Slitherine

Well, i am very happy to start a new AAR. I have decided to do so because of the state of this game, since i think it has value for playtesting purpose. Basically the idea was to only attack the Russians in 1942, while totally conquering England, thus taking full advantage of the penalty for the british is they loose all troops on their home island. As to the Russians, we would dig in in a solid river-line defensive posture NEAR germany to stay in the 5-supply zone, and most especially avoid any severe winter for the whole game. Being in Poland and baltic countries, the Russians would not be able to put their reinforcements directly to the front.

With high manpower, high research, solid airpower we hope to be able to fend any russian attacks.

In the West, Naval power alone should keep the allies out till at least Summer 1944. That is if they ever breatrough the solid high sea fleet ive built:

2 CV
4 BB
3 DD
8 SUB

As it stands right now, the brits are loosing 40 moral per turn. It almost render them useless for the rest of the game.

Why stop before Riga? Maybe I'm missing sth, but it seems illogical to advance past the natural defence line (the river) and then stop just before the city which can potentially be transformed into a fortress, since it's surrounded by forests, marsh, the sea and a river. IMO you should either centre your defence line on Kaunas and the river or on Riga.

The whole idea definitely has potential, since you have a formidable navy and will be able to save much resources by resigning from Barbarossa.

I've been curious to see if this strategy can work. So glad you decided to do it!

Seems unfair that the Homeguard morale drop continues even after Britain is conquered. Wasn't the point to discourage a GAR-blob in France, not to cripple the RN permanently? The morale drop represented fear at the prospect of invasion, but once the invasion has occurred can't we assume the Navy would "Keep calm and carry on"?

peterjfrigate wrote:Seems unfair that the Homeguard morale drop continues even after Britain is conquered. Wasn't the point to discourage a GAR-blob in France, not to cripple the RN permanently? The morale drop represented fear at the prospect of invasion, but once the invasion has occurred can't we assume the Navy would "Keep calm and carry on"?

This struck me as odd, too. Seems like another case of a reasonable fix having unintended and undesirable consequences.

Wasn't it supposed NOT to apply when there are enemy units in the UK (or sth like that)?

peterjfrigate wrote:Seems unfair that the Homeguard morale drop continues even after Britain is conquered. Wasn't the point to discourage a GAR-blob in France, not to cripple the RN permanently? The morale drop represented fear at the prospect of invasion, but once the invasion has occurred can't we assume the Navy would "Keep calm and carry on"?

Indeed this seems very wrong and needs a fix. RAF and the RN with effectiveness of 30 after conquest of the British Isles means they are even worse than Axis minors.

This is why ive done an aar on this game.

I think the moriss fix is worse than the other way around...

But then again we must ask ourselves the effect of the conquest of england.

I think we should do like world in flames when the uk is conquered... That is most of the british units on the map stay there, some surrenders. Not possible to get british troops anymore but only commonwealt units. Not possible either to buy more ships from the uk force pool.

In our ceaw, it could be represented in a major , major drop in manpower, which would enable the brits to only build a handful of land units and air units and naval units.

Anyway you put it, in this game the british are not a factor anymore.

But... Before making a hasty change, lets see the outcome of our game... By this i mean that if i get steamrolled by the russians, we will know that this strategy is not a good course of action anyway.

You guys didnt see the game earlier, but zechi didnt squander british forces to the winds, i had to destroy, seek and outsmart his damned british for the better part of 2 years. Its not like moriss, who "invites" you to conquer england by squandering his brits.

no too rapid a change please. After all, this change with the brits was made because of my other aar with moriss. Lets see this game thru before we officialy do something about it.

Loosing UK means loosing the war for the allies. The penalty is so hard it makes all other UK units worthless, US and Russian will have a hard time finishing of the axis. As soon as UK is taken, what stops the Axis from advancing on Egypt and Irak. The US will be so hard pressed to make and effort in taking back UK and the Russians will have their hands full on their front if they gonna have any chance to break through the german lines.

I agree that we have to make some changes to the Morale drop...cause UK has real trouble defending against a well planned and executed Sealion

Crazyg

The easiest and most logical fix seems to stop the morale loss once the USSR or the USA enters the war.

Like this, the UK is only crippled until summer (if the Axis lauches Barbarossa) or winter (when the US enters the war) of 1941. It would also makes sense: After the loss of the UK, the Commonwealth will have a hard time keeping up the fighting spirit. In RL, it would probably have asked for peace. Once there is a mighty ally, there is hope again to liberate the British Isles and win the war.

The morale will drop a further 10 when Russia joins the Allies and another again when Italy surrenders. So Britain should be able to get back into the game if they're patient.

Remember what we're talking about here. Great Britain is completely conquered by the Axis, even Belfast and Scapa Flow. So Britain can only produce in Canada. Most of the manpower and production is gone. It's only natural that the fighting spirit would be much lower. The British in Canada had no way of knowing about the Japanese attack upon USA and the German attack upon USSR. So it's natural to me that they're low on morale.

This makes it actually worthwhile doing what Supermax is doing. If Britain had normal morale then they would have been punished quite hard several places once they get entangled in war with USSR.

What we can discuss is how much the morale is lost and whether it should apply to only ground and air units, and not naval units. Still, UK have lost their most important marine bases and that would have made naval warfare harder for them.

UK can counter the morale loss slightly by having a good general nearby, but naval units can't take advantage of the general at sea so maybe naval morale loss should be halved. What do you think?

Stauffenberg wrote: The British in Canada had no way of knowing about the Japanese attack upon USA and the German attack upon USSR. So it's natural to me that they're low on morale.

This makes Canada sound like Tibet. Canada surely had telegraphy and access to US newspapers even in 1940. US papers and newsreels covered Pearl Harbor. Even distant events such as Barbarossa must have been noted in the US within a few weeks.

I'm speaking of PRIOR to the actual invasions. Therefore the morale loss is big before UK get help.

I tried myself that strategy in a PBEM game GS 2.0. It was succesful. I took Great Britain by early 42, then I stood on the defensive. Soviets couldn´t break the defensie line until early 45. US invaded Ireland in order to have an air base, but they could not retake Britain, just a foothold in Scotland.
IMO the strategy is well worth trying against a UK opponent that doesn´t fully prepare for Sealion.
Another strategy that seems to work perfectly is to go for North Africa in massive force, take the oilfields of the Middle East and remain on the defensive in the Eastern Fornt. By taking the oilfileds you reduce the offensive possibilities of both US and UK drastically

The Key will be how well the Russian's are managed.

You will hurt their convoy PP's but if they are patient they can do a lot of damage.

The thing that will make it hard in the beta is that they won't have been able to switch focus to organisation when they realised you weren't doing a 41 Barbarossa.

From my perspective it is working correctly - Brits should take huge blow if the loose their homeland and Axis should be the favorite in such a game.

The question is if it is not too easy for Germans to conquer the UK. Perhaps this should be made a little bit more costly for Germans. I was thinking that maybe each amphibious landing (transport not in port) should consume landing capacity, even if unit lands on already conquered ground?

Regarding the defense line in the East, my line went from Konigsberg to Warsaw in a straight line, and then behind the Vistula river. It has some advantages over your proposed line, it is 4 hexes shorter, it takes advantage of the fortress in Konigsberg, and you can put your fighters closer to the front line for counterattacks while still remaining in the Central Europe weather zone.

How then do you bridge the gap to Bretislovak?

I think Max's line is innitially better as provides greater scope for counter attack and then retieing to your suggested line at a later date.

Kragdob wrote:From my perspective it is working correctly - Brits should take huge blow if the loose their homeland and Axis should be the favorite in such a game.

The question is if it is not too easy for Germans to conquer the UK. Perhaps this should be made a little bit more costly for Germans. I was thinking that maybe each amphibious landing (transport not in port) should consume landing capacity, even if unit lands on already conquered ground?

I agree with your first point completely. That was what was wrong with 2.0, as Moriss showed us.

On your second point, I think it depends. Our goal is that Sealion should be risky and difficult to pull off, but should be a viable possibility, as it was in the actual war. In this case, Max, would you please give us an idea of how well prepared the UK was for invasion? I'd hate to see the game get to the point where Sealion was automatic, no matter what the Allies did to prevent it.