From: Nich Hills Subject: COMP: RUSSIA The Great War in the East 1941-1945 by SSG. [LONG] A recent update to Web Grognards had a pointer to Apple Emulator's Wargame Pages at http://www.concentric.net/~evin/a2war Pointing my browser there, I was delighted to discover disk images of SSG's RUSSIA The Great War in the East 1941-1945. This is a game I have owned for many years, but have not played recently as my Apple ][+ is no longer set up. I have since enjoyed several games on my PC. RUSSIA was never developed for the PC, but can now be played on the PC with the new range of Apple Emulators. A disclaimer. I have no idea what the legal position is if you play RUSSIA on the PC without buying an Apple or Commodore version. You may not even be able to *buy* a copy of RUSSIA from SSG any more. For details, their e-mail address can be found at http://www.ssg.com.au. The documentation that comes with this game is of a high quality and is recommended. A further disclaimer. Apple emulators come with electronic copies of the Apple ][ ROMs. These may be copyrighted. If you don't own an Apple ][ you may wish to check with Apple Corp to see what the legal position is. ABOUT RUSSIA The map goes from Zagreb and Berlin in the west to Grozny and Kazan in the east. Berlin is 24 hexes from Moscow. Each turn is one quarter of a month - approximately one week. There are also monthly strategic turns. The game comes with three scenarios and a campaign game. A game editor allows you to produce your own scenarios and campaigns. The map can *not* be edited. The Leningrad scenario is a good learning tool before tackling the campaign game. I can't really recommend the other two scenarios. 'Counters' on the map are Korps for the Axis and Armies for the Soviets. The game keeps track divisions, but these are attached to Korps or higher level command structures. Losses are calculated at the regimental level; damaged divisions that do not receive replacements will eventually be amalgamated with other damaged divisions. The game also keeps track of air and ground support points. An air support point corresponds to about 50 planes; a ground support point is a non-divisional unit like an artillery or combat engineer regiment, or an assault gun battalion. Higher level command structures include Armees for the Axis and Fronts for the Soviets. All Korps/Armies belong to Armees/Fronts. The Armee HQ occupies a city. On the offensive an Armee is given an objective a nearby city and its Korps manoeuvre towards that city. On the defensive an Armee's Korps will try to move to defensive positions within 2 hexes of the HQ. Armees can be reassigned to different friendly cities within seven hexes by the player. The computer will also occasionally reassign an Armee to any friendly city on the map, possibly belonging to a different Army Group. Above Armees/Fronts there are Army Groups/Theatres. There are three per side, Army Groups North, Centre and South for the Axis and Theatres A, B and C for the Soviets. Each Army Group/Theatre has territory, basically cities, it is 'responsible' for. Responsibility is either to defend or capture the city. That is, every city on the map has an assigned Theatre and Army Group. Borders between Army Groups is handled logically yet historically. An Armee of an Army Group can operate out of, or attack, a neighbouring Army Group's city, but only if the city is directly connected by rail to a city of the Armee's own Army Group. Example: Dvinsk is an objective of Army Group Centre. Dvinsk has a direct rail connection to Velikie Luki, an objective of Army Group North. Army Group North's 4th Panzer Armee can have Dvinsk as an objective. Above Army Groups/Theatres are OKH and Stavka. On each strategic turn OKH and Stavka set postures (Attack, Normal and Defend) for each Army Group Theatre in the coming month. The also reallocate divisions, air support points and ground support points between the Army Groups' reserves and allocate reinforcements. OKH has an additional responsibility of juggling forces between OKW in the west and forces in the east. Fewer forces in the west means a higher rate of attrition and a possible early end to the war. More forces in the west means bonus victory points, but at what cost to the main event? Korps/Armees and every level up are rated individually for administration and supply. High values are good. Being on a high state of readiness and battles lower administrative and supply values. Being out-of-supply lowers supply values. Units with low admin and supply values fight worse and are more vulnerable. HOW DOES IT PLAY? The above makes RUSSIA sound like a complex game. It isn't. The computer handles most of the complexity. The computer can also take on the role of Stavka, OKH, and/or one or more of the Army Groups/Theatres. In a player turn a player has some simple options. A Korps adjacent to an Army can Retreat, Defend, Probe or Attack. Each Korps can have 0-7 air support points allocated to it, if available from the Army Group; and 0-7 ground support points if available from the Armee. (A Soviet Army gets both air and ground support points from it's parent Front, but up to 15 ground support points). A Korps that is not adjacent to the enemy can either Hold or Deploy. In a player turn, Armees/Fronts are also given orders: Main Effort, Normal or Rest. Main Effort allows an enemy city to be targeted as an objective of the Armee and its Korps. Main effort chews up supply and administration. Normal is what it says. Normal is good for defending. Normal is also the only posture that allows the Armee HQ to be voluntarily moved to another city. Rest is good for restoring supply and admin levels. Korps in an Armee are reduced to skeleton levels - typically only two divisions. Ground support points are moved away from an Armee at rest (a Front at rest will also have many of its air support points reallocated). Korps belonging to an Armee at Rest are *very* vulnerable in a combat situation. So, each Korps has either two or four options each turn. An Armee has three. There is no direct, player controlled movement of Korps. An experienced player in command of all three Army Groups or Theatres can complete a turn in two to five minutes. Against a computer opponent, a 47 month, 185 turn game can be completed in 6-8 hours. As commander of, say Theatre B, with computer colleagues guarding your flanks, you can fight the campaign in as little as two hours. Other special features include Soviet surprise, which makes the first few months of the war a 'happy time' for the Axis; and first winter, which makes Dec 41 to Feb 42 an unhappy time for the Axis. The game editor allows either of these to be toggled on or off. TWO PROBLEMS This is IMHO the strategic wargame with some of the most exiting concepts I have encountered. Unfortunately it has two major problems. Firstly, the AI is defective, unusually so for an SSG game. The AI is overly aggressive, and makes too many 'low odds' attacks. These may be justifiable in a scenario, but the computer plays the campaign poorly. When playing as the Soviets against the computer, I make it my goal to capture Berlin by the Summer of '43. Secondly, there is a bug in the game. This is a game produced in the days before software companies issued patches. (Besides, how on earth do you issue a patch for a program on a copy- protected diskette?). The bug has to do with supply handling at Army Group/Theatre level. An superior unit with lots of 'busy' subordinate units should have its supply and admin values drop. This does not happen for an Army Group/Theatre with lots of subordinate Armees/Fronts on Main Effort. However, the AI acts as if this rule were implemented. The result is an AI that is slightly more passive than it needs to be. CONCLUSION There are many features in RUSSIA that will be recognisable to players of SSG's Battlefront and Decisive Battles of the ACW family of games. RUSSIA is a very streamlined, elegant strategic game that eschews the micromanagement of, say, Gary Grigsby's War in Russia. The game is let down by AI that just isn't up to SSG's usual standard. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable game that bears several playthroughs. It can also be played hot-seat against another human player. I would dearly love to see SSG tackle this topic again with and enhanced, PC version of RUSSIA. Nich Hills nhills@actonline.com.au