Cheap Russian & Minor Axis Infantry

[HimAgain]

I don't like playing with hard build limits because it limits the "what if" factor.

Currently all infantry units have the same costs regardless of which country is buying.

Clearly some countries valued the lives of their soldiers more than others and so were given a bit more training.

(You could also argue that some gave them plenty of training but still didn't value thier lives)

What gernally tends to happen now is the minor axis allies are used for garrison/anti-partisan duty.

To add some colour to the battles, and rather than relegate all the minor axis allies to garrison/anti-partisan duties, i would like to see their build costs come down. They are already almost useless in any serious battle, and lets face it, unless you play with hard unit build limits, why would you ever build a Romanian, Finnish (with all respect to our Romanian & Finnish friends) or any other minor ally when you can get more bang for your buck by just getting the equiv. German Unit. In actuality I'm sure the Germans were eager to enlist the help of any of their allies and then drop them into the front lines on the Eastern Front. Even if they were just cannon fodder.

This would be offset by reducing Russian infantry costs.

The Big Red Machine was all about strength in numbers and they had a total disregard for soldier’s lives.

Training came cheap and so did their infantry.

I propose the following:

Reduce all Axis Minor Ally (all axis except German) Infantry Costs by 15-20%.

Reduce Russian Infantry Costs by 15-20%

Restrict Partisan Activity to random disruption, but no actual physical units appear on map.

Interesting, right now the deployment/use of Axis minors reminds me of the current situation in Afghanistan.

The Canucks, Brits and the US (even if only with their itchy trigger fingers on their bomb pickles) are doing the heavy lifting.

Meanwhile, the rest of NATO is on guard duty in some quiet sector. (Hmm... Simulation imitates reality????)

I'm sure that Hitler would not have accepted axis troops with such strings attached, but i digress.

I know the editor lets you do this, but it would be nice to see it as a standard modification to the game.

Cheers,

Angus.

[Joshua22]

/Off topic.

"...Interesting, right now the deployment/use of Axis minors reminds me of the current situation in Afghanistan.

The Canucks, Brits and the US (even if only with their itchy trigger fingers on their bomb pickles) are doing the heavy lifting...."

That's not quite correct, there are more countries, and the Dutch are fighting heavily in a southern province alongside our US allies.

And I can tell you it pisses me of *a lot* that our NATO "allies" won't send more troops to support our cause there. Left wing politicians, bah.

/end off topic ramble

[SeaMonkey]

You know HA you're right, it does add some flavor to the game. I've built the Rumanian leader on occasion for supply help in USSR. Trained the minors on the Yugo partisans until they provide resiliency against the Western Allies.

But usually this is only in a few games where my opponent is overmatched, doesn't usually happen in real competition.

You know in the basic FW game you can upgrade the minors albeit at a greater cost, but think of it if you could achieve high PT and IT levels for Germany, it evens out.

[pzgndr]

I know the editor lets you do this, but it would be nice to see it as a standard modification to the game.

Who's "standard"? What you may want, somebody else may not. Hubert has defined a pretty good standard with the default campaigns. There have been some adjustments over the years since SC first appeared. Still, the default campaigns have retained a nice balance for both fun and playability.

Have you tried my A3R mod by chance? The standard unit is the corps, but there are nationality differences and costs are scaled accordingly. German 3-3 infantry versus Russian 2-3 infantry, etc. Cheap replacement corps of 1-3 infantry are also available. Much of what you are asking for is already available...

[HimAgain]

Thanks for the Heads Up PzGndr. 3rd Reich's always been a favorite of mine too. Will have to check it out.

[Fred19]

Originally posted by Joshua22:

/Off topic.

"...Interesting, right now the deployment/use of Axis minors reminds me of the current situation in Afghanistan.

The Canucks, Brits and the US (even if only with their itchy trigger fingers on their bomb pickles) are doing the heavy lifting...."

That's not quite correct, there are more countries, and the Dutch are fighting heavily in a southern province alongside our US allies.

And I can tell you it pisses me of *a lot* that our NATO "allies" won't send more troops to support our cause there. Left wing politicians, bah.

/end off topic ramble

Well, to say it in a polite way:

Whatever obscure "cause" that may be, it's not worth the bones of one single German soldier (to use a slightly modified quotation of Otto von Bismarck).

And be assured: Your "war" is already lost, no matter how many lives there are going to be sacrificed. The British Empire couldn't do it, the Soviet Union failed utterly.

It's a shame that the leaders of the so-called "free world" cannot think of other options than bombs and rockets.

[Marty Ward]

I agree that the initial cost makes them not worth building. Perhaps their initial cost should be the same as the controlling major but the upgrade cost increased even more than it is now to keep them from being easily made a powerful as a majors units?

[HimAgain]

Hi Marty,

I think the problem is that the minor axis allies costs are the same as the parent.

Why not just buy the real thing for the same cost?

Improvements are not more expnsive either when buying German. why would anyone recruit non-German units?

Anyway, have to try PzGndr's A3R mod.

Apperantly he's addresed this already.

Cheers,

Angus

[Liam]

Many Axis Minor Troops were lugging around WW1 equipment... Relatively for those nations it was expensive for their backward Industry/Raw Material/Economies to carry large armies. Plus why would Hungarians Serve Germany or their Army, many Minors would NEVER? So you have to look at it in realistic terms. I do say however that "Zero" tech is a bit harsh for them, they should have base upgrades.

[pzgndr]

Angus, I didn't exactly address your issues for their own sake. For my A3R mod, I adapted the old Third Reich game to SC2-WaW as best I could. Anyone who played and enjoyed the board game has some bias toward how an ETO grand strategy game should play out.

Hubert's decisions for the SC series are based on a different perspective, and he's been successful with his balance between fun and playability. Those coming into SC with a 3R or WiF background, or perhaps Totaler Krieg or other games, are generally looking for more realism and historical accuracy. Seeing Germans getting L5 jets in 1942 and such may be "fun" for many, but its downright annoying for others.

Third Reich was never a perfected game system to begin with, hence all of its evolutions through Advanced Third Reich and now A World At War with multiple editions. But the basic 3R OOBs, map, and economics retain their charm and that's what I used. All I can say is check it out at cmmods.com, review my pdf designer notes, play it some, and come to your own conclusions.

[HimAgain]

I thinks i should re-state my beef.

It was somewhat muddled.

The game shines because you have such flexibility thru the editor. No Problems there.

Your right PzGndr, my views are prbably skewed because of some of the games we've all played in the past. (A3R, Clash of Steel, etc.)

Liam, I have no illusion about the eagerness of the minor axis allies to volunteer, but lets face it, they were strong armed by Hitler and had little choice and less motivation.

When comparing a German unit to any of the Axis minors it's no contest. The German unit is always the better unit. Why shouldn't the cost reflect this? When looking for something to plug the lines on the Eastern Front, you should be able to get the less efficient Minor Axis units in there at a reduced cost. Without even factoring in the additional costs for upgrades, the identical base costs are identical. This means you would never purchase a minor axis unit.

My argument only extends to basic Infantry units. Political considerations aside, basic infantry should be available cheap to the Russians too. I mean, "Grab a rifle and go" was all it took in these cases.

There, I feel much better now, even if it's not much clearer.

Cheers,

Angus

[jon_j_rambo]

You should got a better fighting value when fighting on your home turf too.

[arado234]

HimAgain I guess the games is the way it is to prevent the Germans(and the Russians)from building to many units to early(play balance).By allowing Germany easy access to cheap garrison troops which would free up more German units then would normaly be available would upset play balance.If this were done do you think by just allowing Russia to build troops cheaper would be enough of an offset or would you think you would have to give the western Allies something?

Pzgndr I dont fing Germany having level 5 jets(or for that matter any level of tech.) in 1942 annoying when you have to consider the HE280 flew march 30,1941.It had a mock dog fight with a fw190 and clearly out performed it.Whats truley amazing is the fact that the R.L.M.didnt show alot of interest.Germany could have easily had operational(we are lucky they didnt)jets by 1942 if they had gone allout it jet research.

[arado234]

Pzgndr love the Third Reich mod but I found the A.I.to be quite slow.Any ideas?Im a Third Reich fan from the 1970s.My other fav. board game was Squad Leader.

[pzgndr]

Yes the AI is slow in A3R, primarily because of the larger map and additional units. This is pushing the limits of the game. I can only imagine how WiF is going to play out when Matrix releases that one!

Thing is, players should see this for themselves whenever they start asking for bigger maps and more units. I like the A3R scale and I generally like how the game plays out, slow or not. It's not that terribly slow, at least on my dual-core. In retrospect, a pure army level game at higher scale would definitely play out much faster than the corps level game, but you'd lose so much of the operational flavor that makes it worth playing.

Germany could have easily had operational(we are lucky they didnt)jets by 1942 if they had gone allout it jet research.

I question how easy this would have been in practice. Certainly there were some prototype models flying and more of these could have been produced and made operational. But converting production lines, developing training and doctrine for pilots and mechanics, and generally upgrading all the Luftflottes to jets would have taken years. In game terms, it's simply too easy to get rapid advances and then "poof" upgrade your whole fleet to the latest wonder weapon. And in play balance terms, it just doesn't feel right.

But it's fun, I'll grant that. I still vividly recall one game of SC where Axis AI attacked USSR in 1941 with L5 tanks! I was scrambling, lemme tell ya.

[Marty Ward]

Originally posted by HimAgain:

Hi Marty,

I think the problem is that the minor axis allies costs are the same as the parent.

Why not just buy the real thing for the same cost?

Improvements are not more expnsive either when buying German. why would anyone recruit non-German units?

Anyway, have to try PzGndr's A3R mod.

Apperantly he's addresed this already.

Cheers,

Angus

I think a good way of making minors attractive to buy would be to make the initial cost 1/2 the German cost and any upgrade to be 2 - 2 1/2 times the German cost. That way you could get some cheap troops but they would be little more than cannon fodder in the front line after a while if you didn't upgrade them. They would be ok for partisan duty, garrison duty and many of the other tasks they historically did. I would also limit this change to infantry only. Armor, aircraft etc could probably be left the way they are.

I'm not real good at installing mods. Are any of them ever incorporated as part of a patch upgrade?

[arado234]

Pzgndr I like the Third Reich feel of the game but I do truely miss the exploitation phase.

What you say about German jets makes some sense in the fact I also wonder how many would have been flying by 1942 but they did have a working prototype in early 1941 and this was with very little research.Im saying if they had started research before the war(and made it their number one priority) im sure they would have had a fair number of them by 1942.Remember they built about 1500 of them and this was with the Allies pounding them from all angles.They would have had no such problems early on.

[Liam]

PG and others:

Yes, Jets 5 in 1942 is quite ahistorical. However in 100 games I have never achieved Jets5 in 1942. It may be possible against a weak player but on average Jets2 is a difficult achievement in my "Challenging" games...

It's better to have 2 more fighters than to invest a bunch of chits in Jets and pray you get a hit! The two more Fighters and the Experience they can and the Secondary Fronts they can serve will give you more bang for you buck than overteched Fighters. Not to say I wouldn't mind a lucky hit, I've just never been that lucky.

Also, I have never achieved Jets5 in any GAME of SC2 Vanilla in nearly 2 years even after 1945. Jets 4 only 2 or 3 times and usually very very late game! A competitive player with destroy anyone misplacing Chits in an area not that important!

Also as for Axis Minor Troops. There is no incentive to recruit them and they were poorer quality. Though There is not individual Nation MPPs and Research, etc... Game is not that detailed. The Cost to build 10,000 Men armed with outdated Rifles and Horses isn't the same as updated SMGs, Mortars, LMGS, advanced training, more modern WW2 vehicles, on and on and on and on... The Germans wouldn't buy their Minors these, because they had shortages. Though we make our own World in SC so why not give the Germans the option since they're buying the Minor Units at full cost anyway. Though reduce the Attack/Defense strength of these units and DO AWAY with their amphibious capabilities!!! There by simulating what they were fodder and fillers. It is pretty accurate they are antipartisan units they are garrison units and that would have worked well for the Germans... Had the Germans not overextended into the Caucasus and used THOSE troops to defend the line at Stalingrad instead of Axis Minors perhaps 6th Army would've had a fighting chance to win there. SO I have to say there is no reason to make these troops up to par

They weren't and they would've never been. Unless you're talking about the elite and dedicated Fascists within those nation which were not large enough to bother with in Strategic Terms

[arado234]

Liam ive had jets in SC2.I like em cause they sound cool,plus it is a little demoralizing to hear the woosh noise.They are pretty deadly if youve got level 5 jets at 5 star power 15 lead by Manstein.

I guess the only minor Allies it wouldnt apply to(lower quality) is Finland.Their sissi troops were as well trained as anyother elite troops and their regulars werent bad either.The rest were mostly what you said.Your also right about their amphib.capabilities.