Give Russia a port city on the northern coast

Carking the 6th wrote:

You made quite a few assumptions there… the far east would have likely had 4-5 million people, yes, but it’s far colder, and there were railways here, just not the trans Siberian. If anything it was closer and easier to reach. Even then, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk had much larger populations than most Swedish cities in the game did. You are completely wrong about their strategic value, you’re just repeating the same, incorrect point. Murmansk literally today hosts a multitude of Russian nuclear submarines and about 1000 of Russias arsenal of nuclear weapons. Historically, much of lend lease and Soviet trade in general shifted to these two ports, especially Arkhangelsk in WW2. Lend lease, while it wasn’t crucial to win the war, helped the Soviet Union massively, strengthened their military and had a much larger overall effect than most other cities (you’ve yet to give a good alternative.) in the USSR have. The only good replacement city would of course be Sevastopol, with most other options being nearly pointless and less important, but elsewise these cities had huge effect. They had massive strategic value, that’s why the Germans wanted to take it. By the way, the northern fleet did have an effect in ww2 as well. It served as a foil to Finnish, even blockading them at times. It protected and sank many convoys. It caused thousands of German casualties when retreating from Leningrad and other liberated cities. It served major roles in the 50’s (which this game encompasses) growing massively in size and importance. By the way, the Northern fleet is currently the largest of all of Russia’s fleets! Bigger than the Pacific, Baltic or even Black Sea fleets. The Northern fleet and its main operating centers of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk are important, were important, and should have the potential to be important in game.

West of the Urals would also have their own railways connecting them to the north, giving them just as much access, these railways are just not as well known since they are much shorter and less important to the region there. Another thing, Baku only had a population ranging from 200k-800k at the time, not really dwarfing those other two cities.

Modern North West Russia has a population of 14 million today. Since Russia had 107 million people in 1940 compared to 144 million, we have to reduce that proportion by about 35 percent. That gives us 9.1 million. Subtract 3 million from Leningrad and we have roughly 6 million people, which stands similar to Sweden’s population at the time, but with 2-3 cities rather than the 5/6 held by Sweden. Sounds fair enough to me lol.

Sevastopol and Baku were very important to the USSR, but not important enough to warrant replacing these cities. It would be better to just add these in if anything in a larger map with more overall cities, changing the map is very hard. But moving on, these two cities would not need to replace Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, but rather they should replace much less important cities than those if anything, such as the city in Sakhalin and Batumi.

Sure, the game doesn’t completely show convoy tactics, but technically you can still do that by landing there if needed. Convoys do exist in the game even if they aren’t that important… point was it proves that these cities held importance. Furthermore, I could argue that a lot of what you’re saying such as the importance of Baku and Sevastopol are incorrect, as you couldn’t really have the oil or Baku and importance of the port of Sevastopol either. Finally, the Northern fleet actually overtook the Black Sea even in the Cold War. By 1986 over half of Soviet submarines belonged to the Northern fleet. It also was the site of the first Soviet nuclear submarine in 1958. It would fall off under the collapse before being arrived and retaking its mantle in the 2000’s. Point is that this fleet, based in Murmansk, shows how important these cities were and became, even in the game’s timeframe. You shouldn’t remove these cities, which barely even affect the game as is, because of the false pretense that their existence is pointless! They had a large role, and made up for their smaller population by doing a huge service to the Union both during and after the war.

Although there must have been some railways east of the Urals before the Trans Siberian Railway, nothing on that scale had been built before, and there was no continuous rail connection between them. There were roads, but they were too cold to be safe to travel on in the winter and in the summer, they were still difficult to traverse, due to their bad condition and lack of paving. Baku had a population of 793,000 people in 1950, which in my words does dwarf 270,000 and 300,000. As I have already said, I do not believe that Sevastopol or Baku should replace both of the two northern cites, but rather that one of them should be replaced, still making it possible for a northern fleet to be produced.

Though convoys could land in these cities, and these cities were important for resupplying in real life, as CoW has no supply system, thats not relivant and the units can land in any old province. That the Baltic fleet had managed to keep itself ahead of the Northern fleet until 1986, really shows how important it was to have warm water ports. It was very inconvienient for them to have to pass through the Skakgarak if they wished to pass their fleet westward. Despite this, they still maintained most of their fleet in the Baltic. Though they both did great services, one of them on their own could do so in CoW. I believe that the strategic importantce of these warm water ports, especially Sevastapol, would be far more.

Most concise forum discussion:

You notice how Murmansk and Arkhangelsk are both major parts of this railway line? They even existed before many other newly built ones. This shows how important it was to Russian trade, since this was built so long ago… Arkhangelsk gives goods for a reason on game, that being its high importance as a trading hub. Murmansk of course is important as well, being the largest city in the north, capital of its own oblast and home of the Northern fleet.

1950 is not the best time to use, tbh. Baku only grew during more recent times, for decades prior it was far less important and even at that time it served only a purpose of oil, with there being little other industry. Replacing one city just to cripple Russia’s northern capacity is foolish, it has a very strong ability that would only grow to build ships there. One port is not a good representation of their potential.

Where did you learn that it took until 1986? It has long surpassed the Baltic fleet earlier than that, I was saying it surpassed all other fleets COMBINED in Submarine count and likely other factors as well. As an appeal to authority, the Bytro devs who made the whole map likely researched all these ideas and decided that these cities should be included instead. Perhaps it was because Ukraine, would have too many cities, they didn’t think they were important as you do, or 5000 other things, but I think that shows that the current state was done for a reason. No one even builds a northern fleet, so what’s the point of cutting out this possibility anyway? Either way I remember hearing that city changes aren’t gonna happen any time soon, so this idea would be dead on arrival.

noblebright wrote:

This would be increadibly unrealistic, as Russia's north coast is unusable in real life due to the freezing in the winter. I dont see why Bytro would wish to further unbalence the game in an unrealistic manner.

I remember us asking Freezy about something along the lines of different sea terrain. Issue is the way the code it written apparently makes it extra donation difficult to do such a thing…