Slitherine

Apologies if these have been done before but I am curious.

1. Denmark did not resist the German takeover. This was a wise and expedient move resulting in Copenhagen and the lives of many Danes being spared. Without the Germans needing to keep a heavy presence it may have also contributed to the success of the evacuation of Danish Jews later in the war.
In CEAW, though, the Germans must attack to take Copenhagen and, in my experience anyway, bomb it with Stukas to assure a quick victory.

2. German units reached and took Paris within a month - the French did not try to defend it due, to some extent anyway, the likely damage it would cause. Even the German commander in Paris ignored Hitler's order to destroy the capital in 1944 until the French and US forces could liberate it.
In CEAW, though, the French often build a line 2-deep along the Seine, which can take months to crush and inevitably leads to massed attacks on Paris. Of course, I order my bombers to avoid the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Arc de Triomph and the Palace of Versailles!

So, my question, why does CEAW GS 2.0, which states it tries to emulate history without forcing the player to be scripted, not prevent the destruction of 2 beautiful cities? I know it's 'just a game' and I don't have a solution to the Paris problem but I am curious. For Paris, perhaps the victory could be dependent on taking another city, further to the west/south-west? x number of French units killed? All UK units out of France?

Rome was declared an open city too and probably several other cities as well.

Remember that this is a GAME and the players will define their strategy according to what gives them the best results. The real Germans didn't know that the French would be so demoralized in May 1940 that they would consider leaving Paris an open city. So the Germans pushed for Paris.

What would happen in GS if e. g. the players know that they don't need Paris to enforce French surrender. Then some other city must be the surrender city. Then the Germans would go all the way to that city instead. That is not historical at all. The French surrendered when it was obvious to them that there was no hope and Paris would fall anyway.

Denmark has a symbolic force in Copenhagen (only 4 steps). You can certainly take Copenhagen without air support if you use the BB and DD and an amphibious landing to Sealand. The real Germans actually committed some force to Denmark to take control over the country very fast. The Danes actually had 2 divisions (one in Jutland and one in Sealand) that the Germans had to defeat.

We can't program into the game limitations like some units not wanting to fight and surrender at the sight of the enemy. We use the OOB's we find and go from there.

I've played hundreds of wargames and several strategic ones. I've yet seen any rules where the Germans can enter Denmark unhindered or enforce a French surrender without getting to Paris.

If you play a game and think about the beautiful buildings and people you would "destroy" when making attacks then maybe wargames is not for you? Such games are a simulation of something terrible, i. e. destruction and death. War is cruel and if you don't like to attack then playing Monopoly or Scrabble is probably better. People who like wargames like the historical aspect where you can test different strategies than the real generals did and see if it could make the war result different.

GS v2.0 is designed in such a way so the Axis will in 99% of the games lose strategically (i.e would get on the defensive and eventually crumble), but they can win the GAME if they perform better than the historical Axis.

Again I want to repeat that GS v2.0 is a GAME and we consider the units you have on the board as pieces in the game you PLAY. I guess you know that chess is a wargame too and you destroy and kill units there too. The pawns are regular soldiers and so on. I don't think the chess players worry about the symbol of killing when they capture a piece. For them it's a game and they try to master the game under the rules of the game.

War is cruel and if you don't like to attack then playing Monopoly or Scrabble is probably better

A more condescending response I don't think I've read. Luckily, I enjoy Monopoly and chess, too. Thanks.

El_Condoro wrote:

War is cruel and if you don't like to attack then playing Monopoly or Scrabble is probably better

A more condescending response I don't think I've read. Luckily, I enjoy Monopoly and chess, too. Thanks.

This is what you wrote: "I order my bombers to avoid the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Arc de Triomph and the Palace of Versailles" and "So, my question, why does CEAW GS 2.0, which states it tries to emulate history without forcing the player to be scripted, not prevent the destruction of 2 beautiful cities?"

Do you really think wargamers think about buildings and the beauty of a city when they plan where to attack? Are you serious that you avoid attacking Paris in GS v2.0 because of the famous buildings in Paris? To them a city is simply an objective on the map which is required to capture to win the GAME.

Why send strategic bombers to Berlin in GS v2.0? There are many beautiful buildings there too like the Brandenburger Tor. If we put such limitations to
GS v2.0 then nobody would play the game at all. You simply can't win the game as the Allies unless you capture all enemy major power capitals. You can't attack a single city in GS v2.0 if you would worry about destroying something beautiful inside the city. The truth is that many beautiful buildings were destroyed or damaged by both the Allies and the Axis. That can't be avoided in war.

Sometimes the real commanders avoided the destruction of cultural buildings and other times they ignored it because it was more important to get the military objective. E. g. Monte Cassino was severely bombed by the Allies and the Allied got a lot of criticism after the war for bombing Dresden. In GS v2.0 YOU, as the player, decide where to attack. Not some kind of scripting in the game code.

I completely agree with what you are saying; it's the how that I have a problem with. Like I said in the OP, it is 'just a game' and, no, I was not serious about the beautiful buildings in the various devastated European cities of WW2. I was just curious about why those particular aspects of the game could not more accurately reflect history. As you pointed out, Rome was not a significant part of Italy's reasons for actions, neither was Paris for the French etc. The reason for my question was more that bombing Paris back to the Dark Ages was not a historical necessity but it is in CEAW. Thanks (sincerely) for your extended responses; as I said, I do agree with the logic of game mechanics etc.

Why don't we make a game where everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya

El_Condoro wrote:The reason for my question was more that bombing Paris back to the Dark Ages was not a historical necessity but it is in CEAW.

Is it really? To be bombed into nothing is usually fate of London, Moscow and most german cities.
Never seen Paris bombed into 0, its more like couple of airstrikes and fast german assault on the city, meaning the fall of France.

I may not be making my point well. Moscow, London and, of course, Berlin were all bombed extensively during the war so to do so is historical to do in CEAW. Paris and Rome were not, and yet to conquer France and Italy their capitals must be attacked - usually bombed, definitely ground assaulted. Now that's fine as a what-if of a wargame but players are *forced* to do something ahistorical by the game - there is no choice if you want to conquer those countries (unless the defender abandons the cities for some inexplicable reason). So that is my point. No biggie - it is not a game-breaker for me, simply a question.

What French did with Paris is pure "the defender abandons the cities for some inexplicable reason".
Why player should be forced to repeat this?

Because it's all part of playing the French. Incorporate the 'inexplicable'. Anyway, off to my next turn preparing to bomb Brest-Litovsk. Cheers

El_Condoro wrote:I may not be making my point well. Moscow, London and, of course, Berlin were all bombed extensively during the war so to do so is historical to do in CEAW. Paris and Rome were not, and yet to conquer France and Italy their capitals must be attacked - usually bombed, definitely ground assaulted. Now that's fine as a what-if of a wargame but players are *forced* to do something ahistorical by the game - there is no choice if you want to conquer those countries (unless the defender abandons the cities for some inexplicable reason). So that is my point. No biggie - it is not a game-breaker for me, simply a question.

During our early play tests of GS2.0, I gave some thought to the French-Paris question but as Stauffenburg has indicated there are a number of constraints that make it difficult to "replicate" the opening of Paris. The only option that I came up with but didnt circulate for comment, was to have the isolation of Paris (ie all hexes around it as axis) as the pre-condition for armistice or surrender. The coding of this would be tricky as each hex around Paris would have to be checked at the end of a German turn to determine whether they were all axis. The benefit to the German player would of course be that the French wouldnt put their strongest unit in Paris and it, at entrenchment level 8, wouldnt have to be assaulted. The question of course is what impact to play balance it would have - I suspect that France would fall a turn earlier on average.....

Thank you for your explanation, schwerpunkt. A fellow Aussie, too, I see from your location. I appreciate the difficulties of the coding etc.

I am probably (read, definitely) missing something in the attack on France because in my experience the French player rails all his garrisons 2-deep to the Seine, buys leaders and effectively prevents anything approaching blitzkreig occurring. A direct assault on Paris is required or a slow flanking manoeuvre to the south to attack in open ground. I need to see how experienced players do it.

El_Condoro wrote:Thank you for your explanation, schwerpunkt. A fellow Aussie, too, I see from your location. I appreciate the difficulties of the coding etc.

I am probably (read, definitely) missing something in the attack on France because in my experience the French player rails all his garrisons 2-deep to the Seine, buys leaders and effectively prevents anything approaching blitzkreig occurring. A direct assault on Paris is required or a slow flanking manoeuvre to the south to attack in open ground. I need to see how experienced players do it.

The problem with any strategic WW-II game (e.g., GS, 3rd Reich, WIF) is that we know history and that an experienced allied player will not repeat the same mistakes the real allies made; especially in France. The French and British executed the Dyle Plan, which was to move their strongest units into Belgium to stop the Germans there. They were expecting a replay of WW-I and thought the Ardennses impassible to tanks and vehicles.

The Germans feinted a main thrust through Belgium by attacking with a some armor there and this just reinforced the belief of the allies to move into Belgium. All the while the Germans were pushing the armor spearhead through the Ardennses. When the allies realized all this the Germans had already crossed the Meuse river. In fact, orders were given to blow up bridges across the Meuse but only after the Germans had already captured. The French were making battle plans to engage the Germans but the Germans had already moved past the places where they were going to engage them.

My first wargame was Avalon Hill's France 1940, which I got back in 1973 for Christmas. It had several scenarios including one where you could replay the disastrous Dyle plan. This was best played solo and I don't think we'd keep interest in GS if that was the norm.

The bottom line is that we tried to create a realistic strategic WW-II game without forcing players into the exact strategies and mistakes that happened historically. Another example is Hitler abandoning the 6th Army at Stalingrad to total destruction. Most sane axis players won't do that.

Another example is that the allied player knows with certainty in September 1939 that France will fall in the summer of 1940. That would have been unimaginable in reality. Even if you had a time machine and could back in time and warn the French and British of this no one would have believed you. How do you decouple the pre-knowledge of history in a wargame like GS?

El_Condoro wrote:I am probably (read, definitely) missing something in the attack on France because in my experience the French player rails all his garrisons 2-deep to the Seine, buys leaders and effectively prevents anything approaching blitzkreig occurring. A direct assault on Paris is required or a slow flanking manoeuvre to the south to attack in open ground. I need to see how experienced players do it.

His uncharacteristically snarky response aside, Stauffenberg recently submitted a post showing exactly how to take apart the double defensive line, which I found very helpful. He posted it in this AAR viewtopic.php?t=25589&start=0 NO KINGHUNTER, I'M AFRAID!

Just don't read it, Duane, until our game is finished...

@rkr1958: Your points are all very true and I agree. I think the solution that schwerpunkt set forth would be the best but as it is difficult to code, and probably not worth the effort, Paris as the capital and requirement for German victory makes the most sense.

@gchristie: thanks for the link. I promise not to read it until after I attack your French. I might also have my fingers crossed behind my back. Cheers

From my point of view El_Condoro has valid point. The Fall of France as well as the invasion of Denmark do not feel very "historical" in a typical GS 2.0 CEAW game.

In most GS games I have played the Axis player invades Denmark in 1939, mostly on the second turn. In most games Holland is also invaded in 1939 and then the Sitzkrieg begins. As soon as the weather becomes fair Belgium is captured in one turn. After the fall of Belgium the Allied player will most likely not engage the Axis forces in Belgium, but will instead have formed a double-defense line in France. After a few turns the Axis will break through this line and capture Paris normally after 2 turns of attacks against the city (normally two air strikes and as many ground attacks as possible). The French will then surrender if the German accept the armistice.

From my experience this is the typical start in GS and it does not feel really historical as Denmark and the Netherlands are invaded in 1939 and France surrenders after heavy fighting for its capital. In fact it is quite risky to depart from this standard starting strategy. From my point of view it would be perhaps possible to make it more attractive for the German player to invade Denmark and the Netherlands in 1940. Right now it is a “no-brainer” do invade both countries in 1939.

This could be achieved perhaps through the following changes:

1. Denmark can be captured without any fighting in 1940 if the weather is fair and Poland has been captured. If Denmark is invaded before Poland has been finished off and the weather is not fair, the Danish Army will try to resist the invasion. From my point of view this would be a historic solution. The main reasons for the surrender of Denmark during Operations Weserübung were twofolds. Firstly, the Danish as the rest of the world were still in awe of the Blitzkrieg campaign against Poland. Nobody expected such as swift victory against the Polish Army. Secondly, all of the minor powers in Europe noticed that the French and British were not able and not willing to come the help Poland. The Danish realised that they could not count on any help by the western Allies and of course the Danish army was outnumbered and outmatched by the Wehrmacht. Therefore, surrendering immediately after the invasion of Denmark began in April 1940 was the best option. This would be simulated through an automatic surrender of Denmark in April 1940 if the Axis finished Poland off in 1939 and declared war on Denmark in 1940. From a game balance perspective this could also work, as the Axis player would normally get Denmark for free in 1940. However, he could still do an invasion in 1939 if he wants to secure the PPs of Denmark a little bit earlier.

2. As similar solution could be found for the Netherlands. Currently is quite unrealistic that Belgium will stay neutral if the Netherlands are invaded in 1939. I think that the Belgium government would not have stayed neutral if the German would have invaded the Netherlands in 1939. It would have been more then obvious that they would be the next target. Most likely they would have allowed the British and French to enter Belgium in the winter of 1939/1940 to go into the prepared defensive positions of the Dyle plan. This could be simulated through Belgium becoming immediately an Allied minor power if the Netherlands are invaded in 1939. Then the Allied player could move French and British units into Belgium and form the defense line in Belgium as it would most likely happened. However, if the Axis player waits with the invasion until fair weather in 1940 and attacks Belgium and the Netherlands simultaneous, as it happened in the real war, then the Netherlands should surrender either immediately (in reality they surrendered after 4 days) or after the first city of the Netherlands has been captured.

Of course such changes would have been carefully playtested and perhaps they are too extremely enforcing the historical course of action, but I think it would feel more historically if there would be at least some incentive to invade Denmark and the Netherlands in 1940 instead of in 1939. Currently the game is designed in such a way, that nearly every Axis player will invade both countries in 1939 .

The problem with Holland is that if Germany has to take out Belgium and Holland at the same time in the Spring of 1940 then there is no way the French will fall in June as they did historically.

The common way now is to attack Belgium in March and then France usually falls in June. Each turn is 20 days and you need 5-6 turns to get to Paris due to the distance and the need to break the double defense line.

If you weaken the French so it's possible to blitz them then the Germans will attack in 1939 and be in Paris before Christmas.

The strength of the French is about historical in GS, but you can't enforce the Allied player to repeat the mistake of the real war and move the best French units into Belgium and not defend in the Ardennes. The GS Allied player will not push into Belgium and instead defend behind the rivers in France.

If the Germans would have to first go into Holland and then into Belgium in Spring 1940 we will have to accept a later fall time of France. That will limit their chances for Sealion and an offensive in Egypt.

Right now the game balance in the west seems to be quite good so do we really need to link Holland to Belgium so a DoW upon one will automatically be a DoW upon the other?

Germany need Denmark to invade Norway, especially if they want to use a paradrop on Oslo. We can't prevent the players from invading Denmark early to open up the Kattegat and Skagerrak for Axis warships. Norway and Sweden would remain neutral if Denmark was attacked separately.

Weserubung is very risky in GS and if the Germans have to invade via the Helgoland Bight then the Royal Navy can more easily stop this invasion. I don't think we will see an invasion of Norway and Denmark in April 1940 as we saw in the real war. One reason is that the Germans need their air units in Belgium and France at that time. In the real war Case Yellow started in May, after Norway and Denmark were captured.

The symbolic Danish force in Copenhagen is 4 garrison steps and that can easily be taken out in one turn. It's even possible to lower the size of the Danish garrisons in general.txt to e. g. 2 steps or even 1 step.

A strange thing is that the Germans can NOT take Denmark in one turn if Copenhagen is empty unless they send a transport a turn early adjacent to Copenhagen. The swift amphibious assault from Kiel to the hex south of Copenhagen can only succeed in one turn if there is something to attack. The real Germans didn't know the Danish would surrender so they committed a considerable force to take out Denmark. Again we see that players will only do what's required to enforce surrender. Denmark surrendered BEFORE Case Yellow even begun so the Luftwaffe was available for the invasion of Norway and Denmark and then back to western Germany for Case Yellow. That' can't be recreated in GS v2.0 because it takes too long to get to Paris unless you can start the invasion in March.

So if we should do anything about Denmark it's actually better to lower the strength from 4 to maybe 2.

Making Denmark surrender immediately once a Danish hex becomes Axis controlled is probably not a good idea because then the Germans can only use a garrison north of Kiel to move one hex and they can use the rest of their units to something else like going for an early Case Yellow.

It's not possible to make a game like GS be completely historical. The game mechanisms make it too hard to simulate the swift fall of France and the other countries prior to Barbarossa. The Germans managed to capture most minor powers in less than one month. That means one game turn. E. g. France should surrender 2 turns after Case Yellow starts. Even the best Axis player can't take out Holland, Belgium and France in 2 turns in GS.

So the game engine is actually not well suited for swift wars because you only attack and move once per turn (20 days). Some games have phases and impulses (like World In Flames). Then you can attack several times during a game turn.

When we designed GS we had a few benchmarks that we wanted to be pretty historical. One was the average fall date of France. Another was the front line in Russia by the end of 1941.

So we've setup the OOB, rules etc. so it's possible to get these major events rather historical. A side effect of that is that we have to accept that Holland can be DoW'ed separately and that Case Yellow can start in March (or even February with luck on the weather) to have a June fall of France.

Most other strategic games have the same problem trying to recreate the time line in Case Yellow. E. g. War In Europe has setup the French in such a poor way it's a hole in the defense line near the Ardennes so the Germans can easily crack the line. The Allied player would never setup so poorly and form a contiguous defense line, but if they do the the Germans will struggle to get to Paris in time.

So we have to ask ourselves. What is more important? Should the main events happen at approximately the historical time or should we try to let every little event follow the historical time line?

I can give you one example. When the Germans invaded Norway they landed in Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Egersund, Kristiansand and Oslo at the same time. Norway lost Oslo on the very first day, but the war still continued in Norway for 2 months (3 game turns).

So for Norway we should actually have a rule saying that Norway would not surrender until all Norwegian cities are captured. But that would require too much effort for the Germans to do so Weserubung wouldn't happen in GS. In GS the Germans can focus on taking Oslo and it takes 2-3 turns to do so now. Turn 1 you land south of Oslo and paradrop near Oslo while Oslo is bombed. Turn 2 you move adjacent to Oslo and maybe capture Oslo (turn 3 should be a guaranteed capture if turn 2 failed).

Brussels was declared an open city and the Belgians surrendered quickly after they realized the Germans had broken through in the Ardennes. The same with Holland. E. g. the terror bombing of Rotterdam meant they surrendered a week after the invasion.

How can we recreate such events. If we make a prerequisite that the Germans need to put a unit across the Meuse then every Allied player would put the 2 French mech units in the most exposed hexes to delay this event. The point is that the players will know the game rules that can trigger the quick surrender of Holland, Belgium and France and try to prevent it. The real Allied leaders didn't know what would have happened and tried to defend the best way they could.

This is a problem with every game. The players know the rules before they even start the game. In the real war there were no "rules". Since we can't force the players to redo the mistakes from the real war it means we need to have rules that will give the approximately historical results regardless of what each side does.

It's certainly possible to have percentage changes that certain things would happen like 10% chance for surrender for Holland, Belgium and France for every hex German controls. But then you could end up with a lucky Axis player taking one French hex in 1939 and get a surrender. So percentage chances aren't good either because luck will decide more than skill. E. g. several players comment on their bad luck with weather rolls. They would certainly not want even more areas they can be unlucky with.

We therefore have to accept the fact that GS is a GAME that's in no way a historical recreation of the real war events. Some compromises have been done here and there to make a good simulation game. I would therefore not call GS v2.0 a historical WW2 simulation. It's just a bit more historical than the vanilla CeaW. That was our aim when making the original BJR mod.

It's certainly possible to alter the game rules to increase historical accuracy, but then we need to accept the consequences of that. Linking Holland and Belgium is easy code wise, but we will end up with a later fall of France date. If that's acceptable then fine, but if it's not then we need to alter the game somewhere else and maybe introduce a game imbalance somewhere else.

This is the main reason GS v2.0 took to long to be released. We had many versions trying to tweak the game balance, especially in Russia. Still we feel we haven't got it quite right so further tweaks may be needed. At least the beta testers felt that the game was pretty balanced up to the start of Barbarossa using the rules in GS v2.0. So if we change the game in Denmark and Holland we would have to look at this once again by testing and checking the data so we could tweak the rules a bit.