Slitherine

plus I have successfully defended from a significantly worse position than you are in and you are a significantly better player

PS on an oil note, I have found in the past that, when playing the Fotress Defence, I haven't built enough FTR's and given up the Air initiative a little to soon in 44 and finished with oodles of oil left

Stauffenberg wrote: Going into Portugal is possible, but there the Germans can rail units to the area and use tactical bombers to help wiping out the invaders.

And I wonder here, why is the different gauge of the Spanish railway not represented as the Soviet is?

richardsd wrote:plus I have successfully defended from a significantly worse position than you are in and you are a significantly better player

PS on an oil note, I have found in the past that, when playing the Fotress Defence, I haven't built enough FTR's and given up the Air initiative a little to soon in 44 and finished with oodles of oil left

I think the oil is the weakest spot in my improved Fortress Europa.

In fact, i would like to continue a large offensive with the Germans in Russia, but it just wont be possible. I already burnt 350 of oil in 2 turns!!!

I think a separate peace between USSR and Germany could have been possible if Barbarossa never started and Russia had seen a German fortress along their entire front line.

The main problem was that Hitler didn't want peace with Russia. He wanted lebensraum and it was in the east he wanted to expand.

We could have got a cold war between Russia and Germany if Barbarossa had never taken place and Britain had fallen. USA could consider making a separate peace so they could finish off Japan. Still this is a lot of speculation and it could be the Allies would have bought some time and once the US had nuclear weapons they could put them on missiles or long range bombers to DoW Germany to win the post WW2 war.

I don't think it would have been possible for Germany to keep control over Europe for a long time. Most regimes based on terror will eventually crumble, often from within. Look at how USSR or the Roman Empire crumbled.

GS v2.1 is a game from September 1939 to May 1945 and we check the victory conditions after May 1945. It's not a simulator of Europe where the conflict can go on indefinitely. E. g. we only have techs up to level 6. If we wanted to extend the war then we would have needed more techs and even new units like helicopters.

That is beyond the scope of GS. We only have permission to mod the CeaW using the same map area and time period as CeaW. Therefore I think it's best to declare the winner comparing how you did to the real war. If we had played the war and declared the winner from who won the war then we should be able to play to 1950 and beyond. Then we would need techs like missiles, nuclear weapons, helicopters etc.

Is it just me or since the forum upgrade a month or two ago, there's a limit on image width if exceeded cuts off the right part of the image. Anyone else seeing this?

I see exactly the same.

Going to be interesting to see if all these German CVs will make any difference in the face of massive Allied navies. I wonder though, with the long building time of 15 turns, whether the PP investment can be justified when the effect of it is so long deferred. Any other builds will see a much faster usage/payoff to limit the Allies. However, refreshing to see this strategy tried out!

trulster wrote:Going to be interesting to see if all these German CVs will make any difference in the face of massive Allied navies. I wonder though, with the long building time of 15 turns, whether the PP investment can be justified when the effect of it is so long deferred. Any other builds will see a much faster usage/payoff to limit the Allies. However, refreshing to see this strategy tried out!

Well simply said in tactical terms, what you say is true. Germany will probably not be able to challenge the allies if they keep building ships. That is if they keep building them.

Maybee Diplomaticus has "figured out" that i aint building a navy this time around, so he could decide to focus on land assets. This is where my fleet will come in handy. Also, one only has to look at the allied fleet off the coast of Morocco to see that the allies have build more ships. But what if they stopped?

I believe the allies have build a TON of sub and intend to keep me off-guard with them. Thats why i have been building DD's.

Thats for the tactical aspect, which will not make me win this game.

On the grand strategical aspect of the game however, it will greatly help me.

1- This fleet will help me keep England till the end of the game. Reinforced with land-based planes, it will be very hard for the allies to do anything in England except loose a lot of units trying to invade.
2- When Dilpomaticus starts seeing what ive built, well he will frantically re-start major naval production(or it will reinforce his intentions to keep building ships), which is going to start showing 12-15 turns for the capital ships and 6 turns for the regular ones. Again, time will be on my side there and simply said you cannot take Berlin/Rome with ships.
3- It will also make Dilpomaticus pause and think before he decides to do any other landings / campaigns. For example, i have a little fleet of 5 Italians DD in the MED. If he wants to destroy them,, he will have to move some of his fleet there, if he wants to attack Italy one day. If he splits his fleet too much, i may even be able to get local naval superiority...

In 12 turns, the axis fleet will be about shoe numbers *(not counting the next ships that will be produced):

Germans: 4 BB. 3 CV, 7 DD, 5 subs
Italians: 3 BB, 3 subs, 5 DD
Spanish : 2 DD

TOTAL: 8 subs, 14 DD, 7 BB, 3 CV.

He will not be able to ignore this.

You can't suddenly discover that Supermax has several BB's and CV's and then just build naval units to counter that. The build time is so long so you're pretty much stuck as the Allied player if you ignored getting more naval units to keep naval superiority.

If the Allies lose naval superiority in the Atlantic then it's too dangerous to send transports to Europe and that means Supermax will keep England. So it's certainly a good strategy to have a healthy navy as the Axis.

Stauffenberg wrote:You can't suddenly discover that Supermax has several BB's and CV's and then just build naval units to counter that. The build time is so long so you're pretty much stuck as the Allied player if you ignored getting more naval units to keep naval superiority.

If the Allies lose naval superiority in the Atlantic then it's too dangerous to send transports to Europe and that means Supermax will keep England. So it's certainly a good strategy to have a healthy navy as the Axis.

Yes, exactly, lets just call it a "calculated risk and probable solution to win the war"

You never know what the allies are doing.

I think it is obvious that the game is already won if you play a defensive game. The Axis position is way too strong in this game. If I were in your situation I would considering to play the game much more aggresively and go for an all out attack on the Soviet Union trying to get at least to Moscow if not even to Omsk. This would be risky and could lead to a lost game, if the Axis runs out of Oil, but would be more interesting.

In fact I think this is the biggest drawback of the Fortress Europe strategy. My experience with this kind of strategy is, that it leads to rather boring games. The Axis player will rule the game till the activation of the Soviet Union, which is for nearly 2 3/4 years, which is perhaps fun for him, but not really for the Allied player. Especially after losing Britain the Allied player will be paralyzed by the morale drop and he can't really do anything in 1940/41. After the Soviets activate the game becomes rarely more interesting as the Axis player goes on the defensive and the Allied player can't really attack in 1942 (perhaps in Finland) as the Soviets need upgrade, replacement etc.

Then in winter 1942/1943 the Allied player can only try to win the slugfest agains the Axis defenses. This is difficult (but depending on the Axis gains, it can be possible).

From my point of view the Barbarossa 1942 Scenario is flawed as Cybvep already pointed out. Firstly, from an ingame view as several ingame events do not make any sense, they make only sense if there has been a Barbarossa in 1941. Secondly, the playability suffers as the Allied player is not be able to really get fully in the game until Winter 1942/43. Thirdly, as both player exactly know when the Soviets will activate (+1/-1 turn) the game is centered on this event, which leads to cheesy game play, for example Axis DOW Soviet Union for the morale drop, but does not attack etc.

From my point of view it should be considered to fix at least the ingame events which do not make sense in case of a Barbarossa 1942 for GS 2.2. Much better would be to provide a more realistic and fun Barbarossa 1942 scenarion. Wild ideas for a change:

1. Complete random activation of Soviet Union after the historical Barbarossa date, for example +5 % chance per turn.

2. Allied player can "buy" the activation of the Soviet Union after the historical Barbarossa start (it becomes cheaper to activta after each turn).

3. After the historical date the Allied player can upgrade units in the Soviet Union even if not activated. Units can also use the rail network, even if not activated (which would not make it possible to form a double defensive line, but at least make it much easier to organise a strong defense.

Just some wild ideas, which will perhaps not work, but could be at least considered.

no landing in the 8th Army rear?

Ronnie, after reading borgers's post it does make me realize that this thread should be moved away from my forum.

I also do not want to be involved in these discussions anymore so all pls refrain from posting anything else than comment about the game

Once the thread is moved away from my post, you guys just wont hear about ne on this subject as i normally nevee gzmet involved in those discussions

Also i must apologize to all the readers i will be taking a break from posting the game i am on the road for work. After reading all these post, it will honestly be a nice break.

supermax wrote:Ronnie, after reading borgers's post it does make me realize that this thread should be moved away from my forum.

I also do not want to be involved in these discussions anymore so all pls refrain from posting anything else than comment about the game

Once the thread is moved away from my post, you guys just wont hear about ne on this subject as i normally nevee gzmet involved in those discussions

Also i must apologize to all the readers i will be taking a break from posting the game i am on the road for work. After reading all these post, it will honestly be a nice break.

Off topic (game realism / balance) posts moved to viewtopic.php?p=312337#p312337

Please post in that thread if you wish to continue discussions on that. And please, lets keep posts in this thread on topic and related to Max's AAR.

Max, have a nice trip and we look forward to a continuation of your game and AAR when you get back.

Sorry,

but that thread is not accessible to me. I think the discussion is interesting also to those not involved in GS testing or else, so, please, it would be nice being able to follow it on.

AC67

PS: Sorry Max, but I didn't know where else to post this.