Does the 'Great Purge' event for the USSR sleep events 2651-2656?

[Mr_B0narpte]

I'm referring to the 250 manpower events the USSR gets, would these be disabled if a player doesn't go through with the purges?
Also, are the 200-250 divisions limits only for the AI in order for the events to trigger?

 

[Pang Bingxun]

I'm referring to the 250 manpower events the USSR gets, would these be disabled if a player doesn't go through with the purges?

Yes. The 6 event are there to counter the purges and will therefore only trigger after the purges.

Also, are the 200-250 divisions limits only for the AI in order for the events to trigger?

Yes. Mainly it is for balance issues AI vs. AI.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Thanks for your concise answers. So does 1.5k manpower have the same value as avoiding the purges? To me, that seems to balance it the other way where the 'benefits' of the purges far outweigh the disadvantages. I'd rather have 150 divisions (or 120-130 brigaded), then have slightly more org, GDE, and more commanders.

 

[Pang Bingxun]

So does 1.5k manpower have the same value as avoiding the purges?

Probably not exactly. But the purges help germany a lot. If they help to force 120 divisions into surrender it is roughly offset.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

So you are saying the surrender of 120 divisions is much more likely if the purges did go through, I guess due to the lower org and morale? But don't the org and morale recover after a certain period of time anyway? (I have looked at the events, but got somewhat confused, hence why I'm asking).

 

[Pang Bingxun]

The purges lower org and moral, 6 events 2651-2656 counter that. Those events will fire after USSR suffers severe losses. In AI vs. AI many divisions are lost before the 6 events trigger. Regaining the bigger values for Max org etc. will help slowly, but by then germany will have easily won battles because relatively few divisions are left. In AI vs. AI chances are that the purges do more harm than those 1500 addional manpower can repair. This addional manpower allows soviet AI to slowly regain lost territory.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Severe losses? Maybe I got this wrong but from what I gather reading the events (if USSR was human):
*Event 2651: Ground defence and organisation is increased alongside 250 manpower being given if, either: it's 1940, USSR is at war with Germany, or 2% of national Soviet territory has been lost.
*2652: Ground defence and organisation rise alongside another 250 manpower: it's 1941 AND the Soviets control all the Baltic capitals, with 4% of it's national territory being lost.
*2653: Same bonuses: it's 10th November 1942 and 5% of national territory has been lost (or earlier in the year if 20% of national territory has been lost).
*2654: Same bonuses (except a rise in morale instead of org): it's 10th November 1943 and 6% of national territory has been lost (or earlier if 25% has been lost).
*2655: Rise in org, GDE and 250 manpower: it's 10th November 1944 and 7% of national territory has been lost (or earlier if 30% has been lost).
*2656: Rise in org, GDE and 250 manpower: it's 10th November 1945 and 8% of national territory has been lost (or earlier if 35% has been lost).

I disagree with the 10th November 194X trigger as I do not see a 5-8% loss in national territory is a 'severe loss' for the USSR, especially considering the relocation of industry events. And, these events pretty much make it pointless to avoid the purges in the first place as the org and GDE will most likely be regained through these events, plus the player would avoid having an extra 40% dissent to deal with. Maybe for single player AI v AI this works but, IMO, this is highly unfair for a human v human scenario (or for a AI Germany v human USSR).

 

[Pang Bingxun]

There is no change in GDE. I also believe you mixed up AND and OR. In case of human USSR the conditions are likely to be this:

The events 2651-2656 trigger only after purging, only in the proper sequence and have multiple conditions, some only relevant for AI and most are only relevant as a fall back value. Therefore i will only mention the condition relevant under regular circumstances.
2651: Triggers when ger at war. Gives 10 org and 250 manpower.
2652: Triggers when three baltics capitals are captured and viipuri is taken. Gives 10 moral and 250 manpower.
2653: Triggers when 5% national are lost after november has begun. Gives 5 org and 250 manpower.
2654: Triggers when 6% national are lost after november has begun. Gives 10 moral and 250 manpower.
2655: Triggers when 7% national are lost after november has begun. Gives 5 org and 250 manpower.
2656: Triggers when 8% national are lost after november has begun. Gives 10 moral and 250 manpower.

So in essence the once lost 20 org and 30 moral are regained, before winter hits in the soviet unions faces a harder barbarossa and 1500 manpower are gained as a compensation for those obstacles. This equals the money of 15 ic put on consumer goods.

And, these events pretty much make it pointless to avoid the purges in the first place

I disagree, especially if going for a democratic or fascist USSR. Since 1.08 Stalin must be in cabinet to trigger the purges.

Maybe for single player AI v AI this works but, IMO, this is highly unfair for a human v human scenario (or for a AI Germany v human USSR).

Unfair in which favour? Before those events trigger a human player is severely limited in the ability to win battles before the winter hits in.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

There is no change in GDE. I also believe you mixed up AND and OR.

Ah yes, I did get that wrong, rather then mixing anything up I failed to notice the '#' on every line regarding the GDE.

In case of human USSR the conditions are likely to be this:

Ahh ok, thankyou for the clarification.

I disagree, especially if going for a democratic or fascist USSR. Since 1.08 Stalin must be in cabinet to trigger the purges.

But what if the player keeps Stalin in power and avoids the purges. What I should ask is: is it worth keeping the 20 org and 30 morale from the start and receiving 50% dissent, or getting 10% dissent, losing commanders that will eventually be replaced and 1,490 extra manpower (due to the -10 manpower from accepting the purges) manpower while also eventually getting back the lost org and morale?

Unfair in which favour? Before those events trigger a human player is severely limited in the ability to win battles before the winter hits in.

Unfair in favour of the USSR. I highly doubt a human USSR (even against a human Germany) would loose anywhere near 120 divisions, thus making the decision over whether or not to go through with the purges a moot issue (with accepting them being the clearly best option). Maybe I'm wrong, a question to everyone reading: would you rather keep an extra 20 org and 30 morale from 1938-45 at the expense of 50% dissent, or receive an extra 1,490 manpower while also getting back the lost org and morale from over the 1940-45 period, when playing historically?

 

[Pang Bingxun]

But what if the player keeps Stalin in power and avoids the purges. What I should ask is: is it worth keeping the 20 org and 30 morale from the start and receiving 50% dissent, or getting 10% dissent, losing commanders that will eventually be replaced and 1,490 extra manpower (due to the -10 manpower from accepting the purges) manpower while also eventually getting back the lost org and morale?

You forgot the two steps dove lobby. They might be the biggest asset in favour of purging. I would not purge. The 40% additional dissent are paid off relativly cheap, thanks to fully authorian and fully closed society the costs are moderate. The 20 org however are 50% of that part of 45% that is above 5%. So with purging and without changing doctrine USSR will have only 20 Org in attack. This increases in 1939 to 30 Org in attack. Still this awful little, Germany can use 75 org in attack.

Unfair in favour of the USSR. I highly doubt a human USSR (even against a human Germany) would loose anywhere near 120 divisions, thus making the decision over whether or not to go through with the purges a moot issue (with accepting them being the clearly best option). Maybe I'm wrong, a question to everyone reading: would you rather keep an extra 20 org and 30 morale from 1938-45 at the expense of 50% dissent, or receive an extra 1,490 manpower while also getting back the lost org and morale from over the 1940-45 period, when playing historically?

Most likely the last event triggers in late 1941. I would guess that a human USSR would have to use a lot of VoV. Those losses would probably be less than than 1490 manpower, wouldn't they?

 

[MagooNZ]

In my first, and current single player human SOV AAR, Stalin is in power and I declined the purge. While the extra 1490 manpower from accepting the purge would be very welcome, and only a 10% dissent hit (not 50%), I don't like losing so many military leaders and tech teams in the purge. The loss of leaders has two groups: identified leaders that are always purged, plus a number of randomly selected leaders. What I notice in AoD1.08 is that very early on during a countries first battles, I lose one leader in combat (which is usually a good one, since I have put them on the front line), then there is a reasonable wait until I lose my second & third leaders in combat. I suspect it is possible to lose both Konev & Zhukov in the purges, I dont think I have ever had a purge accept where I didnt loose one of them. Surely these leaders are not eventually replaced after accepting the purge? Once gone, they are gone for good? Even if there were some extra leaders available later, they would not have the same skill level?

I need to go through the list to identify the leaders & tech teams that are guaranteed to disappear during the purge. A human GER could advance a long way into Russia & complete many encirclements during the summer of 41 before 1 Nov 41. Harder to do if the purge is declined: SOV organisation & morale remains high, & all leaders are available. Although a war start in summer 41 means that a lot of the morale & organisation has already been recovered, and with the extra manpower, an organisation regain minister could be used instead of the manpower minister.

Mr_B0narpte, are you saying that it is always better to accept the purge? (Pang Bingxun would likely be happy with the game balance if most players reach this conclusion, since that is the historical option) Perhaps I should do a repeat of my AAR but accepting the purge.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

You forgot the two steps dove lobby. They might be the biggest asset in favour of purging. I would not purge. The 40% additional dissent are paid off relativly cheap, thanks to fully authorian and fully closed society the costs are moderate. The 20 org however are 50% of that part of 45% that is above 5%. So with purging and without changing doctrine USSR will have only 20 Org in attack. This increases in 1939 to 30 Org in attack. Still this awful little, Germany can use 75 org in attack.

Indeed, the two steps towards dove lobby further reduce the logic/argument in favour of not purging. The 40% additional dissent may be paid of relatively cheaply in terms of day-to-day expenses, but what about the actual time taken to remove that dissent? What is the overall cost to Soviet industry? - even with the calculation for this, one must consider the IC lost due to the RR in all the provinces containing IC, as the Red Army will most likely not be in all those provinces; or if they are, what about the increasing supply demands due to the poor infra of most of the USSR (aswell as the attrition incurred during the winter)? IMO the improved org is somewhat irrelevant as the USSR cannot attack Germany pre-1941 with or without the purges, it can only really go on the offensive 1942/43 anyway (at least online, assuming the German player doesn't make any serious mistakes).

Most likely the last event triggers in late 1941. I would guess that a human USSR would have to use a lot of VoV. Those losses would probably be less than than 1490 manpower, wouldn't they?

The last event? As in event 2656? Yes those losses would most likely be less than 1,490 manpower, thus making the decision on whether or not to purge an obvious one: to purge.

In my first, and current single player human SOV AAR, Stalin is in power and I declined the purge. While the extra 1490 manpower from accepting the purge would be very welcome, and only a 10% dissent hit (not 50%), I don't like losing so many military leaders and tech teams in the purge. The loss of leaders has two groups: identified leaders that are always purged, plus a number of randomly selected leaders. What I notice in AoD1.08 is that very early on during a countries first battles, I lose one leader in combat (which is usually a good one, since I have put them on the front line), then there is a reasonable wait until I lose my second & third leaders in combat. I suspect it is possible to lose both Konev & Zhukov in the purges, I dont think I have ever had a purge accept where I didnt loose one of them. Surely these leaders are not eventually replaced after accepting the purge? Once gone, they are gone for good? Even if there were some extra leaders available later, they would not have the same skill level?

IMO leadership qualities count little when compared to the size of your army. The USSR does not need experienced/talented generals, it needs overwhelming force (i.e. a massive army) in order to win. Maybe technological disadvantage could drastically affect this, but so long as the Soviet player focuses on the essential research (infantry & industry) then it should have little impact.

I need to go through the list to identify the leaders & tech teams that are guaranteed to disappear during the purge. A human GER could advance a long way into Russia & complete many encirclements during the summer of 41 before 1 Nov 41. Harder to do if the purge is declined: SOV organisation & morale remains high, & all leaders are available. Although a war start in summer 41 means that a lot of the morale & organisation has already been recovered, and with the extra manpower, an organisation regain minister could be used instead of the manpower minister.

If playing the 1936 scenario, with experienced players playing as both the USSR and Germany, I highly doubt the Germany player would be able to encircle 120 Soviet divisions in 1941 alone. IMO a manpower minister should always be chosen regardless of the situation (both for Germany and USSR), the Soviet Union's infra is still relatively high (40-60), and both sides can rest and re-org units and send them back to the front with relative ease.

Mr_B0narpte, are you saying that it is always better to accept the purge? (Pang Bingxun would likely be happy with the game balance if most players reach this conclusion, since that is the historical option) Perhaps I should do a repeat of my AAR but accepting the purge.

Yes I am saying that, even if the game was ahistorical, with the USSR going to war earlier. This is because if war broke out earlier with the USSR having rejected the purges, then the entire Red Army would be hit with a -25 dissent hit whenever in combat and many of its IC provinces would have RR, thus weakening its IC base. While the Purge itself is the "historical option", is it "historical" to say that the mass mobilisation of the Soviet war industry, both in terms of manpower and the revival of its industry from 1942, would not have happened without the 1937-38 mass purges of the Red Army?

 

[MagooNZ]

I'm still looking into this, but with an early March 1938 decline the purge choice, the human SOV player can clear all the 50% dissent by May 1939. Other people may be able to do this more quickly than me; perhaps with more industry, and lesser base need on that first consumer goods reqd? slider unsure: dont have the game open right now ), the national dissent can be cleared at a faster rate. Took me a while to get what RR means, ahah revolt risk.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

I'm still looking into this, but with an early March 1938 decline the purge choice, the human SOV player can clear all the 50% dissent by May 1939.

Good to know; but IMO it still doesn't really tackle the imbalance between deciding whether or not to go through with the purges.

Other people may be able to do this more quickly than me; perhaps with more industry, and lesser base need on that first consumer goods reqd? slider unsure: dont have the game open right now ), the national dissent can be cleared at a faster rate. Took me a while to get what RR means, ahah revolt risk.

Oh, sorry yeah RR means revolt risk. If there are any other terms you don't understand, feel free to ask.

 

[MagooNZ]

I thought I understood the March 1938 purge, but I dont. Can anyone confirm that the 147 leaders that are randomly purged are selected from the total list of Soviet leaders, after the 60 named leaders are purged ?

By total list, I mean all the leaders that the SOV has in the game, including leaders that dont appear until as late as 1946. I had thought that only leaders that existed in March 1938 would be at risk of being purged. But this doesnt appear to be the case.

Also, I no longer think that leaders that are assigned at the time of the purge have a higher probability of being purged. Now I think that assigned / not assigned makes no difference to the probability of being randomly purged. The probability of losing any one leader in the purge is about 22%

 

[MagooNZ]

Some details for the Purge

Six ministers are lost in the purge.
Stalinist Head of Military Intelligence Berzin offered +5% research, but there are four other leaders with this skill.
Three other ministers aren’t particularly important.
Two Chief of Air Force leaders are lost. Smushkevich benefits TAC & CAS construction & combat but there are other ministers of this type. Alksnis provides FGT & INT construction & combat benefits and a replacement doesn’t become available until 1942. So air superiority for the SOV player becomes much more difficult.

Two or three of the minister changes are undesirable, and need to be changed out (only 1% dissent hit for each one).

Two tech teams are lost in the purge. Tukhachevsky, skill level 5, specialises in combined arms, training and large unit tactics. Vasilevsky, skill level 7, becomes available for land doctrine research in 1940 so Tukhachevsky’s loss is not important.
Alksnis, skill level 6, specialises in piloting, aircraft testing and fighter tactics, so is very important for researching FGT & INT air superiority doctrines. SOV only has one other team with aircraft testing and fighter tactics, so the SOV player may fall behind in research of these doctrines.

A total of 207 leaders are lost in the purge. 60 leaders are predetermined, the remaining 147 are randomly selected. AoD’s Stalin not only purges existing leaders, he purges some future leaders too. So it is impossible to know exactly how many leaders will remain available immediately after the purge. Of the 60 fixed leaders, 53 are skill level 1, only 1 leader has skill level 3, the remaining are skill level 2. They have a range of traits. There is a 22% chance of losing any one leader to the random selection. Here is a graph of the expected total number of leaders (army, navy, air) that the SOV player will have available if the purge is accepted or declined. It doesn’t include leaders lost in events or combat. The "End Year" data field in the leaders file does nothing in the game, unlike the "Start Year" data field. This meant that the original graph I loaded was wrong, so here is the replacement. "End Year" must have been one of those game features that someone thought was a good idea but it was never implemented.

However, as Tomnoddy has shown, there is a third choice which is to remove Stalin as Head of Govt, then the purge event will not fire.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Very interesting, thanks MagooNZ. To me, this just confirms the irrelevance of chosing not to purge. Having 388 leaders in enough in 1941 IMO.

The loss in air research is not significant IMO, with a large army any 'interdiction' missions become pointless and the USSR should have a large enough army by 1941, thus reducing the damage done of bombing Soviet IC (as production is not that important). This is coupled with the industry move events, thus making it even harder to bomb the USSR's IC.

 

[MagooNZ]

You're welcome Mr_B0narpte. It took me quite a while to produce a brief summary of the key points for the purge (lots of leaders to count, and End Year threw me a curve ball). Would be interesting to run "accept the purge" and then record the number of leaders available to see how it compares to my graph. My recent thought about moving industry is if the industry moves away from a resource rich province to a resource poor province then this is a long term loss, and should the SOV player do this? There are a lot of things to consider in this game.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Do resources effect the IC of a province? I thought it was just infra (and revolt risk).

 

[Pang Bingxun]

No. IC does effect resources. Resources = base value x techmodifier x (0.7 + 0.3 x Infra) x (1 + 0.01 x factories) x (1 - Revolt risk)