Battlefield: Europe MOD v2.4

[Ceek]

Uhu's post made me wonder if there is anyone willing to share a save with us where they have played historically and have reached late '42/early '43? I agree that it's too easy right now (but Rommel is also a little too gamey for me) and I want more of a challenge--but I also really like the idea of starting "from behind" and basically playing defense.

Thanks in advance!

Also, I should emphasize how impressed I am with the amount of work and detail that went into this scenario. It's really a work of art and I love the design choices.

If I might make some quick suggestions for future versions, they would be the following.
1. Offer different historical "start points" for the grand campaign--Summer of '42, Winter '42, Summer '43, Summer '44 all seem potentially exciting play points. The '43 and '44 start points should also start w/ some Allies already holding the beachheads w/ the Axis forces in dissarray; I have found it too easy to barricade the coasts w/ troops to prevent landings and given the necessarily small beachheads, this tends to be too effective a strategy from what historically transpired.
2. To encourage more strategic balance, penalize the player for transferring all aircraft from Western Europe. This is a highly unrealistic strategy as it would have meant disaster for German industry. Given that this infrastructural damage of level bombers is difficult to simulate, maybe you can make every Allied plane that ends its turn pre-D-Day in mainland Europe cost the German player 25 prestige. As it is, I just transfer all aircraft to other theatres and dominate the skies--ahistorically.
3. I think Leningrad is quite easy to capture w/ just Finish troops at the moment. For me, this tends to swing the war in the Axis favor, both in the prestige it awards the player for new offensives and in the diminished reinforcements for the Russians. Maybe draw back the number of forces at their disposal, or increase reinforcements to the city if Viipuri falls?

[McGuba]

Hi,

Hmm, I realised, that playing the mod in historical way (not capturing many major objectives, retreating from certain areas, using units only in that region, where they were historically used, attacking only, when it historically occured - until the mid nov of 1942!) is quite a level increase of difficulty! And I'm just at the end of 1941 - what will I face in 1943...?

Haha, you don't wanna know

My experience with the U-Boat mod is, that it made "uboating" much harder - although with more strategic possibility. The only benefit is, that I can stationate my O-Boats longer on convoy routes, as in dive mod they will get destroyed slower.

Yeah, as intended, now travelling on the surface is now more dangerous, but faster, while diving deep provides longer survival, but no offensive action. Actually, I try to attack destroyers as well when dived to periscope depth when I have a good opportunity, especially when supported by the Fw-200 Condor. This way I can get rid of a few destroyers to make convoy routes safer for the subs for longer. Also I tend to take back damaged subs to a French port for repair as now it cost less prestige and thus it worth it. At least in the first half of the war.

Uhu's post made me wonder if there is anyone willing to share a save with us where they have played historically and have reached late '42/early '43?

Well, I am planning to enclose such a savegame with the next v1.4 version. The time is Novemer 1942 (turn 35), the Germans took most of Stalingrad and reached the Caucasus, and just managed to break through the British defenses at Alamein, now ready to continue their advance. However, a certain Mr. Zhukov and his colleague Mr. Montgomery have some different ideas to deal with the current situation...




The above scenario is quite similar to the historical one, and I did not really have to restrict my gameplay to achieve it. Basically I just did not take Moscow in 1941 and transferred most of the army to the south towards the Caucasus. I also used the historical disposition of the Minor Axis armies, and thus the Hungarian 2nd Army holds the River Don just south of Voronezh:





while the Italian 8th and the Romanian 3rd Armies hold the frontline between the Hungarians and Stalingrad:





so that the German 6th Army and the 4th Tank Army could concentrate on the capture of Stalingrad itself while protecting the northern flank of Army Group A, which is tasked with the capture the main aim of the whole operation, the oil fields of the Caucasus:





Too bad that the Soviets have their own plans as well for the coming weeks.

I agree that it's too easy right now (but Rommel is also a little too gamey for me) and I want more of a challenge--but I also really like the idea of starting "from behind" and basically playing defense.

It is quite interesting for me that most people seem to write that this campaign is too hard, they get smashed as early as in 1941-42 or 43 the latest, while for others it is "too easy right now". Changing the in-game difficulty settings is just one way to make it harder. The other way is to play it with some self-restrictions, at least for a while, just like I did. Also a few key units (tanks, fighters) can be disbanded in turn 1, which would take to whole scenario to another dimension as these cannot be replaced for quite a while.

Also, I should emphasize how impressed I am with the amount of work and detail that went into this scenario. It's really a work of art and I love the design choices.

Thanks, basically I just borrowed some of the best ideas and unit icons from others and added some of my own, and tried to replicate the main offensives of ww2 within the boundaries of the game engine. Also, the numerous feedback coming from the players helped me to make it (hopefully) better and better with each release.

1. Offer different historical "start points" for the grand campaign--Summer of '42, Winter '42, Summer '43, Summer '44 all seem potentially exciting play points.

I agree, but since the scenario editor uses a turn based script engine and the Allied replacements appear at certain turns as well it would mean a complete rework of the scenario in each case which would take a long time. For example, currently Allied D-day units appear at around turn 71-72 (June 1944), and if I changed the starting date to two years later, all these units should be changed to appear at turn 20. And the same goes for the other one thousand Allied units on the map, and the 160 scripts. This would be a tedious work with a lot of possible errors, and it would require a lot of testing after.

I have found it too easy to barricade the coasts w/ troops to prevent landings and given the necessarily small beachheads, this tends to be too effective a strategy from what historically transpired.

Hm, I have never tried this tactic, and to be honest I did not think it would be so easy to do so. Maybe some self restrictive playing could help here, but I also know from my own experience that it is just too hard to restrict my playing if there is an opportunity presented.

Well, all I could come up with right now, to counter this problem, is some prestige penalty for each Axis unit which ends its turn on those beach hexes. It could start to happen some turns before the invasion and the message box should say something like this: "Too many of your units are wasting their time on the beaches of France. Come on, there is a war going on, so they should end their vacation to prevent the loss of their morale and fitness. You loose xy prestige for each unit." So how about that?

2. To encourage more strategic balance, penalize the player for transferring all aircraft from Western Europe. This is a highly unrealistic strategy as it would have meant disaster for German industry. Given that this infrastructural damage of level bombers is difficult to simulate, maybe you can make every Allied plane that ends its turn pre-D-Day in mainland Europe cost the German player 25 prestige. As it is, I just transfer all aircraft to other theatres and dominate the skies--ahistorically.

Believe it or not, I had a very similar idea just recently, I was just not sure wheter to implement it or not. Given your feedback, I think I should. But due to the lack of free AI zones (I cannot designate an AI zone for "mainland Eurpe" as do not have more AI zones) all I could do now is to penalize the player for each Allied aircraft (or maybe for strategic bombers only?) which ends its turn over the victory objectives in Germany as there is such an AI zone designated. These are basically the more important cities like Essen or Hamburg and some Allied planes are already set to attack these, and as I see the AI tends to attack these anyway sometimes, so why not? In the end it would be very similar to the current partisan attack penalties. I just do not know what should be the right penalty for such a carpet bombing, maybe 100 prestige? Or just 50? It is hard to find the right number as it should not be too high so that the player do not have to deploy too many fighters for the defense of the Reich, but it should not be too low, so that the player could just ignore it. As a side effect, it would also force the player to keep some of the anti-aircraft guns in Germany for the defense of those cities. And possibly to upgrade them to 88mm ones or even to the bigger 10.5cm ones (what I have never done before as they are not multipurpose). Historically the Germans made great effort to produce large numbers of Flak and ammunition for them.

3. I think Leningrad is quite easy to capture w/ just Finish troops at the moment. For me, this tends to swing the war in the Axis favor, both in the prestige it awards the player for new offensives and in the diminished reinforcements for the Russians. Maybe draw back the number of forces at their disposal, or increase reinforcements to the city if Viipuri falls?

Another thing that will be fixed in v1.4 to some extent. Delta66 reported the same some time ago, so I already decided to make the defense of Leningrad even stronger. I think it should not fall before 1943, unless the player deploys extra troops for its capture.

Regards, and many thanks for your feedback.

[Ceek]

Wow, talk about a responsive developer! It sounds like 1.4 will address all my major concerns and include a saved game from late '42. I couldn't be happier--except maybe when I have 1.4 installed and booted up.

As for the prestige hit, those fighters and bombers are very tough nuggets to crack, so I would say maybe only -25 or -50 per VH they end their turn on. This may lead to players hovering over those cities, but that's still a more historical deployment of the Luftwaffe than what you can currently get away with--and in later years, Spitfires will potentially knock them around and the player will have to spend a lot of prestige maintaining experienced fighter corps.

Incidentally, your mod makes me long for the ability to strengthen individual units on a sliding scale rather than all or nothing as it is currently coded. With the sheer amount of "front" the mod covers, sometimes I want to just give a bunch of units a +1 or +2, rather than automatically knock them up to +10. Wonder if it will ever be possible?

Anyway, thanks again for all the tremendous work you've put into this. Battlefield has single-handedly rekindled my interest in Panzer Corps!

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I agree, but since the scenario editor uses a turn based script engine and the Allied replacements appear at certain turns as well it would mean a complete rework of the scenario in each case which would take a long time. For example, currently Allied D-day units appear at around turn 71-72 (June 1944), and if I changed the starting date to two years later, all these units should be changed to appear at turn 20. And the same goes for the other one thousand Allied units on the map, and the 160 scripts. This would be a tedious work with a lot of possible errors, and it would require a lot of testing after.

There is a command in the editor that lets you change the current turn, but it doesn't edit the date. You interested in knowing how? [If you set commands up to be say Turn (17,17) it will work as planned, if (17,-1) it won't]

- BNC

[Uhu]

Uhu's post made me wonder if there is anyone willing to share a save with us where they have played historically and have reached late '42/early '43? I agree that it's too easy right now (but Rommel is also a little too gamey for me) and I want more of a challenge--but I also really like the idea of starting "from behind" and basically playing defense.

First of all: welcome aboard! Second: it is good to know, that not I'm the only one "abomination", who needs at least Rommel difficulty to enjoy the game.
Now to the post:
I already know that this "Defending the Reich" version will be an extra though one...so my target is to make an "as good as it could be" save/starting point from mid nov 1942. Still it is not easy: because I played the mod several months earlier last time, I already lost some memories, how to make ALL the move in the best way. And it is really easy to get high damage, only for 1-2 "wrong" moves... I already started again, after turn 15, because I had so much loss (not whole units but much points)...

2. To encourage more strategic balance, penalize the player for transferring all aircraft from Western Europe. This is a highly unrealistic strategy as it would have meant disaster for German industry. Given that this infrastructural damage of level bombers is difficult to simulate, maybe you can make every Allied plane that ends its turn pre-D-Day in mainland Europe cost the German player 25 prestige. As it is, I just transfer all aircraft to other theatres and dominate the skies--ahistorically.

Well, I usually don't like the idea, where the player is penalised, if he makes new, creative moves/solutions. That would make the whole gameplay odd... If you want make a DV on Rommel, you HAVE TO do ahistorically! Bringing the Bulgarians to the eastern front, making no siege circle around Leningrad - honestly absolute no guarding units in that region, bringing heavy finn equipment to the south of Russia, using the Hungarian Mobile force as cannon fodder, because it will be anyway disappeared (sorry, for both of us, McGuba ), using all axis air/land forces anywhere, reckless of nationality, making a strong defense line west of Tunis before Torch, saving the U-Boats for Sealion, etc, etc, etc. And of course the ahistorical offensives: taking Malta, taking Tobruk in 1941, taking Cyprus, taking Moscow, conquering England, taking the oil fields...
So, now, focusing on one special point - the removing of the fighters from NW-Europe - would be not a fair solution IMHO. Also, because if the player do not make this, he will absolute no chance (at least on Rommel) against the swarms of airplanes of the Red Air.
Plus I don't know exactly, how strong the Allied bomber runs will be from 1943 on, but I know, that there will be surely an absolute monster-strong Allied air power... So, only - without any extra penalties - if they just bomb the axis objetives, that will be enough loss... In 1943 prestige is so scarce, that every single prestige point counts. Losing even 40-50 prestige/turn because of the bombed objectives will be/would be already a painful loss!
So, my vote is "No".
I leave/move anyway almost all AA units to NW-Europe (to collect experience), so in that way, the region is not total undefended. And as I wrote, I anticipate, that from 1943 hell will unleash...

3. I think Leningrad is quite easy to capture w/ just Finish troops at the moment.

Really? I never tried that in this way with the finns. The defense of Leningrad looks so though *WARNING SPOILER!* (Battleship, 85AA, heavy arty, supperhero inf) that I leave the capture always for the last step - when I conquered everything else and I have all of the resources.
Hmm, but I can imagine, that with the early and easy capture of Leningrad you made a high advantage - prestige -> better units earlier, less soviet reinforcements - that could make for you the later gameplay much easier, than for me!! Well, actually, only in that way can I imagine, that for you the gameplay is too easy. My suggestion to make a a gameplay with more challenge : 1., Do not take Leningrad with the finns. Take it no earlier as winter of 1944 and attack also from south with strong siege force. 2., Delete the extra prestige points (you can make that with a cheat, giving negative prestige values) , gained from capturing all major allied objectives (Malta, England, Moscow, Leningrad) and do not use U-Boats for collecting prestige. trust me: it will be much-much harder...

About the shore-blocking strategy in Normandy. Well...I played it only one time when I encountered the allies in Normandy ( Ididn't conquered England earlier), so I have not wide experiences, memories about that. That's true, that containing the allied invasion was a relative easy/modest job. Surely not so hard as defending Tunesia from the west. But allied naval units and airforce still decimated my defenders and losses were high - what is in that stage of the war, not a good result... But I agree with that, that blocking the whole shoreline with units, or structures is like cheating. So, BEFORE D-day, I find it fair forbidding the player to do this.

[Uhu]

McGuba,

about the topic of StugIIIA,B and StuH42 in AT mode (or later allied equipment, like the SU-122). I find it important, when giving AT power to that units, we have to take in concideration, that these units were not designed for that and they used that only in critical situations. They also did not have the amount of AT ammunitions for that! So, my solution would be 1., only 1 ammo in AT mode (what is not possible in the game) 2., lowering the AT value of the gun, simbolising the facts above. So, for example, if the short 75mm gun has a value of 8 in Panzer IVs, than I would give the StugIIIA, B only a value of 4.

[Delta66]

About penalizing the German players from removing fighters from the France and Germany, I tend to agree with Uhu.
I'm not sure how the allied strategic bombing campaign targeting German production facility is currently represented in the game, or if it should anyway. May be the Germans prestige income already take into account the reduced production capability of the German factories, and represent more or less the historical throughput of those factories taking into accounts bombing damages.
Germans had Flak assets in most potential targets, yet at the mod level it would not make for a Flak units per city, if you factor the number of Flak guns on static defense into game units using the same ratio as you do for most fields units. I think it is hard to simulate the diffuse nature of German Flak defense and home air force defense within the game mechanisms.
Giving the Germans prestige penalties for a few key cities seems reasonable. But to me forcing the player to keep maybe 3-4 AA guns in those 3-4 cities. amount to the same final result as not giving the player the AA guns and not using penalties. In other word, it is extra works and rules for little effects.

Another issue is that, given the game rules, allied fighters escort can move much farther in Europe mainland than was historically the case. I think that the air forces based in Great Britain are already too effective compared to history. From a gameplay perspective, there is little points in keeping your German fighters in France or Germany, as considering how the AI works it sends its fighters ganging up on any one of your single aircraft for easy kills. Which IMO is much more effective than was historically the case.

Also from my experience keeping AA defense, even improved heavy caliber guns around city doesn't prevent at all the AI from attacking, it goes as far as attacking AA guns directly even when another AA gun is adjacent and giving additional protection. Especially on FM difficulty or higher even by the end of the war your units fighting from turn 1 didn't accumulated enough experience to fight with the allied improved and experienced planes.

Overall I'd rather keep part of the air campaign in Western Europe a bit abstract and let some freedom to the players on how to use is own fighters.
Yet I think that currently, moving not only all of your fighters to the eastern or Mediterranean front is the best strategy, so some restrictions may be considered.

I'm confirm too that Leningrad is too easy to capture with the Finns, rotating (for healing) 4 Finns units, and attacking from the north lead to a sure capture maybe not by the end of 1941 but in Q2 1942. Destroying the fort with the Finns Jäger is not to hard. Then the first thing is to get rid of the Soviet ship, with your planes. Park a strat or tac bomber in a bad weather turn where the AI can't use its AA, then if the weather allows air attack, make your first attack and send another plane to finish the ship. Later at some point the Soviet gun will have to reload and it is usually a good time for attack. I have suggested to add a minefield or something north of the fort to make things harder for the Finns.

[Delta66]

About blocking the french coast with units. If you have done very well in the east and south this is actually a good option, if you can shifts enough units from the eastern front in time.
I wonder if you can modify the Germans rail capacity during the scenario, in that case it would be good to reduce it a little in 43, more in 44 and even more in 45. In every cases if the United Kingdom is still allied controlled. This would be another way to represent the strategic bombing campaign on the rail network this time.

[McGuba]

Incidentally, your mod makes me long for the ability to strengthen individual units on a sliding scale rather than all or nothing as it is currently coded. With the sheer amount of "front" the mod covers, sometimes I want to just give a bunch of units a +1 or +2, rather than automatically knock them up to +10. Wonder if it will ever be possible?

Some other guys requested this earlier, but the developers rarely respond to such requests, especially since they have been working on Warhammer and other projects like porting the base game to other consoles. IMO Panzer Corps might be slowly reaching the end of its life, however the planned Soviet Corps might give it a (final?) update. After that I rather expect PzC 2 or something like that.

If you want make a DV on Rommel, you HAVE TO do ahistorically!

.

Well, my original intention was to make DV virtually impossible, as I think the Germans had no realistic chance to defeat both the Soviets and the British from June 1941. I just did not expect that there would be some fanatics out there, who decide to make a DV, whatever the cost.

Still I think that completely abandoning the skies over Western Europe and especially Germany and using all the fighters elsewhere is very unrealistic. In contrast to the examples you have listed, currently it does not have a disadvantage:
- bringing the Bulgarians to the East means less units to deal with the partisans in the Balkans. And there would be some more in v1.4.
- bringing the Finns to the south of Russia and making no effort to encircle Leningrad means a later capture of that city, just as you realized as well later in your post. Which means some more Soviet reinforcements appearing in 43-44. Also, in v1.4, and if I am right even in v1.3, HINT HINT!!! a few Soviet units will DO spawn at Leningrad if it is still owned by the Soviets, set to attack trying to break the encirclement. And, obiviously, if there is no encirclement they just carry on with their attack.
- making a strong defense line west of Tunis: those units have to be transefered from somewhere earlier where they could be used better
- saving the U-boats for Sealion: it would mean less prestige awarded for blocking the Allied convoy routes with those U-boats
etc etc
- oh, and finally, using the Hungarian Mobile Corps as cannon fodder would make McGuba very disappointed

So, as you see in most cases there is a trade off, as a wise man said to me, "life is always fair, if someone's left leg is shorther than the other, then his rigth leg must be longer"

Whereas if the player moves all the fighters from Western Europe currently there is no such drawback at all. So I think it would be fair to make the player keep 2-3 fighters guarding the skies of the Reich, with more or less success, just as it happened. And if he does not want to, he has to lose some prestige at times to make it fair. In all of my test plays I could more or less control the Western European skies with two Fw-190s and a Bf-109 or Me-110(G), supported by the AA guns, up until 1943 and sometimes even longer. And by 1944 the war should be decided anyway: if the player successfully invades England by then there are obviously no more Allied planes appearing, and if he defeats the USSR the Axis planes can be transfered to the West to counter the hordes of new Allied planes. And if none of the major powers are defeated by then, well, then it is K.O. anyway.

I would also do it in a way to maximize the prestige penalty so that e.g. 50 prestige for one Allied bomber over a German objective city, 100 for two and 150 for three or more.

The maximum range of Allied fighters in the mod is set in a way that until the arrival of the P-51 in 1944 they cannot provide escort to their bombers attacking most of the German cities, just as historically. So taking them out should not be a big problem until them. Maybe further reducing the range of the Spitfires would help a bit here.

I would really like to implement the air war over Germany to some extent, and I DO think that the possiblitiy to completely forget about it is an issue in the current version of the mod.

About the shore-blocking strategy in Normandy... BEFORE D-day, I find it fair forbidding the player to do this.

Me too. Maybe the same for Sicily and Italy. And if there was another free zone I would do so for Tunezia as well. After all, it was de-facto part of Vichy France and that's why Axis forces did not enter until the Allies landed in North Africa.

McGuba,

about the topic of StugIIIA,B and StuH42 in AT mode (or later allied equipment, like the SU-122). I find it important, when giving AT power to that units, we have to take in concideration, that these units were not designed for that and they used that only in critical situations. They also did not have the amount of AT ammunitions for that! So, my solution would be 1., only 1 ammo in AT mode (what is not possible in the game) 2., lowering the AT value of the gun, simbolising the facts above. So, for example, if the short 75mm gun has a value of 8 in Panzer IVs, than I would give the StugIIIA, B only a value of 4.

I think 4 for HA would make it pretty much useless in AT role for the early StuG III, even in defense. I believe the Pz IV and the Stug IIIA/B had similar ratios of AP, HE, and HEAT rounds as they both had more or less the same role, infantry support, and not anti-tank role, and they also had the same main gun. Thus I think if the Pz IV has HA 7/8 in the game the Stug IIIB should have a similar value and not just half of it. The initiative penalty for the AT class reduces its effectiveness when used offensively, anyway.
Also there is a video on youtube about Wittmann, who initially commanded a Stug III in Barbarossa. By the end of 1941 he had destroyed 25 enemy tanks with it. Yeah, I know it is Wittmann, but still it shows that the early StuG III had to be a fairly effective anti-tank weapon.

[Uhu]

About blocking the french coast with units. If you have done very well in the east and south this is actually a good option, if you can shifts enough units from the eastern front in time.
I wonder if you can modify the Germans rail capacity during the scenario, in that case it would be good to reduce it a little in 43, more in 44 and even more in 45. In every cases if the United Kingdom is still allied controlled. This would be another way to represent the strategic bombing campaign on the rail network this time.

I'm not sure but I imagine, that the total dominance and the extreme high number of allied aircraft in the skies of NW-Europe will anyway hinder the normal rail transport... Already in 1941, I carefully move my AAs to the Normandy area to not get massacred mercilessly by the already lot of allied planes. That means, they already hinder my transport options. So, I think in 1944, without any further restriction, train transport to NW Europe will be a difficult task. Well, I can report about in few weeks...

[Delta66]

Whereas if the player moves all the fighters from Western Europe currently there is no such drawback at all. So I think it would be fair to make the player keep 2-3 fighters guarding the skies of the Reich, with more or less success, just as it happened. And if he does not want to, he has to lose some prestige at times to make it fair. In all of my test plays I could more or less control the Western European skies with two Fw-190s and a Bf-109 or Me-110(G), supported by the AA guns, up until 1943 and sometimes even longer. And by 1944 the war should be decided anyway: if the player successfully invades England by then there are obviously no more Allied planes appearing, and if he defeats the USSR the Axis planes can be transfered to the West to counter the hordes of new Allied planes. And if none of the major powers are defeated by then, well, then it is K.O. anyway.

In my experience any German fighter in France in 1941 or 1942 finish completely destroyed rather soon, even the early Fw 190 received which is the best plane the German can field.
Trying to put 3 fighters in France too always gave me bad results. If the AI send 3 fighters vs any one of your own baring lucky rolls your fighter will be completely destroyed one after the other.
The fight is a bit unfair because you start the Barbarossa scenario with many more units than you core limit and you cannot replace your destroyed planes, even if you have the prestige available. whereas the British can rebuilt planes easily I don't remember for sure, but I think to make thing worse, the AI can build experienced planes, whereas the player new units start with 0 xp.

Keeping a few Germans fighters over Germany is significantly safer, but they may only be used a few turns here or there.

[Ceek]

This is a good debate and I am glad others are sharing their views on this. Taking into consideration these concerns, here are my updated proposals.

1. Western Europe air defense: The impact of prestige loss on the Axis player is valid because there is already a "hit" being taken in having to keep some strong fighter units in the West and being unable to replace them. Ultimately, though, McGuba is right that players transferring all aircraft from Western Europe is really against the spirit of the mod attempting to simulate accurate deployments of all units--air, land and sea. Short of not simulating infrastructural bombing altogether, I think small prestige penalties for failing to defend historically high value industrial targets with both fighters and flak still makes sense (i.e., by identifying these cities to the players and ordering them to prevent level bombers from ending their turns directly over these cities).

In terms of how to mete out the "punishment" for failing this objective, I think a potentially -150 a turn is crippling to the player given how little we get to begin with. I would only make it that high if I also gave the Axis player more of a chance (w/ more air units). Another question is how to scale up the arrival of allied air power in the west. My understanding was that the air war in Western Europe was very costly to the Allies through '41 and '42 and that it wasn't until the US/UK revamped their escort approach that it began to have a substantial impact on Axis production. I am not an expert on this history, though, and I'd be curious to hear what others say to this.

Regarding the concern about the German fighters getting chewed up in early engagements w/ Spitfires, I agree that I have had this happen to me, too. I think the problem could be solved by increasing the Luftwaffe's and flak's experience in Western Europe by 50 exp. per unit while also slightly lightening the amount of British fighter/bomber incursions in '41 and early '42. The numbers would still slowly increase as time goes on, though. I also think the Red Air Force you initially see in '41 so that the hit of not having those extra German air units in the East is not immediately felt in the early months of the campaign (where the Red Air Force was, by all accounts, decimated) but would become more noticeable in the summer of '42, where the Germans started really dealing with a substantial Russian opposition in the air (though still mostly poorly trained).

Finally, regarding the core limit and the inability to buy new fighters, one way of getting around the core limit to replace lost fighters would be to have the first two or three (German 109s and 190s, at least) automatically replaced by "scrambling" fresh emergency fighter corps (similar to what happens when you lose Finnish units or German recons). I think the rules for these replacements should be made explicit to the player from the get go (as in you know how many "extras" you have). Sure, it might lead to some slightly riskier gameplay on the player's part w/ their fighters, but would also prevent them from being able to ahistorically dominating the skies in the early years without having to earn it.

2. Beach barricades: I employed this strategy with complete success in Italy and to a lesser extent in France. Following Uhu, I think there needs to be an explanation to the player that occupying "beach zones" will not be allowed after certain dates. The justification can be that a.) it was historically unfeasible and only "appears" to work due to the trick of the map scale and b.) exploits the limits of the game engine (i.e., landing craft not being able to attack land units from sea hexes). From '42 on, the player should be prevented from occupying the Torch beaches; from '43 on, the player should be prevented from occupying the coastal hexes of Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and Southern France. It's a gamey solution to a gamey problem, but I can't think of any other way that makes the player deal w/ the historical reality of containing the effects of an amphibious invasion, rather than preventing one from ever taking place.

3. To stug or not to stug: I liked McGuba's proposed changes to the Stugs and being able to switch its abilities to serving as an anti-tank unit. It was historically designed for artillery but practically used as both. The player should have the same choice.

Thanks for the conversation, everyone--getting ever more excited for 1.4!

[McGuba]

In my experience any German fighter in France in 1941 or 1942 finish completely destroyed rather soon, even the early Fw 190 received which is the best plane the German can field.

Hm, it is really interesting how differently people can play the same game. During my test plays on General I always kept 2-3 fighters and a Me-110 in France-Germany and never lost all of them. I did lose one or two at times, but mainly the weaker ones. Which made me to upgrade the survivors to Fw-190. My tactic was to only attack under favourable circumstances, i.e. unescorted bombers, or older or weakened fighters. I usually also made sure not to move my weaker fighters too close to England or too close to active enemy fighers so to avoid them being intercepted by more numerous enemy. So usually I just moved them to the relative safety of Southern France or East Germany when I saw several stronger Allied fighters sweeping the northern areas. Also, those Spitfires have relatively short range, so when I see the low fuel symbol next to their icon I know that I do not have to be afraid of that unit, it will move back home in the next turn instead of attacking my nearby fighters. It is a cat-and-mouse game, but I usually managed to keep decimating the enemy aircraft so that they cannot gain too much power and heavily outnumber my fighters. Up until 1944, of course, which is another story.

This is a good debate and I am glad others are sharing their views on this. Taking into consideration these concerns, here are my updated proposals.

Sure, I also find the brainstorming and researching part of the mod development at least as interesting as playing. For me the most interesting question is how far the actual game engine can be used to simulate the historical events as accuratly as possible. Obviously there are limitations, but I would like to get close to those limits as much as I can.

In terms of how to mete out the "punishment" for failing this objective, I think a potentially -150 a turn is crippling to the player given how little we get to begin with.

In my example, the -150 prestige would only occur if there are three or more Allied strategic bombers over three or more German main cities at the same time. I guess it would not happen too often, at least not until 1944 as there are not too many of these bombers at the moment, and the bombers would keep moving from one city to the next on a random basis. Thus on most cases those bombers would end their turn somewhere over Germany and not over a city.

I would only make it that high if I also gave the Axis player more of a chance (w/ more air units).

I think I would rather reduce the exp of the early Allied fighters and, just as importantly, their range a bit. If I am right the Spit VB had a combat radius of 470 miles (760 km) which means it could effectively reach Northern France and Western Germany, but not Berlin and E Germany. Currenty the Spits can reach a bit further on the map, so I would reduce their max fuel to the lower 40s so that the British strat bombers have to attack most objectives unescorted. This would make the life of the player easier a bit and would also make the scenario more accurate as those bombers did suffer terrible losses and basically that's why they changed to night bombing. The range reduction would also limit the time the Spits can spend over the Continent further limiting their effectiveness.

My understanding was that the air war in Western Europe was very costly to the Allies through '41 and '42 and that it wasn't until the US/UK revamped their escort approach that it began to have a substantial impact on Axis production. I am not an expert on this history, though, and I'd be curious to hear what others say to this.

As I know due to the heavy losses the British changed to night bombing, which, on the other hand, was much less accurate and effective. Still, it was the only way the British could strike back at that time and the public demanded some kind of revenge for the Blitz. Even when the Americans had started to arrive in numbers from 1943, initially they suffered heavy losses as they could not escort the bombers all the way to Berlin with the P-47s. It was only with the introduction of the long ranged P-51 that they could dominate the skies. The overall effect of Allied bombing on Axis economy is still debated, but it surely had an effect on the morale - seeing the inability of the Luftwaffe to defend the big cities, more and more Germans started to doubt that the final victory would be theirs in the end.

Regarding the concern about the German fighters getting chewed up in early engagements w/ Spitfires, I agree that I have had this happen to me, too. I think the problem could be solved by increasing the Luftwaffe's and flak's experience in Western Europe by 50 exp. per unit while also slightly lightening the amount of British fighter/bomber incursions in '41 and early '42. The numbers would still slowly increase as time goes on, though.

Yeah, I think it is possible to do so.

Finally, regarding the core limit and the inability to buy new fighters, one way of getting around the core limit to replace lost fighters would be to have the first two or three (German 109s and 190s, at least) automatically replaced by "scrambling" fresh emergency fighter corps (similar to what happens when you lose Finnish units or German recons).

Yeah, some replacement fighters could be added. In some cases there can be nasty dice rolls and even the most cautious player can loose an important fighter unit, which cannot be replaced due to the core cap.

the player should be prevented from occupying the coastal hexes of Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and Southern France. It's a gamey solution to a gamey problem, but I can't think of any other way that makes the player deal w/ the historical reality of containing the effects of an amphibious invasion, rather than preventing one from ever taking place.

Yeah, I am just still a bit uncertain how to prevent it: a simple presitge penalty could be affordable for a few or just for a single turn, especially if the player is low in prestige anyway and thus he has not much to lose. A more drastical solution would be to make all Axis units disappear from the map which enter those hexes, following a warning message, of course, but even than it would be hard to justify it. Maybe it could be said that those units are destroyed by the Allied naval barrage.

[Ceek]

1. Regarding air defense, I like your latest proposals. I think that's a system worth at least testing in 1.4 and we can offer feedback from there on how it works.

2. Regarding the amphibious invasions, there are at least three ways you could deal with it. 1.) In Niki's Legacy of Versailles scenarios, he made the scenario end in an automatic defeat if you violated rules regarding the deployment of tanks beyond an allotted amount specified in his briefings. The loss was called "Disobeying orders." You could do something similar, although that may be too harsh in a long scenario like this where the player may not be saving regularly. 2.) I am not a fan of the prestige penalty idea. It doesn't seem to make sense given how other penalties are linked to disruptions in infrastructure and production. And, as you said, it would still be worth it to lose prestige for a few turns if it meant holding off a potentially game-changing invasion force. Of all the possibilities, I think removing (i.e., destroying) all units on the beaches with the explanation, "destroyed in the invasion's naval barrage and beach strafing" makes the most sense, provided you give the player warnings from High Command that this will be the outcome before each invasion and are very clear where units can and cannot be located in order to remain protected (e.g., coastal towns are excepted). This way the penalty is harsh, but the player knows what they need to do to avoid it, and you still have the challenge of having to defend against a "real" (i.e., deployed) amphibious assault force.

[Delta66]

I understand that it would be a good idea to prevent the player from abusing the fact that he now the exact timing and location of the june 44 invasion.
We could also argue that if France is not well defended the invasion may happen a little earlier.

In my last game I blocked all of northern France coastal hexes by mid 44, not really to prevent the allied landing, but because I had just finished the Soviet Union, and was preparing my own Sealion invasion. You also have to take that into account if you plan to add some penalties for occupying the beaches. If there is only UK left to conquer it sounds fair to allow the German to stack as much as units he wants in France.

In 1944 there were debates among the Germans on how to defend against the naval invasion, as if they didn't know were to expect it, they knew it will come anyway. Rommel for example wanted to defend on the beaches, other rather wanted to keep a strong force in reserve to counterattack. In the end they choose something in between. But at this point in the mod, I think it is good to give the Germans some freedom on how to defend the french coasts.

[Ceek]

What I would argue is that even Rommel's proposed defense is not in fact what the player is allowed to do right now in mod. He wanted to "meet" the enemy on the beaches, but this is not what the mod depicts because allied landing craft cannot attack units on beaches from their landing craft; they simply cannot land on the beaches at all! Nor could the Germans have realistically covered every single kilometer of available beachhead in Northern France, as is possible right now. These are limits of the game engine and map scale and are why special measure needs to be taken to prevent the player from cheaply barricading hexes to prevent ahistorical outcomes. This was not Rommel's strategy--would that defending Germany was as easy as spamming infantry units and rushing them to beachheads to sit on their hands so that the landing craft had to patiently wait offshore until they would kindly move aside!

[McGuba]

In my last game I blocked all of northern France coastal hexes by mid 44, not really to prevent the allied landing, but because I had just finished the Soviet Union, and was preparing my own Sealion invasion. You also have to take that into account if you plan to add some penalties for occupying the beaches. If there is only UK left to conquer it sounds fair to allow the German to stack as much as units he wants in France.

Sure, it makes things a bit more tricky. But, it is possible to do it like that.

What I would argue is that even Rommel's proposed defense is not in fact what the player is allowed to do right now in mod. He wanted to "meet" the enemy on the beaches, but this is not what the mod depicts because allied landing craft cannot attack units on beaches from their landing craft; they simply cannot land on the beaches at all! Nor could the Germans have realistically covered every single kilometer of available beachhead in Northern France, as is possible right now. These are limits of the game engine and map scale and are why special measure needs to be taken to prevent the player from cheaply barricading hexes to prevent ahistorical outcomes. This was not Rommel's strategy--would that defending Germany was as easy as spamming infantry units and rushing them to beachheads to sit on their hands so that the landing craft had to patiently wait offshore until they would kindly move aside!

I tend to go for a compromise: the player would be allowed to occupy several hexes close to the beach like cities and and airports, but not all. As seen here:

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All Axis units in zone 28 would disappear right before the Allied landing and there would be a warning message before and zone 28 would be clearly marked for a time. And the same would happen in Italy.

It is indeed a bit gamey, but I just cannot come up with anything better using this game engine.

[Delta66]

I understand the reasoning for limiting the Germans to artificially hinder the landing by blocking the beaches.
I also understand the game engine limitations.

However I' would argue that the main reason that prevented the Germans to do this IRL, was because there were quite busy on the eastern front.
If the idea of is to have one long scenario for 41 to 45, there is a high probability that each game might deviate from history at some point, this is not necessarily a bad thing as it allows to experiment various strategies too. So this raise the question of why forcing some specific major operations (why not others BTW) of the war to happen as they did IRL, especially late in the long Barbarossa scenario.

Having all AXIS units disappear from the beach seems very unnatural and could be a worse cure than the problem IMO. It sounds like changing from having all Allied disappearing in easy combat blocked on the shore to the other extreme.
I wonder if we can found other solution to distract the Germans from the north coast in a more natural manner. maybe increasing partisan activity in France, perhaps to the point of sending a SAS commando units too. Or increasing the bombing raids, as a concentration of force so close to the British airbases would have probably triggered.

If you choose to remove all Germans units as you mentioned, I think Zone 28 is pretty large. And I would reduce it in the NE, at least the three (or five) north most hexes.

[McGuba]

Right, one at a time.

So I have set up the stage for the strategic bombing campaign in the following way:
- Most Western Allied strategic bombers from England would attack a randomly selected victory objective city in Germany from early 1942
- Until the arrival of the P-51 these bombers would attack the easternmost targets like Berlin without figher escort, however they might be escorted by Mosquitoes at times (Mosquito was made a fighter in the mod earlier) and by other fighters when attacking closer targets like Kiel
- Unfortunately, as there are no night turns, on some occasions it is possible that British Mosquito night fighers would provide escort to American daytime bombers. It is a serious game engine limitation, but I think it is still acceptable to some extent.
- The player gets 50-150 prestige penalty for one or more Allied strat bomber still alive over those objective cities at the end of the Axis turn.

On the one hand it gives the player the chance to destroy the bomber in the Axis turn so to avoid the prestige penalty. On the other hand, if the player is already low in prestige, i.e. he has around zero in the end of the turn he would not lose any prestige as there can be no negative prestige in the game. Then, he would get the normal prestige award at the beginning of the next turn. In this way those players who are already doing bad would not be affected by the penalty. However, a smart player can make use of it and just spend all the prestige before clicking the end turn button only to avoid getting the penalty. But, if he does so, he cannot save prestige for the more expensive units like the Panther and such as they usually cost more than the prestige generated in just one turn. In other words, you can ignore the effect of the bombing, but then you can only purchase the cheaper units. I think it is very much in accordance with the spirit of the mod: you can ignore the bombing raids, but then there will be a drawback. Historically, the Germans did something similar: they were unable to protect their cities and industries, so they moved many of the big factories to the countryside and to the underground but it must had had a negative effect on the volume and quality of production. For example the the hull of the Type XXI submarine was constructed from eight prefabricated sections made by smaller companies and finally assembled in the shipyards. As a result there were many quality problems and in the end only a few were ready for service by the end of the war.


- oh, and there should be no penalty for the winter months as it is unfair to get penalty for a bomber that cannot be destroyed due to the bad weather. However, at times there might be penalty when it is raining as it is a random weather condition in the mod. So the player has to destroy those bombers before they could reach their targets while the weather is fine.

I am really curious how the AI will handle this bombing campaign. I mean, to what extent will it provide fighter escort and stuff.


Now, for the other issue:

Having all AXIS units disappear from the beach seems very unnatural and could be a worse cure than the problem IMO. It sounds like changing from having all Allied disappearing in easy combat blocked on the shore to the other extreme.

Hm, I tend to agree. At least, now you can see how difficult it is to balance a long scenario like this.

I wonder if we can found other solution to distract the Germans from the north coast in a more natural manner. maybe increasing partisan activity in France, perhaps to the point of sending a SAS commando units too. Or increasing the bombing raids, as a concentration of force so close to the British airbases would have probably triggered.

Now I am thinking about adding more and more Allied battle ships and such if there are many Axis units placed on those zones at the time of the landing. I mean, the more Axis units there are the more Allied units would spawn to bombard them. And there could be more and more partisans as well in their back.

Actually, I did a very similar scripting with the convoy routes: if the player only attacks with U-boats, the Allies only get destroyers and bombers to counter them. But, if the player decides to move some of his cruisers or even battleships there, the Allies would also respond with sending more and more warships. I think it does make sense.

[Delta66]

Ok, one at a time too

1/ Strategic air war looks good.

It would give more reasons to keep AA guns in Germany too, instead of moving them massively either to France or to the Eastern front. Indeed it would be great if the AI air campaign would focus more on Germany than on France, until 44 at least.
I think starting from spring 1942 Mosquitoes started long range "Intruder" type missions. Later in Nov 1943 they were used in N° 100 Group as escort fighter for the Bombers. From the game point of view this makes little difference. maybe as tactical bombers they don't get reaction fire while on escort duties. I wonder if this is a modable trait or if reaction fire is a class specific feature?
Having Mosquitoes potentially escort US day bombers, seems a minor issue, considering the mod scale and the engine limits. Maybe mention it in the documentation, to assuage your historical consciousness


2/ Increased Battleship in June 44.

It sounds good, and like increased partisan activities it would feel a more natural way to make the Germans think twice before camping on the beaches.

I was thinking of new players trying the mods, without having followed this discussion, and suddenly having their units removed (or threatened to be removed) from forbidden hexes. I think in such a situation I would feel OMG WTF cheated

It would be ok if the allied invading units could somehow "push" the Axis defenders from the beaches, representing the momentum given by the massive armada and units pushing behind in the following assault echelons. But I don't think that is possible, actually the way the game handle entry of reinforcement during a scenario is not really good.
Having protected spawning hexes forbidden to the other side, on some friendly edges of the map would be acceptable too. But right in the middle of the battlefield it feels to much of a gamey artifact