Slitherine

Hi all.

I've recently showed CEAW and 3.0 to a few friends so I could play games with them. To help them, and myself, with axis strategic planning I made a decision tree to help guide timings and objectives.

I'm looking for feedback to improve it and I hope the colors make each decision path coherent. Red is recommended for the risky, aggressive/expansive Europa strategy, Blue is moderate or historical strategy, Green or far right is a conservative strategy, Gray are optional campaigns. Turns are not exact, but key events and launch of the campaign should take place within those turns. Preferably with forces prepared at the end of the previous campaign and launching as early as possible.

Decision tree does not go beyond Barbarossa since the situation can vary wildly depending on how successful Barbarossa was, and how the game has developed on other fronts.

But post 1942 summer offensive Axis generally assume a defensive posture and must avoid any decisive defeats or heavy losses that would lead to collapse.

Rojas,

Very interesting effort!

I like the options being put on the table, with level of risk.

Perhaps you could elaborate the pros/cons in terms of some of the game's key strategic considerations, such as:
- Oil reserves: Spending oil on many campaigns means not enough for Barbarossa
- Manpower reserves: More fighting = quicker depletion
- Experience level: Conversely, more fighting = more experienced troops
- PP's: How much will it cost you to conquer a country vs how much will you get each turn?
- Earlier conquer = more PP's
- Some countries are more prone to early recapture by the Allies = less long term benefit (followed by Allied benefit of occupation of a previously neutral country)

Very nice

That's a great graph and I agree, I wish you could go into a bit more detail about the conquests. For example are you accepting the French armistice? Or are you running roughshot over the French country side?

Rejecting the French armistice opens up a whole bunch of interesting options in 1941 including taking Yugoslavia and Greece in a leisurely fashion, clearing the Middle East, a '41 Seelowe? These can be viewed as conservative in some regards as the priority may be to build up the biggest Reich possible with lots of manpower reserves and oil.

Of course, if you don't get Spain in by taking Casablanca et al. in time, thing become a tad mere tense! Russia will have well over 2 000 PPs to spend in the first couple of turns in '42 when war does come upon the Germans (whether self-inflicted or Soviet-driven).