regimental reinforcement unfair allocation

[hobbitlord]

Yesterday I ran into a weird situation with reinforcements in an 8 part operation with my opponent. After a dawn battle which I'll call battle #1 and a day battle, battle #2 etc. we decided to skip the night battle #3. Both of us received battalion level reinforcements at the start of battles #2 and #3. Fortunately for me I incurred fewer causalities then my opponent in both battles. Now the crazy thing is at the start of battle #4 I received my regimental reinforcements and my opponent didn’t. And we both allocated the same points into battalion, regimental and divisional reinforcements, plus our army sizes in battles #1 and #2 were comparable. If anything I would have thought my opponent to receive additional reinforcements due to losing more units. Can anyone help shed some light on why this occurred?

[Joachim]

Originally posted by hobbitlord:

Yesterday I ran into a weird situation with reinforcements in an 8 part operation with my opponent. After a dawn battle which I'll call battle #1 and a day battle, battle #2 etc. we decided to skip the night battle #3. Both of us received battalion level reinforcements at the start of battles #2 and #3. Fortunately for me I incurred fewer causalities then my opponent in both battles. Now the crazy thing is at the start of battle #4 I received my regimental reinforcements and my opponent didn’t. And we both allocated the same points into battalion, regimental and divisional reinforcements, plus our army sizes in battles #1 and #2 were comparable. If anything I would have thought my opponent to receive additional reinforcements due to losing more units. Can anyone help shed some light on why this occurred?

Who was the attacker? Which op? Static (with flags), advance or assault?

If you are the attacker I'd expect you to get some reserves when your opponent has almost as many units as you do.

And just to make sure: You are sure these are the btn/reg reserves you got, not some reserves due to battles. Cause I find it a bit weird that both get btn reserves which are released when you are in trouble.

Gruß

Joachim

[Sergei]

Battalion, regimental and divisional reserves are released depending on force ratios. E.g. if the point value of Germans at the beginning of battle 2 exceeds 1.x times the point value of Soviet force, then Soviets are given some battalion reinforcements. I very much doubt the possibility of both sides receiving them at the same time, as that would indicate that both sides are superior to eachother simultaneously.

[hobbitlord]

The OP we are playing is static with flags with myself playing GE (attacker). Ok if I understand this right if SO's army on the field is 3.9k from a starting 6.0k sized army and I have a 4.25k army from a starting 6.k army I qualify to get reserves solely as being labeled the attacker in the OP? This OP attacker setting seemed harmless at first now it looks as though there is more to it behind the scenes. None of the reinforments I've received

have been repair based.

Sergei what your saying sounds reasonable but that's not what we have seen from playing this OP. Both SO and GE have received battalion reinforcements at the start of the same battle. Not once but twice. Personally I find this battalion, regimental and divisional reserves confusing. I'm going from memory here but I don't believe "plain" reserves (not battalion, regimental or divisional) can come in on a particular battle such as battle #3 with a % chance per turn. If CMBB does I think I'm going to switch to that type of reinforcement mode to avoid what has happened in this OP. My friend and I are in a rather unfortunate situation here as he has lost more land and more troops in both battles #1 and battle #2, now I see CMBB as gave him a kick in the teeth by giving only GE regimental reinforcements. These regimental reinforcements give the GE army a significant advantage in battle #4 to decimate and gain additional territory. After battle #4 when SO gets their regimental reinforcements it will be too little too late.

[TotenkopfZZ]

I design the maps and set up the OP perameters for the games the hobbitlord and I play. This one is a static OP with Germans (GE) as the attacker and Soviets (SO) as defender. Attacker Casualty Point Factor set to 100%. I make the map and pick my troops then send the file to him and he picks his units. (we have gentleman's agreement not to look at each others units) We allocated 2000 points for "on map" battle 1 and then roughly split up 8000 points between Battalion, Regimental and Division reinforcements. For example, I have 2000 points "on-map" , 2000 points for Battalion Reinforcement 1, 1500 points for Battalion Reinforcement 2, 1500 points for Regimental and 3000 points for Divisional reserves.

The manual says that these types of reinforcements appear depending on the losses suffered, so we figured instead of having a predicatable amount of points show up each battle per the standard system, we would use this type of reinforcement system to provide some uncertainty and unpredictability to the process. That way if one side gets a real bad beating, they will get reinforcements while the player who suffered little will get less or perhaps no reinforcements

However, as Hobbitlord pointed out, I (SO) got the beating but only got my second Battalion level reinforcements. As GE, Hobbitlord got both his Battalion and Regimental reinforcements. Since he suffered fewer losses we would expect the situation to be the other way around if anything.

One possible reason is that after battle #2 we both got a reinforcement from the battalion level and then we both chose to skip the night (3rd) battle. It was the 4th battle in which his other set of Regimental reinforcemnts arrived and mine did not....even though not a shot was fired in the 3rd (night) battle.

We are still playing the battle, for the interest of seeing how things go.

[Joachim]

A small theory:

End of battle 1 sees GE player about even with SO. As the attacker is supposed to have 1.5 (or sumfink) ratio, he gets his btn reinf. Now the game checks for the defender ratio. Ooops. With the freshly arrived reinforcements, the Germans are too strong. Reinforcement for the Soviets. Both btn reinf due at start of battle 2.

End of Battle 2 sees the force ratio just below the regt reinf treshold.

During the night (end of battle 3), several men return from hospital, maybe even a SO vehicle gets repaired. The bigger the beating was, the more men return - the Soviets get a few more. The ratio shifts just enough to unleash the regt reinf of the Germans...

I'd suggest you use regular reinforcements

2000 - 1000 - 1000 - 1000 and btn/reg/div reinforcements of about 1000 each.

And I strongly suggest you conserve your forces!

Gruß

Joachim

[Sergei]

That would make sense. Maybe it would work better if you set the reinforcements as only, say, 25 % of the on-map force.

I didn't know that reserves would be dispensed one at a time, I thought if you set two Bn reserves, they'd be thrown in at the same time. Interesting.

You can set ordinary reinforcements to arrive with a % chance, though. You could for instance give both sides 30 (smaller) reinforcements set to arrive for battle 2 with 10 % chance. It will then be very unpredictable that what will come when. Maybe leave some slots open for reserves in the case one gets all his reinforcements for battle 2 and the other gets none, as even that possibility exists!

[WWB]

Reason you got the regimental was that you were the attacker. Reserves appear based on ratios between the attacker and the defender. There is no such thing as an even, ME type op. IF you need the specific numbers, do a search for a post by charles in scenario talk in the 2001 or 2002 archive.

WWB

[flamingknives]

Yes! I found it!

I am invincible!

The computer looks at the relative strengths of the two sides after each battle. If one side is doing poorly, the reserves may be released. The threshold at which a reserve unit is released depends on its type. Battalion reserves aren't that hard to trigger, i.e. you don't have to be doing too badly to receive these. But divisional reserves are given only when things are going quite badly.

Attacker gets reserve if relative strength to defender is below...

1.8:1 Battalion

1.4:1 Regimental

1.0:1 Division

Defender gets reserve if relative strength to attacker is below...

1:2 Battalion

1:3 Regimental

1:4 Division

[DavidFields]

So, if I understand those ratios correctly, the only time that neither side would recieve reserves is if the ratio of attacker to defender was almost exactly 1.9.

Now, one more question--which I realize may not be able to be answered easily? Are the ratios for possible reserves calculated simultaneously, or are they calculated for one side and then the reserve forces awarded are taken into account for the ratio calculation for the other side?

I would have thought that the former (simultaneously). But I have recently had an instance where, as attacker in an op where I was crushing the defender, I recieved regimental reserves. The only way I could figure out why I received those reserves was that the defender just received reserves.

[flamingknives]

I've never been able to work it out (and I have tried)

Although now I've finally found those numbers, I may well give it another go.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Rankorian:

Now, one more question--which I realize may not be able to be answered easily? Are the ratios for possible reserves calculated simultaneously, or are they calculated for one side and then the reserve forces awarded are taken into account for the ratio calculation for the other side?

I would have thought that the former (simultaneously). But I have recently had an instance where, as attacker in an op where I was crushing the defender, I recieved regimental reserves. The only way I could figure out why I received those reserves was that the defender just received reserves.

If force ratios are the only reason for reinfocements and they are calculated simultaneously, it is not possible that both sides get reinforcements in the same turn as stated in the first post.

Gruß

Joachim