Mius Historical Campaign

[Philippe]

Have been playing the Mius Historical Campaign in a pbem as the Germans and have started wondering if it's balanced for HTH play.

The campaign game is 66 turns long and the map isn't really big enough to trade space for time. And 66 turns is a lot of time. To make matters worse (or maybe to simulate a stand-fast order?) almost all of the victory locations are near the front line: if you try to roll with the punch the Soviets will win on victory location points, and he's so much stronger it's hard to imagine mounting an effective counter-offensive, even after the panzer and panzer grenadier divisions come into play.

I'm a third of the way through the campaign and suffering horrendous losses. Every time I manage to contain a break-in, the Soviets start coming through somewhere else. I've started to launch an armored counter-attack, but I'm not holding my breath. And I don't seem to have any schwere panzer abteilungen in my reinforcement roster.

The short scenarios seem very nice for solo play, and maybe even for HTH. Was the Mius Campaign added as an afterthought, or am I doing something dramatically wrong? Or maybe that's why there's a hypothetical scenario with a very early arrival of SS units.

A scenario where the defender gets beat up and ground into powder can be interesting, but the defender needs a chance to win some kind of relative victory. As it is, I'm having trouble seeing how the defender could get a weak draw, because when this gets to turn thirty or so I would expect the defender to simply collapse.

[Fhil]

Well, are you playing with the new Delayed Disruption Reporting rule? As it would be pretty hard for the Soviet side to successfully break through all over the front. At least I believe so.

Best Regards,
Filip

[Philippe]

Interesting point. We're not using Delayed Disruption reporting.

A "feature" of my defensive tactics is that I try to systematically disrupt his stacks so that if he uses his numerical superiority he'll suffer the different division penalty as often as possible. I don't know what would have happened with this rule in effect. He would have had a harder time steamrolling my defenses, but I would have had a harder time put up a (tactically) organized defense. The impact on the attacker would probably have been greater.

I still haven't worked out in my heart of hearts whether or not you can tell that the pounding you've just given the other guy has disrupted him inside of a two hour time frame. Thinking back to my Combat Mission days (where one turn equals one minute), you can usually develop a feel for whether the other guy has been chewed up and is keeping his head down (which is more or less what the disruption result represents): he doesn't shoot as much and it's less effective when he does, and that artillery barrage is still ringing in your ears so it's got to be ringing even worse in his....

[Philippe]

Just thinking about the concept of Delayed Disruption reporting, I may be about to start using the rule.

My point of reference for all of this is my experience with CMx1, that is, CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK.

Most of what happens in a CM scenario is what in Panzer Campaigns would be considered an assault.

My sense has always been that time (and perhaps losses) was a bit too accelerated in CM when you compare what happens in an historical scenaro to historical accounts.

But my sense has also been that losses were a little too low in Panzer Campaigns. If you were to set up a CM battle in Panzer Campaigns you probably wouldn't get the same results, partly (but only partly) because when a commander knows he's got to keep using his units for the next six months or so he's a lot more cautious about exposing them to losses (i.e. CM players tend to play more recklessly and aggressively than their real-life™ counterparts).

In CM you can tell that a half dozen squads or so closest to the front line have been shot up to the point that if you send in a reasonable assault, you'll overwhelm their positions. But what you can only guess at is the condition (or even presence) of what is sitting two kilometers behind the point of contact. So if I use CM as a weak proxy for realty, I suppose there is no very great obstacle to the concept that you can't really tell how much damage your prep fire did until you wade in there.

Still a little uneasy with it, but then again, in CM it is very difficult to impossible to execute a phased withdrawal without sacrificing the squads that are in closest contact with the enemy. [ I have actually been successful in using the withdraw command, but the not very satisfying trick to it is that you have to give that particular order *before* you experience significant incoming fire].

No system is perfect and is going to have anavoidable abstractions. I suppose delayed disruption doesn't really do violence to verisimilitude -- and at least you can conduct a fighting withdrawal in Panzer Campaigns.

[Ricky B]

Have been playing the Mius Historical Campaign in a pbem as the Germans and have started wondering if it's balanced for HTH play.

Philippe, not to speak for the designer, but as this entire game was designed as a free module for the purposes of introducing new players to the PzC series, I would guess that the scenarios were NOT designed for HTH, rather for a new player to learn the ropes of the game and get a feel for the play, and then if the person likes it come back and buy the full games that appeal. We added it to the ladder knowing that some would play it HTH, but from the JTS side, that wasn't its primary focus.

So to me it seems quite reasonable that it wouldn't be balanced HTH, and if I was designing the scenario, I would start out making it reasonably easy for the attacking player to win, since many players like to start that way, and then a good challenge for the other side against the AI so the player can build more experience that way.

Rick

[Philippe]

If you're right (and I strongly suspect that you are), then this is a scenario/game that is really crying out for the Volcano Man _alt treatment.

Apart from using a different data base for the units, I think a lot would change with different victory locations worth different victory points.

I suspect that playing against the AI in the campaign game probably gives a pretty good game: the AI Soviets are numerically superior but hamfisted, and that might give the Germans a fighting chance. A human Soviet (which is what I'm up against) will use that numerical superiority to give him a crushing advantage.

But all of that's without taking into account what would happen if delayed disruption reporting were in use.

[Fast Heinz]

I have played the game half-way through as the Soviets & started over because my brave boys' units were in a bit of a mess. Phillippe is correct that the Soviet player must keep his house in order to do well.

However it is a hoot to play as the Soviets against the AI. The scenario is small enough to be playable for those of us with limited time. I have stayed away from East Front PzC games because of limited time & energy but instead have played a lot of West Front titles. Whoever designed Mius did a good job.

To tell the truth no one really knows for sure that Mius is not balanced for HTH even though it may have been built to show off the engine against the AI.

I would love to play PBEM as the Soviet player.

[Fhil]

I´ve tested this campaign until the 10th turn or so against myself back in the day. I´ve used both the Volcano´s Mod and the Delayed Disruption rule. I didn´t break through at any place as a Soviet player. And I´ve planned my attacks carefully.

With the DD rule (Delayed Disruption), Axis player has always time to reconsolidate his positions, bring the reserves into the bunkers while pulling back the disrupted ones behind a hill or forest to get out of sight and rest. Meanwhile the two other units from the given battalion should hold the bunker. With a good morale that Germans have here in Mius, they mostly get undisrupted right on their turn, so the Soviet player doesn´t have a chance to respond with any attack. There are also plenty of AT-Guns for Germs there.

Using Volcano´s mods and the DDR rule makes this a nightmare for Russkies instead. For those not using either VM mod or DDR rule I suggest to use the Alternative Direct and Indirect Fire Resolution. This should balance the things too.

If you want Philippe, we can try this campaign sometime. It would be an honour for me to meet you on the battlefield. By the way, I really LOVE and ENJOY your great work! I´m using your map mods since I´ve tried them!

Best Regards,
Filip

[Philippe]

Thanks for the kind words. Due to some unusually hellish circumstances in my life right now I can't really think about taking on another game for a few months, and may even have to put my current ones on hold for a while.

The tactics you described are pretty much what I'd been using, and for the first dozen turns or so (without delayed disruption) I managed to rotate fresh troops into the firing line and pull back the damaged ones. There were penetrations but they were containable, and in the early turns it seemed like I was spending more time building second and third trench lines behind the bunkers to shore up the inevitable fall-back. But after about ten turns the progressive damage started to mount up and the dents in my line started linking up with each other. Then things began crumbling in rapid order, with the local counter-attacks becoming fewer and more feeble. Twenty-three turns into the game I have big gaps in my line that I can no longer patch, and my counterattacks are going nowhere. What I'm seeing looks worse than what happen in Byelorussia in the summer of '44.

[enigma6584]

Sorry if this is a dense question but may I ask what panzer campaigns game this particular scenario is with?