Slitherine

In GS you're always sure of fair weather in May 1941 so the games don't have to delay the start as the real Gemans had to.

I know that, I was responding to your "what if" scenario . In-game May Barbarossa is the norm, so it's as you said, i.e. the Axis has 2 more guaranteed fair weather turns. Also, most players skip Greece altogether. I'm wondering whether that will change in v.2.2, with the new +5 Italian organisation bonus for controlling Athens.

I think going after Greece for 5 extra morale could make quite a few Axis players go for Athens. It's not like it's hard to take Greece soon after you take Yugoslavia.

The main reason I often skipped Greece was because I wanted to save oil. With extra morale for the Italians I might consider burning extra oil to have slightly more valuable Italian units. Athens is not a city you will lose soon so Italy should be able to keep the bonus when the Allies move into Libya and later Sicily. So if that means you can keep Italy in the game for a few extra turns then it's certainly worth it.

IIRC it's possible to station your air units in fair weather hexes? In that case, I think that we might see invasions of Greece rather frequently in late 1940/early 1941. I doubt that many players will go for Egypt in 1941, but I think that it will become the norm in Fortress Europa scenarios, because of the additional Italian boost. In fact, one of my worries is that combined with the new naval rules, FE will become even stronger, because the Axis has a lot of time to conquer everything before 1942 and build a big submarine fleet that will make the life of the Allied player miserable.

Then the Allies will have to challenge the Axis in Egypt and Greece once they get the initiative. It's not sure that fortress Europe is a sure winner for the Axis. You have to play very well to do it.

Regardless of what we do with game tweaking I think the player quality has much bigger impact on the end result than our tweaking. We have only seen a few fortress Europe games done so we can't make any conclusions.

The only way to find out is to play.

Well, I can only speak for myself. I've won Axis Ultimate Victories using FE strategy, but I've never managed to score that high using the standard strategy . I agree that it's not a sure winner, though.

I particularly like the Antwerp sea port hex location chosen. Not only it is an accurate position for the inland Antwerp port but also represents the impassable for land units Zeeland delta region.

Cybvep wrote:Well, I can only speak for myself. I've won Axis Ultimate Victories using FE strategy, but I've never managed to score that high using the standard strategy . I agree that it's not a sure winner, though.

If you can score Axis ultimate victories regularly then I wonder why people want to make the Axis even stronger.

No, not regularly. I'm not that good, huh. However, I managed to score some and in all these cases I was using the FE strategy. I've never been able to score an Axis Ultimate Victory using the standard strategy, excluding early surrenders, i.e. when the opponent simply gave up or stopped responding. Don't know what is your experience with this.

Playing an Allied player with a lot more experience than me I took Omsk in 1944 and have just - Sept '44 - executed a handy looking Sealion. (I took Ireland first to give myself an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier'.) All from a fairly standard set of Axis strategies. So it can certainly be done.

I doubt that it is possible to collect valid statistics as when Allied players drop early we'll never know if they could have come back. Whilst Axis drops are usually undoubtedly hopeless cases.

I doubt that it is possible to collect valid statistics as when Allied players drop early we'll never know if they could have come back. Whilst Axis drops are usually undoubtedly hopeless cases.

True. It's usually easy to tell when the Axis is going to lose, but it's hard to predict when or even if the Allies will lose. In general, I noticed that when the game is played to the bitter end, the Axis will very rarely fall before 1944. Ultimate Allied Victory is not easy to achieve, either.

Cybvep wrote:Well, I can only speak for myself. I've won Axis Ultimate Victories using FE strategy, but I've never managed to score that high using the standard strategy . I agree that it's not a sure winner, though.

I also have accomplish the Omsk mission several times by playing Axis . But That were only because of the bad Allies performance & too many Allies mistake .If your opponent just perform normal & well experienced by playing allies , He will surely win in the present 2.1 ! So usually an Axis Ultimate Victory is always a dream of Axis player

Cybvep wrote:IIRC it's possible to station your air units in fair weather hexes? In that case, I think that we might see invasions of Greece rather frequently in late 1940/early 1941. I doubt that many players will go for Egypt in 1941, but I think that it will become the norm in Fortress Europa scenarios, because of the additional Italian boost. In fact, one of my worries is that combined with the new naval rules, FE will become even stronger, because the Axis has a lot of time to conquer everything before 1942 and build a big submarine fleet that will make the life of the Allied player miserable.

I basically agree with you . We will test it in practice .

Cybvep wrote:In fact, one of my worries is that combined with the new naval rules, FE will become even stronger, because the Axis has a lot of time to conquer everything before 1942 and build a big submarine fleet that will make the life of the Allied player miserable.

I think that part of the problem is that IRL FE is what the Axis should have done. So if the game is to be reasonably historically accurate that is always going to be an attractive Axis strategy.

This has been covered many times - defensive 1942 makes little sense in-game, because the game was clearly made with the standard 1941 Barbarossa in mind. This includes pretty much everything, from victory conditions to in-game events and Soviet activation. Lack of any real diplomacy doesn't help, either. However, at this point it's far too late to change this (well, maybe in GS v3.0), so we should just make sure that FE is a balanced option.

BTW while reading this:

We made a few other minor changes. One is a one time event regarding German Volksturm units spawning in the German force pool once Allied units enter a core German hex. This is similar to the Russian strategic reserve and the UK HG spawning in case of a Sealion. The value is currently set to 6, but we may change it.

/* German Volksturm reserve units spawned the turn Allied units enter German territory */
NUMBER_OF_GERMAN_VOLKSTURM_UNITS 6 /* 0..99 Number of garrisons that will be placed in the force pool */

I'm wondering whether partisans will be counted? They shouldn't IMO - that makes little sense and could lead to many "accidental" Volksturm activations.

Or Poles.

Ah, yeah, good point. I think that a minimum year requirement would be in order, e.g. 1942 or 1943. I wouldn't like to see silly "strategies" like emptying the Siegfried Line in order to get the free GARs early when the French take the forts (and if they don't, then your GARs are free to go to other places, anyway). It should be sth that makes some sense in-game.

Any idea on a tentative release time?

Blathergut wrote:Any idea on a tentative release time?

~2013 .