Slitherine

I have just completed a historically accurate 1939 game. I dont know if its playable but I will give details of what I altered

PRODUCTION: Rescaled production accurately per power. I had to do some number trickery but I got it really close to historical. I Based production on cost to manufacture and unit type for... tanks, trucks, ships, planes, artillery, manpower, steel production, machine guns, AA, anti and tank guns. I did not incoude merchant marine since its an auto in the game

Germany: added synth and crude oil fields in GE so they can be bombed. Scale I used is 1 oil point per 1m tons of oil produced. Also Germany has very LITTLE production early in the game as it was historically. They production scaled upward 10x by 1944

Italy: Scaled them to accurate, which is very low.

USA: starts with zero then becomes a powerhouse in 1943-44. I removed a couple units, 1 DD, 1 fighter, 1 MOT, to adjust for their production as the scale was slightly off.

USSR: accurate.

UK: accurate. I split 50% into convoys, 50% into UK production. In reality I believe 90% of raw materials had to be imported but the convoy system sends in only production points.

France: accurate. They start off with not much and their production should get them to historical arms levels.

Captured: I reduced it down to 20% return since all powers really had their production capacity already in place and the needed materials. Only oil was really important.

UNITS: I scaled it down
Corp, Garrisons, Motorized = 4 divs UK, US, GE, FR, 5 divs for USSR and IT
Arm = 2 arm divs + 1 mot div. The USSER actually should have 25 armored corps but I reduced this due to the fact their tanks SUCKED
even upto 1941. I did this to keep the proportions right to the quality of tanks.
Motorized =
Ftr: 400 operational planes. Increase dogfight on powers that had modern planes UK, GE level 2. FR level 1, IT, USSR, US level 0.
Tac: 400 operational planes. Ge has a level 1
Str: 400 operational planes.figh

BB: 3 per unit + cruisers and some DDs
DD: 25 DDs per unit
SS: 25 per unit. For Germany while they had 50 subs really only 25 were long range.

So what does this mean? More units on the board, mostly ships and air units.

German subs are tech 2 and allies tach 0 ASW. Reason is that subs were a lot more devistating early in the war and by 1943 they had no shot. Since reaseach is based on productions the Germans cant build research early while the allies can. In history the Germans never really advanced technologially much in fields that didnt make a difference. Their tanks were the same about till the tiger and panterh. The Me-109 was their main fighter till 1942 when the fokwolf 190a came out and in 1944 with the jets. Their subs improved but not much. The ASW tech really improved although most of the early problems were the allies not using conoys to their best advantage. So what you should see is a highly trained slaughtering German army early with few replacements and room for tech until about 1942. The allies have to catch up in technology to them and units.

I also modified tech for ships. GE, UK, USA tech 2, USSR, IT tech 0, france tech 1. Reflects how well the navies were run. One thing that is not taken into account is land based air vs sea units and vs land units. Land based air units are DEVESTATING vs sea units. Land based air is not as amazing as books perceive vs ground targets. Artillery was the key factor in determining battles in europe during this time. In fact around 50% of casualties inflicted were from artillery.

I made it historical but it might need tweaking to be playable because we have hindsight to ww2. We wont make the same mistakes the allies or axis made. For example it is believed that if the germans didnt lose 300,000 guys at stalingrad, 120,000 in tunisia, and didnt do Kursk that they could actually have kept the Russians at a stalemate. By 1944 the Russians had literally run out of men. The we they fought was not on the highest caliber and their value for the individual solider was much less than the axis or allies. Or take Italy, lost their whole african army (200k men if I remember) in 1940 to 25,000 of Wavells forces. Then in Tunisia lost 180,000 men. Then they lost a ton of men in russia. Thats a lot of armed forces that could have been used elsewhere if their generals werent idiots.

I am also working on the "counters" to look like a board game counter. I have done the land units, I have to complete the air and sea units.

So do you all want me to put out the mod for playtesting? If I get enough yeses I will pop up the files for the game on my website.

Arm = 2 arm divs + 1 mot div. The USSER actually should have 25 armored corps but I reduced this due to the fact their tanks SUCKED
even upto 1941.

Err...no...they didn't.

their maintenance sucked, their tactics sucked, their training sucked, and often their units had only a small proportion of their official strength.......but their tanks were comeptitive with the best in 1940 and 41 - eg even the T28E was more than a handful for any Axis vehicle tactically.....fortunately they were unreliable and only a couple of hundred were built.

And of course by Barbarossa they had 1100 T34's and a few hundred KV's available.......

If you really want to go historical then you should give Soviet units really low effectivenesss to start (say 30 as a starting guess) and see what happens. Tank Corps that were formed in 1940-41 (all except the first 9 IIRC) should have even lower effectiveness as they were still forming and lacked almost everything by Barbarossa.

Well when I mean their tanks SUCKed I take into account all the things you said. When you count everything put together their paper strength was not even close to what the unit could do. While they took 3-4 shots to hit a tank a german tank to 1-3 for example. While their tanks did have big guns and big armor they still sucked. Poor barrels for firing, poor crews, break downs, and so on.

But there is only so low I can go with their organization. I think I cant go below 0. I also cant put out 25 units of tanks. I was thinking of making the germans a 4 on organization.

that's why I suggested starting the Sov's at very low effectiveness - assuming the editor lets you.

You can probably reasonably reduce the sov mech forces to "just" the 9 corps they had before the big expansion of 1940-41....but still at low effectiveness.

However if you're determined to use "historical" OOB's then startign to fudge them straight away is not a good look - I think your aim is excellent, unfortunately I dont' think the game will actually stand it because it is too abstracted in the area of troops.

I am testing it right now on my own. I upped the german organizational value. 0 is the lowest 5 the highest.

I gave the soviets extra armor but not hte 25. Their pre 41 armor was really bad until the T-34s and KV-1s. They also had a large airforce with old crappy planes.

In France I couldnt beat myself in the game. I had to UP the germans. Testing that tonight.

Make this available soon, please!