Slitherine

Since we are looking hard at amphibious landings at the moment, I'd like to bring up another idiosyncrasy: invasion forces have to move up next to the coastline and then wait to land until the next turn.

Obviously, this doesn't have much to do with a realistic timeline. In no case that I know of did an invasion force procrastinate off the beaches before landing –– quite the opposite.

As far as I can tell, the game was implemented this way to:
a) help simplify the movement rules.
b) give air and naval forces a chance to attack landing forces in the turn before they go ashore.

Those are reasonable aims, but I think it might be time to see if there is a better way of doing things. I'd propose that seaborne units essentially be allowed to land on the same turn that they arrive at the beach. This could work a little like airborne units, in that once they have arrive at their destination, they can attack and advance.

On the whole, I think that this kind of implementation would be much closer to reality.

I'm opposed to this change. It would make amphibious invasions much easier and the defender would have no chance of defending against them. Remember that it's a turn-based game, which has its own advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages of the system is the fact that the defender cannot react until it's his turn. If this change was implemented, they wouldn't be able to use ships or subs to sink transports or attack their escorts, they wouldn't be able to attack the transports with their aircraft etc. Moreover, gamey "surprise" invasions would become more common and I think that it's undesirable, too.

However, I think that regular movement should be allowed after the troops land on the coastal hex. The time needed for unloading men and equipment is already represented by the 1-turn delay and even with the regular movement allowed the attacker would still be stuck with 1-lvl supply for 1 turn.

So if we land against enemy resistance, we can load unit, move transport to shore, assault enemy positions and land unit.
But if we land on empty land of even friendly port we can only load unit and move transport, but no unload.
Voila ! Enemy resistance is good, it speeds up your landings!

Or if we allow same turn unloading for any transportation game will be full of very "fun" things like you load your allied turn and see couple of german corps suddenly appeared in Britain and captured say Norwich with no naval supply at all (all during french campaign).

Another possibility could be that if a transport at sea moves one hex it can invade on the same turn.

This would be the case when the transports are stacked at the coast.

Not that I am for this, but to add to the discussion to see if it is worthy and to discuss the implications.

Then we can vote. This would definitely keep the British home.

1) So the rule would be you have to at sea at least one turn and not in a port to be able to move one sea hex and invade on the same turn.

2) If we allow units to start in a port, move one hex and then invade then all other rules apply.

Thoughts?

The fact is that even for transporting your troops between friendly ports you cannot load and unload in the very same turn and now are we going to allow amphibious landings to do that when this last one is supposed to be a much more complicated operation?

So IMO if finally we implement this rule we should also allow to load and unload transports in the same turn because, if not, it won´t make much sense.

Anyway, I see balance issues in changing this so lot of playtesting will be needed: then we would have to aim june 2012 as the date when the patch will be ready.

I agree with your assessment. I just threw that out there since this topic was discussed before with the beta-testers and we decided not to change the game mechanics.

There are a lot of things that can happen and create all sorts of gamey situations. Leridano, we know that was one reason why we moved ports to stop
or delay the one turn invasion that was present in CEAW.

That also goes with the other subject on the thread about movement after landing. Since the game is turned based there are going to be

allowance and the compromise with the game that the opposing player gets to react.

The game always allowed the possibility of the attacker to advance if the enemy was retreated or destroyed. Unless they attacked to get ashore.

Movement after doing a non-occuppied hex (i.e.. empty) landing was not allowed unless there was an adjacent enemy to attack and retreat or destroy the unit

then the option to advance.