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Alright, Trin, before I start, I just want to make it clear that I greatly enjoyed this game, and would like to play another round. Thank you for running it and for taking your time to come up with these scenarios and do the hours of work needed for it all to go on. If I was being salty, I would have dispensed a few platitudes and bowed out with dignity instead of spending hours writing up this analysis of the scenario. That all having been said, What the bloody, bloody, bloody hell were you smoking when you thought that this scenario was balanced or fair in any way, shape, or form? I am going to have to write A LOT of words about this whole thing. So, let's go from the very start. Here's the map, just to make reference easier.  First of all, something that isn't unfair on its own, but needs to be taken into account for later. The enemy team starts with more artillery. Furthermore, they start with a lot more of heavy artillery which can actually hit targets inside towns. In addition, they start with 3 times the number of machine guns we have. In return, we get 2 extra green infantry brigades, a mounted brigadier chit instead of a regular one for our mini-brigade, and field artillery that can be manhandled. OK, this is an assymetrical starting situation which may or may not be balanced depending on the scenario it is being used in. I can see situations in which it works out better for either side. So, let's take a gander at the scenario, shall we? Ooooooh, boy, the scenario. There's a bunch of things that are wrong with it. Let's take them slowly, one by one. First of all, you permanently handed St. Croissant to the German team. Let's start from the French perspective. Remember my initial plan, rushing the cavalry into Saint Croissant as quickly as possible, not matter what's standing in the way? It was the fastest possible option for us to establish a presence there before the Germans arrive. I imagine this is the initial cavalry charge Trin was hoping for. However, my team, rightly, pointed out that, of all the starting scenarios we could possibly consider, only the one with the German team starting in the NW ends with them being able to arrive to St Croissant at the same time as we do. All the others not only let them beat us to it, they let them get infantry in there in time to overrun any cavalry presence we establish before we can provide any support to them. We also have a very mobile brigadier, and no way of knowing that the enemy doesn't have one. Our cavalry is contained in a single brigade, and if they fail a morale check, we lose them all, including our best source of mobile artillery. Now let's start from the German perspective. Due to how the map is laid out, the only way for us to beat them to St Croissant is for us to start from center South, and even that depends on the initiative roll. They don't know about our mobile brigadier, and their cavalry assets are attached to other brigades, so they can count on them fighting to the last man and the last horse without morale problems. Bonus points for not having to worry about losing artillery in the fight. So, they have no real reason to be overly cautious with the specific part of the force tasked with occupying St. Croissant. Now let's lift the fog of war. Consider the mobile assets the German team has, then consider the mobile assets the French team has. The German team can concentrate a potent cavalry force that can fight for longer due to a lack of morale issues, has more mobile machine guns,, and sending them there isn't a risk but a reasonable precaution measure. In addition, it doesn't tie up their mini brigade from heading for the main objective. The French team has to explicitly make a choice to send their most mobile brigade into extreme danger, with little guarantee that it'll succeed, and no real way to capitalize on this. Not only does the scenario incentivize a German capture of St. Croissant and early deter a French attempt to do the same, the only way for the French to seize it in the opening moments is for A) The German team to make gargantuan cockup and fail to send anyone to Croissant and B) predict that the enemy is going to make that specific cockup. #1 for "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position". We'll be seeing this one a lot. Now, think of a way for the French team to take Saint Croissant. With your new rules for orders, it's not impossible, it requires a couple of hours or setting up, some surrounding, good heavy artillery placement, and a simultaneous attack from several brigades, but not impossible by any means. Except, oh, look, there's a couple of problems with this. First off all, we had to make our plan to take St. Croissant with the assumption that making coordinated plans outside of the initial planning phase in nigh-impossible, due to how the rules for runners carrying orders worked. Also, you just randomly took away all our heavy artillery in the most decisive moments of the battle. Third, even if we were to take St. Croissant, there was no chance in hell we were to be able to hold it. The enemy had a metric fucton of artillery capable of shooting into the town, and we lacked the amount of machine guns needed to break infantry charges. All our artillerymen would have been able to do in such a situation is to wank off into the tubes while listening to the screams, because between the terrain and the game mechanics, there's nothing they'd be able to do to help. #2 for "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position". Notice the "completely". We had barbed wires up before the German team did, for gently caress's sake. They have no excuse for not placing one in front of Saint Croissant as soon as their engineers got there, making any French ideas about taking Croissant a pipe dream. Second, the deployment zones favored the German team. Now, considering the decisive disaster of the disciplined Deutsch, this claim may seem like complete bollocks. However, it's just an extension of the "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position" situation. Look at the map. They have a perfect place to set up a flank guard near La Cote. They can have 3 machine guns that can hit anyone who tries to cross the hill, the hill itself protects them from French artillery coming from that direction, and they have a precious free turn to set up their artillery before anything French can show up from the South. Had they done that, if would have be game, set, and match for the German team from the get go. I jokingly told Bacarruda that I suspect the optimal strategy for the map might just be forming up a big blue napoleonic blob and marching in battle formation diagonally across the map, flanks be damned, map features be damned, and hoping to just grind down anything encountered under the sheer number of your chits, and never issuing an order for the entire duration of the game. I am sad that the joke in question may have been correct, since it's literally the only counterplay to this which I can think of being actually played by someone without observer vision. Obviously, the decisive disaster of the disciplined Deutsch did happen, and was such a spectacular fuckup that I was tempted to send Tevery Best a message calling him Bochecar Poletyorek. We wiped out an entire German division in the opening hours of the battle. All that was required for this massive blow to be avoided is for the senior German commanders to not be complete idiots. #3 for "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position" Look at the road network of the roads in the West of the map and the two hills there. Considering that the German team is pretty much guaranteeed control of St. Croissant, and the French guaranteed a position on the Southern hill (Clemenceau), look at how accessible the NW hill (La Sanglant Femme) is for both sides. Now look at the SW hill (Dejeneur) and how accessible it is for both sides. The NW is pretty much a gimme for the German team, and allows for an easy setup to deter any attack that way, and not very useful for the French to hold, while Dejeneur itself can be contested by both sides, with roughly even odds of taking it, and gives the German team a commanding position should they take it, and it's impossible for the French to really bypass it. However, the forest means it's actually really bloody easy for the German team to bypass it if they want to go to Quatreprouts. In addition, notice that the distance between Clemenceau and Dejeneur is greater than the distance between Dejeneur and Croissant. Holding both Croissant and Dejeneur means that the German team effectively locks down the entire West of the map off from the French, in a way that the French simply can't copy in any way on any segment of the map. Sure, our courageous cuirassiers crushed cowardly Kraut cannon crews, but just consider the sheer scale of the German fuckup required for this to happen in the first place. Like, holy loving poo poo, with the most basic of commons sense conditional orders by the German commander, there would have been no way whatsoever for our team to beat back that artillery cluster. 3 cavalry chits routing a brigade was a fluke. Sure, I'm glad I noticed the opportunity to do it, and I'm proud of my team for doing the job right, but let's not kid ourselves, it was absolutely not a likely course of events. #4 for "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position" Third, the reinforcements favored the German team Before I start writing this part, just let me make it clear, that yes, I understand that I called for our reinforcements relatively late. I made a faulty assumption about how long we'll need to be given access to reinforcements. Grumbling done? Good. They got two veteran brigades of choice to deploy in the time we were allowed to get a single green one. 1 German reinforcement and 2 Entente reinforcements arrived too late to have an effect on the outcome of the game. By far the biggest Boche blunder, bigger than even the brutal Baguende-Baguette Boche brigade bash, was deploying their reserves in the East. If they deployed 2 veteran cavalry brigades in the far West, and used them to get to Quatreprouts and then to escort the runner back to St. Croissant, there would have been no way whatsoever for us to counter this. What, deploy a green infantry brigade in Quatreprouts to hold them off with wet farts if we somehow saw them coming? They literally threw an easy win out of the window because of panic. Ultimately, you can argue that I made a similar mistake with the artillery reserve. True, but I've already told you the issues with our perception of the objectives. Not to mention what would have happened to them in presence of two veteran cavalry brigades. #5 for "All the German team needs to do is not gently caress up completely and they'll be in an advantageous position" **Break** OK, I'll change the topic for a moment with a seemingly unrelated anecdote that may explain why I'm listing all these separate issues. I used to play World of Warships. It's a naval warfare game with 2 teams of ~10 players each (if I remember right), each controlling a ship. You'd have two ways to win - achieve the objective, like holding a particular area of the map, or sink a sufficient portion of the enemy fleet. I liked using the lowest tier US carrier. It was an incredibly slow ship, and really drat vulnerable to just about anything. But it could carry a large amount of bombers. The traditional way to play a carrier is to stay far away and let your team screen you, while you plot the best trajectories for your aircraft to do their mission while taking minimal AA fire. As a result, even carriers on the losing side would have good chances to survive until the end of the battle, having done a relatively large amount of damage to the enemy team over the duration of the whole game, unless a destroyer managed to sneak past and torpedo them to death, or the enemy carrier managed to find them and alpha strike them. I had a very different playstyle. I'd get as close as possible to the enemy without being shot at, and rapid cycle my bombers at the nearest enemy as fast possible, until all my aircraft get shot down, and then kamikaze in and draw fire from enemies who see a carrier and think "priority target" without considering why I'm willingly being that suicidal. I had fairly low total damage statistics for a carrier player. My survival rate was <20% compared to the 50% rate those carriers usually had. My team win rate? 75%. In a game of 20 players, I alone was turning defeat into victory half the time. This isn't said to brag, because lol, but to point your attention at an important fact. Having good enough firepower now, beats having perfect firepower later. For every enemy removed, you don't just damage their force, you protect yourself from the damage inflicted to you by that enemy for the duration of the battle. Now compare this to being hammered by so many different circumstances that favored the German team from the get go. /Break Final word: My team utterly outplayed the German team. They made ridiculously stupid blunders on a map that favored them heavily, while my team made the best of what they had, and even got a close shot at winning this. So, to the rest of the French Team: You guys absolutely rock. We had our issues, and mistakes, but I'm glad I was able to play this game with you. To the German team: You had individual players who were way better than what your higher ranking generals deserved, considering their blunders. That having been said, congratulations on your win. Ready for round 2? To Trin: With the same people on the opposite teams, this battle would have ended with a crushing German victory. Please consider balancing your future scenarios better. I don't mind being the underdog (in fact, I like the challenge), but I fear the possibility of ending up on the overly favored team, and then feeling like poo poo when I see what really ended up causing the victory.
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Mar 4, 2017 23:48
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| # ? May 9, 2024 12:24 |
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Response pending, but just for the avoidance of doubt: we're cool, no whiteknighting required edit: I'm gonna give this one 24 hours to marinade. For now: he's right about some things, some other things I don't think are quite as clear cut. I'm not going to spoil the next map just yet, but I will say it looks and plays completely differently to this one. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 23:55
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I will take full credit for failing to notice that all brigades of my division had conditional orders not to stop marching even if they encounter an enemy. That was a baffling decision, and I don't remember how it came to be, and why. I think it may have been decided as a default setting for the entire corps? I just know it happened. Anyway, the strong initial push for St. Croissant and its execution weren't problems. Problem was that even after identifying an enemy threat, our conditional orders were the worst possible thing that could have happened. The attack at Q and its execution were debated in the thread, and unfortunately the things I was worried about happened. We should have waited a couple turns for an opportunity to reinforce the assault force, instead of rushing it for no good reason. That would have also reduced the likelihood of a total tactical failure happening due to negligence. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 23:56
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Overall I think our main problem after taking St. C. was a lack of overriding authoritative direction by the high command, which led to a lot of constant, unnecessary and uncoordinated shifting by all our attacking troops, which made our heavy guns totally useless. Had we properly accounted for the need to unlimber to be effective, we wouldn't have lost that attack so badly. Once again, I think the desire to rush the objective defeated common sense.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:04
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I think the "don't stop marching" thing was to avoid something like what I did with my cavalry at Croissants in the opening turns: a single company forcing the entire advance to stop dead in its tracks. We just didn't word our orders as "run past small forces but pay attention to large ones". Also, we probably should have sent a brigade to Baguende, with the idea of turning it into a fortified zone. At the start of the game, we didn't really need to have a single line, we just needed to have our guys close enough to support each other; we could have had one brigade of the 19th head to Baguende and another to roughly the eastern Bois de Baguette without needing them to touch at their final positions.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:07
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So Trin, what will historians think of X briefly turning into an angry war god and personally slaughtering a few entire companies of Germans? :V
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Mar 5, 2017 00:18
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Still need to read the German thread but here are my initial thoughts. I am amazed at just how well my team actually did. Towards the end of the battle when my brigade got basically wiped out I got really tempted to start calling everything bullshit. In the end though it looks like there was some truth mixed in with the salt. If I was to rate my performance I think I did okay and next time I need to focus on more then just what is going on near my brigade as easily some of the most fun I had this battle was pushing for an organized push on the Germans with our artillery. Thank you very much for running this Trin and I look forward to future attempts to achieve victory for my side.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:19
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hey observer thread, what's going on
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Mar 5, 2017 00:19
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I have been meaning to ask this. What was the German teams obsession about moving around in box formations?
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Mar 5, 2017 00:22
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Hunt11 posted:I have been meaning to ask this. What was the German teams obsession about moving around in box formations? i study the 17th century and all formations from the 18th century on later look too thin to me
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Mar 5, 2017 00:27
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Hunt11 posted:I have been meaning to ask this. What was the German teams obsession about moving around in box formations? Well, they were Germans, duh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEN5-_93gQg HEY GAIL posted:hey observer thread, what's going on Not much now that the battle is over, but your slaughtering each other def kept me entertained, thanks for linking me this thread in the first place 
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Mar 5, 2017 00:27
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Where is my earth shattering kaboom. I really wanted to see if we could take ST C 
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Mar 5, 2017 00:31
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Hunt11 posted:I have been meaning to ask this. What was the German teams obsession about moving around in box formations?
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Mar 5, 2017 00:32
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You definitely could, during day. Our plan of defending St. C. at all costs was at all possible only thanks to the night rules.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:33
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We probably should've realized that isolated French companies were not a particularly likely thing to be occurring tho. While we're doing mea culpas the decision to concentrate all the heavy arty in one brigade was breathtakingly stupid. There was no guarantee that it'd end up where needed and it was utterly dependent on one brigade's worth of infantry for staying power.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:36
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All that matters is who won.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:39
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Reading the German thread and just got to them talking about the artillery death star they were getting ready to set up at Dejeuner ridge/La Oeuf.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:45
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steinrokkan posted:Just for the record, I was being direct about the size of the blunders, not literally calling you guys idiots.
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Mar 5, 2017 00:50
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I know that they were massive, and it's almost unfair that we were still in the game after not one, but two of them. Anyway, I think your complaints about the setup being too favourable for Germany are not exactly valid, but now it's getting late here, so maybe I will get to it later.
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Mar 5, 2017 01:07
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I agree with my dad about the map, and I'm glad that someone else felt similarly to me about it. The road system is a huge advantage for the Germans, and it's kind of funny that trying desperately to make up for it helped us get things right off the bat. Just be a dear next time Trin, and factor in the map/everything balance into the win conditions. It's fine and cool to know that we might be the underdogs and one of three objectives is all we need to count as coming out ahead or that we might badly outnumber them and need all our objectives to win, but grade us on that scale. Honestly it's a really cool idea and it plays up something more than grand battleplans drawn up ahead of time, and I think that's a good thing. steinrokkan posted:I will take full credit for failing to notice that all brigades of my division had conditional orders not to stop marching even if they encounter an enemy. That was a baffling decision, and I don't remember how it came to be, and why. I think it may have been decided as a default setting for the entire corps? I just know it happened. That's totally understandable. First orders of the game. For reference, even I, the fabled hero of Dejeuner Ridge ( ), blatantly loving whiffed my first orders. I had everything planned out, it was a masterpiece, I had plans for multiple cases of enemies west of St. Croissant for whether or not I could take up aggressive positions. You know what I didn't have? Any orders for enemies east of there. I thought about it and I just didn't have any cases for falling back to plan merde (where I'd set up short and prep the arty) even though I knew there'd be possibilities where I couldn't get things done. I don't think any of my other orders were flawed, but that was a big one for my brigade, and part of learning is mistakes like that.Also I nearly made a big mistake once by copying a default block order for stance, so that's totally understandable.
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Mar 5, 2017 01:18
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twig1919 posted:The thing is from my perspective the Germans got it a bit easier. They had the better arty and brigades, and would have easily stomped the allies if they had planned for contingencies. They assumed that the French wouldn't start to their south, then assumed that they wouldn't be able to call reinforcements to the southern border. Both times, someone had predicted this and the high command dismissed it. The fact that they are even in this battle after losing a whole division immediately says alot about how trin kept it from being a one sided cluserfuck, imo. This is from a few pages back, but I figured I'd explain some of our thinking in the charge towards Q. We absolutely expected french reinforcements from the south (most likely from the southwest directly next to Q), and had extended discussions about that possibility in the R20. But the choice boiled down to essentially this: Either we dig in north of Dejeuner and settle for an unsatisfying draw/very minor victory, or we roll the dice on the hail mary and go all in on the tiny slim chance of actual victory. Had the timing shaken out just a tiny bit differently (or if the french there had been infantry instead of cav), our combined forces could probably still have given the BEF a good mauling while they had a go at Q. Incidentally, I'd been one of the guys cautioning against that very charge. My fear at the time had been that we'd manage to take Dejeuner, but only end up too strung out and disorganised to put up any resistance against a concerted counterattack. Which was pretty much what happened, but I hadn't thought Cryo's guys would actually get inside the objective in time and trigger the win condition. So in the end I may have been right about the worst case but wrong about the thing that actually mattered, so it's a good thing Tevery listened to Cryo instead of me. Anyhow, the game was really fun, even if my dudes barely did anything but serve as the victims for the frenchmen's finest hour. I really enjoyed the very quick pace of updates, even though it did get a bit stressful at times. I guess that's period-accurate immersion for the commanders.
Perestroika fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 01:20
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i'm reminded of Robert E Lee's first campaign in our civil war, which was a piece of complicated bullshit with a billion moving parts. he failed, and never tried anything like that again.
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Mar 5, 2017 01:30
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 That was fun, would order hundreds of men to their deaths again.
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Mar 5, 2017 01:47
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HEY GAIL posted:If I see that french cav, I will tip my hat to them as gallant foes. Thanks, but actually seriously a lot of the blame there goes to my dad. He was dead on with that opening. I do think I did a good job with the orders there, but it was two parts opportunity for one part execution at least (also I'm pretty sure I win the coveted Trin Tragula "can this guy stop typing for once in his drat life" award for my orders). Also congrats to the Germans for having a better handle on the objectives and how they worked. Trin, I think that in the future we might want take and hold to be the order of the day lest we both slam mobile forces past each other into the stretch goal and then write them off.
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Mar 5, 2017 02:34
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haha wow, what a clusterfuck towards the end i was getting a little despondent due to my grotesque losses, but otherwise it was a good time
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Mar 5, 2017 02:55
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Flesnolk posted:So Trin, what will historians think of X briefly turning into an angry war god and personally slaughtering a few entire companies of Germans? :V They'll get either a song or poem written about them. It'll reach #4 spot in the Pan-Euro Music Charts.
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Mar 5, 2017 03:02
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Definitely a fun game  Are we allowed to reach each other's threads now too? Or just the observer thread?
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Mar 5, 2017 03:11
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Oh I hope we are, because I've already read most of the French thread. Sorry if I wasn't supposed to.
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Mar 5, 2017 03:15
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You're all allowed into all threads.
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Mar 5, 2017 03:15
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Trin Tragula posted:You're all allowed into all threads. Huzzuh!
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Mar 5, 2017 03:17
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Crazycryodude posted:Oh I hope we are, because I've already read most of the French thread. Sorry if I wasn't supposed to. you definitely weren't supposed to be reading it during the battle more like crazySPYodude 
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Mar 5, 2017 03:20
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Comrade Koba posted:This!  sorry about your brigade koba
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Mar 5, 2017 03:24
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Crazycryodude posted:Oh I hope we are, because I've already read most of the French thread. Sorry if I wasn't supposed to. I have to say it was a lot of fun to help turn the SW part of the map into a confusing mess of bodies with you.
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Mar 5, 2017 03:25
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So yes, I did have crazy amounts of fun this game, and want to play another round. I do want clearer objectives this time though, otherwise we would have tried a cav rush of our target much earlier
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Mar 5, 2017 03:26
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In honor of a certain person, you know who you are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edflm7Hh3hs&t=346s
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Mar 5, 2017 03:27
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In honor of another certain person, you know who you are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afhMMcAHlKw
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Mar 5, 2017 03:29
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my dad posted:In honor of another certain person, you know who you are. Wow rude.
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Mar 5, 2017 03:40
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Seeing as how our reinforcements came from the north west and theirs came from the south west, do the French hold the north half of the map now? Edit: Okay, Im going to be serious. I disagree with those trench lines.  Map around dawn.  I think everyone can agree that St C is going to get stomped in the morning, even as the Boche arrive  Which means French hold St C, with Boche hitting them in the south as French reinforcements arrive  As such, I think the 1915 map should look something closer to this. Loel fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 03:46
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Loel posted:Seeing as how our reinforcements came from the north west and theirs came from the south west, do the French hold the north half of the map now? I agree with the spirit of this - if not the exact layout. I'd keep the French in the south and the Germans in the north. Trin, with the greatest respect, the current 1915 lines don't reflect how this battle turned out. My division was in complete control of Dejuenner and Le Oeuf by the end of the battle. Saying that we now only own half of it erases much of the gains we played and fought our guts out for. And TBK's men had a strong foothold on Pasteur. If 8 German chits are enough to give them La Crepe and Quatrepouts-- why isn't a brigade with a massive gunline enough to give us at least some of Pasteur? Put another way, if the new German corps wiped out the Frenchmen on Pasteur -- why didn't the new French corps wipe out the Germans in Quatrepouts? I understand that there's always going to be some things happening behind the GM screen - but I'm struggling to understand this decision. Even if you don't change the 1915 lines, at least help me understand what happened.
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Mar 5, 2017 05:05
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| # ? May 9, 2024 12:24 |
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My boys would have been pushed out of Pasteur by the enemy reinforcements. I agree with the southwest, though. We seized control of 4farts and by the time the original forces could be withdrawn and the reinforcements replace them in St. C, our own reinforcements should have arrived. I can totally see how we would not have been able to hold on to Faiblimpots, though.
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Mar 5, 2017 05:38
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