USGrant

A very simple tweak that I've previously suggested that would help greatly would be to reduce the tech level 0 strike range of airfleets to 3 (or 2 or 4 depending on playtesting) instead of 6 while leaving bombers as they are. This would: Force players to spend more on Long Range research early (reducing MPPs available to purchase air fleets). BTW, does longer range increase the cost of airplanes, or just Jet Tech? I've never noticed. Encourage players to use bombers for longer range duties, with less chance of interception early on. Force players to move airfleets more often, hence taking them out of action for some turns and reducing their value. Force fighters to be closer to the front, and hence riskier, early in the war. Prevent figters in western Europe from covering the Atlantic coast of North America. I think the cumulative effect would be to cause players to think twice about going 100% airfleet, and would increase the usefulness of bombers. This would probably require a few scenario tweaks, like giving the US Long Range 3 or something when they enter. This suggestion has a similar effect to the original posting in this thread, but would be trivial to program. It, like all other tweaks, would require playtesting.

That's a rather one-sided list. It could have said use crappy doctrine for French armor, defend too far forward with the Russians, purge the Russian officer corps, let Monty sit on his ass at Caen and go through the Bocage instead, waste TWO army groups in north africa, get bogged down in Italy, start the western campaign in 1944 instead of 1943, throw away an airborne corps at Arnhem, fail to defend the Ardennes (twice)... Strangely enough, most players avoid doing those things (or make up for the ones that are coded into the starting setups). Strategic errors on both sides are a part of all wars. To claim that the Germans should have won save that they made a few is absurd. In a pure mathematical sense, considering human and natural resources, Germany was toast as soon as either the US or Russia entered the war. I believe that what most complaints about SC play balance argue is that the turning point that occurred in about 1942 doesn't happen or happens much later (in my opinion due to the plunder rules).

Count me in as another waffler who is definitely buying the Strat Guide now. I'll also order the Military Reference Library at the same time to thank you. Any chance of BFC producing a similar reference CD with WWII references, field manauals, etc.?

It seems to me that 1 and 2 could be easily one game - the weapons overlap greatly and there would be no more variety than CMBB brought to us. I would like to see CM WestFront - with 1940 to 1945, Narvik to Tobruk (including the current CMBO scope).

I, for one, would pay a moderate price for CBBO 2.0 using the CMBB engine. I'm thinking $25 or $29 for registered owners and full price for new purchases. Perhaps the "Best-of" mods and user scenarios could be included as well. Only BFC knows the economics of this. It depends on how modular their code is. If the oft-repeated "50% of the work is research" is true, and the internal data structures have not changed, and the scenarios can be imported, and the maps can be imported, and scenarios can be play-tested and... - oh well, it might be feasible. We can always wish

Ditto for the Russians. This has been discussed long ago, along with suggestions for a chance of partisans for any surrendered country. Hubert has made no movement in this direction, yet.

Europa Universalis II might fit the bill. Try http://www.europa-universalis.com/ And now to the general forum...

Cool. Will we see any other tweaks in 1.05, or shall we wait for 1.06?

I think that applying AA technology to ground units is a reasonable approach to this suggested problem. It might, however exacerbate another issue which is the difficulty that the Allies, and Soviets in particular, have in gaining any experience so that they can face the Luftwaffe. Another out-of-the-box tweak might be to reduce the range of air fleets by one or two hexes. The only reason a half-dozen air fleets can hit one unit is because they can all reach it (especially on the Western front). Reducing air units' range will have two effects: first, fewer air units can reach any particular hex on the map; and second, more down time while they are "rebased" to forward positions. Both of these effects reduce the apparent overeffectiveness of air fleets. I would suggest only reducing Air Fleets range and not Bombers. By giving a bigger range advantage to Bombers their relative value increases and they may be used more. I also think this would be more historical, and I use that word loosely. As I understand it, tactical and fighter groups typically did not fly all the way across the front or to their maximum range to engage (the exception being Bomber escorts). They were assigned sectors and mostly stayed in them until they were rebased. To go along with this, I agree with some other suggestions that air units movement allowance should be double their strike range. [ September 18, 2002, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: USGrant ]

While not solely Russian Front, I've always liked the West Point Atlas of American Wars for a broad overview of WWII in text and maps. The maps are available at: http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps/Atlas%20Page.htm

I think that SC is the only Strategic WWII wargame that requires conquest of the US for an Axis victory. In my experience this does not really add to the game, except to make you play a little while longer until you see your score. I suggest implementing the more traditional victory conditions of 3 out of the 4 Allied powers surrendering. In most games that would be France, Britain and Russia. You might add a condition that says the game is not over if the US controls a city in Europe. If the Axis went West, it could be France, Britain, and US - at which point, with no Allies, the Russians would negotiate some kind of truce though not a surrender. Conquest of Russia, Britain and US would force a French Armistice (what? it could happen! ). This could be an option on the setup screen, but I know I would always play with it on.

We have a number of proposed tweaks on the table which seem to all have the effect of tilting play balance towards the Allies. I think this is fine because it appears to be slightly tilted towards the Axis right now (when played with balanced experience levels). The suggestions that look like they might make it in include: 1. Adjusting tech so advances are slower - prevents blowout tech levels by the Germans in 1941 - a good thing, but be careful that it does not prevent Allied catch up later in the game. 2. Tweak the Russian capitols for improved supply and construction. Others that are suggested but that I have not read Hubert's opinion on include: 3. Moderate the Operate move so that Germans don't fly a half-dozen corps from Stalingrad to Normandy in a week. 4. Tweaks to British supply/deployment in the Med. All of these, it can be argued, go to realism but in so doing reduce some Axis advantages in the game. I'm in favor of all of these, but suggest that Hubert be careful that the the combined effect of implemented tweaks does not tilt the balance too far the other way.

Great! A day or two ago I had a similar thought on a larger scale. I was thinking of 4 capitals for Russia, I think Leningrad falls too easily and could/should also be a capital - that thousand-day-seige-thing doesn't happen in SC! Also, there is a tradition in East-front board games of the victory condition over Russia being capture of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. But my thoughts extended the idea further. First I thought about England where making London and Manchester co-capitals would not matter much, but adding Alexandria would sure open up Africa. As a counterbalance, Italian capitals could be both Rome and Tripoli. Lastly, for good measure, Germany could add Munich and/or Prague. Anyway, this would all a require serious play-balancing effort and so might not be feasible. But I strongly encourage your efforts on the Eastern Front. Thanks for all your good work. [ September 12, 2002, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: USGrant ]

Probably just a minor nuisance and not really worth it. I mean they have no chance of becoming regular army units anymore (unless the German player foolishly leaves cities open-and I typically leave all corps and minor allies units behind anyway). They will just make for good target practice for any excess armies and tanks that you don't need for Sea Lion. John DiFool

After conquering Russia a few times, it appears to me that there are no Russian partisans after she falls. I guess that is because they are programmed as units of the Russian army, which no longer exists. I wonder if they could be put back in, perhaps programmed as a new minor power. As it stands, it is game over if Russia falls - which is usually OK unless the German got overextended and the allies are headed towards Berlin. I think the anti-partisan garrison should have to remain in Russia to dampen the "operate everyone to the western front" effect. This would not have a huge impact on most games, I for example use corps and minors to garrison behind the lines and they are not that useful on the western front. But, it would add "realism" and flavor to the end game.

Matt, There is a typo in your link: I guess hrml is a new web language!

I noticed that the posting on this board slowed considerably since the day the CMBB demo was released. I know I have been playing that the last few days instead of SC.

I think you were replying to my comment about gamey "results", not tactics. By that I mean that Level 5 Air Fleets represent, to me, that there have been advances in things like aerodynamics, navigation, construction materials, radar, training, etc. Many of these same advances would show up in bombers. So the gamey "result" is having one kind of airplane at Level 5 and another at Level 0 - which is usually the case for me when I play the Germans. My point was that encouraging players to spread reasearch points around dampens this effect.

What he said!

As I think about it, limiting the change in research points in an area to one-per-turn (plus or minus) would have a number of beneficial effects: 1. Slow down research a little bit 2. Encourage diversification of research, thereby making gamey results like Level 5 Air Fleets and Level 0 Bombers less common. 3. Cause players to think twice about rocketing to Level 5 using 5 research points because they could have 5 points assigned to a maxed area and could only move one per turn out (thereby wasting some research capacity for a few turns). This will encourage players to decrease research points in an area once they reach level 4, unless they really want level 5. 4. Slow down the end-game conversion of research points to armies. [ September 06, 2002, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: USGrant ]

While the idea of expendable research points is a good one, I think implementation in SC is impractical. It would be a major curveball for the economic model. To retain the current, play-tested balance you would need to lower the cost of research points or increase the gross income available from the map. Either could work but could require significant rebalancing. For example, lowering the cost of research points could actually accelerate the early research - kind of opposite the intended effect! With expendable research points the players could easily spend 6000 MPPs on research in a game, versus the current limit of 2500. Those additional MPPs come right out of armies, air fleets and submarines, hence the whole economic system must be rebalanced.

In the same vein, I think all of the naval movement allowances are too low. Unfortunately, with the constricted Atlantic fixing this would cause other problems. While the naval aspects of this game are fun, they are not very realistic. In a future game I would suggest sea zones instead of hexes in the ocean. It would be a case of the addition of an abstraction increasing realism.

I like the current system, I just think it needs a little calibration to synchronize the results with historical possibilities. In other words, Germany maxing out on the "important" techs by 1942 should be extremely rare, rather than the norm. A limit of 3 or 4 research points in any one area (rather than 5) should accomplish this without any purturbations to the system. It would also cause a little more variation in that the German (and later the allies) would have to spread out his points a little more to use them all, and therefore get advances in less common areas. I also like the suggestion of one-per-turn assigned to an area.

Ditto here. Immediate lockup whenever I click on a bailed crew as Germans in Citadelle. Everything else works. WinXP, Pentium 4, Nvidia Geforce3 (not latest buggy drivers), SB Live! w/latest drivers. [ September 04, 2002, 09:48 PM: Message edited by: USGrant ]