Slitherine

Stauffenberg wrote:If the Allies DoW countries prior to US joining the the Allies then the war effort will drop by 5 per DoW. Since every war effort % counts so early in the war it can hamper the US lab builds etc.

After USA joins the Allies the penalty is lifted. The US entry time is not affected by this because the event that caused the US entry happened outside the game (Japan attacking Pearl Harbor).

Sounds relatively sensible, but I'm a little confused - will the penalty only apply to the US war effort and/or to Britain/France? Will convoy levels be unaffected? Thanks

Only to US war effort. Britain and France are already at war and the ones making the decision to invade a neutral power.

If the Allies DoW Portugal then the Spanish tungsten mine is changed to German control. Spain supports Germany with tungsten.

Ireland is changed so there are 3 garrison units in Dublin and adjacent (so sea invasion is harder). Ireland is also bumped significantly regarding partisans so if the Allies invade Ireland they will have to have some land units stationed to deal with the partisans.

Stauffenberg wrote:The US entry time is not affected by this because the event that caused the US entry happened outside the game (Japan attacking Pearl Harbor).

Somewhat. There was also the DOW by Germany and Italy on the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (and consequent state of war between Japan and the US). That made it really easy for FDR to get involved in Europe. I don't suppose there is going to be an option for Germany/Italy to decline to DOW on the US after Pearl Harbor (and I'm not suggesting there should be).

I have always maintained that Hitler's biggest blunder of the war was declaring war on the US instead of Japan. At one stroke he made victory for Germany impossible. To allow this in the game would be a real deal breaker.

I like the political changes that are being incorporated -- seems like it will add a lot of variety to the game...

I wonder if the Finish conditions can be changed though? They seem a little complicated. As detailed below, the Soviets have to be careful to avoid taking two cities before taking Helsinki. If the coding will allow it, wouldn't it be better to just have Finland offer the Soviets an armistice like France does now once the two cities are taken, which can be rejected or accepted by the Soviets?

Finland.
1. Finland will sign an armistice with USSR if 2+ cities in Finland / Estonia and <6 Axis units are present in Finland. When the armistice is signed then Finland turns to neutrality and all Finnish units as removed. All Axis and Soviet units in Finland are moved to their respective force pool. The armistice basically removes Finland from the active playing area. Finland is neutral with no units and can't be DoW'ed. That is a good way for Russia to disengage from Finland and relocate their units to the main front.
2. Finland will surrender normally if Helsinki is captured. So Russia should avoid taking too many cities or kill too many units if they intend to take Helsinki so they can use the Finnish ports.

I agree that the Axis shouldn't have the option to not declare war on the US once Pearl harbor happens. What Axis commander would want to drag the US into the war?

ncali wrote:

Stauffenberg wrote:The US entry time is not affected by this because the event that caused the US entry happened outside the game (Japan attacking Pearl Harbor).

Somewhat. There was also the DOW by Germany and Italy on the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (and consequent state of war between Japan and the US). That made it really easy for FDR to get involved in Europe. I don't suppose there is going to be an option for Germany/Italy to decline to DOW on the US after Pearl Harbor (and I'm not suggesting there should be).

This would be interesting, but it's hard to imagine the USA not actively engaging in the European war at some point. By December 1941 there was already a state of 'cold war' between Germany and the USA, with American destroyers having duels with German U-boats. Sooner or later FDR would have found a pretext to persuade Congress to decalre war, and I'm sure this would have happened before the end of 1942.

What I do think should be in the game is an option to delay US entry into the European theatre by up to say, 12 months. This could be done by simply avoiding declaring war on the US if you are the Axis and by lowering the number of U-boats in the Atlantic below a certain number.

I don't like the idea of the war with the USSR always happening automatically by October 1941 at the latest. I think there should be an option for Germany to secure a peace with the USSR by agreeing to allow the USSR to occupy Finland, Bulgaria and the Bosphorous/Dardanelles. These were the main demands that Molotov made in the famous meeting of November 1940 that convinced Hitler of the need to fight the USSR. By agreeing to these demands the USSR would become a permanent neutral and effectively a non-participant in the game. Now that would really make things interesting!

Interesting yes, a simulation of WWII no.

CEAW is a great game because of the supply/combat mechanism's - its not designed as a political engine.

The team have done a great job introducing some finess around this but its not a political level game.

when?

The exact release date depends on Slitherine. They will get the release candidate next week. The signal we've got is that they expect to make the installer both for the MAC and PC and make these available on their WEB site as soon as possible. I guess Iain can make more detailed information about what will happen next.

So the waiting time is soon over. We have stopped adding more functionality so now we just need to wrap up things before we give all the files to Slitherine for release.

richardsd wrote:Interesting yes, a simulation of WWII no.

CEAW is a great game because of the supply/combat mechanism's - its not designed as a political engine.

The team have done a great job introducing some finess around this but its not a political level game.

I don't see how you can separate the politics from the military aspects of WW2. The two are inextricably intertwined. If you just have a military simulation it will get boring, for the simple reason that Germany cannot win once the USA enters the war. Do you want contant repeats of the same outcome or the ability to explore other possibilities?

@marklv: I don't think the game should have too much politics in it. There are other games for that. The scope of CEAW is mainly military simulation, rather than a complete war game, I think.
On the other hand, I think it would be fun to have some more politics in the game. But as I said, there are other games for that.

marklv wrote:I don't like the idea of the war with the USSR always happening automatically by October 1941 at the latest. I think there should be an option for Germany to secure a peace with the USSR by agreeing to allow the USSR to occupy Finland, Bulgaria and the Bosphorous/Dardanelles. These were the main demands that Molotov made in the famous meeting of November 1940 that convinced Hitler of the need to fight the USSR. By agreeing to these demands the USSR would become a permanent neutral and effectively a non-participant in the game. Now that would really make things interesting!

If you accept that then the war is already won by the Axis. Remember the victory conditions are so that the Axis will win if they control ANY of the major power capitals. How can the Allied player get ashore in Italy or France if Russia is a permanent neutral and Germany can just produce for the west? Not even the best GS player would have a chance to get to Berlin in time.

The main reason the Axis player will eventually lose is because he will lose so many units in Russia that he can't have enough forces to also stop the Allies in the south and west. So it's a small price to pay for Germany to sacrifice Finland, Bulgaria and Turkey to get a permanent peace in the east. Nobody knows what Stalin would have done. What we do know is that he did not trust Hitler and believe there could be a long term peace between them. Stalin accepted to the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact to buy time to strengthen the Russian army. Hitler accepted it to have a single front to deal with the west before he could turn to the east. Stalin believed the clash would happen in 1942 and had geared for that. So he was very surprised the Germans attacked as early as 1941.

So I think there is a big chance that Russia would still attack Germany even if they got Bulgaria, Finland and Turkey. Maybe it would be as late as 1943, but Stalin would have armed his Red Army with lots of airplanes, tanks, artillery etc. to be ready to go against Berlin. So if we had such an option then it should only be time limited to e. g. 1943 and Russia should mobilize in October 1941. So accepting such a deal for the Germans would buy them a little more time before war with Russia would be inevitable.

Remember that we're creating a GAME that's supposed to be fun for BOTH sides. If we create events that make sure one side will win then people won't play the game. E. g. somebody suggested that USA could attack the Allies and become and Axis partner. It was not very likely, but if it had happened then the war would have ended with Axis victory for sure. No reason to play on.

Thanks to rkr1958 for the excellent summary of what's to come. I'm really looking forward to it.

Stauffenberg wrote:The exact release date depends on Slitherine. They will get the release candidate next week. The signal we've got is that they expect to make the installer both for the MAC and PC and make these available on their WEB site as soon as possible. I guess Iain can make more detailed information about what will happen next.

So the waiting time is soon over. We have stopped adding more functionality so now we just need to wrap up things before we give all the files to Slitherine for release.

I remember with past versions you sometimes made the game files available for download so we could manually update the game before the offical installer was available. I'm hoping you might do the same this time. If not, I guess we'll just have to wait.

Stauffenberg wrote:

marklv wrote:I don't like the idea of the war with the USSR always happening automatically by October 1941 at the latest. I think there should be an option for Germany to secure a peace with the USSR by agreeing to allow the USSR to occupy Finland, Bulgaria and the Bosphorous/Dardanelles. These were the main demands that Molotov made in the famous meeting of November 1940 that convinced Hitler of the need to fight the USSR. By agreeing to these demands the USSR would become a permanent neutral and effectively a non-participant in the game. Now that would really make things interesting!

If you accept that then the war is already won by the Axis. Remember the victory conditions are so that the Axis will win if they control ANY of the major power capitals. How can the Allied player get ashore in Italy or France if Russia is a permanent neutral and Germany can just produce for the west? Not even the best GS player would have a chance to get to Berlin in time.

The main reason the Axis player will eventually lose is because he will lose so many units in Russia that he can't have enough forces to also stop the Allies in the south and west. So it's a small price to pay for Germany to sacrifice Finland, Bulgaria and Turkey to get a permanent peace in the east. Nobody knows what Stalin would have done. What we do know is that he did not trust Hitler and believe there could be a long term peace between them. Stalin accepted to the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact to buy time to strengthen the Russian army. Hitler accepted it to have a single front to deal with the west before he could turn to the east. Stalin believed the clash would happen in 1942 and had geared for that. So he was very surprised the Germans attacked as early as 1941.

So I think there is a big chance that Russia would still attack Germany even if they got Bulgaria, Finland and Turkey. Maybe it would be as late as 1943, but Stalin would have armed his Red Army with lots of airplanes, tanks, artillery etc. to be ready to go against Berlin. So if we had such an option then it should only be time limited to e. g. 1943 and Russia should mobilize in October 1941. So accepting such a deal for the Germans would buy them a little more time before war with Russia would be inevitable.

Remember that we're creating a GAME that's supposed to be fun for BOTH sides. If we create events that make sure one side will win then people won't play the game. E. g. somebody suggested that USA could attack the Allies and become and Axis partner. It was not very likely, but if it had happened then the war would have ended with Axis victory for sure. No reason to play on.

Well, according to the Russian author Victor Suvorov, Stalin was planning to attack as early as July 1941, and Hitler forestalled him by a few weeks. Personally, I don't buy this argument, because Stalin was known to be very cautious and would most likely have waited until the late Spring of 1942, by which time the Soviet army would have been very strong indeed. What irks me about the game is that the Soviets always attack Germany by November 1941 at the latest, even if the latter does nothing - I would prefer to see a May 1942 attack from the USSR, not earlier. This would allow more time for Germany to strike in the Mediterrenean and also wage a more damaging naval war against Britain.

and your wish is granted GS v 2.0

The release candidate files for PC and MAC are now complete and will be sent to Slitherine any moment now so the rest is up to Slitherine about when it will become available.