Hexaboo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 11:36 pm
Maus crushing the Hollywood sign perhaps would be too tacky,
Or too provocative.
Hexaboo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 11:36 pmEven a set of slides with voiceover, and maybe a few statistics for the entire campaign would do the trick.
My guess would be that if they address it at all , ( for all I know , programming it into the game after the fact is easier said than done ? ) This is pretty much , generally , exactly what they will do. Some kind of narrow and specific focus on statistics , your core , the campaigns your core participated in , and the hardware your core used.
I wish they would include your characters picture and name somewhere in there. I suppose it is an eccentric and minority taste , but I spent 30 minutes or an hour picking out a portrait and name for my general. ( Including an elaborate biography for the character , and a back story for my army.
)
But you never see the portrait or name again in the game.
Hexaboo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 11:36 pm I'll definitely turn my attention to the Mediterranean theatre, probably reviewing it as an alternative to Barbarossa; there's certainly more than meets the eye there.
There certainly is more than meets the eye there.
I passed on Russia , frankly , because it looks intimidating. Secondly , for personal reasons that I won't go into , the very name , " Barbarossa " acutely depresses me.
And , finally , for reasons that would require a wall of text , I'm obsessed with the Mediterranean theatre and the North Afrikan campaign.
It starts out deceptively simple enough. Libya is no more involved , and no greater a scale , than Belgium or Dunkirk. Except that now you have a lot more core slots.
So , if you can't wipe the floor with the Brits in this campaign , then you are hopelessly incompetent.
Your next scenario is a defensive action ---- you have at this point never been on the defensive .
But it turns out again to be not such a big deal.
Then you get another defensive action after that. That's a bit annoying . You wonder , " Are we ever going to start making forward progress again ? "
Adding to the annoyance , Rommel keeps making threats about retreating and packing it in if you don't win and win big.
But , again , it's no big deal.
After that though , the campaign snowballs and mushrooms.
Then you have a choice ; Follow the defeatist loser Rommel to El Alameine , ( No thanks ! ) or push on to Egypt . ( Yes ! )
Well .... Egypt isn't too bad , except the British armies keep getting bigger and tougher , which means that pretty much nine out of ten actions need to be combined - arms efforts. Because , while your tanks have improved , they STILL aren't quite as good as Allied tanks.
At least , specifically Grants and Matilda's. Your shells pretty much bounce off Grants and Matilda's. You have to surround them and cut them off from supply and / or suppress them significantly. Stuka's will murder them --- but you need air supremacy to bring out the Stuka's.
Otherwise your ten strength Stuka will get busted down to a four strength Stuka , and that's no fun . Because Allied fighters really love the Stuka , except that's no compliment !
After Egypt you go to Palastine , and , admittedly , Palastine isn't too bad --- except , potentially ,
it can START in a very ugly way.
You cannot deploy all your forces in the southern deployment area , and the southern deployment area is lousy tank country anyway.
You have a northern deployment area , for an amphibious attack on Beirut. An amphibious attack on Beirut seems like a good deal.
Except your tanks cannot land and attack on the same turn , and your infantry and artillery cannot land and entrench on the same turn , and Beirut is only three or four hexes from Damascus , and there are Allied tanks and infantry in Damascus.
Without artillery support from the Italian navy offshore you are , best case scenario , going to get mauled , worst case scenario , you will get wiped out.
What's left of the British navy is a shell , but it is still there. If your Italian navy simply ignores it , your Italian navy will get chopped up . And , like I said , you very much need the Italian navy artillery support in your amphibious landing.
After Palestine you go to Iraq .
Iraq ?
Surely Iraq will be a side show and a mop - up ?
No !
Maybe it's my imagination / confirmation bias , but you seem to meet the biggest , strongest British army here. Also , the map is carved up by two major rivers , the Euphrates and Tigris , and , yes , Baghdad is carved up into three defensive islands by these rivers. Maybe you have never used Bridging pioneers before , and will never use them again ? But I see no way to win this scenario without at least one , better two , units of Bridging pioneers. Trying to bulldoze your way over the available bridges is going to be unavoidably ugly.
After that you go to Persia / Iran , and the foothills of the Caucuses . Same story here ; This is no side show or mop - up.
The British Army is smaller --- but they are joined by the Russians. The British air force is as large as ever , and it is joined by the Russian air force.
Here I thought myself wise for investing in four units of fighters back in France , and for having made the sacrifice to upgrade all four to four slot FW 190's going into Persia.
I found that all I could do was park my Stuka and Strat bomber at an airport well behind the lines doing nothing , while my fighters systematically destroyed every fighter he had , which took at least 6 turns.
In the same way , with my ground forces , in Persia , like in the previous Iraq , I took my ENTIRE army and methodically swarmed one target at a time , and prayed that I could clear the map before time ran out.
Because ANY splitting of forces only resulted in a stalemate , or a Custer's Last Stand , somewhere.
Finally you enter the Caucuses proper , and leave the British behind.
A nice story bonus here is that you are told that , while you are operating 500 or a thousand miles away , the point of this particular campaign is to relieve pressure on the 6th Army at Stalingrad , which is in imminent danger of collapse. So your mission , basically , is , " Save the boys at Stalingrad ! "
( And make Germany Oil rich , and the Russians now oil poor , by seizing the Baku oil fields. )
Like Norway , this map is terrible tank country. Unlike Norway , you certainly seem to need the tanks anyway. Like with the amphibious landing at Beirut and the employment of the Italian navy , in Palestine , there is no clear and rational choice here. Only an ambiguous compromise.
You gotta love and hate whoever made this map. It's a series of ugly bottlenecks.
Maybe the the thing to do is spend 6 or 10 precious turns climbing mountain ranges ? Otherwise , your avenue of approach , and where you are going to attack , is bloody obvious. Geez , it's like the Kursk defenses --- in the mountains .
At least I already had the four FW 109's , and his air force here is modest , and the weather is good. My air force was free - ranging by turn 5 .
Finally you go to Moscow , and presumably after that the Second Russian capitol ?
So it seems there is no avoiding Russia after all.
All of this is probably more than you wanted to know or read. But I haven't noticed a description of the North Afrika campaign here on this forum so far.
