Slitherine

I have to say that I don't currently think the UK needs any help defeating Sealion, its near impossible as a game winning strategy against a good player.

Stauffenberg wrote:One thing we could do is to spawn a new British fighter with the strength of the French fighter in Liverpool if the French armistice is accepted. This unit could simulate the pilots and air units that fled from Poland and France to Britain to fight on there. We could make this fighter Polish to simulate the contribution of the Polish pilots through the war.

By doing so we help the Allies try to save their French fighter and fly it to Britain instead of sacrificing it just prior to the fall of France.

I don't recommend it. This way UK get 'free' fighter as everybody will save it 'for later'

Stauffenberg wrote:Or we could spawn a Polish fighter in Britain at the fall of France with strength 3 regardless of the fate of the French fighter. This means saved British PP's can be used to build up the depleted fighter. We need to spawn the fighter maybe near Liverpool so it can't be taken out by the Luftwaffe.

I'm a big fan of Polish figher (wonder why? ) I think 2 fighers is too little to fight against German air power and it is not so easy to transport other remaining fighers from MED theater. 3 fighers is still less then what Axis can have but add some strength for air defense.

Stauffenberg wrote:Amph range can be a variable dependent upon tech instead of a fixed value of 10. The range could be 6 + tech in surface ships. That means Germany will have a range of 7 at the start of Sealion. I think it's better to link better performance to tech rather than a fixed game year. It means you can get the extra performance earlier if you put focus on that tech. Or later if you ignore it.

Completely agree. You should avoid sticking certain capabilities with dates. They should be tied to tech progress.

Crazygunner1 wrote:I invite every player to do Sealion against me....in my book that is a sure receipt for Allied Victory, you simply cannot afford spending that amount of PP and oil on England as an Axis player without having to face the consequences later in the game. Placing cheap defensive leaders in key cities, having 3-4 mechs ready to strike will most likely repell the invaders or atleast prevent them taking a port before fall and winter. You could bring home the second sub from the Med and attack the Kriegsmarine, that will surely "stirr" up things.

What seems to be standard procedure strategy wise lately, is the Morris inspired BEF in France, so almost all allied players overextend and send troops to France, then complain about operation Sealion being to easy.

Placing another fighter gives the UK a total of 5 fighters on the map witch is way to much, even with 4 fighters as now, the Axis are having trouble. Axis cannot muster up the PPs to construct those fighters needed to compete with RAF. Hard pressed Axis economy has to priorities ground units. As it is now i usually don´t even have to construct more fighters at all with the UK or US, since those 4 is enough....so my question, why add another fighter?

I totally agree with Crazygunner ! Axis can not afford for the cost of pps & fuel & manpower by a long sealion even if it finally sucess . The game's victory is not base on whether the sealion is success . I had defeated almost all players who launched sealion to me even if I sent BEF to France . Here I also send a invitation to any Axis player who believe sealion is the key of Axis victory , I will show you it is hopeless to launch a sealion by Axis especially after the patch of increasing the Allies ASW level .

Crazygunner1 wrote:

joerock22 wrote:And let's remember that the Allies did win the Battle of Britain historically. Currently, in the game the RAF has virtually no chance to beat the Luftwaffe. The best they can hope for is to do a little worse than breaking even. Adding a Polish fighter would give the British a better chance.

Well they won it narrowly and if Hitler hadn´t intervened at the critical moment they would have colapsed and Luftwaffe have superiority. RAF didn´t win becuase they had the same amount of planes against the germans but because they had shorter to the battlefield and could stay up in the air almost more than twice as long as the german fighter cover. Also wounded RAF planes could set down somewhere in England and be restored to fully operational fighters again while the german fighters where lost and the pilot to or captured. They had radars that warned them early when germans planes arrived in the channel so well coordinated fighter resistance could be made.

In this game you don´t need airsuperiority to be successful on the ground...

This is true, but what would the Axis use the air superiority for? If they didn't have the navy to support amphibious landings then it wouldn't help much to control the skies over Britain.

The fact is that Germany lost or damaged most of the Kriegsmarine in the invasion of Norway. So the aftermath of Weserübüng was that Seelöwe was much harder to do.

It seems to me that the Germans wanted to bomb Britain into submission so getting air superiority would help their bombers reach their targets. The German main mistake was to switch to bombing cities too early and thus they lost the Battle of Britain. Still, I don't think Germany could have bombed Britain into submission. Their morale was too high and with Churchill motivating the British to fight I think the only way to neutralize Britain would have been an amphibious invasion.

Do we have any evidence that the real Germany actually had any real plans to go ahead with Seelöwe? They certainly had plans on the paper, but did they have the equipment (transports etc.) to actually go ahead with the invasion. I don't think so.

We also have to take into consideration that GS allows the players to follow a different strategy than the real Germans did. So looking at what the real Germans did or didn't do isn't always the solution. I'm certain that the Germans could have performed a successful Seelöwe if they had built for it right from the start. They could have got more submarines, transports, surface ships etc. Maybe they could have ignored Norway and used all of the Kriegsmarine against Britain.

So Sealion is easier to do in GS than in the real war, but I think that's fair. The real Germans didn't prepare for Sealion (Seelöwe) so it didn't happen. Clever Axis players can make better preparations.

Stauffenberg wrote:Do we have any evidence that the real Germany actually had any real plans to go ahead with Seelöwe? They certainly had plans on the paper, but did they have the equipment (transports etc.) to actually go ahead with the invasion. I don't think so.

OPERATION SEA LION: A JOINT CRITICAL ANALYSIS

I. Introduction
Military history contains many lessons from which the warfighting doctrine of the individual
services, as well as joint doctrine, is derived. World War II stands as one of the major contributors
of valuable lessons learned. From a joint and combined warfighting perspective, Germany’s
planning and preparatory military actions to the invasion of Great Britain after the fall of France
are instructive. Their plan, called Operation SEA LION by the Germans, was never carried out,
as certain prerequisite conditions were never achieved, and Hitler elected to move on to other
operations. But Germany could have been successful in invading and, if necessary, occupying
Great Britain had they exercised joint and combined operations to achieve better unity of effort
within the German military, remained focused on key British operational centers of gravity, and
exploited the capabilities of friendly nations such as Spain, Italy, and the Vichy government of
France.

The officers who authored this report in 2002 certainly thought so.

The primary issue for the Germans for Sea Lion (other than requiring air supremacy) was that it had never undertaken such a large amphibious operation before and did not possess the technology or resources to do so. Instead, they were forced to comandeer and convert various river barges which despite extensive modifications were a long way from being ideal - they would work under the right conditions but were not very efficient.

This Wikipedia entry is a good summary of some other references that I have;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion

Hence, even if one assumed that the germans could prepare early and obtain support from other axis allies, there is a significant technology deficiency that just couldnt be overcome, making an amphibious invasion highly problematic and likely to fail strategically even if things went well. I dont think that Sea Lion should be impossible to do in CEAW but against an experienced and prepared british player it should be highly unlikely to succeed. As has been mentioned earlier, the Germans also had an invasion with providing follow up troops and supplies due to their lack of shipping, so even if the initial invasion was successful, they would need a port very quickly to just maintain the first wave.