A suggestion about order of battle

[SMK-at-work]

I understand that the OOB's of both sides are "historical" in the sense that units come and go as the did "in real life".

But IMO a campaign such as this cannot reasonably expect that to go exactly the same way that it did "in real life", and so the decisions to release or remove troops should not be fixed by events that are not being influenced by the way the campaign IS going.

So IMO both sides should have some ability to bring in more or less troops depending on how well they think things are going - but of course there should be a price!

This is probably more important for the Axis than the allies - but for example they may choose to replace a couple of panzer divisions with infantry divisions, or they might bring on a couple of extra reserve infantry divisions - obviously with the troops being taken from other fronts they have to pay a price in VP's, and maybe also in supply at least for a turn or 2 as they rail in divisions that were not there historically.

Or with troops being sent back to reserve they might gain some VP's - or force he allies to retain a few more troops in Nth Europe so thy aren't available in Italy......

Such a mechanism would, IMO, make the game much more replayable, and give the Axis player some sense of being able to react and/or tailor forces.

[pzgndr]

There is the alternative Main Front Italy campaign that changes the OOBs and victory conditions. I'll admit I have not tried playing this one yet but one of these days I will.

In its own way, this game does have events that trigger release of reserves and extra replacements. I also liked how the old AH Anzio game did this. Certainly, there could be a popup box to provide players some additional choices. If nothing else, a popup box for the various game events and what they trigger would be helpful. Sometimes things happen and I don't notice the game effect, or recall a particular rule that said something about what happens when Allies take Foggia or Rome or something.

As for replayability, it's more important for players to try different strategies and see how things develop. I wasn't ever too worried about replayability back in the day while playing Anzio. Just have fun with the game.

[wadepm]

You could add something where the more units you choose to keep in theater or push up their arrival the harder the victory conditions become for you. Within reason of course, but it could change the game unpredictably depending on how each side selected their reinforcement conditions...