Railroad anomaly in Persia/Iran

[JimR]

When Persia/Iran initially joins the Allies, the Soviets do not have access to its rail network. But if the Axis conquers the country by capturing Tehran, the Soviets then have rail access to remaining Iranian cities (usually Tabriz) that have a connection to Soviet territory. And if the Soviets move south, recapturing Tehran and other cities, their railroad access continues.

So when Persia/Iran is an ally, the Soviets cannot use its rail network. But when Persia/Iran is conquered by the Axis, the USSR can use those parts of Iran's rail network that the USSR still controls or that it later conquers.

This is not a game-changer, or even a bug, but it is odd.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

This is the same "rule" as for Romania when turning Allies. Since USSR can't control minor powers it means that Persia will be part of the western Allies. So cities there will be Allied. If Persia is alive then Russia can only liberate cities for the western Allies. Once Persia is conquered Russia will claim the territory for themselves.

We added code so Russia can't use the western Allies rail network and vice versa. It was made for 2 reasons. One is that the rail gauge in Russia is broad gauge while it's standard gauge in most of Europe. When Russia conquers cities they convert the gauge to their own type. If they liberate cities the rail gauge will be kept.

The other, and most important, reason is that before we made the change we frequently saw the western Allies rail Allied units to southern Russia in case of Case Blue or vice versa if the Germans moved towards Iraq and Persia. That made it much harder for the Germans to get anywhere. It's not historical because you couldn't easily rail units from Iraq through Persia to Russia. So this change was mainly a game balance change, but also a historical issue in the Middle East.

For the Allies to send units to Russia they need to rail to a city near the border and move by foot across the border to get inside the Russian rail network. And vice versa.

It doesn't happen often that this becomes an issue. If it happens in central Europe it means Germany is about to fall anyway.