How A&A corresponds to WWII history

[dezrtfish]

Actualy it would be 4,000, but the size model isn’t based on naval aviation.  I think IL is closer.  An infantry has to be at least corp level.  Look at the number of divisions in Germany in 1942.  In the game the total Number of German infantry is 15, that dosn’t account for Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish etc.  When in fact there were probably, I’m not going to check right now, 45 Infantry Divisions in eastern Europe in the Spring of '42.

Maybe someon eshould do the resurch and create new setups with acuratre division counts…

[Coronel Cool]

Imperious leader:
1 inf = 3-5 corps or 1 army
1 tank = 1 tank corps
1 AA gun = built in gun emplacements and batterys built around industrial complex and cities
1 transport = 100 merchant ships only no combat ships
1 submarine = 40 subs
1 fighter = 2,000 planes
1 bomber = 1,000 bombers
1 carrier = 4 carriers
1 battleship = 4 Battleships
1 destroyer= 20 destroyers
1 artillery= light armor/ mechanized infantry  1 corps
1 factory = lots of heavy industry
Neutral country (3 ipc) = garrison (up to 20.000 active elite troops)

This is obviously for A&A revised (indicated by the destroyers) But, wow. 1 inf = 1 army? This may be true for the German east front, but I personally don’t think it would be as much realistic when you look at other war fronts and theatres.

Well, It’s great to find agreement that the 3 ipc price for neutral countries, could be viewed as representing a rather small defence force.  :-D

dezrtfish:

An infantry has to be at least corp level.  Look at the number of divisions in Germany in 1942.

Yeah, but maybe the actual inf could then be understood as the front division of a corp (still representing a corps)? This would also mean that the the loss of 1 inf wouldn’t be the loss of an entire corps. Anyway I believe it’s fair to say it all depends on where on the map we base our calculations. Take for example the Islands of the pacific: A full army corps (80.000-140.000 soldiers?) on the tiny Midway Island does not sound very realistic to me.  :-D

However: Your 1inf=1corps suggestion sounds very realistic concerning for example the british forces in North Africa (2 inf), that at spring 1942 was not yet army sized (later became the eight army). But looking at the German Afrika Corps, it seems to consist of 1 tank & 2inf. But yes, maybe the 2 inf represents the italians and the Vichy french.  :-)

But, thanx guys for sharing your thougts on this matter.

[Baghdaddy]

@Colonel:

…
I believe Mr.Harris once stated - in a thread he started on this website, as I remember  - that all moves in a round should be understood as synchronized.
…

“Col Cool”, how long have you been on this site?

Did you have a previous alias?

If so, why have you chosen to start a new name?

[Coronel Cool]

If we start going into historical accuracy, we would have to make disparate units (e.g. German tanks hit at 4, Russian at 3, Japanese at 2).

Sure, I agree that changes like these would be necessary (allthough i disagre that German tanks was better than the Russian tanks. The russian tanks (like KV-2 and T-34) was the best in the world in 1942 IMHO).

But I think maybe the range of fighters should be changed from 4 to 3 movements, as the typical range of fighters was max. 500 miles (max 800 miles with droptanks). At the Battle of England German fighters could cross the channel but not the North Sea (except Me-110).

[Coronel Cool]

“Col Cool”, how long have you been on this site?

Did you have a previous alias?

If so, why have you chosen to start a new name?

Ive played A&A for many years with a large group of friends. Therefore I have also been aware of this website for a few years, and once in a while I have frequenced this webpage reading threads and articles. But I have always done this as a guest only. I have never before been a member with alias.  :-)

[cyan]

@Colonel:

But I think maybe the range of fighters should be changed from 6 to 5 movements, as the typical range of fighters was max. 500 miles (max 800 miles with droptanks). At the Battle of England German fighters could cross the channel but not the North Sea (except Me-110).

yeah but i think planes shouldn’t have to spend movement points when they cross into thier own terrtories.

[Coronel Cool]

But I think maybe the range of fighters should be changed from 6 to 5 movements, as the typical range of fighters was max. 500 miles (max 800 miles with droptanks). At the Battle of England German fighters could cross the channel but not the North Sea (except Me-110).

Ha, ha ha, Did I really say that? I meant of course “from 4 to 3 movements”!  allow me to re-edit that, :-D

yeah but i think planes shouldn’t have to spend movement points when they cross into thier own terrtories.

How so? would they turn off the engines and glide?

[Guest]

Since a “turn” refers to 3-4 months of time, crossign your own territory would allow for refueling along the way, and actual “combat” movement would begin when you moved into enemy territory, or over water.

[Imperious Leader]

2,000 Planes on 4 Carriers?!

Thats one of the major problems i have with the game and the need that carriers should have seperate ‘naval fighters’ or some built in planes that cannot be allocated to land battles. Those carriers are of a completely different scale than land based aircraft.

Each Infantry has to be a army. Germany had about 15 armies in 1942.

[Coronel Cool]

ncscswitch:

Since a “turn” refers to 3-4 months of time, crossign your own territory would allow for refueling along the way, and actual “combat” movement would begin when you moved into enemy territory, or over water.

Yeah, if we agree to Harris’ “syncronized” theory, that’s an acceptable point of view, I think.

Imperious Leader:

Each Infantry has to be a army. Germany had about 15 armies in 1942.

It does not sound very realistic to me that Germany can put up 10 new armies every turn (every four months?) Also, this would mean that Germany could attack egypt with 4 armies + pz corps (1.0- 1.5 million soldiers?) in spring 1942.

….and there should be 250.000 - 300.000 soldiers on Midway island? - nah…  :-)

Then I would rather count the total ipc value on German units and then divide with 15.
A German field army= 258/15 = 17 ipc

Germany’s initially only got 11 ipc of units in Africa, (Africa corps - not entirely a field army) so this makes more sense to me.

Since Germany in first turn can attack Russia with 139 ipc of units, this would still be a strong offensive with more than 8 field armies.

Example: A possible attack on Caucasus on G1 with 3 tanks, 3inf, 3fig (60 ipc) could thus represent an army group (Army Group South) consisting of 3 field armies + smaller panzer armies, (The 4th Army, the 6th Army, 17th Army + 1st Panzer Army and 4th Panzer Army)

[Imperious Leader]

The different units represent different scales. Infantry would represent 3-5 corps which could be considered an army and Armor is a smaller scale of a corps (3-6 divisions of tanks) The tanks have alot more impact than infantry armies. I see that germany had 160 divisions  and out of this 20 were panzer/ motorized in 1941. They were organized in 14 field armies. If you take 140 and divide by 3 to get corps and again by 3 to get armies you get 15.5 which the game has 15 infantry on that front ( as pointed out by another poster). If you take the 20 armor and divide by 3 to get corps, you got about 7 units ( 7 corps of armor) and revised has 6 in range of soviet territories plus 2 artillery which makes 8 and thats close enough for this type of comparison.

On Midway that one infantry is not:

and there should be 250.000 - 350.000 soldiers on Midway island? - nah

an army would be made up of 15 divisions ( with 10,000 men each so thats 150,000 but its still to high and some units are just not gonna fit really any consistent system because the game was not designed that way. It was a balanced idea on deployment rather than historical.

Germany’s initially only got 11 ipc of units in Africa, (Africa corps - not entirely a field army)

These forces also represent the bulk of the italian army. The tank alone would represent both the DAK and probably some italian armor units

[Yahoshua]

Probably the only way to get a truly accurate count between R/L and A&AR (or A&A if you prefer) is to have a seperate count for each power and average it out.

If you wanted to make the counts accurate to R/L you’d have to alter the unit numbers and placement to make it true to life and add “Realism” rules. Eg. Aircraft, Armor, Inf, and Art. can only move one space during a turn (to account for the vast stretches of land on the map). And it’d go without saying that you’d need a minimum number of infantry pieces per territory to act as a “garrison” or suffer a penalty of income from that territory. This would add a whole new aspect of logistics to the game.

And you’d have to have seperate “Theatre Rules” for the Pacific and for the European theatres such as the chanelkampf (Channel Battles) during the battle of Britain and to account for the limited flight distance of German aircraft compared to the British advantage of being over home-ground (maybe only 1 round of German fighters over England, with 2 rounds for all powers’ bombers? or a reduced German aircraft attack while over England?).

You’d also have to take into account that the Japanese aircraft could travel much farther (and were cheaper to produce) than American aircraft, but they were’nt as hard-hitting nor hardy as U.S. naval/land based aircraft.

In short, you’d have to literally re-write the movement, engagement, income, and territory capture rules from the ground up and work with the map that’s already in place. Additionally, you’d also have to figure out the “theatre rules” according to the specific theatre (especially in regards to Japan as they depended almost solely on airpower and infantry for keeping their territory, with their navy to back it up).

This actually sounds like a fun project to do (especially since I suck at playing A&A and I have the spare time I could devote to it).

[Admiral_Thrawn]

It would be neat to have a more realistic setup and income level for the game. Maybe it would be too steep of a climb for the Axis to defeat the Allies but, if you did it would be that much more glorious! I have been trying to find the different powers approximate strengths in all the theaters but it is kind of difficult. I think you would have to put some kind of restraint on the amount of troops you could raise. Of course Russia and Germany raised millions of troops but, there is always a limit to your army. Germany should actually start off with most of there forces because wasn’t 1941-42 the peek for the German army?  Also what do you think the difference in representation of the amount troops a piece represents from Revised to Europe and Pacific would be? Has Larry every said what a infantry piece is suppose to represent?

[cyan]

Has Larry every said what a infantry piece is suppose to represent?

I think he said corp once. but i not that sure.

[Baghdaddy]

The other part of this is to realize that supplying armies is not exclusively about numbers of men.  War fighting materials are as much a part of the problem as finding grunts to carry the rifles.

To presume that the armies raised at new bodies is to ignore the actual practice of pulling combat units back for resupply and reconstitution.  Yes, replacements for casualties were part of that practice but new equipment was as much a part of the industrial complex problem as finding more men.

We should not assume that a “destroyed” army is actually representing 100,000’s of men dead.  It more accurately is the destruction of war materials and disruption of the organization that is what most quickly removed combat units from the front line.  2% to 3% causualties were enough to get most combat units looking for R&R.  10% casualties would be enough to make most units static and unable to do much more than hold ground.  Casualty rates higher than that would generally be the end of the unit but the “elements” of the unit would still be individually functioning and could often be pulled back together in R&R to rebuild the unit.

This is, in my opinion, where those IPCs ar going.

[Admiral_Thrawn]

Baghdaddy, I agree with what you are saying but, I also find extremely unrealistic to be able to raise the infinite infantry as long as you have IPC. Like getting 12 or 13 inf. a turn. At some point you run out of men who can fight.

[ajgundam5]

Well that’s why it’s called a game :-)

[cyan]

@Admiral_Thrawn:

Baghdaddy, I agree with what you are saying but, I also find extremely unrealistic to be able to raise the infinite infantry as long as you have IPC. Like getting 12 or 13 inf. a turn. At some point you run out of men who can fight.

okay the population fit for man service is about 20%. 54,609,050 /300,000,000 this is only males btw https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Military.

the poulation of the us in 1940 was 132,164,569. .2(132,164,569) = 26,432,914. with 100,000 sized infantry(about 2.5 time the size of a corp) then you would yeild 264 infantry foe the us for the whole game. this is not. inculding rreplacements.

2,143,873(number reaching military age anually for 2005)/300,000,000(pop) = .71%

.007*132,164,569(pop 1940)=925,152 thats 9 infantry a year. a year is 4 turns( 3 months). that is 2 infantry increase for the next 72 rounds uninterpated. (18 years)

the war ended in august 1945. thats about 12 turns. or 9 turns for 4 month turns. 
if you added up all the infantry of the us would you come close to there being 275 infantry for the whole game? (264+24=288) thisd is not inculding the fact 100,000 men dead is way more than one dead infantry.

[cyan]

@cyan:

@Admiral_Thrawn:

Baghdaddy, I agree with what you are saying but, I also find extremely unrealistic to be able to raise the infinite infantry as long as you have IPC. Like getting 12 or 13 inf. a turn. At some point you run out of men who can fight.

okay the population fit for man service is about 20%. 54,609,050 /300,000,000 this is only males btw https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Military.

the poulation of the us in 1940 was 132,164,569. .2(132,164,569) = 26,432,914. with 100,000 sized infantry(about 2.5 time the size of a corp) then you would yeild 264 infantry foe the us for the whole game. this is not. inculding rreplacements.

2,143,873(number reaching military age anually for 2005)/300,000,000(pop) = .71%

.007*132,164,569(pop 1940)=925,152 thats 9 infantry a year. a year is 4 turns( 3 months). that is 2 infantry increase for the next 72 rounds uninterpated. (18 years)

the war ended in august 1945. thats about 12 turns. or 9 turns for 4 month turns. 
if you added up all the infantry of the us would you come close to there being 275 infantry for the whole game? (264+24=288) thisd is not inculding the fact 100,000 men dead is way more than one dead infantry.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=7302.0
I hope you don’t meind darthmaximus and Fox but i’m using your game. it berlin would of fallen on round 11 so average and allies owo. just what i’m looking for. 6 inf for america to start with exculding china. then all subsent inf purchases. us went 9 times game ended on japan 10.

6+ (6,9,5,0,8,2,6,4,5)+ (lets say all 44ipcs wnet to inf. on round 10) that would be 14 inf.

65 inf for the whole game. nowhere close to the 275 inf limit. 200 inf off to be excat or 4 times the amount. i think inf rescritions shouldn’t exist because if there needed your playing way too long.

[Coronel Cool]

Imperious leader:

an army would be made up of 15 divisions ( with 10,000 men each so thats 150,000 but its still to high and some units are just not gonna fit really any consistent system because the game was not designed that way. It was a balanced idea on deployment rather than historical.

I’m quite sure a full German infantry division at WW2 was much more than 10.000 men, rather 16.000-18.000 men, and consequently I believe the average German field army (at least before combat) was very much bigger than 150.000 soldiers. The average German Army corps was about 60.000- 120.000, more or less the size of a russian army.  The Russian equivalent to a German army was called a “front” and could number as much as 350.000 men. I also believe The German 6th army at Stalingrad initially numbered 200.000-300.000 men. Tell me if I am wrong.

Baghdaddy:

We should not assume that a “destroyed” army is actually representing 100,000’s of men dead.  It more accurately is the destruction of war materials and disruption of the organization that is what most quickly removed combat units from the front line.  2% to 3% causualties were enough to get most combat units looking for R&R.  10% casualties would be enough to make most units static and unable to do much more than hold ground.  Casualty rates higher than that would generally be the end of the unit but the “elements” of the unit would still be individually functioning and could often be pulled back together in R&R to rebuild the unit.

I think this sounds very reasonable to me, which is why I suggested that the visible inf-unit may be interpreted as the elite front-division of the corps it represents. Losing this front-division the corps would eigther be pulled back for reinforcement (symbolized by a newly purchased inf) or pinned down, unable to make offensive action (thus symbolized  only by the territory colour).

AJGundam:

Well that’s why it’s called a game

He,he, yes A&A is a game alright, but unlike e.g. RISK it is nevertheless designed to follow WW2-history more or less accurately.

Have you guys ever tried playing the CD-rom game? In this game the odds are very much manipulated to make the game even closer to WW2 history. Example: Even though the odds should be exactly equal, it sure seems UK will almost NEVER lose the bomber in the first SBR on Germany, where as Germany will almost ALWAYS lose the bomber in a first SBR on UK. So to win in the cd-r game one could say that knowledge of WW2 history seems more helpful than actual skills in calculating the odds.