Frunze

Just a bit of devil's advocate here, really, since I don't really disagree with Jason but none of the advocates of maneuverism here are up to Fionn's level of argument.... Possibly the two Gulf Wars could be cited as examples of victories without fighting? Yes, both were against a weaker opponent, but the military success and casualty ratios were incredibly lopsided even taking that into account. In the first, there were relatively few major battles - in the sense of two forces shooting at each other. The Iraqi military was effectively disrupted, and incapable of combat, before most of the major contacts between the opposing ground forces happened (e.g. road to Basra). Iraqi forces caught in the encirclement didn't try to fight their way out in most cases - there were rearguard actions to prevent Rep. Guard units from being caught in the encirclement, but not much fighting from those actually caught. This is often credited to air-bombing of the logistical and C3I systems - something Jason seems to think is not the best use of airpower - which left Iraqi forces out of supply and command. On the other hand, all this was in order to destroy combat forces, as Jason recommends. In the second, Iraqi combat forces and "maneuver elements" were certainly targeted - more than in other U.S. wars actually, there was little emphasis on hitting infrastructure. But basically this was in order to clear the road to Baghdad and Tikrit, and it was correctly assumed that the Iraqi army would stop fighting when these cities were taken. Many Rep. Guard and other units were destroyed, but many more Iraqi military units melted away without fighting at all. Current events might be cited against this, but really I think that's another war, or seeds that may be growing into one. On the other hand, maybe both these successes are due to the failure of an attempt to win without fighting...by Hussein. In both cases, esp the first, he failed to organize to fight, hoping to bluff his way to a negotiated solution. Even in the second, the decision to fight outside rather than in Baghdad and other disastrous decisions relate to this. Then there's the bombing of Yugoslavia, which forced a withdrawal from Kosova without hitting Yugoslav military forces much at all. Infrastructure and industry, mostly. Maybe Jason would consider that a non-war, though?

That would be an "unforced error" as you put it, then. Russia had to relocate (less) industry during WWI*, and had always needed to trade space for time until its forces could be mobilized from throughout its vast spaces, so the need for such a plan was easily foreseeable. (Mostly from the Baltic and Poland. Workforces were relocated along with the factories.)

Dunno, it would be rolled and cut differently but a blast furnace is a blast furnace.

An excellent thread. Especially bringing into focus the human cost of turning back Barbarossa. Churchill commented that no other regime could have survived it...but then again it was, in large part, the Kremlin's early mistakes that made the sacrifice and suffering necessary. Yes, exactly. If they were not Nazis, the war would have been politically impossible (or at least unsustainable, others had tried to attack the USSR earlier.) As they were Nazis, there's no point in expecting them to act like they weren't. Emrys makes some good points on this as well. A "kinder, gentler" invasion is a bit oxymoronic and not always so practical even when someone actually intends to do it. Yes. Kinder, kuche, kirche. But as you pointed out, a different government.... Women probably kept Soviet agriculture from collapsing more than it did, as well. And a significant number served in noncombat military and AA jobs. The smaller number in combat was significant as a signal: if women can do that, you better not object to a woman driving that truck. The Civil War experience may have been useful here. The railroads nearly did collapse then - mostly from a shortage of functioning locomotives. I think you're leaving out the Caucasus here. Georgian, Armenian, "mountaineers" etc. And Azeris/Azerbaijanis unless they're under "other Turkic", which would seem low in that case... And of course when you say "non-Russian" you're leaving out European non-Russian, but that wasn't in the question. I'm not arguing with your overall conclusion on this, though.

I'm cool with that...I have about 5 turns left in Koltov. I've been sending 'em back within a day of when I get 'em. Mickey's being kinda slow but reasonably steady - about 1 a week - actually that'll have to pick up a bit if we're going to make the deadline.

Just finished High Road vs JPS. That just leaves Koltov vs Mickey Diaz. About 2/3 of the way through, but going slowly now. Send me a turn, Mickey!

I've won a lot of games based on showing my armor last. It gives an advantage in the armor vs armor fight, which can be decisive in the game as a whole. One problem with giving a glimpse early: once a unit is spotted in CM, it will be respotted a lot easier. Even if it's in a totally different part of the map. That's just one of the rules of the game. This is a good point. If your opponent does change his plan, it likely will become a better plan, based on more information. The only way it would work is if the information is misleading....if the tank is misIDed, or if you show him one heavy tank, and have a bunch of light tanks out there to make him think you have more of the same....but this seems a little fancy to work reliably and outweigh the disadvantages. [ August 31, 2003, 02:04 AM: Message edited by: Frunze ]

Damn, I killed the thread.

Y'know, I was prepared to accept Seanachai's conclusions until this sentence. Okay, fine, the "Wehrmacht fan" phenomenon smells vaguely fishy, all that stuff about the superiority of German ubermensch soldiers. The complaining about CDV "Waffengrenadiers" can most charitably be explained away as anal-retentive groggishness. And I've given my opinion on Dorosh's Grossdeutchsland essay long, long ago in a thread far, far away. But neo-Nazis? Nah. Well, maybe a couple. But the great majority of forum participants are just too comfortable to become fascists. Or so I thought. But then I find out that all this is the results of "Investigations by members of the Peng Challenge Thread"! It's axiomatic that the results of any investigation conducted by Pengers must be exactly, 180 degrees wrong. If there were no neo-Nazis, the Pengers would have been sure to find some. As they did not, the forum must be severely infested!

Just finished Petroskov. That's the only scenario I've seen where the defender has the exit zone - does anyone else know of any? About 8 turns left in High Road - which is the longest one. About 12 turns left in Koltov.

So now we know who was responsible for those. Seriously, these are good scenarios. I especially liked "The Beast" - small in space and time, intense fighting.

KVs in '41 are more unkillable than any German tank in '43. With the Tigers and Panthers, you can maneuver for a close flank shot. The KV has about the same armor all around, and I've bounced shells off 'em at 13m. Infantry close assault will kill 'em. Or 88s. Immobilization and gun damage does happen to KVs, you just need a lot of hits to get it. Small-cal FlaK guns will do it. Or the autocannon most small-caliber German AFVs have. But if you want an even match, just don't play with KVs.

bump

Anybody noticed any difference in combat within a building? Logically, oughta be easier to thrown grenades downstairs, so the upstairs unit oughta have an advantage. I once took an improbably long time, and improbable amount of ammo, to kill a MG that was upstairs using three units that were downstairs. But maybe that was just luck.

Well, my section (number two) is moving along pretty quickly now. Thanks to all my opponents.

Eh, y'all just need to play more games with T-70s or whatever it is...the light tank with the one-man turret. You'll be grateful for the two-man turrets then.

So send me a turn already, Mikey!

'cause there ain't no Tigers in that battle.

There can also be bugs from switching versions midgame. At least there was a unit identification bug in switching from 1.01 to 1.02. Not a big deal ordinarily, but might be an issue in tournament play.

I got a turn from Bryce.

I did get an e-mail from you, so maybe this got fixed? If not, have you considered setting up another account, maybe on Yahoo, or wasn't somebody offering free mail accounts to tourney players that would let them send and receive large attachments? In other news, I finally got an e-mail from Bryce Baker, but it was blank.

Interesting to see that Jon L vs yours truly was right on the median for King of Debrecen. At the time, we both thought that the Nabla scoring would favor me. Really, all these scenarios turned out to be pretty balanced, as Nabla says, and Debrecen was slightly Allied-tilted, not Axis-tilted as all those King Tigers made us think. If I edged out Jon L for overall victory in our section, like it appears, I owe it to whoever beat him in The Beast. (Jeb, I think.)

I just managed to download it off this site. I didn't think it was going to work - nothing happened for a long time - but eventually it worked. Here's the thread with the FTP addresses for download. (In the first post.)

I seem to remember that the finals for ROW II were scored before all the games were finished - and even before the deadline, maybe? Treeburst announced that enough scores were in hand to figure up averages, and then he did it. Am I remembering right? Could whatever method was used then also be used to figure up the results now? Yeah, here we go. He said: I have 14 game results for "Emilville Exit", 15 results for "Lab Rats In Norway", and 12 results for "North Of Epron". These are enough to score the prize eligible sections, but it would be nice to get a few more, especially for "North Of Epron". Having said that, the ROW II Finals will be scored on Sunday, December 15th, no matter what. Enjoy your games. There's no need to rush. Just make sure you have reported all your losses to date. Thanks!! link And then he said: I'm good to go now for scoring this tournament. I'll do it on Sunday the 15th. I may get a few more results in by then. The more the better, even though I already have enough. link And then on the next page he posted results. 'Course now it occurs to me that maybe nobody knows what method Treeburst used to make up for the missing results....

SgtAbell: In any CM scenario, the scenario designer decides where the reinforcements will appear by creating setup zones for them. The designer can put the setup zones anywhere he/she chooses. Does that answer your question? Seems like there are a lot of games not finished, at least in my sections...but I wonder if that's just because the game results haven't been reported to Kingfish in some of them, or not correctly reported? There's a number of people playing in their first tournament, and even people who started in the middle. So, maybe it'd be useful to repaste the rules on reporting game results, from the beginning of the thread? The deadline for reporting results would be May 15, too, right? Here it is: The LOSER reports game results. If you end up being on the weak side of a few unbalanced scenarios you will find yourself having to report most of your games. This is, as they say, tough luck. Game Report email needs to have the subject, "Game Report". The body of the email must contain the following information: Tourney Number (1-3), Scenario Title, Your username on this forum, the side you played, your score, your opponent's username and his score. The body of the email should then look like this if you are Fred: Tourney 1, The Ambush, Fred (Axis) 37, Joe 43 Reporting games in this manner will save me a great deal of time. With 72 people I NEED to have games reported this way. Do not send me final game files. Keep these in a safe place in case of disputes.