To make things a bit more fun for our group, I’ve decided to keep a log of each nation’s turn from start to finish, recording what they purchased, their attacks, kills, losses, non-combat moves, any gains and ending IPC for that particular round.
It gives you a sense of, A) the huge amount of casulaties that take place in a single round and B) how many times a chunk of blood-soaked land is exchanged between two nations (primarily the Soviets and Germans).
What I’m trying to decide is how long is a 5-round turn? And also, how many infantry, tanks, airplanes and aircraft carrier pieces represent numbers?
The way we have it now, one 5-round turn in the game is one season of a year. Thus, 4 turns equals a year. Another buddy of mine likes to play one round as an entire year, which seems pretty quick to me.
As for numbers, an “infantry” piece could represent anywhere from 500 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 50,000 troops.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I believe that each turn is really 6 months. All infantry/armored formations are individual armies which are about 3-5 corps sized formations. Note: each corp is itself 3-6 divisions. Each plane is about 1,000 planes, while in naval terms the following seem appropriate:
battleship=3-4 battleships, plus supporting ships
destroyer=25 destroyers
subs=25-35 subs
carriers=3-4 carriers
transports=250 merchant ships
Wow… that’s even larger than I anticipated. So each infantry piece is 3-5 corps. How many men would that be?
For an example of the loss of life, last night Germany launched four attacks in the Soviet Caucaus, Karela and Belarussia areas, plus Rommel thrust across the Suez Canal and claimed Trans-Jordan. In the aftermath, Germany “killed” 7 Russian infantry pieces, 2 Russian tank pieces and 1 artillery piece, as well as 1 man, 1 tank and 1 plane from the UK. German “losses” in these four attacks (all successful) were 6 infantry pieces, and 2 fighters.
Total losses for these four battles? If each infantry “piece” is 50,000 men, then the Soviets and Germans combined lost 650,000 soldiers (plus UK’s 50,000 men under Monty in Egypt).
Epic battles, indeed!
Well if the game started june 22 1941 by the end of that year on the eastern front the soviets would lose about a million men, while germany lost 100,000. It gets worse every 6 months after that. Taking Berlin cost the Soviets as many as 500,000. At Stalingrad germany lost about 24 divisions=235,000 men.
Well, IPCs represent “X million man-hours of industrial production.” So just think of approximately how many soldiers you could equip and arm with 3 million man-hours of production… or how many tanks you could build with 5 million. That might put it into perspective a little bit.
