brucer

Steve: Funny, you and I read this thread differently. I saw someone (not me) expressing their opinion and being jumped with the "generalization is bad, m'kay?" line over and over. When I stepped in to mention a legitimate set of scholars who might have disagreed, their work, which informed the post-Nam recreation of the American army, among other things, was called an "insanity." Since then, I think we've identified between us all kinds of cases where wargamers and historians can, even should, use generalizations for a given army: related to literacy, or mechanical aptitude, or to reflect doctrinal differences, or strategic situational ones. They even include some cultural effects, such as Japanese bushido. The only valid argument made here against using such modifiers, assuming they can be quantified, and are in the right historic time frame, is that CM's at the wrong scale for that. Which is fine with me, personally. It's certainly a much better argument than we'd been hearing 150 posts ago. I'm still hoping you can enlighten me on the national differences you said CM does use, related to command and control. I wasn't aware previously there was such an animal. Re Dupuy: oh, there's all kinds of problems with Dupuy. And I personally don't believe he'd be in favour of general, across-the-board modifiers at this scale, either, if he were asked. (BTW, I'm not familiar with that reference to supply effects you made... could I get that citation?) I say that because Dupuy's own Italian and Lorraine figures are a compilation of his own often widely varying "Dupuy numbers" for the individual divisions in-theatre. For instance there was a British division (whose number eludes me) in Italy whose performance he tracked over a long period and concluded was simply appalling: an opinion, incidentally, shared by the commanders in theatre at the time. Now that's pretty good evidence for me... good enough that were I to see a CM scenario involving that one division where its troops were all Veteran, say, or at 20 per cent fanaticism... well, if the designer tried to justify it for reasons of play balance, or because "every division had its good days and bad days," I'd question the value of spending further time on it, without the troop quality being altered somewhat. And I don't think I'd be alone, there. BruceR

"We have several national differences in the game, such as command and control time differences..." Sorry, could I get the specifics on that? I'm not fully versed on what you refer to. "...not some sort of possible, though likely mythical, inherently superior/inferior set of human traits." So does that mean you and Charles reject that annoying 1.2:1 Dupuy German-Allied troop quality ratio? (Which, by the way, he attributed to organizational and doctrinal innovations by the German army that encouraged greater leadership, intercommunication, and the taking of initiative at all levels of command, not any national traits.) Or are you just leaving it up to the players to implement themselves when and how they choose? BruceR

BTS writes: "In other words, it is utterly silly to make the Germans have a "1.5 firepower modifier" versus the Soviets in 1941..." Bit of a straw man, isn't it? I don't know of any tactical level game that does that, or any post on here that has called for it here. "As for simulating Doctrine, this is probably the WORST argument for national hard coding..." and "No, the best way to simulate national differences is to simulate the core elements of ... national doctrine of the day directly." Leaving aside the possible incongruity of those two statements, I would be curious to hear more about how you see the major accepted subunit-level national doctrinal differences (such as British "battle drill," or the German emphasis on initiative at all levels) being simulated in the current game. I had thought no such national variations in training or tactics were currently reflected in CM. BruceR PS to Major Tom: "I stated this point [the impropriety of hardcoding nonquantifiable national differences] around 5 times now, and you seem not to notice it..." Assuming "you" means "me," I have not once in over a dozen posts said ANYTHING about wanting to hardcode nonquantifiable, generalized characteristics in CM, so I'm not sure what you want me to say. That you're right? Okay, you're right. (But if you weren't talking to me, please disregard.)

The ASL rationalization, from the rulebook, may be germane at this point: "Nationality Distinctions vary troop capabilities from one nation to another, and while patently unfair in their application of stereotyped and oversimplified traits to all troops of a country without exception, nonetheless do serve to give the game much of its flavour." To be clear, an ASL scenario designer could easily manipulate troop quality and ELR and leadership quantities to make a 1940 French set of squads equal to or better than a German set, just as you can in CM, but the system's "hardcoding" did imply that the *average* real-life German squad would display a higher level of combat ability than the *average* French squad. (Note that is not contradictory with the belief that "some French fought well," or "some Germans fought poorly.") The result, and the explanation given above, shows both the advantages and drawbacks of simplification through hardcoding, an approach BTS chose, perhaps wisely, not to pursue for CM. I have not yet heard of anything in the way of a Dupuy-like statistical study of the 1940 campaign. BruceR

Writes CavScout: "Are these numbers by Dupuy that you are brandishing indicative of a unit's national make-up or are they, as someone has pointed out to me, actually representative of a units firepower?" Personally, I think they're open to interpretation, like all statistics. But this thread all started when people started slamming ASL for including subtle differences in the average performance of its different armies and types of units in battle. I was just suggesting that maybe instead of attacking a game, which is an easy target because it's just that, a game, we look at the historical scholarship the game's assumptions was based on. If we want to roll into a rollicking debate on the Dupuy theory, and what all that data really means, right on! I was just suggesting we can't discard a whole body of work out-of-hand just because it goes against our common sense notions of "Any Given Sunday." The theory has apparent probitive value, is logical and fleshed out, and is widely respected, as Snapdragon said. That it was apparently not used as a foundation for CM (as much as it was for ASL, anyway) is not in any sense a failing of that game, but it is significant in our understanding of that game's dynamics. I can't speak for anyone else on this thread. But I have merely asked from the beginning if doctrine and other artefacts of a given military subculture should not have an influence on the troop qualities we *generally* select for those troops. Remember, at the beginning of this thread the opposing argument was "it's bad to make Poles crack and Brits regular, or give better leaders to Germans as a rule, because people vary too widely to be categorized that way." I suggested that no, we should feel free as scenario makers to make generalizations about the quality of a particular unit or army sometimes, if there was good evidence for it. I did not call for CM to limit our freedom to pick our own troop quality, as removing that freedom would definitely not be an improvement. That said, if BTS were ever to hardcode some subtle national differences in the game to reflect some quantifiable tendency in that population (for instance reflecting Americans' demonstrably higher literacy or automotive aptitude by increasing their troops' chance very slightly of un-immobilizing a vehicle, or being able to use a captured weapon), I can't say I would mind... so long as there was some rationale for it. I certainly wouldn't see it as offensive or an "insanity," as PeterNZer said about 100 posts ago. BruceR

Major Tom: Snapdragon has it almost exactly right. Dupuy's work always concerns the average result, abstracted from a very large data set. He said, with enough data you can quantify the average influence of differences in terrain, or equipment, or training, or tactical picture, or leadership, or artillery/air support, abstract them out of the equation, and still be left, on the average, with the fact that *all other things being equal* with a quantifiable fact like Germans and Americans in exactly the same position, advanced (say) 1.1 times faster than Americans in the tactical offensive. Logically, that quantifiable variable must equal the combined influences of all the non-quantifiable influences on that result. Given a sufficient and reliable data set, it's a first-year statistics problem. Dupuy and his colleagues were bang-on when they argued pure accidents of geography (i.e., whether one was born in America or Germany) could logically have no causal relation to the differentials they were finding. They said it was likely due to differences in doctrine and military culture. *All other things being equal*, they proved you could show statistically that some armies' small unit tactics and military culture just worked better, and Dupuy's adherents believed if you adopted elements of the same system (as the Americans have done with some German tactics) you would fight better, too, *on average,* by a quantifiable amount. Where Snapdragon and I depart is his saying all this has no relevance to CM, for I believe it should have some influence on scenario design. For if we can establish, once all the other variables are abstracted out, that one unit's "Dupuy value" would have been 1.2 and another's was 0.8, for instance, I believe it's incumbent on a scenario designer to consider that in his evaluation of which troop quality value, Green, Regular, or Veteran, to *generally* assign to those troops *under most circumstances.* BruceR

Posts Germanboy: "I'm sure you can see where the dog starts chasing its tail." Dupuy has often been accused of circularity, and fairly so... but so has just about every other researcher with an interest in quantifying human ability. Think of it this way: you rig CM so the computer plays itself over and over. You randomize the map, the force mix, and all the other variables. It plays itself over and over and over and you extract the kilometres advanced, or the casualties lost on each side, or whatever other result is meaningful. After a few hundred runnings, you've probably got enough of a data set to start concluding that, say, in scenarios in heavily wooded areas the attacker advanced 10 per cent more slowly than in scenarios of average tree cover. Or in scenarios with an above average number of leaders, they advanced 10 per cent faster. Or if the defender was crack, the casualty:loss ratio was 10 per cent higher, and so on. It's very easy and mathematical, all you need is enough base data for the results to be statistically significant. And the conclusions (ie, it's harder to attack through trees) will be pretty much inarguable, even if when you took just one of those battles, tree cover would be just one of a thousand factors with impact on the result. That's basically what Dupuy did, but taking hundreds of real life engagements (not having CM to work with). And as each factor was identified, it was taken out of the equation across the board. Now if you do that in CM, evaluating and taking out every single variable a game designer has access to, you can be fairly sure the result at the end will be the ratio of American force accomplishment to German force accomplishment, say, will be 1:1, since the troops are modelled exactly the same once all the designer-imposed variables are removed. But when Dupuy did that in real life, he found that there was a residual differential. Grossly simplified they'd be something like German 1.1, Allied 1.0, Russian something less than 1, etc. And he attributed that, many believe correctly, largely to differences (ie, doctrinal ones) between the military cultures of the countries involved. It's warfare as rotisserie baseball: still far from capturing the totality of combat. But it's a compelling theory, with tons of statistical data, and just because it goes against our "Any Given Sunday" common sense view of soldiering doesn't mean that it's wrong. Other statisticians have proved there's no such thing as a "hot streak" in basketball or hockey, either, but we still have trouble accepting that, too. BruceR PS: Re "insinuating" you're a relativist would imply I believe relativism is something to be ashamed of. It's not. But it is a popular view today... you only have to sit through a few seminars with young students saying the Aztec genocides were misunderstood, or the Nanking massacres were merely a side effect of the colonial legacy, and you start thinking maybe it's gotten just a bit too popular. BruceR

Writes Chupacabra: "I can't find where you said that, in fact." In my first post, on page 2, I made three implied statements: one, attacking another game for its flaws is, as always a bit of a straw man and you should really be attacking the historical underpinnings (such as Dupuy) that ASL is based on. Two, I suggested we should keep accusations of racism out of this as unproductive. And three, I asked whether something like an army's doctrine should have any effect on how we set troop quality in game, ie, if it can be established the US airborne taught independent thinking under fire, or the SS engendered fanatics, say, whether their mean troop quality should be different. I did not believe then, or now, that this absolutely requires a game change, only an openness here to discussion by knowledgeable people about the relationships of differences in doctrine and other sociocultural factors to battlefield performance. Also, "I believe you're incorrectly attributing certain beliefs to those of us who disagree with you." Make no mistake: the implied psychological view of the game, that all humans are capable of the same range of behaviours when put in small-group high-stress situations, regardless of their society or culture, IS a profoundly relativist statement, and would easily be seen as such if it concerned a different subject area. It comes from the same intellectual wellspring as suggestions that the Aztecs (SS, Mau Maus, whatever) were just misunderstood, or that "every side" in any given war committed war crimes. Sometimes, cultural relativism can be illuminating; sometimes, as in CM's case, it may even be necessary, politically. But sometimes it can also get in the way of full understanding. Like all approaches to historical problems, relativism should only be used with the awareness of its own inherent prejudices. Taking a relative view on cultural matters is certainly NOT wrong in all circumstances. But I don't believe it's always right, either. BruceR

Germanboy: My apologies for the misattribution. Canadians are notoriously poor with proper nouns. It's why we have to keep renaming our mountains... I have corrected the text accordingly. BruceR [This message has been edited by brucer (edited 10-30-2000).]

Writes CavScout: "How does one re-fight battles where grossly out-numbered American units held off German attacks?" Dupuy would likely point out that they won somehow. They could have been better equipped, or had better artillery support, or better leadership, or better terrain, or more easily obtainable objectives, or were less fatigued... all of which are modelled in CM... or they could have been just better troops, because they were Rangers, or from the Big Red One, or something, and the Germans were new volksgrenadiers. All those things could offset an overall disparity derived from national modifiers alone, and all of them Dupuy tried to factor out. In CM, a "default troop quality" or "fanaticism range" would be just one of many you would factor in to come out with an overall resolution of troop quality. And Matt: I frankly don't have a particular scenario in mind... as I said earlier, I just want to be able to suggest "Canadians should generally be green" in CM, or "The 48th Highlanders should generally be crack" or whatever, and have it debated on its merits, instead of being hung up on the "generalization is bad, m'kay?" level of debate we're endlessly circling right now. I could concede the point, if I ever thought I'd been arguing for it... BruceR

Writes Elijah Meeks: "No, the Union fielded inept cavalry commanders from start to finish when compared to the likes of Van Dorn, Forrest, JEB Stuart and Forrest's counterpart in Tennessee whose name eludes me." John Hunt Morgan, perhaps? On the other hand, Griffith notes that the Union's Phil Sheridan was the only cavalry commander on either side to be widely praised by knowledgeable European observers. Again, neither here nor there. As for "...use, competency and mastery of equipment such as tanks, guns and aircraft was not something that were taught to children," you don't think the much higher rates of motorization and industrialization in American society had any influence at all on the American army's ability to keep its vehicles well maintained and serviceable? Finally, Germanboy summarizes the argument against in this debate as: "We can never know [which German units put up a better fight] because there are too many intervening factors." As I have said, a fair point... but also generally an admission of defeat for a historian. Many essays I have written would have been much easier if I could have started and ended with that statement alone, but they never get published if you do that, for some reason... I understand your argument perfectly, gentlemen. Please try to understand mine: I started by asking if saying "American Paratroopers should generally be crack," or "Volksturm should generally be conscript" were not valid statements to make. Your answer, apparently, is that they are not. I have never suggested that troops of a given unit or nationality must only be a certain quality level, or that they always should have a certain special characteristic, or anything of the sort. And I agree, there's exceptions to every stereotype. That just follows from any discussion involving ranges of probabilities. But as Dupuy demonstrated, if we add them all up and tie them to measurable indices (rate of advance, casualty-loss ratio, etc.), and abstract out other identifiable factors, you can still demonstrate significant differentiations in the mean between units, nationalities and timeframes. (Nor is it just Dupuy... Marshall did the same thing in his own way, for instance, as did Delbruck.) It was BTS's choice whether to devote resources to affirming/developing that kind of research itself, or leaving the judgement entirely to the players. I understand why they would not care to open that particular can of worms. The assumption underscored by that choice though, is that humans from all cultures may (underscore MAY) in fact behave more or less equally under stress, with any variation dependent on their training, experience, and possibly their morale/fanaticism. On any given Sunday in CM, as you have said, an SS trooper or an Irish recruit can act green or he can be elite. I'm not arguing that that's a wrong theory... just that it is not in tune with much of what all the anthropologists, sociologists and social historians on the "Nurture" side of the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate have been telling us for decades. It is, however, remarkably in tune with modern conventional thinking by the citizens of, what did Germanboy call it... our "more educated age?" And by the way... I'm Canadian too, and quite happy in that fact. BruceR [This message has been edited by brucer (edited 10-30-2000).]

Writes Madmatt: Re "that is your fault, not the fault of the game" Let's avoid the easy ad hominems (that's twice, now) and keep this elevated, shall we? Surely you can see the problem with using suppression and fatigue to represent a unit's general level of ability, because those characteristics are so temporal. Keep your troops out of the CM fight, don't move them around, and those effects go away in a few minutes. It stands to reason then, that they should generally be used to reflect initial conditions (surprise, recent forced marching, recent bombardment) rather than lasting characteristics of the troops themselves, like discipline and training. Buchholz *is* a classic example, in fact... of soldiers who were historically taken by surprise being given appropriate modifiers to reflect that, modifiers that begin to go away once the troops pull themselves together and start fighting at the full level of their ability. But the definition of that full ability is still determined for them, as for all CM troops, by their place on that one 6-point scale. BruceR

Writes Germanboy: "...the educational, social and historical system of Japan pre-WW II made it more likely to encounter this behaviour. As there were certain traits in Germany's or the Us's social systems that made it more likely to encounter specific behaviours. The problem is how you quantify these, and I would argue that you can not, because it would create at least as many problems as it solves." That cultural influences would be difficult, perhaps exceedingly so, to model in CM is a point I do not dispute. That doesn't in-and-of-itself make it *wrong*, though. The "more trouble than it's worth" argument is a convincing clincher, but it's totally different to say that we're not doing this because the complex nature of cultural influences on small group dynamics eludes this particular game system, and saying those influences did not really exist, or did not have real world impact. We have no problem with removing "choice" from players when we are reasonably certain of our facts (armor penetration, vehicle speed, etc.) Re the 89th ID vs the HitlerJugend Div: so you're saying that, under combat conditions, soldiers from these divisions were effectively equivalent? That's hard to compute, especially by a Canadian whose view of the 12th SS will always be coloured by its members' apparent propensity for war crimes against Canadian soldiers. BruceR

Writes Mark IV: "All American squads would be +xx over all SS units (and every other European unit, except maybe those of the Balkans) as we have always led the world, by a lot, in private ownership of firearms." Actually, current research shows that the majority of American communities were almost completely disarmed, with gun ownership rates comparable to those of Europe in the first half of the 19th century... with the significant exceptions of the slave states and the very edge of the western frontier. The roots of the American "pro-gun mentality" have more to do with slave ownership than Charlton and friends like to admit. Check out Michael Bellesisles' "Arming America." Re the Little Bighorn, it's been awhile, but I seem to remember the Red Horse account refers to many refused offers of surrender, and the Wooden Leg and Kate Bighead accounts refer to soldiers shooting themselves and each other. I'd have to hit the books again on that one, though. But no, I agree, surrender to Indians in the Plains Wars was, generally, suicide: what Richard Holmes and others have questioned is whether the awareness of a no-quarter policy by one's enemy actually improves one's fighting ability in most cases, or just accelerates the process of combat breakdown. Faced with no easy out, do you fight harder, or fall apart faster? There's evidence soldiers can go either way: see Grossman's thoughts on the SS in "On Killing" for a possible psychological explanation why. Re: "the tweak for Japanese might be as simple as allowing a Fanaticism setting of 85%". Agreed... it could be very simple. But if 85 for the Japanese, why not 45 for the Finns? Or 25 for the SS? Or 5 for residents of Omaha (I don't know, I just made that up)? If we conclude one group of soldiers was culturally distinct enough to fight differently from all the rest, than there's no reason not to extend that, to a varying and lesser degree mind you, to any other group of soldiers. Finally, re: "I wonder how the experts would have rated the Japanese national characteristics in 1904, just before they drove Russia out of Korea and Manchuria?" No one who saw them in 1905 had an excuse for underestimating them later, though. A country's first appearance on the world stage is always going to be something of an unknown quantity. I don't discount the pernicious influence of racism in subsequent British and American views of the Japanese at all. However, I'd suggest that historically, it's generally riskier to assume other nations' armies think and act and fight the same as you, rather than trying to analyse their true nature. If MacNamara et al hadn't seen the Vietnamese as as vulnerable to aerial bombing as Western countries, for instance, the Vietnam War might have been considerably different. In 1812, the Americans thought all the Canadians were like them and would desert to their side... in 1944 the Americans were surprised by the kamikazes... the French were baffled by Spanish nationalism in 1808, and so on and so on. BruceR

Writes MadMatt: "...the 5 levels of Suppression and the 4 levels of Fatigue..." Funny, I would have thought those reflected a unit's suppression and fatigue, not its quality... given that they have to reflect two other whole complete sets of complex variables, it seems almost inappropriate to use them as a stand-in for troop quality variations as well. And re fanaticism percentage: so that's equivalent to another game's morale, to your mind, is it? And the quality factor equivalent to training/experience? Just trying to clarify what you're saying. Re the South: McWhiney's was in part a numerical analysis, which showed a predilection for the tactical offensive, even when not dictated by operational imperatives, that crossed all theatres of war and all levels of command, irrespective of leadership effects. I should make clear that the connection with gun ownership is correlative rather than causal, that the average Southerner, who lived in a semi-rural setting with the perpetual possibility of slave revolt (at least in their own minds), was both much more likely to be familiar with weapons -- and in some analyses, more likely to have been involved some kind of prewar militia-related or other martial activity, and possibly less averse to the settlement of disputes through duelling or other violence than his more pacific Northern counterpart. A modern comparator might be the 1948-1956 Israeli. BruceR