Slitherine

Its a holiday weekend here in the States, my Labor is done, so I've made a wish list. Yeah, I know. Wrong holiday. Cant hurt to try though.

CEAW is a great game. The BJR folks are making it better. And I have a list of things I'd like to have considered. Probably not in time for the next release, but maybe in the future?

Here goes, in no particular order. Some of these can be changed by editing the .txt files, others require going under the Java hood.

1. Two capitals. Canada was a sovereign state in 1939. I believe Canada declared war on September 10, 1939. The units in Canada should be Canadian, not UK. Canadian flag, not Union Jack. I'm guessing this was done in order to be able to implement the "two capital rule". I have implemented this by moving the second UK capital to the hex north of London. If I remove the second capital altogether, the game will load but not start. So removing the second capital is a Java change. Moving it to London is a map change. Instead of the two capitals, I propose the following. In the turn that London falls, the UK continues to fight on. The only change is that no UK unit can have full supply as there is no capital. If the Axis player wishes to continue and occupy every city, he/she has that option. Historically, the UK government probably would have relocated to Canada. But I don't believe you would have seen a similar situation as happened in France. The USSR should also have one capital. Again, I have moved the Perm/Siberia capital to the hex north of Moscow by changing the .txt files. This works except that capturing Moscow's two hexes knock's it out of the war. But like the UK, I don't believe this is historical. The Reds would have continued to fight even after the fall of Moscow. Except that the fall of Moscow would have been an even greater defeat than the fall of London. Moscow was the economic, political, and transportation center of the USSR. I think in the game, the USSR should continue after the fall of Moscow, no USSR should be able to achieve supply level 5 (no capital), and the USSR loses all rail capability.

2. Map/country changes. Newfoundland should be playable. Make it owned by the UK (revert to Canada if UK falls) and add St. Johns as city/port on eastern edge. Iceland and Greenland should be playable. Both should be owned by Denmark and be neutral. Add Luuk(?) as city/port on Greenland and Reykjavik as city/port on Iceland. If Denmark is invaded and conquered, both revert to US control. Neither Iceland nor Greenland should be initially garrisoned. Nor should Newfoundland. I can add the ports and make them playable by map and scenario .txt changes. But the switch with the conquest of the owner needs to be done in Java? (I'll save the whole discussion of supply of ground units over water for another time, as well as should the Axis even be allowed to invade Greenland/Iceland/Canada/USA. Hint - it should be possible, but extremely, extremely difficult.)

3. Partisans. They are just wrong for a simulation at the corp level. Make them an option to turn on/off (Java change). I've had the game plop a partisan Dutch "corps" right next to a German armor corps one turn after invading Holland. Granted only once. But that was just silly. I'm assuming the game will still determine when and where to place them if you don't turn it off. But here's some guidelines. The chance of a partisan appearing should be a factor depending on 1, country (Yugoslavia highest, then USSR, France, etc.) 2. proximity to city (closer the more likely), 3. distance from enemy unit (never closer that 2 hexes), 4. proximity to hex where a unit was destroyer (survivors more likely to spawn a partisan, and yes the game could track this), and 5. the number of current partisans (success breeds success), 6. subject to an overall per country limit. Partisans should always be garrisons only and never corps.

4. Garrisons. OK if you have to have them (if for no other reason than partisans), only a minimum attack capability and no offensive tech upgrades. I don't agree that you can prevent an invasion by lining your coast with garrisons. Seriously, the Home Guard did not prevent SeaLion. Lack of control of the air, channel, and supply concerns killed it. It should not be enough that you can trace to a port to be in supply. That port should be be able to trace supply back to home country with all water hexes covered by more friendly air/naval ZOCs than enemy. You might be initially in supply, but if you lost the air/naval cover, the invasion/occupation force would see its supply level drop. Much more realistic. And doable in the game engine - just an extension of the supply calculation.

5. Commanders at the start without the "must build rule". Use the historical ones. Two for the British - one in UK, one in Egypt. One for French in Paris unit. One for Italy in Rome unit. Or maybe Africa. None for US/USSR. Player can build own. Two for Germany in Poland - von Bock AGN and von Runstedt AGS.

6. Fortifications. There needs to be a way to make them. Another ground type unit? But not if you could place it however many turns after building. You should be required to identify the location before building. Which means it may be better to give a ground unit the ability to fortify once its entrenchment reaches a certain level. Adding the West Wall was great. But I don't think the East Wall existed in 1939. Nor did the Gustav Line. And (I can change these in the .txt files) I'll give you Leningrad, Sevastopol, Tobruk, Gibraltar, Malta, probably Scapa Flow, but Palermo???

7. Air unit supply. Sorry. Not buying this one. Air units can rebase, but they must trace supply just like land units. They did not have air-refueling in WWII and I don't believe they had tanker planes. So no air flitting all over the map. You move out of supply or get cutoff - you don't fly. Air units are powerful enough already.

8. There are some capabilities that are not correct, but they can be fixed in the .txt files. For instance, naval units should have minimal attack capabilities against ground units. The idea that a destroyer/ battleship flotilla can inflict 2-3 steps damage is unhistorical. Even against fixed targets with intense shore bombardment with spotters the consensus was that the effects lasted at best an hour. (e.g. D-Day, the whole Pacific theater) So allowing the French fleet to pummel 3rd Panzer Corps if it happens to be in a coast hex is ludicrous. I'll give you against fortifications, maybe, but not mobile ground units.

9. There is already the capability to set a country's initial tech levels through the scenario file. But this is at the expense of a tech level during the game. I would like to see a mechanism where I could give a country a tech level and it still have 6 levels available to improve. These should be given sparingly. For example, I think they should be UK - radar, USA - industry, USSR, France, Italy - none, Germany should have Blitzkrieg, Organization, and perhaps Ground Support. There should be no naval. The only one would have been Carriers for the Japanese. But they are no the other side of the map.

10. Russian winter length should be variable. Once it starts both players can plan for it. Make it variable and you'd see the same uncertainty you see now with the onset.

11. Rail/amphibious/transport capacity should be a tech level under general somewhere. Should start with a certain level and be able to increase it with tech spending. There should be no "extra" RR/transport/amphibious. If you don't have the facilities you, can't do it. No spending PP's for this. And I don't like the RR length fixed. (And zero in eastern Russia). How about tying the rail length to supply level?

12. Convoys. Its nice to have the computer manage them. But frankly, sending out a 100+ PP convoy when your looking at 10-12 Axis subs and minimal escort is silly and unhistorical. The convoys would have been suspended. Let the Allied player move the convoys. And determine the amount of PP's. Which should come from the US pool. Probably have to do some play balancing here. Speaking of convoys and escorts, the Lend Lease destroyers in the BJR are a very clever implementation. But how about making their appearance triggered off some event rather than a set time. Say the Axis destroys 50 or 100 PPs of convoy.
Likewise, the Azores should be neutral, owned by Portugal, until such time as the USA enters the war and has a Strategic bomber.

Well, that's twelve. And there are only twelve days of Christmas, so I'll quit.

Comments?

PS. But just one more. Can FreeVerse, (or anyone else, for that matter), please support the mod on the Mac?

Some interesting thoughts here, and I'll give my two cents on each in turn. I'm speaking about the BJR mod, not vanilla.

1. I'd be fine with having Canada be a minor country instead of included within the British empire. The issue, like you said, would be finding a way to have the UK continue fighting if the British Isles surrendered. The only change you would propose to Russia is making them lose rail capacity if Moscow fell, correct? That's a bad idea, trust me. It would lead to some serious massacres on the eastern front in 1942. See my AAR against Ronnie. He would have literally no army left if a) he lost rail capability and b) he couldn't run faster than I could chase. Besides, having Russia lose rail capacity at any point is probably ahistorical. I don't think all the railroads ran through Moscow, after all. That would be a pretty inefficient way of doing things, don't you think?

2. I would love to see Newfoundland playable, but I think the problems outweight the gain. The Allied player could station a few bombers there and cover the whole Atlantic Ocean, and I don't think that's right. As it is now, there are places the subs can lurk with relative impunity, and that is how it should be.

3. Partisans are one of the main things that have been revamped in BJR version 2.00 (still in development). No more corps; only garrisons, most of which will not pop up at full strength. Conversely, they can appear in conquered countries and also in unoccupied cities. So if the Germans leave Kiev empty, there's a small chance a partisan unit will pop up right inside the city. It's a bit of give and take.

4. Not sure I understand what you mean here...

5. BJR 2.00 gives players free generals when a major country joines the war. Germany gets Runstedt, Britain gets a 5-rank, France gets the 3-rank guy (can't remember his name), and Russia gets a high ranking commander but not Zhukov. Italy also gets a 4-rank commander, I think.

6. It would be cool to build forts, but I'm not sure how many players would actually do it if it was too expensive. And it has to be expensive because otherwise players would be tempted to build lines upon lines of them.

7. The problem with not giving air units automatic supply is that you can't base them out of islands anymore. Malta, Greenland, Gibraltar, Scapa Flow...all these potentially vital airbases would be useless. There would be no anti-sub presence in the North Atlantic.

8. Usually a single DD/BB won't cause 2-3 steps damage. Sometimes I can take 3-4 steps off a tank unit if I attack with 3 BBs, but that seems fine to me. It's the Axis player's fault for leaving the unit on the coast. Also, you can't lower the BBs or DDs ground attack value any further; it's already at 1!

9. The way ceaw handles starting tech is to give one country a head start in a certain area over others. I believe the rationale is that the other side will catch up eventually if they put additional effort into that area.

10. Now this is an idea I like. Maybe allow winter length to very by one turn more or less. You would just have to make sure there's no possible way to see bad weather effects in late May or June, because that would just be horrible.

11. Invasion/transport capacity is linked with industry and surface ships tech in BJR 2.00. RR overspending gets exponentially more expensive the more you go over your limit. The first couple steps are cheap, but they get prohibitively pricey after that. This allows the player to rail, say a tank (costing 5 rail points) when he only has 3 rail points left. He can still move the unit, but he has to pay extra for those last 2 rail points. You HAVE to allow players to do this or you run into all kinds of logistical problems.

12. Another intriguing thought, but I don't know if I'd want to manage convoys as an Allied player. This is a military game, and those convoys are purely economic. Besides, why wouldn't the Allied player just send out 500 PPs worth of convoys at once? He wouldn't even have to escort them; sheer numbers would ensure that most of the production would make it safely to England or Russia. The subs wouldn't stand a fighting chance of putting much of a dent in the UK's or Russia's economies. I do like the idea of triggering the release of the US Lend Lease DD on a certain number of convoy PP sunk by the Germans, though 150 or 200 is probably more appropriate. We'd have to set the threshhold so the average Axis player would cause the DD to appear at its historical time.

How long does winter last once it starts? I know it's fixed but have never seen the length recorded in a post.

1. It's possible to have Canada as a minor country and use e. g. Halifax as the second US capital. Then Canada can have their own minor power units just like Free France. The initial problem is that minor power Allied units are 2 tech levels below their controlling major power unit. It could be possible to make an exception for Canada so they have the same tech level as Britain.

2. Having New Foundland, Iceland and Greenland playable means that the Allied player get lots of airbases to fight the subs. That changes the sub warfare completely. This is the reason we just have a few airbases in Iceland and Greenland. That's enough to allow the Allies to send air units to Britain or use as sub hunter airbases.

3. Partisans are kept to ensure you garrison your important occupied cities or resources. If no partisans would exist then there is no reason to have rear garrison.

5. The free generals are set in general.txt and for the 1939 scenario the following generals are free when the major power activates:
Germany: Rundtstedt, Italy: Graziani, UK: Auchinleck, France: Gamelin, USSR: Timoshenko, USA: None

For the 1941 scenario they get the following generals and in addition. Germany: Guderian and Manstein, Italy: Messe, UK: Montgomery, USSR: Zhukov. More generals arrive in the 1942, 1943 and 1944 scenarios. So if you start the 1944 scenario you would have 5 German generals, 2 British, 5 Russian and 2 US.

You won't get the free generals that would e. g. arrive in the 1941 scenario if you start the 1939 scenario. You have to build them yourselves. You only get the free generals for 1939.

6. Building forts would require a big change to the CeaW engine so we haven't considered this. This is the reason we added the Gustav Line, East Wall and Siegfried Line. We need to have them at the start of the scenario for them to still be there at late stage of the game. Forts you add via the scenario will disappear when occupied (like the Maginot Line). So we could not add forts along the French coast.

The east wall existed before the war because it was created as defenses against the Poles. Construction of the Ostwall started in 1934. Here if info about the Ostwall if you understand German:
http://www.ostwall.com/ostwall_start.htm

7. I agree with Joe here. We need to keep air supply open for air units. We also think what would happen in the real war if an airbase was about to be surrounded. The land units would not escape, but the air units to use the petrol they still had and evacuate back to safety, flying over the units encircling the airbase. So I don't think it was as easy to trap air units. Also remember that each turn lasts 20 days. If an enemy attack had started that threatened to encircle a city or airbase then the air units could easily evacuate before the trap closed while the land units would need time to get out facing enemy fire while they withdrew.

8. Ground attack for BB's or DD's is reduced to 0 during winter so you won't see French BB's attacking the German coastal units during the winter. The BB's usually inflict 0-1 steps per turn, but at least the lower the efficiency of the bombarded unit. German soldiers told horror stories about being victim of Allied shore bombardment in the initial phase of Overlord. Such bombardment paralyzed the coastal defense units so the invaders had a slightly easier task getting ashore.

9. I agree it's ahistorical that CeaW stops at tech 6, but with the lab limitations we have in the BJR mod the players rarely reach tech 6 anyway. Usually they get the 3 air techs before May 1945. Armor tech 6 might be there for German armor before the end of the war as well. But no country would get to tech 7 before the end of the war, maybe with the exception of USA putting focus on strategic operations right from the start.

In order to have the tech levels advance as far as it could then we would need more unit images, add more pages with tech info etc. Right now the game engine is made so it can show 6 tech levels in one window. If we want to add more tech levels then we need to add some scrolling functionality etc.

I don't see the benefit of this when you would most likely never reach tech 7 before May 1945.

10. The Russian severe winter starts at a variable date and will last 6 turns (can be altered in general.txt). This is in addition to the winter in Europe (all hexes north of hex row 50) which lasts from November till February (included).

The European winter effects (+1 movement cost in each hex, -1 ground attack (-2 for armor) and air factors halved) is supposed to be weather effects from both winter and mud. You had true winters in the north, but it was muddy weather and not winter that affected e. g. the Allies the most in Italy. So the European winter is actually the months with either winter (north) or mud effects. We don't distinguish between winter and mud effects.

It's possible for a later version to have weather each month be random (clear, mud or winter), but it would require some change to the CeaW engine so we can show the current weather in each hex.

12. It's certainly possible to let the USLL destroyer arrive after a certain amount of PP's was lost to the subs. I think such a change would be linked to 1 (making Canada a minor power with their own units).

You also have to remember that the USLL destroyer program was a program that required political approval because US was not yet at war. Roosevelt wanted to help Britain before, but had to struggle with the Congress who wanted Europe to fight alone. So Roosevelt had to wait for the right time to get approval for his lend lease program. The USLL program was approved by the Congress 11th March 1941. This is the same date we make the USLL destroyed available in the BJR-mod.

I'm not sure the number of convoys sunk in the Atlantic would have helped the Congress realize that it was necessary for USA to help Britain. Maybe Jim can help here with the historical background that triggered the USLL program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

Thanks for the responses, guys. If you would, let me clarify some of my points.

Several items on the list come from the realization that someone on your team has access to the Java engine. Not having access to the code myself, I don't know how well its written or how easy it would be extend/modify. I was suggesting that while you are implementing house rules, weather, etc., if you could take a look at some of these suggestions. Some of these may be too complex to implement or they may break too much of the system to be worth while.

1. Two capitals. My guess is that the original programmer wanted to have UK and USSR continue after their capital fell. Since there obviously is code somewhere to deal with a fall of a capital, how hard would it be make each country a unique event? UK and USSR still get production points, convoy points, can still build units, etc. BTW, if you think the USSR RR penalty is too severe, OK. But in reality, the Soviet system was that inefficient. I don't have any references to support this, but I do remember the old "War in the East" game which included RR on the map. And if I remember, it was nigh impossible to rail units from north to south once Moscow fell. Anyway, I'd settle for having USSR continue to exist after Moscow falls.

My guess is this is one of the code changes that would be easier to implement.

2. Newfoundland/Iceland/Greenland. I see your point about the Allies getting a lot of free bases. Thinking about this, I see at least three problems. First, the range of air units is too high, at least for units that were available in 1939. Not sure this is worth changing, given the effects it would have elsewhere. Second, the scale of the map is wrong for the distances between the continents. Don't even want to think about this one. Finally, supply is not considered. I believe this is the correct solution, but it would take a major change to the game engine. Though maybe not. If you are implementing the Malta rules in the game engine, couldn't you also implement a set of North Sea rules? Tie the number of air units allowable to be available to the industry and surface ship levels of Allies?

3. Partisans. All I'm suggesting is that if you get a chance, make the AI smarter about creating partisan units. Also consider that the AI does a very poor job of playing partisans once they are created. Maybe could you add an option to turn them on/off?

4. & 7. In my original post, I called these by other names. But the real issue is supply of units not connected by land hexes to the home country. I understand why things are the way they are (air units always in supply, invasions supported by surface ships, etc.) for playability. And I realize it would be a major and probably difficult change to the game engine. So I don't hold out much hope for this one. BTW, the correct answer, IMO, is the number of supplied units based in land hexes not connected by land hexes to a allied/home country should be a function of the 1.) industry/surface ship tech levels (barring transport ships, which I would not propose), 2.) the number of cities/ports occupied in the non-home land/island, and 3.) the number of enemy versus friendly air and naval units that can interdict the intervening water hexes. Note that the game engine has these three pieces of info available so it could calculate supply at the beginning of each turn for that turn.

5. Commanders. OK. Glad to hear you put it in general.txt. I'd prefer none for majors not at war including USSR and Italy. But if you put it in general.txt that's fine. This also brings up a separate point. The more of these changes you can implement in the .txt files the better. First, players can make their own decisions to include or not include the changes and second, its gives us Mac users a possibility to have them available without the changes to the game engine. Who knows if/when we'd see them.

6. Fortifications. Not sure why this would be a big change. And I agree, joerock, they should not be cheap. But how about this - select a land unit that has an entrenchment value of say 8 (meaning it hasn't moved or been attacked (including air) for at least that many turns, correct?), hit Control-F, and at a cost of an additional number of PP's, hex is fortified?

8. Surface ships. I agree. Units in FIXED positions and on the COAST, could be subject to shore bombardment. But don't forget the scale here, a mobile unit in a coastal hex is for the most part NOT visible to surface ships. What is the hex scale? What was the maximum range of even the 16" naval guns? How many shells did they carry, compared say to the average WWII artillery unit? How successful were surface ships firing "blind"? If you want to give them some shock effects, OK. Not a big deal either way, because I can modify the "unit.txt" file.

9. Tech levels. My original post was unclear. I would like to have the ability to set tech levels at the country level independent of the tech spending levels. The way to do this requires a rather simple engine change. Have unit.txt files on a per country level. Or leave the current unit.txt file in place as the default and then add country specific lines of data to override specific unit types. Also, consider adding an option to disable the 50% limit on tech areas. If you want it fine, but maybe others would like to experiment?

10. Weather. Again, if you can parameterize your implementation from outside the engine and also make it optional, the value of your mod increases. Allow me to specify a minimum and maximum length. Allow me to turn it off.

11. RR/amphibious. OK. Not sure its worth all that bookkeeping. But I still am going to say there should be a hard limit to the number of units. I believe one should be able to "grow" that number with some type of tech spending. And as long as I have the capability to set the additional penalty in a .txt file, I'm OK with it.

12. Convoys. I still say if the Germans had never unleashed the U-boats, there would have never been the Lend Lease deal. So I'd like to see it tied to a sinking level. Not a big deal. We're talking one destroyer flotilla here. And I can always edit the scenario file, if I choose.