[WarInEur] CWIE - FOW + manpower

[Daniel Jagelman]

The variables sound very interesting, at all levels.

I have tinkered about with Grigsby's laest offering, World at War. It is basically an exercise in forward planning and getting the equations right, little more. As there is very little production almost no tactical input the game is boring as batsh#t. 

I guess the other end of the sclae is you want a game to have tangible boudaries to operate to
in so from game to game you can compare apples with apples and master a given set of circumstances to some degree.



> sgminfo at aol.com <sgminfo at aol.com> wrote:
> 
> 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|-