Yet another problem...I think.

[unmerged(16031)]

Sorry for the new thread, but I didn't know where to place this, as it isn't exactly a bug...

Anyways, in my game the year is now 1921, and the war is still on. Needless to say, the amount of divisions is quite high. So, as Russia I just launched my summer offensive, and found out following problem:
I attacked one of the german provinces, which was defended by ~30 german divisions. I attacked with about 170 divisions, however at first there were only 30 of my divisions fighting it out with the 30 german divisions, and the fighting was somewhat equal. Now, once the rest of my divisions appeared the germans were slaughtered quickly. So, I continued the attack to the next province, which was defended by about 80 divisions, again they got slaughtered, while my casualties were minimal.

And when I say minimal I do mean it. The Germans lost about 6000 strenght in that battle, while I only lost something around 500-700 hundred. And the odds were only 2 to 1...

I think I know what causes it, but just to be sure you need to ask Mithel, Mathguy etc. people who have 'researched' this. It can be fixed by setting the defence for all units into 999.


EDIT:
I continued the offensive and rolled up the whole german line, capturing 5 provinces. My casualties thus far are total of 3-4000 strengh(300-400 manpower), while germans have lost about 100 full divisions, and god knows how much strenght in total.

 

[unmerged(16031)]

My offensive has reached Berlin. Germany has so far lost about 220 divisions; I have about 250 divisions taking part in the offensive in total. And what is strange, is that none of those divisions have been destroyed by encircling them, they all died fighting to the last man. My casualties are now about 400 manpower.

 

[unmerged(16031)]

Well, well, well.

So, I went to an all out assault and the war ended in 1922. In the end my divisions amounted to 400 as I raised some new and brought in all those that had been fighting against AH. I threw them all against Germany, always trying to get at least 2 against 1 odds. Result: Germany had 600 divisions at the start of the offensive, and when the offensive(and the war) ended it had 100 left. Some of those were destroyed by my allies, but vast majority died in the hands of the russian hordes. So what did I lose? Well, since the offensive begun I hadn't reinforced any of my units, so I simply placed them all on one province, clicked the merge button and reinforced: cost me 1600 manpower. So the casualty odds, that is if we only count the destroyed german divisions not those that they lost in the battles but later reinforced, were 1 to 4,6. Quite good.

 

[unmerged(16031)]

I checked the German technology level and now i remember what causes this.

Each 'defense' point has a certain chance of stopping an attack, but if the unit has more 'soft attack' points than the enemy unit has 'defense' points, all those extra attack points go straight trough.

Here is an example:
Side 1 has 10 soft attack
Side 2 has 12 defense

Now, in a normal battle(10 vs 5 division etc) it's allright and there are no drastic effects, but if out up big numbers the casualties start to mount up real fast. For example:
Side 1 has 200 divisions = 200 * 10 = 2000 soft attack
Side 2 has 100 divisions = 100 * 12 = 1200 defense
That means that 800 'attacks' go straight trough...

Now im still not sure if I got it right, so you better ask someone who knows. That is if you want to do something about this.

 

[Allenby]

Is this something to do with the Ground Defence Efficiency matter that Copper Niccus raised about five months ago? Apparently, any problems arising from that were fixed in 1.06.

 

[unmerged(16031)]

Nope(I think), I suggest you look at Mithels mod(Starfire Historical mod) so that you undrestand what I am trying to explain.

 

[Gwalcmai]

No, the efficiency (GDE) issue was that the values attributed to that variable affected the game in the opposite way that people expected it to, IIRC.

What Perkele is talking about is the "dogpile effect" that Mithel tried to avoid with his mod. What happens is that when the defense value of a side is outstripped by the attack value of the other, the casualties rise quite a lot. Using the example of 10 SA, 10 defense:
The SA is the same as the defense, so each attack point has a certain chance to cause damage (usually this is 0.2, but it relates to GDE). Using the standard value, of those 10 SA 2 will get through, each causing a certain amount of damage (can't remember how much, say 1% each). The defender takes 2% casualties. But if the defender is facing 2:1 odds, then the attacker has 20 SA against the defender's 10 defense. The first 10 attacks happen normally, with the same result of 2 going through. But the other 10 attack points are completely unblocked, and all go through. Instead of taking 2% casualties/hour, the defender is taking 12%, and gets killed really fast.

Usually this is offset by the low efficiencies of the attacking side. If you have 20% attack efficiency and the SA and defense values are the same, you need to outnumber the enemy 5:1 to reach the "dogpile point". But if things level out a bit, you get what Perkele got: the outnumbered defender taking massive casualties.

 

[Allenby]

Wonderful. What would be a reasonable solution?

 

[MegaPIMP]

Raising defence for all combat units to something really high I belive, at least that was what Mithel did.

 

[Allenby]

Raising defence for all combat units to something really high I belive, at least that was what Mithel did.

Would a unit with defensive abilities of 995 perform markedly better than those with a defence rating of 990? And would be the effect on a unit with attack attributes of 8, for example?