Soviet National Focus needs some serious ballance

[Had a dad]

people that cannot discuss history without being hostile will either be banned from the thread or infracted. One person has already been banned from this thread

 

[Loke]

"The Soviets giving the Japanese a good beating" - This is not a good beating in my world, its a very costly win.

 

[Praetori]

"The Soviets giving the Japanese a good beating" - This is not a good beating in my world, its a very costly win.

I was meaning for it to be IF (as in in-game terms for negative modifiers to national paths choices), not that it was that in reality. Poor choice of wording perhaps.

 

[Loke]

I was saying IF (as in in-game terms for negative modifiers to national paths choices), not that it was that in reality. Poor choice of wording perhaps.

Ok, I misunderstood you.

 

[Gort11]

So, the original post was basically saying that even if the USSR carries out purges as quickly as possible, their divisions still have -50% organisation until autumn of 1940.

When's the earliest Germany can realistically attack them? You'd need to deal with Poland (and therefore also France) ASAP - but given that France is on a timer before they can start properly researching their doctrines, it might actually be best to attack them ASAP as well.

Is the best strategy for Germany just to rush to the "Danzig or War" decision as quickly as possible, defeat France and Poland while French doctrine is terrible, then rush into a war with the USSR to make the most of the USSR's 50% organisation penalty?

 

[Hagen67483]

So, the original post was basically saying that even if the USSR carries out purges as quickly as possible, their divisions still have -50% organisation until autumn of 1940.

When's the earliest Germany can realistically attack them? You'd need to deal with Poland (and therefore also France) ASAP - but given that France is on a timer before they can start properly researching their doctrines, it might actually be best to attack them ASAP as well.

Is the best strategy for Germany just to rush to the "Danzig or War" decision as quickly as possible, defeat France and Poland while French doctrine is terrible, then rush into a war with the USSR to make the most of the USSR's 50% organisation penalty?

Yes and no.
The reasons to rush where already shown by you, so I play devils advocate and show the counter arguments.
1. Germany has a weak army but many military factories in 1936, if war is rushed the German army is too small or has not enough equipment.
2. Germany has some very strong national focuses like "Anschluss" "Sudetenland"... these strengthen Germany without fighting but need time.
3. Germany has some early bonuses to important tecs (earlier PzIII, fast research of many doctrine tecs). Without these the German army lacks one of its greatest strengths.
4. Rushing to "Danzig or War" could mean that Poland will accept more likely because there wasn’t enough world tension for England to guarantee them. That means no war.
5. Germany lacks civil Industry in 1936. That means it’s harder to repair battle damage for it. And fighting in Russia without repaired Infrastructure will be a hell in my opinion.

My conclusion: Germany needs a "build up phase" but it also needs to use its window of opportunity. If I would make a guess don’t start a war bevor 1938 and don’t wait longer than early 1940.

As always just my opinions.

 

[Gethsemani]

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.

We should also keep in mind that corruption was rife in the Red Army before the purges. Higher level commanders were either in on the corruption themselves (divisional commanders selling equipment and keeping the money themselves) or did absolutely nothing to stomp it out. Whatever or not these commanders could have been great battlefield leaders in WW2 is sort of a pointless question, because they were obviously disastrously bad as peacetime leaders meant to maintain the readiness and quality of the Red Army. This is also why so many of them were taken on charges of corruption and treason, because they failed to keep the Red Army in even a mediocre state and created the corrupt culture that would eventually lead to the Red Armies disastrous performance in the Winter War and during Barbarossa.

The purges were not good by any humanistic accounts (especially not the politically motivated persecutions), but as a means to combat the rampant corruption and incompetence in Red Army leadership they most certainly served their purpose. They sent a powerful message and set an example that said that no one was above being persecuted for abusing their position and neglecting their duties to the Soviet Union. The downside to this was that the Red Army was saddled with an inexperienced officer corps that also developed a nasty fear of taking initiative, on top of its' already dire shortage of officers.

 

[fellaz007]

The heart an soul of the Red Army was the officer corps. The Red Army relied on the quality of their officer corps more heavily than e.g. the German army, because they didn't had a professional NCO organization. Sergeants were only specially trained conscripts in the Red Army, while a German sergeant (Feldwebel) was a professional soldier and was highly qualified over several years of training and practice. German NCOs were trained to lead platoons in combat.

Therefore the Great Purge of the officer corps did not only affect the operational performance of the Red Army, it was also affecting their morale greatly, because there was no NCO corps keeping things together, while the officers had to come to term with their new jobs.

 

[Praetori]

We should also keep in mind that corruption was rife in the Red Army before the purges. Higher level commanders were either in on the corruption themselves (divisional commanders selling equipment and keeping the money themselves) or did absolutely nothing to stomp it out.

Well I wouldn't use the alleged crimes or "evidence" brought up against the victims of the purge as fact without being utterly careful but corruption in the Soviet system was everywhere and neither the Red Army or civilian administration was any exception.

 

[Madzai]

Well, to add a little bit perspective, further declassification of some early-war documents and interviews with live witnesses (for some reason a saw none of them in English, but only in Russian) of what happens in first days of Barbarossa reveal that the reason behind all the mess was not only lack of officers in the whole CoC, but that some elements wasn't purged well enough (at the same time i not advocating purges in a form the were conducted and i fully agree that a lot of ppl were prosecuted wrongly). There were massive attempts of Army or event Front level sabotage(not to mention Division level) made by some Commanders. Like sudden commission with a couple of Generals in it arriving in unsuspecting Artillery Corps around Kiev and demanding to remove of all aiming equipment and sending it to HQ for "check up" 2 days before Barbarossa.
Or in interview some interceptor pilot who was stationed in Belorussian SSR said they had strict order to ignore "all possible provocation" and were forbidden to return fire to German planes. And then germans appears and bombed half of their planes (and he also said their planes acted as if they knew there would be no return fire) someone decided to counter-attack and to call Theater HQ. They said that no such orders were issued.

It's a very simplified and, with mistakes in some terms, because of my poor English, version of that i watched but my original point still stand - Vlasov wan't the only one and purge happens not only because of Stalins paranoia.

And more on original topic. 50% org penalty? It sad to see that even after 4 games Paradox still can't manage to deceit lack of higher officers in any reasonable way. Because i kind of failing too see why every unit must suffer because of some probable shortage of officers somewhere else. No matter that everyone think, some Divisions and even their upper command very pretty much combat ready.

 

[Praetori]

Well, to add a little bit perspective, further declassification of some early-war documents and interviews with live witnesses (for some reason a saw none of them in English, but only in Russian) of what happens in first days of Barbarossa reveal that the reason behind all the mess was not only lack of officers in the whole CoC, but that some elements wasn't purged well enough (at the same time i not advocating purges in a form the were conducted and i fully agree that a lot of ppl were prosecuted wrongly). There were massive attempts of Army or event Front level sabotage(not to mention Division level) made by some Commanders.

Well there was a serious blame-game going on in the Red Army at the time and the contemporary investigations done at the time came up with some mindbending explanations along those line to justify both the purge and the followup arrests and executions of commanders who in a lot of instances had done nothing wrong other than obeying impossible orders from high-command as well as to explain away the real reasons for the problems the Red Army was facing. There was a constant fear in the Soviet leadership of the revolution blowing up in their faces (learnt from the years of civil-war) so the blame had to be put somewhere.
Diversion units were operating inside the USSR at the time with both Brandenburgers, spies and fifth columns of native russian speakers but not to any significant degree as far as is know. I'm pretty sure that there's some merit to those claims since covert operations from the war have often been kept that way (and all in the know brought their secrets to the grave) but the catastrophic development in the first months was hardly the result of such operations to any meaningful degree.

Or in interview some interceptor pilot who was stationed in Belorussian SSR said they had strict order to ignore "all possible provocation" and were forbidden to return fire to German planes.

That one seems to be actually true but the funny thing is that those instructions can be traced directly back to high command and Stalin the day before the invasion began as a last ditch effort to not succumb to hostilities. The Red Airforce was a lot more politically governed than the Red Army and that's not the only example where crazy orders were followed to the letter in fear of reprisals.
I don't recall the exact order number but it was sent to all command-areas and was highlighted in John Erickson's book on Stalingrad and also mentioned by Beevor somewhere.

And more on original topic. 50% org penalty? It sad to see that even after 4 games Paradox still can't manage to deceit lack of higher officers in any reasonable way. Because i kind of failing too see why every unit must suffer because of some probable shortage of officers somewhere else. No matter that everyone think, some Divisions and even their upper command very pretty much combat ready.

Well I think there's a lot of us that would like to see some distinction between different types of military personnel now that we have individual sets of equipment. People have suggested Officers, Pilots, Sailors etc, why not include higher echelon commanders as well and we could actually get a decent representation on the purge as well as other stuff like the Chinese army, the French failures in 1940 and other major differences between the warring nations beside divisional stats and technology.

 

[D Inqu]

"The Soviets giving the Japanese a good beating" - This is not a good beating in my world, its a very costly win.

"Costly" is entirely based on the very "interesting" way the Japanese counted losses, such as completely not counting the 3k prisoners they lost, since they were when the peace treaty was signed.

In short:
1. The Japanese failed to use their numerical and material superiority in the first 2 months of the conflict, and then got utterly annihilated when the soviets got numerical superiority.
2. The battle ended Ueda's, Yasuoka's and Komatsubara's careers, so it's not like the Japanese felt it was a good fight by them.

 

[hkrommel]

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).

I think we're all also missing that we'll never know how good or "brilliant" those purged would have been. Because they were purged.

 

[Praetori]

I think we're all also missing that we'll never know how good or "brilliant" those purged would have been. Because they were purged.

Well some of them were know to be pretty brilliant already, from the civil war and other military operations before the purge started.
It was partly the fact that they had risen to their military commands through competence and results rather than loyalty to the party that had them purged in the first place. Tukhachevsky being the most prominent example and his theories and methods, almost considered heretical after the purge was pretty much followed to the letter later in the war by successful Soviet commanders such as Rybalko, Badanov and Krivoshein and others and are even evident in the plans laid down by higher officers like Zhukov or Konev.

 

[jamesd]

Since this thread started I've been doing some reading and thinking about this section of the Soviet focus tree. I don't like the way that the purge is structured as a single focus that takes 3 times as long as a normal focus to research. It happened over a period of years, not all at once. This is how I think I'd structure the tree, with all taking 70 days to research:

Start the Great Purge
Pre-requisites: None
Benefits: national unity +10%, reduce internal coup chance
Penalties: None

Continue the Great Purge
Pre-requisites: Start the Great Purge & at least Jan 1937
Benefits: national unity +10%, reduce internal coup chance
Penalties: remove certain commanders; doctrine research -50%; organisation -25%

Finish the Great Purge
Pre-requisites: Continue the Great Purge & at least Jan 1938
Benefits: national unity +10%, reduce internal coup chance
Penalties: training time +50%; organisation -25%

Learn from the Soviet-Finnish* War
Pre-requisites: Finish the Great Purge & subsequently fight ground battles in 3 different months
Benefits: organisation +25%; doctrine research +25%
Penalties: None
* use name of war in which greatest troop losses were suffered

Learn from our enemy
Pre-requisites: Finish the Great Purge & lose a ground battle in Europe with a major power or Change the role of political officers
Benefits: doctrine research +25%; training time -25%
Penalties: None

Change the role of political officers
Pre-requisites: Learn from the Soviet-Finnish War & fight ground battles with major powers in 12 different months
Benefits: organisation +25%; training time -25%
Penalties: None

I'd start the Soviet Union with a national unity of say 60% and have the purges significantly increase that unity. For the true believers the purges represent the State staying true to the revolution, inspiring them to remain loyal, while for not so true believers, they can see it as a matter of remaining loyal or else. For the player there are some hefty military penalties in the later purges, which is mainly when the military was affected, but without the NU gains, they could see the nation collapse relatively quickly under a surprise invasion before reserves can be mobilised and gain experience. Of course the penalties could see any such invasion achieve more success so its a balancing act.

The purges started with the Party which is why there's no penalty for the first focus. Maybe the -25% org penalty of the second focus could be shifted up as the military starts wondering if they're next, but my thinking there was that it represents the 1937 reintroduction of political officers looking over the shoulder of every commander down to company level. I guess another alternative could be for that purge to have no impact on NU, but to completely eliminate the chance of a coup.

The other penalties of the second purge are fairly self explanatory, with some senior commanders gone and the theorists who are left keeping their ideas to themselves in the fear that they would follow. The final purge represents the loss of middle ranking officers and the dislocation of having to promote many inexperienced commanders. This disrupts organisation significantly, and combined with the large increases to the Red Army that a player and the AI should be looking at around 1939-41, it also contributed to slowing training significantly. With this penalty and large manpower reserves, there will be a big incentive for the Soviets to deploy partially trained troops to gain experience in combat rather than training when fighting for survival, which is exactly what they did. As far as I can tell, there is no officer mechanic similar to HOI3 in HOI4 which would otherwise account for this type of thing. Training for their soldiers remained fairly basic throughout the war.

Once the purges have been completed, the Soviets have the chance to start learning from negative experiences on the battlefield. In this fashion there is an incentive for the Soviets to fight a small war that is much greater than just the territorial gains of the Winter War. In that war officers started gaining experience in their new positions and the shortcomings were studied and improvements commenced. The early months of the war with Germany highlighted more shortcomings and by late 1942 the Soviets were more experienced and made organisational improvements like changing the role of political officers from oversight to morale and propaganda. They even retrained the most junior political officers as replacement infantry lieutenants.

 

[hkrommel]

Well some of them were know to be pretty brilliant already, from the civil war and other military operations before the purge started.
It was partly the fact that they had risen to their military commands through competence and results rather than loyalty to the party that had them purged in the first place. Tukhachevsky being the most prominent example and his theories and methods, almost considered heretical after the purge was pretty much followed to the letter later in the war by successful Soviet commanders such as Rybalko, Badanov and Krivoshein and others and are even evident in the plans laid down by higher officers like Zhukov or Konev.

Well yeah I was more referring to the untested guys who we will never know if one of them was another Patton.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

If I may add my two cents, though, I think the purge should give the Soviet player a bonus to the generation of political points since it solidified Stalin's already considerable power to the point where nobody dared to ever challenge him.

 

[Overestimate]

I find the set up rather poor.

Seethought the purge needs to be the first thing the Soviet player does or else

1. The Soviets are completely exposed to any early/ahistorical attack as done in www and also historical attack no matter what
2. Will on the other side be hit with a potentially game ending coup event, with the probability being higher longer you delay
3. Takes 3 times as long to research as everything else despite the massive penalties which basically pushes the real purge impact to 1670 days

A choice with a gun to your head is not a real choice (and therefore not really much fun) but it's actually point 3 which just adds insult to injury somehow

 

[jagvi1986]

Given that Stalin and Trotsky had quite divergent priorities, might it not make more sense for the Soviet NF tree to be restructured around an initial choice between the two of them, followed by widely differing trees, such as Trotsky being more dedicated to Global Revolution, possibly leading to the Soviets starting WW2, and Stalin going down the historical path. This way, those players who want to play as Trotsky over Stalin don't have to deal with a random event chance, and those who want to play Stalin can have their tree reworked to remove the immediacy of the purges. This might work better for a '33 scenario as opposed to a '36, but my viewpoint is that if you have a possibility of Trotsky, it should be as an NF choice rather than an event.

 

[hkrommel]

Maybe the purge is something that the SOV player needs to do, otherwise there's an increasing chance of civil war every year? That way if the SOV player puts it off, the game balance remains in play because if GER makes good progress and lowers National Unity, the SOV player may have a rebellion on his/her hands despite having a better officer pool.