Suez Crisis

[George Patton]

There is a scenario about the Suez Crisis, with british carriers involved?

[Lionheart]

Operation Musketeer? Sadly not, but I hope one day there will be.

[Randomizer]

Having spent more 30+ hours working on a Musketeer scenario I packed it in because the situation is so entirely one-sided if you use the historical ORBATS and situation. The Anglo-French combat power is overwhelming and game play is merely a matter of launching strikes, slaughtering Egyptian units and infrastructure and repeating until stupefied. Still tinker with the scenario from time to time but currently have no intentions of uploading it as the situation is just so not fun although I love the era and the CWDB hardware. Despite incorporating AI Israeli paratroopers, merchant ships scuttling in the Canal (via Lua scripts), Valiants and Canberras in Cyprus and an American CVBG watching events unfold (with a scripted chance of intervening against the Player) Some historical events make for a poor player challenge or are just not that much fun and Suez 1956 is one of these.

Even if it never sees the light of day, building it has been really instructive for learning scripts and modelling the tortured behind-the-scenes politics that drove the invasion.

-C

[SeaQueen]

Maybe you're looking at it from the wrong perspective? Instead of trying to reproduce historical events, ask what might have happened if the French and British hadn't been hampered by pressure from the superpowers, make the computer control the French, Israeli and British forces and put the player in control of the Egyptian forces?

[Coiler12]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Having spent more 30+ hours working on a Musketeer scenario I packed it in because the situation is so entirely one-sided if you use the historical ORBATS and situation. The Anglo-French combat power is overwhelming and game play is merely a matter of launching strikes, slaughtering Egyptian units and infrastructure and repeating until stupefied. Still tinker with the scenario from time to time but currently have no intentions of uploading it as the situation is just so not fun although I love the era and the CWDB hardware. Despite incorporating AI Israeli paratroopers, merchant ships scuttling in the Canal (via Lua scripts), Valiants and Canberras in Cyprus and an American CVBG watching events unfold (with a scripted chance of intervening against the Player) Some historical events make for a poor player challenge or are just not that much fun and Suez 1956 is one of these.

Even if it never sees the light of day, building it has been really instructive for learning scripts and modelling the tortured behind-the-scenes politics that drove the invasion.

-C

Could you "balance" it with an artificially high point loss for every Anglo-French unit taken out? It's what I'd do in a similar situation.

[Randomizer]

Reducing the political restrictions only makes the Anglo-French side that much more powerful and it proves rather easy to exceed the 20:1 kill ratio achieved by the ground forces. Penalizing the Player for losses is a favourite balance tool but one problem is that the Egyptian sides cannot achieve kills without a massively ahistorical OOB/situation. As Keith Kyle's book Suez makes clear, when untrained, rifle-armed militia fight Centurion tanks and elite infantry operating under total air superiority there can be only one outcome.

For example I made the city of Suez composed of more than 70-buildings, structures and facilities and then populated it with randomly placed civilian units as well as hostiles. The total AU count is huge (the urban areas got similar treatment) but this is mitigated by placing all the infrastructure on its own side which is set blind for awareness. The Player is supposed to clear the city using the Paras and Foreign Legion without killing civilians or levelling the place. Rocket-armed carrier planes do nasty things to the Egyptian ground troops while not inflicting complete destruction on the city structures. The CMANO ground game is not really up to the nuances of this sort of combat in my opinion but that will likely change as the simulation advances.

Currently putting the finishing touches on a 1962 RAF V-Bomber scenario where the Player fights as Bomber Command in the same full-scale nuclear war as portrayed in my Wargasm '62 and Deter, Detect, Defend '62. I hope to upload it in a week or so and then maybe revisit Suez since it seems to big draw in the community. Or not; am still unconvinced that there is an enjoyable game there.

-C

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer
The CMANO ground game is not really up to the nuances of this sort of combat in my opinion but that will likely change as the simulation advances.

Probably not. I suppose this might be an example of a situation which is interesting on the operational and strategic level, but less rich on the tactical level. Perhaps you could isolate some very specific vignettes in the larger crisis where maybe the full brunt of the allied European and Israeli forces can't be brought to bear or things might be a little less lopsided? Perhaps a very specific narrowly defined problem? For example, defending the Franco-British task force from American and Soviet submarines?

[Andrea G]

I would love to see your scenario, not for the playability but for the historical reconstruction.
Myself was considering a Suez 56 scenario but my editing abilities ar still far from the level necessary.

Hope you will share it with us even if it's not "fun" to play.

[gregb41352]

+1

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: Andrea G
I would love to see your scenario, not for the playability but for the historical reconstruction.

I think the trick to doing it may be to break it into smaller pieces. The interesting bit is to adequately capture the uncertainty of the situation, with respect to the involvement of the superpowers and each other's intentions.

[Andrea G]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

ORIGINAL: Andrea G
I would love to see your scenario, not for the playability but for the historical reconstruction.

I think the trick to doing it may be to break it into smaller pieces. The interesting bit is to adequately capture the uncertainty of the situation, with respect to the involvement of the superpowers and each other's intentions.

Exactly, I think that "Seven Days in October" captures just exactly the uncertainty of these situation.
I would like to see a similar scenario depicting the Suez Crisis.

[gregb41352]

I would like to see a similar scenario depicting the Suez Crisis.

As would I. If I knew anything or had the time, I'd make it myself.
Sadly, retirement doesn't give me a lot of extra time.

I've always wanted a Suez scenario as I'm very interested in the period.

Can somebody take this on? I really like the analogy to the Cuban Missile
Crisis scenario, which is my all time favorite CMANO scenario.

[Randomizer]

Suez was nothing at all like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the outstanding Seven Days in October scenario is one where decisions to escalate the situation create a rather unique experience for the Player. The scenario does an excellent job of recreating the real crisis and where it diverges, it does so in a manner that is reasonable. In Suez there are no such considerations. Break the scenario into smaller pieces? How, since the geographic objectives were all contingent upon each other. Model air combat only? BORING! Somebody around here once used the phrase "seal-clubbing" to represent situations where a carrier savages an inferior enemy and in Suez there are multiple carriers versus an entirely ineffective enemy. CMANO is not yet at the point where urban combat is sufficiently modelled and the air combat is entirely one-sided.

The military superiority of the Anglo-French-Israeli invaders was so absolute, particularly given the limited geographical objectives of the operation. Had President Eisenhower not slapped an oil embargo on the invaders, there is no reason tho believe that Musketeer would not have been a magnificent "last call" for European imperialism. The failures were almost entirely political and cannot (as yet) be modelled in a single-player game with a programmable AI.

Of course you could change everything to make a game out of it but it would bear no relation to the actual Suez crisis that proved so pregnant for consequences for the UK and of course the poor Hungarians, whose uprising against the USSR was overshadowed in the West by the combat in Egypt.

One could perhaps model the Israeli advance to the Canal in isolation but again, the CMANO ground game makes this problematic as a playable scenario. Having spent well over 30-hours trying to make a playable scenario of Operation Musketeer I do not think that it can be done (yet) but I am open to somebody proving me wrong AND representing the historical events. Good luck with that...

Now in a multi-player, umpired and/or moderated game with live opponents and a political dimension, Suez 1956 has the potential to be a totally awesome scenario but until that point is reached, no way. Fortunately for the Forum, I do not intend to revisit this topic.

-C

[SeaQueen]

What about a "what-if?" scenario examining the naval and air battle that might have ensued had the US or Soviets intervened to stop the Anglo-French force from intervening? You could play it a few different ways.

Scenario 1) The US intervenes to stop the Anglo-French force from intervening on behalf of the Israelis. The Soviets attempt to block them.

Scenario 2) The Soviets intervene on behalf of the Arabs to stop the Anglo-French intervention on behalf of the Israelis. The US attempts to block them.

Scenario 3) The US and the Soviets intervene to stop the Anglo-French force.

Scenario 4) The US intervenes to stop the Anglo-French force from intervening on behalf of the Israelis. The Soviets do not attempt to block them.

Scenario 5) The Soviets intervene on behalf of the Arabs to stop the Anglo-French intervention on behalf of the Israelis. The US does not attempt to block them.