AAARRRRGGGHH! 59 on 3!!!!!!

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Originally posted by Daz
Hey case - you sure know your history - great stuff.

I do recall reading about a battle in Stalingrad where the odds were pretty huge. Apparently there was a building occupied by an unknown number of soviet soldiers that was holding off the German advance. It was surrounded and from memory it tooks the germans days and a hundred or so dead/wounded to finally wipe out the defenders. When they did silence the guns and get in they found only about 3 or 4 Russians.....

Probably one of the tractor factories or grain silos. The central core of Stalingrad had a lot of reinforced concrete buildings that were superb defensive positions and the Germans definately paid trying to root the Soviets out.

Still, the overall force ratio in Stalingrad was nowhere near 40:1 . Probably nearer 4:1 or 5:1 in favor of the Germans.

 

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Re: Spartan Pass

Originally posted by Craw55

Monte Casino is a perfect example. After being repulsed repeatedly, the allies were only successful after calling in some really accurate tac bombing. A strategy which works in HOI. Scare up a half dozen tac or dive bombers and have another go.

Two things:

1) Tac bombers cannot take a fortified division below 10 org.

2) I think you may be confusing your battles of Monte Cassino. The second battle is the one that is famous for using air power to destroy the monastary and it ended in an allied defeat. Likewise, the third battle used even *more* airpower to bounce the rubble of the monostary, again, without significant effect. The fourth battle, which actually carried the monastary did so by a combination of a feat of mountaineering by the Free French who managed to wiggle their way past the defenses, and a bloody frontal assault by the II polish corps which eventually carried the fortress.

 

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Greatest example I can think of would be from a book on the Winter War I have.
"At Kollaa, where the lines were far-flung and the defenders were few, single soldiers often dashed to break-through points. At 'Killer Hill,' 4,000 Russians attacked a Finnish platoon of 32 men."
Gotta love those odds. Which come out as 125:1. And this kind of stuff happened all the time, and they were able to hold the Russians back.

 

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Originally posted by El Tigre Pagano
Greatest example I can think of would be from a book on the Winter War I have.
"At Kollaa, where the lines were far-flung and the defenders were few, single soldiers often dashed to break-through points. At 'Killer Hill,' 4,000 Russians attacked a Finnish platoon of 32 men."
Gotta love those odds. Which come out as 125:1. And this kind of stuff happened all the time, and they were able to hold the Russians back.

Some notes:

1) The finn's *lost* the winter war. They fought very well, and made the SU look bad in world eyes, but superior Soviet numbers did, in fact, break their lines.

2) Total Finnish Forces at the time of the Winter War:

350,000 (9 divisions and a few independent brigades)

Soviet forces committed to the initial (failed) offensives up the Karellian Isthmus and around lake Lagoda:

500,000 (22 divisions)

Force Ratio: 1.43:1
Result: Soviets thrown back

Soviet Forces committed to the subsquent (successful) offensive:

1,000,000 (45 divisions, 6 tank brigades, and mixed artillary)

Force Ratio: 2.87:1

If we limit ourselves to the operational area where the soviets ultimately broke through, the Karellian Isthmus:

Finnish Forces: 150,000 (7 divisions)
Soviet Assault Force: 600,000 (25 divisions and all 6 tank brigades)

Force Ratio: 4:1
Result: Soviet Victory

 

[unmerged(11748)]

You guys are great!

Wow, this really seems to have spawned more discussion about force ratios and odds than I thought it would. It is really a credit to this community of players to know the history of these monumental battles. Keep up the good work and I enjoy reading what everyone has to say.

Sincerely,

A very impressed part-time war gamer.

 

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Dont ya just hate a knowit all

 

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Just as a note, when you play a minor country and have no decent leaders you are at a severe dissadvantage in any combat where you have a large number of units. One piece of advice that _should_ help - do not put all your units uner one leader. That will guarantee that all of your units will fight at huge penalties, and most likely will never have over 1% efficiency. The best way to handle a combat like that when you do not have any kind of leaders (and I am pretty sure Persia is lacking in that department) is to keep each unit with it's own default commander and not group them together under one commander. In battle it will represent them under a single commander, but it works much differently than if you actually had them all under one commander when the battle starts. It still sucks though, with no decent commanders the minors really lack for playability in the game. It would be nice if they came up with some sort of random leader scheme for people that play a minor. Some people have put out files where you can go through a complicated process to make it so any minor has a default leader file, but it requires renaming/modifying the file for any country you want to play.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by viking9
Dont ya just hate a knowit all

Only when they're on the other side.

 

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I think Rorke's Drift would fall into the category of victoriously defending against overwhelming odds, 150 Britishers against 4000 Zulus, but only a few of the Zulus had rifles. 26-1 odds.

 

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Numbers Are not Everything

The strength and fighting ability of a military unit are dependant on a number of factors including organization, skill, experience , weapons available, supply, terrain etc... etc... Numbers only matter when 2 forces are otherwise roughly equal in these other dimensions.

Think of it in the following terms: 2 soccer teams , 1 fielding 11 experienced players with 3 substitures, all having trained for years to play together and having won several championships, another one inexperienced, with say 1 million substitutes (but still having the limitation of no more than 11 players on the field at any one time)....

Which do you think will win most of the time ?

 

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Re: Numbers Are not Everything

Originally posted by Tomar

Think of it in the following terms: 2 soccer teams , 1 fielding 11 experienced players with 3 substitures, all having trained for years to play together and having won several championships, another one inexperienced, with say 1 million substitutes (but still having the limitation of no more than 11 players on the field at any one time)....

Which do you think will win most of the time ?

Instead of a 90 minute game, how about we just keep playing until one side or the other can no longer continue to play?

How long do you think a set of top notch pro's can last out there? A day, two days? By the third day, they'll be borderline insane from sleep deprivation if nothing else.

On the other hand, if each of our ameteurs played 10 minutes each, they'd still have 990,000 some substitutes left at the end of the third day.

Alternately, how about we just let all million of the ameteurs on the field at once against the 11 pros?

 

[Derek Pullem]

I think people are missing the point here. Of course if you can mobilise all those 59 divisions at once against three they will slaughter them. But most likely IRL, the 3 divisions will be dug in in defensive positions with superior leadership and weaponry. You probably can't mobilise more than 6-9 divisions against them unless you can turn their flanks.

So, if instead of attacking from one province with one crappy leader at a time you attacked from three provinces with three crappy leaders and then repeated ad nauseum with air support etc, you probably would shift them.

What people forget is that althoug the game is strategic, the combat system does include some pretty severe tactical modifiers which you ignore at your peril.

Bu think about it - lets say one batallion, 500 men deploy across a front of 1000 yards. If you are going to deploy 59:3 you'll need to deploy 10,000 men over the same frontage or 10/yard.

Anyone care to try an assault in infantry columns a la Napoleon against dug in machine guns and assault rifles


As for examples of overwhelming odds - add Rorkes Drift and quite a few colonial wars.

 

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yeah, ure very right there.
but i would like to see more random modifiers in the battles. and also some cool random events to happen during a battle. for xample:

in a fortress attack: a handful of our troops under command of general X has attacked thru an unguarded backdoor of an enemys fortified positions.
this could have the effects that for the remaining of the battle the level of fortifications could be downgraded by 1.

Division sorrounded and annihilated!, this could have a large chance of happening if the enemy has attacked you and you army has very low organization compared to the other. also this could happen to attacker if attacking with low org(division left behind in unorganized retreat) stuck and detroyed.

there could be alot more of these cool happenings this would make combat pretty hard to predict, wich is the real case in a war. the commanders, didnt matter how good they were couldnt calculate every battle down to a single casualty. this is represented by critical hits, but i dont think thats enough.

 

[Dinsdale]

For those citing heroic victories by vastly outnumbered troops, remember one thing; they are remembered because of their rarity. For every Rouke's Drift there are 100s of Isandhlwanas.

Also missed in the discussion, The Alamo, Monte Cassino, Thermopolye, Finland -- very heroic yes but what were the final scores in those matches?

It should be possible for the occasional heroic stand, but not all the time. The game mechanics of quality v quantity are a little overstated despite the historic precedent, but that's a design decision which I would bet won't change.

Funny, but I never remember anyone debating the Red Army as having the best trained and equipped troops during the last war, doesn't that mean Germany must have won?

 

[Derek Pullem]

Originally posted by Dinsdale
For those citing heroic victories by vastly outnumbered troops, remember one thing; they are remembered because of their rarity. For every Rouke's Drift there are 100s of Isandhlwanas.

Also missed in the discussion, The Alamo, Monte Cassino, Thermopolye, Finland -- very heroic yes but what were the final scores in those matches?

It should be possible for the occasional heroic stand, but not all the time. The game mechanics of quality v quantity are a little overstated despite the historic precedent, but that's a design decision which I would bet won't change.

Funny, but I never remember anyone debating the Red Army as having the best trained and equipped troops during the last war, doesn't that mean Germany must have won?

Well it's not a question of numbers not counting - just that past a certain point more troops are futile as they cannot be used effectively. How are these 59 divisions (600,000 men) going to be organised by a third world nation, thousands of miles from home in an offensive campaign.

Now I will concede that the game has flaws especially when attacking on to a beach / mountain / fort all of which get too high a defense bonus IMHO. But the general principle is ok - more is good, too many is bad.

 

[Dinsdale]

Originally posted by Derek Pullem
Well it's not a question of numbers not counting - just that past a certain point more troops are futile as they cannot be used effectively. How are these 59 divisions (600,000 men) going to be organised by a third world nation, thousands of miles from home in an offensive campaign.

As logistics are not part of the game this is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you are 100 yards or 1000 miles away from home, not part of the equation.

Now I will concede that the game has flaws especially when attacking on to a beach / mountain / fort all of which get too high a defense bonus IMHO. But the general principle is ok - more is good, too many is bad.

Yes in general it works well, but there are too many exceptions which pop up like this one. When exceptions become the norm then something is wrong. The odd heroic defense is good for the game, though forts in mountains are a little overbalanced.

I don't think it's a big deal, though perhaps an overrun needs to be added, 20:1 should be impossible to defend when below a fixed number of divisions (say 5 for arguements sake.) Fewer than that would not be able to defend a province from overwhelming odds. Overrun would therefore abstract that a detachment simply surrounds the 3 divisions while control of the province changes hands. The surrounded troops later surrender;

 

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well once i had 75 elite red army division attacking from 4 directions bounce on 4 surrounded and out of supply Germans in one of the checkoslovakian fort provinces

obscene

but then again... it does gives tactical bombers a use.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Originally posted by Dinsdale
I don't think it's a big deal, though perhaps an overrun needs to be added, 20:1 should be impossible to defend when below a fixed number of divisions (say 5 for arguements sake.) Fewer than that would not be able to defend a province from overwhelming odds. Overrun would therefore abstract that a detachment simply surrounds the 3 divisions while control of the province changes hands. The surrounded troops later surrender;

For the most part I'd agree with you only I'd like a maximum attack of say 12 divisions per province otherwise the temptation to form killer stacks of 20 + light tanks divisions may be irresistible

Say Overruns occur at 4:1 normally with +1 odds modifer for river, beach, mountain, swamp and/or forest. So you'd overrun Albania at 6:1 odds on the beach. And 4+ divisions would never be overrun unless attacked from more than one direction

 

[Killerjes]

Amazing - all of you have failed to mention...

RAMBO


Odds: 100:1 if not even higher!

 

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I experienced a vaguely similar situation playing the Italians. If I recall correctly I landed 24 divisions (average organization of 43) on the island of Malta (I don't recall the province name but it is just beneath Sicily) in an attempt to dislodge the one British Division that was there.
What was interesting was the fortifications on the island allowed that one division to hold my 24 divisions at bay indefinitely without losing any organization or actual strength.
Once I realized that I had tied down half of my total army strength to take Malta (thinking it would be a pushover of course) I simply ran my 6 Bomber Wings over to Sicily and began bombing the bejesus out of it. Each run seemed to knock the organization down by 4-5 points. After a month of constant bombing (and nasty attrition of my air units) and 24 divisions pounding away, the island finally fell.
So count me as not surprised when your 59 Persian (probably Militia equivalent or really low organization/low tech level) divisions failed to take out 3 battle-hardened Wehrmacht Divisions.