Slitherine

Noticed that if the Netherlands has already been conquered, there's no morale drop, even if belgium falls in 1 turn. Is that a bug or a feature?

Belgium needs to be surprised for the Allies to lose morale when Brussels falls. When you DoW the Netherlands on a separate turn then Belgium will mobilize and not become surprised.

So you need to DoW Holland and Belgium on the same turn to get the chance for Allied morale loss. The Allied morale loss was partly caused by lots of refugees fleeing from Belgium and Holland into France and also from north France towards Paris. Another was that the Allied High Command was in disarray and couldn't send effective orders to the units on the battleground.

Some of this would still have happened if Belgium was blitzed after Holland was taken out, but the effect would have been much less. If people in Belgium had seen the fate of the Netherlands then they would have been more prepared that also Belgium would be invaded and reacted differently when it happened. There would still have been evacuations, but maybe not the big panic that happened in the real war.

Game wise it's good to keep the rules as is or Axis players would DoW Holland in 1939 as usual and storm Belgium in March 1940 with a bigger punch since they can do it from dutch territory. In order to get the Allied morale loss you need to blitz both Belgium and the Netherlands on the same turn.

Hi,

This was in one game of our tripleheader to start and play 3 games to the fall of France to provide stats and continue with a random one from therefore so there is the incentive play as you'd normally would.

38. Belgium and Holland are also linked. If Holland is DoW’ed on a prior turn then Belgium won’t be surprised. If Belgium is DoW’ed on a prior turn then Holland won’t be surprised. If Belgium is not surprised then all units will spawn at full strength. Otherwise the unit in Liege will spawn at 10 strength, the corps at 7 strength and the garrisons at 5 strength. The location of the garrison adjacent to Belgium is dependent on which side will DoW Belgium. If Holland is not surprised then all units will spawn at full strength. Otherwise the garrisons will spawn at 5 strength and the corps at 7 strength. The garrison north of Hague is removed.
39. The French and UK forces in France (and air units in UK) will only suffer a 20 efficiency loss if Belgium surrenders in one turn.

I guess that's where both us had the idea of that the simultanious DoW controls the spawning stregth of the forces in Belgium/Holland and that only the one turn fall of Belgium controls the EFF penalty from refugees planted idea in our head . And that they are separate. Duh!

I'll point it out to Alec to make it clear in the manual.

_augustus_