""Polish sector wasn't to fun for me as well, I liked later levels much more, BUT: the germans have more then enough prestige. It is not near-impossible to win. Are you playing on highest difficulty or something? If you advance properly with your units and use the right units for the right job, the maps are more than doable. ""
""Yes, the number of unit slots is low, and yes, it is cool to use all the tools at your disposal, but imagine if you had multiple aa, anti-tank, fighters, stukas, strat bombers in addition to your 8 tanks and 6 artillery. The game would become hilariously easy. And 2 fighters are more then enough for the first 4 or 5 levels.""
In Fall Weiss, even though the prestige and unit slots appear very generous, it turns out that there are not enough turns to get the job done. I like it because it's a big map, you get to have lots of units, the Polish have lots of units, and I actually think the Polish should get more prestige so as the battle progresses they could repair some units and build a few more units. The 2 (4) Polish Campaign game scenarios do have enough to get the job done because the maps are tiny.
Hilariously easy? We are depicting history here. The Germans should not have to decide between having artillery or having bombers or having Bridge Engineers. They had them all. So if you are going to depict history with a game, the player also should be able to have it all. In Fall Weiss the stand-alone Polish scenario, the Polish player gets 12 fighter aircraft units and about 10 bomber units. If the German only had 2 Fighter units, you'd spend the whole game trying to diminish their superior air numbers and not supporting the ground troops at all. The Polish did not have a larger, much larger air force than did Germany. So right off the bat you need a bunch of German aircraft if you hope to achieve air superiority and then support the ground troops. Which the Germans did in real life. But, the Fall Weiss scenario does allow for generous prestige and unit slots, so that with no cheating, you as the German player will be beating the Polish EXCEPT that you will run out of turns and not get an official victory. Either you must cheat by turning the game clock back and giving yourself more turns, or build an even larger ground force with unit slot cheating. And give yourself heros also to help.
""And just a few counter-points to your statement that the germans were winning everywhere from 1939 - 1942: Battle of Britain, Operation Crusader, Battle of Moscow and the following counter-offensive, Stalingrad.""
Well, I disagree with you. Germany was winning the Battle of Britain until Britain started bombing civilians and Germany felt compelled to reply which was a mistake that led to Britain rebuilding it's Air Force. Crusader is up for debate with some people saying Britain won because Germany and Italy retreated. Others say the Allies lost because the amount of equipment lost was awful and not replaceable immediately so they were just holding on. While the Germans and Italians retreated to be closer to supplies and not stay out there and disintegrate -----which is what happened to the Allies when the Germans re-captured the area before Gazala. The British made the same mistake in the spring of 1941 after Wavell's victory. They tried to hold the ground with hardly anything left and 4th Armoured Brigade literally destroyed itself through movement. Every vehicle broke down and was abandoned. Rommel didn't want to do that himself so they retreated. Moscow was a defeat mostly by weather but they were within 2-3 Km of the city. I wouldn't call that a resounding defeat, just attrition. And the Germans came within inches of taking all of the west side of Stalingrad but by then the Soviets were getting lots of help from the USA and Britain. Not just with tanks and airplanes, but with millions of tires, food rations, gas, medicine, thousands of trucks, radios, etc.. If it takes 3/4 of the whole world to gang up on a country the size of Texas and in 6 years beat them to hell....is that called "victory"? Even Kursk could have been a German victory but they became too impatient like the Confederate's Pickett's Charge.
Also disappointing : I get to North Africa in the Campaign Game and the first scenario opens up with 3 weak Italian units with no way to purchase more or upgrade the existing units. When the Germans arrived in North Africa, there were way more Italian units there then German. (I did the research on this as I had 4 of my designs published and used by the US Army.) I was shocked to see that in the purchase screen you can't buy Italian units. (Not all of which are bad. The Italians had excellent fighter aircraft, Navy, and elite ground soldiers too.) But we'd never know that just reading the mostly British accounts (read propaganda) of this part of the war. The British called the Italian M13/40 the armoured coffin. That's real funny. Considering that small arms could penetrate the British A-9 cruiser tank and their crews referred to them as death traps. The TRUTH is, that Italian tank had a 47mm ATG and better armour protection than everything except the British Matilda, Soviet KV-1 and T-34/40, and the French CharB 1 and 2 and Somoa-35. Out of the more common and numerous small tanks of the time, the Italian tank was the best. It was less reliable than the German Pnz 2s and 3s but German engineering and manufacturing was the best in the world.
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""I think most people (or at least people interested in WWII) know that there were actually more italian units then german in north africa. But how would you balance that out? If there was a massive amount of italian units, you would have to place even fewer of your units. Or you could make your units upgradable to italians. I don't know why you would do that, since italian units are almost always worse than the available german ones, but let's say you could do that for some reason, ignoring the fact that the italian industry wasn't even able to build enough of their mediocre m13 and m14 tanks for their army), then it would actually be somewhat cool to keep those italian units with you into the caucasus and further. But on the other hand, after 1943 there are no real new italian units available.""
You balance it out by having larger-sized smaller scale maps that can accommodate more units for BOTH sides. That way everyone gets to have enough infantry, tanks, planes, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, artillery, etc.. And now we're getting into "what-ifs" here. If the Italians were still in the war because you as the Axis player did a good job, by then the Italians would have had a newer tank (P-20 I believe) which was more like the Panther than anything else. But they quite before they could use it. But even before they quit, their late model aircraft were giving the Americans one hell of a time. If the Italians were so inept, what took so long? Poland was destroyed in a month. France, the same. And they had pretty good armies and the Dw-520 was a great aircraft in some ways better than the Me-109e. So it took 3-4 years with Italy and 6 years for Germany. The Italian M15/42 tank is actually not bad. It had a more reliable engine and the AP shell could penetrate the early Sherman and the Grant. So we can't make blanket statements like the equipment and training were crap (we CAN but it would be inaccurate). Unfortunately with mostly British accounts and even American accounts having a British editor-in -chief for the publications we get a really one-sided view of the war. Yes. Propaganda. Post -war. And as flagrant and as bad as the Soviet accounts.
""The italians did not really have
excellent fighters, navy and elite ground soldiers. They had good ones. Except maybe the Macchi c202 and c205. They were really good. Their navy was actually quite outdated. Sure, they had some good stuff like their frogmen, but not excellent. Their ground troops weren't actually bad because they were italian or something, if they were ably led, they fought good, maybe just as well as everyone else, but they were extremely badly led, their equipment was mostly bad and their training was also very bad.
Leading me to your comment on the m13/40. Yes, for 1940 it was an acceptable tank, which can be also seen in the fact that the australians and british actually equipped some of their forces with the m13 and m14. The problem is, it was a light and "small" tank, but it was used like a medium or lets say main battle tank, and it was not really suited for that. Apart from that, they - again - had little training and were mostly badly led.""
Once again blanket statements. But you are correct about those later Italian fighters that gave the Americans a lot of trouble and were shooting down P-38s and the early P-51. The bomber force was much more effective then we were told and gave the British nightmares when they would destroy whole armoured columns and supply convoys. The Navy ships were relatively new but had poor radar and sonar. Germany should have given them theirs. But they were good powerful and fast ships and the British feared them enough to make them a primary target of high importance. The Italian Navy was good but wasted. The leadership was afraid to risk losing the ships by using them. So they were surprised at Taranto and took costly losses. If they had been at sea being used that would've been more difficult to accomplish.
There are also accounts of Germans saying that the tanks were adequate for some tasks. The M13/40 was considerably better than the British Mk-VI, the Cruisers A9, A10, and A13. The 2 pounder gun had an HE round but it was so ineffective no one carried them in their tanks. The Italian 47mm ATG had an HE shell that was actually decent and even the paratroopers used them as light artillery. Not all Italians were universally badly trained. The mountain troops were elite. The recon troops were elite. They had elite commandos. The engineers and sappers were good and the artillery, anti-tank, and AA crews were elite. They would either die at their guns or surrender when they ran out of ammo by all accounts. If they abandoned a gun they always tried to recover it. And not all of the infantry were poorly trained but yes the personal small arms were very inferior to everyone else and that effected morale. Also the Italians used their 75mm and 90mm Anti-Aircraft guns against the Matilda tank successfully at Bardia and Tobruk in December 1940. Bet no one ever told you that because the Italians are just so dumb and want to eat pasta, drink wine, and sing songs to women.
All of that was Hollywood portrayals based on British propaganda in their highly biased accounts.
I did the research especially in this area and had 4 games published. I started out with Avalon Hill Gaming Company but then they were bought out by Critical Hit!, Inc.. I used lots of different sources, including Italian and German, a Belgian researcher, newer English and Irish researchers who are more honest, objective, and not full of patriotic pride. I worked on the new TOBRUK! with the original designer Hal Houk (not in person but by mail) but he passed away early in the project. My submissions were accepted and published by his team and later used by the US Army Officers & Artillery School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to train with. So they thought my research was good enough. It's just my opinion, but Panzer Corps 2 could be a much better game and for the price it should be.
phair2 wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 7:20 pm
But we'd never know that just reading the mostly British accounts (read propaganda) of this part of the war.
"""Last point: The equation "british accounts = propaganda" is just wrong. Please read what propaganda actually means. And I can assure you that the german and french accounts differ very little in their review of the italian tanks."""
Addressed these points earlier.....
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