Barbarossa 4.0 tactical

[fast Heinz]

Has anyone ever played barbarossa 4.0 tactical, single day turns about 250 of them! A real monster.I am playing as the Russians and game seems to be tilted in their favor? Is DNO better?

[Kraut]

can't tell you anything about barbarossa 4.0 tactical but DNO is the best Barbarossa scenario there is ! It's PBEM only, no chance for a PO play.
I'm up to turn 14 playing the germans and waiting for my opponents turn. DNO is huge (my CPU (1GHz Duron) needs 15 min. just to calculate the supply distribution!), as the germans you should plan for 10h for every turn if you want to do it right and are taking care about every combat and try to keep your regiments stick to their HQ.

[Tiberius]

But what do you think of the balance?
I know it's hard to want to say anythin about that while still in the middle of it. (no one wants to sound like a whiner, or give away an advantage.) And it's awfully darn hard to tell anyway.
I know one thing: Brian Topp's Barbarossa 9.0 is definitely _not_ balanced. It is designed to make it hard for a German human to beat Soviet PO. Playing against a human as Soviet we had to call it off in July (41) because my Soviet lines were just too thick and solid.
It would be nice to know that a Barbarossa scenario was at least designed with human vs. human somewhat balanced play in mind.

[fast Heinz]

I have found the same thing as Tiberius....Germans are hitting a brick wall, with armoured reserves forming behind, we are on turn (or day 32), late July, and Germans are bleeding.....4.0 is pbem only.

[Kraut]

Well, from my point of view my opponent tried the forward defence, he used every available reserve to form a solid defence line and deny me the occupation of his key conscript cities. This gave me great problems as the germans army has to slug its way through fortified soviet lines and without the reduction of soviet replacements he'll still recive huge amouts of new rifle squads every turn, greatly increasing his staying power.
The problem for my opponent is that he now has no fallback lines and no reserves to plug any holes I tear in his lines. One of my breakthrough in the north could only be plugged because he recived 2 armys reinforcements that round. In my last turn I made good progress in the south (encircling and destroying 11 soviet divisions and some smaler units) and it seems as if his entire south front is about to break. With no secondary defence position and no reinforcements (except the ones he recives as scheduled reinforcement) this might turn into a huge disaster for the Red Army, allowing me the conquest of vast terrain in the south before he is able to form a new line of defence.

So.. is this scenario balanced ? I'd say yes although its still to early in the game to tell for sure. The size alone gives both player enough possibilitys for different strategies and I highly recommend giving this scenario a try.

[Ryan88]

I think an important thing to remember about DNO is that it is not designed as an evenly balanced scenario as much as a historical study which realistically presents the actual forces and situations that occured historically. If I am not mistaken, McBride is a PhD in history and I find his immense scenario backround descriptions utterly fascinating since they pertain directly to TOAW considerations.

I think it is difficult to have both balance and historical accuracy in a lot of scenarios. As it is, I also think DNO is decently balanced. It is definitely important to put the more experienced player as the Germans since the German player really needs a lot of ability when it comes to drawing out multiple combat rounds, etc. Still, both sides have many strengths and weaknesses and the scenario seems like it could easily swing either way. I suppose only extended playtesting (and I mean extended; I don't think a game has even been finished yet, though I could be wrong...) will really show how balanced DNO is. I agree with Kraut, it is certainly worth a try; it is by far the most fulfilling and awesome scenario I have ever played, and is well worth the time I have put into it so far.

I would like to hear an update on your game sometime Kraut. Specifically, have you taken Odessa? Kiev? Smolensk? Gome\l? What happened on the Finnish front? What turn did you take Minsk? Where are your breakthroughs occuring?

Ryan

[Stauffenberg]

Originally posted by Ryan88
If I am not mistaken, McBride is a PhD in history and I find his immense scenario backround descriptions utterly fascinating since they pertain directly to TOAW considerations.

Ryan


Modesty demands I point out that my academic background does not pertain to military history per se, along the lines of Samuel W. Mitcham for example. That info was dropped into my bio on here more for human interest than anything else.

Be that as it may, you are right in surmising that a certain fussiness about detail comes out of a background in academic research, and that my interest in all this is "history first, playability second", although there are things one can do as a designer to add some spice to playability without altering the historical situation whatsoever (see the small Sevastopol scenario as an example).

With something as large as DnO the issue of "play balance" really comes down to getting the replacement rates right once everything else is in place. Ver. 3.4, besides dealing with various anomalies, omissions, small problems, and the like, represents the latest fine-tuning in replacement settings based upon some 8 months of near continuous playtesting. Finally, playing style looms large in a scenario that large, lasting some 70 intense turns. If you, playing the Soviets, are up against a German player who will settle for one round of combat and movement most turns, you certainly have the gods of war smiling on you; if, on the other hand, you are playing James "buzzsaw" Mathews, all I can say is "abandon all hope ye who enter here."

D.

[Ryan88]

That is defeatist talk! I better have the NKVD take you off to the Gulag for surmising that the Soviet Union will not win out in the end.

Darn intelligensia, always getting in the way of the will of the people. James Matthews or no James Matthews, two combat rounds or ten, the fascist pigs will be driven back in disgrace and will see their own land devasted by war!! Mother Russia will prevail!!!!

Although it would really help if, during your time in the Gulag, you could finish that Berlin 44-45 scenario. Then I really could take the war to the German homeland as the Soviets...

[Major Banned]

Originally posted by Tiberius
But what do you think of the balance?
I know it's hard to want to say anythin about that while still in the middle of it. (no one wants to sound like a whiner, or give away an advantage.) And it's awfully darn hard to tell anyway.
I know one thing: Brian Topp's Barbarossa 9.0 is definitely _not_ balanced. It is designed to make it hard for a German human to beat Soviet PO. Playing against a human as Soviet we had to call it off in July (41) because my Soviet lines were just too thick and solid.
It would be nice to know that a Barbarossa scenario was at least designed with human vs. human somewhat balanced play in mind.

In defense of Brian's scenario (I have not played it nor have I tried to tackle DnO, but I did work on the remake of War in Russia). The German forces did start having a tougher time of it once they had outrun their supply lines in July (ie. Smolensk). If it had not been for the fact that Stalin was an idiot for trying to run the tactical war from Moscow (similar to Hitler running the war from Berlin starting in 42), the Soviets could have put a hurting on the German forces during the summer of 41.
Now I'm assuming that the Soviet opponent was somewhat smarter than Stalin, and didn't engage in several fruitless attacks, allowing his forces to be encircled and destroyed by numerically inferior forces. That would account for the "steel wall" that you encountered during that time period.

[Tiberius]

aaaarrrrrgggghhhh. Why do I always hit tab to indent the paragraph and accidentally subscribe to the thread or some such?

I love Brian Topp's scenarios also. The look and feel of them are excellent (besides their other good qualities). But it just doesn't pay to play head to head a scenario that was designed for the PO. I also have played Barb 4.0 which is for PBEM and we stopped that one also, feeling like the Russians were too strong. Although in that scenario it was much more of "well it's going to be tough but....", than in ver. 9 which was clearly going to be impossible for the Germans against a skilled human opponent.

I agree with the point about balance and historical objectivity not going hand in hand. To me a balanced scenario is one in which a historical outcome is reasonably likely between two humans and ideally there is opportunity for each player to improve upon history.

[Brian Topp]

I have to fess up here -- it's true that I progressively rebalanced that scenario to make it tougher for a human-controlled German to prevail against a computer-controlled Soviet.

I received an amazing volume of of email about that scenario over many months; most of the folks playing it seemed to be taking on the PO as the Axis; many complained it wasn't "balanced" in that the Soviets could be beat ahistorically easily; and my design goal in revisions did focus on addressing that problem.

Nine revisions into it, it's probably true that it doesn't work as well head to head.

It is also true that a human Soviet player, with the gigantic 1941 Red Army under command, should be able to achieve a better result than Stalin did -- perhaps a much better result. You have the benefit of hindsight and are likely to avoid Stalin's mistakes (forward deployment; the Kiev battle; etc.).

Best,
bt

Briantopp@rogers.com

[Don Maddox]

Hello Brian. Nice to see you on the forums. :D

[Brian Topp]

Nice to be here and nice to see such an active forum. I kind of drifted away for awhile, having changed jobs and been busy at the new one.

Any sign Norm has figured out a way to get that next patch out?

[Dan Neely]

Unfortunately the impression I've gotten is that he's more or less given up. SiberianHeat has emailed norm on the subject a few months ago, the reply is somewhere on the old board, but I'm not sure where.