New Ideas for CEaW Grand Strategy

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Everything we've done can be turned on or off from general.txt so people who don't like some of the changes can play with a modded general.txt.

Other changes are:
* You can no longer see the cargo of the enemy transports.
* Transports who can invade will have an anchor symbol (NATO) or a LST image while other transports will look like a convoy
* Corps, mech and armor can invade, but with much lower strength than the unit inside. Tech in surface ships will increase the
Ground attack, Shock attack and quality of the amph. When the amph lands the unit will get back the normal strength. This
simulates that amphibious landings were very bloody.

Playtesting has shown that attacking defenders with amphs without first bombarding them heavily is not a good idea. You get e. g. odds like 1:6 or 2:6 against mechs in 1944 and retreat is very unlikely. Against garrisons you get odds like 3:3 and still not likely with retreats. If you first bombard the defenders down to orange or red you get odds like 2:3 against the mech and 3:1 or 3:0 against the garrison. The mech can retreat maybe in 1 of 3 chances while the garrison will most often retreat.

So this means it's smarter to not use garrisons as cheap coastal defenders if the enemy has full air superiority. Every invasion attack will consume an invasion point so if you don't pick your targets you will run out of points and have to pay 35 PP's for the first over use, 70 PP's for the second and so on.

So amps will probably be used to finish off very depleted costal defenders and maybe allow another unit to land in the empty hex or land if no others can land.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Another change added (at the request of several players and to slightly counter the bigger Allied invasion threat) is that the Maginot fortresses will be dismantled and slowly moved to the Atlantic Wall.

Strasbourg is turned from fortress to city when France surrenders.
Brest and Nantes will become fortresses in July 1942
Rouen, Calais (clear hex) and Antwerp will become fortresses in July 1943
Bordeaux and Cherbourg will become fortresses in July 1944 (so the Allies need to hurry to get to Cherbourg in time to avoid fighting a fortress).

This means that the Allies will have to plan their invasion to get a port to increase supply from level 1 to 3. With amphs they have a better chance,
but they need to have air range to bombard the coastal defenders enough to get ashore if completely blocked.

All changes above can be changed dependent upon the result of playtesting. That can be done by altering general.txt.

None of the changes will invalidate any save games so it's possible to implement the changes in v1.10 in existing games.

People who would like to help with playtesting can send a PM to Ronnie with your email address so he can send the needed files. Please notice that if you introduce the new files you need alternate file locations to have v1.06 in one area and v1.10 in another area

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The change about not being able to see the enemy transport cargo means there is no longer any need to rename the transports to fake or hide the content.

Please notice that you will see if the transport is amph capable or not due to the amph having different symbols from the other transports.

This functionality can be turned off in general.txt if both players would like to know everything about the enemy unit transports.

[ncali]

Everything we've done can be turned on or off from general.txt so people who don't like some of the changes can play with a modded general.txt.

Both players would have to be in agreement about this. Will you receive a message if your general.txt activation does not match your opponents?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Everything we've done can be turned on or off from general.txt so people who don't like some of the changes can play with a modded general.txt.

Both players would have to be in agreement about this. Will you receive a message if your general.txt activation does not match your opponents?

Yes you will. Then you get the checksum error message. If you alter the general.txt file to the one your opponent has then you see this message just once. When you don't see the checksum error message anymore you know your opponent is using the same file as you do.

[Plaid]

About Atlantic Wall, maybe its worthy to give an axis player right to choose, if he wants system of atlantic forts or PPs?
Its a bit more logical, because construction of fort system is resource consuming, and if situation is really bad (major defeat in russia in '41 winter, for example) resources are wery unlikely to be used to build forts in france.
Also if things go to good (england sealion'ed for example) construction of forts is pointless aswell.

[TotalerKrieg]

About Atlantic Wall, maybe its worthy to give an axis player right to choose, if he wants system of atlantic forts or PPs?
Its a bit more logical, because construction of fort system is resource consuming, and if situation is really bad (major defeat in russia in '41 winter, for example) resources are wery unlikely to be used to build forts in france.
Also if things go to good (england sealion'ed for example) construction of forts is pointless aswell.

Good point Plaid. Another proposal would be to allow the Axis player the choice of where he wants the forts to be placed as they come available. That way forts could be placed according to the strategic situation and would add variability between games.

[Plaid]

About Atlantic Wall, maybe its worthy to give an axis player right to choose, if he wants system of atlantic forts or PPs?
Its a bit more logical, because construction of fort system is resource consuming, and if situation is really bad (major defeat in russia in '41 winter, for example) resources are wery unlikely to be used to build forts in france.
Also if things go to good (england sealion'ed for example) construction of forts is pointless aswell.

Good point Plaid. Another proposal would be to allow the Axis player the choice of where he wants the forts to be placed as they come available. That way forts could be placed according to the strategic situation and would add variability between games.

If things go this far, both sides should be able to construct forts at places they like (time and resource very consuming for sure) , if it can be done at all.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

That can be harder to code because it means we need a new type to purchase and make code for placement of the fortress etc. You can alter the setup hexes in general.txt. The Maginot fortress guns were dismantled and placed along the French coast before the Axis knew where Overlord would take place. So they protected the most important ports first. Building forts would take a lot of time and it's hard to make the build be done according to the combat situation. It's hard to know where the Allied player will send his amphs 6 turns in advance. So you have to guess and place accordingly.

That's what we've done. There were some fortifications in open hexes between the ports, but they were not so fomidable so they can become fortresses. These fortifications are simulated by entrenchments.

Several of the French port fortresses held out till the end of the war like the ones in St. Nazaire (Nantes) and Rochelle (Bordeaux). The Walcheren fortresses protecting the entrance to Antwerp were one of the most heavily fortified areas along the entire Atlantic wall.

So I think we've managed to pick the normal places to place the fortresses. Their purpose is to deny the Allies supply. The Axis didn't know the Allies would bring their own supply via mulberries.

[gerones]

About Atlantic Wall, maybe its worthy to give an axis player right to choose, if he wants system of atlantic forts or PPs?
Its a bit more logical, because construction of fort system is resource consuming, and if situation is really bad (major defeat in russia in '41 winter, for example) resources are wery unlikely to be used to build forts in france.
Also if things go to good (england sealion'ed for example) construction of forts is pointless aswell.

I think it does not have much to do a failed Barbarossa in 1941 with not being able to build a defensive line in the Atlantic. And, keep in mind that many of the batteries and defensive systems in Atlantic wall were set up by dismantling french Maginot line. So might be that the cost in resources for building the Atlantic wall was not excessively high. And we are introducing an historical effect to the game.

What I´ve to say is that with the new fortresses in France, it might be a good idea to make less formidable the Sigfried line as it was done the same with the Ostwall.

[Plaid]

I offer to do something with air units, because they (especially late ones) are extremely resilent, when attacked by ground units.





(all 6 attacks here done, still bomber lost only 4 steps, its better then any fort)

Ofcourse weak marines have no chance to damage this bomber, so fighters blocking beaches will be still with us.

[Plaid]

And another idea here - expanding map and adding honest northern route for soviet consoys (Murmansk - Archangelsk), aswell as adding soviet northern fleet DDs, trying to protect this convoys, like they did historically. It will add another naval field of battle, and maybe we will not see USSR ignoring ASW any more, who knows...
Unsure, if it is doable though, because require map expanding.

[rkr1958]

And another idea here - expanding map and adding honest northern route for soviet consoys (Murmansk - Archangelsk), aswell as adding soviet northern fleet DDs, trying to protect this convoys, like they did historically. It will add another naval field of battle, and maybe we will not see USSR ignoring ASW any more, who knows...
Unsure, if it is doable though, because require map expanding.

The map size and the time period are two parameters that Johan will not allow us to modify.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I've changed the code for v1.10 so the survivability of defending air units against attacking ground or naval units is set to 5. I tried it in the 1944 scenario and even strategic bombers with survivability 9 were destroyed after 3 attacks. Expected odds were 4:0 or 3:0.

So I think this change will make it less lucrative to use air units to block land attacks.

An alternative would be to halve the survivability for air units vs land and naval units, but then they become very vulnerable on ground early in the war. So I think initially it's not a problem. It only becomes a problem with high survivabilty from techs (usually past 1943). So a max of 5 seems ok to me. Comments?

[rkr1958]

I've changed the code for v1.10 so the survivability of defending air units against attacking ground or naval units is set to 5. I tried it in the 1944 scenario and even strategic bombers with survivability 9 were destroyed after 3 attacks. Expected odds were 4:0 or 3:0.

So I think this change will make it less lucrative to use air units to block land attacks.

An alternative would be to halve the survivability for air units vs land and naval units, but then they become very vulnerable on ground early in the war. So I think initially it's not a problem. It only becomes a problem with high survivabilty from techs (usually past 1943). So a max of 5 seems ok to me. Comments?

I like it. Air units should have some defensive value due to their ground crews but shouldn't be supermen especially when it comes to defending against amphibious invasions. No I think we're going to see more realistic invasion combat.

[_Augustus_]

Hi,

How about the survivability of defending air units against attacking ground or naval units is reduced by the Air combat level of the attacker(or some multiple of it)? Like the antitank vs armour.

No, I am not familar with the common levels of Air combat and Survivability at various times during the war, so I can't comment on what sort survivablity levels for combat this would result. But this is just an idea that would take unit abilities into account rather than just use an arbitrary number.

_augustus_

[ncali]

Overall, I like Stauffenberg's suggestion. I do tend to think of air as being almost like paratroopers when used in the role Plaid suggests. But currently, that stratair would have been one incredible paratrooper.

[TotalerKrieg]

I do tend to think of air as being almost like paratroopers when used in the role Plaid suggests.

I think I may be in the minority here but I have to say I don't see why we need strong ground survivability values for fighters/tacs/strats. In my opinion, they should have values similar to garrisons which would acknowledge the presence of associated ground troops like Luftwaffe infantry but also that they aren't strong ground divisions. I don't think that attacking an airforce unit with an armored division should only get 2:0 or 4:0 odds where you get much better odds attacking just about everything else. Such a system, as others have mentioned, just leads to non-historical gaming scenarios where the airforce units are used to shield retreats, block beaches, or litter France with USAF/RAF units in partisan cleared hexes when Overlord is underway. Might it be possible, if it is desired to keep the paratrooper functionality, that the added paratrooper survivability only apply to one airforce unit like strats and not the others?

[Plaid]

I think I may be in the minority here but I have to say I don't see why we need strong ground survivability values for fighters/tacs/strats. In my opinion, they should have values similar to garrisons which would acknowledge the presence of associated ground troops like Luftwaffe infantry but also that they aren't strong ground divisions. I don't think that attacking an airforce unit with an armored division should only get 2:0 or 4:0 odds where you get much better odds attacking just about everything else.

Totally agree. Afterall naval divisions also have numerous crews, but they simple disappear, when you capture port.
So why various airfield services should have any chance against even simple corps - they are few in numbers and have no heavy weapons at all, except some airfield flacks.

[BuddyGrant]

I think I may be in the minority here but I have to say I don't see why we need strong ground survivability values for fighters/tacs/strats. In my opinion, they should have values similar to garrisons which would acknowledge the presence of associated ground troops like Luftwaffe infantry but also that they aren't strong ground divisions. I don't think that attacking an airforce unit with an armored division should only get 2:0 or 4:0 odds where you get much better odds attacking just about everything else.

Totally agree. Afterall naval divisions also have numerous crews, but they simple disappear, when you capture port.
So why various airfield services should have any chance against even simple corps - they are few in numbers and have no heavy weapons at all, except some airfield flacks.

I agree as well. IMO placement of air units has to be one of those high risk/high reward decisions that make games like this interesting. An airfield should be very vulnerable, this is not a defensive land unit regardless of how many kitchen staff are given guns. With no support from other ground units, it should not be able to survive 2 attacks from a corps size land force, never mind 3 or 4 attacks.