France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

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SoB
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Re: France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

Post by SoB »

way2co0l wrote: Jul 27 2018
mrgenie wrote: Jul 27 2018
SoB wrote: Jul 23 2018 I mean Germany is supposed to beat them. France needs the UK to win.
Ehm, no..IF like in Supreme Ruler, Poland, France, UK fight together not by a long shot Germany could have came that far in WWII
I believe he was talking about WW1, not WW2.

Yeah this is about WW1. Germany would of been able to push through the western front if it was only the French.
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way2co0l
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Re: France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

Post by way2co0l »

SoB wrote: Jul 27 2018
way2co0l wrote: Jul 27 2018
mrgenie wrote: Jul 27 2018

Ehm, no..IF like in Supreme Ruler, Poland, France, UK fight together not by a long shot Germany could have came that far in WWII
I believe he was talking about WW1, not WW2.

Yeah this is about WW1. Germany would of been able to push through the western front if it was only the French.
I would agree with this. The professional British army saved the French big time. England also had a larger population at the time and was able to field an army larger than you'd imagine coming from England notoriously known for their smaller armies. It's fairly easy to imagine scenarios where England doesn't get involved considering their close relationship with Germany, and their historically terrible relations with France. If Britain did not send its army into France to assist, I'd say there was zero chance that the French hold out successfully on their own.
mrgenie
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Re: France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

Post by mrgenie »

I agree with your logic way2cool.

However in the game all this isn't implemented as a lot is based on "coincidence" and "human behavior" of the leaders of Europe.

My point was in a game you can't really factor in human error on 1 side and the other side using it to their advantage.

In a game engine you just have numbers left and right.

and Russia+France+UK in WWI by plain numbers wouldn't loose from Germany.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... iances.jpg good overview who is against who.

Someone took the time to write down general stats:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3415778

Germany heavily outnumbers and outpowered if you don't consider the human factor which you shouldn't cuz you can't model it in the sandbox game.
sandbox is just stats vs stats really...

and in stats vs stats Germany should loose.

And yes, I agree Germany had on the artillery the nose out front.
But as you know, enemies respond accordingly and did so in WWI as well.

To break lines the British came with their first tanks on the battlefield. The tactical effectiveness of them might be considered null I think but the psychological
effect and morale surely was one of the reasons Germans got sick from the war.

Also even if your equipment is better, 10 or 20%, you can't compensate the fact the allies brought simply put
3 times more people under arms..

The reason Germany capitulated was really because the first US troops arrived at the scene and Germany simply couldn't maintain it anymore.

But you should know to this fact, that the Russian army in the east literally dwarfed the US troops. USA had an max army size not even a 3rd of what Russia
fielded in the east.

So not just a 3 times larger army but also 2 fronts ..


I stick to my opinion, hadn't the russians accepted the peace treaty, Germany would have fallen anyway as the country was on their knees.

You should know, the revolutions in Russia already started in february 1917. Factory workers refusing to work, to produce. This limits the war efforts of course dramatically.
But these are all human factors you cant program in a sandbox..

a sandbox is really just strenght one side vs strength other side..

And that Germany so easily can beat the rest, tells me something is wrong with the balance of power.

And even IF Germany would win, let's not argue about that.

But in the game engine they win within months from France..

The trenches and bunkers don't help France at all in my sandbox games.

this points out something is wrong in the balancing of power.
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YoMomma
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Re: France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

Post by YoMomma »

Balthagor wrote: Jul 26 2018 I'm often amused when people without software development experience toss around the word "easy".
They are just settings, if you know how to do it, it should be easy.

I know for a fact changing priority for researching rubber production is a 5 sec job, it's just for some reason i cant open the tech file with the modding tool i use after i make changes, so i spare the tech changes up.
So the minister priority for rubber production or rather lack of priority seems to be a ''design decision''.
Gameplay 1st
way2co0l
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Re: France, Russia, etc bad warfare?

Post by way2co0l »

@mrgenie I've been meaning to reply to this but I wanted to take my time to reply thoroughly rather than just to try to get it out quickly and fail to capture what I'm trying to say.

I'll firstly say that I agree with you on the gameplay being different from real life and you have to treat it differently. For example, for the mod I'm making, there are things a human player might do differently, but in the absence of human involvement to change what happened, then I'm going to try to model it as closely as I can while trying to leave some wriggle room. My ideal scenario is one in which the Germans make some early gains only to have their advance halted by the British arriving to take the pressure off of the French and their combined forces preventing any major gains after that, preferably with both sides reinforcing quickly enough to turn it into a meat grinder with very little movement. A fairly historical representation. In the East, I'm going to want to delay the action from the central powers allowing Russia time to mobilize its forces and make minor gains before the Central powers arrive in force to push them back. The early portion of the game will have the most uncertainty, but as the game goes on, the sheer weight of allied numbers and combined production ability will wear the Central Powers down and ultimately win the day. So in this sense I agree with you. If Germany does not manage to secure an early win, then it will almost definitely lose. Russia alone had a larger population than all of the Central powers combined. The number of men they could call up meant that any war of attrition would almost definitely come out in their favor, and if they had continued fighting the war in which Germany failed to secure victory in the West, then yes, I agree that an allied victory would have been all but certain. I also agree that the balance of power in the default scenario is off, which is part of the reason I'm working on my mod in the first place. :)

The points that I disagree with you on is the inevitability of an allied victory by sheer numbers. As I'd mentioned in the previous paragraph, Russia alone outmanned the entirety of the central powers. The honest truth though is that meant little. They did not have enough rifles to arm all of them, and the rifles and artillery they had were vastly inferior to what Germany had. And even when they could put guns in the hands of their soldiers, it was an entirely different matter to give them bullets to shoot with them. Many of those early months had Russians waiting for their compatriot to die so they could take their rifle and even then only to fight with the bayonet. The Russians could not adequately arm, clothe, feed, or even transport their men to where they needed to be. The main reason for early Russian success was due to the German concentration on their western front, the surprising speed with which they managed to mobilize a fighting force, and the complete incompetence and lack of patriotic loyalty of the Austrian forces and leadership. But once the German advance in the west stalled and they decided to call forces to the east to stop the Russian advance into East Prussia, German successes were almost immediate. The Russians continued to find success against the Austrians, right up until the Germans assumed command of their forces and began reinforcing them with German units and equipment.

The superior size of the Russian army meant very little, and the Germans actually had numerical superiority on the Western front for most of the war. Even more importantly, they had both superior quality and quantity of German artillery, and a better understanding of how to use it in concentration that made any simple look at manpower irrelevant. The Germans won, time and time again. They had victory in the palms of their hands. There was absolutely NOTHING the western forces could do about it. If the Germans had seized upon their victory, they would have had it. They delayed each time for various reasons and defeated themselves. The numerical advantages of the allies only came into play because Germany failed to secure the early victory they could have. Once it turned into a war of attrition, things began to go against Germany, but I contend that right up to that point, victory was an absolute, 100% certainty for Germany if they had simply pushed forward to take it. The Allies could not stop it, could not change it, could not do anything. Only German delays could. And they did. I contend that they lost a war that they should have won.

But I mean, that's war and hindsight is a wonderful thing. lol. The point I'm trying to stress is that the German advantages were no trivial thing. It was not just a simple 10% or 20% difference that I'm talking about. German advantages in the first 6 months of the war were, for lack of a better word, astounding. It was not an even playing field. Not even close to fair. And without the millions of men that England contributed to the front at such necessary times, then France would have lost, 100% guaranteed, German delays or no. The French army was at several points in those early months broken and defeated. It was only the time they got to reform and the British arriving to secure the northern portions of the front, along with British supplies and the moral boost that came with it that allowed them to continue to fight. And while you mention the allies bringing 3 times the number of men, this wasn't the case for the first year and a half. The Germans had numerical superiority for the early part of the fighting, in addition to all of their other advantages, and even as the war progressed and German forces were sent east, they still maintained relative parity with the Allies in the west. After those first 18 months or so, that's when the allies numerical advantages began to show and mean something. They meant nothing prior to then however.

As for the US troops. Again, they meant very little. They showed up in too few in number, too late in the war, only to fight in the decisive final battles where again, despite all of the numerical strength of the allies, Britain and France were certain that they were about to lose the war if the American forces didn't get off their butts and actually do something. lol. The main contributions the American forces made prior to that were in the moral boosts of the other allied forces, moral hit to their enemies, the supplies the Americans provided to their allies, and the sense of a ticking clock where the Germans were now fighting against a deadline. The actual influence of American force of arms was fairly minimal with the exception of those final key battles. And yes, the Russian surrender helped, but not as much as you would think. The Germans continued to advance their armies in the east to put pressure on the Soviets, occupied much of Ukraine to ensure the grain agreed to in the peace terms was protected, and eventually continued to advance their army further into Russian territory into the Caucasus out of a desire to secure the oil fields under German control. It did free up significant German forces, but not nearly as many as you might imagine, so those German victories at the end of the war were simply further examples of a superior German war machine committing everything to the hope of a final victory, and getting really damn close despite everything.

Germany may have been on her knees, but so was everyone else. Well, everyone except America, and perhaps Britain. Russia crumbled. France was very close to crumbling itself. Italy and Austria were in no better shape, and the Ottomans barely counted. England had been on her knees before, and many argue she was nearly starved out of the war as it was, but by the final stretch with convoys, anti submarine advances, and American assistance, that threat was behind them and they were in the best shape of all the main combatants. And the Germans nearly broke them on the mainland as well. You could argue that if Germany had simply focused on an actual goal and stuck to it, rather than trying to split their efforts across so many goals at once, then they very well might have pushed the English off the mainland and ensured that the French would have fallen. Instead they split their efforts, and over-committed their reserves too early, which ensured that even though they had achieved large victories, they were unable to exploit them for any significant strategic gains. This demonstrates to me that even this late into the game, with the massive manpower and resource advantages the west had over Germany, Germany's military advantages were still THAT extreme that it was only their own mistakes which cost them. The allies didn't beat them, they beat themselves. Tanks (and air superiority) were the only real advantages the allies managed to have superiority on, but both new technologies were still in their infancy and their actual physical effectiveness was minimal. They had a definitely psychological impact to be sure, and some measure of effectiveness late in the war, but even that effectiveness was rather muted in the grand scheme of things. People talk it up more for what it meant for the evolution of warfare than for its actual effect in the war itself.

Germany simply was the most effective fighting force in the world at the time, and no other single power came close. Under the right conditions, they should be able to win fairly easily. But you're right, the fact that it happens so consistently is a problem which requires things to be rebalanced to allow for real world outcomes to be possible. Whether or not they were inevitable is debatable, as I've been doing here, but the fact that it's currently weighted so it almost never actually happens is a problem. I definitely agree with you there. lol.
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