[WarInEur] CWIE - FOW + manpower

[sgminfo at aol.com]

Daniel Jagelman wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Call me stupid but I have only just stumbled on the 'scope' function in the inventory tool. I was flabbergasted to see the level you can scope down to.
>   

Yes it is a really useful, and at the same time a potentially very 
dangerous tool, especially in FOW games.
> Now my Axis defences in Africa, which I thought so sufficent given FOW, feel naked and inadequate. Kind of like being caught nude swiming in cold water..
>
> Is FOW changing in CWIE II via some kind a margin of error or tolerance or something else?
>   
Well I am proposing (if people agree) that with FOW there will be all 
kinds of "innaccuracies" factoring into the reports you get as part of 
the game. (Not yet implemented)

So for example,
The OB might end up being accurate to about 85% strategically,
but at each drill down level of reporting, 15% gets added to the 
innaccuracies laid down...

i.e. Board level     85%
     Front level       70%
     Country level   55%

I.E you will always know overall what your opponent generally has to a 
significant degree,
but the devil is in the detail. So the closer you look the less reliable 
reports can become.

Note for reporting purposes,
you will always be able to rely on your own side not lying to you...
:-)

I.E. Hitler and OKW/OKH had a good working knowledge of the overall 
level of allied inventory,
(even if Goering and Hitler refused to accept these figures).
But when you get down to individual areas, things become more and more 
opaque,
(Hence the ability of the allies to foist FUSAG on the  German  command 
in the West-
The deception gained credence, as their faulty OB analysis of the 
Western  deployment in Britain
allowed the resources  for such a fictitious army group under Patton to 
exist
> On a different topic - it fascinates me that as the German player, if you fight a mechanized war against the russians reasonably successfully and target their personel points heavy units and resources, you can exhaust the soviet manpower while still having hundreds of thousands or even millions of men still in reserve. Targeting personel points is really a form of 'strategic' warfare in that you are trying to create or exploit an existing bottleneck in the opposition's ability to wage war. I am surprised that in the WIE game, a manpower bottleneck is so easy to manufacture for the soviets without the benefit of years of extravegant Stalinesque spending of russian blood..
>   
Actually there are two manpower bottlenecks, and both are, to my mind, 
unreasonably tight.
The soviet one, as you say, is such as to allow a gamey German tactic of 
deliberately skewing his game to exploit that inherent weakness,
to the point of destroying the Russian commander.

ITRW The Germans were NEVER _that_ sure of the manpower bind.
At least they were not so sure that they could base their tactics 
entirely upon it.
There was a serious argument raging in the German High Command 
throughout 1943 and 1944,
Between such players as Gehlen, and the likes of  Keitel, Jodl, Hitler 
and, on a third side, the field commanders as to how big the Soviet
manpower pool really was, and how much they were actually damaging it.

Hitler took the view that the Soviets were actually scraping the barrel,
Gehlen felt that they were some way towards it,
but nowhere near at crisis point,
Whilst Manstein, Hoth, and others, felt that mobile defensive tactics
could exploit that weakness and play to the German strengths as a result.
Others such as Model and Heinrici, were more in favour of the Hitler 
view of Soviet manpower,
that a  "stand fast" style of defence could actually break the soviets 
by indulging  in a direct test of wills and a real war of accelerated 
attrition.
(A War that worked, only if the immediate pools of manpower were tipped 
in the German favour).


On the German  side, the strictures of the proportions you have as 
mandatory builds,
results in a massive problem in 1943-44, if you have not maxxed out the 
airforce.
The huge levels of arms points coming in, if the Allies do not control 
the German economy by bombing,
cause the German production system to break down.
This is because,
the proportions  for minimum builds are based upon arms points, not 
personnel,
and it is personnel that runs low.
Thus you get into the situation where a large number of arms points mean 
that the miminum build for the Luftwaffe
then absorb an unreasonable  proportion of your narrow margin of manpower...

but those mandatory luftwaffe builds then trigger a requirement for a 
minimum build of ground units, a minimum build which
exceeds the manpower quotient at your disposal, locking you into a no 
win production game. Namely the only way
you can satisfy the minimum builds test is NOT to build anything at all.


As a concept...

I would like to see some element of randomness in the manpower multiple 
when the game starts,
perhaps allowing the total potential manpower in the game to be variable 
maybe up to 15%,
with that extra manpower appearing pro rata in the last 24 months of the 
war, but if less,
perhaps depressing the manpower multiple by similar amounts throughout 
the war.

Alternatively, to depress some of the excess manpower in the early 
years, and transferring it onto the back end of the game.

IN the German case ITRW Germany suffered from a manpower bind, but not 
an insoluble one.
They could, and did, take steps to square the circle, and for the most 
part, came up
with adequate (although not ideal) solutions.

The current manpower multiple for the Germans is clearly a nonesense. 
Overall it may be correct,
but in the real world, and such circumstances as we have- steadily 
piling up manpower unused in the early war years
to be finely budgetted and eaked out in the latter stages-  is pure 
invention.

OKW would never have allowed a huge manpower pool of potential recruits 
to accumulate,
sitting on their proverbial arses,
whilst the Reich indulged in a bitter struggle to the death on the 
eastern front.

If this were true, the  1942 Spring  refit of the German army would have 
been  a VERY different proposition.
Generally speaking, a nation at war, especially the German General Staff,
would mobilise whatever it could lay its hands on in the way of manpower.
In warfare, there is NO POINT AT ALL in husbanding forces for the long haul,
if this means that you lose in the short term. For a nation at war, 
there is,
effectively, no tomorrow, if you can't get through today.

So I am an advocate of the reducing excess manpower at the start of the 
game, and tack it on the end.
The Germans should have a sufficiency of manpower to use to maintain at 
least their historical programme in the early years,
plus say 20%, and all the rest should be loaded towards the back end of 
the game.

instead of the 4 3 2 1 style used now, I advocate a  loading more akin 
to    2 3 3 2 distribution...

After all, the Germans are arms point limited in 1939-41 and can never 
use them there anyway.

Currently It makes the strategic planning for the newbie virtually 
impossible,
he does not know how the endgame operates,
and cannot make provision for it.
It is all very well saying "it's a lesson he needs to learn",
because manifestly it isn't.
ITRW the staff would advise you when mobilising this or that section of 
the manpower pool was sensible,
and try to stop you when it wasn't
(See Speer's brushes with the hierarchy as they unknowing tried to cut 
into his essential worker programmes
for planned extensions of industrial output.)

> I would love to see some graphical reports on the historical data of month by month men/divisions/afv's for both sides on the eastern front, and the same for losses.
>   

There are plans (not yet realised) for CSV output in various aspects of 
reporting,
to enable those players who would like to do more detailed analysis, as 
a tool.
exporting to spreadsheet  will enable a wealth of detail tobe teased out 
of the system relatively easily.


-|steve|-
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