Kursk '43 Campaign balance issue

[dto]

I'm playing the Soviets in the standard Kursk '42 Grand Campaign. It's only Turn 13 (the second day of the battle) and the Germans already have 7,600 VPs. They only 12,000 to win a Marginal Victory.

Soviets losses don't seem excessive (about 2:1 in favor of the Germans, which seems historical), and the Germans haven't achieved any major breakthroughs. But the Germans already have 4,700 Objective points, many of which are located near the front line, which makes them easy pickings. The Germans will probably gain another 1,000-plus points in the south from Objectives, which pretty much will give them a Draw at the minimum. The Germans will probably gain more VPs from killing Soviets than the Soviets from killing Germans, especially since many of the Soviet reserve won't activate until mid-game

It may be that I'm playing the game badly as the Soviets. But I wonder if the VP thresholds are too easy for the Germans.

Michael

[Green]

Michael,

I would say that you are correct. A Soviet victory is hard to imagine if the Germans have already amassed 7600 points in 13 turns. Even if you had played poorly (I am not suggesting that) it seems wrong that any chance of a Soviet major victory is gone when only 10% of turns have been played.

Having said that, your losses seem high. You have lost 2900 casualty victory points in excess of those lost by your opponent. From a Soviet perspective a victory point represents roughly 10 men. So that gives excess losses of 29000 men (or their equivalent in terms of guns/vehicles/planes). Presumably your total losses are around twice this. This seems a lot to incur in less than 2 days but perhaps this is typical. Whether it is historically accurate is another question. 

The ALT version of the campaign has higher victory levels with a greater spread between them. It also provides tougher Soviet defenses as it has more bunkers as opposed to trenches. Of course any comparison is difficult as there are a large number of other variations. Regardless, looking at the games reported on the Blitz, both versions would seem to have a similar pro-German bias of around 3:1. This is generally true for the non-campaign Kursk scenarios as well.

It would be good to get this fixed but it would also be good to hear what the general opinion is of others that have played the campaign. Is the problem just the objective values or is it something more fundamental regarding the simulation?


John