Slitherine

Germany 2.10, normal difficulty

Took Poland in 2 turns then shifted towards France. Blitzed Denmark in 1 turn, then dow'ed Holland. Here comes the first problem with 2.10. It's unrealistic that I can destroy Holland without Belgian interference. -> Make Belgium join Allies once Holland is dow'ed!
After fall of Holland dow'ed Belgium in winter of 1940. By April Paris had fallen and I prepared Sealion. Next problem: Royal Navy M.I.A.? Only need to establish air superiority and block the Channel with 4-5 subs, easy as pie. -> make RN more aggressive!
Sealioned them Brits by late 1940, then took Ireland and Spain with Gibraltar. With Italy I focused solely on North Africa. Built some tanks and infantry and got Egypt in 1941, Iraq in 1942. Oil problem solved forever.

Had my troops ready for Barbarossa just right on time (May 1942 turn 50, last chance to strike the bear first). Progress was somewhat slow because of Stalin's early mobilization (shouldn't have attacked Persia first...). It's May 1943 now and I'm close to Moscow and Stalingrad. The north however is flooded with Soviet troops. I'm stuck at the gates of Riga. Every single tile west, north and north-east is filled with Soviet troops. I wonder how much manpower the Soviet a.i. has left. I suspect it might be cheating (see casualty stats).

Now to the biggest flaw of 2.10:
The war of the Atlantic started to get really annoying when it turned into a round of whack-a-mole. I have a vast submarine fleet tech level maxed. The Allies seem to have no surface ships left (sunk 3 carriers and a dozen other war vessels) and they're only constructing land units recently. So the braindead US a.i. keeps sending unprotected transport ships towards Europe. No American soldier has ever entered European soil. Yet, guess how many American soldiers lost their life thus far... 1.267.200!!! Each turn I sink 3-4 American transport ships which becomes a chore rather than satisfaction.
-> Make the a.i. prepare for invasions! Make it a condition that a certain amount of units and escort vessels is required before launching an invasion. Make invasions rare yet powerful. It'd be rad if the German player had time to prepare his defences and then gets struck with a massive blow. As of yet, whack-a-mole is annoying and nothing of a challenge. Further more, you guys strive for realism. The US public and senate weren't too keen on dying for European interests. What does that mean for casualty tolerance you think? In the real timeline the US lost 500.000 men. In my game the number had more than doubled already. What about either limiting manpower for the US or making war weariness events which lead to peace deals after a certain amount of losses. How about them apples?

Casualty stats are based upon the official conversion rate. For some reason I can't post images here (trust me, I know how it usually works). Hence I attached a screenshot of the respective excel sheet.
The most important number:
Germany lost close to 2 mio. men, Soviets 7.7 mio! Yet no sign of shortage.

Took Poland in 2 turns then shifted towards France. Blitzed Denmark in 1 turn, then dow'ed Holland. Here comes the first problem with 2.10. It's unrealistic that I can destroy Holland without Belgian interference. -> Make Belgium join Allies once Holland is dow'ed!

If you DOW Holland, Belgium will mobilise its forces and you will face 10-step units. It's the same in case of Norway and Denmark. I think that this works good enough.

gest flaw of 2.10:
The war of the Atlantic started to get really annoying when it turned into a round of whack-a-mole. I have a vast submarine fleet tech level maxed. The Allies seem to have no surface ships left (sunk 3 carriers and a dozen other war vessels) and they're only constructing land units recently. So the braindead US a.i. keeps sending unprotected transport ships towards Europe. No American soldier has ever entered European soil. Yet, guess how many American soldiers lost their life thus far... 1.267.200!!! Each turn I sink 3-4 American transport ships which becomes a chore rather than satisfaction.
-> Make the a.i. prepare for invasions! Make it a condition that a certain amount of units and escort vessels is required before launching an invasion. Make invasions rare yet powerful. It'd be rad if the German player had time to prepare his defences and then gets struck with a massive blow. As of yet, whack-a-mole is annoying and nothing of a challenge. Further more, you guys strive for realism. The US public and senate weren't too keen on dying for European interests. What does that mean for casualty tolerance you think? In the real timeline the US lost 500.000 men. In my game the number had more than doubled already. What about either limiting manpower for the US or making war weariness events which lead to peace deals after a certain amount of losses. How about them apples?

The AI is stupid, it's there just for training purposes. You should try MP - things are completely different there. CEAW is a MP-oriented game.

drommarnas wrote:Took Poland in 2 turns then shifted towards France. Blitzed Denmark in 1 turn, then dow'ed Holland. Here comes the first problem with 2.10. It's unrealistic that I can destroy Holland without Belgian interference. -> Make Belgium join Allies once Holland is dow'ed!

Do we really believe Belgium would declare war on Germany if Holland was conquered? Belgium, which suffered so heavily under German occupation a little more than 2 decades earlier? Which just saw the German war machine roll over much bigger Poland in a few weeks? I don't think so. What Belgian leader would want to turn his country into a battleground? Why would they want to rely on the French and British for protection when those countries had done nothing to help them in the first world war?

No, a sane Belgian leader would ready his small army and tell his people to prepare for an invasion that is probably coming. But he would still hope to avoid it by peaceful means! This is exactly what GS 2.10 does--if Holland and Belgium are not DOW'd on the same turn, the Belgian army prepares for the invasion and calls on additional reserves (the extra steps you get when surprise is lost). But to say the Belgians should automatically declare war on Germany if Holland is invaded to me is not reasonable.

Your other issues with GS 2.10 can be chalked up to the AI. The AI is not very good, and the GS dev team does not have the time to improve it significantly. I'm not even sure they have permission from Slitherine. Play against a human opponent, and you will be amazed at the difference.

Yeah, human versus human play is still the recommended way to go. Unfortunately there are some very cool features of GS that makes the AI much less challenging than the vanilla CEAW.