Events

[Currahee]

-Axis replacement too weak, and never improve after 4 year of war.

I think you should increase it; until the twin disasters of Stalingrad and Tunisia, the Axis was able to keep most of its units at strength; and even afterwards, was able to keep some elite units at strength. Remember that you can set replacement priority and eligibility for reconstitution, by unit.

-Allied replacement insanely huge (8x more that axis)

Probably needs to be cut. You can use the event engine to change replacement rates, by side, during the game. One nice touch is to cause the fall of certain major cities to reduce replacement rates. This could be done for both sides.

-Axis supply decreasing by 80% in winter 41 ?? I know that winter was terrible, but still..That seems too much..And the afrika korp doesn't deserve to be so affected as well..

One problem with the game system is that a side’s force supply stockpile level and supply radius must be the same, all over the map. First, stockpile levels (like replacements) can also be changed through the game, by the event engine. Certainly it should increase for the Allies, and decrease for the Axis, during the game; but again, could be keyed not only to dates, but also to the fall of certain cities or industrial areas. Second, the Afrika Corps could be supplied with a couple of supply depot units. Within their supply radius, they’re effective at increasing supply for hexes off-road, and road hexes at less than full supply. Also, even though Africa can’t have a higher force supply stockpile level than other portions of the map, it is certainly easy to place additional supply sources in Africa. But you should probably not add too many rails & roads, because there were indeed serious supply problems in Africa, on both sides.

-Axis rail repear too slow, in the real history, we know that the wermacht was supplied by train until Stalingrad, and in "war in europe ver3" it is impossible to repear the lines so fast..

This is an easy fix, as you can either increase the default rail repair, and/or add rail repair units at (say) Army or Army Group level.

Well, I know it’s easier to throw out ideas that to actually implement them, but it’s a very powerful game engine, and if the scenario is worth saving, it would be a good deed for the gaming community! You have now the basic familiarity with the scenario, to make some good changes; it may be that the designer never was able to play more than a few moves into the scenario.

[Amnesia]

To be more accurate :

I think the allied replacement need to be much higher during the whole war, even if the URRS falls..but currently even after having captured the whole industrial area behind the Oural, Allied replacement still stay 5x higher..(should be 3x imo)
Maybe should start around 20% of the current value, and then, reaches his maximal point in the 1943 spring. btw, it is not logical that they start at 0% supply and german at 45.
the german prod slitghly improves after warsovie and paris's capture, and that is all..It should increase a little bit during the preparation of Barbarossa and Blau (maybe a condition for blau : having captured few middle points like kharkov, and to not have lost tripoli..)

Here is a print of the maximal prod of the two sides :



Then, I think 80% of lost supply is not exagerate for the winter 41, (in every other barbarossa scenarios, the fall is as important..) but maybe it could be more realistic to make it as steps, example, instead of :

turn x : german supply -80

would be better to do :

turn x : german supply -15
turn x+2 : german supply -25
turn x+4 : german supply -40

Btw, if there is 80% lost during the winter 41 ? Why not adding a -30 or -40 during the winter 42, I found that the operation Blau passes too easily on this scenario..

btw, I don't know how to define the supply unit with a logical proportion, I am just discovering how it works..My knowledge with the events is also a bit limited to the main ones, I will need your help if I want to make something properly..
No need to make any change on the map, I prefer let things like that and increase a bit the africakorp's supply recovering..ah ! and I take the liberty to remove the surrender of the africakorp if Tripoli falls, in reality, Rommel did a fantastic maneuver after having abandon Tripoli, he escaped in saving his units by the tunisie after a last attack on american troops..

and actually yes, I played almost 10 times this wonderfull scenario..and I only found THE solution after these many attempts..If someone decides to play this scenario a first time, he will get blitzed by the red army I think, like me in the past..So I think the difficulty of the scenario is well balanced..Because I propose to increase the allied supply in the begining, and to not touch their replacement but make it step by step..And I just want a symbolic very little german prod increasement because they deserves it if they control the whole europe in 42..

[Currahee]

Makes good sense, and sounds exciting! Let me know if I can do anything to help.

[Amnesia]

We need to make join the designer into this discussion, because I think the guy is not a noob in scenario design, so we need his opinion..I also though about something very good :
currently, the lose of Stalingrad only rewards german by a reducing of 2% for the allied prod..(Physicaly, that sound logical, but I think we should include the moral impact of this fact, I propose to add an event which makes decrease the allied shock army at 95%.

anyway, I have a lot of tiny improvement like this one, but I am afraid to make the gap between the reality and the scenario deeper instead of make it more close..I am not so confident in the WW2 story and the scenario design, I still consider the designer of war in europe as a genius, so I will propose a personal update, but I need you then to do one time this scenario..
(By PM I will give you my wonderfull little strategy to win the war, and you will decide what to do, you need between one and two months to make run this scenario at 2/3 of the total, which is enough to get a good validation..

[Shazman]

I'm not sure how well you can tie the West Front/Italy, East Front and North African campaign all together in a nice little generic package. Each is so obviously different. The game engine will not let you have more then two forces when actually two and sometimes three forces for each theater is needed each with it's own separate states of supply, replacements, etc.

Then there would be the matter of unit transfer from one theater to the other. It makes my head hurt just thinking of the complications. If you could make on the fly changes with the event engine it could help.

I think TOAW was never meant to cover an entire multi theater world war but some have done a fair job at it and that is a credit to the devotion (or insanity ) of the people who design these scenarios.

I salute you. :bow:

[Currahee]

It is hard, but it is a bit easier than before; you can now have supply depot units, to bolster supply in one theatre; you can add supply sources in various locations, as a "back door" way of "increasing" supply in a particular area; and can use different equipment types to effect different replacment rates within various parts of the same "force"; ie, "light infantry AT-" for paras, etc. And now, with the latest game (III), can custom-design your own squads & equipment. Interestingly, when War in Europe 3 came out, we were still in TOAW I, and there wasn't even an event engine!

[Amnesia]

Then there would be the matter of unit transfer from one theater to the other. It makes my head hurt just thinking of the complications. If you could make on the fly changes with the event engine it could help.

Not sure if it is what you mean, but you have to know that war in europe has not been designed for a CPU leading Axis forces, which is insanely complex to manage..You can only invade the europe in managing the Axis against allied CPU, or play by mail with 2 humans[/quote] leading the forces..My objectif is to improves the conditions of the second option btw..

[Amnesia]

yesterday, I believed that I would become crazy !!
It took me a while to understand that there is 2 "war in europe" designed by 2 different people !!

One is great, passioning, big map, lot of events, every country in the war.. the one I want to improve, and it is called "war in europe ver3", in the COW pack, I have only this "ver3"..it has been designed by Gabriele, a spanish player I think..There is some names of city written in spanish..(I will send him an email)

And the one you were talking about, I tested it one time in the past, and stopped because french armies had totaly robbed my blitzkrieg in 1940..(maybe I am simply bad, but I hope Patton would confirm I am not that bad..;))

take a look on the maps :



Honnestly, if you had to choose, which one would you prefer to start a game ??

considering the events, the big one (ver3) has 480 events and the little one has 400 events. If we add the fact that the weapons are not the good one, and if I add that gabriele implanted the upgrades of the panzer divisions, I think I am doing a good thing in correcting a bit "war in europe ver3"..

Then I saw that I have in the pack "Europe Aflame 1939-1945", (I had forgoten this one), it seems much more serious than 39-45, the supply lines interactions between India and East Africa has been implemented, the map is bigger than 39-45, but still less great than "war in europe ver3", there is 490 events..So we can expect a similar accuracy than "war in europe ver3" with his 480 ones..

BUT : 2 major problems : the game had not been defined for 1 human axis VS CPU allied, only PBEM games..And the worst imo, the unit scale is korp scale, which is I think, rubbish for the accuracy of the battles..

EDIT : I am working on war in europe ver3, already corrected 4 bugs, and added some little personal adjustements I am properly reporting in a text file, give me 2 weeks to finish, and make 2 savestates at turn 30(west invasion ready) and turn 70 (barbarossa ready)

EDIT 2 : from my researches about the industrial production of the WWII, the nazi prod. did not massivaly increased from 39 to 41, but multiplied by 4 between 42 and 44..I know that if I set a multiplication by 4 on the Axis replacement, that will become too easy and will lose sense..Should I reset the whole list of replacements ?? This question is hard..Currently, the existing list of replacement seems to work fine, I mean, the difficulty looks logical..Because Axis starts the war with a huge reserve, and alllied with 0 in reserve..
I don't know what to do on this point..Maybe the best would be to trust the designer and do not touch anything about the replacements..

Code:

--------------------prod nazi :                    prod USSR/USA :
40 --> 42 =         12400 --> 24800 (+100%)        8000 --> 123100 (+1500%)
42 --> 43 =         24800 --> 44700 (+80%)         123100 --> 174800 (+42%)
43 --> 44 =         44700 --> 65300 (+46%)         174800 --> 183800 (+5%)

these values are the simple addition of the flights and tanks of the historical REAL productions.
now, curahee, I will let you analyse the list of replacement of war in europe ver 3[/code], and we will decide if we let as it is currently, or if we do massive changements..

[Currahee]

I would be inclined not to make massive changes to the replacement rates at this time; replacement rates are easy enough to change later, for various periods, as you continue to playtest. But if the current rates are working realistically, I would leave them for now.

There are other ways to tweak replacments & losses that may be better than simply changing the rates, such as "force loss intolerance" and "attrition divider". But both of those have to be set for the whole game, and can't be changed by the event engine "on the fly". So those should be set first, and then as playtesting proceeds, you can adjust replacement rates, if needed.

Axis force loss intolerance should probably be higher than Allied, simply because of their smaller population base, and the unreliability of some of the Axis minor allies.

Then, if each side is building up huge equipment reserves as the game progresses, the attrition divider could be fixed to provide higher losses for each side; and only then, if one side still has unrealistic, massive reserves of replacments, should you change the replacement rate, and that could be done for a particular time period only.

[Amnesia]

I have absolutly no idea why these damn U-boat never come..Is it due to the "?" near the cordinate values ?
I also check in the replacement list is there was not a conflict between the start o fthe prod and the date of coming of the unit, and everything seems to be fine..That is the only one thing I can not fix..

EDIT : pb 2 :

I don't find where I can change these values :



Currently, Axis starts with 45% supply rate and allied 1% only, I would like boost them at 5 or 10% for starting..I wonder, maybe these global supply rates depends of other setting in the forces edition ?