Soviet National Focus needs some serious ballance
- Thread starter paranoidsteve
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Can you explain to me, how a lieutenant in 1916 can become a general in 1920? Will that lieutenant be a good general, without going through the ranks? List of the purged in 1937 is available - research, how many of them were "military professionals of the tsarist era". That's like taking a store manager and making him CEO of a big company.
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Red Army had ~1.9 mil men in Feb 1939. It had ~5 mil men in June 1941. 2.5 times expansion in 2 years - and you expect corps commanders to have huge amounts of experience in their jobs? Those corps didn't exist for that long! That's like blaming a man for not having experience at a job, when the job was just created.
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in hoi 3 the permanent debuff from the purge were removed as soon as the winter war with finland was started. maybe the -50% on org will be removed eaerlier by another national focus?
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Yes, lets forget the Soviet-Polish war, because Russians didn't win that one.
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IMO it would be nice if the purge started brutally but subsided over time. For example, -60% org immediately, then the org loss drops by 20% annually. Something like that. Don't think the focus system can really handle it but in principle it wouldn't be impossible to add effect decay over time, perhaps on monthly ticks.
They did "win" the Winter War and also fought in the far East against Japan. The latter with pretty good success.
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I'm still at loss as to why you try to sell getting rid of commanders with any kind of expiriense as smart policy at time when armed forces expirience dramatic expancion. Those could become teachers, mentors and advisers, teachig new people their skills.
Insead, they were thrown away, so that evrn more positions had to be filled with even more stretched education infrastructure. Why, ofcourse, that was brilliant policy.
Both were after officer purge, not sure what your point is. His point was that the only "war experience" the old officers had was civil war. Which, is blatantly wrong, but typical for Russian historians to not mention anything other than civil war, about Soviet conflicts in 1920s.
I would note the Sino-Soviet conflict, 1929 as a show that Soviet army clearly wasn`t in collapsing state during 20s.
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You're not listening. The problem was higher echelon officers being sent en-masse to either execution, the Gulags or were forced to quit. That is 60/% brigade commanders and upwards with the percentage increasing the higher you go in rank.
Now a divisional commander is usually not terrible serving as a corps commander nor is a corps commander terrible at the job as an army commander. On the other hand a guy who's resume is limited to being a revolutionary battalion commander being thrust up into the position to command a division in peace-time and then just a year or two later finds himself in command of an entire army facing down the Wehrmacht now that's the problem the Red Army faced. The actual and deliberate purge of most of the officers from brigade-commander and upwards meant that the experience and knowhow on operational level combat was destroyed and the effects were, evidently, abysmal and the penalties of the event in HOI4 should IMO reflect that.
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I wasn't trying to make any point. The Soviet leadership was not as ignorant on the results of the purge as some historical descriptions try to paint but hey appearance is everything so the charade went on. The fact that they dragged people like Rokossovsky out of jail after the not-so-good performance by party lapdogs like Voroshilov would be funny if it wasn't for the tragedy of it all.
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Well, Rokossovsky and many others were re-instated in 1940-41, the war had already started in 1939 and Stalin had already authorised the "Tripling" of the Red Army and reduced the age of conscription from 21 to 18.
USSR was at War with Poland in 1939 and with Finland in 1939-40. They also fought two major "border engagements with the Japanese". It was mainly due to its "performance" that those who were purged were reinstated.
Secondly, a lot of your arguments on this topic are - corollaries of the "Peter Principle", which is good in theory until you look at the fact, that you are replacing a man with "some competence and some experience with a FRESH guy with no experience and unknown competence".
Now, things worked out in the end but "hindsight 20/20" cannot become an argument.
for Peter Principle - http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp
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I just want to add that with the start of the war, a lot of commanders were allowed back to front (including most brilliant ones).
Therefore, may be the -50% organization penalty should be kept only until major war starts (with another faction)? Then it should be gradually lifted, for example in one year time.
Lets say if purges start in '37, there will be no difference if Germany attacks in '38 or '40 - there will be just one year of the great war affected.
If gradual penalty removal is hard to code, I think this can be done via events - like -50 changes to -35 when faction war starts (or just hardcoded - wars with Germany/USA/Great Britain), then -15 after 6 months and 0 in one year.
Therefore, may be the -50% organization penalty should be kept only until major war starts (with another faction)? Then it should be gradually lifted, for example in one year time.
Lets say if purges start in '37, there will be no difference if Germany attacks in '38 or '40 - there will be just one year of the great war affected.
If gradual penalty removal is hard to code, I think this can be done via events - like -50 changes to -35 when faction war starts (or just hardcoded - wars with Germany/USA/Great Britain), then -15 after 6 months and 0 in one year.
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Yea, they won both the Winter war and Khalkin Gol.
But.... when comparing losses of soldiers, tanks and aircraft - Russia lost alot more than Finland and Japan.
Pretty good success to me is a win with less losses than the loser....
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Seems pretty wrongheaded to discount every victory where the winners took higher casualties.
Better to look at who owns whose country when the peace is signed.
Better to look at who owns whose country when the peace is signed.
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This depends on who is attacking and if the sides have prepared for the war or not.Pretty good success to me is a win with less losses than the loser....
So Winter War was won with high casualties because of strong defensive positions of Finland. At the same time war in Mongolia was defensive, but Soviet forces were not prepared. When additional forces were relocated there, Japan was quickly crashed.
Therefore I can agree that Winter War is a bit bitter 'Win', but Khalkin Gol was pretty good in military sense. IMHO.
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It is not when quality of force is debated, as the eventual victor has greater strength, which often comes down to numbers.
SU had army that obviously was stronger than either Finland or Japan. The quality of their army, however, is questionable.
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#1 Im saying that in my book its not a "pretty good success" for the winner to have losses alot bigger than the losing part(the losing part also had a smaller army than the winner)
I would call the Finnish defence "pretty good" considering the circumstances...
#2 Finland aswell as Japan was in control of their country when peace was signed.
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Yea, they won both the Winter war and Khalkin Gol.
But.... when comparing losses of soldiers, tanks and aircraft - Russia lost alot more than Finland and Japan.
Pretty good success to me is a win with less losses than the loser....
The strategic outcome of the Winter War and the clashes in the Far East were very different though.
While the Winter War prompted the Continuation War, which created another lengthy and costly theater of war while the Red Army needed to fight for their survival against the invading Facists, the results of the Far East clashes left a big enough impression with the Japanese Army to calm down their aggressive posture in Manchuria and honor the resulting non-agression treaty, even while the Red Army was heavily committed in Western Russia.
Thus I would regard the Winter War a strategic failure, while the clashes in the Far East were a strategic success as well as a operational one.
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The Japanese army was despite this very keen on expanding operations in Asia as opposed to the IJN's interest in the Pacific. The clashes between the Soviets and Japan was pretty darn important as you say though when it came to affecting the path that the Japanese leadership chose.
I really like that PDS has identified this aspect through Japans national decisions and focuses though I would love to see more modifiers (or prerequisites) for them based upon the outcome of the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts during the period. The Soviets giving the Japanese a good beating should IMO mean that the decision to focus on the pacific being an "easier" choice than taking the path towards further expansion in Asia.
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Hm, Blucher most of his staff were purged because of the 1938 border conflict.