the HQ is in and 6 to the other side=13 for the divisional HQ+3 on each side for the brigade HQ's=19, 14 hexes of which are in command of brigade HQ's) are currently at the level of corps as described in the design document, so there's already a large gap. You can't hold that front, but you can certainly place units that far apart. For the Russians, the limit is 7+2=9 with 6 hexes in command of brigade HQ's.

They still face strategic penalties like reinforcements arriving at the edge of the map with no functional rail line to the front in the north and center (the German reinforcements from the Western front can either arrive close to the edge of the map, or somewhat west of the center but with good rail lines to the front) and having their late game defense in the south hang in the air through the extremely variable arrival of 10th Army.

10th Army's arrival might not have been an organized affair, but the Germans did have to take its presence into account. Currently, it's more of a phantom threat. Even with a regular 8% arrival chance instead of an 8% daily arrival chance, it would still take them days to reach the front. You would, however, at least have something to prevent the Germans from pushing too far in the south and center, a push which was stopped historically as well: Fortress Osowiec held out, for example, something which it might not do without some outside help at the moment.

The release schedule for 1st Army also gives variable results and that they start rolling for release on the second and not the first day turn of each day doesn't help. 1st Army also literally can't reach its historical positions on time with the current release schedule and the short days even if it would release on the second daytime turn of each day and would face only limited German opposition after the first day. My men are barely at Insterburg at the start of the 27th, and only because there was no defense at the Angerapp. Any halfway decent defense at the Angerapp will throw a big wrench in keeping with a historical timetable.

I also started a game as the Germans at the same time as my game as the Russians, and I never really feel any pressure at all. 1st Army stops itself without my influence, I can let 2nd Army advance for a few days and just wait somewhere knowing that its supply situation will worsen rapidly. There is no sense of impending doom unless I succeed in knocking out a large part of the Russian force. As noted before, the Russians cripple themselves. It just feels too organized.

You can't sustain an offensive with 20-30 supply and little to no replacements against an enemy who gets ~30 replacements per turn (or 125% of that number, if replacements are like fatigue recovery in the sense that what you actually get is between 50% and 200% of the given number, which makes the average 125% that number unless there are further modifications weighing it towards the given number).

Volcano Man, if you recall the discussion about France '14 a while ago where the French could stage a very forward defense and win because losses were less relevant than the points they held: the German player is in a fairly similar situation. You can't rotate troops as easily because you have fewer, but there are quite a number of tricks you can pull on the defense to protect the objectives and losses can be replaced fairly easily. Fatigue is another matter entirely, but with good play it can be managed as well. The Landwehr can also temporarily take over whilst your other forces regain strength/decrease fatigue.

There's also the matter of what incentive the current design gives to the player. It is now the 27th of August in my Russian game against jonnymacbrown and I've just had my second supply decrease. What is my incentive to keep moving forward? You know the Germans have a significantly better loss recovery rate, better supply situation, interior lines and reinforcements that will warp to the front in a few days. A draw might be possible, but victory seems far out of reach.

If the Russians don't get the supply they need to at least have the idea that they can keep an offensive going, why should they attack if they know they will lose? From what it feels like, there is no carrot and a lot of sticks for the Russians. This might also not be enjoyable for the German player if he has to remove the Russians from positions prepared for several days in order to get a draw, but getting a draw is already tricky.

My 2nd Army briefly captured Bischofsburg and then I retreated when the Germans attacked as for the moment there was no logical reason to keep advancing, it is suicidal with the current supply situation. The Russians get hit by supply decreases through distance and overall supply decreases, which is a double whammy that prevents them from keeping a good advance going.

I understand the need to prevent the Russians from being too strong, but a single 10 supply decrease already accomplishes that. At 50 or so, they get ~23-24 replacements, at 40 about 16, or about half what the Germans get. That, to me, allows you to make interesting yet also difficult strategic choices. Now my battalions get 8 replacements per turn and will soon get 1 or 2 for over half the campaign game. On the attack, the Russians would be bled white without being able to dislodge the Germans from a serious defensive position.

That matter of incentive could also cause problems in, say, a FWWC game featuring the Russian advance on Lemberg as the Austro-Hungarians needs to have an incentive to not do the smart thing and dig in and hide behind the numerous rivers in the area but attack instead.

The problems that have been commented on by my opponent and others of not being able to destroy units is due to both sides having the same moment rate for the regular infantry, units having full movement rates when disrupted during daytime, there being little to no offensive firepower (the usual two step back move to avoid assaults has already been mentioned) and no mobile units aside from vulnerable cavalry units. There are also not that many units for both sides. Not being able to destroy units is thus not caused by Russian (or German) supply, command radii or replacement rates.

As to Lodz: it's a very different scenario for the Germans. The weather is mediocre to bad, the supply situation is bad, your forces are mostly D/C quality, your cavalry doesn't get replacements anymore so they can't replace their losses, the Russians outnumber you and your forces arrive spread out in distance and time. Like, I believe, burroughs wrote as commentary on his victory in a Lodz game: any competent Russian defense will win them the game.

I'm going to start a game with a modified version of the scenario, with improved Russians, to see how bad it truly is as at the moment I can't see them win against a good German opponent.

jim pfleck: in scenarios with replacements instead of recovery, fatigue is likely to reduce combat effectiveness more than losses, but there are ways to manage it. The usual Soviet strategy in WWII PzC titles seems to be to wage a war of attrition through losses and fatigue, because you have more units that can take fatigue and can usually take the losses as well. The Russian supply situation in Clash of Empires makes it difficult to use their numerical superiority as although you can rotate forces more easily (your regular divisions have 4 more battalions than German ones on average after all) the other penalties keep the advantage in check. For the most part, I feel that's fine, it's just the overall rapid reduction in combat effectiveness even without actual combat that bothers me.