Slitherine

I'm still in my first game playing as the Axis, so bear with me.

I invested quite a lot of ressources in building my kriegmarine and also in the sub research field. I always like to wage war in the Atlantic.

So far, I'm not sure how efficient the sub warfare is for the Axis, economically speaking. In my game so far, I usually have an active fleet of 5-7 subs. It will take at least 4 subs of level 1-2 to destroy 30-40 points of convoy. However, since the AI does a pretty good job of escorting its convoy, I will usually lose 1 sub and 2-3 are damaged with 2-4 points each from the convoy escorts. Economically speaking, the Axis is loosing on the exchange. The axis lost 70 pts for each sub lost and it is expensive to repair the subs (I think the formula is 60% of unit cost, 60%*70/10= about 4 ressource pts per strength repaired). So 3 subs with 3 pts of damage will cost about 12pts of repair. A net of 82 ressource points spent, 70 which are permanently lost, to sink 30-40pts of convoy.

Of course, we have to take into consideration the cost of repairing the escorts ships. Since destroyer have a strength edge over subs at the beginning of the game, I think an edge of 1 point, the repair will be more costly for the Axis, hence keeping the balance in favor of the Allied for most of the war. This is valid as long as the Allied keep using destroyer unit, which the AI is pretty good at; usually 2-3 destroyers are used.

The sub warfare is really over when the American comes into play with the massive amount of naval units it has in the Atlantic to play escort role.

Anyone else has experienced similar behavior?

Historically speaking, the Axis should have the edge in the sub warfare at the start of the war. Perhaps this should be reflected with Axis starting at level 2 in sub warfare, and its existing sub units equipped with those upgrade. Or perhaps the starting destroyer with level 0 in ASW should have lower strength factor against sub, perhaps an edge of 2 pts in favor of subs.

Good points. For next patch we are looking into it and will slightly adjust tech and unit cost of the different naval units. As is now, sub war will cost UK a lot too so it is a good strategy of weakening UK in the mid game so it is not a bummer but requires a lot of practice to get
right.

In most cases Subs do not have total dominance (else there would be no one even trying to escort convoys) so must use its special ability invisibility to gang up on convoys in REMOTE places (NW, W and S edge of map). If you convert it into a big naval fight with all subs vs all allied naval units you will most certainly lose so be tricky and exploit the fact that the Atlantic is very large.

I have experienced just the same problems being the Axis player. It's too easy to lose the subs and financially the Axis will lose more PP's due to losses and damage than they inflict (upon convoys and escorts).

I think there is a very easy solution to this problem that won't be hard to program.

I think it would be better if the subs have a chance to evade combat if attacked. That will make the sub warfare much more interesting.

You can add some values into general.txt that will govern the following:
* Base evasion percentage chance (e. g. 50)
* Evasion bonus percentage pr. level in tech submarine (e. g. 10)
* Evasion penalty percentage pr. level in tech ASW (e. g. 10)

This means we can fully customize the effects of sub warfare. E. g. with British tech 1 in ASW and German tech 2 in sub each sub will evade an attack 60% of the time (50 +2*10 - 1*10). So if 2 DD's and a CV attack the sub it means it gets an attempt to evade each attacker. So some attackers might find the sub and hit it while others will miss it.

The outcome of the battle when the sub evaded can be shown with a "bubble" with the text "sub evaded" instead of the damage number. Or you can show the damage number 0 on both the escort attacking and the sub defending if you don't want to add any new graphics.

I think this could be very easy to program and won't affect current game mechanics too much.

If a person want to play with the current rules he just puts 0 in each of the 3 variables mentioned above.

Is this possible to do for e. g. v1.05? I know this will make the already great game even better. Sub warfare is the only part I feel doesn't work very well.

The procedure is simple. When a unit attacks a sub you just roll a die before combat to see if the sub evaded or not. If yes then you show 0 damage to both sides instead of the real damage if the sub failed to evade.

U-boats require a surprising amount of skill to use properly. In the beginning of the game I think the axis player must decide if he is going to pursue a strategic campaign or not. I suggest the minimal use of attacking while U-boats are scarce. Don't attack, but use the ambush function by placing a screen of U-boats in the path of convoys. Don't reinforce your attack if within air range of England or the US(after entry). Watch for escorts, use discretion when they are present in numbers.
I generally prefer to build at least one u-boat every other turn or so until I have 8-9 to employ in real wolfpack tactics. With a screen of U-boats I will intercept a convoy with an ambush attack when it meets a u-boat. If there are escorts I attempt to dstroy them with multiple attacks, then surround the convoy to annihilate it when possible. This is particularly important when the USSR is in the war. You must intercept the Murmansk convoys or face eventual defeat. 200 point convoys mean 6 or so Russian Corps alone if they reach their destination safely. I suppose there are some people out there who can defeat the allies w/o U-boats but with the oil option and fog of war I cannot.

I've been thinking quite a bit about the naval warfare in CEAW, in particular the submarine war. Stauffenberg, you had some good thoughts in the Modders forum that I think are worth linking to here: viewtopic.php?t=3632.

My thoughts revolve around three themes: build time for naval units, movement rates (and for subs, mode), and lack of intercept ability for air/naval units of opposing naval units.

Build time: Build time is too short. Building a navy is a long-term strategic commitment, and in practical terms takes much longer than is in the game's default settings. The current settings do allow for flexibility, and that is good for a game. I tend to lean more toward the simulation, however (and I don't mean replicating historical results, just being faced with the same realities as those facing WWII leaders). It is an interesting decision for the German to make early in the game: are you going to divert resources to build a real blue-water navy that will be ready in a few years; focus on U-Boats, or; concentrate on land and/or air forces at the expense of a navy? (One estimate I have read is one U-boat took the steel of 30 tanks.) If the latter two, you are basically putting off or conceding a challenge to the US, which is probably wise. Early in the war, Hitler figured on beating the European rivals quickly and needing a blue-water navy circa 1944 to take the battle to the US. He began work on that navy early on (though it was canceled in short order resources had been diverted in that direction).

Currently it takes four turns (80 days) to deploy a sub flotilla after buying it. I looked on u-boat.net to check out build times of U-Boats during the war (I assumed ones built before might have been on a slower pace so did not include them). The two main types, VII and IX, took between 8 and 18 months and 9 and 12 months, respectively, to build a single boat (and that's keel laid to commission; factoring in initial order was even more). Capital ships take longer: Bismarck took four years from keel laid to commission (though most not in war years, so perhaps not as urgent) and for comparison, USS Wisconsin, the only Iowa class BB built entirely while the US was at war, took 2.25 years to complete. So for realism, I would suggest that build times be longer.

Also, with technology, the Germans used more or less the same two types of boats (VII and IX) throughout the war for their deep sea operations. Improvements to the boats were minor. There were improvements to communications and torpedoes, however. One might consider making early benefits have very little impact on subs, but then the final level be extremely potent (particularly in survivability) to represent Type XXI boats. These would have been extremely hard to counter had they ever been fielded in number. Unfortunately for the Germans they rushed them into production and could not iron out the flaws by the time the war ended.

Movement rates: Naval movement seems slow, though part of that is to allow for battle mechanics and players to find one another (see below). An account of USS Ranger talks about making a roundtrip from the US East Coast to Morocco and back in 22 days. Generally the Atlantic crossing took about a week or a bit more, it takes most ships 2-3 turns (40-60 days) to cross the Atlantic in CEAW, and a lot longer to make the trip from England/US to Port Said.

The other factor is submarine movement. Generally they were slower than most surface vessels, though not by too much, while on the surface. Once submerged, they were very slow: 7 - 8 knots for the German Type VII's and IX's. They also had a fairly short underwater range: 57 - 94 nautical miles. My point bringing this up is that I think it a bit unfair for subs to traverse vast oceanic distances without being spotted. U-boat.net reports that 56 percent of U-boat losses were at the hands of Allied aircraft. The Bay of Biscay was known as "The Valley of Death" among U-boat crews, primarily because of air attacks. Allied air crews successfully searched for and destroyed U-boats because they spent most of their time surfaced.

Intercept: I suggest that there should be a similar intercept model for naval units as there is currently for air units (though not automatic, and less chance for subs). Currently you have to hope your opponent bumps into your naval units, particularly subs, or go after them once you spot them if you are lucky enough that they are still in range. Air units should be allowed to intercept naval units as well. Doing so would allow for more realism in naval operations. If Murmansk could be moved further east, it would also allow the Germans to use aircraft to intercept, from Norway, convoys going to Murmansk (and of course ships passing near western France). It would also make it more difficult for the Italians to move around the Mediterranean.

Overall these suggestions make life more difficult for U-boats. Life was difficult for them. The Battle of the Atlantic was clearly lost in 1943. U-boat losses were extremely high, and frankly the payoff was not worth the investment in the end, particularly once the US entered the war (nearly 900 Type VII and IX U-boats. However, to balance things I would suggest that U-boats be much, much cheaper and considered to represent a wolf pack (for the sake of argument 3-4 vessels; flotillas did not operate as a single group). This would allow the Germans to cover more territory and attack in many places, though still suffer interdiction on the way there.

One final thought is a suggestion that there be two types of aircraft carrier units: standard and escort. Standard are as is in terms of ability and escort have little ability against ground or air targets but good against subs. These were an important component in the U-boat war.

I should note that I mostly bring up these points for discussion and for consideration of a second version down the line; I am not agitating for immediate change in an upcoming patch. I realize that what I bring up here would add a lot of time for the player to spend on naval operations, particularly in the Atlantic. On the other side, I would not be averse to simply abstracting the convoy/wolf pack process, as in AH's [/i]Third Reich or, if I recall correctly, the old computer game High Command. In this case, you simply assign assets to convoy interdiction as the Axis and escorts to the convoys as the Allies and a result is calculated every turn.

Ummhhh...what if Axis subs could deal MUCH more damage to convoys than actually does? I am surprised to see how little damage they deal to convoys. A sub could make 4 or 5 damage to a battleship and thats nearly 50% of the combat capacity but 5 points to a convoy is...nothing.

Now you barely make 8 or 10 damage points, which is a very small amount and nearly nothing for Murmansk convoys (75-100 points!)since, unlesa you attack two full turns with 5 or 6 sub units, they would eventually get to URSS without much damage. And, if you try to do that, allied flleet would locxate and wipe you.

A single sub unit should be able to take on the smaller convoys and 3 of them should be able sink the murmansk ones.

Actually, I agree with you in many ways. I have made some modifications and am testing them out now. These modifications approximate--within the limits of modding--what I proposed. Here's what I did:

To model smaller units, a wolfpack of say 4 boats rather than a flotilla (since U-boat flotilla did not operate as a whole), I have made subs cost 25 instead of 70. Manpower is 1 (not 4), build time 15 (4) based on how fast U-boats were built, movement 28 (15), sea spotting 4 (6) to encourage better coordination, air combat 1 (0), naval combat 3 (4), survival 2 (4), and oil 0 (1) otherwise the Germans goose would be cooked.

To balance, I also assume destroyers working in smaller escort elements. They cost 30 (70), manpower 2 (5), build 14 (6) based on how fast US destroyers were built, movement 55 (18), air combat 2 (1), naval combat 2 (3), sub combat 5 (6) though I think I might tweak this to 3 or 4, and survival 3 (5). They still consume oil.

I have also made CVs more powerful against subs, and BBs less powerful. Technology has been changed so that subs get a lot less improvement until level 6, to reflect the Germans actually being able to field Type XXI boats with the flaws ironed out.

I also made convoys faster, smaller, more frequent, and less survivable.

Basically, I am finding that a lot of convoys get by, but when I can find them two U-boats can pretty much take them out. In turn, the U-boats also suffer. There are more units out in the ocean now, but that makes things a bit more exciting. It is encouraging more multi-unit cooperation. The increased movement of the naval units better reflects actual speeds (though still they should be faster), but also means that pretty much every destroyer can reach the site of a u-boat attack. In turn that means feints and/or attacking at the extremes of the board.